Century Aluminum Co Q1 FY2020 Earnings Call

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the First Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Peter Trpkovski. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the conference call. I'm joined today by Mike Bless, Century's President and Chief Executive Officer; Craig Conti, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Shelly Harrison, our Senior Vice President of Finance and our Treasurer. After our prepared comments, we'll take your questions. As a reminder, today's presentation is available on our website, www.centuryaluminum.com. We use our website as a means of disclosing material information about the company and for complying with Regulation FD. Turning to Slide 1 of today's presentation, please take a moment to review the cautionary statement shown here with respect to forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures contained in today's discussion. With that, I'll hand the call over to Mike.

Thanks very much, Pete, and thanks as usual, to all of you for joining us this afternoon. Before we get started, I need to report some truly tragic news. It has been widely known within the Century family and the broader community. If you've had a chance to look at the press release sent out an hour ago, you've seen we suffered a fatality in the anode manufacturing plant at Sebree in the early hours of April 8th. This was devastating to all of us at Century, especially given our collective commitment to keeping each other safe. We are redoubling our efforts to ensure that a similar event never comes close to happening again, and we are sharing our learnings within the company and with others in the industry. Our late colleague's family is and will remain firmly in our thoughts and prayers. And with that, if you please turn to Page 3, let me give you a quick overview of the current situation. As usual, Craig will provide you some detail in a moment, and you'll see that the first quarter financial performance came in quite strong. This is evidence to us that industry conditions before the health crisis were favorable and actually improving. You'll also see that our cost structure led to excellent profit and good cash flow conversion, and this was before the recent cost reduction actions that we implemented in March. All this gives us confidence that we've gone into this period in very good shape. I'll give you some detail on our response to the pandemic in just a moment. As we reported a couple of weeks ago, all our plants continue to operate normally. And given the present facts and circumstances at each of the facilities, we don't see this changing. In a couple of minutes, Pete will take you through our current view of the industry environment. It goes without saying that any analysis of the conditions in the industry is highly changeable even at the moment it's given. We saw a significant and almost immediate decline in demand in all our end markets in the US and in Europe. Thus far, there is little consistent industry-wide data. However, based on our discussions with our customers, we believe that there has been average temporary demand destruction on the order of 30%. This is spread unevenly across the end markets. As has been widely reported, the large market most immediately affected has been automotive. Others like construction are doing somewhat better, so we could lag. Others still are in relatively good shape, such as utility and certain infrastructure markets, as well as the defense and military sectors. You've obviously noted recent announcements of manufacturing plant restarts around the world. Obviously, we've all seen those. The situation remains very dynamic, but those do give us some cautious relative optimism for the back half of the year. All this has obviously led to a precipitous drop in metal prices. You've seen that. As is normally the case, aluminum has been a leading or very coincident indicator here. As we stand today, the LME cash price is down about 17% from its beginning of the year level. At its low, it was down about 21%. Regional delivery premiums have also decreased significantly. Both the US Midwest and EU Duty Paid Premium are down 40% from their highs in 2020, which were just a couple of months ago. The Midwest Premium has continued to slide well before the health crisis. In fact, during the second half of 2019, the Midwest Premium posted down 20%. The decline began shortly after Canada was exempted from the Section 232 tariffs. It's easy to understand the problem when you compare the period since the exemption with a similar time period just before the exemption. Total primary aluminum imports from Canada are up 30% since the exemption last May. More particularly, P1020 imports from Canada are up almost 75% since the time of the exemption. This starkly contrasts with the commitment made by the Canadians that post-exemption imports would not surge. The issue is, of course, well known to US government officials. At the time of the exemption, parties agreed that the tariffs would go back into place if a surge were to occur. Countering these movements in metal price, we've seen a decline in the price of key commodities to which we're exposed, largely following trends we saw before the health crisis. The alumina price index was already coming off in late 2019 due to the rebalance of industry supply. Since the beginning of this year, it has traded down a further 13%. The current level of $235 to $240 a ton represents 15.5% to 16% of the LME price, which we consider a normalized level. US and European wholesale power prices have also declined significantly since the beginning of the year. Bottom line, we believe we're well prepared to navigate this difficult environment. The decline in the price of these raw materials, combined with our recently implemented cost reduction actions, has brought our cash breakeven level down to very near the current LME price. In addition, we have strong liquidity that provides extra support. I'll give you a sense of all this in just a minute, and Craig will give you some further detail. But first, I'd like to update you on our response to the health crisis and the status of our operations. If you could turn to Slide 4, please. In early March, we implemented a range of preventative and restrictive policies like many companies. These are numerous, so let me give you a couple of examples. We segregated our employees into the smallest groups required to accomplish necessary tasks in each department of each plant. We staggered our essential personnel to preserve the required expertise. We closed nonessential common areas and