Kaiser Aluminum Corp (KALU) 2014 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good day and welcome to the Kaiser Aluminum second quarter 2014 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. Now at this time, I will turn the call over to your host, Melinda Ellsworth, Vice President and Treasurer. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Kaiser Aluminum's second quarter 2014 earnings conference call. If you have not seen a copy of our earnings release, please visit the investor relations page on our website at KaiserAluminum.com. We have also posted a PDF version of the slide presentation for this call.

Joining me on the call today are Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Jack Hockema; Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Dan Rinkenberger; and Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer, Neal West.

Before we begin, I would like to refer you to the first two slides of our presentation and remind you that the statements made by management and the information contained in this presentation that constitute forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations.

For a summary of specific risk factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the Company's earnings release, earnings presentation and our most recent reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the full year ended December 31, 2013.

In addition, we have included non-GAAP financial information in our discussion. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are included in the earnings release and in the appendix of the presentation. Any reference in our discussion today to EBITDA means adjusted EBITDA, which excludes non-run rate items for which we've also provided reconciliations in the appendix.

At the conclusion of the Company's presentation we will open the call for questions. I would now like to turn the call over to Jack Hockema. Jack?

Thanks Melinda. Welcome to everyone joining us on the call today. We had strong second quarter EBITDA of $46 million and 24% margin, driven by another record quarter of shipments for both heat treat plate and automotive extrusions and improving manufacturing efficiency, up 10% compared to the run rate of the prior three quarters.

Even though we're in the early stages of implementing the Phase 5 expansion at Trentwood, the throughput and efficiency gains from this investment are exceeding our expectations and were an important contributor to the second quarter results. With the disruption from Trentwood's construction activities behind us, following completion and startup of the new casting complex in June and with additional potential for gains from investments made across our platform in recent years, we expect to realize continued improvement in manufacturing efficiencies throughout the remainder of 2014 and beyond.

Looking forward, we continue to anticipate full year results similar to 2012 and 2013, as improved manufacturing efficiencies and increased shipments are expected to offset the impact from lower heat treat plate prices compared to prior years.

On that note, I'll turn the call over to Dan for further discussion of the second quarter results and then I'll provide additional comments regarding our near term outlook. Dan?

Thanks Jack. Turning to slide 6, total value-added revenue in the second quarter grew 3% compared to the second quarter of 2013, as we continued to ramp up automotive extrusion programs to record levels and shipped record pounds of heat treat plate. Automotive extrusion value added revenue in the second quarter was up 59% over the prior year quarter.

Aerospace value-added revenue in the second quarter also improved slightly over the prior year, as lower pricing for most products was more than offset by higher volume of aerospace shipment volumes.

With our manufacturing efficiency in the second quarter running at a pace favorable to the second quarter of last year, EBITDA increased $2 million year-over-year and our second quarter EBITDA margin improved to 24.4%.

On a sequential basis, second quarter value added revenue and value added revenue per pound both increased 2% compared to the first quarter, due to a slight shift in mix, as increased aerospace and automotive shipments offset a reduction in general engineering shipments.

More dramatically, second quarter EBITDA improved $10 million to $46 million and EBITDA margin improved from 19.7% to 24.4%, primarily due to improved costs. As expected, the $5 million of weather related energy costs and benefits accruals highlighted in the first quarter earnings call were not repeated in the second quarter.

More importantly, as Jack previously noted, we began to realize throughput and efficiency gains from our investments, particularly from the Phase 5 plate expansion at Trentwood. These efficiency gains contributed approximately $5 million in the second quarter compared to the first quarter. And with our casting complex at Trentwood ramping up, we expect a trend of further throughput in efficiency gains as we move into the second half of this year.

On slide 7, we review our first half 2014 performance. Our total value added revenue in the first half of 2014 was $375 million, which was a slight improvement over the prior year. Underlying this improvement, however, was a 55% increase in automotive extruded value-added revenue, which more than offset a year-over-year decline in aerospace value-added revenue.

As anticipated, EBITDA in the first half of 2014 of $83 million was comparable to the last half of 2013. However, it was a decline of $9 million from the first half of 2013. This year-over-year decline was driven by several factors. The prior year period benefited from a $4.5 million aerospace customer contract payment.

Additionally, planned major maintenance expense was $3 million higher in the first half of this year compared to last year. And as you may recall from last quarter's earnings call, we incurred approximately $2 million of incremental weather related energy costs in the first quarter, which also contributed to the lower EBITDA in the first half of this year. These factors also accounted for the decline of EBITDA margin to 22% in the first half of 2014.

