Century Aluminum Co (CENX) Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

good afternoon thank you for attending today's century aluminum company second quarter 2025 earnings call my name is Makaya and i'll be your moderator for today's call all lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for your questions and answers at the end at this time i'd like to pass the call over to our host ryan crawford ryan you may now begin today's call thank you operator good afternoon everyone and welcome to the conference call i'm joined here today by jesse gary century's president and chief executive officer and peter trypkovsky executive vice president and chief financial officer 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 one, please take a moment to review the cautionary statements with respect to forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures in today's discussion. And with that, I'll hand the call to Jesse.

Thanks, Ryan, and thanks to everyone for joining. We find ourselves today in an excellent market environment for Century, So I'll start by reviewing our second quarter performance and the strong macro conditions we've had so far in 2025. I'll then walk through our operational performance for the quarter and an update on some of our strategic initiatives, including our very exciting announcement regarding the restart of 50,000 metric tons of additional production at Mount Holly. People then take you through the details of the Q2 results and our third quarter outlook before we turn it over for questions. Let me begin with safety, which is core to everything we do here at Century. Our safety performance has shown improvement across our assets in the first half of the year. This is rewarding to see as we continue to invest substantial time and effort towards improving the safety culture at each of our locations. We've been specifically focused over the first half on the launch of our new safety program. Mount Holly will be the pilot site for this new initiative that we've been working on with DuPont safety systems, and we are really excited to get it off the ground as we head into the second half of the year. Turning to financial results, Century generated $74 million of adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter. Rising Midwest premiums offset lower realized LME and European premiums, as well as higher than expected market energy prices in the second quarter. Realized LME prices averaged $2,540 in Q2, while realized Midwest and European premiums averaged $850 and $220 in the quarter. Midwest Premium saw significant positive improvement during the quarter as we began to see the benefits from President Trump's Section 232 tariffs impact our results. As we have discussed, in February, President Trump restored the effectiveness of the Section 232 program by revoking all country and product exemptions and raising the tariff rate for aluminum from 10% to 25%. These became effective on March 12th and due to our contractual lags first rolled through our results in Q2. In June, President Trump took additional action to raise the Section 232 tariff to 50% in order to support the domestic industry and incentivize domestic production to ensure our national security. Following this announcement, spot Midwest premium today sitting at close to sixteen hundred dollars per ton or 72 cents per pound just please remember while these tariffs became effective in q2 they will only partially affect our results in q3 and then be fully reflected in our results in q4 pete will give you more details here the best part of this news is that the section 232 program is working as we have seen strong domestic demand for all of our products and our customers are increasing orders and as the largest producer of primary aluminum in the United States, Century is doing its part to build and secure the aluminum production that is so essential to U.S. national security needs. More on that at the end of my remarks. In July, we were also very pleased to complete the refinancing of our outstanding 7.5% senior secured notes in an Icelandic cast-out loan facility with the issuance of our new $400 million tranche of 6 and 7 eighths notes. Pete will walk you through the details here, but we are really pleased to simplify our debt structure, lower our interest costs, and push out the maturities with this transaction. Turning to slide four, power prices fell quarter over quarter, but unusually warm summer temperatures led to slightly higher than expected energy costs for century in Q2. These temperatures persisted into July, but we have now returned to more normalized levels. With natural gas prices also falling to $3 per mm BTU, we expect power prices to continue to move lower as we enter into the fall's shoulder season. Turning to page five, as you can see in the top left graph, we continue to expect constraints on new global supply to drive a global market deficit in 2025. Global aluminum supply remains challenged with China very near its 45 million ton production cap and limited announced new global projects. We believe demand growth will continue to outpace supply in 2025 and for years to come. global inventories remain near post-financial crisis flows in q2 at 47 days we have seen u.s demand for domestically produced builds continue to grow this year following the effectiveness of the revised section 232 tariffs on aluminum in march centuries domestic bill of shipments are up eight percent year over year in the first half as downstream customers look to shift supply chains back to the