GrafTech International Ltd. (NYSE:EAF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

GrafTech International Ltd. (NYSE:EAF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript February 3, 2023

Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the GrafTech’s Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. This call is being recorded on Friday, February 03, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mike Dillon, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Michael Dillon: Thank you. Good morning and welcome to GrafTech International’s fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. On with me today are Marcel Kessler, Chief Executive Officer; Jeremy Halford, Chief Operating Officer; and Tim Flanagan, Chief Financial Officer. Marcel will begin with opening comments; Jeremy will then discuss safety, sales and operational matters; Tim will review our quarterly results and other financial details; Marcel will close with comments on our outlook. We will then open the call to questions. Turning to our next slide. As a reminder, some of the matters discussed on this call may include forward-looking statements regarding, among other things, performance, trends and strategies. These statements are based on current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties.

Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by forward-looking statements are shown here. We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures and these slides include the relevant non-GAAP reconciliations. You can find these slides in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.graftech.com. A replay of the call will also be available on our website. I’ll now turn the call over to Marcel.

Marcel Kessler: Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining GrafTech’s fourth quarter earnings call. 2022 was a challenging year. Geopolitical conflict, high levels of inflation, supply chain pressures and economic uncertainty impacted global markets and the steel industry. This has negatively impacted demand for graphite electrodes and continues to do so. In addition, the temporary suspension of our operations in Monterrey, Mexico in the fourth quarter affected our business. These factors, along with a substantial shift in mix from LTA to non-LTA volume will have a significant impact on our 2023 business performance. However, with a determination and resolve our talents as GrafTech team we are confronting these challenges head on.

And we remain optimistic regarding the longer term outlook for the business and our ability to deliver shareholder value. I would like to highlight several points. First, our Monterrey facility has restarted and is running well. We are pleased to have reached an agreement in November that allows for the restart, and we remain confident in our ability to achieve a full resolution of this matter. The impact of the suspension in our sales volume in the first half of 2023 will be significant. However, we will be well positioned to fully meet our customer needs, as well as, as we enter in the second half of the year. And we expect to meet all our remaining LTA commitments throughout 2023. Second, we are taking proactive actions. These include closely managing our operating costs, capital expenditures and working capital levels.

Proactively reducing our production volume to align with the near term demand for graphite electrodes and making targeted investments to further improve our strategic positioning and support long-term growth. Third, as the result of our disciplined capital allocation strategy, we have a strong balance sheet and ample liquidity to navigate the near term challenges. Lastly, electric arc furnace steelmaking and demand for graphite electrodes are expected to experience accelerating growth in the medium-to-longer-term. GrafTech’s sustainable competitive advantages remain intact. These include three of the highest capacity electrical manufacturing facilities in the world, and our substantial vertical integration into petroleum needle coke. As such, we are well positioned to capitalize on long-term demand growth.

I will now expand on my comments regarding our operations in Monterrey Mexico. As we have previously reported in September of 2022 inspectors from the environmental authorities for the state of Nuevo León, Mexico, visited our facility and issued a temporary suspension notice. In mid-November, we announced that our efforts towards the resolution resulted in an agreement with the authorities that allows for the conditional lifting of the suspension notice and the restart of the facility. The lifting of the suspension of this was subject to a completion of certain degrees upon activity, and we are well on track to accomplish all aspects of the condition. We expect the full resolution of this matter, and we continue to expand our engagement with the authorities in the state of Nuevo León and the community in the area.

At the same time, we continue to pursue the risk mitigation activities related to things stock that he discussed on the previous earnings call. These include the full restart of our St. Mary’s Pennsylvania operation, as well as other alternatives for production of pin stock. While we are encouraged to be working toward final resolution of the situation, the negative impact of the suspension on our operating performance in the first half of 2023 will be significant. Although production of electrodes, and pin stocks began immediately upon the listing of the suspension the required manufacturing time for our products is generally several months. As such, the rebuilding of our pin stock payment will take time. In addition, on the commercial front, the timing of the suspension coincided with the critical timeframe to secure customer orders for the first half of 2023.