However, as demonstrated by the sequential improvement in the second quarter, we expect our EBITDA margin to improve in the second half of this year, as additional throughput in efficiency gains from our recent investments at Trentwood are realized.

On slide 8, we show key consolidated financial metrics. Consolidated operating income as reported was $46 million in the second quarter, which included $8 million of non-run rate gains. Adjusting for non-run rate items, consolidated operating income was $39 million in the second quarter, up $2 million from the prior year quarter and $10 million from the first quarter of this year.

My earlier discussion of quarterly EBITDA comparisons also applies to adjusted operating income.

For the first half of 2014, consolidated operating income as reported of $79 million included $11 million of non-run rate gains. Adjusted for these non-run rate gains, first half consolidated operating income was $68 million, which was down $10 million from the first half of 2013. In addition to the items that I previously discussed with respect to EBITDA, the decline in adjusted operating income reflected $1 million of additional depreciation expense in the 2014 period.

Reported net income for the second quarter was $25 million or $1.33 per diluted share. For the first six months of 2014, reported net income was $40 million or earnings per diluted share of $2.18. Adjusting for non-run rate items, net income was $19 million for the second quarter and $33 million for the first six months or adjusted earnings per diluted share of $1.05 for the quarter and $1.76 for the first six months.

While our effective tax rate was 37% for both the second quarter and the first half of 2014, we continue to apply our net operating loss carry forwards, resulting in a cash tax rate in the low single digit percentages. Capital spending in the first half of 2014 totaled $30 million and we continue to expect capital spending for the year will be between $50 million and $60 million.

During the first six months of 2014 we repurchased nearly 350,000 shares of our common stock for $24 million and we paid $13 million in quarterly dividends. Liquidity remains strong as of June 30th, with cash and short-term investments exceeding $300 million and revolving credit availability of over $250 million.

And now Jack will discuss current industry trends and the business outlook. Jack?

Thanks Dan. Turning to slide 9, and a discussion of our aerospace and high-strength products, despite strong underlying demand and a robust long-term outlook, actual demand continues to reflect destocking related to excess supply chain inventory. For aerospace plate and extrusions, we expect that the inventory overhang will extend into 2015. For other aerospace products we are continuing to experience modestly improving demand, as the supply chain is slowly coming into balance.

Overall for these applications, we anticipate slowly improving demand as the inventory overhang continues to restrain actual demand below real demand levels.

Turning to slide 10 and the automotive outlook, we expect that second half value-added revenue for these products will be similar to the record first half pace, as we anticipate that lower seasonal build rates will be offset by growing content from new product launches of crash management systems and structural applications.

Beyond 2014, we expect these positive trends to continue, with steady long-term growth in content per vehicle as we launch new programs already booked for 2015 and further capitalize on a strong and growing pipeline of opportunities for new automotive extrusion programs.

Slide 11 addresses the outlook for general engineering applications. Consistent with prior years, we anticipate normal seasonal demand weakness for general engineering and industrial applications in the second half.

Slide 12 summarizes the short-term outlook. We have strong momentum headed into the second half, with three consecutive quarters of record heat treat plate shipments, record automotive extrusion shipments in each of the first two quarters of 2014 and record dollar per vehicle content up 30% in the first half compared to the record 2013 level. The Phase 5 Trentwood expansion project already exceeding our throughput and efficiency expectations and our new casting complex at Trentwood ramping up production.

Overall, we expect that second half value-added revenue, EBITDA and margin will be favorable to the prior year second half and that full year results will be similar to 2012 and 2013.

Summarizing our remarks today, our strong second quarter results were driven by record heat treat plate and automotive extrusion shipments, along with improving manufacturing efficiencies as we begin to realize the benefits of our most recent Trentwood investments. We anticipate further improvement in manufacturing efficiencies in the second half and we continue to expect that the full year results will be similar to 2012 and 2013.

Looking beyond this year, we remain bullish regarding Kaiser's long-term prospects and our ability to continue to drive shareholder value as we realize the full benefits from strong secular demand fundamentals for our aerospace and automotive applications and improving manufacturing efficiencies as a result of the capital investments made to support profitable growth.

In addition, our priorities for capital deployment will continue to be balanced among a combination of investments driving organic and inorganic growth, increasing quarterly dividends and returning excess cash to shareholders in the form of share repurchases.

We'll now open the call for questions.

(Operator Instructions) Tony Rizzuto, Cowen & Company.

First question is, now with your manufacturing inefficiencies moving behind the Company and all the fine work your team has been doing in terms of the investments and now is certainly a brightening outlook for your platform wins and your program wins, I'm wondering are we setting the stage for a meaningful move above the kind of $740 million to $750 million run rate that you've been doing on VAR, heading into 2015?

