Jastrzebska Spolka Weglowa SA

WSE:JSW

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q3

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

Good morning. I'd like to welcome you to the earnings conference of the JSW Group. Before we walk into the presentation of the results. I'll go ahead and introduce the management team of the Tenth term of office. So we've been in charge of running the company for the last 2 months.

My name is Tomasz Cudny, the Supervisory Board interested me to act as the CEO of the company. On my left, we have Artur Wojtkow, who's responsible for labor issues. Then we have Robert Ostrowski, who's the Vice President responsible for Economic Affairs. Then on my right side, we have Sebastian Bartos, who is responsible for Sales. And then a little bit further, we have Edward Pazdziorko, who's response -- being responsible for development. We have a vacancy in this matter. And so as the CEO, I'm running this area of operations.

And so let's go ahead and look at the core of the presentation. And so, of course, we'll dwell on this at greater length during the course of the presentations. So if we look at the core production, 1 of our core activities in the first 9 months of the year. We had 10,181.6 million tons. So it was down from the production in the corresponding period of the previous year by 4.1%.

Here, I would like to indicate that we have moved in the direction of coking coal. And so the level of coking. So basically, sales revenues in total was PLN 6.7 billion. And so this is more than 31% higher than what we saw in the corresponding period of last year. And if we look at the total amount of coal sales, that's 11.1 million tons, which is a figure that's up from the figure that we had last year. So it's up by 11.8%. And so the prices that we received in our contracts that we command in our contracts are higher than the prices we commanded in the previous year.

So if we look at the met coal prices, it was 4 -- it was up by 4.5%. If we look at coke in turn we were PLN 1,108.93 per ton, and this is up by 40.8% over the price commanded in the corresponding period of the previous year. If we look at EBITDA in the first 9 months of the year, this is PLN 1,044.2 million last year. In this period, we had a negative result of PLN 99.4 million.

So at the end, we haven't quite reversed the losses. So we have a net result of minus PLN 62.7 million versus last year, where the negative figure was more than PLN 1 billion. It was PLN 1,088 million. And so you can see the activities the company has taken in order to conquer this.

And so I'd ask our Technical Director to talk a little bit about our operating results.

[Edward Pazdziorko, executive]

So welcome, ladies and gentlemen. So ladies and gentlemen, I would like to go ahead and show you some of the coal production data as well as our mining cash cost and the amount of inventory that we have. So if you look at Q3 of this year, as the CEO mentioned, we had 3.3 million tons of production. Of course, this was down by 3.1%, so by around 108,000 tons. And the main reasons where we had bigger production in Q2. So some of the work on the front was completed.

So at the beginning of the third quarter, we were still involved in doing that. And so basically, we're setting things up at that time. And so we know that when you are trying to achieve your full production capacities. It takes a little bit of time to ramp that up.

So on top of the technological organizational issues with respect to coal production, we can say that, unfortunately, we had some tectonic movements. And above all, we saw that there were some -- we had some more greater or worser conditions in mining because of various changes along the front -- the longwall. And there were some fault lines there. And these variable conditions called us -- called for us to have to deal with some of these disruptions of technical nature.

So if you look at the first 9 months of the year in met coal, so we had a total production of 10.1 million tons, of which, 8.25 million tons was met coal, and we had a steam coal of 1.927 million tons. What contributed to this. And so if we compare it to the previous year, so we have lower production overall. But if we compare these figures to last year, we would point out that in 2020, we had some production that was increased in 2020 by some 50,000 tons because around the shaft area.

And the third quarter, in particular, we had the situations that we mentioned that we had some mining and geological conditions that we had to face as a result of that fault line. Of course, this had been anticipated. But after we did some surveys during the mining operations, it turned out that those faults were bigger in terms of the amplitude they had. And so that called for additional work we had also some downtime because we are operating in worser conditions -- in worse conditions. And so basically, the machinery is facing greater downtime as a result.

Nevertheless, we lost some 400-and-some thousand tons compared to the previous year. And so if we look at the mix, the coal mix, on a net basis, what we can record here is that we had an increase of 3.4% of met coal. And at the same time, we were able to reduce the mix or the percentage of steam coal in the mix.

If we look at corridor works in Q3, we did 19,056 meters -- running meters, preparatory works. So if compare that to the second quarter, we were down in terms of the amount of corridor works by some 4.0%. This was as a result of completing some of the work. And then we had to do some of the cutting of the longwall. And so this is a place where we start to prepare new longwalls and install supporting systems. And so the progress is less than what you would normally get in an underground mining pit.

And so if we look at the full 9 months, you can see that we have pretty big step-up because we have 60,754.5 running meters. And if we compare that performance to the previous year, it's up by 13.6%. And above all, we can see that the corridor works stand by our own staff represent a greater proportion as opposed to the work done by external companies. And so we had 7,021.5 meters, running meters done by external companies, whereas the rest was done by our own staff.

And that means that we've prepared quite a bit of work to do. So it takes we're preparing 3,500 meters. And so we can say pictorially that we've prepared 2 additional longwall areas compared to what we've done in the past. If the average length of the longwall is around 3,500. So we can say that the work is being done more precisely, and we've basically built done this corridor work for the future, for future mining operations.

If we look at mining cash costs in Q3, generally speaking, we can say that our costs came in at PLN 1.557 billion, and it was up from Q2 by PLN 9.2 billion. And what contributed to that? Well, employee benefits as well as an increase of taxes and fees for fixed assets for PPE, property, plant and equipment.

