Carpenter Technology Corp (CRS) 2014 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good morning and welcome to Carpenter Technology's second-quarter earnings conference call. My name is Janada, and I will be your coordinator for today.

(Operator Instructions)

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the call over to your host for today, Mr. Mike Hajost, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please proceed.

Thank you, Janada. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Carpenter's earnings conference call for the second quarter ended December 31, 2013.

This call is also being broadcast over the Internet along with presentation sites. Please note, for those of you listening by phone, you may express a time delay in slide movement.

Speakers on the call today are Bill Wulfsohn, President and Chief Executive Officer; Tony Thene, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Andy Ziolkowski, Senior Vice President Commercial for Specialty Alloys Operations; Gary Heasley, Senior Vice President Performance Engineered Products; and Dave Strobel, Senior Vice President of Global Operations.

Statements made by management during this earnings presentation that are forward-looking statements are based on current expectations. Risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements can be found in Carpenter's most recent SEC filings, including the Company's June 30, 2013 10-K, September 30, 2013 10-Q, and the exhibits attached to those filings.

I will now turn the call over to Bill.

Thank you Mike, and good morning, everyone.

During our last call, I conveyed that Q2 would be our most difficult quarter. It was, in fact, a very difficult quarter as aerospace and medical demand remained depressed. In this context, I believe that the Carpenter team executed very well. As a result, I believe Carpenter is well positioned to realize near-term revenue, margin and cash flow growth.

More specifically, during Q2, the specialty alloys operation, or SAO team as we call it, again drove volume growth. This volume growth was the result of strong gains in the transportation, industrial and consumer market segments.

In addition, the SAO operation team further reduced production cost per ton. The team accomplished this gain through their disciplined focus on cost, productivity, scrap management and yield improvement. In total, while SAO volume was up and costs were down, total revenue and margin were off due to reduced aerospace and medical sales.

The performance engineered products group, or PEP as we call it, was down in the quarter due largely to mix and operating performance. We have taken aggressive actions in this segment and anticipate a new performance trajectory beginning this quarter. Gary Heasley, our PEP Senior VP, will describe the PEP demand and operational dynamics to you in greater detail in a few moments.

As a result of our prior restructuring activity and aggressive cost control, SG&A for the Company was down versus Q2 last year. Adding it all up, in total, as a company, we experienced the seasonality and related earnings we expected. At the same time, in Q2, our order intake rate increased across all of our major end market segments. This increased order activity has raised our confidence that we can at least match prior year performance in Q3.

Equally as important, just Monday of this week, we held our Athens facility ribbon cutting ceremony and routed product through the facility. The Athens project is on budget and ahead of schedule. In fact, two weeks ago, PRI audited and is recommending that the Athens facility receive AS9100 accreditation as soon as March of 2014.

This is one of the key certifications required to ship products into the aerospace market. We had a great team effort, and it yielded a fantastic result. As of today, over 80% of the Athens project has been completed. The remainder of the project-related spend will be completed over the next 18 to 24 months.

We need to pay some bills for our Q2 Athens spend in Q3. After that, we expect to move back to strong cash flow generation beginning in Q4.

Before we leave this page, I want to point out an important change we have made as it relates to our Athens project. We have decided to use straight line depreciation rather than units of production for the Athens facility. Note this change does not impact our EBITDA, but will only increase our EPS breakeven by approximately 1000 tons per year. Tony will explain this decision and its implications in greater details in a few moments.

Moving to page 2, you can see that we had some pluses and minuses from a market subsegment perspective. Despite growing Boeing and Airbus build rates, the aerospace sales continue to be down. The good news is that demand for engine related parts has stabilized, and we are expecting fastener demand to grow in the second half of our fiscal year.

While down versus last year, energy sales picked up nicely versus Q1. The drill rig is moving up, and we see signs that power generation is gaining momentum.

Medical demand remained depressed. But fortunately, the growing North American automotive build, combined with increased Carpenter content on new engine platforms, led to strong growth in the transportation subsegment. We also saw a spike in industrial and consumer activity due to an increased number of new plant and infrastructure projects, which require Carpenter materials.