We're really just beginning to put together the plans for 2015, so it's really premature for me to comment on that. But we continue to be very confident that our longer-term potential is the high 800s in terms of value-added revenue and we fully expect we'll get there as these inventory overhangs abate and as we continue to see strong growth in automotive demand.

Alright Jack. And you still feel confident in your ability to be able on the adjusted EBITDA margins to see further improvement up to that upper kind of 20% range? Is that still possible?

Absolutely Tony. We saw the initial stages of the benefits in terms of manufacturing efficiency. We'd really been stuck in the mud here for the last nine months, primarily because of the construction at Trentwood, as well as some other distractions that we had, but that was a nice breakout.

But if you compare it, we were up 10%, as I said, compared to where we ran the prior three quarters, but we were actually up 6% compared to where we were in 2012, in terms of our manufacturing cost efficiencies. So we've moved to a whole new level of efficiency and we continue to see efficiency gains as we go forward. We're nowhere near the full potential of this platform; we have a lot of runway left in terms of that.

And we'll also get additional margin boost as we go forward from higher volume, which gives us more leverage on the fixed cost component of the equation. So we remain very optimistic that we can push that EBITDA margin into the high 20s over time.

Sounds very encouraging, Jack. Appreciate your insight on that. My other question, I have to ask about the departure of Pete Bunin. I've always regarded the consistency and abilities of your entire management team obviously to be one of the core strengths of Kaiser and I was wondering if you could just comment on his recent departure. I think not long before that, he was promoted to a more senior role within the organization.

Sure, Tony. Pete obviously has been a key person in our accomplishments here over the past 10 years or so and a major contributor. Unfortunately, he's left for personal reasons. We had put him in a newly defined and a very critical role, a role so critical that with him departing, I'm going to assume that responsibility of leading the development of our vision looking out long-term to 2025.

Keith Harvey has the operations folks focused on the next two or three years and they're really driving toward what we think are some great things we can accomplish over that time period. So we've got a very strong and deep management team here. We'll miss him, but we've got a lot of very talented people stepping up and I can tell you, they're energized, we're all energized by what we see as tremendous opportunities here.

Sal Tharani, Goldman Sachs.

A couple of things, on the automotive has been doing phenomenally well for the last few quarters and I was wondering, at one point I remember it was last quarter or quarter before, you mentioned that the average selling price you were getting per pound may not be sustainable and it will go back to a run rate of mid 90s [cents]. I'm just wondering if that's still the case. Because you've been doing very well even after those comments.

Yes, that is still the case, Sal. This thing, it bounces all around based on whatever the particular sales mix was within a particular quarter. But over the long-term as more and more new programs come on, we expect drive shaft tubing, which is the highest price per pound product that we have in that automotive mix, we don't expect that volume to decline, but it will become a smaller and smaller percent of the overall volume. So we expect that will gravitate downward.

Also, the last expansion you did, expansion number five, what utilization rate are you running at overall or at least on that volume?

We're not utilizing all of it but we're utilizing a good portion of our capacity at Trentwood right now, although as DC0 -- that's what we call it, our new casting complex, as it comes online and as we continue to gain the efficiencies that we expect, we're still not fully utilizing everything we expect to get from Phase 5. We'll continue to add capacity there.

So there is more expansion opportunities in Trentwood?

Yes, because while we're doing better than we thought we would do at this point in time, there still is additional capacity to come from these investments that we've installed, as we capture the full potential of these investments. We're nowhere near the end of the runway here in terms of cost or throughput.

And the cast house benefit wasn't there in the second quarter and you're going to see it actually in third quarter?

Actually, there was a little bit of benefit. There are two benefits from the cast house. One is it's going to be a very efficient casting unit, but the other benefit is that it replaces rolling ingot that we were purchasing on the outside. We actually cut off most of those purchases in the second quarter. So we had some benefit from lower what we call purchase price variances, the cost of outside ingot versus producing in house. But we don't have any benefits of the very efficient cost that we expect when we get this thing ramped up to full speed.

Okay. And one more if I may. You have moved your destocking of aluminum aerospace plate horizon into first quarter I believe 2015 from your earlier expectation of late this year. Has something changed from your customers that you're expecting that now?

If you go back through the chronology here on our fourth quarter call, which was in February, we said and we actually had a chart that we still have in our business update on the website that shows destocking extending into 2015. On the last call, we said we were a little bit more optimistic that it might wrap up sooner, but since then we've gotten further information from the marketplace that we're going to see it extending into 2015.

So really, it's nuanced the changes we've had from what we said in February then in April and to what we're now saying in July.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Timna Tanners, BofA Merrill Lynch.