If we look at the mining cash cost per ton, so we have an increase of PLN 17.34. Now if you look at the nine months -- first 9 months of this year in the mining cash cost is at PLN 4,578.4 billion. And so it's up by PLN 291 million was but above, this is because of energy and material for consumption up by some 9%, then employee benefits, fees, taxes, real estate taxes and some other types of costs.

And so if we look then at the inventory of coal compared to last year, at the 30th of September. So at the end of the third quarter, we can say that we had 1,128.5 tons. We can say that the market has reacted. So we can say that the inventory has fallen compared to where we were last year at this time. So we had 2.4 million tons of coal at the end of September. So basically, we've halved our inventory.

And so if we look at the mix of that inventory. In our coal storage yards, we have some 31% of met coal and 69% is steam coal. And then if we look at coke production and inventories as well as our cash conversion cost and so the coke production is done in our 3 plants and so in -- we have 923.9 tons, so it was down by 0.3%. In Q3 we were doing some renovation works and this was linked to a slight decrease in production of say 2.9%. And so 73-point-somewhat percent was blast furnace and the rest was industrial coke. And so if we look at the 3 -- the 9 months of the year, the production of coke was 2.7 million tons.

And so we saw an increase over last year of some 370.9 tons. And so we can say that industrial coke was up by 0.9% in the mix. Generally speaking, it's 2.4% of the production. And whereas industrial -- sorry, whereas blast furnace coke represents some 70-odd percent. So we utilized our capacity -- production capacity at 99.9%. And so as a result of some renovations in Radlin, we were a little bit down.

If we look at the full 9 months period, We had an increase of some 12.2% because in 2020, we had an 87.7% production capacity utilization ratio as opposed to 99.9%. I mentioned Radlin, where we had 99.6% utilization compared to last year, that well, it was lower by 4.6%. Jadwiga, we had 103% utilization of the capacity. So we're up some 32%. If we look at shares, we maintained our capacity at utilization of 102%. And so this is up by some 12%.

If we look at the cash conversion cost in Q3, it was PLN 154.9 million. And the increase we saw here because of cost of external services and transport without transporting the batch, the inputs. And so the unit cost was up by a PLN 1.6. As I mentioned previously, we had more renovations and some CapEx up by 0.6%. And so if you look at the full 9-month period, we can say the cash conversion cost was PLN 457.8 million. And this is more than last year by some PLN 30 million, but this is because of the consumption of materials and energy as well as employee benefits, and we also had some admin expenses but the increase in the production, reduced our unit costs, our cash conversion cost, PLN 265.49. So it was down by some PLN 13.

So if you look at the inventory of coke produced by the group, as of 30 September 2021, we have 223. 5000 tons. And so above all, there's provides us security for our offtakers, we're able to discharge our obligations under contracts that have been signed.

We had some difficulties with rail transport and now rail transport is being delivered. Well, on a regular basis, so basically, this is where we stand.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

Okay. Thank you very much. Now I'd like to ask Sebastian Bartos, the Head of Sales, to tell us a little bit about the market landscape in Q3 and in the first 9 months of this year.

[Sebastian Bartos, executive]

I'd like to welcome all of you very warmly. A few words of commentary about the market situation, the market landscape, where we are in JSW, not only in Europe but also across the world. There are several indicators and a general commentary about what the market looks likes this year compared to last year. Over the course of the first 9 months, as you know, our company, we had a very difficult COVID year. Our company is confronted with a diametric change of the market environment. And we try to utilize it to the greatest extent possible.

So several words about the main indicators. If you look at steel production across the world, so we see an increase in the world of 7.8% in steel production to 1.4 billion tons. But if we look at the EU, we can see an increase of nearly 20% to almost 115 million tons where does this difference come from? EU member states and Europe have reacted totally differently to COVID and all of the measures taken affected the EU member states as well as our raw material industry and the heavy steel industry.

China, India, I'm primarily talking about the Chinese market started to rebuild more quickly, and they didn't reach such low levels as was the case in the EU. And that's why this rebound this year in the EU is much bigger than the rebound seen at the global level, because the previous year was a difficult year for many plans which discontinued operations, interrupted operations, and this is something that also affected JSW.

So if we look at the spot prices for coking coal, we can see increase. So if we look at premium hard coal spot prices, we see an increase of 37% from $129 to $177, where if you look at 70 -- if you look at semi-soft, the increase is bigger at 85% from $69 to $128 per ton. Where does this difference come from? Well, the demand for semi-soft coal just as for premium coal.

Well, the demand always exists, but it wasn't affected by the geopolitical event or at least not to that extent. As was the case between China and Australia. And so the Chinese decided not to allow -- they banned the import of premium coal from Australia into semi-soft has slightly lower quality, and it can be utilized in part for heating purposes. So for steam coal, this is happening in Eastern countries. And we also saw some shortages of this coal, lack of TSI coal for TSI processes. And that's why we have some differences.

If we look at steel prices on the European market, here, the situation is diametrically different and very positive and conducive to all producers in the European Union and across the global environment. So if we look at flat products, we have an increase of $500 up to $1,171, so it's an increase of 135% almost.

If we look at long goods, and so we have an increase of 70% almost from $510 to $862. While these differences are noticeable. In terms of flat products, this is the automotive industry, whereas long goods, so rods, this construction. Well, this is a more stable industry and the volatility is not as great, but we can see that both sectors have seen pretty major upswings.

And if we look at flat goods, we can say this is a record-breaking level of prices. And as a result, we can say that the coking market follows that. So both in Europe and as well as in China, we can see that the increase is between 68% and 65%. What are the conclusions for us for the marketplace and for the overall supply chain.