As a result of the uncertainty caused by the suspension during this contract negotiation window, our ability to enter into new customer commitments for the first half of 2023 was limited. As a result, we estimates our sales volume for the first six months of this year will be approximately half of the level we reported in 2022 with the largest negative impact materializing in the first quarter of this year. As we move into the second half of 2023 with replenish pin stock inventory, we will be much better positioned. We expect our second half sales volumes to recover as we move past the Monterrey suspension driven uncertainty and that we anticipate a gradual improvement in market conditions. Importantly, we continue to expect to meet all of our remaining LTA commitments throughout 2023.

We will provide them more detail. We will provide more detailed comments on our outlook during this call. But first, I want to thank the entire GrafTech team, and in particular, all our employees in Monterrey for their on-going efforts to address this situation, and to continue to focus on moving our business ahead. And I also want to thank our customers for their on-going support and understanding. With that, let me turn the call over to Jeremy.

Jeremy Halford: Thank you, Marcel. And good morning everyone. I’ll start my comments with a brief update on health and safety, which is a core value at GrafTech as people are our most important asset. We ended 2022 with a total recordable incident rate that while continuing to place us among the top operators in the broader manufacturing industry did not meet our high standards nor our performance levels of the past two years. Safety is and must be fundamental to everything we do as getting health and safety right leads us to doing business right. For this reason, improvement in our safety metrics will be a key point of emphasis with our internal teams in 2023 as we remain steadfast and working toward our ultimate goal of zero injuries.

Let me now turn to the next slide for an update on steel industry trends as additional context for our fourth quarter results in our outlook commentary. During the fourth quarter, we saw further softening of key performance indicators for the steel industry. Global steel production excluding China in the fourth quarter of 2022 was approximately 194 million times representing an 11% decline compared to the same period in the prior year. Global capacity utilization rates declined to 61% commensurate with the lower production. While we continue to see steel industry trends that vary by geographic region, the disparity lessened somewhat during the fourth quarter. Conditions in Europe remained relatively weak although we started to see the stabilization of certain trends in the quarter, which is driving European HRC prices higher, reaching $822 per tonne as of last week.

In the U.S. utilization rate softened further in the fourth quarter, hitting a low near 71% late in the quarter, but has since begun to recover, as demand prospects appear firmer due to improved auto production and construction spending, among other factors. U.S. Steel Mill utilization rates have trended higher since the end of the year, and are currently slightly above 73%. Turning to our fourth quarter performance, our production volume was approximately 29,000 metric tons, representing a 36% year-over-year decline and a 22% sequential decline from the third quarter. The suspension of our Monterrey operations was the primary driver of the declines. In addition, toward the end of the fourth quarter, we began to proactively reduce production at our European manufacturing facilities, most notably our facility located in Pamplona, Spain, to better match production volume with graphite electrode demand and to manage high energy costs more efficiently.

Photo by Chris LeBoutillier on Unsplash

While the impact on our fourth quarter production levels was modest, we expect to reduce our production volume from our two European facilities to approximately one third of their capacity for the first half of 2023. Turning to sales, our fourth quarter sales volume of approximately 28,000 metric tons, represented a 37% decline from the same period in the prior year, and a 22% sequential decline from the third quarter. The impact of the Monterrey suspension, along with lower demand for electrodes drove the declines. Fourth quarter shipments included 19,000 metric tons sold under our LTAs at a weighted average realized price of $9,400 per metric ton and 9000 metric tons of non-LTA sales at a weighted average realized price of $6,100 per metric ton.

This non-LTA pricing represented an increase of 22% compared to the fourth quarter of 2021 and was slightly above the average for the third quarter of 2022. FX had a favorable impact on the sequential price improvement during the quarter, reflecting recent declines of the U.S. dollar, most notably compared to the euro, as a portion of our sales are denominated in foreign currencies. Factoring all of this in, net sales for the fourth quarter of 2022 decreased 32% compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. As we look at the first quarter of 2023, reflecting the headwinds that we discussed, we anticipate our total graphite electrode sales volume will be in the range of 15,000 metric ton to 18,000 metric tons for the quarter. Further, as you know, the terms of most of our LTAs ended in 2022 and our mix shift has shifted more to non-LTA business.

Lastly, regarding our top line outlook for the first quarter of 2023, we expect our weighted average non-LTA pricing to remain comparable to the 2022 full year average of approximately $6,000 per metric ton. Let me now turn it over to Tim to cover the rest of our financial details.

