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Now it's on times. They would like to starts the performance briefing sessions of the Q3 of FY March 2022 of TDK Corporation. Today's speaker is Executive Vice President Tetsuji Yamanishi. I'm Yamanishi. Hello, everyone. Thank you very much. Okay, I'm Yamanishi speaking. Thank you very much for joining us today in your very busy schedule. Thank you. Okay, then I'd like to start with the performance briefing of Q3 of FY March 2022. I start with the key points concerning earnings. And even under the COVID-19 pandemic and uh continuing from the first and a half and that normalizations of the social and economic activities is going on and all over the world, but but still and it's uh. The constraints on the supply chains and have a prolonged so that's the that would have adversary effects to the production units of automobiles and smartphones. But on the other hand, now that our electronics business has been steady so that we could have the increase uh with sales in all segments, and including that's the uh improvement of profits under the passive components and and also the sensor profitability have increased, and we have a very well balanced earning structure. Sales have increased by 26.3% year on year, and operating income have increased by 31.3% year on year. And for both the Q3 and the first nine months of the fiscal year have both and have recognized that all-time high. In the automobile markets, and uh due to that, uh the shortage of that the semiconductors, for example, and and that have lowered their production needs of the… and the year on year, but still that further development of EXP and that the further electrification of ADAS have increased in the number of components installed per vehicle that that that have had favorable for a business so that our business is steady and we could expand the sales of the the passive components as well as sensors. In ICT markets, and now still and some the the shortage of the uh semiconductors and uh push down to the production of smartphones and also they were lower than the last year, but our own components have adapted more in the smartphones, and on the top of that very strong demand in the PC and the tablets., uh they make a contribution of uh steady business and still that's a very good investment to the the data center pushing up to the server demands. In all of these our sales on the secondary battery sensor as well as how did HDD head have increased. Also in the end of the market of industrial equipment. Now the CapEx is very steady by the corporations, and then our sales for that semiconductor manufacturing equipment and renewable energy have increased. And also passive components and the industrial power supply have expanded its sales. And also for the the secondary battery, a, have also have a very good business, including this the increasing sales of the middle-sized battery for the home use ESS. Just likes under this and the good favorable environment, then the first nine months of of that this fiscal year have uh largely surpassed our forecast. So that's why and the full year projection were revised upward in light of operating results through Q3 and that latest order trends. Again we have this and and uh revision and from the last time in October. I will I explain it in details later. Next let me talk about the consolidated result of the first nine months of the Q3. Exchange impacted to that a the net sales have about 85.3 billion yen and also and 3.5 billion yen and all operating income. It including all these. The total sales was 1 trillion and 393.9 billion yen. That is 307.1 billion yen or 28.3% increase year on year. Operating income was 139.2 billion yen. That is 31.8 billion yen yen or 29.5% up from the year earlier. The income before tax was 146.6 billion yen. Net income was 117.3 billion yen. So all these KPIs, we could recognize it all-time high. Earning per share was 309.53 yen. When it comes to the sensitivity to the currency, there's no any change before, so that one yen change to the dollar have the impact on the operating income of 1.2 billion yen and 200 million yen a for the euro. Next let me the report about the consolidated results for Q3. So again, the exchange impacts onto the sales have there’s 39.9 billion yen and also 5.3 billion yen impact on the operating income. And it including on all these impacts, the total net sales, was 499.7 billion yen, that is four 104 billion yen, or 26.3% increase year on year, and operating income was 59.2 billion yen, that is the 14.1 billion yen, one, 31.3% of increase year on the year. Income before tax was 62.2 billion yen, and net income was 49.1 billion yen, just like for the the nine months. A first to the nine months and the total also we have the regular high KPIs for all these and the figures, and a unexpected share was 129.50 yen. Next. Now let me talk about the segment wise business performance in Q3. Uh, the passive component segments, the sales was 129.5 billion yen, that is 18.3% increase year on year. The demand in automotive markets have been pushed up by that increasing number of components and uh mounted onto the vehicles. And also now in our industrial equipment markets or the renewable energy business also have been favorable. And in the ICT market, although the demand in smartphones decline, but the other strong demand in the uh uh base station's valuable devices have more than offset. So then on all of all these entertainment installations, we could have then a positive growth in all of the segments. Operating income was 22.6 billion yen, that is 69.3% of increase year on year, and operating income margin was 17.5% with increased profitability. The business-wise, excluding high-frequency components, then we have all that profit increase, particularly and improvement of the profitability of the capacitor and inductive devices that pushed up uh the business performance of all the segments. When it comes to high-frequency components, it have the profit have declined slightly due to that upfront investment for the R&D for new products. Next, sensor. Application product segments. Now we have consecutively deposited all-time sale, high sales from the last Q3. And also in this Q3, we also now have a record high sales of 36.1 billion yen. That is a 57.1% increase year on year. Operating income and could also secure the profits, including that the pushed up sales and also the better product mix. So now we can pushed up that flexibility from the Q2 Q2, and now we have the operating income margin of over 10%. And the result of that, also in the first nine months of the fiscal year, we could secure the profits. The temperature and the pressure sensors, they was very steady and a demand for the industrial equipments or the home appliances. Then we have the the increased sales also for the whole sensors. It was supported by the automotive markets, and we have largely improved that’s profits. TML sensor a is in the ICT market now and the increase of demand in the ICT market, but then also and adapted for the new applications, and we have the largely substantial increase of the sales and the profits. And for the MEMS sensors, we could enjoy about the expansion of customer base and application base. Now have reflected steady on the performance. And motion sensors, memory microphones sales, have increasingly and substantially, and now with the profitability improvement, we could successfully shrink that largely that uh uh at a loss. Next a magnetic and application products business. Net sales was 64 billion yen, 14.4% year on year. Operating income was 3.3 billion yen down 22.5% year on year. But uh here may I remind you that in the third quarter previous year we had booked 2.4 billion yen from the sales gain of suspension business. So in substance this segment was able to secure growth in profit. HDD and head uh server demand for data centers has been firm. Nearline HDD and heads grew 1.8 times in volume. The total HDD and head became profitable with its volume growing 28%. Hard disk drive suspension, near line on the hard disk drives for the major customers and data centers continue to be firm, giving us growth both in revenue and profit. Magnet. Sales for the automotive has been firm in sales. With the price increase of raw materials, loss number increased slightly. Next I will and explain our energy and application products. Revenue was 256.1 billion yen, operating income was 30.9 billion yen, up 31.1% in sales and 8.9% in profit year on year. As for rechargeable batteries, this segment was impacted by the FX changes as well as the increased price of raw materials, talking of FX, the cheaper Japanese yen. But uh if we are to exclude this, with the smartphone production decline as much as 11% from the previous year, sales uh for smartphones declined. In contrast and power sales for uh electric uh electric uh motorcycles and the residential uh energy and storage systems expanded. For the entire business, uh it became almost flat year on year, excluding FX impact and also the price and factor. Operating income. While the real sales did not grow, we made efforts to improve cost and fixed cost efficiency, and we are uh seeing improved profit starting from the second quarter. But in the third quarter of this year, raw materials and the price started again going up rapidly. So now we uh still have some potential factor uh to push down profit. And also now we have about 5.1 billion as the royalty to be paid. As for the industrial equipment um on the uh power devices, demand uh intersection action and has been rather firm, giving us opportunity to increase the revenue. But um then we also uh have been faced with an increase in the materials so we had to procure and also we have been uh within COVID-19 and with all these factors in place uh we are having a slight decline in profit. Next, I'd like to go through the factors behind the ups and downs of sales and operating profit numbers and for the third quarter uh by segment. First, on the uh passive component segment. Net sales was uh up 2.2 billion yen or 1.7% from the second quarter. Operating income was up 1.3 billion or 5.9%. As for sales, it grew slightly thanks to the strong and older market. In the industrial equipment market, renewable energy and manufacturing facilities grew in sales, whereas in the ICT market, sales for smartphones declined. The business started became half profitable except for the RF components. Operating income slide. Capacitors and inductors contributed to the overall profit growth. Next, uh sensor and application products. Revenue uh here was 3.5 billion yen, up 10.6%. Operating income was an up 2.3 billion yen. We continued to improve further uh since the second quarter. Temperature and pressure sensors slightly declined, partially due to the seasonal factor. In MEMS sensors, whole sensors grew firmly, particularly for the auto, and the TRM sensors grew significantly in the sales volume of new products since uh Q2, thanks to the major customers for smartphones. Motion sensors are uh sensors and are are firmly growing in sales thanks to the expanded base of customers and applications. Operating income grew uh significantly thanks to the good business of TMR sensors. Motion sensors contributed to greatly to profit, reflecting the improved customer mix and product mix. All in all, they contribute greatly to the overall uh profit improvement. Next I will explain magnetic application products, revenue being 1.3 billion yen, down 2.1%. Operating income was down 2.7 billion yen, excluding a one-time cost of about four billion yen. We had in the third uh second quarter. Revenue now HDD and head volume mainly for PCs was down about 8%. And how to describe assembly sales volume also was down about 15%. In contrast, HDD suspensions and had an a growth in profit driven by nearline business. Magnets. This business grew in profit thanks to the firm demand for auto. Operating income declined sharply due to the decline in HDD heads volume as well as the selling price uh the pricing erosion. Suspension improved and its profit are driven by the growth in cells and the mixture improvement by high value products. Magnets are still in a loss because the impact from the price rise is still with us. Next, energy and application product segment. Revenue was 20.6 billion, up 8.8%. Operating income was 4.7 billion yen, up 13.6%. Rechargeable and the batteries, our sales grew thanks to the increased production volume of smartphones. Power sales and products sales grew. Even when excluding an FX impact and raw materials and price increase shifted to our selling price, revenue actually grew from the second quarter. Industrial power supplies grew slightly in revenue. Operating income raw materials and for the rechargeable