As we look at the technological utilization of coke, coal and steel, well, we can say that we have a healthy added value supply chain, this is a situation totally different from what we saw in 2016 and 2017, where we also saw major price increases for coking coal but this only applied to coking coal grades, it did not affect any of the further products.

Here, the situation is different, where the margins have been preserved in each area of the economy. So with respect to starting in June, August, we started to see sudden sharp rises of coking coal, coke and steel. And so in each 1 of these segments, we can say all those segments generate margins has created a very healthy arrangement for the industry to operate, and this is also true of JSW. And this is the market that we want to benefit from to the greatest extent possible.

As I move along, in terms of the prices of products and benefiting from them and how we, as JSW are able to command prices from the international markets. So if you look at met coal prices of around PLN 170. And then we have the average prices of PLN 158. So we're looking at Q3 here. As we look at the past, we can say there's a discount between the quality of our coal compared to the premium class and these quotations talk about primarily the premium hard coking coal prices.

And so if you look at the prices commanded by ourselves in Q3, we've maintained that same path that we had in the past as JSW, so PLN 158 for us as opposed to PLN 170 for the market, so down below on the graph below, along with that gray box you can see what's happening between ourselves and the marketplace.

We've said it many times at conferences, there are 3 systems for negotiating prices and for quoting prices with our -- we have the Nippon Steel method, where we have long-term periods whereas on a quarterly basis, we look at 2 months of the current quarter and 1 month of the previous quarter. And then we also have price formulas that utilize the previous quarter in its entirety. This is Q minus 1.

And then we have some of our contracts that are defined prices where we're negotiating based on spot prices on a daily basis in certain predictions about what's going to happen in the future. And that's how the price is set for subsequent quarters. And so the reference price for the most recent 5 months, this was the basis for agreeing on prices for Q3.

So if you look at the prices for coke from our coking plants, in the coking segment. And if we compare ourselves to the European market as well as the Chinese market, here, I would focus on the third quarter. And you can see the difference. It's more or less the same as in previous periods.

So we have $343 as opposed to what you see on the black and the gray bars. And so you know the price that we called as JSW is an aggregate price. This is the average price of coke in total, which includes our main product. So this blast furnace coke, but also the various fractions, key coke. So this is an aggregate price.

And this is based on available quotations, which are only for the blast furnace coke and that's where we have some of the differences. Now if you look at steam coal prices, you're well aware of this process because we have the Polish steam coal price market. The product we have, our steam coal price. Well, we're selling it to commercial power plants. And we set the prices on -- at annual intervals. And so the PLN 221 is the average price.

And so if you look at the previous quarters, we can say that the relationship between our coal price and the market prices is maintained. And these are stable prices that will remain in force until intact until the end of the year. And so if you look at the volumes, of course, Mr. Pazdziorko talked about the production.

So if we look at the second and third quarter of this year, you can see that coal sales were fell by 5% from 2.5 million to 2.4 million tons. And so this is to external customers. And then you also see coal sales to internal customers. So this is our coking segment. And so the decline here is 8.3% from 1.2 million to 1.1 million tons.

And so the difference comes from the fact that we made a decision as JSW to optimize our flows. So we sent coal to external customers as well as internal customers depending on the inventories we have in our coking plants. But if we look at the nominal decrease, it's primarily linked to the supply of coal in Q3.

If we look at the same relations in the 9 months from the current year and the previous year, also to external customers and internal customers. Here, you can see an increase of 12.6% to external customers and 10.1% to internal customers. That means we're selling more to our customers to our coking plants, which are utilizing nearly 100% of their production capacity with the exception of Przyjazn coking plant, which had some disruptions as well as Radlin because of technological causes. And so we showed 1 other thing on slides.

And Mr. Pazdziorko explained this to us. And we had our inventory dropping from 2.4 million to 1.2 million tons at present after as at 30 September. And this is something that we were able to do because we had contracts. This is primarily to external customers. And at the same time, we used our own coke and coal to met coke for internal purposes.

And so if you look at the revenues on the sales. And so we have an increase of some 45%. If we look at Q2 and Q3, and if we compare the full 9 months of last year to the current year, we have an increase of 4.5%. And so the price increase enabled us to get revenues on sales of coal to external clients. So this is up by 26.4% higher in Q3 over Q2. And if we look at the first 9 months of the year, we're up by 15.9% for the first 9 months of 2020 to the first 9 months of 2021.

Now let me say a few words about the coke segment. So we have the coke sales to external customers when we compare Q3 to Q2 of this year, we can see a decrease of 2.3%. And if we look at the first 9 months of the 2 years, we can say that the uptick is roughly 1.4%. As you look at these figures, in the coke segment, we tried to keep at a very stable level. So the minor variations we see between Q2 and Q3, this is a result of invoicing as well as changes in some of our shipping primarily overseas markets.

But if you look at the first 9 months, why is the increase quite small, only 1.4%. This is part of the business model of our group, which we used to defend the group in more challenging times because we have integrated coking plants and since we're selling coke which is not necessarily being sold in Europe. A lot of that is being sold on overseas markets.

So in this difficult period, we're able to continue selling the maximum level. And that's why the differences are so small because our coking plants were utilizing their capacity to a great extent. And the coke was being sold to external markets. And this is not something that would have been doable simply with coal. And this is part of the strength of the business model that the group has because it has coke as well.

And so if we look at the average coke sales price in Q2 and Q3 of this year, we see that it's an increase of 15.1%. And if we compare the first 9 months of last year to the first 9 months of this year, we can see the increase of 40.8%. And so the revenues on the sales of coke and hydrocarbons followed suite. And so we see an increase from Q2 to Q3 of this year by 12.4%. And if we compare the first 9 months of last year to this year, we see an increase of nearly 50%.

