West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. (NYSE:WFG) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Matthew McKellar: Hi. Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. First, I’d like to ask, I think you talked about having a few more organic projects in the queue for your U.S. lumber platform. Is the softness we’re seeing in Southern Yellow Pine today changing your view at all on whether those projects pencil out over the longer term or potentially changing the timing of when you may move forward with some of those new investments in the U.S. South?

Sean McLaren: Good morning, Matthew. Sean here. I think when we refer to that, it’s projects we have in motion and which the largest is our Henderson project, and that one project, we’re not slowing down there. It’s on schedule, on budget. It is a strategic investment that we think will be well positioned whatever the market cycle is once we get it up to rate and integrate it in our full lease Texas platform. I think for future projects, we are very focused on ramping up what we have in motion and executing on the capital we’ve spent and finishing the capital we have underway. So even though we are doing planning for the future, I think new projects, we’re going to pick our time. When we do that, focused job one today in West Fraser is delivering on what we’ve — projects we already have in motion and in start-up.

Matthew McKellar: Great. Thanks very much for that. The next question, you’ve been pretty clear on outlining what factors you consider when pursuing M&A. And with that as a background, can you describe what the pipeline of opportunities you see in the market looks like today?

Sean McLaren: Maybe I’ll make a comment or two and ask Chris to just weigh in here. But I would say, our view in West Fraser is and has been for an M&A opportunity. It needs to be high quality, immediately make us stronger, support our existing business. It needs to tick all of the boxes like Angelina did, like Allendale did, like Spray Lakes or Cochrane did. I would say those opportunities are pretty few and far between today and people with high quality assets. The odd one might come to market, but tough to find them. So that would be my perspective and who knows, but I think we’re well positioned to react to anything that we’re interested in that comes on the market, but the bar is pretty high in West Fraser.

Matthew McKellar: Great. Thanks very much. One last kind of cleanup for me. On Hinton, I know you have a long-term contract with [indiscernible] to supply residuals into that facility. My question is whether you expect any significant downside of that mill between now and 2027 as they work through their paper machine investments. It would mean you have to find a home for those residuals on an interim basis? And if so, how should we think about the financial significance of that?

Chris Virostek: I think what — how they’re going to execute their capital is really a question for them. But we feel very good about our ability to dispose of our residuals in Alberta that’s a low cost region for us that we want to make sure operates. And we think we’ve definitely taken all the right steps with that transaction to provide us the comfort that we can continue to do that over a very long extended period of time.

Matthew McKellar: Great. Thanks a lot for the color. I’ll take a back.

Chris Virostek: Thank you.

Operator: We have a follow-up question coming from the line of Sean Steuart from TD Cowen. Go ahead, please.

Sean Steuart: Thanks. Just one follow-up, guys. OSB in North America, it looks like prices are starting to crack after really surprising run over the last several months. Can I get your perspective on downside risk to that market? How far do you expect prices could fall before downtime kicks in? And I appreciate you’re taking a slow and steady approach with Allendale, but broader thoughts on managing supply as prices potentially correct here over the next little bit?

Chris Virostek: I’ll make maybe a comment or two here, Sean, and then get Matt to fill in here. I guess from my perspective, our OSB sales team and the entire team has done a very good job. I think we’ve strengthened relationships with key customers, built programs that both are supported by OSB and lumber. And I think that’s given us an ability to ramp up Allendale into those programs. In terms of what it’s going to happen really tough for us. We know supply is coming on saying that, the business has consistently held up better than our expectations, which we’ve been pleased by, and our team has done an excellent job of strengthening relationships with our key customers for both products. Matt, anything to add?

Matt Tobin: No, that’s perfect. We’re really focused on supporting our key customers to meet their demand and supply them through all markets.

Sean Steuart: Okay. That’s it for me. Thanks, guys.

Operator: We have a follow-up question coming from the line of Ketan Mamtora from BMO Capital Markets. Go ahead, please.

Ketan Mamtora: Thanks for taking my follow question. Question on kind of what you’re seeing in Europe in terms of activity level. Are you still seeing kind of activity under pressure or are you seeing things stabilize?

Sean McLaren: Yeah. Hi, Ketan. Europe is slow, has been slow for a number of quarters now. What I would say, as we come into Q2 is that we’ve seen — even though prices really haven’t materially improved, we have seen some volume improvement. Rate inflation seems to be coming down a little quicker over there. Saying that, I’m still really slow in Europe. We have really good assets, a strong team. We’ll see when things improve, but we’re pretty — we feel pretty good about operating even in this environment and keeping — moving our — all of our operational excellence and business goals forward even though pricing is tough.

Ketan Mamtora: Got it. And then just one related question to that. If Europe remains weak, and it sounds like it is fairly weak. What is the risk that we start to see an uptick again in imports of lumber into the U.S. from Europe. I mean it’s been coming down here in the last little bit. But just curious how you see that potentially shaping out as we move through Q2 and into Q3?