batteries and started rising further from the second quarter, and its impact is still with us. But we made further efforts to improve the efficiency of fixed costs resulted in the improved profitability starting from the second quarter. Industrial power supplies, thanks to the increase in sales, resulted in the growth both in revenue and profit. Next uh I will go into details of 14.1 billion yen of uh the operating income. With the growth in sales of passive components, profit expanded. With the sensor business becoming profitable, profit expanded. With the uh recover the profit of HDD heads though we had some impact from the rising cost of materials, we had increase we had an increase in profit as much as 12.6 billion yen. Impact from the sales price discounts remained rather small. Rationalization cost down efforts as well as the impact of 8.6 billion yen coming from the structural reform we executed in the fourth quarter in the previous year, in the previous fiscal year, our profit uh has been raised up. Asian yen and actually increase uh 12.5 billion. Major factors for that in our first in the third quarter previous year, we had in the sales of uh the in a set of the suspension budget almost 2.4 billion yen. And also the rechargeable uh the royalty in a cost being uh 5.1 billion yen. And uh with the COVID-19 going on, there has been uh a price increase in the distribution cost. Well, of course uh the Japanese yen becoming cheaper actually on up uh 5.3 billion, all in all it is going to be a 14.1 billion yen improvement in on a profit. Lastly, uh I will explain our focus for the full year consolidated performance. As I said this in in the outset with the actuals and up until in the third quarter, and in light of the orders we have received in the latest um quarter, we revised upward our last numbers we announced back in November, November the first. So we made this revision again. Full year in our net sales is now one trillion 850 billion yen. Operating income 160 billion yen. Income before income taxes now 168 billion yen. Net income is now 113 billion yen. As for net sales, demand for the passive components, particularly for auto and industrial equipments. And also for the rechargeable batteries, demand for smartphones turn turned out to be much faster than we had expected. So that uh these are the reasons why we wanted to actually make uh the upper revision. As for the operating income, we expect to grow the profit thanks to the increased sales. We are also expecting to have one time cost of nine billion yen for the consolidation of locations as well as the sales disposition of assets. And that is being expected uh in the fourth quarter. We expect to do have one time cost of tax around seventeen billion yen about. That is projected in the fourth quarter. So with these and factors in place, and we are happy to announce that we made these revisions. As for uh the year end dividend and CapEx and depreciation, amortization and our running cost, there has been no change uh since the last time announcement. This concludes my explanation. Thank you indeed for your kind attention.
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Hello ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by for Qudian’s third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to our host from Qudian. Please go ahead. Hello everyone and welcome to Qudian’s third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. The company's results were issued via Newswire services earlier today and were posted online. You can download the earnings press release and sign up for the company's distribution list by visiting our website at ir.qudian.com. Mr. Min Luo, our Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, and Ms. Sissi Zhu, our VP of Investor Relations, will start the call with prepared remarks and then we will open the call to Q&A. Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the company's results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding this and other risks and uncertainties is included in the company's 20-F as filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable laws. Please also note that Qudian’s earnings press release and this conference call include discussion of unaudited GAAP financial information as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. Qudian’s press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measure to the unaudited most directly comparable GAAP measures. We also posted a slide presentation on our uh IR website, providing details of our results for the quarter. We will reference those results in our prepared remarks, but will not refer to specific slides during our discussion. I will now turn the call over to our CEO Min Luo. Please go ahead. Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call. Amid fast evolving market conditions in the third quarter, we continued to execute prudent operational strategy in our cash credit business, ensuring our asset quality at a stable level. The transactions volume for our loan book business decreased sequentially by 2.1% to 3.4 billion RMB in this quarter. And our own balance sheet, loan balance decreased sequentially by 40.4% to three billion RMB. During the quarter, we continued to make steady progress with our Wanlimu kids business. As of December 12th, 2021. We had seven centers operating in Xiamen, Fuzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen, all delivering high quality extracurricular activities, services and products to children and families. The ramp up of Wanlimu kids center is slower than expected. During to COVID-19 resurgence, we are continuing to closely monitor ongoing COVID-19 conditions and proactively taking precautionary measures as our highest priority to ensure the safety and healthy of the children, families and staff in our centers. We also fully support the recent government regulatory changes announced announced for the supplemental lending industry and will strictly comply with the applicable regulations. Moving forward, we will continue to focus on improving the quality of our products and service while also exploring new investment and business opportunities. Now I would like to turn the call over to Sissi for more details in on our results. Thank you, Min, and good morning and good evening everyone. Echoing Min on our loan book business, we continue to uphold rigorous standards for credit approvals in the third quarter. We focused new loan origination on better quality borrowers with stronger credit profiles, and our D1 delinquency rate continued to remain below 5% at the end of the quarter. Additionally, more than 99% of our outstanding loan balance was funded by our own capital, and our M1 Plus delinquency coverage ratio remained high at 2.3 times. Looking ahead, we will continue to prudently operate our cash loan business while simultaneously pursuing new potential growth channels. Supported by our strong balance sheet, we believe we can continue to grow our overall business and deliver sustainable value to our shareholders over the long term. Now let me share with you some key financial results. In the interest of time, I will not go over them line by line. For a more detailed discussion of our third quarter 2021 results. Please refer to our earnings press release. Our total revenues for the third quarter were RMB 347.4 million, representing a decrease of 59.1% from RMB 849.4 million for the third quarter of 2020. Our financing income totaled RMB 285.5 million, representing a decrease of 41.4% from RMB 487 million for the third quarter of 2020, as a result of the decrease in the average loan balance sheet loan balance. Loan facilitation income and other related income decreased by 95% to RMB 8.8 million from RMB 177 million for the third quarter of 2020 as a result of the reduction in transaction volume of all balance sheet loans during this quarter. Transaction services fee and other related income increased to RMB 20.9 million from RMB 6.6 million for the third quarter of last year, mainly as a result of the reassessment of variable consideration. Sales income and others decreased to RMB 7.3 million from RMB 139 million for the third quarter of 2020, mainly due to the decrease in sales related to the Wanlimu e-commerce platform, which we are in the process of winding down. Sales commission fee decreased by 55.5% to RMB 8 million from RMB 18 million for the third quarter of 2020 due to the decrease in the amount of merchandise credit transactions. Our cost of revenues decreased by 47.4% to RMB 104.6 million, from RMB 198.8 million for the third quarter of 2020, primarily due to the decrease in costs associated with the loan book business and the decrease in cost of goods sold related to Wanlimu e-commerce platform. Sales and the marketing expenses decreased by 49.3% to RMB 32.9 million, from RMB 664.8 million for the third quarter of last year, primarily due to the decrease in marketing promotional expenses. General and administrative expenses increased by 170.4% to RMB 157.7 million, from RMB 58.3 million for the third quarter of 2020, as a result of the increase in staff salaries primarily relating to Wanlimu kids business. Research and development expenses decreased by 21.6% to RMB 40 million, from RMB 51 million for the third quarter of last year, as a result of the decrease in staff salaries. Net loss attributable to Qudian shareholders was RMB 94.2 million. And our non-GAAP net losses attributable to Qudian shareholders was RMB 99 million for this quarter. With that, I will conclude my prepared remarks. We will now open the call to questions. Operator, please go ahead. Certainly. Participants who wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound or hash key. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, if you wish to ask your question to the management in Chinese, please immediately repeat your question in English. Hit star followed by one to ask your question. Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Frank Zhang from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Thank you, management, for taking my questions. Uh this is Frank Zhang from Credit Suisse. I have two questions. The first one is on the Wanlimu kids program. Uh could you please provide more color on what's uh how many more in the pipeline maybe in the next year? And also how's the payback there applied currently uh as well as the unit economics? And the second question is on cost revenue. Uh I noticed that on sequential basis, cost revenue increased. Can you maybe uh break down a little bit on what's driving the increase? Thank you. Thank you, Frank. Thanks for the questions. Um so to address your first question with regard to our Wanlimu kids business, um we actually had three centers in operation during the third quarter and seven centers now. There will be over ten centers in the pipeline for the next year. Um the performance, as we mentioned in our prepared market remarks, is not as good as we expected because of the on and off regional COVID breakout. Um, you know, when we see positive COVID cases in the city, kid’s activity centers are the first ones to be shut down and the last ones to be reopened. And therefore, our centers um have been shut down for almost uh two month period during the third quarter, um, because of COVID. Um so. Um our um and and once a center got cooled down um because of COVID, we need another two or three months to heat it up again. It's really hard to answer the question regarding to payback periods and um the the stabilized U/E because we we are not in that stage yet. Um and um and our our current imminent goal is to bring our centers to break even points as soon as possible before we do any further expansion. Um, hope that answers questions. With regard to our cost of revenues, uh just a moment please. So the cost of revenues, because we didn’t provide um the breakdowns in in our um uh earnings as the segment reporting is not required under certain accounting rules, but um the the majority of the um increase of of cost of revenues is because of uh you know we uh when we when we when we do the uh Wanlimu kids business we have to hire teachers and instructors in our centers so their costs are are in the cost of revenue. Hope that answers question. Thank you very much. Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press dial one on your telephone. Thank you. As there are no further questions now, I would like to turn the call over to the company for closing remarks. Thank you. So thank you everyone once again for joining us today today. Um it's a relatively short call. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact our investor relations team. Thank you. Thank you. This concludes the conference call. You may now disconnect your line. Thank you. Thank you all.
