Earnings Call Transcript - RYAM Q1 2025

Operator, Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the RYAM First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me on today's call are De Lyle Bloomquist, our President and CEO, and Marcus Moeltner, our CFO and Senior Vice President of Finance. Last evening, we released our earnings report and accompanying presentation materials, which are available on our website at ryam.com. These materials provide key insights into our financial performance and strategic direction. During today's discussion, we may make forward-looking statements made subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks are outlined in our earnings release, SEC filings and on Slide 2 of the presentation. We will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures to offer an additional perspective on our operational performance. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures can be found in our presentation on Slides 22 through 27. We appreciate your participation today and ongoing interest in RYAM. I'd now like to turn the call over to De Lyle, to discuss our performance and strategic initiatives.

De Lyle Bloomquist, President and CEO

Well, thank you Mickey, and good morning. I'll start with a review of our first quarter financial and operational results, before handing it over to Marcus to provide further detail on our business segments, capital structure, and liquidity. After Marcus’ comments, I'll return to discuss our strategic initiatives and outlook for the remainder of 2025. Let's now turn to Page 4. Let me begin with a direct and honest assessment. Our 2025 first quarter performance fell well short of our expectations. Compared to the first quarter of 2024, we reported an 8% decline in revenue and a 67% reduction in adjusted EBITDA. These results are disappointing, and as CEO, I take full responsibility for where we are. There were several distinct and compounding challenges this quarter. First, the lower revenue was driven primarily by our cellulose specialties customers, accelerating purchases into the previous quarter due to concerns about supply chain disruptions from potential tariffs and a U.S. East Coast port strike. Second, we experienced operational setbacks from equipment failures and poor weather at our cellulose plants. In the case of our two sulfide operations, the equipment failures were primarily due to the extended 16-plus month period since the previous scheduled maintenance outages. At Jesup, the unusual cold weather in January was a primary driver of lower productivity. Third, energy prices were higher than expected in the Southeast United States due to the noted cold weather in January. Fourth, we increased the remediation reserves for a couple of our legacy sites due to recent changes in scope resulting from the regulatory process. Fifth, we experienced an unfavorable $5 million change in foreign exchange. And finally, our paperboard and high yield pulp businesses continue to be challenged by unfavorable market dynamics. Our most significant near-term issue is tariffs, particularly the 125% tariffs imposed by China on U.S. sourced cellulose commodities. These tariffs affect approximately $85 million of our annual revenue. In response, we are actively mitigating this risk through three key actions: customer advocacy, market diversification, and operational adjustments. These efforts are already underway. I will discuss these risks in more detail later in the presentation. Despite these challenges, our financial foundation remains solid, supported by liquidity of $272 million, net secured debt reduction of $624 million, and a net secured leverage ratio of 2.9 times covenant EBITDA. However, given these uncertain market conditions, we've lowered our full-year guidance for adjusted EBITDA to a range of $175 million to $185 million and adjusted free cash flow between $5 million and $15 million. With that, I'll hand the call over to Marcus to discuss the financial details.

Marcus Moeltner, CFO and Senior Vice President of Finance

Thank you, De Lyle. Starting with our Cellulose Specialty segment on Slide 5, quarterly net sales decreased by $5 million to $201 million. A 2% sales price increase was more than offset by a 2% decline in sales volume and an unfavorable sales mix. The decline in sales volumes resulted from accelerated customer purchases in the prior quarter and stronger prior year volumes ahead of the Temiscaming indefinite suspension. Operating income for the segment was $31 million, down $7 million compared to the same quarter last year, due to higher input costs, mainly higher energy and operational challenges. EBITDA margins reduced from 27% to 23% as a result of the above impacts. Turning to Slide 6, in cellulose commodities, net sales declined $19 million to $75 million. This decrease reflects the company's shift away from negative margin commodity grades, partially offset by a 2% increase in pricing. Operating results improved by $6 million year-over-year to a loss of $13 million, primarily due to reduced commodity losses, partially offset by higher input costs and operational challenges. Slide 7 covers our new Biomaterials segment. Net sales remained steady at $7 million, with growth from bioethanol sales partially offset by lower feedstock availability from the Tartas cellulose plant. Operating income was flat at $2 million, as increased shared and ancillary costs to support the segment's new operating structure were offset by lower maintenance expenses. EBITDA margins for the segment held steady at 29%. Our paperboard results are set out on Slide 8. Net sales were down $4 million to $49 million, reflecting a 4% decrease in sales prices and a 3% decline in sales volumes due to increased European imports and a weaker product mix. The segment recorded an operating loss of $2 million, declining $10 million due to volume and pricing impacts, higher purchase pulp costs and maintenance expenses, as well as the impact of Temiscaming custodial site costs. Slide 9 summarizes our high yield pulp segment, where net sales declined $3 million to $31 million. Sales prices and volumes decreased by 7% and 4% respectively as a result of continued market oversupply, notably in China and shipment timing challenges to customers in India. Operating losses increased to $7 million driven by lower market pricing, reduced volumes, and Temiscaming custodial site costs.