And so this is something that we've achieved more than on just coke itself. And this is because in the coking segment, we have an integrated hydrocarbon product. And it was treated once as a side product or byproduct today, it's capable of commanding prices we haven't seen for many, many years, and it creates added value and improves our top line and add something basically to the results on blast furnace coke. Thank you very much.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

Now I'd like to ask our technical management Board members. So Edward Pazdziorko, to say a little bit about the group's investments in the first 3 -- in the last 3 quarters -- 3 months as well as the first 9 months of the year.

[Edward Pazdziorko, executive]

So we have the following CapEx figures, net of consolidation effects on an accrual basis in Q3, we had CapEx of PLN 413.1 million. And if we look at the breakdown in the segments, so it's PLN 342 million in the coal segment and PLN 47.7 million in the coke segment. Other segments had a CapEx of PLN 23.4 million.

Generally speaking, we see an increase in CapEx in the coal and coke segment. And so this is true vertical pits, also environmental protection, we are modernizing the roof support systems, mechanized roof support systems. And then we also had transport systems, attracting CapEx.

If we look at Przyjazn coking plant, we were modernizing the coking battery that was the primary CapEx. And so if you look at the increase in CapEx offer, second quarter, the increase is 4%. If we look at the first 9 months of the year, we also saw -- well, we had a decline in the CapEx of 12%. Unfortunately, the biggest decline is in the coal segment.

Generally speaking, this is above all CapEx for leasing. If we look at the coking segment. Here, we see an increase because of doing some key investments as we were building coking battery #4 at the Przyjazn coking plant, and we also saw a higher execution of the investment in terms of building an energy power unit in the Radlin coking plant.

So the other segments saw a much lower level of investment. That's because the plans were scaled down from last year. And if we look at the capital expenditures in the group in Q3, PLN 342 million. And so it was an increase of 5.7%, and this is because of investment construction, PLN 121 million.

And then we had purchase of finished capital assets. And then we had expenditures on expensable mining pits of PLN 150 million. And then we had some leasing contracts. And if you look at the 9-month period of this year, we saw a decline over last year of -- so the performance was PLN 975.9 million.

And if we look at the various segments, we can say that investment construction was PLN 366.3 million, this is a decline over the first 9 months. And then we also have purchases of finished capital assets down, but this is because they're usually focused in Q4 of the year. If we look at expenditures on expensable mining pits, they were up when comparing to last year. We came in at PLN 477.3 million versus PLN 441.7 million. So roughly PLN 36 million more was spent on that.

And if we look at expenditures -- on capital expenditures in the JSW Group, including also installments -- on lease installments. So in Q3, if we look at the breakdown, by segments, we can say that we had PLN 398.3 million. So basically, we had PLN 321.6 million in the coal segment, PLN 31.4 million in the coke segment and PLN 45.3 million in the other segments. And so this is down -- the reduction was because of expenditures to prepare and reinforce the walls and to work on the washing plants plus we had the expensable mining pits and the vertical pits.

So if you look at the 9 months of the year, first 9 months of the year, we can say that the total spend was PLN 1.3 billion, and it was lower by 24.6% lower than last year. And so -- in the other segment, we were down by -- where we saw compared to last year, that we were spending money on the environment protection, modernization of our reinforcement systems, transportation systems and other expenditures.

And then if we look at the CapEx in JSW KOKS on an accrual basis, above all in Q3. It was PLN 47.7 million, which is an increase over Q2 by 19.3%. And if you look at the first 9 months of the year, we came in at PLN 110.8 million compared to PLN 100.4 million were up by 10.4%. And this is above all driven by the fact that we did more investments to build coking battery #4 at Przyjazn coking plant. And we also had -- this was PLN 10.4 million, and then we were preparing the power generation unit in Radlin, which was PLN 3.9 million. Thank you.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

Okay. Thank you very much. Now I'd like to ask Robert Ostrowski to tell us about the financials in Q3 in the first 9 months of the year in the JSW Group.

[Robert Ostrowski, executive]

Thank you very much. Welcome to all. So after my colleagues have shown you the performance of our operating business, the market landscape, what we've done in terms of investments, it's now time to talk about the financial results of the JSW Group. So I'll begin with sales.

So generally, the group generated a top line of PLN 6.7 billion. And this is PLN 1.6 billion more than what we saw last year. And so Q3 was responsible for adding an extra PLN 400 million. But if we look at the 9 months at the mix of this growth we can say that we were selling coal by PLN 417 million. And then we had a bigger volume and this gave us PLN 381 million. But in the first 9 months, this gave us an increase of PLN 36 million. And so if you look at coke sales, they are up by PLN 906 million. And so this was PLN 37 million, because of volume, but the price of coke raised revenues by PLN 870 million. And so -- we also saw higher revenues on hydrocarbons. This PLN 165 million, and this is in terms of volume of tar as well as benzol.

And so if we look at the results, we can start with the EBITDA. So after the 9 months of the year, we have a very clear improvement in the result. We have more than PLN 1,044 million, and this is net of recurring -- nonrecurring events. So it's adjust -- and last year, it was minus PLN 99.4 million. In Q3, we can say it contributed some PLN 717 million to that result.

If we look at results, I would also mention about the net result of the group. At the consolidated level, we continue to have a loss of nearly PLN 63 million. Last year, the loss was almost PLN 1.1 billion. So you can see a lot of the progress we've made in these corresponding periods. What's really noteworthy and should be emphasized, there's several bits of information -- positive information that we want to highlight here. In Q3, we had a profit in the group of nearly PLN 268 million.