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Good morning and welcome to the Loma Negra Third Quarter 2021 Conference Call and Webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a Conference Specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Also, Mr. Sergio Faifman will be responding in Spanish immediately following an English translation. To ask your question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note that this event is being recorded. I’d now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Diego Jalón, Head of IR. Please, Diego, go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Loma Negra’s third quarter earnings conference call. By now, everyone should have access to our earnings press release and the presentation for today's call, both of which were distributed yesterday after market close. Joining me on the call this morning will be Sergio Faifman, our CEO and Vice President of the Board of Directors, and our CFO, Marcos Gradin. Both of them will be available for the Q&A session. Before I turn the call over to Sergio, I would like to make the following safe harbor statements. Today's call will contain forward-looking statements, and I refer you to the forward-looking statements section of our earnings release and recent filing with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect new or changed events or circumstances. This conference call will also include discussion on non-GAAP financial measures. The full reconciliation to the corresponding financial measures is included in the earnings press release. Now I would like to turn the call over to Sergio. Thank you, Diego. Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us today. As usual, I'm going to mention a few highlights of the third quarter and then Marcos who will lead you through our market review and financial results. After that, I will provide some final remark and then we will open the call to your question. As you could see from our release used yesterday, we are pleased to share our third quarter result where we observe solid demand in high historic figures. As we keep our core business margin at world class level. We encourage that the strong momentum experience in cement sales since the start of the recovery in mid-2020 has reached level most equivalent of the those seen in record industry years. Our high efficient production, standard enable us to delivery another robust quarter despite the impact of the normalization of operation and the subsequent effect of regularly seasonality maintenance cost and the higher energy input in our assessment EBITDA margins. Despite these effects, when measured in US dollar, our assessment EBITDA increased to 51 million from 48 million in third quarter 2020, even improving the result from last quarter, keeping the US dollar per ton above thirty dollars. Finally, regarding the expansion project of L’Amalí, we are delivering cement to the market and already seeing promising result from the first production budget. We expect to show its benefits in the comings quarters. I will now hand off the call to Marcos Gradin, who will view you through our market review and financial result. Please, Marcos, go ahead. Thank you, Sergio. Good day everyone. As you can see on slide four, leaving behind the deep drops of GDP in 2020, we saw a sharp recovery in the second quarter and an improvement in 2021 GDP estimated growth reaching 8.3%. Construction activity measured by the ISAC also had a strong performance in recent month, starting to present a more moderate growth, as third quarter 2020 showed the start of the post-pandemic recovery. Regarding cement national industry sales, they had kept on growing strongly, even above our previous expectation, consolidated in high figures with 10 months accumulated volumes almost reaching industry's year record, less than 1% down from the same period of 2017. Although we do not see large private infrastructure projects, bulk has recovered mostly on the back of smaller projects. So when breaking down the consumption by dispatch mode, we observe figures in line with historical pre-pandemic average. Certainly, the economy as a whole still faces different challenges, particularly on the macroeconomic outlook that may impact on future growth expectations. Turning on to slide five for a review of our top line performance by segment. Consolidated revenues increased year on year by 8.5%, mainly reflecting the continuous recovery of the other segments. More affected by the pandemic restriction and the growth of our core cement business. Cement, masonry cement, and lime segment was up 2.4%, with volumes expanding 8.4%, with softer pricing dynamic. Concrete and aggregates showed sharp revenues recovery of 117% and 47% year-on-year, respectively. As we mentioned before, these segments suffer more deeply the effects of the pandemic restrictions. In the case of concrete volume expansion of 111% was underpinned by a positive pricing recovering performance. Regarding aggregates, the segment volume was up 7.2%, boosted by a recovery in pricing and a positive pricing mix. Finally, railroad revenues increased by 25.4% in this quarter versus the same quarter in 2020. As the higher transported volumes were coupled with a good pricing performance and a positive product mix. Moving on to slide seven. Consolidated gross profit for the quarter slightly declined 0.1% year-on-year, with margin contracted by 222 basis points. Mainly impacted by the normalization of seasonality cost and higher energy inputs. Cement gross margin contracted by five, 577 basis points from 35.5% to 29.8%, with the comparison affected by regular annual maintenance cost this quarter against the third quarter of 2020 with a maintenance schedule affected by the pandemic restriction. We also experienced some pressure and from seasonal energy charges as winter production in 2020 was abnormally low due to the sharp drop in the month of last year. For the next year, the brand new line built in L’Amalí plant will give us a flexibility to maximize production out of the winter months, avoiding higher energy charges. SG&A expenses as a percentage of revenues remain almost flat, decreasing by five basis points to 7.6% from 7.7%, mainly due to cost dilution from higher sales volume. Please turn to slide eight. Our adjusted EBITDA was down 9.1% in the quarter, reaching 4.7 billion pesos with consolidated EBITDA margin contracted by 512 basis points to 26.4%, mainly explained by a lower cement segment adjusted EBITDA and the impact of the recovery of the other segment, which as they have lower margins, contributed negatively to the consolidated margin. In a nine-month basis, the adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 55 basis points to 30.7%. When measured in US dollars, our third quarter EBITDA reached $51 million, up 6.5% from 48 million in the same quarter a year ago, and sequentially. Cement segment adjusted EBITDA margin contracted by 484 basis points to 29.5%, mainly due to the impact of regular seasonality maintenance and winter energy costs, coupled by a softer pricing dynamic, partially offset by the increase in sales volume. In a per ton basis, EBITDA remains at a top-notch level of $30. Concrete adjusted EBITDA increased 42 million pesos compared to third quarter 20, explained by a recovery in sales volume and a positive price performance, yet margins remained at negative 4.0%. Aggregate adjusted EBITDA improved sharply from negative 64 million pesos in third quarter 20 to 1 million pesos in third quarter 21, with margin of 0.3% as better pricing mix and volumes at weighted cost increase. Finally, railroad adjusted EBITDA improved 34 million pesos to 110 million pesos for the quarter, with margin expansion from 6.3% to 7.3%, mainly explained by higher transported volume, positive product mix, and good pricing performance. Moving on to the bottom line on slide 10. Our profit before tax stood at 2.6 billion pesos with the comparison to third quarter 20, affected by an extraordinary result in such quarter. Total finance cost stood at 0.3 billion pesos in third quarter 21 compared to a net gain of 3.1 billion pesos in third quarter 20, due to an extraordinary result in foreign exchange gain of 3.1 billion pesos during that quarter. Gain on net monetary position was 0.3 billion in third quarter 21 compared to 0.2 billion in third quarter 20. As a result, our net final expense increased by 79 million pesos to 0.3 billion pesos compared to same quarter of last year, driven by lower effects depreciation effect compared to the evolution of the inflation rate. Finally, during the quarter, we recognize a non-cash impairment of Sierras Bayas asset facility of 131 million pesos due to its obsolescence and the future higher efficient production scheme of Loma. Moving on to the balance sheet, as you can see on slide eleven, we ended the quarter with a cash position of 4.3 billion pesos and a total debt of 4.0 billion pesos. Consequently, our net debt to EBITDA ratio stood at minus 0.02 times compared to 0.16 times at the end of 2020. In third quarter 21, we reduced our debt in 16 million US dollars, standing at 40 million, 83% of which is denominated in US dollars. Additionally, as we continue with our third share repurchase program, we acquire share for a total amount of 600 million pesos in the quarter. Our operating cash generation stood at 5.4 billion pesos with a positive seasonal working capital effect. Regarding capital expenditures, we spent 1.5 billion pesos, 36 of which were dedicated to L’Amalí expansion project. As the second line is already delivering cement, the capital requirements are almost completed. Now for our final remarks I would like to handle the call back to Sergio. Thank you, Marcos. Now to finalize the presentation, I please ask you to turn to slide thirteen. To wrap up, I would like to highlight the strong evolution of the cement demand, with accumulated volume until October almost reaching industry record. Even through, we expect this trend to continue in the forthcoming quarter, we remain caution through the medium term, as Argentine faced macroeconomic and political challenges that could affect the evolution of the economic activity. Regarding our new line at L’Amalí, we are glad about the advance in the project as we are already delivering cement to the market. We are enthusiastic with the preliminary results and expect to start seeing the operational efficiency and the economic benefit in future quarters. Furthermore, this additional capacity will allow us to minimize production in winter. Avoiding the seasonality higher energy inputs and also reducing the need of solid fuel that the lead to a more environmental friendly energy matrix. Natural gas will remain our main source of thermal energy, giving us flexibility and avoiding the hike in petcoke international price. We continue to work analyzing alternatives for the near future to support a sustainable growth path for Loma Negra. Underpinned by our highly efficient operation, standard and solid capital structure. Last but not least, I would like to thank all our people and stakeholder for the commitments to Loma Negra operational excellence, without whom this set of solid results would have been much harder to achieve. We are now ready to take for your question. Operator, please open the call for question. Thank you. We will now conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star, then one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star, then two if you would like to remove your line. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset prior to pressing the keys. Once again, star one on your telephone keypad. We would also like to ask that you please limit your questions to one question and one follow-up, please. If you have additional questions, you may re-enter the queue for those questions and they will be addressed. Please note that Mr. Sergio Faifman will be responding in Spanish immediately following an English translation. Please hold momentarily while we assemble our roster. Our first question today comes from Alejandra Obregón with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning, Loma Negra team. Thank you for taking my question. Congratulations on the results. Um, I have two questions. I'll I’ll ask the first. Uh I was just wondering if you can comment please on the different trends that you're seeing across the different verticals, residential, infrastructure, uh, formal and informal housing, if you can help us understand how that's developing as we go into into 2022. Thank you. Speakers, you may have yourself on mute. Hi Alejandra, thank you for the question. Eh.