You were kind enough to give us some thoughts on the uses of cash. I was just interested in your appetite for acquisitions, given that you have these NOLs still and interest rates are of course pervasively low. How do you think about build versus buy as you go forward and how are you leaning in terms of the different options that you mentioned?

We're exactly the same place that we've been for several years in terms of acquisitions. We're very bullish in terms of our organic growth opportunities, in terms of both more efficiency and in terms of sales growth. We've got a very strong platform and can have a very successful company without acquisitions.

That said, we certainly continue to look for complimentary acquisitions, but we have a very fine screen. We're very disciplined in terms of what we're going for, looking for things that are a good complimentary fit to our strategy and ones where we can get it at a price that creates shareholder value. And at this point, we've been close on a few, but haven't had the brass ring. But we continue to look and if the right one comes along at the right price, we'll pull the trigger.

Okay. That's great. I'm still trying to grapple with this last quarter, the stronger margins than we anticipated. How much can we attribute to cost controls that you talked about and how much do you think would be attributed to the better demand environment, roughly?

It's a small component of leverage from the higher value-added revenue and the predominant impact was from the improved costs.

Okay. That's helpful. Then last one from me, if I could, (Inaudible) [Alliances] commented on the import pressure and difficulty in heat treat aluminum and general engineering plate. How do you see that market going forward and is that something you can continue to offset, you think?

We pretty much have offset it. If you saw our margin, it was over 24% here in the second quarter; and the last two years we've been averaging 23.6%, 23.7%, something like that. So our margin here in the second quarter, despite a couple of points of margin erosion due to lower heat treat plate prices, we've more than offset with volume and with our improved cost efficiencies here in the second quarter.

So going forward, we're going to continue to see competitive price pressure. We don't think it's going to get much worse than what it is. Hopefully we've hit a bottom here. Although with the rise in aluminum prices, we may get some short-term impact. But over the long-term, we think it's pretty much bottomed out in terms of pressure. That import pressure has been there for two or three years.

So we'll see the import pressure. We'll deal with it and we'll keep running the business to capture the volumes and continue driving our costs down. We see that not only with the investments that we've made, but I go back to the answer to Tony's question, the role we had described for Pete, we see this as critical over the next 10 years and it's a big part of our vision. We see that as a key drive over the next 10 years to drive our costs down because we're going to have a competitive environment with more and more imports coming in here.

Edward Marshall, Sidoti & Company.

I'm just curious if we can maybe define destocking in the way you're using it. Because as I normally see it, I would assume that inventories would slide along with it. I'm looking at your inventory, especially as it relates to the aerospace volumes, up roughly 10.5% and to your own document on page 9, it looks like you're saying aerospace is 12%. Are you assuming that that's about 2% of destocking that's going on in the channel or am I looking at that number incorrectly? Is it potentially a portion of mix? How do I think about your volumes overall in aero in the context of destocking?

Is slide 9 the aerospace slide?

Yes, aerospace and high-strength.

The aerospace and high-strength slide, on the right-hand side of that slide, we're showing our average quarterly value-added revenue. So that's a combination of our shipment volume, our product mix and our pricing. And when you said 12%, I think the numbers there at the line is showing our value-added revenue per pound and that's a function of pricing and of mix.

So if you look at the second half of 2013, going to the first half of 2014, it's down $0.11 a pound and that's two factors. One factor is lower prices on heat treat plate. The second factor is a higher percentage of the shipment mix is heat treat plate. And heat treat plate is the lowest priced product among our portfolio of aerospace products. So the only impact of destocking you can see there is the impact that it would have on volume and our volumes were actually up this year, year-over-year, and the impact on price.

We do have in our business update, and I don't have that slide number off the top of my head, but if you look at our business update on the website, we have a chart that we showed in the February earnings call, where we actually do show our estimate of the impact of restocking and destocking on the aerospace plate supply chain.

Order of magnitude, I'm just recalling from memory, but I believe we show in 2012, and this is measuring mill shipments versus our calculation of what real demand is for what's required to build the planes that they're building; 2012 actually was an 8% to 10% restocking compared to real demand; 2013 was order of magnitude the same level of destocking. I'm sorry, 2014. Yes, 2013 was neutral.

This year is pretty much equal in that 8% to 10% destocking that we saw as restocking in 2012. And then that slide still shows and we've had it in there since February, it still shows roughly 2% or 3% destocking as we look out into 2015. So we continue to believe those are the case. We think that the destocking may not be as severe in 2015 as it is here in 2014, but we think we'll still see some. Did that get to your question, Ed?