Timothy Flanagan: Thanks Jeremy. Net income totaled $50 million in the fourth quarter for 20% net income margin and resulting in $0.20 of earnings per share. Adjusted EBITDA was $80 million, a decrease from $183 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 reflecting the lower sales volume and higher year-over-year costs. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 32% in the fourth quarter. Let me expand on costs. For the fourth quarter, we experienced a year-over-year increase of 47% in cash COGS per metric ton, which represented a 20% sequential increase compared to the third quarter of 2022. This resulted in a cost per metric ton average of nearly $5,200 for the fourth quarter of 2022. With this metric, excluding depreciation and amortization, as well as the cost of goods associated with by product sales and other non-cash factors.

As we’ve indicated during the fourth quarter, we continue to feel the impact of global inflationary pressures that we experienced throughout the year, most notably for certain raw materials, energy and freight as we sold higher price inventory during the quarter. This inflation accounted for approximately half the 20% year-over-year or sorry 20% quarter-over-quarter increase. The balance of the change was due to the accelerated recognition in the fourth quarter of approximately 11 million of fixed costs related to our Monterrey operations that otherwise would have been inventoried if we were operating at normal production levels. As we look ahead, we project our cash costs per metric ton for the first quarter of 2023, to be flat to up slightly compared to the fourth quarter of 2022.

While we expect those two quarters to represent the peak of a recognized cost curve, we anticipate only a slight moderation error cost per ton for the balance of 2023. Therefore, we’re projecting a year-over-year increase in our cost per metric ton in the range of 17% to 20%, on a full year basis for 2023, as compared to 2022, which averaged $4,300 per ton. As we look forward, in addition to our on-going focus on cost management, we expect market pricing for certain key elements of our cost structure to decline in the medium to longer term, including but not limited, limited to energy and decant oil. For these reasons, and with sales volumes expected to normalize, return to more normalized levels beginning in the back half of 2023 and for the full year of 2024, we are optimistic that our cost per metric ton will improve significantly as we move beyond the current year.

Turning now to cash flow. In the fourth quarter, we generated $50 million of cash from operations and $23 million of adjusted free cash flow, with both measures decreasing compared to the fourth quarter of 2021 reflecting lower net income. Moving now to slide 9, our gross debt-to-adjusted EBITDA ratio was 1.7 times as of December 31, compared to 1.6 times at the end of 2021. On a net debt basis, we ended the year at a ratio of 1.5 times. During the quarter, our total liquidity increased $27 million to approximately $462 million consisted of consisting of $135 million of cash and $327 million available under our revolving credit facility. As we move into 2023, we continue to manage our working capital levels. We expect to be free cash flow positive for the year and do not intend anticipate the need to borrow against our revolver.

We remain confident we have ample liquidity between cash on hand and availability under our existing credit facilities. Now turning to slide 10. Maintaining a prudent disciplined capital allocation strategy remains a long-term priority. With the unanticipated suspension of Monterrey, we elected not to pay down debt or repurchase stock in the back half of 2022. However, a significant portion of our cash flow generation in the first half of the year was utilized for those purposes. In 2022, we reduced our term loan balance by $110 million, bringing our cumulative debt repayments to more than $1.2 billion since the start of 2019. During 2022, we also returned $70 million to our stockholders in the form of stock repurchases and dividends. Additionally, we invested $72 million in our capital assets, while also preserving a significant portion of our cash flow generation in the second half of the year to increase our liquidity.

For 2023 we’re focused on maintaining a disciplined capital allocation strategy, including certain targeted investments such as the restart of our St. Mary’s operation, as Marcel referenced earlier. For the full year, we expect our capital expenditures to be in the range of $55 million to $60 million, including investments to support our future growth expectations. Let me now turn it back to Marcel for his perspective on the outlook.

Marcel Kessler: Thank you, Tim. We remain confident in our ability to overcome near term headwinds and are optimistic about the longer-term outlook for our business. We have been taking actions to best position GrafTech for the future. These include remaining disciplines at all our operating costs and capital expenditures as well as our working capital. As an example, a reduction in temporary staffing and the implementation of hiring restrictions resulted in a reduction in our workforce during the fourth quarter of 2022. As Jeremy pointed out, we are proactively reducing production at our European electoral manufacturing facilities to approximately one third of our capacity to align our production volume with our near-term outlook for graphite electrode demand.

