Ferroglobe reports Q1 EPS 0c vs. 5c last year

Reports Q1 revenue $391.9M vs. $400.9M last year. Dr. Marco Levi, CEO, said: “In the first quarter, we continued to make progress in improving Ferroglobe’s financial position, ending the quarter with a positive net cash position for the first time, representing the strongest financial position in the Company’s history. We announced a dividend last quarter and are declaring another dividend of $0.013. Our board recently approved a buyback initiative, and we expect our shareholders to do the same during our annual shareholders’ meeting in June. We will continue to focus on policies that return value to our shareholders. As we position the Company to exploit the strong anticipated demand in silicon metal to address the solar and EV battery markets, we are in the process of applying for a permit to expand our silicon metal operations in North America. This will be in the form of a brownfield expansion, which is significantly less costly than a greenfield buildout. In March, we signed a memorandum of understanding with Coreshell, a leading US-based battery technology company, working towards building the world’s first battery-grade metallurgical silicon for electric vehicles. Recently we solidified this relationship by making a strategic investment in Coreshell. This is an important opportunity for Ferroglobe to play a key role in the ongoing evolution of the electric vehicle battery market. Using silicon in EV batteries has significant advantages over graphite, including lower cost, an increase of up to 40% in driving range as well as significantly faster charging times. We believe silicon will be an important component in the innovation of EV batteries and we are positioning the company to be an integral part of it. The indices across all our businesses are up from the lows. While the initial improvement in prices was driven by supply-related issues, these prices have held strong and we are starting to see some signs of fundamental improvements in demand in the U.S. Accordingly, we are raising the low end of our annual adjusted EBITDA guidance, increasing the range from $100-170 million to $130-170 million.”