Rayonier Advanced Materials Inc (RYAM) 2016 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Greetings and welcome to Rayonier Advanced Materials fourth-quarter 2016 teleconference call.

(Operator Instructions)

As a reminder this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host Mr. Mickey Walsh, Treasurer and Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you and you may begin.

Thank you Audry and welcome to Rayonier Advanced Materials 2016 earnings call and webcast. Joining me on today's call are Paul Boynton our Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer; and Frank Ruperto, our Chief Financial Officer. Our earnings release and presentation materials were issued yesterday afternoon and are available on our website at rayonieram.com.

I would like to remind you that in today's presentation we will include forward-looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of Federal Securities Laws. Our earnings release as well as our filings with the SEC list some of the factors which may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements we may make. They are also referenced on slide 2 of our presentation material.

Today's presentation will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures as noted on slide 3 of our presentation material. We believe non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information for management and investors, but non-GAAP measures should not be considered an alternative to GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included on pages 14 through 18 of our presentation.

At this time I would like to turn the call over to Paul for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Mickey and good morning everyone. A year ago, when we addressed you in our fourth-quarter call, we faced a $68 million negative impact to EBITDA from price and volume for 2016. At that time we challenged the organization to take $40 million of cost out of the business.

I am pleased to report that each and every employee responded. As we exceeded our own expectations and delivered $50 million against this significant initiative. These cost improvements mitigated the majority of the price and volume impact and allowed us to deliver $226 million of EBITDA, well above beginning year guidance of $175 million to $190 million.

Additionally, we generated $143 million of adjusted free cash flow, exceeding our goal for the year by over $50 million. Again, these financial results are the testament to the hard work and persistence of our employees.

In 2016 we also took a significant step in strengthening our balance sheet and improving our financial flexibility by issuing a $173 million of equity. The combination of a strong balance sheet and an improving cost structure provides a solid foundation to fund future growth initiatives and drive stockholder value. Shortly, I will share additional comments on our strategy and the conditions of the market which we operate.

Let me now turn over to Frank to review our 2016 financial results as well as provide guidance for 2017.

Thank you, Paul. Now let's look at slide 4 to review our financial highlights for the fourth quarter and full year. Sales for the quarter totaled $231 million, 5% below fourth-quarter 2015. Full-year 2016 sales were $869 million or 8% lower than the prior year.

The full-year sales decline was primarily driven by a 7% decline in CS prices and a 2% decline in CS volumes. Net income for the quarter and full year were $11 million and $73 million respectively. Pro forma net income was $67 million, compared to $73 million in 2015.

Pro forma results exclude one time adjustments primarily related to 2015 Jesup asset write-down, and the gain on extinguishment of debt repurchased in 2016. Operating income was $26 million for the fourth quarter 2016, compared to $29 million for the fourth quarter 2015. Full-year operating income was $138 million in 2016 and $120 million in 2015.

In 2015, pro forma operating income was $149 million, with a significant portion of the negative impact from CS sale decreases offset by our cost improvement initiative. Pro forma results primarily exclude the asset write-down in 2015.

The variance analyses for operating income relative to fourth-quarter and full-year 2016 are provided on slide 5. Quarter and year-to-date variances have similar drivers. CS prices were down 8% and 7% respectively from the prior-year, three month and full-year periods.

Volume variances and sales mix contributed $4 million to the fourth quarter of 2016, while full-year results were $14 million unfavorable to prior year. As referenced on slide 6, fourth-quarter CS sales volumes of 121,000 tons, were 5,000 tons above the prior-year period primarily due to the timing of revenue recognition.

Full-year 2016 CS volumes of 456,000 tons, were down approximately 11,000 tons or 2% from 2015. Commodity volumes for the quarter and full year were 70,000 tons and 249,000 tons respectively, a decrease of 3,000 tons from the prior quarter and an increase of 2,000 tons from the prior-year period.

Returning to slide 5, cost for the quarter and year were favorable $3 million and $46 million respectively. Reductions in SG&A and other costs for the quarter and year contributed $5 million and $11 million to operating income respectfully. We made excellent progress throughout the year reducing our costs.