We are making targeted investments to further improve our competitive positioning and to support long-term growth. This includes the full restart of our St. Marys, Pennsylvania operations. With these actions — with the actions we are taking, we will emerge stronger to benefit from longer-term demand growth. We continue to expect the steel industry’s efforts to decarbonize will drive the continued shift to electric arc furnace steelmaking supporting long-term demand growth for graphite electrodes. Factoring an announcement of planned EAF capacity addition by steel producers and estimated production increases at existing EAF plants, this could result in an incremental annual electro — graphite electrode demand outside of China of 200,000 metric tons by 2030.

We also anticipate the demand for petroleum needle coke, the key raw material we use to produce our graphite electrodes to accelerate driven by its use in lithium ion batteries for the growing electric vehicle market. In fact, based on estimates for growth in EV sales and battery pack sizes, this could result in global needle coke demand for use in battery applications increasing at the compound annual growth rate of over 20% through 2030. The huge growing demand for needle coke is another positive long-term trend for our business as higher demand should result in the elevated pricing. Our sustainable competitive advantages, including our substantial vertical integration into petroleum needle coke production through our Seadrift facility are critical differentiators and foundational to our ability to meet our customers’ needs.

To that point, we are very encouraged by recently having entered into several new multiyear electrode sales agreements. This reflects our customers’ confidence in our ability to reliably deliver high-performing products. In closing, our investment thesis remains intact. GrafTech possesses an industry-leading position, a distinct set of capabilities and competitive advantages and a talented and dedicated team that is committed to serving our customers. For these reasons, I remain confident in our ability to deliver shareholder value. That concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open the call for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. First question comes from David Gagliano at BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

David Gagliano: Hi, thank you for taking my questions. I just wanted to ask a clarification question to the prepared remarks just now. Was the comment made that St. Mary’s are fully restarting? Is that what I heard?

Marcel Kessler: Yes, that’s correct.

David Gagliano: Okay. Can you talk a little bit about the reason why St. Marys is probably your starting at this point? What the CapEx is associated with that restart and what the volume expectations and the timing of that ramp-up in volumes?

Jeremy Halford: Yes, sure. The — I mean, the logic behind it really comes down to establishing a second complete value stream for the production of pins. And so with that, we kicked that project off immediately after the initial suspension in Monterrey, and we’ve been working to restart those assets and to complete the permitting process. All of this is, in fact, going extremely well for us. The CapEx that it’s going to take will be minimal in the — make sure that it won’t be incremental to the CapEx that we’ve planned for this year. And so it will all be managed within a typical CapEx budget for the year. So it won’t be anything extraordinary in that regard. The timing of it is that it is permit dependent, but the State of Pennsylvania has been incredibly responsive to our request in that regard so far. So I would expect that we should be able to say that we’re producing there by the time we have our next earnings call.

David Gagliano: Sorry, I just want to clarify one thing. So all that had previously been communicated. But I thought when you’ve said — or when the comment was fully restarting St. Marys, I thought that meant into graphite electrode production again. Is that not correct? We’re still just talking about pins, right?

Jeremy Halford: Well, we — what’s different from what we’ve done historically is that we are actually producing the pin stock in St. Mary’s. So that will be the complete value stream is being produced there, which could also be used for electrode production if economically feasible to do so.

Timothy Flanagan: Dave, to your point of your question, our intent is not to bring additional electric capacity to the market right now, right? We’re allowing us to have the redundancy and pin stock and also eliminate some of the movement of pin stock from Monterrey to St. Marys, which hopefully longer-term on a cost basis will be beneficial to us.

David Gagliano: Okay. Great. Thanks for clarifying that part of it. It’s still — the commentary still leaves me a bit with the impression that there’s something else to come, i.e., graphite electrode production on the way at some point. Just along those lines, if that decision were to be made and to, again, ramp up volumes of graphite electrode production, what’s the lead time associated with that incremental step? And when would one expect to hear an update on that part of it?

Marcel Kessler: So obviously, the demand situation will drive that decision. In the current CapEx that we talked about, the $55 million to $60 million for 2023, a capacity expansion of electro production is not excluded. So that will be beyond the 2023 time frame. With regards to the timing it would take, Jeremy, you want to add? Yes. Right if market demand is much, much better here than we expect, how long do you think it would take?

Jeremy Halford: Yes. We’re probably talking 18 to 24 months type of a time frame to execute an expansion of St. Marys to drive incremental volume.