[Management View]
GrafTech International's management emphasized their strategic priorities, including increasing sales volume, regaining market share, improving average pricing, reducing costs, and strengthening liquidity. Key metrics highlighted include a 12% YoY increase in sales volume, a 16% sequential increase, and a capacity utilization rate of 65%.

[Outlook]
Management provided performance guidance, anticipating EBITDA near breakeven for the full year 2025, with sequential performance affected by planned shutdowns, input costs, and tariff timing. They expressed cautious optimism for gradual pricing recovery into 2026.

[Financial Performance]
GrafTech reported a net loss of $87 million for Q2 2025, including a $43 million non-cash income tax charge. Sales volume grew by 12% YoY and 16% sequentially. Average selling price decreased by 12% YoY. Adjusted EBITDA was $3 million, compared to $14 million in Q2 2024.

[Q&A Highlights]
Question 1: Good morning, Tim, Rory, Jeremy. Thank you for taking my questions. Good morning, It's nice to see the continued share gains in The U.S. Is this still stand at around 50% for the company's overall exposure? Is there any room to gain further share this year potentially from Indian suppliers? Or is this more of a 2026 contract opportunity?
Answer: Yeah, Bennett. So I would say U.S. or The Americas as a whole represent a little bit more than 50% of our overall revenue. And certainly, as we continue to look to grow our share which is up, you know, 31% year over year in The U.S., that'll continue to drive that percentage higher as we move out forward. You know, think as we look at the back half of the year, know, I think we'd expect demand in The U.S. to remain robust. Given the tariff landscape and those 232 steel tariffs that are already in place. How it impacts the supply side on electrodes is still yet to be seen as the reciprocal tariffs and all of those kind of work through the system and continue to evolve. But net, I think we feel very good about our position, both with what we've done thus far, and also how we think about the value and what we offer our customers as we look forward. So look forward to continued growth in this market.

Question 2: Great. Thanks for that. And then my quick second one here relates to the Chinese antidumping duties. Do you feel this has potential to lift local needle coke prices and ultimately cause support for U.S. pricing? Or is this kind of a further dated opportunity just given how immature the Western supply chain still is?
Answer: Yeah. I mean, I'll start and I'll let Jeremy chime in as well. But I think the way you asked the question kinda answered it in some respects. Right? You know, there isn't any anode production of material within The United States right now. But I think the backdrop of the previous ITC ruling and now the most recent Department of Commerce ruling on the 93 and a half percent really sets a foundation that'll allow for more confidence in moving forward with these projects and the development of the supply chains in the West, which, again, I think we feel good about where we sit in terms of a raw material supplier and our technical capabilities both on the raw materials, but the graphitization as well, which is an important kind of first step, to get the supply chains established. So I think it'll support, medium to long term. But it's not an immediate impact to pricing, in the short run. Jeremy, anything you wanna add?
Jeremy Halford: Yeah. No. I think you hit the key points there, Jim. The only other thing that I would note is that while there is a variety of announced projects that hope come online for additional anode production domestically. There's been no announced new projects for needle coke. Other than, of course, our permanent expansion at our Seadrift facility. And so we do think that this will lead to an eventual tightening up of that market but that's still quarters into the future, as Tim was mentioning.

Question 3: Great. Thanks for taking my question. Hope you guys are well. Congrats on the EBITDA improvement and the cost reductions as well. So I guess maybe the first question would just be on pricing and the pricing environment. Looks like there was a tick up in your production and volumes. So, know, and the utilization rate may be slightly better as well. In The U.S. especially. So would you say that you know, overall kind of pricing expectations have bottomed and maybe, you know, kind of very, very small room for improvement, Or, how would you kinda characterize the pricing environment as you look into the next six months or so for electrodes?
Answer: Yeah. You know, and appreciate that, and thanks for the comments. You know, listen. The pricing environment remains very competitive. Right? We've talked about the oversupply especially coming out of China, which has put pressure on the rest of the world. And the global demand environment with, you know, some puts and takes in certain regions outperforming others. But overall, global demand is pretty flat. You know, I think though, despite this, we are growing our volume, and, you know, we did grow our ASP by 8% over the fourth quarter last year. So I think we are starting to see price stability globally, but it's still not at a level where we think it's sustainable for the long term. Right? So whether it's our actions, to change our mix and focus our energies on those markets that will compensate us for the value we provide in our healthier, production markets as a whole. Or if it's through the continued pressure of raising our price and driving higher prices and getting compensated again for the services and the value provided to our customers, we're gonna keep pushing the envelope to drive prices higher. It's a challenging market, but we're starting to see some success. We've seen some flattening out of the pricing curves, which throughout all of 2024 were downward sloping. So we hope that we've hit bottom, and we'll now start to see some recovery in the back half of this year, but then more importantly as we get into 2026.