De Lyle Bloomquist, President and CEO

All right, thank you Marcus. Let's turn to Slide 12. As I mentioned earlier, our immediate focus is on tariff mitigation actions. We have organized these initiatives into three key areas: customer advocacy, market diversification, and operational adjustments. I'll expand further on these mitigation strategies on the following slide. Though we remain committed to our key strategic initiatives, progress for some of these initiatives will likely be paused this year. For example, debt reduction in 2025 will likely be minimal due to the cash flow uncertainty caused by the tariff situation. Also, in the Cellulose Commodities segment, we will likely increase the production of non-fluff commodities in the short-term to keep the plants operating at capacity while we work to mitigate the impact of the tariffs. Conversely, we plan to continue to pursue high return, but low risk strategic investments that will improve operational efficiencies. We also believe that the change in the macroeconomic climate does not affect the investment thesis of our biomaterials growth strategy given that the investments in commerce will be U.S. centric. So we will continue to execute our biomaterials strategy. The strategy's key projects will continue to advance, and we expect to make final investment decisions on several projects in the second half of this year. Moving to Slide 13, currently within our Cellulose Commodities segment, only our fluff pulp sales to China are directly subject to tariffs. In addition, we expect some indirect secondary impact from a few U.S. cellulose specialty customers that are also facing high tariffs into China. To address this challenge, we are actively diversifying our sales channels into non-tariff affected markets, taking immediate steps to gradually shift production toward other commodity grades, and engaging in ongoing dialogues with customers to mitigate disruptions. We remain closely attuned to the evolving trade landscape and will continue to proactively take steps to further protect our market position. Though our paperboard products are USMCA compliant, avoiding tariffs, we are proactively working to reduce our exposure to potential future tariffs. For example, we are taking advantage of the current buy Canada sentiment to increase our Canadian market share, and the Canadian government is positioned to impose retaliatory tariffs on U.S. paperboard products if needed. On Slide 14, we outline our updated financial guidance and cash flow drivers for 2025. As already noted, our adjusted EBITDA guidance is now in the range of $175 million to $185 million, which is roughly a $45 million reduction from the midpoint of our earlier guidance. The primary drivers of this lower EBITDA guidance include the following: we now assume a $20 million reduction in adjusted EBITDA from tariff related impacts specifically the estimated direct impact on cellulose commodities, and secondarily to our cellulose specialty customers. We also lowered the adjusted EBITDA guidance by $15 million to reflect our first quarter production problems, which we believe are largely behind us as the scheduled maintenance outages for all the HPC plants were completed in March and April. The new guidance also includes a $12 million non-cash environmental charge in corporate expenses. However, most of the actual cash spend for this charge will not occur before 2028. We are forecasting unfavorable foreign exchange adjustment of $5 million due to the weakened U.S. dollar versus both the Canadian dollar and euro, and we are forecasting input prices to remain largely in line with our prior guidance. Finally, some cellulose specialty orders were canceled or delayed in April after the initial tariffs were announced. Though we expect that most of these orders will be rebooked, this revenue and accompanying EBITDA will likely be recognized in the second half of the year. Consequently, the second quarter results will be lower than a straight linear extrapolation. Adjusted free cash flow guidance is expected to be in the range of $5 million to $15 million. Cash interest expense is projected to be approximately $93 million, which is $12 million higher than normal due to the timing of interest payments related to our recent debt refinancing. Maintenance capital expenditure remains at $85 million, primarily driven by the extended planned maintenance outages at our HPC facilities, which as noted are largely behind us. The pause of $10 million under environmental