And then a few words about net working capital. I think it's worth mentioning here. Of course, we do have a shift and the position in terms of the short-term assets and liabilities. The shortfall of PLN 728 million as a result of the fact that the sum of equity and long-term liabilities doesn't cover the long-term assets, and this is the gap, the shortfall that we're going to be able to fill in by taking a number of measures and we'll make sure that it's a positive figure. I hope. So then as a matter of tradition, I'll show you a couple of slides about our EBITDA and what it looks like.

What's the bridge? And what contributed to our EBITDA in Q3 compared to the EBITDA we had in Q2. In Q2, including nonrecurring events was PLN 151.5 million. And then if we look at the various factors, let me begin by talking about the volume of coal sales. If you look at met coal, we had a decline of nearly 11%. While steam coal was up by 10.6% in -- in total, this had a negative impact of PLN 88.1 million. That was a negative -- had a negative EBITDA impact. So we can see that the impact was PLN 95 million for met coal and a negative sign.

And so if you look at the prices commanded in Q3. So this was -- we had a 45% upswing in the coal price for met coal. We had a symbolic price decline of 0.1% in steam coal. And so the price side impact gave us a total influence of PLN 336 million. If we look at then the impact of coke sales volume, we had coke sales volume down by 2.3%. And that meant that this was an impact of PLN 24.7 million in minus. At the same time, we -- in Q3, we saw average coke sales price moving up by 15.1%, and this improved our EBITDA in Q3 by nearly PLN 150 million.

Here, we have a group of many smaller line items, so other operation revenue -- operational revenue and expenses. And so here, the impact is PLN 134.8 million. So we have higher revenue on the sales of hydrocarbons, up by PLN 14 million, plus we have revenues up by PLN 13 million plus -- and here there are variety of line items or the sales of electricity. So it's an additional PLN 3 million from JSW KOKS, plus we have Bzie services or sales. And then we have some tourist sales, which grew by PLN 2.6 million. Tourist services were up.

So if you look at the nonrecurring events, which improved the EBITDA for PLN 58 million. Above all, we had PLN 112 million, which is negative because of the agreement we signed with the staff representation, but we also have a change in a decision to discontinue loans from what to forgive loans from PFR, the Polish Development Fund, and this was more than PLN 107 million. Plus we also have amongst the bigger things that took place. We have more than PLN 52 million, which is an up. We have the Jastrzebie-Bzie and so this reversal of impairment loss. And so in total, we had an EBITDA without including nonrecurring events of PLN 717 million.

So how -- what was the impact of the operating segments EBITDA? So the coal segment had a positive impact. So the total EBITDA was PLN 717 million. So the coal segment delivered PLN 628 million of that. And this is because of higher sales of PLN 220 million in Q3, primarily because of the higher average sales price, which was discussed earlier during the presentation.

The coking segment had a negative impact on EBITDA was nearly PLN 67 million. And this is because of higher operating expenses, they're up by PLN 206 million, and this is a result of having a higher utilization of a batch of inputs. So the feedstock to ensure that we have the right level of quality as set forth in the contracts.

So in total, we can say, we have nearly PLN 67 million negative impact. The other segment is below the level of materiality at 8.1% in the plus. Then we have movement in the balance of consolidation and eliminations. So the total impact is minus PLN 62 million. This is primarily a result of unrealized profits on inventory. We talked about that when we discussed the results for Q2. So I won't quote the definition. So the impact is negative at PLN 62 million.

Then we have other consolidation eliminations because of dividends received from group companies of more than PLN 20 million. So nearly PLN 27 million. Then we had the nonrecurring events, which I already presented to you were PLN 58 million in the plus. And that's why the EBITDA in Q3 came in finally at PLN 717 million.

And here's a slide that presents information about the costs by nature. So after the first 9 months of the year, the value of the costs net of cost of materials and goods sold. So it's up by PLN 238 million. So it's up by nearly PLN 400 million over the previous period. And so we can say the employee benefits are up by some PLN 238 million and JSW is responsible of nearly PLN 207 million.

And so these are factors that were discussed previously because of the agreement signed with the representation of the staff. So 1 agreement was signed in July. One was in September, signed into September. And so basically, the rates of pay will be increased by 5% up to the end of the year. And so the impact of PLN 112 million along with some security benefits in other payroll related expenses.

And so the costs of materials and energy are up by nearly PLN 208 million and if we look at material utilization that's PLN 108 million and then higher energy cost is nearly PLN 87 million. If we look at materials above all we have the impact of higher utilization volume of coke from outside the group I discussed that previously that we were buying feedstock from elsewhere.

But we also have our own management system that we had more meters of corridor works. So this is more than 7,700 running meters. And so we also had higher costs for roof support systems, but the increase in energy costs because of the higher price is clearly higher prices for allowances. And so over the nine months of the year, we have higher amortization expenses of some PLN 87 million and this is a result of settling of course for the costs that have been converted into capitalized.

Our cost of external services are down by PLN 52 million, and this is a result of lower costs to do drilling services, mining drilling services and other external services. From my side, that's it in terms of the results. So thank you very much for your attention.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

Thank you very much. Now we've presented the results of the JSW Group in Q3 and in the first 9 months of the year, this is where we'll end the presentation. Now we're at your disposal. If you have some questions, let me ask you to go ahead and pose any questions you may have.

So let me read some of the questions that have been sent to the company. How can you explain specifically the decline in production in Q3? Will this affect production in subsequent quarters and to what extent?

So I'll ask Mr. Pazdziorko to respond to that question.