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Thank you, Darcy, and welcome everyone to our December quarterly analyst call. December quarterly production showed a considerable improvement on the September quarter with record production throughput and improving grades, improving recoveries and improving cash flow. Unfortunately, delays accessing higher grade parts of the open pit resulted in lower grades than projected in our guidance. On the exploration front, today we announced a 70% increase in our 100% owned Yamarna resources. So they now sit at 0.5 million ounces. In the presentation today, we will be referring to the quarterly results slides that can be viewed on the live webcast, our website, or the ASX release. Those on the webcast are now also able to submit a question for us to address at the end of this call. On the call today we have Duncan Gibbs, Managing Director and CEO, John Mullumby, our recently appointed CFO, Andrew Tyrrell, General Manager of Discovery, and Hayden Bartrop, our Company Secretary and GM of Corporate Development. I'll now hand over to Duncan Gibbs to talk you through our quarterly results in more detail. Thanks, Duncan, and thank you everybody for joining us on the call today. As Duncan's just indicated, the December quarterly saw saw improvements across the board. Production total 67,813 uh ounces were produced at Gruyere for the quarter, the best quarterly production in 2021. All-in sustaining cost was $1526 per ounce for the quarter, lower quarter on quarter, but higher than anticipated to due to lower gold production than forecast. Pleasingly, our 12-month lost-time injury frequency rate continued to fall, ending the quarter at 2.3. Thanks to good cash flow generation during the quarter, our cash and equivalents lifted to 135.5 million. Gold Road continues to carry no debt. We continue to make good progress on the exploration funds with encouraging signs seen from several targets tested on a 100% owned southern project area at Yamarna. The quarter also saw us grow our 100% owned Yamarna resources to half a million ounces, with the majority of these resources in the southern project area. Now turning to the quarterly in a little more detail, total material movement increased again quarter on quarter by about point three million tons. Uh the total rate of oil mining lifted again to record highs and an annual equivalence of 12.7 million tons per annum. The mine grade lifted in the December quarter, but not not as much as we expected, reflecting a delay in accessing some of the high grade parts of the stage two pit. Delayed progress was in part due to challenges in rostering key blasting personnel, uh combined with some short-term interruption from clement weather in December. Processing rates continue to uh rise to an equivalent annualized rate of 8.9 million tons per annum, despite the disruptions to the ball mill that we uh reported early in the quarter. Overall plant utilization lifted to 91%. Metallurgical recoveries also improved in line with the higher head grades and less processing interruptions. Head grades head grade was up, but over to the lower than expected mine grade uh was lower than we expected, uh resulting in anticipated quarterly production and annual production falling slightly short of guidance. As a result of that, uh our our attributable all-in sustaining cost going slightly above guidance. Uh gold ounces sold lifted quarter on quarter to 35,460 ounces, an average price of $2309 per ounce. Delivery in the forward sales of the product was approximately 25% of our uh production in a quarter. Our corporate all-in cost was lower this quarter at uh $1924 per ounce. Ready for the next slide. Um in line with our three-year production outlook that we put out a year ago, um our production will continue to improve in 2022. Gruyere annual production will increase to a forecast range of 300 to 340,000 ounces or 150 to 170,000 ounces attributable. Lower all-in sustaining cost is guided between 1270 and 1470 dollars per ounce. We view our guidance as incorporating an appropriate allowance for operational issues, which we expect to have less of in 2022. That said, we have not allowed for major force majeure events, extended impacts, including those from COVID-19 or other issues. Improved production is driven by increasing grades through the stage two and three pits, as shown in the image here, with grades lifting through the year, and increasing throughput rate as as uh previously communicated in our three-year outlook. Quarter one includes two planned shutdowns, a reline of the tack mill and a reline of the ball mill, with lower planned utilization in this quarter. Our opportunity to use of the rehandle fleet, as we've seen in the December quarter, is likely to continue into 2022, with most movement being brought forward from future years, which has been factored into our all-in sustaining cost guidance. Bringing forward this total material movements uh allows for greater processing flexibility and it provides a buffer to some of the industry headwinds currently being expected in Western Australia, including labor availability, supply chain concerns, and potential COVID-related staffing disruptions to mining. Drilling for lease at the Gruyere resource was completed during the quarter. Assay results are still awaited for three holes. When all results are received, a full assessment of the updated geological model will be undertaken before determining our next steps. You'll note that from this long section it shows the the September uh 2021 Oil Reserve, a 1.1 million ounce increase. And the long section also shows the open pit mineral resource as it was communicated in December 2020. And the underground resource as communicated at February 2021. Both of these resources will be updated as part of an annualized reporting cycle in February 2022. We anticipate seeing a transition between the open pit and underground resources pushing deeper given the steepened pit slopes uh reported in the uh recent reserve update. Referring to the next slide, uh we move on and look at our uh our balance sheets and cash position. We remain debt-free and cash and equivalents lift is 135.5 million. In October we paid a fully franked dividend for the six months. Uh to the 30th of June 2021. The cash flow waterfall summarizes the movements of cash equivalents over the quarter. It is worth noting the gain on a short investment with Apollo Consolidated during the quarter of 3.6 million. Free cash flow was 15.7 million before the gain on Apollo shares and payment of the interim dividend. I’ll now hand over to Andrew to talk through the exploration update. Thanks, Duncan. Uh, the Discovery team continued to focus their efforts on systematic and targeted exploration over the priority prospects within the southern project area of the Yamarna project. In 2021, the team achieved a significant amount of drilling with over 155,000 meters of Aircore, 36,000 meters of RC, and 8,000 meters of diamond completed. While exploration made encouraging progress from prospects such as Earl, Waffler, Avados, and Warbler, as with most of the exploration sector, we are still awaiting assay results from most of the drilling completed in the December quarter. However, early results received to date have been encouraging. A budget of $30 million has been allocated to the discovery projects for 2022, which is slightly less than the final 2021 budget spend. 2022 will see an increased rate of RC and diamond drilling as the company focuses on deeper drill testing for these numerous regolith gold anomalies and mineralized trends defined by Aircore and RC in the last six to twelve months. There is currently an RC rig on site as I speak, and a diamond rig will be remobilizing shortly. A further two Aircore rigs are also expected soon. Today we announced a 70% increase in our 100% owned Yamarna resources. They now total half a million ounces at an average grade of 2.44 grams per ton of gold and include an increase to the Gilmour Resource of 40,000 ounces, which includes a small underground component. 45% of the Gilmour Resource reports to the indicated category at a healthy grade of 6.55 grams per ton of gold. Maiden Inferred open pit resources declared for Smokebush and Warbler and an increase of 30,000 ounces at the Renegade Resource located just north of the Golden Highway. As you will note, the bulk of the resources are located in close proximity to each other in the Southern Project Area and show potential to be incorporated into any future standalone processing operations in this area. Looking at the Southern Projects Area in a little more detail now, we continue to push forward with our exploration efforts in this area. Activities completed in the Southern Projects Area have highlighted several very encouraging and large areas of regolith anomalism and favorable geology. From this, several priority targets are emerging. In particular, these include, at Waffler, we completed an RC program at this four kilometer long regolith anomaly and are still awaiting most of these results. In addition, we completed another phase of Aircore at Waffler that continues to show strong drilling results in the regolith, which needs to be followed up with further RC drilling in 2022. Follow-up RC drilling at the Earl target, located southeast of Smokebush, along with Smokebush shear zone, has returned some encouraging results. And these include 17 meters at 1.27 grams gold, 15 meters at 1.18 grams per ton gold, and 10 meters at 1.05 grams. Further work will include more planned RC and diamond drilling. At Avedos, a program of RC drilling was commenced in the December quarter, designed to test beneath a a four kilometer long regolith anomaly with results still pending. The RC program will recommence uh early in early February of this year. At Warbler, we completed a program of RC drilling along strikes northwest of the Maiden Resource. Drilling intersected the same sequence of rocks with similar encouraging alteration observed. Assay results are still awaited. And finally at Kingston and at the Deepwood Camp, Gold Road intends to complete infill Aircore drilling to better understand the large anomalies defined in this area by Aircore drilling in 2021. That brings a close to the exploration update. I look forward to any additional questions you may have. I will now hand back to Duncan Hughes. Thanks, Andrew and Duncan. So that brings a close to the results presentation. I would now be very happy to answer any questions uh you may have, and I'll hand the call back to Darcy. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question via the phone, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speaker phone, please pick up the handset to ask your questions. If you wish to ask a question via webcast, please enter it into the ask a question box and click submit. We have no phone questions at this time. Okay, well perhaps we'll start with some webcast questions and return to see whether there's any phone questions at a later date. The first question comes from Robert. Um who’s the current leadership of exploration? Uh Andrew Tyrell is our exploration manager um as uh or sorry, our general manager of exploration, uh and he ran through the exploration uh announcement on the uh on the call. Yeah, yeah, and uh our exploration manager is currently James Davis, uh someone we promoted internally. And he has the right level of expertise as well to to hold that role. Thank you. Our next question comes from Jemka is when do you expect more returns to be delivered to shareholders? Uh uh well I think Gold Road has a strong track record of uh creating uh returns to shareholders, uh particularly since the inception of the company. Uh of course we're one of a few companies that have come up into production that pay a dividend uh and no debt. And uh you know having commenced paying a dividend, I expect to uh keep doing that. And uh I think the exploration results that we've uh we've got at the moment are quite encouraging. Obviously, still not there yet in being able to develop a second mining operation or half a million ounces, but uh you know some of the uh scale of the geochem anomalies that will be actively RC and diamond drill testing this year uh put put us in a pretty good shape to uh progress those forward and with the objective of developing a second mining operation. Another question from uh Michael from uh Euroz Hartleys, could you please outline the expected grade and throughput for calendar year 2022 to reach guidance? Um I'll give you rough numbers, um Michael. So you'd be looking at throughput of somewhere between 9 and 9.5 million tons and grade between 1.1 and 1.2. Um. That should should get us there. Um I think as we outline in the quarterly, it's worth noting that um this quarter that we're in now because we're doing mill relines will be softer and the the grade and throughput will progressively increase through the calendar year. Question from uh Robert. Beefwood was looking very promising. What's its current status? Uh Beefwood is a bit of an enigma. It is obviously uh a quite a sizable geochem anomaly that sits there in both Regolith and uh in Saprolite, Lower Saprolite. We continue to try to understand, I guess, the source of that, and we will that's why we plan a program this year to to I guess try to vector into where we think the source of that that gold may be. Question from Tom. What is the company guiding in terms of gold price for 2022 and its policy on hedging? Yeah, look we don't and um gold producers don't put out guidance on uh on gold price. In terms of our hedge book, uh really our hedge book runs through to the end of this year. It represents about 25% of production and the strategy at the moment is basically to deliver into those gold hedges that they fall due. Uh the general uh principle of uh what we do around hedging uh really is around risk management and the hedging that we took on uh was really put in place when we knew we’d have to draw down some debt for uh the construction of Gruyere. Obviously with the gold price being substantially uh higher um since the development of Gruyere than what was projected at the time of construction. Uh and when we were in that financing phase, uh we ultimately paid down uh our debt facilities a lot faster than uh than than modelled at that point in time. So uh what you can really expect to see uh you know, barring some need for uh for drawing down debt to grow the business is that we'll continue to deliver into those hedges as they fall due. Question now from Sabrina. When will a decision be made as to whether a dividend will be paid for the December 21 half? Uh the uh announcement of every dividend obviously follows the um final audit of accounts and the announcement of those accounts. So we'd expect it to come out after our financials uh are formally reported. Uh and then the board is able to determine uh the dividend at that point in time. Our annual results will be released in the last week of March, along with our sustainability report. A question from Scott. Is the company still active in the M&A area? Yeah, look, I think it's no uh secret. We've uh looked at lots of opportunities. Uh obviously uh you know Tropicana well publicized. Uh and also the more recent uh have a look at Apollo. Uh I guess we've also accessed you know exercised discipline in what we're prepared to pay. Um so uh you know we're still looking for opportunities, but I guess we're also quite disciplined about uh they've got to create value for shareholders, not just getting a transaction done. So thank you all for your webcast questions. That's the first time we've um we've done that, and I think that worked really well. There's a few other questions I know that we haven't had time to answer on this call. Uh we'll endeavor to answer those that we'll get back to you on those questions in due course. Um I'll just quickly check in with Darcy if there are any questions from the from the phone. Otherwise, um please hand back to me, Darcy. Thank you. We do have a question from Paul Kaner from Ord Minnett. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi gents. Thanks thanks for taking my question. Just on your 22 guidance, uh when we have a look at that compared to your previous three year guidance which you which you put out in in February of last year, there's there's about a nine to ten percent increase in your all-in sustaining costs. Could you could you maybe talk specifically what is driving this this Delta increase and and how much is related to inflationary uh increases? Yeah, so I think as you're saying there, Paul, no uh state secret that um uh you know WA is experiencing higher costs. Um so we've obviously factored those in. Um uh I'd also say they're not um particularly sort of astronomical, uh so sort of a few percent is what you need to be considering around kind of CPI type levels. But the other thing probably of note, which I did make commentary on uh during the presentation, is that we're pulling forward mining volumes, uh and we're doing that quite consciously, really as a risk mitigation strategy around you know labor shortages and delays from COVID or or other of those kind of events. Um now of course how that exactly pans out during the year um will depend on whether any of those those risks eventuate. But of course over the life of mine we’re not actually spending more money, it's it's purely an offset spending that this year rather than in future years in in accelerating that that waste movement. Uh so we think that's a prudent strategy to uh really mitigate mining related risks to production. Uh but it does have a consequence of of contributing to uh higher all-in sustaining costs uh during this year. The other slight impact on that, Paul, as well, is um production guidance in terms of ounces is down very slightly on our uh initial outlook and that again is just driven by slightly slower progress into those improved gap grades. So obviously with slightly lower ounces, our all-in sustaining cost per ounce is impacted. Yeah, no, I understood. And and just remind me again on the uh uh the stockpiles you have on site at the moment as a sort of another contingency to these labor pressures that we see. Yeah. Uh look, I don't have the exact number, but I mean order of magnitude uh three three and a half million tons of total stockpiles, they're of obviously of lower uh uh grade on average than the um the ROM grade. Um so uh you know they provide a uh a big buffer in terms of being able to keep the mill going with with any uh you know mining related delays or disruption. But but if we rely on those stockpiles they obviously have a a negative impact on gold produced. Yep, perfect. No, that's all from me. Thanks very much. Thanks, Paul. Thank you. There are no further questions on the phone at this time. Thanks, Darcy. So um I'll just close on um slide eleven. Um. Obviously this is just a summary of our quarter. Um. It shows, you know, as as we outline grades and throughput increased, um we're still in line with our two-year outlook. Um. Gold Road’s attributable resources are now lifted to 4.7 million ounces thanks to the impact from Yamarna. Um. We see continued encouragement of exploration and we're excited now the rigs are returning to site. Um our balance sheet is strong and I'm very happy that our cash and equivalents grew um by quite a considerable amount during the quarter. Thanks everyone for attending and we look forward to speaking to you again next quarter.
