Andersons Inc (ANDE) 2015 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good day ladies and gentlemen and welcome to The Andersons, Inc. 2015 second-quarter earnings conference call.

(Operator Instructions)

As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the call over to your host for today Mr. Jim Burmeister, Vice President, Finance and Treasurer. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Ben. Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us for The Andersons 2015 second-quarter conference call.

For the purpose of today's discussion we have provided a slide presentation that will enhance our talking points. If you are listening and watching this presentation via our website the slides and audio will be in sync. This webcast and supporting slides are being recorded and will be made available on the investor relations section of our website at Andersonsinc.com.

Certain information discussed today constitutes forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those presented in the forward-looking statements as a result of many factors including general economic conditions, weather, competitive conditions, conditions in the Company's industries both in the United States and internationally and additional factors that are described in the Company's publicly filed documents including its 1934 Act filings and the prospectuses prepared in connection with the Company's offerings.

Today's call includes information for which the Company's independent auditors have not completed their review. Although the Company believes that the assumptions upon which the financial information and its forward-looking statements are based are reasonable we can give no assurance that these assumptions will prove to be true.

On the call with me today are Mike Anderson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Hal Reed, Chief Operating Officer; and John Granato, Chief Financial Officer. Mike, Hal, John and I will answer questions that you may have at the end of the prepared remarks.

Now I will turn the floor over to Mike for his opening comments.

Thank you, Jim. Good morning everyone.

We are pleased to announce that despite many challenges in our markets, our portfolio of businesses delivered $31.1 million of net income this quarter. This compares to $44.3 million reported in the prior year with most of the variance coming from lower Ethanol margins which were unusually high last year.

Our Rail Group led the way this quarter achieving its 10th consecutive quarter of increasing utilization rates which produced another strong quarter of lease income. The business recognized a $10.6 million pretax gain related to an early lease termination. While these types of settlements occur from time to time, this one was larger than normal.

The business also demonstrated operational improvements and its repair and services business which resulted in its best quarter in a few years. As a result, total Rail Group pretax income for the second quarter came in at $21.7 million.

Our Ethanol Group built on their portfolio profitable performance in the first quarter to deliver stronger results this quarter, recording $9.7 million of pretax income and achieving record second-quarter production volumes.

During the quarter the Plant Nutrient Group completed the acquisition of Kay Flo Industries. We have been encouraged by the positive response from our customers. We're very pleased with the high quality assets and people who have joined our Company and the opportunities that expanding our geographic reach and added products will bring.

We continue to be disappointed with the results in our Grain Group where slower movement from farm to market, weaker sell side margins, less forward contracting activity have lowered results. Excessive rains during late May and June in much of the eastern corn belt had a negative impact on agriculture.

In some areas it prevented farmers from getting on fields to finish planting and restricted the ability to apply a normal amount of nutrients. This had an adverse impact on our nutrient volumes and will negatively impact this year's crop production.

John and Hal will take you through the detailed results of the quarter. And I will finish up with our outlook for the remainder of 2015.

Thanks, Mike, and good morning everyone. In the second quarter of 2015 the Company generated net income attributable to The Andersons of $31.1 million, or $1.09 per diluted share on revenues of $1.2 billion. This compares to the second quarter of 2014 when net income of $44.3 million was reported or $1.56 per diluted share.

Revenues were down in total primarily due to a 38% drop in our Ethanol business driven by commodity prices. Second-quarter earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization EBITDA totaled $72.2 million compared to EBITDA of $90.7 million for the same period of 2014. The Company recorded income tax expense of $18 million for an effective tax rate of 35.7% this quarter, up 1.5% from the second-quarter 2014 rate of 34.2%.

The higher effective tax rate this quarter is primarily due to the decreased impact of income attributable to non-controlling interest in our Ethanol business. We expect the full-year effective tax rate to be approximately 35%.