began frequent deep cleaning of all other areas. We changed policies and procedures around the use of shared equipment. Finally, we began requiring all individuals who enter our facilities to have their temperature measured at the gate. Beginning in March, employees who could work from home began doing so and continue to do so today. These changes put a real burden on our people during an already strenuous time. Our folks have taken on these challenges with a strong and positive attitude, and for that, we are very grateful. They've kept these plants running and maintained the quality of our production high despite these tough conditions. We have also put on hold any activity not focused solely on keeping the plants running safely and maintaining production quality. The objective is straightforward: it's to allow our folks to focus only on the essential tasks. Deferred activities include most nonrecurring maintenance and various improvement projects. Thus far, these measures have had the intended effect. As of today, we have had only one confirmed COVID-19 case across the entire company, including Iceland and the Netherlands. Additionally, we have a handful of people who have been required to quarantine after contact with those infected or suspected of being infected by the virus. Our plants have continued to operate without interruption. As expected, we have been in constant contact with our key business partners. All critical raw material suppliers have been deemed essential businesses and have continued to operate with minimal interruption. The same applies to logistics providers. All our production continues to be sold essentially as it is cast. That's per normal operations. We do have relatively less exposure to the hardest-hit sectors like automotive, for example. Some customers have requested to reduce take of value-added products for a couple of months, and we're working with them to fill these gaps with increased production of standard products. Of course, these come with lower premiums. However, we are seeing some good offsets to these trends. For example, the Hawesville plant is producing record amounts of high-purity metal. This product continues to be required by the military sectors, and we're proud to be doing our part. This is a gratifying confirmation of the success of the technology upgrade at Hawesville, and importantly, the skills of our largely new workforce there. We're not ready to declare ourselves through the health part of the crisis, and we'll continue to operate in this manner until further notice. Lastly, we have contingency plans ready to implement if the health situation in any of the plants declines. With that, let's move to Page 5, please. I'll summarize our cost position and share comments about the outlook before handing you over to Pete and Craig. In early March, we got ahead of falling metal pricing premiums. By mid-March, all corrective actions were firmly in place. First, all nonessential spending was ceased and deferred, including the types of projects I mentioned a couple of minutes ago. We instituted a hiring ban and canceled salary increases for higher-earning and non-production personnel. We put on hold the majority of the capital projects. The most significant of these is the rebuild of the last potline in Hawesville, the fifth of five potlines. The rebuild of the fourth line was completed earlier this year, and essentially, all spending for that project was behind us before the health crisis hit. The restart of that fourth line is now nearing completion as planned. That produces incremental cash flow even at the current commodity prices. Additionally, the fixed cost absorption further improves Hawesville's cost structure. For example, the plant's cash operating cost will be down $300 a ton from Q4 to Q2 of the current quarter. Most of these actions were put in place in March, so the positive impact will be realized in the second quarter. We have a next phase of actions ready for implementation if it becomes necessary. Just a couple of last comments: as we discussed in our written update in late March, we made partial drawdowns under our two revolving credit facilities. We see no foreseeable need for these funds at any time in the future. In that context, let me give you a quick sketch of the current financial situation and the outlook. Craig will provide more detail shortly. The performance in the first quarter gives us confidence in our expectations for the next couple of quarters. We have the cost side of the equation well in hand. Just at a high level, if you've had a chance to take a quick look, Q1 EBITDA was $15 million higher sequentially on a revenue decline of $14 million. Most of that fall in revenue was due to lower premiums, which directly impacts the bottom line. We also saw strong conversion of earnings to cash flow. These results were produced by the cost structure we had in place before the recent improvement actions. The realized raw material prices in the first quarter were before the recent additional decline, and the results were before the cost reduction actions implemented in March. As usual, Craig will provide detail on the impact of commodity price changes and other factors on the forecast for sequential quarter-to-quarter EBITDA. Obviously, I'm not discussing Q1 to Q2. Most of our revenues and key cost inputs for Q2 are already priced at this point, giving us good visibility. Based on this analysis, we expect decent positive EBITDA and essentially breakeven cash flow for Q2. Craig will provide an update on our cost structure for the second half of the year, allowing you to build your estimates. You'll see average plant operating costs as well as cash operating costs down a further $180 a ton from the levels we showed you in February. The premiums have also declined, so direct LME comparable operating costs are down $110 a ton from the February estimates. As a reminder, the operating costs we showed you in February were already down over $200 a ton from the 2018 levels. All this has brought our cash flow breakeven level down a further $125 a ton to around $1,550 a ton. This is a direct LME comparable metric, demonstrating the LME level at which the company is cash flow breakeven given current premiums and raw material prices. As a reminder, we define cash flow here as net of all items, such as debt service costs, taxes, working capital movements, CapEx, and so forth. Backing this up, we have maintained over $200 million in liquidity. This demonstrates our solid position to operate through this environment. With that, I'll hand it over to Pete for additional comments on the industry structure.