Overall, while we achieved volume growth, we saw revenue decline due to lower aerospace and medical sales. These are two of our highest margin subsegments and typically represent approximately 50% of our revenue. As demand recovers in these key segments, we anticipate we will begin to see both sales revenue and margin expansion again. Signs indicate we will see this recovery begin this quarter and expand throughout the calendar year.

With that, I will turn the call over to Tony who will explain our financial performance in greater detail.

Thank you Bill, and good morning to everyone.

Let's start on slide 7 with the financial overview of the quarter, and then we can get into some other details.

Overall, we had another clean quarter, and the results were in line with our expectations. Net income was $29.5 million, or $0.55 per share. Net sales, excluding surcharge, was $415 million.

Importantly, two of our key end-use markets, aerospace and energy, account for 59% of our total sales. Operating margins decreased sequentially by 260 basis points due to weaker sales mix.

We generated cash flow from operations of $7 million, and free cash flow was a negative $100 million. Capital expenditures for the quarter were $98 million. And lastly, our total liquidity stands at $598 million with $106 million of cash on hand.

Now let's turn to the next couple of slide, and we will get into more detail. Moving to slide 8 and the income statement summary. Revenue in the quarter was $504 million, or $415 million excluding surcharge. We realized growth in transportation and industrial and consumer, which helped offset continued soft demand in our aerospace business.

However, our market position in our key markets remains strong. Overall, the long-term market fundamentals remain solid, and we are well-positioned to capitalize on growth opportunities.

SG&A was virtually flat sequentially at $48 million in the quarter. Our internal emphasis has been and remains to hold SG&A cost flat versus year over year, even with the increased overhead cost in assets, and we are achieving that objective.

Operating income was $47.5 million in the quarter. Included in the $47.5 million was a $2.2 million benefit, due to the correction of the amount of pension earning, interest and deferrals capitalized into inventory. It also included $1 million of Athens start up costs.

Operating income, excluding pension EIB, was $51.3 million in the quarter. Operating margins declined sequentially 260 basis points to 12.4%. This was driven primarily by a sequential decrease in aerospace products partially offset by improved manufacturing performance.

The effective tax rate for the quarter was 33.6%. However, for the remainder of FY14, we should use an all-inclusive rate of 34%. Lastly, as I mentioned earlier, net income for the quarter was $29.5 million or $0.55 per share.

Now let's turn to Slide 9 and the free cash flow summary. Net cash flows provided from operations was $7 million. This is our fifth quarter in a row of positive net cash from operation. In the second quarter, we increased our working capital, primarily due to lower accounts payable, as spending on the Athens facility begins to wind down.

In addition, our required pension contributions were significantly lower again this quarter, as a result of the strategic discretionary pension contribution we made in the third quarter of FY13. The result was a $69 million year-to-date improvement in net cash from operating activities compared to prior year.

For the quarter, we continue to have elevated capital expenditures, again driven by the Athens project, which was $78 million or 80% of the total capital expenditures in the quarter. In the third quarter FY14, we expect capital expenditures to be lower than Q2. And while Q3 free cash flow will still be negative, it will be substantially improved versus Q2.

In the fourth quarter, we expect CapEx to again decrease on a sequential basis, as the Athens spending declined significantly. Accordingly, we anticipate strong positive free cash flow beginning in the fourth quarter of this year.

As Bill mentioned earlier, we have decided to use the straight line depreciation method for our Athens facility. After careful consideration, we believe this method is more widely accepted and will cause less earnings volatility quarter to quarter. To help you adjust your models, we anticipate Athens depreciation of approximately $4.5 million per quarter once the facility is fully operational.

For full FY15, we estimate Athens depreciation to be approximately $18 million. As the Athens project nears completion, and with minimal near-term required pension contributions, or debt payments due, we believe Carpenter has the ability to generate significant free cash flow going forward.

With that, let me turn it over to Andy.

Thank you Tony. I will now cover the SAO segment.