[Edward Pazdziorko, executive]

In terms of the differences, we saw a decline in production of 108,000 tons reduction in Q3. Well, in Q2, we had a pretty good quarter and so we had some slight decreases for Q3. Well, technologically, we had to fire up some new longwalls. And so when you reopen a longwall, they have to go through a period of commissioning. It's usually 30 meters before you're able to get the full scope and the optimum production capacity. And so we lost 4 longwalls.

And so 6 of them were being retooled. And so these were elements to which extent basically delivered some impact. In Q3, we were also, unfortunately, dealing with some obstacles because we had more difficulty in geological and mining conditions. In the mining pits, well, we were cutting them up in 3 of the sections.

We had noticed some falls, but after we launched those longwalls, it turned out that the deposit was more complicated between the various mining pits where we were preparing those access locations. And so some of those falls and the extent of those falls were bigger than anticipated at the time of opening up originally, those long falls -- and the longwalls and that slowed things down. And so we had to use some preventive measures when we run into these type of disruptions.

And so sometimes you have to gather the winnings in a slightly different manner. And so basically, safety conditions are downgraded, and that's why we had utilized other technology in terms of how we reinforce the roofs. And then we also can say that the equipment has a higher downtime ratio, so greater falls. So also when we do the transportation. So we were unable to anticipate everything.

And in some cases, these fault lines can continue along the entire longwall and sometimes they disappear. And so generally speaking, these were the mining conditions that trigger this process. And so we can say that some of those difficulties have disappeared, and that means there's a trend towards improving mining conditions, but they will continue to have an impact all the way through the end of the year to some extent. So basically we're going to have to do some additional works.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

Okay. Thank you very much. The next question. So achieving the target above 14 million tons, should be compared to the 18 million tons from the previous strategy, does the new strategy mean that the volumes are down by 22% versus the previous strategy?

So I'd like to ask our Technical Director, this is his area. So go ahead and provide us with response to that.

[Edward Pazdziorko, executive]

Generally speaking, the new strategy or the update that the company is working on addresses geological disruptions in the tectonic side of things, which actually verify our assumptions. And so basically, if you look at the mix itself, we can see that met coal will have a higher share of the mix and steam coal will have a lower share of the mix. And so this will have an impact on the overall production outlook and the volume.

So if you look at Bzie mine, we have the corridor works that have been done there. And this will have an impact on having an optimal approach in the strategy to the run rate for production. And so this will have an impact on our survey operations and to give us greater assurances of what we're going to be able to produce in the future.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

The next question. Does the management see an ability to achieve a run rate above 15 million tons by 2025? So I'd like to ask our Technical Director to respond to that question.

[Edward Pazdziorko, executive]

That level of run rate, as I mentioned in my statement, is being updated in the strategy. And this is something once the strategy is completed at the end of the year, we'll state at a different date after we approve the current strategy, what that run rate would be.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

Since we're talking about the strategy, when does the company intend to present its updated strategy?

I'll respond to that question. The strategy is a document which is alive. And so it's a living document in the environment, and it's always being analyzed by management board members in the various areas. And so the update of the strategy is not -- well, our intention is not to turn the current strategy upside down.

But basically, it's an update of what's happening between nature and engineering. Every day of production enables us to analyze our technical conditions of operations in performance. The next condition prerequisite is that the management team and its current composition has looked at the strategy in the areas for which they're responsible, and we have a slightly different vision.

And these are the things that will be incorporated in the strategy update. So we're looking at the information we're getting from the mines as the mines are directly doing this work. So we've set the bar very high. We want to complete this process by the end of the year. And at the beginning of next year, we would like to announce through updated strategy.

The next question. When you talk about increasing met coal in the mix, when you have a run rate above 14 million what level are we talking about with respect to the 80%? We had previously talked about achieving a target in the mix of -- in excess of 80%. What is your ambition in the short and long term, so in 2022 and 2030?

I'll respond to that question. The management and the company's operations in order to increase the volume of coking coal, this is something that hasn't changed. This is the priority, and we've shown that on the first slide, even though mine production was down. Our decisions, our operating measures were taken to ensure that the level of coking coal I think was around 81.1%.

So in the new strategy, as we analyze the data we received from the mines, we're looking at the deposits. And with this in mind, our efforts have a clear priority to focus on coking coal. Of course, steam coal is also a sales product, but our main efforts. I can't give you a percentage right now, because that would be a bit of reading from tea leaves, depending on the data we get from the mines and the Colliers and from the strategy.

And the next question, what level of CapEx should we anticipate on an annual basis, having in right -- having in mind that the run rate is being reduced to around 14 million tons because previously, we had a 2.2 billion. This is a financial matter. I'd ask Robert to speak to that question.

[Robert Ostrowski, executive]

Thank you. Well, ladies and gentlemen, as was stated, we're presenting the results for the first 9 months of the year. And the CEO mentioned that our assumptions, the information about updating the strategy will be presented to you at a separate meeting. Of course, we can say that the CapEx level stems from the scope of operating business. But I think we'll speak to the specifics at the proper time.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

Thank you very much. The next question. Having in mind the rising prices of materials components and labor, how up to date are your CapEx figures, how current are they? Well, I'll ask the CFO to respond.

[Robert Ostrowski, executive]

Well, the response is the same. Well, the plans aren't the subject of this conference, and we'll present in the new year the response to this question.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

Thank you very much. We have another question. What are your investment plans as a company in terms of the wash plants to enable you to drive up the percentage of hard coking coal in the next 2 to 3 years?

I'll try to provide an exhaustive response to that question. So our wash plants in the various mines, were built along with the mines and the technological processes were dedicated. Now our investments after 50 years of operations in the company, we're following 2 directions. One is to replace what we had in place previously, but the world hasn't -- isn't stuck in a single spot. Engineering knowledges move forward. And what we want to do is we want to be able to extract more coking coal.