The Company repurchased approximately 156,000 shares of its common stock during the second quarter for $6.4 million. Since the end of the second quarter we have purchased 407,000 shares for $14.9 million and just this week completed our $50 million repurchase program. This bridge graph shows the increase or decrease in each group's pretax income for the second quarter in comparison to the pretax income for the same period of the prior year.

The largest driver of year-over-year performance was the impact of lower margins in Ethanol. Our Grain and Plant Nutrient businesses were challenged in the quarter but this was offset by very strong results in the Rail Group.

Hal will now discuss the key drivers of performance within each business group.

Thanks, John, and good morning everyone. Our Rail Group has an impressive quarter delivering $21.7 million of pretax income.

Rails results included growth in lease income supported by an average railcar utilization rate of 93.5% compared to 89.3% in the second quarter last year. This was the 10th consecutive quarter of improved utilization and year over year the Group's fleet increased by approximately 800 cars.

The Group benefited from a settlement related to the return of approximately 750 railcars prior to the end of their lease. We are confident in our ability to redeploy these cars within a number of months. While utilization rates will take a small dip in the third quarter as these cars return we expect third-quarter utilization to remain above 90% and return to the low to mid 90%s by year-end.

With this impressive quarter the Rail Group has surpassed the prior year's full-year pretax income. We expect the Group's performance to continue to be strong in the second half the year.

While Ethanol margins are well below the record levels seen in 2014, margins did improve during the quarter from near breakeven levels in the first quarter, rising to more robust levels in May before falling off through June as corn prices temporarily searched. The Ethanol industry in total produced at high levels during the quarter, providing substantial supply to feed strong domestic and export demand.

Within this environment our Ethanol Group performed well, delivering record second-quarter production volumes and generating pretax income of $9.7 million. In the prior year $33.9 million of pretax income was reported but remember record margins were seen at that time. Margins were a bit weaker today but as we look into the second half we see signs for optimism in relatively low corn cost, continued good export and domestic demand and supply levels that should begin to soften it is the industry goes through normal maintenance downtime in late August and September.

Turning now to Grain, the Group had pretax income of $3.1 million this quarter compared to $10.4 million in the prior year. Results in our core Grain operations continued to struggle as we worked through a year of slower movement of grain from farm to market that has led to lower margins and volumes.

Our core Grain assets reported a loss while profits in our investments in Thompsons and Lansing Trade Group brought the full Group results to a profit for the quarter. Revenues were $625.3 million in the second quarter which was slightly below the $656 million in the prior year due to commodity prices that were down approximately 20%.

Bushels sold increased by over 18% in large part due to the volume from the recent acquisitions in Michigan and Texas. Operating expenses were higher in the quarter versus prior year due to the inclusion of these acquired operations as well as certain costs which are now being allocated to the business for the operation and for the deployment of SAP.

Our Western grain assets underperformed in the second quarter, delivering pretax income below second quarter of last year. Year-to-date results, however, remained slightly better than prior year. We anticipate improved performance from the West in the second half of the year based on favorable crops.

For those viewing the webcast as you can see from the graph of June 2015 rainfall many markets in which we operate experienced excessive rain which has negatively impacted this year's crops. Flooding and wet fields caused damage to some crops in low-lying areas and limited the ability of farmers to apply the nutrients that are normally put down in this period. In some cases the weather also prevented planting which will reduce this year's expected acreage.

The wet weather also impacted the quality of the wheat crop recently harvested. I should add, however, that situations such as these do lead to more volatile markets which can provide other income opportunities.

The condition of the corn crop is mixed. Adverse impacts on yields are expected to be felt especially in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio while fairly good conditions exist in much of the Western region. Soybeans have been even more negatively impacted by the excessive rain especially in many areas of the Eastern Corn Belt.

Results in our Plant Nutrient Group this quarter were below previous expectations as volumes did not materialize due largely to excessive rainfall during late May and June which limited fertilizer application in many of our markets. Revenues in the quarter were $357.2 million which was similar to the prior year as the decline in tons sold was offset by a higher average selling price. The gross profit, however, was lower as this lower volume was met with lower margins as well.