Thanks Mike. If we can move on to Slide 6, please, I'll take you through the current state of the global aluminum market. The cash LME price averaged $1,690 per ton in the first quarter, which is down approximately 4% or $64 per ton from the fourth quarter of '19. As COVID-19 continues to weigh heavily on the global economy, we have seen aluminum prices fall significantly from a high of about $1,811 per ton in late January to a low of about $1,421 per ton in April. For April, the average price is approximately $1,460 per ton, and the current three-month LME price is hovering around $1,500 per ton. In the first quarter, regional premiums averaged approximately $0.136 per pound in the US, down 14% quarter-over-quarter, and $147 per ton in Europe, which was actually an increase of 8% from the prior quarter. Current spot prices are around $0.085 per pound in the US Midwest and $100 per ton in Europe. As Mike mentioned earlier, we had already seen a trend of falling input costs from our key raw materials pre-pandemic. From the end of 2018 to the end of 2019, aluminum prices were down about 8%, but our key inputs of alumina, power, and carbon prices were down approximately 30% each during the same period. Since then, due to the health crisis, aluminum prices have fallen a further 17%, but our key raw materials have continued to decline as well. The alumina price index and the Indiana Hub, which closely represents power prices for our Kentucky smelters, have fallen by 17% and 16%, respectively, during the same period, and coke prices have declined 4%. We have seen an immediate impact on demand worldwide from COVID-19. In the first quarter of 2020, global aluminum demand was down about 8% compared to the first quarter of 2019. Demand contraction occurred in the world, excluding China, at 7% and 10% in China. Global production was up 2% in the first quarter year-over-year. We saw 3% production growth in the world, excluding China, and 2% growth in China year-over-year. Recent market developments have shown positive trends for demand recovery, with several OEMs and other downstream manufacturers announcing production restarts or plans to do so in the near term. With that, I'll hand the call over to Craig.