For the quarter, we drove higher volumes compared to a year ago and the previous quarter. These volumes were driven mainly by stronger underlying demand and share gains in the transportation and industrial consumer market segments. We continue to benefit from the growth of our materials and new engine platforms designed to meet the new CAFE standards.

Additional capacity provided by the Athens facility enables us to expand our participation in to new market segments. This is desirable volume for us. And as the Athens facility becomes online and fully qualified, it will allow us to capture more volume and enjoy the richer margins associated with more premium applications.

We have already begun to see the early signs of participation in new market segments, such as the chemical processing industry or CPI. These early orders are specifically targeted for our Athens facility.

The quarter experienced a weaker sales mix resulting from lower volumes of aerospace materials, which diluted overall operating margins. We continue to manage our costs, which resulted in lower operating cost per ton and lower SG&A costs compared to a year ago. Despite weaker demand in certain key market segments, our pricing continues to be virtually unchanged compared to prior period levels.

Moving forward, order intake labels were up significantly in Quarter 2, compared to a relatively soft quarter a year ago, and January has continued that trend. We expect sequential volume growth across all market segments. We will continue our focus on execution and cost management.

Before I turn the call over to Gary, I would like to discuss the challenges we're facing in the month of January. The severe cold weather that we are experiencing in the northeastern US is having a significant impact on electric cost. We anticipate a negative impact of as much as $4 million in the third quarter associated with higher electric costs and related curtailed operation.

I will now turn the discussion over to Gary Heasley to cover the PEP segment.

Thank you, Andy, and good morning, everyone.

Our performance engineered products, or PEP businesses, continued to experience challenging market conditions in the second quarter. As we look forward into the second half of our fiscal year, we see indications of improving market fundamentals, and we have taken steps this quarter to position our PEP business to capitalize on those improvements.

Operating income was negatively impacted by continued weakness in demand for titanium in the medical and distribution markets, and weaker shipments into the aerospace market. These market dynamics were partially offset by continued strength in rentals of our drilling tools as service companies opted to rent tools instead of purchasing.

As we look to the third quarter, we expect market conditions to remain challenging but begin to improve, and we expect the PEP businesses to deliver improved results from the second quarter. The improvements we anticipate are an expected increase in demand for titanium in aerospace as inventories are better aligned with demand throughout the supply chain, and an increasing onshore and offshore drilling activity in oil and gas. Our distribution businesses had strong bookings late in the quarter, which is a further indication of increasing activity in the oil and gas market.

Within the PEP companies, our team is taking action to respond our customers' needs and improve results. In response to our customers' forecasts of increasing demand in titanium fastener wire, we will launch an additional wire finishing line in the third quarter. Also we have identified and implemented cost savings actions in our powder operations as we work to improve execution in that business.

We continue to increase our investment in downhole drilling tools to support our customers' demand for rental tools in both North America and Asia. We believe that we will see increasing positive momentum in the third fiscal quarter, which will carry through the balance of the fiscal year.

PEP is well positioned to benefit from anticipated strengthening in the aerospace and energy markets. Strengthening in these markets, combined with our continued focus on operational improvements, will benefit the PEP companies in the second half of FY14.

And now I will hand off the call to Dave Strobel who will provide an update on our Athens project.

Thanks Gary, and good morning, everyone.

We have obviously had a lot of interest regarding our Athens facility. I wanted to give you a quick update on this key project today as part of our presentation.

In short, we are very pleased with the construction to date and the progress into the startup phase. While we still have much work to do, as Bill mentioned earlier, we are tracking it ahead of schedule and are on budget.

We have now started operating a condition area; we have also begun processing heat through our ESR and VAR furnaces. We have also now hotworked several ingots through the centerpiece of our facility, the largest in the world, radial press, pictured here on this slide in the upper right corner.

Again, there is lots of work to do yet commissioning these large and complex pieces of equipment. As we get them dialed in, we will also begin to validate our equipment from the technical perspective.