Same-store volumes in the Plant Nutrient Group, excluding Auburn Bean and Grain and Kay Flo, were down nearly 90,000 tons versus the prior year. This represents a little over a 10% drop caused by the excessive rainfall.

Operating expenses this quarter were higher than prior year primarily due to new cost associated with operating Auburn Bean and Grain and expenses related to the one-time deal cost and added operating expenses of Kay Flo. This resulted in Plant Nutrient Group tax income of $18.9 million versus $27 million in the prior year. While this crop year had challenging weather conditions in many of our markets we remain pleased with the acquired assets and look forward to a more normal crop year beginning with fall applications.

The Retail Group produced pretax income of $1.5 million on revenues of $41 million during the second quarter which is comparable to the prior year.

Now I'll turn it back to Jim for the treasurers report.

Thank you, Hal. The Company's net working capital as of June 30 was $210 million versus the $252 million a year ago.

The largest changes in assets were from higher inventories and accounts receivable, partially offset by lower commodity derivative assets. The largest changes in liabilities were from higher short-term debt partially offset by lower commodity derivative liabilities.

Short-term borrowings under our line of credit as of June 30 were $141 million compared to $27 million at the same time last year. Long-term debt totaled $417 million at the end of the second quarter versus $300 million a year ago with the primary increase stemming from the funding of the Kay Flo acquisition.

Shareholders' equity was $822 million at the end of the quarter after repurchasing $34.2 million of common shares year to date. We believe long-term debt to capital is the most appropriate metric of our leverage. Our long-term debt to capital ratio at the end of the quarter was 0.35 to 1 versus 0.33 to 1 in the same period last year.

Our effective interest rate for the second quarter was 4.02% which is a decrease from last year's rate of 4.49%. The Company continues to maintain ample access to liquidity with an over $850 million committed credit line.

Now, Mike will cover a few more points before we take questions.

The volatile markets we are navigating this year reinforce the benefit of our diversified portfolio of businesses. While our Grain and Plant Nutrient Groups are experiencing tough market conditions the Ethanol Group was doing well and our Rail business is having a great year. We remain mindful of slowing volumes of rail shipments in some commodities and their potential pressure on future renewal rates, but we're very proud of what Rail team has accomplished and are confident they will finish the year strong.

We believe US demand for gasoline will remain strong as will ethanol export demand. These factors should support ethanol margins through the summer.

Leading into the fall we continue to see good demand as production declines due to industry shutdowns for maintenance. Our plants continue to run efficiently and are well positioned to take advantage of market opportunities which we believe will lead to a solid performance in the second half of the year.

The Plant Nutrient Group has gone through a tough crop year as we noted earlier. Volumes lost in the second quarter will not come back. We expect to see more robust demand beginning in the fall and going into next spring, assuming weather patterns are more normal.

Our outlook for Grain is cautious. This year's crops will undoubtedly experience pockets of lower yields and fewer acres harvested than anticipated in the areas hardest hit by excessive rain.

Some crops will be able to recover by harvest and the West is actually expected to see strong yields.

Overall lower production volume will pose challenges in many regions in the second half of the year and potentially into early 2016.

Overall we are optimistic about the rest of the year. We do expect to see Grain's second-half performance improve over the prior year.

Our Plant Nutrient Group should have a second half similar to last year. Ethanol earnings will be down from record levels last year but still good. And our Rail Group should have a solid finish to a great year.

We will now hand it back to Ben, our operator, so that we can begin to take your questions.

(Operator Instructions) Heather Jones, BB&T Capital Markets.

Good morning. I guess my first question would be on the Grain business.

I think earlier this year you had said that you had guided over the near term for the Grain business to yield per bushel results in the $0.15 to $0.25 range and you had said this year would be towards the lower end of that. And I assume you're talking about your core Grain ex- Thompson and Lansing. And so given the first-half performance do you expect the second-half performance to be strong enough to still get you to the low end of that range?

This is Hal. First, yes, it is the core Grain business that we're talking about specifically with those numbers and we did guide to the lower end of that range.

