Century Aluminum Co Q4 FY2020 Earnings Call

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Century Aluminum Company Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Peter Trpkovski. Thank you. Please go ahead. Thank you, everyone, and welcome to the conference call. I am joined here today by Mike Bless, Century’s President and Chief Executive Officer; Craig Conti, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Shelly Harrison, Senior Vice President of Finance and Treasurer. After our prepared comments, we will take your questions. As a reminder, today’s presentation is available on our website at 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, 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 will hand the call to Mike.

Thanks, Pete. Thanks to all of you for joining us this afternoon. If we could just flip to Page 3 please, I will give you a quick summary of the last couple of months. Before we get started, though, we are extraordinarily sad to report a fatality at Mt. Holly that occurred in December. The incident happened outside the cast house in the loading area. The victim was a longtime employee and a cherished colleague and friend. She is sorely missed by her family, by her colleagues, and by the entire community. This tragedy reinforces our commitment to take an unbiased look at absolutely everything we do and commit to improve where needed without condition. It requires dedication and leadership from every part of our organization and personal commitment from each and every individual. We all know we must hold ourselves to the highest of standards and demonstrate our promise to keep ourselves and each other safe, not just talk, but we need to demonstrate that each and every day. Okay. And with that, let’s dive in. Pete in a couple of minutes will give you a summary, as he normally does of the industry fundamentals. Let me just make a couple of points to put the rest of my comments into context before I get going on the rest. You all follow the macro data, so I’ll keep it quick. Obviously, world manufacturing indices are approaching levels that frankly, we last saw in early 2018. At that time, the LME price, as you may remember, was over $2,500 a tonne. Manufacturing activity in our key markets in the U.S. and Europe remains especially robust. You have seen the most recent employment data this morning. Obviously, it’s got a long, long way to go, but it is showing some hopeful signs. Other factors are coincident with strong base metal prices. A number of them, amongst which obviously the dollar, showed a little bit of strength in January, but it remains on a weakening trend and crude prices are up. Thus far, headline inflation has shown resistance to upward pressure. That said, you have all looked inside the summary data and seen that there are some potential signs lurking. Obviously, you have seen the crawl upwards in treasury yields. Further stimulus is coming in the U.S. and almost certainly in other developed markets. The situation has led to extraordinarily tight supply conditions in our markets with real pressure for prompt units. The cold weather in the southern portion of the U.S. over the last couple of days has only exacerbated this problem. Inventories measured in days of supply are historically very supportive. Midwest premium and the EU duty-paid premium are on upward trends. The spot premium for many value-added products is at an all-time high. All these conditions have pushed up the global commodity price. Moving on, our operations are generally stable and running at expected levels of efficiency and cost. Grundartangi and Sebree are both at full complement and running very well. Hawesville, on the other hand, has had a difficult last couple of months. The plant experienced three unrelated but almost simultaneous equipment incidents in December. This resulted in the loss of a number of cells and generally poor operating efficiencies, driving some cost increases during Q4. These were offset by strong performance from the other plants, especially Mt. Holly and Grundartangi. We have a plan in place to get Hawesville back to normal operations by early Q2, and Craig will take you through a financial summary of Q4 in just a minute. Mt. Holly is running well and had an excellent quarter in controllable costs. That said, we continue to lose sales at the predicted rate, given the age of the pods since we last rebuilt them. This reinforces the importance of moving forward aggressively on the rebuild process. Let me just give you a couple of brief comments on the expected financial performance for the first quarter and for the full year, and Craig will give you more detail in a minute. The first quarter is going to be impacted by two items, which will result in lower EBITDA than you would expect to see with a realized LME price in the low 1,900s. The first is the extreme weather impacting the electrical grid in the southern part of the U.S. This will result in a meaningful increase in our power price for the Kentucky plants for the first quarter. We haven’t seen this kind of situation since the Polar Vortex in 2014. The power prices have come nicely back down and are almost back to where they would normally be. So the impact for the quarter of this event looks to be about $15 million. Of course, that’s an extraordinary occurrence, which only impacts the first quarter. A second, much less significant factor is a good dose of restart expense in Mt. Holly, which will hit in Q1, and Craig will take you through all that detail in just a couple of minutes. Absent these items, the quarter would look as you would expect. And obviously, if you adjust for the current LME price, which is well over $200 higher than the price we forecast we will realize in Q1, that would produce a significantly higher level of profitability. Today’s prices won’t be realized in our financials until Q2. Craig is also going to take you through our expectations for Q2 to Q4 in terms of production volumes, plant operating costs, and other assumptions. You’ll see that plant costs are estimated to be up about $150 a tonne versus the estimates at this time last year. It’s important to understand that the vast majority of that increase is simply based on the fact that we’re using a higher LME price estimate to estimate the cost of alumina and power in contracts linked to the LME. We’re also using slightly higher market power prices based on current forward prices. Those forwards are at slightly higher levels than they would normally be just given the prop prices. Most importantly, you will see controllable costs such as labor and maintenance on a per tonne basis are absolutely flat year-over-year, and we are pleased with this, especially given the restart spending at Mt. Holly. Let me move on and talk for a couple of minutes about Mt. Holly specifically. You saw our announcement in mid-December that we had signed a 3-month extension to the power contract. That contract was set to expire at the end of 2020. We and Santee Cooper made good progress in November and December on terms for a new 3-year contract, and just needed to give the teams more time to finalize an agreement and secure the necessary regulatory approvals. That full contract has now been agreed on terms consistent with what we had in December and what we expected. Santee Cooper has submitted the contract to the required state oversight committee, and we are jointly awaiting approval. This new contract is expected to commence on April 1. We are pleased to have reached this milestone. Our colleagues at Santee Cooper were creative in helping us mutually reach this point, and we appreciate their commitment of time and resources. This further encourages us regarding Mt. Holly’s long-term prospects. We are working with Santee Cooper now on interesting demand response opportunities that would bring additional value to both parties. The real credit for getting us to this point goes to our people at Mt. Holly. They managed the plant consistently through an extraordinarily difficult period. Obviously, they had issues caused by the pandemic, and those were compounded by uncertainty over whether we could secure a sensible power contract to run the plant post-December 2020. We are grateful for their commitment and are excited to give them the opportunity to rebuild and expand the plant. The new contract is for just under 300 megawatts, which will enable us to grow production from the current 50% to 75% of capacity, an annualized rate of about 170,000 tonnes. Due to the lack of visibility on a long-term power contract, we purposely did not rebuild cells as they have normally failed over the past 4-plus years. We need to fully rebuild all the cells in the potline that’s been operating, plus half of the other line to get to 1.5 potline, 75%. This is very similar to the process we went through at Hawesville in 2018 and 2019. Recently, we signed a multiyear agreement to sell our low carbon Natur-Al product to Hammerer Aluminum Industries. We are proud and excited to work with them. We are also in discussions with other potential customers, representing a great opportunity for Century. We continue to work on a renewable power opportunity for the Kentucky plant specifically, and hope to report on specifics over the coming months.