Over the next few months, we will also begin working to complete the finish equipment installation. That side of the operation is also progressing very well. I can't say enough about the great progress we have been making in every aspect of this project, thanks to the dedication and hard work of our engineering, maintenance and production folks.

From a quality certification perspective, we have received ISO17025 approval and have been recommended for accreditation of this site for AS9100 certification. This certification and the lab approvals are important steps in giving us the clearance to make products to the most stringent aerospace requirements in this facility.

The auditors were very complementary of the people they interfaced with, as well as the culture they felt as they interviewed our employees. This is great validation of the selection and training program we have put in place to support this facility.

Also, I believe it is important to note, that the auditors saw great strength in our cross facility training and support from our other locations, including Reading and Latrobe. In short, they were very impressed.

Wrapping up this slide, the important point I want to make is this: the work we have done to automate our material handling and streamliner processes, as well as building our high level process control into every one of our operations, is truly excellent work. We will leverage this work back across our entire mill system as we continue to improve all of our operations.

And we firmly believe the lean flow design and associated short lead time capability of this facility is a game changer in the industry. It gives us, as well as our customers, the ability to reduce the working capital required to support our markets, as we can now make quality product much faster.

I will now turn the call back to Bill.

Thank you, Dave.

The operations team has done an outstanding job with the design, construction and staffing of the plant. We need to complete the commissioning, but I am very confident that this will be completed on budget and ahead of schedule. The result will be a world-class operation, which will be the leanest, have the shortest leadtime, and house the most capable radial press in the world.

Wrapping it up, on page 17, Q2 performance was as we expected. Sales demand for aerospace and medical products remained depressed. We took action to mitigate the related impact; more specifically, we executed well in reducing cost and gained share in several key segments.

Looking forward, our order intake rate has increased. Last year at this time, our backlog was dropping. This year, our sales backlog is up versus Q1. As a result, even factoring in the negative impact from the roughly $4 million unusual spike in energy cost, and all incremental Athens expense, we expect our FY14 Q3 operating EPS to be similar or better to the adjusted EPS reported in Q3 last year.

Beyond Q3, if our markets continue to recover and the Athens startup proceeds as anticipated, it makes for a very exciting outlook. Our operating income is 12.4% of sales, in spite of weak aerospace demand. Now our order intake rate is increasing.

Once we get a healthier mix with greater aerospace and medical sales, complete some key PEP operational improvements and drive some volume through Athens, we expect sales and profit momentum to grow as we complete our fiscal year. With the majority of the Athens spend behind us, those earnings will drive strong cash flow in Q4 and in our FY15.

Given our strong balance sheet and the fact that we need no major unannounced capital investment to support our targeted volume growth, we believe we have a great opportunity to leverage our operating cash flow to increase shareholder returns. We still have a lot of work to do and we need to see continued signs of market demand recovery, but our future is looking bright.

With that, I will turn the call over to the operator to take your questions. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions)

Julie Yates Stewart, Credit Suisse.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Bill, Just for clarification, the guidance for flat EPS in FQ3 with last year included the additional $4 million of electric cost?

That is correct. Yes.

Okay. So you are offsetting that headwind?

We are offsetting that, and I just want to clarify that last year, as you may recall, we had an adjusted EPS which was actually higher than our reported EPS.

Okay. You are speaking to the adjusted $0.69?

Speaking to the adjusted number, yes.

And you mentioned accelerating the customer qualifications at Athens. Is this more in oil and gas? Or are you talking about aerospace too? And how long do you think the aerospace qualifications will take?

We have seen a very significant interest from our aerospace and other customers in the Athens facility. And once they have toured the facility, that level of enthusiasm has increased.

So we have a number of what we would call fast track programs to move through the qualification. It does take time because of the nature of the product. And we expect that we will be getting approval starting this fiscal year, continuing all the way through -- we will say the next two years, as we bring on different portions of our business starting more primarily in oil and gas and then expanding with the aerospace approval.

Okay. So where does that leave you in terms of when you are expecting to hit the 4000 premium tons to achieve breakeven? Does that have to go specifically through Athens? Or is that just incremental tons across the integrated mill system?