We do expect after the excessive rains in the second quarter and some of that impact to not to be slightly less than what we expected it to be when we gave that guidance. Still in a similar range but at the bottom end of that range at best.

Okay, and looking at so as a follow-up to that, looking at 2016 and I fully understand everything that can change in the meantime, but based upon your best information at this point and given what the trends in your Western corn belt assets what is your thought on 2016?

Do you think you're going to be at the low end of that range next year because of the weather issues from this year? What is your best guess now as far as 2016?

Yes, as you said there's a lot of things that are going to go into that which will start with the actual crop size from this fall. So it is really hard to say. I think what we have to do is we have to get into the crops, see what the Western crop is, which is better and see what kind of carry we have in the marketplace especially in the corn crop.

The bean crop is a later crop, it has much more to do with the summer weather and we don't carry nearly as many beans. So the answer to that really we won't see until we get start to get corn yields off across the spectrum of both corn belt. So it's really awful hard to say something about 2016 right now.

Okay, thank you.

Farha Aslam, Stephens Inc.

Hi, good morning. My questions focus on Ethanol. Would you be willing to share with us what your EBITDA per gallon was in that Ethanol group in the second quarter and what you're seeing currently and if you've locked in any margins going forward?

Yes, the answer to the first question is we don't share the EBITDA by the segment. And we're just relative to margins while we talk about margins we mentioned margins have softened here especially as corn ran up at the end of June. We expect them to be fairly consistent here as driving demand is good for the summer and we'll start to see slightly lower production going into the fall.

So fairly consistent at these current levels. We have very little locked in right now.

Actually I think we had, what, 10% locked in? Yes, 10% locked in as we got into Q3. So relatively small amounts forward at this point in time in the Ethanol business.

But have you seen margins improve in July? And as an addendum because I only get two questions, would you expect the quarterly run rate of profitability in Ethanol in your second half to be similar to your first half?

Generally similar, yes. We would expect second half to be generally similar based on what we see in the current conditions. Margins have softened a bit in third quarter.

We saw corn prices rise at the end of second quarter and Ethanol margins clearly took a hit at the beginning of the third quarter. So at this point in time they're softer and we need to see good summer driving demand into the fall and the fall shutdown season and hopefully cheap corn in the fall to do that. But we would hope to see them similar.

Okay, so hope to see similar second half versus first half. Great, that's very helpful. Thank you.

Kenneth Zaslow, BMO Capital Markets.

Good morning everyone. Can you talk about the other opportunities that you alluded to?

On the Grain side?

I believe that's what it was, I wasn't 100% certain. It sounds like you'll maybe take a little bit more aggressive trading with Lansing.

I didn't understand what you exactly were saying. What order of magnitude are we talking about?

Well, order of magnitude no we're not changing our business model. The point is that as we get a wide variety and quality upgrades, which is especially prevalent in the wheat crop this year, and as we get dislocations in local places because of very bad damage to crops, we get certain supply and demand conditions that allow us to trade across a little bit broader territory.

That's something that we tend to do. But this year the Eastern corn belt happens to be a place where we have some very widely varied crops, good and bad, just depending on how the rains hit or didn't hit.

It's something that Lansing does on a regular basis. It's the market opportunities that take place in a dislocation that we're clearly looking hard to help make up for some of the downfall in the acres and the other negative incidents that occur because of the excessive rain in the Eastern corn belt.

And what's the order of magnitude in this?

I would say the order of magnitude is not business changing, it's to make up some of the downturn in what we've seen because of the slightly reduced acres and yields.

Great, thanks very much.

One of a number of things to be done.

Great, I appreciate it.

Brent Rystrom, Fetl.

Yes, good morning guys. Just a couple of quick questions. As far as the Plant Nutrient Group are you expecting a change in the mix of business this fall given the wet conditions and I think insecticide and fungicide, stuff like that, and then does that have any market implications?

We don't expect a substantial change in the mix. We don't. What has changed in the initial applications is obviously the decline in the basic nutrients.