It added more than what I was looking for, but I was pointing to the global commercial airframe builds that you have the chart on Airline Monitor. And if I looked at 2015 over 2014 shipments, it's 10%. If I look at 2014 over 2013, it's 12%. And then I see your volumes up roughly 10% in the quarter. So I'm just trying to put that in --

Generally I would have assumed that you would underproduce the production rates, assuming there is destocking but yet you continue to buck that trend. I'm trying to put that definition to the destocking as you mean it. Is it mix that's driving that number higher?

If you go back to our comments probably even in October last year, but certainly in February last year, we said that this destocking, the primary impact on us would be competitive price pressure with our competitors trying to buy business. But we didn't think it would have a dramatic impact on our volumes. And that in fact has been the case. Our volumes have held up maybe not on par with build rates, but we've had good steady growth in our volumes despite the destocking, which would suggest that our competitors believe what we say, which is we have a superior portfolio of products and they prefer to buy our products.

I see. Now, I think the way you price your products, especially in aerospace, is generally on a year-to-year basis. Is there a way I can look at maybe an average blend of your prices? Obviously 182 seems high and 187 seems kind of right. Is there a way that I can kind of look at an average price, based on the contracts that you already know what's in kind of your order book for the year, that we can kind of think about for pricing? Was it 10% to 15% was spot in aero on any given year?

Yes, maybe a little higher than that. And again, on that same page where we show the destocking trends in our business update, it shows the mix. I think it's more like a 20% or 25% of our heat treat plate is spot business - aerospace plate, I'm sorry, aerospace plate. But in 2014, the prices are relatively stable. The changes -- the prices by product.

The changes that you see quarter to quarter are primarily a function of product mix changes within that portfolio of aerospace and high strength products. Because remember, there's heat treat plate, there's aerospace sheet, aerospace extrusions, aerospace cold finished bar, aerospace small diameter rod and wire and drawn tube. And the value-added revenue on those ranges all the way from $1.50 or so up to sometimes $9.00 or $10.00 a pound. So it really becomes a function of the mix of pounds that we're shipping, rather than dramatic changes in price.

If I can maybe extrapolate on some questions earlier; the efficiencies and the contribution, I think it was said that you received roughly $5 million of benefit in the cost savings from just the execution on the efficiency side. And I also think you said it was going to improve into the second half of the year. And I'm just curious if you can kind of quantify both maybe the short and the long-term benefits that you anticipate you'll receive off of that business as we move forward. In short-term, I guess we can qualify -- talk about maybe this year.

No, we don't want to quantify that right now. We got a positive surprise in the second quarter that Phase 5 came up as rapidly and as well as it did. We're optimistic, but we're still ramping up our new casting complex.

And then the other part of this that will take time to realize, our new casting complex enables us to cast ingot sizes that we can build into new manufacturing practices that capitalize on improvements we've made downstream in the hot rolling and heat treat processing. And that will give us further cost efficiency benefits and it will take time as we slowly modify and upgrade those practices.

So this is something that has a lot of runway to it. All I will say is basically what we said on our outlook, we're very confident that our second half comparison year-over-year is going to be favorable. Are we going to perform at the second quarter level with seasonality? Not likely and the margins likely to be somewhere between that 22% that we had on the first half average and the 24.5% or so, 24.4% that we ran in the second quarter here. So somewhere in that 23.5%, 24% range probably, but it's hard to predict at this stage. There are a lot of variables in there.

Josh Sullivan; Sterne, Agee & Leach, Inc.

Just another question on the plate overhang, maybe phrased a little differently. In the past, you've talked about the plate overhang being platform specific. Is that related in any way to the A380 or the 747-A coming under pressure, coming down on rate? Then as well as the record shipments that you're also reporting; are those more related to the growth programs like the 787 and the A350 ramping up here? Can we slice it in that way?

First of all, we don't talk about specific customer issues here. I don't think we said it was platform specific. We said it was more customer specific, in terms of what's going on with the overhang, but that gets back, as you're alluding to, really to platform specific issues within their mix of products.

The records that we're seeing, some of that's coming from aerospace plate, but a big portion of that is actually coming from general engineering plate. We've actually lost a lot of our share in general engineering plate. We had major service center customers that wanted to buy more from us and we were land locked, so to speak, with insufficient capacity.

And now that we've brought Phase 5 on, it's opened up our capacity and we can fulfil their requirements to buy from us. So a lot of the record volume that we're seeing in heat treat plate frankly, is related to general engineering plate, although we are seeing modest growth in aerospace plate as well.