As shown on slide 7, we achieved roughly $50 million of cost improvements across the organization. We're realizing savings from energy efficiencies by optimizing operation of our new boilers. We are decreasing chemical usage by both utilizing less chemicals in our production processes while increasing the recapture and reuse of caustic and other major chemicals.

In wood, we have realigned our chipping assets, improved our wood yield, and are strategically managing our inventory to reduce the potential for price spikes. In the supply chain, we are reducing use of external warehouses, removing waste in our inventory handling, and improving our transportation processes. At corporate, we are partnering with product and service suppliers to provide high-quality services in a different and more cost-effective manner.

Favorable market conditions for certain raw material inputs, further helped reduce expenses by an incremental estimated $7 million. Over the past two years, our cost improvement efforts have yielded approximately $85 million of savings, which puts us on track to deliver the $140 million target over the four-year period. The processes and tools that we have utilized and will continue to hone as we deliver on our objectives, will provide value to the organization well beyond the four-year period and allow us to continuously improve our cost structure into the future.

These efforts allowed us to post pro forma EBITDA for the quarter and year-to-date of $50 million and $226 million respectively. In addition to improving profitability through costs, we remain focused on driving cash flow. As shown on slide 8, we generated $143 million of adjusted free cash flow.

Along with the issuance of the preferred stock, we lowered our adjusted net debt to $466 million, a reduction of $302 million in the year. This represents a decrease in net debt of nearly 50% in the 30 months since we became a publicly traded company. We remain well positioned with $555 million of liquidity; including $326 million of cash and $229 million available under our revolving credit facility.

This strong cash and liquidity position gives us the capacity to make meaningful investments in our business that will allow us to grow and diversify enhancing our competitive position. Looking ahead to 2017, on slide 9 we anticipate CS pricing to be down 3% to 4% in 2017 from 2016, due to our previously discussed price declines in acetate and a mix shift in CS volume as we expanded to more non-acetate markets at lower prices. CS volumes are expected to be flat to slightly down from 2016 levels, depending on the timing of shipments and revenue recognition.

In addition, commodity sales volumes are expected to be approximately 10% higher than 2016 due to higher production efficiencies from our cost improvement initiatives, as well as a lack of a planned maintenance outage at our Fernandina facility in 2017. These commodity volumes can vary based upon our mix between viscose and absorbent materials. For 2017, we are forecasting $25 million to $30 million of cost improvements across the organization.

We believe these cost improvements will allow us to offset some of the impact of lower prices and $25 million to $30 million of higher costs and inflation. We have had two straight years of lower than normal inflation. But in 2017 we anticipate 3% inflation from higher costs in certain of our key chemicals, energy, and other raw materials.

We will also have a one-time increase in cost related to our cost transformation initiative and incremental cost in marketing and R&D in 2017, as we focus on our growth pillars. As a result, we estimate 2017 net income of $41 million to $48 million and EBITDA of $190 million to $200 million. Adjusted free cash flow is expected to be $80 million to $90 million after netting out approximately $60 million of capital expenditures, which includes our planned investment in the LignoTech Florida joint venture.

At this point, let me turn the call back over to Paul.

Thanks Frank. Turning to slide 11, let me comment on the market conditions before turning to our four strategic pillars. In the cellulose specialties business, the acetate inventory issues of the past couple of years appear to be settling out.

We believe we are entering a period where fundamental acetate tow demand is relatively flat. Additionally we see signs of more robust demand, including capacity expansions in ethers and engine filtration segments and increased demand for tire cord.

On the supply side, competitors continue to try to move volume from commodity to specialty grade and those with foreign operations are benefiting from the relative strength of the US dollar. These factors in turn, place pressure on our prices and volumes. As Frank pointed out, cellulose specialty pricing is expected to be down 3% to 4% in 2017; which is comprised of acetate prices being down about 2% in line with our prior guidance and the remainder due primarily to a mix shift towards lower price non-acetate volume.

In our commodity business year-over-year, viscose prices are stronger, while absorbed material prices are experiencing modest pressure. Our operations have the flexibility either commodity viscose or absorbent materials. As such we're able to flex our production to take advantage of market conditions and are planning to produce even more viscose in 2017.