Thanks, Mike. If we can move to Slide 5 please, I will take you through the current state of the global aluminum market. The cash LME price averaged $1,900 and $18 per tonne in Q4 2020, which was up approximately 12% or $211 per tonne sequentially as we continue to see a strong recovery in the global economy and in particular, the manufacturing sector in that quarter. As industry conditions continue to improve, the LME price has averaged $2,020 per tonne so far in the first quarter of this year, sitting around a 2.5-year high of $2,150 per tonne today. In Q4, regional premiums averaged approximately $0.13 per pound in the U.S., which was flat sequentially, and $136 per tonne in Europe, an increase of 12% sequentially. Current spot prices are approximately $0.155 per pound in the U.S. Midwest and approximately $155 per tonne in Europe. In Q4 2020, global aluminum demand was up approximately 5% compared to Q4 2019. In the world, excluding China, we saw demand flat when compared to the prior year quarter. In China, we saw a demand growth of 9% compared to Q4 2019. Global production was up approximately 6% in Q4 compared to the same quarter in 2019. We saw approximately 10% production growth in China, while the rest of the world was flat. Looking at some of our key raw materials, the alumina price index averaged $282 per tonne in Q4, which was up 3% sequentially. Indiana Hub prices were slightly down or $0.22 per megawatt hour lower sequentially. Spot prices are approximately $300 per tonne for the alumina price index, and with the cold snap across much of the United States this week, power prices have already begun to come off their peaks from levels we hadn’t seen since that Polar Vortex of 2014. And with that, I will hand the call over to Craig.