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Please stand by, we're about to begin. Good day and welcome to the Polyus Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time I'd like to turn the call over to Victor Drozdov. Please go ahead. Thanks a lot. Hi everyone. Uh. Welcome to our uh conference call for the third quarter uh financial results. Uh today we have uh our uh CFO uh here with us. Uh so Mikhail will uh provide uh valuable comments on uh uh the financial results for the third quarter, uh as well as uh we'll be answering your uh questions. Uh with that in mind, uh I'll pass the floor uh to Mikhail. Please go ahead. Yes, hello, and uh thank you for joining our call. So I'll take you uh briefly uh through the through the key uh highlights of the quarter. So the revenue in the third quarter was 1.4 billion, which is a 12% increase on the uh preceding quarter. That's a reflection of the uh underlying operational performance across uh all of the deposits, and uh our total gold output has increased over this period by approximately uh 15% to 770,000 ounces. Now looking at our sales, in the third quarter we sold approximately uh 760,000 ounces of refined gold, which implies a 14% increase on the uh previous quarter. And we also sold approximately eleven thousand ounces of gold contained in flotation concentrate during the period. Now our quarterly EBITDA uh increased to approximately uh one billion US, which is up 10% quarter on quarter. In terms of our quarterly cost performance, as expected, we saw uh a step up in our TCC uh figure. As we uh highlighted during the uh previous calls, TCC uh rose by 9% quarter on quarter to $427 per ounce. In terms of key factors which I would like to underscore, first is going to be uh a seasonal increase in output at the uh local operations. Uh secondly uh inflation cost consumables and uh uh spare parts. Uh uh next would be lower byproduct credit, which amounted to uh $5 per ounce in the third quarter versus $10 per ounce in the second quarter, and uh also finally a cessation of the regional investment project regime at Verninskoye from August uh 2021. And that increased applicable MET rate from 2.4% to 6%. Now, in terms of our positive developments, I would like to separately highlight the remarkable cost performance at Natalka uh on a standalone basis. TCC was uh approximately $340 per ounce, and that's the lowest number across operations uh during the period. And also our new throughput at the mill reached uh uh a record high of 1555 tons per hour in the uh in the reporting period, which is mainly driven by operational enhancements uh and uh reduced uh circulation load at the uh combination circle. Now moving on to the uh cost performance of the first nine months, uh TCC stood at $403 per ounce, that's a 10% increase over the respective period of 2020. So in terms of uh sort of uh major factors leading to uh a cost increase year on year, that would be uh a temporary decline in head grades at Olympiada, uh inflation of uh consumables, um substantially lower maintenance uh spending in 2020 given the uh COVID-19 restrictions, and also changes in the mill extraction tax at Natalka and Verninskoye. Now, uh we uh previously guided the range uh of 425 to 450 uh as TCC for uh for the fiscal year, and that remains unchanged at this time. Uh just to remind you that's based on 65 as as an exchange rate and gold price of 1300. Now moving on to CapEx, uh we accelerated CapEx spending in the quarter as uh again uh we uh highlighted to you at our calls. So we spent approximately 230 million uh US compared to approximately 180 million in the preceding quarter. Um just to uh sort of uh to point out a few important developments. We acquired nine 210 220 ton uh Caterpillar trucks for Olympiada uh during the period and we also completed the construction of the pit stop for trucks uh maintenance on site. And we also implemented a range of initiatives targeting uh achievement of 15 million ton in annualized capacity at Olympiada from next year onwards and also uh initiatives aimed at improving efficiency of the brine station complex. In terms of our uh CapEx guidance for the entire year it remains unchanged uh at uh between uh 1 and 1.1 billion, year to date we spent approximately four approximately 540 mil and uh um we are counting on a strong catch up in the fourth quarter and we're comfortable it will take place. Uh we're also advancing our growth projects in accordance with the schedule. In terms of our developments uh at Mill number Five, our largest brownfield project, we signed an agreement with the major contractor, Esta Construction. It's a Turkish company that has a proven track record of successfully operating at the major projects in Russia and in terms of on-site uh activities. We are completed the site preparation for the conveyor system and we are progressing with the construction of the crushed ore stockyard. We're also on trade also on track with the uh uh with the uh expansion initiatives at other operations, namely at Olympiada, we will uh reach uh stable throughput capacity of fifteen million tons in 2022, and at Kuranakh we are on track to uh reach seven 7.5 million tons in capacity from uh 2024 onwards. Now, in terms of balance sheet, balance sheet uh figures, the cash on balance was up to almost 1.7 billion. Our net debt came down to 1.95 billion. And our net debt uh to EBITDA ratio stood at 0.5 times. In terms of free cash flow, uh free cash flow was approximately 470 mil of levered free cash flow during the uh period, which is uh basically flat over the second quarter uh number. Now, as we mentioned at our uh previous call, we completed a whole uh number of uh proactive debt management uh initiatives after the close of the reporting period. So we issued Eurobonds uh in the overall amount of 700 mil, and that's a 2028 maturity and uh the coupon rate is uh 3.25. Secondly, we also uh launched a tender for approximately 600 million dollars worth of outstanding Eurobonds. And we also repaid some of the uh bilateral uh lines. Now, in terms of uh COVID-19 uh related uh developments, we allocated approximately four 14 million to uh COVID uh prevention measures in the quarter, and overall the uh annual tally will be approximately 100 million. So, in terms of the impact of the uh uh COVID uh related interruptions, there is indeed uh a shortage of uh shipping containers in China. We are facing uh extended uh transit times. Uh given the congestion of seaports uh at the Russian uh Far East. That's increasing uh the lead times for the consumables and spare parts. However, we are not seeing anything critical and anything that will uh substantially affect our cost line. Uh now in terms of uh sort of uh a quick update on uh on the ESG uh front, so our scores uh continued uh to improve across all key uh ratings. So in November we received a score of 57 and S&P Global CSA Sustainable Analytics ESG risk rating of 25.0. And also MSCI confirmed our MSCI ESG rating at A. That's that's uh all uh as for the uh management comments, and we are ready to take your questions. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, you may signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, star one for questions. We'll take our first question from Dan Shaw with Morgan Stanley. Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple from me. Um the first one just on on the guidance. Um just a quick clarification. In in the uh press release there, you know that the ruble assumption underpinning your your guidance numbers is 65. So is it fair for us to assume that CapExing costs um will come at the lower ends uh of those ranges? Uh that's the first question. And then just one second one on on ESG uh uh as you just mentioned it. But um when can we expect to the next um sort of major update in terms of uh setting out your your uh medium and longer term targets? Do you have a date in mind for that? Thank you. Yeah, hello Dan. So in terms of uh uh forex uh assumption which underpins our guidance, that's indeed uh 65. So in terms of factual figures given the uh spot or near spot ruble rate, which as you are quite aware is fairly volatile, uh you can reasonably expect that our uh TCC factual TCC will be below 425 and our uh CapEx figure uh will be at the lower end of the guidance, again uh assuming the uh sort of factual uh uh exchange uh rate. Now at 65 um our TCC will be closer to the lower end uh and our CapEx figure will be right in the mid of the uh provided guidance of 1 to 1.1 billion. Now in terms of sort of major ESG uh announcements, uh I think we will provide uh an update to the market around second quarter of next year. Okay, thanks very much. As a reminder, star one, if you would like to ask a question. We'll take our next question from Boris Sinitsyn with RenCap. Hi Zhenya, thanks. Uh just one question from uh my side, please. Uh you mentioned uh the uh some uh disruptions on the supply chain not affecting your uh costs uh so far. Uh the question is do you expect those to be continued during 2022? And uh do you think it might affect um a CapEx basically, not costs? Thank you. Hello Boris. Well uh first of all we need to separate the uh sort of the interruptions in terms of uh transit time and the shipments and uh uh pricing effects. So uh and I said that you know the the interruptions related to uh shipment and uh transit times are not materially affecting our cost line. They are obviously bearing a certain uh effect, but again it's fairly small. We are seeing an increase in the uh delivery uh uh timelines um but we're seeing some delays for uh for spare parts, but again there is nothing critical that we're seeing at this point and uh obviously there is nothing which can uh to any extent affect the continuity of the of the operations. Uh that said, the cost inflation per se is a is a major uh is a major challenge for the sector. Um and that pertains to consumables, that pertains to labor uh domestically, and that pertains to equipment and spare parts. Uh now that is being offset by by the fact that we have uh long term uh contracts for all of the consumables and they have a fixed uh they have uh a mix of fixed and uh variable pricing, which is uh uh providing an important buffer against the recent market developments. That’s uh still a certain part of the uh ongoing cost escalation that will have to be absorbed by us as the uh as the consumer. So I would say that in terms of uh 2022 uh projections, uh CapEx is uh CapEx uh spending is not affected to the same extent as uh as our OpEx, because for our capital spending uh we have contracted most of the equipment and also most of the uh outside uh construction services. So uh we are fairly safe there and uh the brunt of cost inflation will be uh felt through the P&L, but again that is offset by the uh by the optimization initiatives and uh will be uh mitigated at least partially. Thank you. Very clear, thank you so much. We'll take our next question from Yuri Vlasov with Sova Capital. Many thanks. Um two very quick questions from me. Um first, um, could you give us um any uh breakdown of your um Mill 5 at uh Blaga that and uh how is it stretched across the years and um remind us what's um timing on uh Sukhoi Log feasibility by the way? When can we expect next uh milestone there? Thank you. Yuri, can you repeat your first question on Blagodatnoye? I mean uh. Yeah, well uh could you give us a CapEx breakdown on Blagodatnoye across the years? So how it's spread across uh the next uh three, four years, roughly, in very rough estimates. And we talk about Blagodatnoye, you obviously uh you are talking about Mill 5, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mill 5. Not about Mill 4. Mm-hmm. Well the uh the bulk of the spending will be uh will be taking place in 2023 and 2024. Uh spending rates in twenty uh uh in 2022 will be broadly comparable to 2021. Now secondly in terms of uh Sukhoi Log uh feasibility, uh I think the major development will be obviously the the approval of the uh feasibility study. That is uh slated to uh take place uh towards the end of the uh towards the end of the next year and we are confirming that we are on track. Now if there are any important developments uh that sort of take place until that date that warrant market attention we will immediately inform you but uh uh what we can what we can uh relay to you at this point is that we are on track in terms of all of the milestones that we uh set previously. That pertains to engineering and that pertains to uh geological studies and that pertains to the study of the requisite infrastructure. Thank you. No, thank you. Sorry, quick follow-up. Uh have you done have you completed your drilling on uh Sukhoi Log or is it still in the process? Yuri, can you repeat that again? Sorry. Uh what's the question? Sorry, have you completed the drilling on um the drilling. This is the question, yeah. Or is it, is it still work in process? Well, the majority of the drilling that is required for the feasibility study has been complete, uh, with the perfect reconciliation against the uh uh resource model. We have some outstanding uh drilling which is being done at the flanks, uh but that's not required for the feasibility study. That is okay, I, basically for the uh for the uh for uh sort of for the operations well beyond 2035. Oh thank you. Many thanks. Thank you. We'll take our next question from Nina Durgunova with Goldman Sachs. Good day. Thank you very much for uh answering the questions. Most of my questions have been uh replied already, probably a few from my side. Um first one on uh consolidated CapEx guidance for next year. Um at the CMD you mentioned that CapEx could increase about 10%, and uh you also said now that um uh for Blaga Mill 5 spending is stable. Can you name which major projects can uh trigger this uh 10% increase in CapEx next year? Thank you. Alright, so the major uh the major increase will be at Sukhoi Log and um that also will be uh at uh Kuranakh as we are commissioning uh the construction of uh the 7.5 project. And then there are, mm-hmm thank you, smaller sort of items but nothing particularly material. Thank you. Mm-hmm. And what about stripping? What stripping do you expect? And I acknowledge that this uh guidance that you provide doesn’t uh include stripping. Guidance does not uh does not uh uh incorporate uh stripping expense now in terms of uh sort of projections, the fourth quarter uh figure will be very much comparable to the average uh quarterly uh number during the first nine months and 2022 figure will be uh comparable to 2021 figure. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Understood. And the second question from my side, um uh this year is uh a challenging year for uh Krasnoyarsk business units with lower grades, recoveries. Can you give a scale of improvement in uh grades and recoveries next year? Yeah, well um I think we'll uh we'll be able sort of to uh to provide a more precise uh guidance uh when we announce our figures for the 2021 uh fiscal year. Now uh what we guided previously is that there will be uh a substantial rebound uh in uh grades in uh uh 2022 and there will be further increase in uh head grades in 2023 and that remains uh that remains the case. So uh Krasnoyarsk will see uh a stronger performance next year. That is clear. Thank you very much. That's it from my side. Thank you. Once again star one if you would like to ask a question. At this time there are no additional questions in the queue. Yeah, thanks a lot guys for attending our conference call. Uh once again, if you have any further follow-up questions, uh just drop us a line. So we're we're we’re gonna be waiting uh for those questions. Thanks a lot. Uh cheers. Bye. That will conclude today's call. We appreciate your participation.