u.s following the expansion of the section 232 program to cover extrusions As we begin to enter into the 2026 billet season, the strong domestic demand growth should be supportive of higher value-added aluminum premiums in 2026. Just as a reminder, our value-added products in the U.S. are sold on an annual basis, so we would expect to see those increased billet prices flow through the results beginning in the first quarter of next year. Turning to Illumina, global supplies remain stable, with market pricing remaining at normalized levels in Q2. SPOT API processes are approximately $375 today. The Atlantic region, where our Jamalco operations are located, has become increasingly short Illumina, resulting in an expanding Atlantic premium for Illumina of about $30 today. This is a good example of how Jamalco, like Century Smelters, benefits from its strategic geographic locations close to its customers in short markets. The bauxite market also continued to experience turbulence, especially in Guinea, where operating licenses for several key producers have been suspended and, in some cases, revoked. These disruptions have lent continued support to seaborne bauxite prices and, in turn, the Illumina price. Please remember that Jamalco does not have exposure to seaborne bauxite prices as the plant is totally self-sufficient through its long-term mining licenses, another key strategic differentiator for the plant. Turning to page 6, you can see that spot Coke, HFO, and caustic soda prices remain near their year-to-date average prices. Okay, on to operations. Our assets continue to deliver strong operating results in Q2. Starting with Seabree, the plant had another excellent quarter, producing strong operating results despite the very hot summer weather. The plant also completed its planned major maintenance program in the carbon plant on schedule and without any impact on production levels. The team at Seabury continues to deliver quarter after quarter. In Iceland, Grunertongi continued to ramp its bill of cast house production as it optimizes performance during its first full year of operations. Grunertongi did see a slight production volume headwind of about 3,000 metric tons in the quarter as it experienced a failure in one of its electrical transformers. While the plant was able to continue full operations with redundant equipment, it will run on slightly lower amperage until a replacement is on site. Jamalco produced and targeted production levels in Q2 and remains focused on executing its major capital improvement program to return the plant to its nameplate capacity of close to 1.4 million tons. The new steam power generation turbine that we discussed in our last call is now on site, and the installation and integration process is underway at the plant. We continue to believe the turbine will be operational in the first quarter of 2026, which will enable Jamalco to be fully self-sufficient in its power generation and lower its cost cost structure by reducing costly third-party power purchases. At Haasville, the strategic review process has gone well, and we are now negotiating final terms. We expect to conclude the strategic review process by the end of Q3. Just before I turn the call over to Pete, I'd like to thank President Trump again for the significant actions that he and his administration have taken to restore American manufacturing and stand up for American workers. The Section 232 Terrace have truly enabled a new future for the U.S. aluminum industry. And we believe a key part of that future will be our new smelter project. Once built, the new smelter will be amongst the most modern and efficient smelters in the world. It will represent the first new smelter built in the U.S. in 50 years and will double the size of the existing U.S. industry, creating over 1,000 full-time direct jobs and over 5,500 construction jobs. Combined with a second new smelter project announced since President Trump took office, President Trump's policies have enabled a future where we could see U.S. production triple by the end of the decade. This is a monumental change from the last 25 years where failed trading policies led to the destruction of American manufacturing and American jobs. And to further Century's commitment to U.S. aluminum production, we are very pleased to announce today that we've made the decision to restart the last 50,000 metric tons of capacity at Mount Holly and return the plant to full production. This project will increase Mount Holly's production to over 220,000 metric tons per year at nearly 100 full-time U.S. manufacturing jobs at the plant and represent an investment of approximately $50 million. We expect first hot metal from the incremental pots in the first quarter of 2026 and should be at our full 220,000 ton run rate by the end of Q2. We are confident that the combined efforts of the Mt. Holly team and our valued partners at Santee Cooper will successfully complete this critical project and ensure the long-term viability of this excellent plan. Pete will walk you through more details on the project spend in a bit. Century's Mt. Holly expansion will increase total U.S. primary aluminum production by nearly 10 percent, replacing imported metal. This project, along with our new smelter project, would not have been possible without President Trump's Section 232 program. We look forward to working with the Trump administration to continue to grow U.S. aluminum production to meet our national security needs. Pete will now take you through our financial performance in more detail.