and other reflected non-cash environmental reserve charge discussed earlier. Working capital is expected to contribute an additional $5 million. Lastly, we have reduced our expected cash outflows related to the France deferred energy payments to $5 million due to timing. On Slide 15, we summarize the 2025 market outlook across each of our business segments in greater detail. In cellulose specialties, we anticipate a mid-single-digit percentage price increase versus 2024 driven by our ongoing value over volume strategy. We believe that ether's demand will improve, and other cellulose specialty sales volumes will remain robust. However, asset volumes face ongoing destocking pressures and as I've noted, we acknowledge that asset demand could present additional near term risk, as customers leverage the tariff-related pause in orders during April to accelerate the achievement of their destocking objective. Although this could intensify near term volume impacts, we believe that such actions would expedite the destocking process creating a healthier market balance sooner. As a result, we now anticipate cellulose specialty EBITDA to be in the range of $237 million to $245 million. In cellulose commodities, fluff demand remains generally strong. Although we anticipate earnings pressure due to the significant Chinese tariff. These impacts will be offset by diversifying our sales channels into non-tariff affected markets and shifting production to alternate commodity grades. Taking these factors into account, we project cellulose commodity EBITDA to be approximately a negative $5 million for the year. Our biomaterial business is anticipated to deliver modest, but positive EBITDA growth driven by contributions from our France bioethanol and powder lignosulfonate facilities and ongoing strategic investments. We expect biomaterials 2025 EBITDA to be in the range of $8 million to $10 million, and paperboard volumes are expected to modestly improve, benefiting from improved market access within North America. However, prices remain under pressure due to competitive market dynamics, including the startup of new capacity. As a result, we expect paperboard EBITDA to be approximately $25 million for 2025. Turning to high-yield pulp, persistent oversupply continues to create challenging market conditions. In response, we plan to idle one of our high-yield pulp production lines for 11 weeks starting in early June. We anticipate the segment's EBITDA to be approximately a negative $20 million this year. Corporate costs are expected to increase year-over-year, primarily driven by the non-cash environmental reserve charge and foreign exchange headwinds, partially offset by reduced costs following the completion of our ERP implementation. Overall, we now expect corporate expenses of $70 million for 2025. Lastly, on Slide 16, we are targeting a net secured leverage ratio of approximately 3.1 times covenant EBITDA for year-end 2025, which is well within our debt covenants and remains within striking distance of our long-term objective of less than 2.5 times. Despite the current market uncertainties, we are confident that we will achieve our longer-term EBITDA target of $325 million, because the growth and value drivers of our strategy remain intact. Our highly bespoke products in a supply constrained market allow us to execute our value over volume CS strategy. The investment in low risk, but high return cost reduction projects will increase profit margins and improve our long-term competitive advantage. Our exposure to the non-fluff commodities market will decrease as key cellulose specialties and uses grow, and we continue to strongly believe that the biomaterial strategy is independent of the current tariff risk and thus remains a valuable growth opportunity for RYAM. With that operator, please open the call to questions.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. First question from Matthew McKellar with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Matthew McKellar, Analyst

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First, I'd like to just ask about Soft pulp. Can you just talk a bit more about what conditions are like in that market right now, with China's retaliatory tariffs in place? What share of buyers in China would be absorbing the tariffs? Would you expect those buyers to continue to do so? And what kind of market diversification do you think is possible to achieve? And over what kind of timeline should we be thinking about there? Thanks.