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en
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audio/647936bd-87b4-4f20-b467-b954263513e6.mp3
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earnings_22_full_test
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647936bd-87b4-4f20-b467-b954263513e6.mp3
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4475604
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On today's call, we will be referring to the Form 20-F and press release filed this morning that detail the company's fiscal year end 2021 results, which can be downloaded from the company's website at arqit.uk. You'll also find the latest earnings presentation that supplements the information discussed on today's call. Please note that listeners that would like to ask a question in the Q&A session will need to dial in to the call rather than joining through the webcast link. Finally, a recording of the call will be available on the investor section of the company's website later today. Please note that this webcast includes forward-looking statements. Statements about the company's beliefs and expectations containing words such as may, will, could, believe, expect, anticipate, and similar expressions are forward-looking statements and are based on assumptions and beliefs as of today. The company encourages you to review the safe harbor statements, risk factors, and other disclaimers contained on this slide and in today's press release, as well as in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which identifies specific risk factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those described in our forward-looking statements. The company does not undertake to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements after this webcast. The company also notes that on this call it will be discussing non-IFRS financial information. The company is providing that information as a supplement to information prepared in accordance with international financial reporting standards or IFRS. You can find a reconciliation of these metrics to the company's reported IFRS results in the reconciliation tables provided in today's earnings release and presentation. And now I'll turn the call over to David Williams, the company's founder, chairman and chief executive officer. David. Thank you very much. Hello and welcome to Arqit Quantum Inc.'s debut fiscal year end conference call. It was a transformational year for Arqit, and we're very excited to discuss our performance and notable achievements with you. Since our year end of September coincided with the completion of our NASDAQ listing, and customer billings only began with commercial launch in the fourth quarter of the year, there's not a lot of new information. So I want to leave plenty of time for Q&A on business model and outlook. Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge a number of constituents who are instrumental in bringing our important product to the market. First, I'd like to acknowledge and thank the employees of Arqit, those that have been with us from the very beginning and recent joiners alike. We've assembled a team of hardworking and brilliant individuals who share our vision. Next, I'd like to acknowledge and thank Centricus Acquisition Corp and the leaders of that organization, Manfredi Lefebvre, Carlo Calabria and Garth Ritchie, for supporting the Arqit opportunity so strongly. Manfredi, in particular, has not only been an excellent and supportive long-term investor, but has also already put his considerable network in play, introducing many new potential customers, some of whom we've already converted into projects. He's also kindly agreed to serve as Vice Chairman and Senior Independent Director. On a SPAC journey, one could not hope for a better partner. Finally, I would like to thank the many public shareholders who've chosen to invest in Arqit. We are all striving to build a business that will deliver through operating successes very significant value creation for all of Arqit’s stakeholders. Arqit’s mission is to use our world-leading quantum encryption platform to keep safe the data of our governments, enterprises, and citizens. The world needs stronger, simpler encryption, and that need becomes more profound every day. Our fiscal year ended on September the 30th. It was a year of significant achievement which positions Arqit to focus now on executing for customers. As a result of the listing process, Arqit was able to launch its product onto the global market with high impact. By virtue of that NASDAQ listing, Arqit now has sufficient capital to fully fund its business case. And we were able in September to turn our sights towards revenue and positive cash flow generation. The listing process has acted as a strong branding and signaling event to our existing and prospective customers and has already increased unprompted brand awareness and resulted in significant uh introduction of new business leads. The most important achievement of fiscal 2021 was the commercial launch and commencement of promotion of the QuantumCloud product. Throughout the year, Arqit had signed customer contracts with marquee global enterprises across all of our initial target markets of defense, telecoms, financial services, and IoT. The interest in and take up of our products during the year has given us confidence in the pace and direction of the business. We set the initial focus area to give us the best chance of turning early contracts into revenues in the financial year ending September 2022, and our initial assumptions look strong. As we said during the listing process, the first billings were going to take place in the quarter ended December 2021, and that's what's happened. All of our customers use the same product, and all QuantumCloud revenues are annual recurring revenues. But some customers with mission critical use cases, particularly in defense and telecoms, are making larger multi-year commitments. As we then roll out the cloud fulfillment channel more extensively next year, we will generate a larger number of smaller customers. But the most important revenue progress we've made is most definitely in defense, and this is where the larger percentage of revenues is likely to arise in the current financial year ending September 2022, putting a strong backbone to our annual recurring revenues in future years, from which we have a strong base to launch the cloud platform more broadly to global enterprises. The realization of need in the marketplace for quantum safe encryption has become much stronger this year, and our unique ability to meet that need is widely recognized. Mainstream legacy architecture, commonly called PKI, was developed in the early nineties to meet the security needs of the nascent e-commerce world. At its heart are encryption keys based on the factoring of large prime numbers, which would take a traditional computer billions of years to decrypt. PKI has generally served the world well for the last thirty years. But it was never designed to protect a hyperconnected world and is now showing its weaknesses. Since the Heartbleed attack on TLS a decade ago, we've seen escalating attacks on the implementation of PKI. But beyond the implementation vulnerabilities, the prime number factorization at the heart of PKI will, with absolute certainty, be compromised by the enormous power of a universal quantum computer. It's a question of when, not if. And we think that's within five years. We've shown in white papers on our website that attempts to make public key cryptography do a better job against quantum computers, so-called post-quantum algorithms, are impractical. PQAs can never be described as provably secure against quantum attack, because anything made of maths can be reverse engineered by a powerful computer programmed correctly. They would also involve huge IT upgrade cycles, which, as the US government department NIST, has recently said, might easily take a decade or more. And as we've shown, they're too complex to be feasible for lightweight applications like IoT and blockchains and even basic mobile handsets. We think PQAs are a busted flush. Arqit’s technology, by contrast, is very simple to use. The customer just sees a lightweight software key agreement agent, which can be delivered to any device in the cloud. The keys it creates are used inside the AES 256 algorithm. That algorithm was previously widely used by governments and banks, often with keys that were human couriered. Arqit has simply replaced that courier. As a result, the algorithm is already globally standardized, so there is no major software change required to adopt Arqit, and the keys it creates cannot be intercepted or broken. In recent months we've found that the incredible ease of implementation of the Arqit QuantumCloud is perhaps our most powerful advantage. The market's recognition that the quantum threat is profound is now clearly established. During the year, we've seen significant statements by government and industry to this effect. The US government said in April that post-quantum algorithms are not universally suitable or timely solutions. Our commercial customers uh in banks and in telecoms have said similar things. We've also learned that quantum threat is now on the risk register as a red item of most major corporations, which creates a genuine sense of urgency on the part of those organizations to mitigate that risk. This is why Arqit’s development of a system which benefits from the mathematically provable security of symmetric keys, whilst also requiring no major global software systems and standards upgrades, is so very important for the world. As we focus on delivering revenue forecasts in 2022 from our selected direct channel sales, we're also readying the launch of the global cloud fulfillment platform, which is how we intend to take this business to hyperscale. For those who are less familiar with the tech, a very simple summary. Our innovation is in two parts. Firstly, satellite quantum key distribution doesn't work since it has a fundamental conflict between global versus trustless operations. Arqit solved that problem with the invention of a new quantum protocol called ARQ19. This simply means that we can put identical sets of random numbers into every data center in the world with provable quantum safe security. In the second step, a radical new classical cryptographic protocol working classically in software form at endpoints borrows elements of the random numbers in data centers in a very unusual way in order to to allow groups of devices to simultaneously create identical new random numbers. This key agreement or creation process is both trustless and computationally secure. Turning to our go-to-market strategy, there are three key elements. The release one of QuantumCloud was launched in September, and our first customers are already using or promoting it. We first focused on growing channel partnerships with leading global telecoms companies who sell Arqit solutions or bundle our solutions with their own products and services. Secondly, certain government and defense customers demand control of critical cybersecurity infrastructure. For these customers, Arqit is selling a private instance of our end-to-end technology stack. We've already recruited a number of private instance partners to the FQS project that