Thanks, Pete. Let’s turn to Slide 6 and I will take you through the results for Q4. On a consolidated basis, global shipments were down 4% quarter-over-quarter, primarily due to the timing of European product deliveries. Realized prices increased substantially versus the prior quarter as a result of higher lag LME prices and delivery premiums, bringing net sales roughly flat with the prior quarter. Looking at operating results, adjusted EBITDA was $800,000 this quarter, and we had an adjusted net loss of $30.6 million or $0.32 a share. In Q4, the adjusting items were $13.6 million for the unrealized impacts of forward contracts, $5.5 million for our share of a litigation settlement, $2.4 million for the net realizable value of inventory, and $800,000 for the historical Sebree equipment failure. Our liquidity remains strong with $182 million of funds available via a mix of cash on hand and credit facilities. This represents an approximate $13 million improvement versus prior quarter liquidity levels. Okay, let’s go to Slide 7 and I can walk you through our quarter-to-quarter bridge of adjusted EBITDA. As we forecast on our last call, higher lag LME prices and delivery premiums drove the majority of the EBITDA increase versus Q3 levels. The Q4 realized LME of $1,730 per tonne was up $180 per tonne from the very low levels realized in Q3, while realized U.S. Midwest premiums of $285 per tonne were up $40 per tonne over the same period. Realized alumina was $290 per tonne or $15 per tonne greater than the prior quarter. Average domestic energy prices were essentially flat versus the prior quarter due to relatively mild early winter weather. However, the Nord Pool price, which we referenced was approximately 30% of our Icelandic power needs, was up about $6 per megawatt hour. We are largely hedged on our Nord Pool exposure at least through 2021. Looking ahead to Q1 specifically, the lagged LME of $1,930 per tonne is expected to be up about $200 per tonne versus Q4 realized prices. The Q1 realized U.S. Midwest premium is forecast to be $290 per tonne or up about $5 per tonne, and the European delivery premium is expected at $140 per tonne, or up $15 per tonne versus Q4. Realized alumina is expected to be $320 per tonne or up about $30 per tonne versus the prior quarter. Taken together, the LME, alumina, and delivery premium pricing moves are expected to increase Q1 EBITDA by about $30 million versus Q4 levels. On power cost, as Mike mentioned earlier, the extreme weather-driven spike in domestic energy prices is expected to cost an incremental $15 million in the quarter. In addition to this impact, normal seasonal power price impacts are expected to be in the range of $15 million to $20 million globally versus the prior quarter. Roughly half of the seasonal impact is driven by Nord Pool prices, which, as I mentioned earlier, we have largely hedged for 2021. In total, we expect global power costs to increase by approximately $30 million to $35 million versus Q4 levels. This range will be the quarter-over-quarter impact on EBITDA. The impact on cash flow will be about $10 million less due to the hedged nature of our Nord Pool position. Finally, we began the process of rebuilding Mt. Holly in early 2021 as Mike mentioned. We expect the incremental restart spend will be about $5 million in Q2. In sum, we expect all of these items taken together will equate to an approximate EBITDA decrease of $5 million to $10 million from Q4 levels. Let’s turn to Slide 8 and we’ll take a quick look at cash flow. We started the quarter with $81 million in cash and ended December with $82 million. A few notable inflows for the quarter included a $5.5 million litigation settlement and about $1.5 million in insurance recoveries, of which the largest component related to our 2018 Sebree equipment failure. To date, we have recovered $21.3 million over and above the $7 million deductible, and we expect to close out the claim with our final collections in Q1. Now I would like to transition to our discussion of 2021. Consistent with our practice in previous years, we would like to provide you with the tools to forecast our business from an EBITDA and cash standpoint using the commodity prices of your choosing. Please keep in mind that any future commodity prices referenced on this page or in the following pages are planning assumptions and not Century forecasts for those commodities. As Mike mentioned earlier, we are using a higher LME assumption than in 2020, which in turn increases our power and alumina costs and accounts for the majority of the operating expense increase in 2021 versus the prior year. Let’s turn to Page 9. We expect our 2021 shipments to be about 875,000 tonnes, or about 65,000 tonnes more than in 2020, largely attributable to the incremental impact of the partially restarted capacity at Mt. Holly and a full year of Hawesville production at its current 80% capacity. LME pricing lags in the U.S. will be roughly 50% on a 1-month lag and 50% on a 3-month lag, while Iceland transactions will be priced primarily on a 3-month lag. Midwest premium pricing will be on an approximate 1-month lag, while European premium pricing will be on an approximate 3-month lag. Our weighted average value-added premium is expected to be about $115 per tonne worldwide. Please note that this is expressed as a value over the premium tonnes themselves, not overall tonnes produced. Domestic power is similar to previous years, with our Kentucky smelters using market-based Indiana Hub pricing contracts. As Mike mentioned earlier, Mt. Holly will transition to a largely fixed power cost contract in Q2 of this year for the next several years. In Europe, similar to 2020, approximately 70% of Iceland’s power will be LME based, while 30% will be market-based referencing the day-ahead Nord Pool market. The Nord Pool price has been particularly volatile in 2020 and early 2021. While the reference to this price covers only about 10% of our global production, in order to de-risk the volatility, we hedged the majority of our 2021 exposure at levels which are globally competitive. The impact of this price mitigation, as with all financial hedges, will be reported below EBITDA. In terms of alumina pricing for 2021, we will primarily use an LME referenced model with the majority of our purchases transacting via this pricing mechanism. Alumina costs will be incurred with an approximate 3-month lag on a book basis and about a 1-month lag on a cash basis. Carbon materials will continue to flow through our P&L on a 3-month lag and with an approximate 1-month lag on a cash basis. The bottom section of Page 9 shows our net plant cash cost for Q2 through Q4 of this year, excluding interest, CapEx, and corporate SG&A. These costs are net of all premiums and hence, are presented on a basis that is directly comparable to the LME, meaning you can take an LME assumption, deduct these numbers, and be left with a plant gross cash profit. Please note that we have provided a bridge from our gross to net cash costs as well as the commodity assumptions we use to calculate these costs in the appendix of today’s presentation. 2021 net cash cost on a weighted global basis is up about $150 per tonne versus prior year levels, driven primarily by commodity price assumptions. Over half of the increase is driven by the higher LME price versus prior year and its effect on inputs purchased primarily on an LME linked basis, notably alumina and 70% of Icelandic power. The remainder of this increase is driven by non-LME linked portions of power, notably U.S. Indy Hub and Nord Pool, which are assumed at roughly their forward values, which are somewhat elevated due to prop prices. Recall that the Nord Pool portion of the cost increase is substantially hedged so, on a cash basis, there will be limited impact from higher prices. In 2021, we will run the company with no increase in controllable operating costs versus the prior year on a volume adjusted basis. Turning to Page 10, I’ll cover some of our other cost expectations for 2021. SG&A will be about $45 million on a book basis, while only $35 million on a cash basis. Interest costs will be $37 million on a book basis and $34 million on a cash basis. The pay-down of our Hawesville term loan will be $20 million over the course of the year. The loan will be fully repaid by the end of 2021. Our non-restart related CapEx is expected in the range of $20 million to $25 million in total, with about $20 million for maintenance spend and up to $5 million for investment spending. The Mt. Holly restart will be a multiyear project that will ultimately result in an expanded operation capable of producing over 170,000 tonnes per year. The 2021 phase of the project will be a capital expenditure of about $50 million and will result in total year production of 140,000 tonnes or 21% greater output than the prior year. Depreciation is forecast to be in the $80 million to $90 million range. From an income tax perspective, we expect both our book and cash impacts for U.S. income taxes to be less than $1 million, while Iceland will be about 20% of 2021 income on a book basis and about $4 million on a cash basis. As a reminder, Iceland taxes are settled one year in arrears. Finally, we expect our cash flow breakeven cost to be $1,775 per tonne. This is on a direct LME comparative basis. In comparison to our discussion in February of last year, the cash flow breakeven is up $100 per tonne. However, the LME price underpinning 2021’s assumption is $250 per tonne higher than that of 2020. As I detailed earlier, the higher LME assumption elevates LME linked costs, such as alumina and portions of Icelandic power. As we think about 2021 outlook in total, it’s important to note that the quarterly pacing of adjusted EBITDA is back-end weighted, driven primarily by lagged LME prices, increased extreme weather-related energy costs in Q1, and incremental Mt. Holly production coming online throughout the first half. A good way to look at the pacing is to take the total year outlook, calculate it on your own commodity assumptions using the sensitivities provided in the appendix, and to assume that the back three quarters are relatively similar after deducting the first quarter outlook, which we provided some insight on earlier. This concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for your time and attention. I would like to turn the call back over to David to begin the question-and-answer session.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I will try and keep them quick here. Just on the three buckets that you called out in the first quarter bridge, the $15 million spike in power cost that’s coming on. The other $15 million to $20 million global increase in power costs, and then there was kind of $5 million on the Mt. Holly start-up costs. I think those are the three. I haven’t gone through the bridge math yet for the rest of the year and the cash cost guidance or the numbers in the presentation, but within those numbers, what’s the assumption for how those reverse or do those reverse and how much of those reverse moving forward?