De Lyle Bloomquist, President and CEO

Hi Matt, this is De Lyle. A great question about the fluff market, and I wish I had something more definitive to tell you. As you would probably understand, the conditions are very dynamic as we speak. But let me try to give you an idea of what's going on with respect to our Chinese customers. A couple of them have decided that they will continue to place orders for the near term. But they've also communicated that this will not be something we should count on for the long-term. I think at the end of the day, they're hoping that a resolution of the trade conflicts between the U.S. and China will be resolved in the next few months. And once that happens, then things can return to normal. But they have said that they can't afford to continue to pay the tariffs for the long-term. So given that messaging, we've started pivoting away from China, trying to pursue opportunities in other, call them non-tariff markets that would be principally India, Africa, the Middle East, and so forth. And we're having some success in finding demand for fluff in these other markets. That's I think indicative of the fact that the fluff markets are largely supply constrained right now. So we are finding opportunities to sell the fluff outside of China. But it is taking quite a bit of effort on the part of our sales teams and commercial teams to pursue such opportunities. In the medium term, if these tariffs continue, we will obviously look to move away from fluff to some of the other non-cellulose commodities, principally things like viscose and paper pulp. One of the things that came out of the Chinese tariffs, at least what we're understanding, is that the dissolving wood pulp is potentially exempt from the tariffs. That would include viscose. So we are having discussions and our viscose orders have resumed, and that will be a real opportunity for us going forward. Fortunately, that's a business where the operating capacity remains high and the pricing is relatively healthy. That is an option that we will consider. Lastly, paper pulp is an exceptionally large market; we are a small player in that market, and if needs be, that'll be a market that we'll use as a backstop if needed to move product into. So, long-winded answer. I'm sorry about that, Matt, but at the end of the day right now we're having some success moving the product and keeping it in fluff. Moving the product out of China and keeping it in fluff. We have opportunities to move it into viscose into China. Currently, the door seems to be open. Lastly, as a final resort, we'll look to get into paper pulp if we have to.

Matthew McKellar, Analyst

That's great. I appreciate all the color there. Moving on to CS, you mentioned lower volumes following the accelerated purchases in Q4, and also it sounds like there was maybe a bit of noise following Liberation Day. Could you just provide maybe a little bit more color around how volumes evolved maybe following Liberation Day, how they've continued to evolve to today? And then how would you have us think about how your volumes sort of evolved through the balance of the year, both kind of across the segments and maybe for acetate specifically?

De Lyle Bloomquist, President and CEO

Okay. All right. Starting at the beginning of the year, we did see that volumes of cellulose specialties principally to China were lower than expectations. In our conversations with our customers, we were informed that a lot of that was due to pre-ordered material going into '25, due to concerns about potential port strikes along the East Coast. I don't know if you remember, but that didn't get resolved until the middle of January, around President Trump's inauguration. They were also concerned generally about potential tariffs. As we got to Liberation Day on April 2 and the announcement of the tariffs, we saw orders going into China dry right up. Orders were canceled, deferred, and delayed. Really at the end of the day we didn't see much in terms of any new orders during that month. It wasn't until we got into May that we saw that orders that had been previously paused began to resume for our cellulose specialty customers in China. We believe that our cellulose specialty products have been largely exempted by the Chinese authorities. Still, there's been no official announcement on that, but orders have resumed for a number of our customers. That being said, some of our customers will likely take advantage of the pause in orders in April to accelerate their destocking. So we expect that our orders will be lower this year than what we had budgeted as well as in our initial guidance. However, we expect that coming into Q3 and Q4, we'll be back to normal based on our guidance. But that Q2 will be light given the pause in April. Things will start normalizing in May and June, and by July, things will be largely normal, which is what we've assumed in our guidance.

Matthew McKellar, Analyst

Thanks, that's very helpful commentary. Last question from me. Could you please just remind us what the puts and takes are around how your paperboard guidance for 2025 has evolved here? Also, what have you assumed around pricing for the segment as part of your guide, and any color around the mix impacts you saw in Q1 would be helpful? Thank you.