It really is across the integrated mill system. And so Andy referenced before, and he can speak to -- we really are seeing some great opportunities not just in aerospace but in other markets, very attractive markets we just haven't been able to go after and support in the past.

Frankly, it has been very well received when we have gone to those market spaces and customers. And so as we bring in that additional volume, we can use the entire system, and we will produce where that product makes the best fit and of course has the needed approvals.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Sal Tharani, Goldman Sachs.

Thank you very much. Good morning.

Good morning.

Last quarter, we had discussed the Temper Tough material, which you had some kind of JV alliance with US Steel. I was wondering, how big is that opportunity? Because automotive has been doing very well. It is very large in terms of volume business.

Recently we saw aluminum sheet used on the F150 truck had caught a lot of attention, just the volume required from our oil industry is significant. Is there something that could be a big contributor for you in the future?

There is no question about it, and we are continuing to make progress. And we're continuing to work with US Steel. And we're very optimistic that this may be a great solution for steel to have the light weighting and yet the strength properties that are required.

And if you look at it, aluminum, while it provides a good solution, is clearly a more expensive option. So if we can prove out our technology and show that the desired properties can be achieved, then there is an opportunity for the metal produced with our technology to grow widely across the automotive industry.

That being said, we are not looking to necessarily produce that product within our facility. Certainly for certain niche applications it would make sense. But that is why we are looking with US Steel and other partners, because they have the bulk and large processing capabilities to potentially move this into the marketplace. If we were successful in working with them, it is more likely that we would see the benefits in terms of, say, for example, a royalty-type revenue as opposed to a direct sales revenue.

And is this a body in white product, or is it the structure inside like extrusions and so forth?

Sal, it's Andy Z.

Yes, it's body in white. Primarily body in white, but then it has the capabilities to have the opportunities through light-weighting to spread into non-traditional ultra-high-strength applications like cranks and pistons and what have you. But the original target would be body in white.

Is it the alloy technology, or is it the rolling technology? What are you bringing to the table?

We are really bringing the material itself. So what our contribution would be the recipe for the material and the characteristics and the optimization for the properties that are required to hit the standards that are being required.

Thank you. Just one quick one.

I don't know if we should read anything in there, but you mentioned 20% of the CapEx of Athens will be spent 18 to 24 months. In the past you've mentioned usually within 18 months. I was wondering if anything we should read into this.

Nothing at all. We're staging the investment just as it makes the most sense, and 18 months would be a logical time frame. So I put a little broader window there, but there is nothing to read into that.

Thank you very much.

Steve Levenson, Stifel Nicolaus.

Thanks, good morning, everybody.

Good morning, Steve.

Can you tell us a little bit more about [more best] qualification? Are the costs all built-in as part of the Athens spend? Is that what is over the next 18 months, plus or minus? And can you also tell us how many alloys you expect to qualify and how long it is expected to take?

Sure. When we speak to, if you will, special startup expenses related to Athens, we are primarily speaking of what we will say is unabsorbed labor. We have a team here, and we are not running on a constant basis as we are qualifying materials. That would be unusual expense.

We are not calling that out as special, but we are noting it in our results just so that you can understand -- because we do view this as more one-time in nature. Our goal is to get the facility clearly up to full consistent and, we will say, uniform operation, where we do not have any of these variances from standards during the next fiscal year.

In terms of the number of materials -- Dave?

This is Dave.

Just to add in here. When you take a look at the qualification, we would need to qualify the processes themselves to make sure that they are functioning the way we would expect them to, getting the properties that we are looking for. And then we start to work through a series of different alloys. And so in total, today, we have about 300 experimental orders planned to support that qualification process. We have probably about 1,300 tons aimed at those experimental orders then, to get the process moving.

Okay, thanks. And then it is just a matter of calibrating everything so it either happens quickly? Or it might take a little longer per alloy?