Thank you, Jesse. Let's turn to slide seven and review our Q2 performance. On a consolidated basis, second quarter shipments increased to approximately 176,000 tons, an increase of 4% sequentially. reflecting strong operational performance across all of our smelters. Net sales for the quarter were $628 million, a $6 million decrease primarily due to lower third-party alumina sales, partially offset by higher shipments, and all-in metal pricing. For the quarter, we reported a net loss of $5 million, or $0.05 per share. our adjusted net income was $30 million, or $0.30 per share, excluding exceptional items. Adjusted EBITDA was $74 million for the quarter. As we've discussed, the Section 232 aluminum tariffs were increased to 25% with no country exemptions on March 12. While the Midwest premium began to increase from 25% tariffs in Q2 as a result, lower realized LME and European duty paid premium partially offset this benefit. Moving on, we continue to make progress on improving our balance sheet during the quarter. Liquidity increased to $363 million, up $24 million quarter-over-quarter, and our cash balance stood at $41 million. Net debt was relatively flat from the prior quarter at $446 million. As you saw us announced in July, we successfully completed the refinancing of our $250 million senior secured 7.5% notes with new $400 million senior secured notes at $6 and $7.8, extending the maturity to 2032 and simplifying our debt structure. We are pleased to substantially lower our borrowing costs, which speaks to the improvements in our business over the past several years. The use of proceeds will be to pay down our existing credit facilities across the US and Iceland, including our Icelandic cash house facility, which will lower overall interest expense for the company. We will maintain our net debt level from before the transaction after we pay down the outstanding credit facility amounts. Our priority to lower our debt and achieve the $300 million net debt target remains unchanged. Overall, our Q2 results continue to reflect operational and capital discipline. Now let's turn to page 8 and I'll provide a breakdown of adjusted EBITDA results from Q1 to Q2. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter decreased $4 million to $74 million. Realized LME of $2,542 per ton was down $11 versus prior quarter, while realized U.S. Midwest premium of $850 per ton was up $247, reflecting the increase in Section 232 aluminum tariffs from 10% to 25% in March, and our realized European duty paid premium decreased $115 per ton to $220. Higher Midwest premium is slightly offset by lower LME and European premium, which when combined together contributed an incremental $11 million compared to the prior quarter. Peter Haslund, M.D.: Energy costs were lower, driven by improved market energy prices versus the prior quarter. Peter Haslund, M.D.: However, in June, we saw unusually warmer temperatures to start the summer and market energy prices ended the quarter higher than anticipated, muting the previously anticipated benefit from prior quarter. Despite this jump in June, energy prices drove a $2 million improvement quarter over quarter. Alumina and our other key raw materials were an $8 million headwind in the quarter, in line with our previously provided outlook. Currency headwinds impacted the quarter by $4 million from our foreign operations, primarily from wages denominated in local currencies. The weaker dollar drove the Icelandic corona to appreciate by more than 8% to the U.S. currency quarter over quarter. We expect this to continue into the third quarter, and I will discuss the impact of that on our Q3 projection in just a moment. As Jesse discussed, we completed the maintenance project in Seabreeze Carbon Plant and realized the OPEX headwind of $10 million in the quarter as anticipated. We ended the quarter strong from an operational perspective and saw a 5 million benefit from volume and mix. Now let's turn to slide 9 and look at cash flow. We began the quarter with 45 million in cash. We funded 18 million of CapEx in the quarter that went primarily towards our ongoing investments at our Jamalco business. We also paid 14 million in normal interest in the quarter. We will see a reduction in future interest payments as the recent