American semi-fabricated aluminium maker Kaiser Aluminum reported results for the final quarter and full year of 2022 this week.

In the final quarter of 2022, Kaiser Aluminum had net sales totaling US$776 million with conversion revenue of US$356 million, due in part to a 9 percent drop in shipped product and a 6 percent jump in average selling price per pound. The firm showed a net loss of US$26 million and an adjusted net loss of US$7 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter came to US$30 million.

For the full year of 2022, Kaiser Aluminum had net sales of US$3.4 billion. The firm had a net loss of US$30 million and an adjusted net loss of US$2 million and an adjusted EBITDA of US$142 million. Shipments rose by 12 percent on the year, while average selling price per pound rose by 17 percent.

Keith A. Harvey, President and Chief Executive Officer, elaborated on the financial results in a press release.

“The full year 2022 was pivotal in Kaiser’s evolution as we laid the necessary groundwork to position the Company for long-term, sustainable growth despite the numerous challenges we encountered, including unprecedented supply chain disruptions, inflationary cost pressures and labor turnover, which negatively impacted our financial performance. We continue to work with our customers to negotiate improvements to commodity price adjustments to mitigate the impact of inflationary and volatile commodity costs on our business and improve our margin profile. We are prioritizing investments in our growth through our roll coat capacity expansion project at Warrick, which we expect will become operational by mid-to-late 2024. In addition, we remain well positioned to service the recovery we have been experiencing in aerospace and continued demand for general engineering (plate) following the completion of a long planned, major outage at our Trentwood facility in the third quarter of 2022.”

“Looking ahead, we remain intently focused on continuing to pursue cost reductions in our operations, as well as improving efficiencies and implementing commercial actions to increase our margins,” he continued. “We believe the strategy we have in place should lead to improved performance in the year ahead with our full year 2022 Adjusted EBITDA representing the trough. While our efforts will take time to manifest, we are confident in our ability to execute given our solid market position as a key supplier, focus on diverse end markets with strong secular growth characteristics, deep customer relationships and multi-year contracts with strategic partners.”