was announced over the summer, and we've been busy progressing discussions with these and other parties to the next stage. Private instances generate a basic annual recurring revenue of $25 million per instance before value added services. We're very confident that we'll be in a position to talk more about these contracts into the new year, and we expect such contracts to put a strong backbone into future annual recurring revenue forecasts and NRR. Finally, QuantumCloud is being launched for sale on a platform as a service basis. Such customers will simply acquire the product and pay for it in the cloud and pay on a per key basis. This platform is therefore infinitely scalable, has a very low operating cost, and enables us to take this business to hyperscale. Any connected device is a potential customer for Arqit. However, in phase one, we've been focusing on selling private instance to customers, mainly in the defense marketplace. Uh. Also on selling the software, which is working in its preliminary method to telecoms, financial services, and IoT or automation customers. We've already signed contracts across all of those target markets and made a number of press releases on these subjects. We're now very focused on monetizing those early contracts that we've signed by delivering the software to those customers to trigger billing in the current six-month period. Whilst we still have work to do to finish out building our sales organization and we're recruiting intensively in many locations around the world. We're seeing increased traction in previously identified business opportunities moving their way through the pipeline towards contracts, and also new unprompted inbound opportunities arriving through marketing are escalating. Arqit’s reputation is growing quickly. The quality of Arqit’s technology and effort of the entire organization is manifest in our key transaction wins for 2021. These transactions are a strong validation of our technology from technologically sophisticated global organizations. We're very proud to be working with these marquee client names, and the breadth of the use cases across these key transaction use cases speaks to the broad applicability of our products. I'll now hand over to Nick Poynton, our Chief Financial Officer, to briefly cover our financial highlights for the year. I'll then conclude with a few thoughts on our expectations for 2022. Nick. Thank you, David, and good morning or afternoon everyone. As David noted, we are pleased to hold our first call as a publicly traded company. Arqit commenced full commercialization of its QuantumCloud product in September, shortly before the close of our 2021 fiscal year end. As a result, our revenues for fiscal year 2021 were not material. Post fiscal year end, billings have continued associated with our contracts and agreements. We ended the fiscal year with an adjusted net loss of $15.6 million. Importantly, as a result of the transaction with Centricus and our NASDAQ listing, we raised a net $96 million in capital and finished the fiscal year with cash on hand of $87 million. We believe our fiscal resources to be sufficient to meet our current business plan. We expect to have a more fulsome discussion regarding revenue generation and key performance indicators when we meet next to discuss our half year results. And now I'll turn back to David for additional comments. David? Thanks, Nick. Uh. Fiscal year 2022 will see the continuation of the trends which call for Arqit’s quantum encryption solution. Specifically, continued weakness in PKI. One major attack was reported just this morning. Increased cyber attack surface and accelerating technological development of quantum computers. Arqit’s target customers are increasingly aware of the threat, and we're focused on driving home the message that our solution is the only end-to-end quantum safe product that can address the issues of today and the significant threat of quantum computers at scale and at low cost and low friction for our customers. We're already seeing the success of our focused marketing efforts in recent announcements of agreements post financial year end in smart cities with NEOM and in defense with BlueBear. We're expecting to announce further contracts which have been awarded and contracted but not yet announced uh in the coming weeks. The company will further refine its product capability and delivery through the subsequent releases of QuantumCloud during 2022. We continue to see growth in identified and existing contract opportunities across all of our target markets. And we are seeing previously identified opportunities escalating through the pipeline very quickly. We're certainly observing that the sales cycle has compressed very greatly, and we're typically moving customers to contract much faster than we observed prior to the NASDAQ listing. We now have the certainty that our product is in a class of its own, proven by some of the most important government and enterprise actors across our marketplace. We have a clear pathway to the near-term achievement of our expected forecasts as a result of the urgency that these customers are exhibiting to solve those problems. Again, thank you all for your support. Uh we look forward to sharing additional news with you as we move forward. So I now turn the call back to the operator to open the lines for questions. Operator. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question you'll need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. As a reminder, that's star then one to ask a question. And speakers, I'm not showing any questions at this time. Well, Operator, I'm I'm delighted if we've presented clearly. As I said at the outset, the uh the financial year end coincided with the NASDAQ listing. There's not too much to report in terms of uh financials. Uh we will expect to be in a position to give much more detail on revenue composition and and uh KPI breakdowns at our next report for the six months to March 2022 and I'm looking forward to that. So if there are no questions for us to address, I'll thank everyone for attending. Um wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and uh hope that everyone keeps safe. We'll close the call here. Thank you. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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audio/5f02200c-200a-4375-ac6e-de067b353a3f.mp3
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earnings_22_full_test
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5f02200c-200a-4375-ac6e-de067b353a3f.mp3
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Earnings22-Cleaned-AA
Quick links: AA Speech-to-Text Leaderboard | AA-WER v2.0 article
Earnings22-Cleaned-AA is a cleaned subset of the English Earnings-22 test data from esb/datasets, a corpus of corporate earnings calls from global companies with speakers of many different nationalities and accents. This cleaned subset is the Earnings-22 portion included in AA-WER v2. We manually reviewed and corrected errors in the original ground-truth transcriptions to ensure fairer evaluation of Speech to Text (STT) models.
This dataset is part of AA-WER v2.0, the Speech to Text accuracy benchmark by Artificial Analysis, where it carries a 25% weighting alongside AA-AgentTalk (50%) and VoxPopuli-Cleaned-AA (25%).
Dataset Summary
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Source | Subset of Earnings-22 (ESB) English test split |
| Domain | Corporate earnings calls |
| Number of samples | 6 |
| Sample duration range | ~14–22 minutes |
| Total duration | ~115 minutes |
| Language | English |
Motivation for Correction
Reference transcripts in the original Earnings22 test set contained inaccuracies — instances where the ground truth didn't match what was actually spoken. Inaccurate ground truth penalizes models that correctly transcribe the audio, inflating WER scores unfairly. On average, model WER on Earnings22 went down 5.6 percentage points (p.p.) after cleaning, and no models had higher WER after cleaning (article).
Dataset Correction
We corrected transcripts to reflect verbatim what speakers said. Key corrections included:
- Incorrect words: Misspellings, misheard words, incorrect contractions in the original references
- Missed words: Retained or added repetitions for verbatim accuracy (e.g., "the the" where the speaker genuinely repeated a word)
- Partial stuttering: Removed incomplete word fragments (e.g., "evac-" in "evac- evacuate") as these are inherently ambiguous in transcription
- Grammar and tense: When speakers used incorrect grammar (particularly speakers with accents) but the word choice was clear, we kept verbatim words as spoken rather than correcting them
Elements already normalized by the Whisper normalizer package (e.g., capitalization, punctuation, and filler words) were not modified, since these differences are already handled during WER calculation.
Sample
Thank you, Darcy, and welcome everyone to our December quarterly analyst call. December quarterly production showed a considerable improvement on the September quarter with record production throughput and improving grades, improving recoveries and improving cash flow. Unfortunately, delays accessing higher grade parts of the open pit resulted in lower grades than projected in our guidance. On the exploration front, today we announced a 70% increase in our 100% owned Yamarna resources. So they now sit at 0.5 million ounces...
Usage
from datasets import load_dataset
dataset = load_dataset("ArtificialAnalysis/Earnings22-Cleaned-AA", split="test")
url fields in the dataset point to repo-local audio files under audio/.
WER Evaluation
For WER evaluation, we use the jiwer library with a custom text normalizer building on OpenAI's Whisper normalizer. Our normalizer adds:
- Digit splitting to prevent number grouping mismatches (e.g., "1405 553 272" vs. "1405553272")
- Preservation of leading zeros in codes and identifiers
- Normalization of spoken symbols (e.g., "+", "_")
- Stripping redundant ":00" in times (e.g., "7:00pm" vs. "7pm")
- Additional US/UK English spelling equivalences (e.g., "totalled" vs. "totaled")
- Accepted equivalent spellings for ambiguous proper nouns (e.g., "Mateo" vs. "Matteo")
Results within the dataset are aggregated as an audio-duration-weighted average WER so that numerous short clips do not bias results compared to longer files.
Citation
If you use this dataset, please cite:
@misc{artificialanalysis2026earnings22cleaned,
title={Earnings22-Cleaned-AA: Cleaned Ground Truth Transcripts for Earnings22 English Test Set},
author={Artificial Analysis},
year={2026},
url={https://artificialanalysis.ai/articles/aa-wer-v2}
}
Resources
- Full results and leaderboard
- Benchmarking methodology
- AA-WER v2.0 article
- VoxPopuli-Cleaned-AA on Hugging Face
Versioning
Current version: 1.0
Used in: AA-WER v2.0 benchmark release
Specific dataset versions used for each AA-WER release are documented in the Artificial Analysis methodology.
License
This dataset is released under Apache-2.0. For upstream terms, see esb/datasets.
Feedback
These cleaned transcripts reflect our best effort at verbatim ground truth, informed by manual review and cross-validation. Future refinements will be released as subsequent versions (v2+). If you spot issues, we welcome feedback via our contact page or Discord.
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