refinancing decreased our coupon to six and seven eighths. We continue to accrue 45x tax credits. As of June 30th, we have a receivable of $195 million related to the full year 2023, 2024, and first half 2025 U.S. production. We continue to expect to receive the FY23 credit in cash imminently and the remaining FY24 amount over the next six to nine months. Working capital was a build this quarter, but mostly a neutral impact for the first six months of the year. We ended Q2 with $41 million in cash and strong liquidity in place to support our strategy going forward, including organic growth projects such as Mount Holly restart. As Jesse discussed, we are really excited to announce the restart of our currently idle capacity at Mount Holly, bringing back 50,000 tons of production to reach production volume of over 220,000 tons per year. The project spend will be approximately $50 million to restart those last 90 pots which will almost be a straight line spend through the completion of the project by the end of q2 2026. to be clear that's about 4 million per month over the next year we will also have some working capital to procure additional raw materials to support the energizing of these pots the additional working capital is approximately 15 million dollars and will mostly come in 2026. We expect to fund the project through our current balance sheet. The financial benefits of the project are incremental volume at favorable margin and fixed cost absorption. At spot pricing levels, we expect the project to nearly pay back our investment by the end of 2026. Now let's look ahead to the next 90 days. At current realized prices, we expect Q3 adjusted EBITDA in the range of $115 to $125 million. For Q3, the lagged LME of $2,495 per ton is expected to be down about $45 versus Q2 realized prices. The Q3 lagged U.S. Midwest premium of $1,450 per ton is up $600 versus Q2 and partially reflects the Section 232 aluminum tariff increase from 25% to 50%. The European delivery premium is expected to be $200 per ton in Q3 or down about $20 per ton. Taken together, the lagged LME and delivery premium changes are expected to have a 50 million increase to Q3 adjusted EBITDA when compared with Q2 levels. U.S. energy prices remain slightly elevated in Q3 thus far, but we have started to see historical levels return in August. Lower oil prices will also benefit the price of heavy fuel oil, a key input at our Jamalco refinery. At these prices, total energy headwinds should reduce suggested EBITDA by $5 million. Coke, pitch, and caustic prices have all remained steady in recent months and are expected to be flat in Q3. We continue to expect further headwinds from currency into the third quarter at our foreign operations on the U.S. dollar impact on wages and other local currency denominated expenses. We are estimating a $5 million impact in Q3. As previously discussed, we completed the carbon plant maintenance project at our Seabree Kentucky facility in Q2 as anticipated and expect our Q3 OpEx to improve by five to ten million dollars. Volume and mix are expected to decrease by zero to five million from Q2 levels. We also include the estimated hedge and tax impacts to help model our business. We expect a five to ten million headwind from real life hedge settlements and a zero to five tax expense, both flowing through the Q3 P&L and impacting adjusted net income and adjusted earnings per share. As a reminder, our appendix details the full hedge book and continues to show the vast majority of LME and regional premium volumes are exposed to market prices. Finally, we are very excited to deliver results in such a favorable market environment. Because of our contractual lags on our revenues, the strong price environment we see today will continue to drive our earnings growth beyond Q3 and into Q4. With spot LME prices exceeding $2,600 per ton and Midwest premium at $0.72 per pound or approximately $1,600 per ton, we are extremely well positioned to capitalize on this momentum and achieve additional earnings growth in q4 we thank you for your time and look forward to taking your questions we will now begin the question and answer session if you would like to ask a question please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad if for any reason you would