Question 4: Okay. And could you also offer any thoughts on needle coke? You know, there was a lot of oil-based volatility in the quarter. You know, especially from a geopolitical standpoint. But does that affect needle coke? You know? And then what is kind of the outlook? We've had some, you know, slightly good EV demand in China, but not necessarily that great outside of China. And so I'm not sure if that's been a drag on needle coke supply demand or how'd you characterize the needle coke supply demand and pricing outlook as well?
Answer: Yeah. So thanks for that, Arun. Really, we're seeing continued flatness in the needle coke market. Pricing remains pretty consistent with where it has been for the last several quarters. And, you know, as we look forward, we're not seeing a large catalyst in the near term. As we get, as we look out a little bit further and start to see some of these catalysts. Particularly some of the Western supply chain developments come online, we think that should start driving some improvements. But as of right now, things are still pretty flat with where they've been.
Tim Flanagan: Yeah. Arun, I would just add if we go back to prior to the Trump administration, you had a lot of support EV mandates and such. Now you're seeing it more on standing up the EV industry through trade and tariff actions. And even, you know, more so as you think about, you know, the recently announced deal with MP Materials from the Department of Defense, right, where you've seen a creative and very transformational public-private partnership. That really is going through, you know, kinda the government's or Washington's efforts to stand up domestic production and onshoring kind of the production of these critical minerals. So, like, those are the things that I think we'll see start to drive needle coke pricing and the demand in the West, which will ultimately help us beyond just the growth of, you know, EAF consumption of electrodes as we look out going forward. So, you know, all in all, you know, I think those are two really positive developments that we're seeing in the market right now as it relates to needle coke.

Question 5: Okay. So given that you expect a flattish needle coke environment, you are driving your own cost lower. You were able to accomplish positive EBITDA this quarter. Do you expect that positive EBITDA trajectory to continue and you see some sequential improvement as you get into Q3? You know, and then maybe it falls off just seasonally a little bit in Q4. And then next year, you continue to expect some modest continued improvement in EBITDA. Have you kind of bottomed and you're kind of heading now towards, you know, improved results, you know, each period? Or where are you kind of in your evolution here?
Answer: Sure, Arun. So as you saw in our release, our cash cost for the first half of the year was about $3,700. We revised our guidance for a full-year cash cost of about $3,950. So you're right. You'll see some cost uptick in the second half of the year, which is driven by a couple of things. It's driven by fixed cost leverage we lose in the second half because of some of our summer shutdowns. It's driven by some of the higher costs of inputs like labor and energy in the second half of the year. And it's also driven by kind of the back half being loaded up with our view on tariffs currently. We're also not getting as much of a benefit from our LCM utilization, LCM reserve utilization that we as we had previously, so that's a little bit of a headwind. But all in, I think you can expect that the full year if you stake all that together, will probably be at or slightly above a breakeven. Type EBITDA number. As far as where we go, in the years ahead, you know, a lot of our negotiations are coming up in the fourth quarter, so we're looking forward to that. I think we've proven our value beyond just the electrode, but also from a CTS perspective and technical service perspective. So we're looking forward to that. And, as that develops, we'll give more views as to how we see the upcoming year.
Tim Flanagan: Got it. Yeah. I mean, I would just add. I mean, you know, I think what Rory has outlined is 100% accurate in the sense that, you know, next six months are what they are. This is all about us stacking quarter after quarter of improved performance. And the team has been doing that now for a number of quarters in a row. It's not always gonna be a straight line up into the right, but we think, you know, we've started to develop the momentum seeing stickiness in our cost reduction efforts. The commercial efforts are paying dividends. And we think as we head into '26, you know, we're happy with the momentum we're creating.