De Lyle Bloomquist, President and CEO

Okay. All right. With respect to paperboard, at the beginning of the year we noted that there was a risk of a $35 million tariff impact for imports of our paperboard business into the U.S. Obviously that didn't transpire because our products are USMCA compliant. Also, what I stated in the February call was that a lot of our mitigation actions on paperboard were actually going to be spread out across the full enterprise in terms of cost reduction, and actions taken to accelerate some projects to improve our material usage and other cost opportunities. The fact that this risk has now reversed and we're not expecting any tariffs on our paperboards has allowed us to implement our mitigation plans across the enterprise. There was some mitigation that was paperboard-specific that also reversed with the removal of the tariff concern. For example, foreign exchange has swung; we expected the Canadian dollar to continue to weaken, and it hit a point of $0.68 to the U.S. dollar but has since reversed back to $0.72, $0.73. That alone accounted for a $10 million swing for us. While we are still in the qualification process with additional Canadian customers, we have not yet included any of that type of activity in our guidance today. With respect to pricing, we expect continued decreases—down roughly 5% due to increased supply from new SAFI capacity coming online in June. We continue to expect that this will put pressure on pricing, and we have accounted for this in our guidance. However, long-term, we expect demand to eventually catch up to this new supply quickly, and support the long-term profitability of our business. As for mix, the primary change is essentially that many of our high-end customers were and are in the U.S. We lost share in the lottery business to some European competitors, which has caused a mix change, leading us to replace that share with lower-priced business to keep the plant running at capacity. This was the main impact on our mix. Thanks very much for all that detail. I will turn it back. Thanks.

Operator, Operator

Next question, Daniel Harriman with Sidoti & Company. Please proceed.

Daniel Harriman, Analyst

Hi guys, good morning and thank you so much for taking your questions. Just a couple of quick ones today. One for De Lyle and one for Marcus. De Lyle, I know you just went through a bunch of information on cellulose specialties and paperboard, but looking at the guide for cellulose specialties in '25 and kind of comparing that to the guide from the 4Q '24 call. I was kind of hoping you may be able to confirm that you're still able to sell that product into China without any tariff impacts. Currently, obviously the fluff is subject to tariffs, but I was curious about the cellulose specialties in general. And then, Marcus, you talked about liquidity.

De Lyle Bloomquist, President and CEO

Oh, yes, I'm sorry. Daniel, nothing has been officially announced with respect to the tariffs or the tariff impacts on our cellulose specialties products, but we have assumed in our guidance that cellulose specialty products will not be exposed to tariffs for the year. We base that on our conversations with our customers, which are almost day-to-day, and the fact that shipments that were previously paused have now resumed. I think that's the most confident indicator we have that cellulose specialty demand or orders will resume to normal. One key takeaway from this experience is that our products are absolutely needed, which has been confirmed in our conversations with our customers. Importantly, orders have resumed and we are hearing that, though not officially, our cellulose specialty products will be allowed to enter China without tariffs. However, I need to stress that this has not been confirmed.

Daniel Harriman, Analyst

All right, thank you so much. That's so helpful. And then, Marcus, quickly, I know you talked about it, but I just wanted to check in and see how you're feeling about the current liquidity. Because in this environment, you still seem to be in pretty good shape at 2.9 times, even though that's higher than where you were at the end of '24, with solid cash on the balance sheet. So any color you could provide would be helpful?

Marcus Moeltner, CFO and Senior Vice President of Finance

Yes. Good morning, Dan. Thanks for your question. No, I feel good about the liquidity profile of the company. Despite the difficult quarter, as you saw in our disclosures, at an enterprise level, just north of $270 million of liquidity. We manage the business with a view to always keep around $200 million of liquidity across the ABL and cash. So I feel we're active on all fronts to always manage cash. Our working capital, we're still looking to target a bit of savings there. Between the factoring line in France and our ABLs, as you saw, we were not on the ABL at the end of the quarter, and we use it just to cover timing issues. Overall, I feel very good about it.

Daniel Harriman, Analyst

Thanks so much, guys, and best of luck this quarter.

De Lyle Bloomquist, President and CEO

Thank you, Daniel.

Operator, Operator

Next question comes from Dmitry Silversteyn with Water Tower Research. Please go ahead.

Dmitry Silversteyn, Analyst

Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my call and my questions. I just wanted to follow up on a couple of things. First of all, you talked about energy costs being up and input costs being up. Now, wood pulp is up. I understand the reasons for that. But what other costs have increased for you, and why are your energy costs down? Just looking at the oil market and natural gas market prices there seem to have come down since the beginning of the year. So what's the dynamic driving higher energy costs?