Despite the challenges we face in our cellulose specialties market, we've laid out specific objectives on page 12, which will allow us to drive growth and value to our stockholders. First we must continue to improve our cost and cash flow. Our cost transformation pillar will remain a critical, core component of the overall strategy.

We have done a commendable job thus far on this initiative realizing $85 million of our $140 million objective in just two years. But we also realize we need to do much more to achieve our full goal and incremental improvements will only get more challenging.

The second pillar of our strategy is market optimization. Which centers on responding to changing market conditions and emerging opportunities with our existing product, production, and logistics capability to maximize profitability. This means working with our customers to enhance our value to them as well as penetrating more attractive market segments where we believe our products are currently underrepresented.

As a simple example that we have already discussed, current viscose markets are yielding more attractive returns than absorbing materials. So we are working with our viscose customers and our operation team to optimize the flow of the highest value products at out lowest possible cost to this market. As another example, in some cases lower price cellulose specialty segments are more attractive than commodity markets and therefore we are working with customers in these segments to provide value products that fit our existing capabilities to provide us with greater returns that we can achieve elsewhere.

New products are the third pillar of our EBITDA growth strategy. We're committed to expanding our business by developing value-added products. To date, we made significant progress in developing and applying proprietary technologies to create new products across multiple end market.

Many of these have been introduced to customers and these customers have been busy with lab and manufacturing trials, which have led to initial commercial orders. For example, we expect sales of $14 million in 2017 from new products going into engine filtration, casings, and tire cord end market. This represents a small but important step towards our goal of 20% of our revenues from new products developed within 10 years.

As we discussed in our last update call, we continue to focus on new ether products, utilizing a very unique technology to achieve performance levels at a value we believe is not currently available in the market. We will continue to work towards commercialization of these ether products. We have made concerted effort the past couple of years to reinvigorate our new product pipeline and it's good to see some of these early results.

Finally, the last pillar of our strategy is acquisition. We have positioned our balance sheet to allow us to pursue investment opportunities that drive stockholder value. Our focus will be in the areas that leverage our core competencies and markets that we find attractive and that are complementary to our existing business.

We expect these investments to expand our field of vision by increasing our capability set and exposing us to a broader array of growth opportunities. In doing so we hope to bring greater diversity and growth in our revenues and earning stream. These investments will have returns that exceed our cost to capital, provide stable EBITDA, and allow us to effectively manage our leverage over the long-term.

Our first tangible investment in our acquisition pillar came a couple of weeks ago, when we broke ground in Fernandina Beach on our joint venture at LignoTech Florida. Phase 1 of this investment will be up and running mid-2018. It's a positive step towards growth, diversification, and long-term value creation.

With a solid performance we delivered in 2016, Rayonier Advanced Materials is poised to execute on investments and growth in 2017. These initiatives are ambitious but I'm confident we have the right team in place, with the experience, expertise, and urgency required to achieve the necessary result. Now I'd like to go ahead and open it up for questions.

(Operator Instructions)

First question comes from the line of John Babcock with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Good morning. One quick question on the CS side, clearly you have been targeting essentially acetate pricing down 2%, is that on the contracted side or is there any pricing pressure on the spot side and then also if you can remind us how much spot volumes you have an acetate?

John we have little to virtually no spot volumes on acetate. That 2% is on our contracted business. We probably commented in the last call that we still had pricing negotiations ongoing. Those are all now included but those are part of contractual business, not necessarily spot business.

Okay. And as far as the newer volumes, clearly we're continuing to see volume pressure on the acetate side, can you give us some sense as far as where acetate volumes are going in the year ahead and then also essentially, some of the areas -- if you could quantify the volume benefit perhaps of some of the newer tonnage that you are picking up to help offset those pressures.

We haven't quantified the magnitudes of our mix shift out there. Acetate is under pressure a bit and you've heard some of our customers already talk about their volume. We see it going down slightly, in the single digits percent and we're picking up the balance of that in the other market segment.