We did see from a weed perspective a variety of fungicides and things that got down. That was mostly done in the second quarter.

We will see some pieces of that. There's clear that you get the added moisture but that's not a huge piece of the business. It is an opportunity for us to sell some of those very specific pieces.

And if the weather is good and the crop is off on a timely basis the soil nutrient content is obviously low-k given what happened this spring and we would hope to see good demand. But again that's timing based on farmers and the actual season and harvest and the weather conditions at harvest time.

All right, thank you. And for my follow-up question or second question both you and Mike actually given your history in this, can you refresh us on how you view El Nino events as impacting your business?

So thinking of 2009 or 2010 or more specifically it looks like this year's El Nino they're saying could be as strong as the one we had in the late 1990s. How has that impacted your business in the past?

It's Mike, I'll start and Hal and I are not rehearsed. He could be 180 from me on this, that would be fine. And actually if it's 180 degrees that wouldn't surprise me because you get these big weather patterns that have an impact and a little bit of a shock when way or another can cause you to have a minimal or a large impact.

So Mike, if I look back the times we'd talk about El Nino or La Nina well ahead of time and then see what happens I don't think you can get a correlation from the prediction of what would happen to what actually happened in the areas that we do business and frankly in a macro sense for corn and soybeans. At times you end up with a big impact because you shove something around you have a big drought.

Other times it pushes water in a timely level. And I'm not a weather expert and I'm not highly studied in it. So it's more from my history and anecdotal.

My thought, Mike, would be that maybe historically I believe an El Nino brings in more mild winter to your region.

Historically in a broad sense that is true. The question is does it include Illinois or does it go to Pennsylvania. As Mike said if it shifts a little bit it's vastly different but historically that's accurate.

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions) Heather Jones, BB&T Capital Markets.

Thanks for taking the follow-up. I was wondering if you could give us a sense of corporate expense was lower than we expected this quarter, so I was wondering if you could give us a sense of how much of that SAP expense has shifted out of corporate and into the Grain business and how should we think about that moving forward?

Heather, this is John. I would say incrementally more has shown up in Grain on a year-over-year basis but from first quarter to second quarter it's the same in terms of the shift to Grain.

And then following up on that, I think you saw a little bit of the drop this quarter relative to last year was primarily driven by lower incentive-based compensation accruals with a bunch of other puts and takes that come and go related to timing or other things. And then let me provide a little bit more color which what I can say is that we expect the second half for this segment to be pretty much in line with the first half which is a little bit better than what we previously told you.

Okay, awesome. And going back, Mike, to your comments about Rail so from what I understand there's been significant weakness clearly on the corn side, anything related to oil. And so you mentioned something about knowing that could pressure utilization and renewal rates.

So I was wondering if you could give us because from what I understand Andersons' exposure to those segments is not, I mean it has exposure but it's not huge. So I guess I wonder if you could give us some more detail on how you expect it to impact utilization rates, etc., for Andersons going into 2016 and 2017? Because I think you all's average lease life is still in this five-year range, correct?

Right. Yes, the average is the same. I'm going to let Hal answer that one.

And, Heather, there is no real cash next year's average kind of returns on leases is about the same as always, so we are kind of average as you asked. Relative to the specific products that could impact, and obviously we've seen a downturn in the demand from the oil and fracking side, but we haven't seen any other unusual activity.

Corn crop is of good size. It's not going to be a whole lot different so we don't expect a substantial change in the utilization of cars. GDP hasn't changed dramatically in the United States and typically you know a lot of rail traffic follows that.

But as you can see if you track it there has been a decline in carloads across just a broad spectrum of the economy so that's I would just say a general softening. Is that a slight impact to the rate issue or utilization?

It depends on the car mix as it comes in in the year and it just we're ahead of the game, we're looking forward at the curve and we're trying to do our best to mitigate those pieces as we always do. It's not a negative, it's just a slight trend in the general economy that we've watched closely to make sure we're out in front of how we put together our car demand for next year.