Yes. Sure, David. So the first – I’ll take your three buckets. The $15 million is already reversed. We are really convinced it’s a one-time thing. If you look at the Indy Hub prices, frankly those aren’t public. But if you even look at Indy Hub, it’s come straight down. The predictions are, if you look at the forecast, it’s going to be back in sort of the 50s by the weekend and then back in the 30s next week. It was terrible, but it was really a 1-week thing, really more like 8 or 9 days. So the answer on the first bucket is, it all goes away. The second bucket is, again, there’s no – all that is, is an increase from Q4 to Q1, that second bucket that Craig talked about. It’s just the fact that power prices were frankly good in Q4, both Indy Hub and Nord Pool. We expect them to be normal Q1. Our expectation is to come Q2, and those prices generally ease back down in a normal year. That expectation is embedded in the plant cash costs that Craig took you through. Yes, and Mt. Holly is just a burst of expense. Most of it is capital, as Pete said. It’s a burst of expense most of the items you don’t capitalize under GAAP tend to be at the beginning of these projects and flow through as expense. The only other comment, going back, I apologize, to that second bucket, is I make all those same comments about both the Indy Hub and Nord Pool. But as Craig said, on Nord Pool specifically, from a reported earnings perspective, EBITDA and all the rest, the variance in Nord Pool impacts our earnings, but it doesn’t impact our cash flow because we’ve hedged that Nord Pool. We don’t like the volatility, and we’ve taken that risk out. So while you’ll see it, and Craig will call it out for you every quarter in the EBITDA or the operating profit from a GAAP standpoint, there’s no cash impact.