Question 6: Yes. Thanks, Tim. Good morning. I just wanted to follow-up on the potential opportunity in anode materials. Feel like we've been talking about this for many years. Right? Probably at least five years. And nothing's really happened so far. Like, nothing's been announced. How would you categorize the state of discussions at the moment? You know, are they active? Because we've obviously seen others move forward. Right? T 66 is got together with Novonix, and they got some money from the DOE. So I'm just curious. Like, where do things stand and yeah. So where do things stand? Thank you.
Answer: Yeah. Thanks, Alex. You know, listen. We have been talking about the anode opportunity for a while. And, you know, we've also been consistent in saying this isn't something that we necessarily will do on our own or have the balance sheet to go alone. And I've outlined a number of areas and ways that we think we can participate in the market and think those still exist, whether it be a raw material supplier, whether it be a graphitization supplier to the market given the capacity that we have. But I think as we've also gone through this last, you know, call it three or four years, we've also continued to develop our capabilities to kinda go soup to nuts on the production of anodes and think we have opportunities. So I think the change potentially that's coming and the way I would think about it is what I mentioned before with what we just saw last week with MP Materials. Right? Again, fairly transformative public-private partnership. Kind of a very creative use of federal dollars from the Department of Defense, you know, to unlock value. And, also, I mean, they're generating returns for taxpayers. So they're kinda going about it different ways where they're not just handing out money to whoever has the best application, but they're really looking for those that are well-positioned to be cornerstones in the industry. And, again, I think as GrafTech International Ltd. our existing capabilities, the fact that we're vertically integrated, you know, could potentially position us to be an attractive partner with the Department of Defense. So, you know, we are continuing our efforts. We're not gonna slow down. We'll continue to probe and look for all I think this is a bit of a game changer from a sense of the government is putting real dollars behind, standing up businesses and an industry, versus trying to pull demand through, you know, tax incentives and such like that. So I think that's where you start to see this change.

Question 7: But, Tim, like, not to put you on the spot. I'm not sure what you could say, but based on those comments, I would interpret that to mean that you are in active discussions. With the government over potential partnership type opportunities. Would that be fair?
Answer: Yeah. Alex, I'm not gonna comment other than saying, you know, we do think we're well-positioned. We welcome the opportunity to continue to advocate on all fronts, whether it's for funding opportunities, whether for its trade protections, whether it's for our position with our customers to improve our position. You know, we're, you know, the MP Materials deal was just announced last week, and this is all very new and very recent to the market. So we'll continue to explore it as we see appropriate.

[Sentiment Analysis]
The tone of the analysts was generally positive, with appreciation for the company's strategic initiatives and cost reductions. Management expressed cautious optimism and confidence in their strategic positioning and future growth prospects.

[Quarterly Comparison]
| Metric | Q2 2025 | Q2 2024 | YoY Change |
|--------|---------|---------|------------|
| Sales Volume | 29,000 metric tons | 25,893 metric tons | +12% |
| Average Selling Price | $4,200 per metric ton | $4,773 per metric ton | -12% |
| Adjusted EBITDA | $3 million | $14 million | -79% |
| Net Loss | $87 million | $43 million | +102% |

[Risks and Concerns]
- Net loss of $87 million, including a $43 million non-cash income tax charge.
- Industry-wide price pressure due to oversupply, particularly from China.
- Average selling price decline of 12% YoY.
- Competitive pricing environment and flat global demand.

[Final Takeaway]
GrafTech International demonstrated strong operational performance in Q2 2025, with significant sales volume growth and improved cost efficiency. Despite a challenging pricing environment, the company maintained its liquidity position and outlined strategic initiatives to drive future growth. Management expressed cautious optimism for gradual pricing recovery and emphasized their commitment to disciplined execution and strategic positioning. Investors should monitor the company's progress in navigating industry headwinds and capitalizing on emerging opportunities in the anode materials market.