like to remove that question please press star followed by two again to ask the question press star one. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your headset before asking a question. We'll pause it briefly while your questions are registered. The first question is from the line of Cat Jensic with BMO. You may proceed. Hi, thank you for taking my questions.

Starting on Mount Holly, can you talk a bit about your sourcing plans for raw materials especially alumina sure hi katya and thanks for the question um yeah we'll be able to service the additional aluminum alumina needs for mount poly within our already uh set alumina book for 2026 so we don't see any changes necessary to our current alumina sourcing planning in order to serve the additional aluminum needs for the smelter you can continue to use the alumina information that we include in our slide deck on page 18 to model our alumina exposure for 2026.

And then maybe just on the 45X credit, I'm assuming that that incremental 50,000 tons is going to get that benefit as well. Is that fair? And how much could it be if that's true?

Yeah, that's correct. So you can just take those incremental tons and compare that to our existing tons and our existing credit which we've said should average in the 70 to 80 million range and you should get sort of a pro forma amount of additional 45x credit for those additional 50 000 tons yeah katya i would just add it's p obviously 45x is just the u.s production so just look at the u.s production volume for that I know you mentioned that the manufacturing credit receivable is still at $195 million.

I thought some of that around $60 million was expected this quarter. Can you talk about maybe are there any delays or when could we see some of that credit actually in cash?

Yeah, thanks, Katia. It's Pete again. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we currently continue to expect the FY23 amounts imminently and expect our FY24 amount over the next six to nine months. So just to elaborate, we do have some visibility into the tax return and we have a certain level of engagement with the IRS and we can see that our return is in the final stages of processing and that's for the FY23 amount.

We did just file our FY24 return and and that's why i said we expect that one over the next six to nine months and that should be a good time frame going forward um as we process 45x credits in the future okay thank you i'll hop back into the queue thanks gotcha the next question is from the lawn of nick gals with b riley you may proceed thanks operator uh good afternoon everyone um guys nice to see the mount holly announcement here uh i read in the release that some final details are subject to the definitive agreement with Santee Cooper and then also some economic incentives provided by Berkeley County and South Carolina. Were you able to give us a sense for those incentives or how much they ultimately played into the decision?

Those are not public, Nick, so we can't just talk about those at this time. It is obviously helpful and important for the restart and the state of South Carolina has been a very good partner in making sure that those important manufacturing jobs stay in the state so we're very thankful to the work they've done but both the power contract and those incentives while we have agreements in principle we'll just need to get nailed down over the coming weeks don't anticipate any problems there and again I would just like to thank our partners at Santee who we've been partners with for nearly 50 years now at that point got it um maybe next one just was hoping uh to get an update on hawesville uh you know how should we think about your appetite to continue to pursue a deal with a developer versus a potential restart yeah um that process as i said uh continues um but we are now in final negotiation so we do make or we are making good progress um and we would expect that we'll finish sort of the entire strategic review process which includes both those negotiations and also our analysis on restart uh over the next quarter and be able to really um make a decision on go forward for oswell um at that time but the process continues to be good and constructive nick we continue to have positive engagement and those negotiations are moving forward well.

Good to hear. Just one more, if I could. You know, can you remind us just how should we think about milestones with regard to the new smelter? I mean, would site selection be kind of the first announcement? You know, is that kind of a – could we see something there before year end, or should we look to kind of 2026 for that to progress further?

Yeah, Nick, the first milestone or the next milestone that you'll see will likely be that site selection, which is tied to coming to an agreement on the energy. So you'll see those two announcements likely at the same time. And while I won't sort of handicap the timeframe there, we do continue to work actively on that. As you might imagine, that is one of the more complex parts of developing the project, given the large amount of energy that's needed and given the significant state incentive packages that will also play a role in siting that project. But so I'll just say we continue to work hard on it, making positive progress, and we'll come back to you as soon as we can. But that's the next announcement. the next stage would be to do the next phase of engineering work which will be site specific which will give you another six to nine months of engineering time so again like we said on the last call you're probably looking in the second half of 2026 before you see any major spending on on the project on the capital side got it uh very helpful well guys appreciate the update and continue best of luck thank you Nick thanks Nick there are no questions registered at this time so as a reminder it is star one to ask the question the next question is from Alana of

Kadeja Jensik with BMO you may begin hi thank you for taking my follow-up maybe just quickly you mentioned that in 2Q we're not going to fully see the benefit from the Midwest premium as it stands currently, and the LME aluminum price is also at higher levels than what's baked into your 2Q guide. So, if we assume your sensitivities and the current spot prices, is it fair to assume that your EBITDA generation could be in the range of $140 to $150 million?