Okay. That’s helpful. Thanks. And then – so just the Mt. Holly piece, does that go after the first quarter? The $5 million goes to zero after Q1?

Yes.

Okay. And then just on the cadence of the Mt. Holly ramp, when does that ramp? So what's the cadence at Mt. Holly?

You’re going to see the material tons come in over the back half of the year, David.

Thank you. Thanks for taking my question. Is there any opportunity for you to pass through some of this high power cost to customers as a power surcharge or is it just too early to think about that route? I’m asking because you mentioned demand is very strong here in the U.S.?

That’s a great question. I mean in terms of the primary piece of it, that’s just not how the business works. Most of our contracts are long-term contracts, 1-year contracts, meaning we don’t do – the majority of the business we do, the prices would have been set during the commercial season. So longwinded answer to your question, we will see some benefit on that demand through spot premiums, but that’s a small portion of our business.

Got it. And then for Europe, the increase in Nord Pool power prices, any thoughts as to why the prices have been higher this year or something has changed in that market?

No, it’s seasonal. I mean there’s been cold weather, too. Nord Pool trades on various factors, including emission allowances required in the EU and the fair market value of those. So we just said, we can take the opportunity to create a first to second quartile power price. Our references are the other hydro-based smelters, Norway and Canada. And we created a power price that’s competitive, and we took that risk off.

Thank you. I was studying the website of your customer Hammerer Industries for green aluminum, and they make a wide variety of products. They seem to be making every aluminum category except beverage cans and foil packaging. Can we conclude from the Hammerer Industries example that the green premium applies to all end markets? Can you sell more than 150,000 tons of the green premium?

Yes, that’s a great question. Yes, there is a market for green given consumers and whatnot. We’ve got plenty of firepower left. That 150,000 is over 5 years. It’s only 10% or less of Grundartangi’s annual production. We’re really excited and we can’t talk about it now, but we’re talking to other customers. This is a great lead customer for us. We thank you as always for your time and good questions and interest and look forward to talking with you in a couple of months. Everybody, take care.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.