The next thing is we want to be able to do new investments to be able to separate the coal in order to give -- get more coking coal. We can look at the Budryk mine, where thanks to modernization work we're able to get 2 products on a selective basis. We have an important product, which is the ortho coke, which is type 35.1. And we have another product which is steam coal, and this is the direction our efforts will take. When we talk about quantities and values figures, we'll talk about them after we announced the strategy. Thank you. And the next question, Bzie Debina was supposed to add 2 million, 2.5 million tons of coking coal. And the first longwall was supposed to be set up in the end of Q4 -- at the end of this year. It was supposed to add 0.5 million tons of coal. Will these -- are these plans being upheld? I'd ask the Technical Director to speak.

[Edward Pazdziorko, executive]

I'd like to give a more precise response. This is -- yes, Jastrzebie-Bzie mine. We're doing the work in the Bzie section. It turns out that the Jastrzebie-Bzie mine is a ventilation segment connected to Zofiówka. And the transportation work has done there. When we do the work in corridor -- in corridors, we have highly complicated geological structure in that deposit.

And now to talk about the fault lines there and the typical corridor works and the survey works that we have to be done basically the structure -- the geological structure of the deposit and the extent -- well, in the future, we want to define those parcels, which is where the longwalls will be located in the future.

If we look at Bzie Debina mine itself, this is pushed back to next year, and we plan or estimate that the preparatory work should enable us to launch the first longwall in that region of the mine or the deposit, somewhere around Q1, Q4 in the second longwall will show up in the latter half of the year.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

Does the company -- can the company say more about how this will affect results next year? What sort of split of coking coal and steam coal do you anticipate? So I'd like to ask the Technical Director to respond.

[Edward Pazdziorko, executive]

Well, in terms of the level of production, as I mentioned, operating the first longwall and later longwalls. This will add production -- coal production. We're preparing the preparatory works. So it's usually coking coal with good coking parameters.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

And the next question, having in mind Jastrzebie III section was moved to SRK, the mine liquidation front. What sort of -- how many employees did that apply to? And what are the savings? This is an employee area. So I'd like to ask Artur Wojtkow to respond to this question.

[Artur Wojtków, executive]

So we've completed the procedures to update or amend the law on the functioning of the hard coal mining industry. The President signed that law. And on that basis, having in mind the regulations in the law will provide or turnover, the Jastrzebie III mining area, to them, SRK mining, liquidation or restructuring company.

So on the 1st of January '22, we'll make the transfer to that company. And so employees will move to that SRK. We have roughly 900 employees, there 700 are on mining recreational leave and 200 will have a severance pay. This will give -- this will reduce costs by roughly PLN 150 million. So thank you.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

And then we can go on to the next question. At what stage are you closing battery #3 in the Przyjazn coking plant, which is planned for 2022. And number two, in that same coking plant in 2027. When will coke battery 4 get started, which is planned for next year and then also the plan for 2027.

I'll ask our sales colleague, we're not closing our coking assets quite the opposite. The decision has been made to modernize battery #4 and in corridor -- in accordance with the strategy, we replace -- we're doing replacement investments in order to maintain our coke production capacities and capabilities.

I talked about the positive business model of the group. So if the question is about battery #2 and battery #3. Battery #2, this is a battery where we're doing renovations of the ceramics. And we believe that up until 2030, it has a lifetime in terms of battery 3, we can extend that battery until the end of 2034. And this is something we're going to try to do.

Battery #4, which has been completed and the work -- the planned work is going on schedule and we should get the first coke in 2023 from that battery. So we can say that quite the opposite, we have the opportunity that 2 batteries can work at the same time, which should give us incremental volumes of coke, whether or not we make that decision after launching battery #4 without closing battery #3. That will be determined by the market conditions at that time. The group doesn't plan to shut down batteries, we want to maintain our production capacity and develop the coking segment. Thank you very much.

And the next question. After this exceptional year of high production of coke, should we anticipate that modernization of the battery will reduce coke production to around 3.3 million tons for several years? So I'd like to ask once again Sebastian Bartos to respond to that question.

[Sebastian Bartos, executive]

I think the question is more or less the same as the question that I responded to a moment ago. The strategy is clear. The coking segment in our production capacities will be maintained above 3.5 million tons in total to 3.6 million tons. So there's no threat or risk that the volumes will fall to the level cited in the question.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

The next question. By how much will steel costs grow and material costs in terms of percentages and values? And to what extent will the total cost of energy grow in 2022 compared to the current year also in terms of zloties and percentages?

Well, then I could ask Robert Ostrowski to speak to that question.

[Robert Ostrowski, executive]

Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, by how much prices will grow for production in terms of the JSW? Well, we probably won't find out until 2022. We're working with our partners, our suppliers. Negotiations are underway in terms of how we're going to operate with 1 another in 2022. The trends, generally speaking, in the forecasted prices. For energy and steel are published by suppliers, and we'll certainly follow those trends, but we're a big buyer. And we do have bargaining power. And so we'll utilize that as was said, the cost of energy, well, our investment plan will be continued, and we want to limit energy intensity, but we also want to utilize our own abilities to generate electricity. And so that will also have an impact on the costs of energy in our cost structure at JSW. Thank you.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

The next question. What are your expectations in terms of wage pressure next year? Having in mind the record-breaking level of inflation.

I'll ask Artur Wojtkow to respond to that question.