Okay. And as far as CapEx, can you also remind us what the maintenance CapEx for Rayonier Advanced is at this point? It seems $60 million, at least from the numbers I am seeing, is the lowest level since 2009, so I want to get a sense for -- and that includes the LignoTech joint venture. If you could provide some clarity on whether there is any growth CapEx in there or anything we should take note of.

No, there's about $50 million in maintenance CapEx, is the you should think about our business going forward. You saw elevated levels over the last several years. We had the CSE project, we had Boiler MAC, and this year we have LignoTech Florida.

It's roughly about $50 million is what I'd planned this year and going forward. It should move a little bit around that depending on which outages we have going on between the different facilities. But $50 million is a good maintenance CapEx number to use going forward.

Okay. And just a last question I had for you before I turn it over, with regards to the increase market in R&D spend is that something that you see as primarily a 2017 item or is that something that we should also expect to see in 2018 and perhaps even later than that?

So John, it's one of our key pillars for growth and we continue to invest in that area. Not only in people but in trials that we are running, equipment to run the new products, and an assortment of things. We would expect that to stay slightly elevated.

It's up modestly and we continue to invest in it, but it should be a permanent part of our path going forward.

So it sounds like it's only a couple million dollars maybe not even that?

I think that is a fair number.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Roger Spitz with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

This is Chris Ryan on for Roger, thanks for taking my questions. My first question, what is your view for Chinese cigarette demand growth or decline going forward?

We commented, many others commented, it's not a terribly transparent picture out there. They have done a significant amount of destocking over the last couple of years. It appears to us that, that is largely playing out now and settling out.

We believe fundamental demand from our conversations with customers there, in terms of acetate tow, is going to be slightly flat if not up a little bit in China. Again, not a terribly clear picture on that but that is our expectations based on the conversations that we've had.

Thank you. And if you can comment, has the Brazilian producer changed his tactics since the go-private transaction as far as you can tell?

I'm not too sure of those tactics. We are certainly aware that they are out there in the marketplace, we compete against them. We have not -- no, I don't know anything other than that.

You'll have to ask them with regard to that, we have limited visibility.

Sure. And then finally, what is your expectation for 2017 cash restructuring costs and to what extent do you think working capital will be a source or use of cash?

So, going into 2017 we don't have significant restructuring costs built-in. We do have a one-time cost built into that cost piece, of the guidance bar that you see, one of the projects you have.

Working capital right now we are referencing is roughly flat. We had a significant pickup last year in working capital. It is something we will continue to focus on and see if we can find more opportunities but given the significant pickup last year in working capital, we have guided as to flat on that.

Got it, thank you. That is all my questions.

(Operator Instructions)

Our next question comes from the line of Steve Chercover with D.A. Davidson.

Good morning everyone. The first question is from a modeling perspective, do you recommend that we use the Q4 average CS price of [$1,505] as the starting point and then take 3% to 4% off of that?

I would look at the average over the year and take 3% to 4% over that from a modeling perspective. That is how we think about it, that's how we tend to guide as a year-over-year, full-year basis.

That [$1,525], I figured there might be some mix issues within that fourth-quarter number. Okay thanks.

A little but I don't think that's going to change your numbers a whole lot.

Okay. And then in the past I believe you've said that the margins on ethers and other specialties were similar to those in acetate. Obviously the selling prices are a bit lower but are production costs lower as well -- are those margins similar?

Yes, Steve its varied out there and in some cases certainly a lot of our users businesses is similar. In some cases it's not. And in these other segments, depending on where we're picking up the business, it may be somewhat different very different if you will.

It's all over the map a little bit in terms of the actual margins. We don't have any guidance out there. I can't specifically say where it's going to be exactly depending on the customer or the product we're supplying them. It's a bit varied.

Okay. And then a quick question on LignoTech and I know it's still a ways away. But you wouldn't even pursue it if you didn't expect to earn an excess in your cost to capital. Is it going to be a new business segment or are you just going to report it as a line item once it finally comes on stream?

It's going to come through as a line item. We don't consolidate or we don't plan to consolidate LignoTech as we're not a majority owner. It will come through as a single line item on our P&L.

Will you give us any visibility in terms of selling prices and what the end markets are like in the margins even if it's not consolidated?