Thanks, Pete. Let's turn to Slide 7, and I'll take you through the results for the first quarter. On a consolidated basis, global shipments were essentially flat quarter-over-quarter, and realized prices were down 3%, primarily due to lower lagged regional premiums. Looking at operating results, adjusted EBITDA was $28 million this quarter, and we had an adjusted net profit of $1 million or $0.01 per share. In Q1, the primary adjusting items were $12.1 million for the net realizable value of inventory and $8.3 million for unrealized gains on foreign contracts. Our liquidity remains strong, with over $200 million in funds available through a mix of cash on hand and credit facilities. As Mike mentioned earlier, we proactively drew down $90 million on our revolving credit facilities via a partial borrowing on each of our US and Icelandic agreements. While we do not foresee a need for these funds, we secured them out of an abundance of caution in this uncertain and volatile environment. On Slide 8, I can walk you through our quarter-to-quarter bridge of adjusted EBITDA. As we forecasted in our last call, realized LME was about flat with Q4, and the decrease in regional premiums was more than offset by a decrease in realized alumina. The Q1 realized alumina price of $290 per ton was down $35 per ton from Q4 levels, while realized Midwest and European premiums decreased by $65 per ton and $15 per ton, respectively. Domestic power prices dropped throughout the majority of the first quarter and generated a 10% or about $3 per megawatt-hour savings versus Q4. As we previously discussed, approximately 30% of our Icelandic power pricing is based on the Nord Pool index, and Q1 marked the first full quarter where this pricing mechanism was in effect. Nord Pool prices were down, on average, $26 per megawatt-hour or about 60% from Q4 levels. Looking ahead to Q2, the lagged LME of $1,635 per ton is expected to be down $115 per ton from Q1 realized prices, while the US Midwest premium is forecast to be $265 per ton or down about $40 per ton over the same time period. Taken together, the LME and Midwest premium pricing declines are expected to negatively impact Q2 EBITDA by about $20 million to $25 million versus Q1 levels. Lagged alumina prices are essentially flat to Q1, with a realized value expected in the $290 to $300 per ton range. The recent reduction in spot alumina prices will begin to materially impact our results in Q3 as recently procured inventory is consumed at our plants. Finally, as Mike mentioned earlier, power prices have continued to decline in both the US MISO and European Nord Pool markets. Globally, we expect an approximate incremental $5 million of EBITDA benefit in Q2 from these market-based power prices versus Q1. Keep in mind that we buy on the day-ahead market and we still have two months of unpriced purchases assumed in this incremental impact. In sum, we expect these items, in isolation, will equate to an approximate EBITDA decrease of $15 million to $20 million from Q1 levels. To approximate Q2 free cash flow on the same basis, simply deduct the normal semiannual bond interest payment of $10 million from the EBITDA result. Our Q2 capital and other outflows are expected to be offset by working capital inflows driven by falling raw material prices within the quarter. Let's turn to Slide 9 and look at our cash flow over the last quarter. We started the quarter with $39 million in cash and ended March with $148 million. During the quarter, we had $6 million of CapEx spending, the majority of which was related to the ongoing Hawesville restart. Q1 also marked the beginning of the amortization of our loans supporting the restart, tallying $5 million in the quarter. As discussed earlier, our proactive partial drawdowns on each of our US and Icelandic revolvers provided a $90 million inflow, with an additional $6 million generated by the timing of customer receipts. Next, I'd like to transition to our discussion on the remainder of 2020. Given the rapid changes in the macro economy and more specifically within our market, we would like to update you on some actions we've taken to strengthen the business' liquidity and cost position. Similar to our last discussion, we'll cover an update to the tools for forecasting our business from an EBITDA and cash standpoint using commodity prices of your choosing. For today's discussion, we thought it would be most helpful to show this on a second-half basis. You will notice that we will focus on the cost element of the toolkit only. The timing or lag portion of the toolkit is unchanged from our previous discussion in February. Let's turn to Page 10 to discuss some key assumptions we made in providing this analysis. The prices on this page are not centrally forecast for individual prices and commodities. Midwest and European delivery premiums are assumed at $220 per ton and $100 per ton, respectively, while the alumina price index is assumed at $225 per ton, all similar to recent spot levels. On energy costs, the MISO Indiana Hub, Henry Hub natural gas, and Nord Pool price assumptions are generally their year-to-date values. Turning to Page 11, I'll take you through the first of two pages we prepared for further insight into the second half of 2020. We expect our second-half 2020 shipments to be about 425,000 tons in total, slightly less than our previous discussion due to cash preservation actions, which will decrease the number of pot relines completed this year. The bottom two sections of the page show our gross and net plant cash costs, both of which exclude interest, CapEx, and corporate SG&A. The midpoint of our gross cash costs has decreased by about $160 per ton in the US and approximately $210 per ton in Iceland compared to a few months ago, driven by our aggressive cost-cutting actions and falling alumina, power, and LME prices. The net cash costs are net of premiums and presented in a manner directly comparable to the LME. The midpoint of these costs has decreased by about $85 per ton in the US and about $150 per ton in Iceland compared to what we showed in February. The net cash cost reduction is lower than the gross reduction primarily due to declining delivery premiums. Turning to Page 12, I'll cover some other cost expectations for the second half of 2020. SG&A will be $20 million on a book basis, while only $16 million on a cash basis. Interest costs will be $13 million, while our principal pay down of our Hawesville term loan will be $10 million over the second half. Our second-half CapEx is expected to be between $5 million and $10 million, representing only maintenance spending. All investment CapEx has been deferred. The funds required to complete the restart of our fourth line at Hawesville have already been spent in the first half, largely in the first quarter. Finally, we now expect our cash flow breakeven cost to be $1,550 per ton or $125 per ton less than a few months ago, driven by enhanced cost controls and falling raw material prices. This cash flow breakeven is on a direct LME comparative basis and highlights the significant upside we have as the market improves. This concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for your time and attention. I'd like to turn the call back over to Grace to begin the question-and-answer session.

Thank you. And our first question is from the line of Lucas Pipes. Please state your company, followed by your question.

Hey, good afternoon everybody.

Hi, Lucas.

So on the breakeven price that you just laid out, first, that's very good to hear. I wanted to ask what sort of other assumptions may be baked into that. For example, on the Midwest premium or added value, could you disclose what sort of levels would be included in that breakeven level? I assume the breakeven is at the asset level, so what other cash considerations, working capital, overhead, etc., should we consider on top of that?