Right. Again, as far as the startup goes, these are fairly complex pieces of equipment. We are really pleased with how it has been going to date. There is a lot of work to do there yet. But obviously, we have worked hard to be ahead of schedule versus where we expected to be at this time, and we're going to continue to keep our foot on the gas and move as quickly as we can through those experimental orders.

Great. Thank you for the additional detail.

Thank you.

Gautam Khanna, Cowen and Company.

Thank you. A couple of questions.

Bill, if you could update us on your mid-decade targets you laid out a couple years ago? Do you feel like you're still on track to hitting them? If you could tell us how do you think we get from here to there?

Certainly.

We, in fact, we just had our fall strategic plan; we reported out on that this week. We looked at that. And we have a path, and we're excited about moving in that direction.

The timing, we will say, of the aerospace recovery will be probably the biggest variable in terms of whether that occurs in FY15 or FY16. But we clearly have a path to get there now. It's not an easy path; it is going to take a lot of work. But as you have seen, we have been able to execute, I think, a pretty rigorous agenda over the last couple of years.

The main parts of the formula are very straightforward. One is, we need to bring in more volume in our SAO business, and we need to do so in margins which are consistent or higher than what we have had in the past. We also need to see the operational improvements we have been targeting with our PEP business. We will are confident we will see those. As Tony mentioned, we need to keep our overhead and cost per ton flat. And if we do those items, we will be there. And we're looking forward to it.

Just a quick follow-up.

We look at FY15 is right around the corner, and I look at consensus estimates that imply a 48% increase in EPS. I was wondering if you could talk about puts and takes this fiscal year to next. We talked about the Aero destocking, updating and realigning with the underlying consumption. But are there other items that we should be mindful of that are substantially better as we move into FY15 relative to FY14?

We continue to work on our operating improvements. As I mentioned, and Andy can speak to this, we are picking up some additional business, and we will get the benefit of volume leverage. Because essentially, our fixed costs in the system are what they are. Whether it be the Athens overhead Tony has clarified, the depreciation, we are not planning on increasing our overhead across the company. So as we get the incremental volume in, we should see the incremental gross profit more or less going to the bottom line.

Now, we see a clear uptick in orders, and of course, we want to see that sustained for a longer period of time. It is not clear if that will be, we will say, a slow and steady and sustained ramp up; or if it will be something more similar to what we saw in 2010, where the backlog and the order level came in much faster as people began to order at a, we will say, a more normal and rapid rate. If we see that, I think we have the opportunity to see a really outstanding FY15. If it is a slower ramp up, I think it will be a challenge to achieve the types of numbers you were referencing just a moment ago.

Last question.

In terms of your exposure to time of downstream conversion work that you process now, have you seen any of that work disappear? And if so, could you size it again for us?

Are you referring to the [wire] portion?

Yes, the long product conversion.

We have a long-term agreement, and that agreement has, if you will, annual targets, minimum, maximum, a normal long-term structure. And we continue to process material in a manner which is consistent with that long-term contract.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Josh Sullivan, Sterne Agee.

Good morning.

Good morning.

With regard to your comments about the Athens investment winding down, how should we think about capital deployment? Is buying back the share dilution from the Latrobe acquisition a priority? Or are M&A targets more attractive at this point?

Well, we would love to find, first, organic opportunities to extend ourselves, those that have quick payback and high returns. Then next, I would say, if there are very attractive acquisitions, we are quite comfortable and think there are some areas that we could expand our business. So that would be a very logical choice.

I think you have also seen that we have taken a very disciplined approach. We are not looking to overpay with a kind of strategic umbrella over that purchase justification. And yes, if in fact those two items don't deliver the opportunities that we're excited about, buying back shares would be a very logical thing for us to begin doing.

Okay. And what are the drivers to get the medical market going again? Did you see a turn in titanium raw material pricing? And are you seeing that?

This is Gary.

In the medical market, we do see some increase in demand. We are also becoming more targeted in our actions to try to grow our presence in that market. So from the titanium perspective, we think we will see some improvements from here through the end of the year.

One last one on pension. How close are you guys to being fully funded? Do you think you can move that off balance sheet at some point?