Josh, you asked about platform specific. The other thing is that most of the product that we sell to aerospace in terms of plate, is not platform specific. They're pretty much -- SIC codes or SKUs I mean, that they order that they can apply to a variety of applications on various platforms through the system.

Then with yourself taking over the long-term outlook role, maybe you can give us a little preview into what you're seeing out into that 2025 timeframe, if you have something to add?

We actually started into this a year ago, when Keith Harvey, who was VP Sales and Marketing at the time said canary in the coalmine, things are starting to get a little bit tougher out here, a precursor of what was happening to some of the price pressure that we're seeing now. And we had concerns, what's this look like for the long term.

So we undertook an analysis really, we do five-year, year by year projections every year. But in this case, we said let's also take a look at 2025. Our best guess of what Kaiser's world will look like in 2025.

And we modeled it with the plans that we had for the first five years and then just took what we call business as usual for the next seven or eight years and said what's this look like in terms of shareholder return.

And what we concluded with what we think is going to be a much more competitive long-term environment, we concluded that we have a platform, as it stands today, that can deliver good shareholder returns, based on how we see things developing over the next 10 or 12 years.

But as we did that exercise, we also took a step back and it caused us to see how tremendous some of those opportunities are as we look out to 2025 and then we concluded what we really should be doing here, because we have a lot of investment planned over the next five years, but we need to create a vision of what we really could look like in 2025. It could be a very different mix of facilities and plants with the kind of sales growth that we think we'll achieve over the next 10 years.

And so the mission we're on here is to think through what should that platform, what should that footprint look like and beyond that, what kind of major efficiency gains can we make. As we make these investments, how can we create breakthroughs in terms of our conversion costs and our processing as we go forward. So that's really the long-term piece of this.

Keith and his guys, they've got in tattooed on their eyelids what we expect to accomplish here between now and 2017, but then as a separate activity, we're looking at 2025 and how can we really make this a robust platform and how do we integrate that back into what we do over the next few years with the investments that we make, if that makes sense.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Brian Ossenbeck; JPMorgan.

I just want to shift gears to automotive for a minute here. Clearly you have talked about the capacity build out at Trentwood and made some comments on that earlier. So, when you look at autos, obviously not just the one plant; you have London, Ontario, which is a biggest one. So how do you feel about utilizations in that end market right now and at what point time would you think you would have to add some new capacity to meet that the light weighting trends that seem to be getting some pretty good traction recently?

Well, the short answer to adding capacity is now, in capital letters. Going back to the answer that I just gave to Josh in terms of this 2025 vision, we have several extrusion presses of capacity that we need to add over the next couple of years and over the next five years just to meet what we think the demand will be for products that Kaiser supplies. But as we look at to 2025, it's really significant. So that's a big part of what we are looking at is what should our automotive footprint look like.

But in terms of the short-term execution, we've modified a press in our Sherman, Texas plant that is going into automotive and is ramping up right now on some new programs for the first time. Our Bellwood, our Richmond, Virginia plant; it supplied drive shafts for a long period of time, they are ramping up some other presses on other programs, major new structural programs coming through.

Our London plant, which has been our bellwether all along, is running close to capacity, with a big part of their product mix dedicated to antilock brake systems, ABS blocks. We're in the process of moving, starting late this year and then heavily in 2015, moving our ABS production to our Kalamazoo plant, which will give us significant efficiencies.

London is a world-class, low cost plant, but the equipment we have at Kalamazoo is especially suited to running ABS. And so we will move that and that will create capacity at London and it will also create significant cost efficiencies for us, because Kalamazoo will be extremely efficient running these products.

So, we have a lot of levers that we are pulling right now. And we announced probably six months to nine months ago, we were going to be spending $15 million on automotive expansion; some of that's underway now. We've got another press that we'll probably get approval from our Board for here within the next two or three months, going into probably the London facility, and we're looking at more presses beyond that.

So, we see a lot of investment in automotive extrusion presses basically, but then also evaluating what that long-term footprint should look like and where should those presses go. Not necessarily, what's the very best for 2015, but what's the best for where we think we'll be in 2020 and 2025.

By ABS, he means antilock brake systems. I think you used those initials for a different product. Just want to make sure you understood that.

Yes, I'm aware of that, thank you. It's sound like the spending, as Trentwood ramps down and finishes up, you'll probably still be maybe in the $50 million to $60 million range as automotive cycle starts to kick in, in terms of CapEx per year?

Yes, we expect to be spending at this level for several years and we are not done at Trentwood. I mean, we don't see immediate needs for capacity at Trentwood, but we still have a lot of runway. Trentwood, we believe is probably the most efficient plate mill in the world right now, but it's not nearly as efficient as we think it can be. So we are looking at lots of investments there to improve our quality and reduce our cost with additional byproducts of capacity as we go.