Thanks, Katya. Great question. Let me walk you through it. I think you hit it right on the head. but as i mentioned in my remarks because of the contractual lags we expect that earnings growth beyond q3 and into q4 at these spot levels so today you know spot lme is is sitting just above 2600 a ton and if you compare that to our our q3 realized expectation of about 2500 that's about a hundred dollar per ton increase so if we do realize that lme for a full quarter as you probably already did in the sensitivities that's about you know it's 46 million for a year for 100 per ton change or about 11 12 million per quarter that's just for lme we also see spot midwest premium of 72 cents today that's nearly 1600 per ton and again if you compare that against our q3 realized expectation today of $1,450 per ton, that's approximately $150 per ton better. So again, looking at the sensitivities, if you took that and compared it against the realized price for a full quarter spot against realized, you should expect to see another $15 million uplift on Midwest premium into Q4 from the Q3 levels. So together, about $12 million of LME and another $15 million in the Midwest premium. So I think that takes you right about into the range that you were quoting.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

The next question is from the line of Nick Gowes with the Be Reilly Securities. You may begin.

With all that's going on in the U.S., I didn't want to leave your Iceland footprint out here. Can you just speak to progress at Grodotongi on the CAST house? I mean, how have operations been going there? And then can you also speak to just kind of value-added premiums in Europe. You know, what are your expectations today? Anything would be helpful there. Thanks.

Sure, Nick. Yeah, the Cast House project continues to go well. It's a great brand new Cast House. A lot of people at the U.S. assets are jealous with that brand new shining Cast House that we have in Iceland. And as you might imagine, as you start up a new cast house there is a ramp up period where you're both ramping up production and also sort of dialing in your processes and getting a lot of new people up to speed on what really is a skilled workforce to cast billets so that process continues to go well they continue to make progress and we're really excited to kind of go into the 2026 uh uh billet season um really running um on all cylinders so so lots of progress there good things to come uh and the mark and the market has continued to uh accept that new billet uh with open arms people people are liking what they're seeing and i think the quality's been really good so all good on on that front more generally on the market side, you know, Europe has been weaker than what we've seen in the US, of course, and that's been persisting for a number of quarters now. We have more recently seen billet premiums firming a bit. As the European duty paid premium has gone down on commodity-grade aluminum, the billet premiums have actually expanded a bit to fill in the gap. So that's been a positive development there. Obviously good for us with the additional volumes we'll be bringing in next year. So all is looking pretty good there. It is summer in Europe today so we'll wait for summer to end and come out ready to go into the fall season and into 2026.

Great to hear. Maybe just one more on Jamalco. Can you remind us of what What should we be penciling in for CapEx there in 2026 as it relates to incremental production?

Yeah, Nick, it's Pete again. We do break out sustaining and investment capital in our appendix for the whole business, but I can just kind of give you a sense of what sustaining and investment CapEx we expect for Jamalco in 26. it's basically for our 55 percent interest about 10 to 15 million in next year for sustaining as well as the investment so as jesse said earlier and we are continuing our investment program at jamalco mainly right now it's the steam turbine generator but we have identified some other projects to get the business back to its main plate capacity and get it back to the second quartile of the cost curve. But for right now, and we'll update this again on the Q4 call, like we always do, but I would expect to have that repeat in 26. So again, 10 to 15 million in sustaining as well as 10 to 15 million in investment at Jamalville next year.

Very clear. Thanks again, guys.

Thanks, Nick.

Thank you. There are currently no questions registered. So at this time, I'll pass the call back over to our management team for any further remarks. okay thank you and thanks to everyone for joining and we'll talk to you guys again on the q3 call thanks a lot thank you all that concludes today's conference call we appreciate your participation we hope everyone have a wonderful day and at this time you may now disconnect your line