And I will add a little more broader than Rail comment. We've been through this probably since 1996 and we talk about this regularly. In these businesses that we're in they are not hockey sticks and they go up and down.

When it gets good we're really grateful to it. Sometimes it gets really good like Ethanol last year where you know it's not going to continue. And we're bullish Rail, just remind you, and follow up on Hal's comment, you see a week-after-week reduction, modest reduction in carloads, you see the oil side of it.

So you see there's a few things that could take the edge off what's a really good situation. But we don't see where as last year I think it was pretty clear so if we're going to go down a lot in Ethanol and frankly it wasn't because Ethanol is bad, it's just that it was so good. This year we might feel that way in Rail.

We feel good about Rail, really good about Rail but there's a few things that say okay, you don't just get in love just because it's really good. I'd say the flipside is we're highly confident in P&G's volume next year, crop year, fall, whatever.

In fact I'm going to ask John right now because I think it's good time to kind of make a comment of while we're into this around the second-quarter Rail and a lease settlement which we get these periodically and some other things because that's a big up. But we got this fertilizer down is to me just as unusual on the downside as the Rail lease settlement is on the upside. John?

You know, Mike I think you encapsulated it well. We did have the early lease termination which was unusually large but it's not an unusual event for us in particular. And in this case we're fortunate that we're probably going to be able to redeploy those cars as we've noted in a relatively short period of time, so I view that as a positive event.

More importantly, I mean it comes at a time where we had unusually wet weather which negatively impacted our Plant Nutrient business and probably will have an impact on overall crop this year. That really to me encapsulates and highlights the benefits of the portfolio we have. You have two events that I wouldn't say won't happen again but they offset in this particular quarter and I think give us a normal outcome for The Andersons.

I think overall and I just don't want people to lose this perspective and we've highlighted it particularly with the Rail side. The leasing business is operating exceptionally well and so is the repair business. I think it would be a disservice to the Rail Group to simply say they had a great quarter based on the lease termination.

Right, right. And actually my final question is sort of a follow-on to that is so you had the gain on lease but you also normally have some gain on railcar sales in the quarter. And if we look at that year-to-date number it's call it roughly $9.5 million and you guys have noted in the past that the annual number doesn't move around a ton but it can shift around a lot quarter to quarter.

So should we expect the second-half, the gain on sale number, should we expect that to look like first half similar to second half of 2014? How should we be thinking about that?

Give me one second here. I would say that I think at this point we don't completely go into all the details all the time. But I think similar probably to slightly down for the second half in terms of what we're looking at would be the view today, Heather.

Relative to the first half?

Yes.

Okay. Thank you so much.

You know, depending on what happens things can change but that's our view today.

Okay, appreciate it.

Brent Rystrom, Fetl.

Yes, thank you. First question, CF Industries this morning said that they see a terrific order book for nitrogen this fall. I would assume that some of your confidence this fall is reflecting that and I'm curious is the order book relatively similar East corn belt versus West from what you can see?

Yes. I would agree.

All right, and then on the Ethanol margins just thinking about the last year where you guys had a year ago the record crops, the excess corn and probably some advantages on basis, do you anticipate that you're going to have some basis inversion this year issues as far as regionally on your Eastern assets?

Yes, a little bit more than last year clearly. Obviously the Western crops were better and probably Michigan is better than Ohio. But we will see a difference across the Groups and the Ohio one with a little bit of a struggle right now but that makes sense given the current crop conditions.

Great. Thank you guys.

I would add but not near like the drought year a few years ago.

All right. Thank you again.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our question-and-answer period. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Mike Anderson for any closing remarks.

I want to thank you all for joining us this morning. I also want to mention for those that are interested there are appendix slides to this presentation available on TheAndersonsinc.com website at the shareholder relations tab under the second-quarter earnings call replay.

Our next conference call is scheduled for Thursday, November 5 at 11 a.m. Eastern time to review our third-quarter 2015 results. We hope you are able to join us again at that time. Until then have a great day.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program and you may all disconnect. Have a great rest of your day.