Okay. And then you mentioned Kalamazoo; can you just review that as kind of a standalone entity? I think at one point in time you were still working on some efficiency improvements. Obviously you will benefit from the mix shift, but is it also fully certified for other types of automotive products that need to go to ramp?

Yes. Kalamazoo has by far the best quality of any of our plants and all of our plants typically have the best quality in the industry. So it has superlative quality. We continue to make progress there; we're still not at our full potential at Kalamazoo, but frankly, we haven't talked about it, it was part of the cost story in the second quarter as well.

They are continuing to make step changes in terms of their efficiency improvements and we expect a lot more efficiency there. And when the automotive goes in there, the antilock brake system blocks, that will give them another big boost.

So, we are extremely optimistic about Kalamazoo contributing bottom line and cost efficiency to the system as we go forward. In fact, part of the whole story, we are running at record levels of efficiency in our business and we are nowhere near the end of the runway. We've got lots of opportunities left.

Okay. I guess one more broader question on just the components you're supplying into auto. I know you mentioned drive train shafts earlier. Are these new applications for the coming up model years or are these already ones that are pretty well accepted and you are just supplying higher volumes as there's a greater push towards lighter vehicles?

And maybe if you can comment just on the timing of these launches? You mentioned this year and next year; are these typically accepted in a one-year timeframe or does it take a little bit longer to see the impact on your shipments on your bottom line?

Our content per vehicle in the first half of this year, our value added-revenue dollars per vehicle is up 30% compared to last year and last year was a record pace. It was $4.10 a vehicle last year and we are in the $5.30 range right now. And we have new captured programs coming on stream here in the second half of the year.

So in the comments we said we expect seasonal reductions in billed rates overall, but we expect similar value-added revenue out of automotive, because we have new programs coming on stream as we speak. We've been PPAPing them, pre-production approval process, here in the first six months and they are going into production now. And we have several others in the pipeline.

So, we have captured business being PPAPed and developed that runs through the second half of this year and into next year and we have a very robust pipeline beyond that. I mean, our biggest issue right now is making sure we get our platform in position to efficiently and effectively capitalize on all the opportunities that are there. I mean it's pretty much us picking and choosing how much we can handle at this time.

Stephen Levenson; Stifel, Nicolaus & Co.

Just a question; we hear a lot of commentary now, people worried about the aerospace cycle. And I know growth in backlog is likely going to moderate, but you are selling into production where rates are going up. Could you just comment on how you see it and if you feel it's becoming less cyclical?

Well, it sure seems less cyclical although the cycles in aerospace, as you know better than I, but those cycles have been pretty long in the past, but we are in a long up-cycle here. I mean, you have to go really back to the early '90s the last time we had a real major aerospace downturn. All the projections we see push that out well into the 2020s; probably early to mid-2020. So, we think there is a lot of runway here and there is a lot of time between here and when anyone anticipates a downturn. So will there be a downturn at some point? Probably, but we sure don't see it in the near term.

Okay thanks. And in terms of your positive outlook on both aerospace and automotive, do you see it mostly coming from unit growth or combine that with share gains, or is it a better mix of end products as you get further along?

No, for us it's content growth. So it's steel and iron parts converted into aluminum parts for light weighting, so there are new opportunities; bumpers and the structural components. I mean the F150 has been announced that they are going to -- the aluminum truck Ford F-150, and there is a lot of news out there of everyone else looking at aluminum trucks. Same thing's happening in cars; certainly in bumpers. But what's driving the body in white also drives a lot of extrusion demand as well.

A body in white is sheet, but it's also extrusion, so there are lot of structural components that go into that. So it's really the whole light weighting that is occurring through the industry and it's just creating a plethora of opportunities for us.

Okay, thanks. Last one. With Airbus announcing A330neo and likely extending the life of that airframe for few years, I know you said some of the stuff you ship isn't platform specific; you're shipping a SKU, but do you have a comment on that?

Yes, we love it because it's all aluminum.

That's what I was hoping to hear.

Yes, we think it's a great plane.

I guess as long as they are selling more, it's okay for you. I appreciate the answer. Thanks a lot.

Exactly.

Phil Gibbs, KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Did you comment much on the market dynamics in the non-plate and sheet aerospace markets?

Yes, in aerospace in general, I had a short comment in the script there. We said that plate and extrusions, we expect that the overhang is going to last into 2015. But on the other products, we said that we're continuing to see the overhang slowly abating. So it hasn't been a step change where aha, it's over, but as we continue to do sequential and year-over-year comparisons, we can see demand improving in all of those other products; very slowly, but improving.