Lucas, it's Mike. Let us help you. The assumption is incorrect. That $1,550 is at the corporate level. It's after all plant costs, corporate SG&A, interest expense, and everything else. It's net-net, bottom line, where you should expect to see a change in cash every quarter based on the LME either above or below $1,550. So it's after all costs. The premiums and our sales team's best estimates are based on discussions with customers regarding our current position. Most of our sales are contracted a year in advance. Those premiums were locked nine months ago or earlier before the beginning of the year. The only change in the weighted average product premiums is that some customers have requested a small portion of their volumes to move temporarily from value-added products, and we've supplemented this with production of standard products. Go ahead, Craig.

One other thing, Lucas, to make this a little more user-friendly, in the appendix on Page 17, we broke out the regional premium and value-added premium, but to help, we've done it in overall tons. To look at the second-half cash costs, you would take what we did on Page 10 and break it out between the US and Iceland overall tons, using the guide on Page 17.

Very helpful, I appreciate all the color on this. I wanted to switch to the industry side, then I'll go back in queue for potentially more questions. In terms of the overall supply response, what's your outlook? There has been talk about a lack of curtailments on the aluminum side and structural issues in the industry. What's your take? Where do you see supply potentially coming offline? How much do you think would need to come offline to balance this market?

To balance the market – if you don't mind, it's Mike again. Let me answer the last part of your question first. That's tough because you need to make the assumption of where demand goes. To balance the market at this point, you would need millions of tons to come off if you assume that demand won't snap back. To answer your first question, you're right; we haven't seen a lot of supply response yet. Smaller pockets have responded, but they are a rounding error when considering global or non-China total supply currently. If conditions start to improve over the next couple of months and customers see that there's some legs to the restart of their operations, we probably won't see much of a supply response. However, if it appears that conditions are likely to be lower for longer, we believe more structural decisions may begin to be made. I'm sorry if this seems vague; it will be a better discussion in three months when we may have more clarity.

That's very helpful. I appreciate the color. Best of luck and everybody stay healthy.

Thank you for your questions, and same to you.

So it's John Tumazos from Very Independent Research. My condolences on the loss of your teammate and congratulations on producing through all those troubles.

Thank you, John. I appreciate you saying that. It's truly made a tremendous impact on our team. I can't tell you how everyone felt about it. It was remarkable. Thank you for your thoughts.

So we feel it, too. It made us feel terrible. I cover Vale when they lost all those people last year.

I don't want to use overly dramatic words, but it was truly extraordinary how the ownership and accountability were taken by our folks at that plant. I appreciate your comments, John. You've seen a few of these instances throughout your experience, so it resonates.

Congratulations on just producing in the first quarter. It looks almost like a normal income statement in the most abnormal of conditions.

Thank you, John. It was a good quarter. The first quarter trading conditions were generally strong despite everything. What gives us more confidence is the cost side. We feel good about our standing, and the breakeven level and the guidance Craig provided suggests a solid outlook for the next nine to 12 months even if external conditions don’t improve. It's a realistic view.

Even as Century does well relative to many companies in this crisis, there's an understanding that China has increased aluminum output in the first quarter, but vehicle sales fell 42%. Alcoa said they think the Chinese built two million tons of inventory, which is 10% of the market. We know you're in good shape, but if you asked Washington for bailout money like those intended for airlines or a larger than 10% tariff or restoration of the Canadian tariff, would you seek that help?

That's great, John. So let me address all those three. We, as you would hope, looked long and hard at every part of the program that was passed by Congress. Regrettably, we find ourselves in a situation where we don't fit in any of the programs rolled out thus far. It's disappointing not to fit within the letter and spirit of the legislation. We’ll continue to monitor it. There are some recent developments that might change this. Thus far, we have not applied for any of those programs. On your second and third questions, which relate to relief, we’ve made our opinions known. We're vocal about our stance given the current flow of metal from regions even if they are non-exempted as well as the Canadian issue, which is of great concern. You can see the data online.

Thank you and good luck.

Thank you very much, John. I appreciate those comments.

Thank you. I have no further questions in the queue at this time.

I'll give it a second just to see if anyone wishes to change their minds? Okay. We appreciate your time this afternoon, and we look forward to providing updates as we move forward. We'll talk to you no later than when we report second quarter earnings. Take care, everybody, and stay safe.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Executive Teleconference service. You may now disconnect.