De Lyle Bloomquist, President and CEO

Good morning, Dmitry. To answer the question on energy, it's really specific to Q1 and the very cold weather that hit the Southeast United States primarily in January. We actually got four inches of snow in Jesup during that period, but also we had a little bit of snow here in Jacksonville, Florida. So the weather was exceptionally cold, and it was part of the reason for some of the operational issues we had at Jesup in January. That shot the cost of energy through the roof. In fact, we received what's called an OFO order that essentially allowed us to use our hedge on natural gas, and we ended up needing to buy natural gas on the spot market in January due to the extreme cold weather. Now, energy prices normalized as we got out of Q1, but the energy impact that we've noted was largely tied to our experience in Q1. With respect to the other inputs you noted, wood pulp is one of them. But I would add that our other major inputs that we monitor, such as caustic in the sulfur family of products, ammonia, and others, our assumptions and guidance are largely in line with industry indices, and those are higher than 2024, but we haven't seen any real decrease in those indices for 2025 yet. That's kind of where we are with our assumptions.

Dmitry Silversteyn, Analyst

Understood. That's helpful. Thank you, De Lyle. And then a quick question on the Tartas plant. It seems to be raw material constrained because obviously you're not producing as much cellulose internally, but even with the full production, you were still not operating at full capacity because of raw material constraints. So what are you doing to address getting the biomass into the Tartas plant so you can produce the bioethanol at higher volumes?

De Lyle Bloomquist, President and CEO

Yes. We're doing a number of things. But the short-term answer to your question with respect to raw material feedstock for the bioethanol plant in Tartas is that we need to run the Tartas plant at a consistently higher level than we did in Q1. The good news is that the outages behind us; equipment has been repaired, and the facility should operate better going forward for the rest of the year. In the medium term, we are continuing to look at using different yeast, as well as making some operational changes to increase the sugars that are more readily accessible for bioethanol production, for example, monomers. Those efforts continue, and we expect to see improvements in feedstock availability or better yields around August and September of this year. As we get into 2026, we'll look at additional operational changes in Tartas' cellulose plant to further enhance feedstock yields. We are also spending some capital to allow us to use GMO yeast at our facility in Tartas, which should improve our yield by 2026 and 2027. This is an area we've got a lot of focus on. The margins on this business are fantastic, and we want to maximize our ethanol production. So we are committing some capital to make that happen. We believe that the problems we experienced in Q1 are largely behind us.

Marcus Moeltner, CFO and Senior Vice President of Finance

And Dmitry, the comments that De Lyle shared on the cellulose production at Tartas impact both the sugar stream and the lignin stream, right? So we're making good economics on powder and liquid lignin as well.

Dmitry Silversteyn, Analyst

Thank you. That's helpful as well. And then you touched on that in response to the previous question, but what's going on with the Fernandina plant and expansion there for bioethanol? I know the city is putting up some roadblocks. So where do we stand there? And how confident are you that you'll be able to get the permits you need and get that plant built in the near future?

De Lyle Bloomquist, President and CEO

We remain confident that we'll eventually prevail. It's a very promising project for RYAM, providing huge benefits to the community as well as the world by reducing emissions and providing another source of renewable energy both domestically and globally. We are well positioned and believe strongly that this business will deliver value for all stakeholders. However, regarding the ongoing legal actions we're taking, there’s not much I can comment on, as it’s currently an open litigation. I just want to emphasize that we believe firmly in our position.

Dmitry Silversteyn, Analyst

Okay. I’ll take the rest offline. Thank you. That’s all the questions I have.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. I will now turn the floor over to De Lyle for closing remarks.

De Lyle Bloomquist, President and CEO

All right. Thank you again today for your time and for your continued interest in RYAM. We acknowledge the challenging start we've had this year and the ongoing uncertainties that we're seeing in the global market. Despite these near-term headwinds, I remain confident in the resilience of our core business and our ability to effectively navigate these challenges. I want to just reemphasize our ongoing commitment to our long-term strategy. Our focus remains clear: we need to actively mitigate the tariff impacts, optimize our assets, and advance our high-return biomaterial investments while maintaining disciplined financial management to drive sustained long-term value. We greatly appreciate your ongoing support and engagement during this period. As always, we remain committed to transparency and open communication. Please do not hesitate to reach out with any further questions if you require additional information. Thank you for joining us today, and have a great day.