So that's plate and bar essentially, rod and bar? Excuse me -- sheet, rod and bar?

It's sheet, cold finished bar, tubing, small diameter rod and wire and I think that's it.

Okay. Well, congratulations on the operational progress; really exciting.

Sal Tharani, Goldman Sachs.

Thank you. I have one question. I don't know if you have discussed this in previous conference calls or not. How does that aluminum premium, the Midwest premiums impact you? And have you been seeing this impact over the last couple of quarters since they have moved up? And what is your outlook for the next few quarters on that?

On the premiums, we pass through the LME plus the premium. So we pass through the Midwest price. So it really doesn't have an impact on us, with one exception and that exception is some of the higher value-added products. We don't have -- they're sold on a spot basis. They sometimes don't move in direct proportion like the lower value-added products. So we can see temporary squeezes on those products.

So we're pushing hard to get those spot prices boosted so that we can capture the total price, and it's really the total price that's the issues here. I mean, this morning the Midwest price was up to $1.11 when it was in the low 90s six to nine months ago. So we are seeing a lot of price increase, cost increase, and we're passing that through in most cases.

Am I correct to understand that your contracts or the products you are selling and the premium is automatically in the equation and you are just putting it and then pass it through?

That's correct. It's in the contracts and in most products, for example, soft alloy, rod and bar products, it's an industry practice to adjust the prices every month based on the prior month Midwest metal price. So even spot prices, there are lot of industry practices where it gets passed through directly.

Okay. And the next thing is there has been drive particularly with one of the very large [melting] producers to get more and more scrap based aluminum rather than buying ingot and that has compressed the margins. I'm just wondering how that is impacting you and have used -- are you using more raw aluminum or ingot instead of scrap?

Well we are, but most of ours are not related to that one big producer that you talked about. We use different alloys. And so our scrap utilization is better this year than it was last year and our spreads are a little bit better. Frankly, it's helping us a little bit offset some of the price erosion that we've seen on selling prices. Our raw material -- net raw material cost actually is a little bit better this year than it was last year because of scrap purchases.

Do you have a close look at lot of your customers in terms of getting -- taking the scrap back from them?

In some cases, but not generally.

Tony Rizzuto, Cowen & Company.

Thanks for taking my follow-up. Jack, I understand there has been a recent price increase on general engineering plate and question number one is, is it sticking? Number two, have you guys followed and how do I square that with comments earlier about the continued destock and imports and price erosion?

Well, the question would be whether we followed or whether we led.

Yes, maybe you led and I'm not aware of it.

Yes, but generally we are seeing improvement there. We haven't seen significant erosion at this point, but it's always a wild card and this thing's moving so rapidly, it's hard to keep pace with it. But right now, I mean it's an issue that we are dealing with, but we don't see a big impact right now, a big negative impact from these rising prices -- costs.

Okay, great. And I really enjoyed the conversion today, because you're talking about the long-term strategic vision. And quite frankly it sounds like the VAR goal that you've been talking about in recent years, this upper 800s, it sounds like it could be quite conservative given the types of things that they were brought out during this call today. Am I off my rocker here thinking about that? It sound like there's a lot of exciting things that you're talking about in terms of further expansion and capability.

Sure, if you're talking about 2025. 2025, we expect to be well beyond that. Within a reasonable timeframe, we expect to be high 800s and high 20s in terms of margin. And probably after I retire they may get the margin up to 50%.

They will do that just to spite you.

Exactly, exactly.

All right, that's a conversation for another day. I appreciate the ability to have a follow up. Thank you.

Brian Ossenbeck, JP Morgan.

Hi, thank you. Just a quick one here. Just to clarify the $5 million of increased efficiency is quarter-over-quarter into the second quarter here. If I heard you correctly, that was all basically from improvements in Trentwood?

Yes, most of it was Trentwood, although Kalamazoo certainly contributed to that. But most of it was Trentwood and then there was some throughout the rest of our operations. We were going through some rough spots in a lot of parts of the portfolio, but it's predominately Trentwood.

Okay. Then order of magnitude between Trentwood and Kalamazoo? Just trying to figure out which one was the bigger driver this quarter.

It's predominately Trentwood. Yes, I mean Trentwood is a big horse. Everything else pales in comparison to Trentwood.

And that will conclude our question-and-answer session today. I'll turn the call back over to Jack Hockema for closing remarks.

Okay, thanks everybody. A lot of good questions today. We look forward to updating you again on our third quarter call in October. Thank you.

Ladies and gentleman this will conclude your conference for today. We do thank you for your participation.