Yes. This is Tony.

Certainly that would be the goal down the road. From a PPA standpoint we are 100% funded in the legacy plan and in the 80% funded range in the Latrobe plan.

We are in very good shape with the discretionary contribution we made. And we will go out of couple years, you maybe have $6 million required contribution this year and next year $15 million, maybe. So we're in a very good spot with our pension.

Okay. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions)

Phil Gibbs, KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Good morning, guys.

Good morning, Phil.

I had a question just on the energy business, particularly the oil and gas. Your comments seem to be fairly positive. Any color you could give us on just what you are seeing and how you're viewing the inventories in the channel right now? Do you think we are finally at the end of a lot of the weakness we have seen in the last year or so?

I will tell you -- this is Gary, Phil.

From the perspective of our businesses that are downstream in the oil and gas sector, we have seen a nice improvement in activity that was called out to us earlier this year as our customers were identifying this time period as a point where they would expect to see a spike.

We have seen some of that improvement, both in materials that are being ordered and the types of materials, indicating a broader type of activity going in; and in the volume in the activity. That includes the downhole tools that we produced and rent. I hope that gives you the color you are looking for, but it is a generally positive move.

This is Bill.

I would just add that, we know that we are pretty far back in the chain, and because of that, we tend to see a little bit more of a whipsaw motion as markets may trend up or in cases trend down. As confidence builds, and assuming that, that continues, I think that our customers -- we're getting the sense are getting more comfortable with the idea of ensuring that they have the right level of materials on their floor. Now, if there are further disruptions in the economy, that obviously could change the mindset.

Terrific. Bill, I had a question on just your own internal inventory levels.

I know that it was a point of the discussion. You had been working with, I think some outside folks about a year ago. What really is your inventory management strategy today? And how should we think about -- how are you feeling about your current levels as we move into the back half of the year as far as, too high, too low, you feel okay -- that sort of thing? Just trying to see how you are thinking about that.

Sure. So there is really two answers to your question there. One relates to this fiscal year. As is typically the case, in the first half of the fiscal year, we will have a bit of a build because we need to be ready for the second half of the year which has a higher volume of finished products shipped. And so we would expect that we will see, just like we did last year, some of our inventory go down. So we will be at a similar level at the end of the year as we were at the start of the year. And of course, that will be over the next six months.

As it relates to the longer-term view, we clearly see inventory as an opportunity. And our goal is to keep our inventory at levels that are similar to where we are today, in the context of what we hope and expect will be growing volume sales. So we are looking to increase our inventory turns as we increase our volume base. And that will make an improvement, but it will also help to avoid issues of us going into LIFO layers and things like that which kind of confuse the whole financial performance. And we are trying to stay away from that.

Perfect. And if I could just ask one more on the housekeeping side.

The $2 million tailwind for you relative to the first quarter on the pension side -- is that something we are expecting going forward on a run rate basis, Tony?

No. That was the catch-up in going forward. We do our normal reviews; we saw that was something we should probably add to what we capitalize. We have done it now. That was to catch-up, it was small, and going forward, it will just be a part of the normal results. It is not another impact to the course going forward.

Thank you very much.

Sal Tharani, Goldman Sachs.

Thank you.

Aside from the 4,000 tons of incremental tonnage for [the big one], you also mentioned 8,000 tons you would be insourcing from this new facility? I was wondering what would be the track between the two? Would you be qualifying or producing the insourcing first, before the 4,000 tons of outside sales?

I really appreciate you asking that question because I think it is an important area to clarify. We have two different actions or types of actions. Athens is enabling both of them.

One is the 4,000 tons that, we will say, reaches our breakeven; of course, we are targeting more volume than that. But we need that. And those will be tons that stay consistent with our current mix, what we call premium tons.

What the second part and the insourcing that you referenced -- that is really just because, in the past, we were out of head space, so we had to have a number of materials and a number of conversion processes done on the outside. We can do those less expensively on the inside. They are not incremental tons like a new sale would be, but they do help us with our objective to keep our cost per ton flat. And in fact, we are targeting to go down even with inflation and other factors at work against you.