Our partner goes into great detail on their views on the market, on the cellular specialty side, as they do that. Given we are not selling any lignin yet we've not thought through that issue from how much disclosure would be helpful to analysts on this call.

But obviously Borregaard will be giving out significant detail on the lignin markets as they do typically do on their calls.

Well, we don't cover Borregaard.

Understand.

For a wish list it would nice to know that it's not just a pure black box if you can help us when it is on stream that, that would be great.

That's fair Steve. Again, we are 18 months out before we sell any so we haven't tackled that question yet. Good point.

Understood. Thanks Frank.

Our next question comes from the line of Paul Quinn with RBC Capital Markets.

Thanks very much. Just following up on Steve's question on LignoTech and disclosure. If we looked at Borregaard's recent disclosure with regard to how they characterize the lignin market, is the product that's going to come out of LignoTech representative of what they are making now or is their mix different?

I would say it's relatively similar to their mix that they have today and a large part of that going into the construction markets.

Okay thanks for that. And on the new products, you've referenced $14 million I guess that's sales in 2017, as part of your plan to grow that to 20%. Is the LignoTech is going to fit into this new product category as well?

No. We've put it into the acquisition side of things and driving that so we haven't included it there.

Okay and the goal of 20%, is that 20% of sales?

Yes, 20% of sales within 10 years.

Okay so the [$14 million] out of [$870 million] is the small -- okay so essentially you are going to have to really ramp up this new product development?

Yes. You're absolutely right and we are doing that now. We said this is just a small but we thought a significant step as some of these things are being picked up in the marketplace they're being appreciated and they take time. They have been pushing new products out there.

We are pleased with the small progress we have made. And again we have a lot of activity going on that we hope will bring in and help us meet that goal in the time period.

Okay and just a quick one maybe to Frank on modeling and SG&A 2017 guidance. It seems to be all over the map on a quarterly basis in 2016, what are you expecting for the full year?

Flat to full year this year.

Flat on 16? Thanks very much.

(Operator Instructions)

Our next question is a follow-up from John Babcock with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

The point that I was hoping to get a little bit more color on was essentially on the acquisition front. I know you have talked about essentially going to take complementary areas and all that and essentially trying to capture some growth. I was just wondering, it looks like with the lower CapEx this year, it looks like that paydown slowed down a little bit. Are you at the point where your are within a relatively reasonable timeframe to be announcing something here? Or how should we think about that?

So John, we have an active program to evaluate opportunities as they come along. So we're always looking at opportunities as we move forward. And again our focus is in areas that are complementary to our core competencies of manufacturing excellence and processing technologies and cost takeout's in the cellulose [and] specialty chemicals.

We don't have anything to announce at this point. You'll have to stay tuned but this key focus and when we find the right opportunity we'll pursue it. But we're also very prudent and don't want to pursue something that we don't think will create value for shareholders.

Okay. And as far as the debt paydown is there any reason to think that perhaps the pace might slow a little bit in 2017?

It depends on our use of capital. Right now, our capital allocations plans, but right now we have some minimal debt pay downs that we anticipate to do and depending on whether or not we see opportunities to use the capital otherwise that we think are higher returns we will pursue that before pursue more debt pay down.

Okay. And are you expecting higher interest rate in the next year or so? From the increased?

We do have some floating rate debt. We will see that portion of our debt, the non-bond debt, increase and float with wherever LIBOR rates go.

Okay. And I assume $37 million guidance for the year, does that include any debt pay down?

That includes minimal debt pay down and it includes a perspective of slightly higher rates.

Perfect. All right thanks.

Ladies and gentlemen that does conclude our question-and-answer session. At this time I will turn it back to Mr. Paul Boynton for closing comments.

I would like to thank you all for joining us today. In summary we are pleased with the execution against our objectives in 2016. We feel confident that the strategic steps that we will take in 2017, best position Rayonier Advanced Materials to serve our customers with the highest level of quality, service, and security of supply, thereby enabling us to drive long-term value for our stockholders.

We look forward to updating you on our progress throughout the year. Thank you. Good morning.

This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may connect disconnect your lines at this time.