[Artur Wojtków, executive]

Ladies and gentlemen, this year, on the 13th of September of this year, the salary agreement was signed between the management team and representative trade unions. And this determines salary in 2021. And so the base rates were moved up by 5%. And then a one-off bonus was paid. And there's another important clause in that agreement, where all salary disputes are brought to an end between the company and the trade union organizations. But in terms of 2020 to the costs of labor will be determined and then new technical and economic plan for 2022. Thank you.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

What will be the increase of costs, but from the outside world next year, having in mind the work that you're doing on energy efficiency and sufficiency. And if you can mention some of the work. What's the status of the work that you're doing on becoming self-sufficient. When can you realistically achieve self-sufficiency?

I'd like to ask Edward Pazdziorko to respond to that question.

[Edward Pazdziorko, executive]

Ladies and gentlemen, as we know, energy prices have gone wild and prices have moved up by 80%. And so we believe that price growth next year won't be so high, but we believe that energy prices will continue to grow, but we also assume that we'll be doing our own production of electricity in energy.

And basically, we'll produce more internally than the cost increase. And so we have cogeneration units. Today, the key to investments, so at Radlin where we're building a combined heat and power plant and the investment program, in terms of the economic utilization of methane. So we anticipate that 2024, 2025 at the turn of those 2 years as we roll out more power generation units. Well, we should be able to exceed production in terms of the use of electricity that was seen in 2020.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

Next question. How does the management Board see the demand for coking coal in Europe in 2025, 2030? Having in mind the statements of some of the large steel mills in Europe about what they want to do by 2025 in their steel mills. This is a question about the market environment. I'd like to ask Sebastian Bartos to speak to that question.

[Sebastian Bartos, executive]

Ladies and gentlemen, we observe as a company, the development of alternative technologies to produce steel, smelt steel, having in mind the normal smelting method in blast furnace. So if we look at the period up until 2030, when we talk about smelting steel in electrical arc furnaces and looking at the volumes of steel -- sorry, of coal that we have as opposed to what's being imported into Europe.

Well, we have certain conclusions. If we have less than 40 million tons of coking coal imported into Europe. Right now, our company has 11 million to 12 million tons, I'm talking here of coking coal. I'm not talking about our total production and giving consideration to the environment in EU, where we're the sole producer of this raw material because as Czech mines are extinguishing their operations, there's only the OKD group that remains in 2 sections in the North and South sections where they produced less than 2 million tons. Well, this means that there's room for coking coal in the EU coming from even if those changes were to take place that you referred to.

I would also add that these type of changes will not take place 100% and they won't take place across the board. All those type of plans that are being made have to take into consideration other factors like the economics of steel manufacturer using that method as you observe what's happening with electricity prices.

The second thing, you have to look at scrap prices. Scrap prices are very high today. In electricity, well, nothing would suggest that these costs would fall in the near future. So if you go to an electric arc furnace, then you have to consume even more electricity, not all EU member states are ready for that type of sharp increase in electricity consumption. And this will be a natural barrier to get rid of blast furnace technology in my opinion, it is impossible. And if you look at the balanced -- production balance, I think we can state calmly that having in mind the volumes we produce as JSW, we're going to be able to sell our wares up until 2030, we don't see any dangerous.

[Tomasz Cudny, executive]

The next question. ArcelorMittal CEO mentioned that in the next few months, they will present investment plans for Dabrowa Górnicza. He betrayed that this would be an arc furnace. Do you have information about when an investment would be rolled out? And what amount of coking coal and coke is sold to Dabrowa Górnicza. What's the production of steel in Dabrowa Górnicza.

Of course, we know that statement was made at the European Economic Congress, but this question -- well, only part of that statement was made, but there was a second part of that statement made by the representative ArcelorMittal, a retooling of that plant to an electric furnace would increase the demand from 6 terawatt hours to 12 terawatt hours, where the current electricity distribution system and production system is not prepared to do that. So that's 1 thing.

The second thing. Well, the question talks about the supply of coking coal and coke to Dabrowa Górnicza. I think we have to separate those 2 things because they're key. JSW in Dabrowa Górnicza, Mittal has steel assets, it has blast furnaces. And this is where coke is delivered. We as JSW and our coking segment is sufficiently diverse. Whatever happens sufficiently well diversified regardless of whatever happens in the long term, this is not a problem for our group.

But the coking coal is not delivered to Dabrowa Górnicza but only to the coking plant in Bielszowice, and this is an integrated coking plant, which can also serve the purposes of other steel plants in Mittal. Mittal is 1 of our strategic off-takers. We don't see any potential threat here in terms of our ability to sell our coal. Thank you.

We have 1 final question. In the European Commission is work still being done on emission trading system for methane is it clear, when this could this take place? How many free emission rates would there be? What's the maximum price?

I'll try to respond to that question. As a company, in our operating operations, we have a massive amount of methane released, but we're not the sole players that do that. There are other areas like agricultural industry and waste treatment. We had more than 360 million cubic tons.

So we are tracking very closely what's happening in the European Commission in this area. We do have some information that in mid-December, there should be a document, the draft regulation in terms of reducing methane release in various industries. We know some of the draft terms of that regulation. Basically, the intentions are more or less in the direction going in the direction of verifying where it comes from and reporting methane emissions.

Today, nothing is being said about fees. I'm looking at this. Well, the European Commission is aware of the gravity, the importance of coking coal as a strategic raw material and it's something that's needed in all sort of transition processes. That's how I would respond to this question.

So we'd like to thank you, ladies and gentlemen. If there are no other questions, we'd like to thank you for your participation. Of course, if additional follow-up questions appear, I would ask that you send those questions to our Investor Relations department, and we'll respond to your questions. So thank you once again for your attention.