So the insourcing will help with the cost management, and the new tons with the new markets and the growth in our existing markets. Those are really the premium tons we talk about related to achieving our breakeven. And more importantly, down the road, of course, getting the right return on our investment for our investors.

And if I look at the production profile, would the 8,000 tons be [extricating] faster in the beginning, or will they be running parallel with each other?

The insourcing would be coming quick. As an example, when we talk about qualification work, there has been a lot of qualification work done between Reading operations and Latrobe operations, and we're through a lot of that. And so whether it is grinding or hot rolling in different places, we have been moving material around the mill system to help support that.

And so we are talking about 5,000 tons, that neighborhood, that we are bringing back into some of these key operations. We have done the qualification work there and we have added capacity to help support debottlenecking.

The other 3,000 tons relates more to items where we have, in some cases, single stage activities in terms of processing, where we actually had to send product out mid-process to have the steps completed so that we could complete the rest of it due to capacity limitations.

Would you be going forward giving us the numbers coming out of the Athens facility and break it down between these two categories?

I think we can certainly share with you the progress we are making on insourcing. That is pretty straightforward. And we will discuss SAO, which, as we talked about, is the system. And it works together. And what we have in Athens, like we just referenced, enables us to bring in other volume. That volume may go to Reading. It may go to Latrobe as we get approvals. We can bring product down to Athens. And so we will continue to use the whole system.

It is a little bit, in my mind, like we called out Latrobe in the first year after we acquired it, so we had some visibility. We're calling out Athens right now so that you have some visibility about it. But going forward, we are going to talk about the business. And of course we do today. We are going to talk about the business in its entirety and how the system is working and how that is performing. And the key will be that the system has the capacity and the capability, so that we can do things that we couldn't do before.

That is very helpful. I have one more question for Gary.

On the titanium wire capacity, Gary, can you give us the magnitude of this capacity? And if you think the market is going to absorb that easily?

The magnitude -- we will add another 400,000 pounds of finishing capacity in our system here. That is an amount that is not extraordinary, in light of what we are hearing from our customers that their demand increase will be over the next couple years. So we do think it will be absorbed easily. We won't be pressed to fill it, if you will. We are not going to do crazy things to fill that capacity. I think it will blend in and our customers will feel better for having it.

We have actually had customers tell us they are concerned that we do not have sufficient capacity to meet their needs. We're doing this specifically to address that comment.

And our goal here with this, and that is why we are already talking about another line. These are not huge capital investments like the Athens facility. But our goal is to have, if you will, extra capacity so that if there are specific spikes in demand, we can support our customers. We know we have an important supply to them, and we want to provide the best service we can and make sure they are confident and comfortable in terms of working with us in this critical area.

Thank you very much.

Julie Yates Stewart, Credit Suisse.

Thank you. Tony, one on interest expense.

What should we be the modeling for the year? And how do we think about headwinds on the capitalized interest as Athens comes online?

On the capitalized interest part, we probably, we had a tailwind in FY14 compared to FY13, probably approximately $5 million. That is going to flip, obviously, in FY15 because our capital expenditures are going to go down significantly. That could be as much as a $6 million to $7 million headwind for us in FY15. But that is baked into our assumptions and into our targets next year.

Okay. And what is the number we should be using for 2014?

Approximately $11 million, I would say.

What is important, though, in that number is that, of course, Athens is the shining star as it relates to that. But we have ongoing and other projects.

Next year we will be pretty deep in our super alloy powder construction projects. And that is why the year-over-year change will not be the aggregate number. It will be the numbers that Tony referenced.

Okay. You would just be adding the $7 million to the $11 million from this year?

Well, it will actually be $7 million from the $11 million. It will go down; the capitalized interest -- it helps us, if you will.

Okay.

That concludes the question and answer portion of today's call. Let me now turn it over to Mr. Mike Hajost for any closing remarks.

Thank you again for participating in today's call. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Thank you and goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.