SunCoke Energy Inc (SXC) 2016 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good morning. My name is Sean and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the SunCoke Energy third-quarter 2016 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions). Thank you. Kyle Bland, Director of Investor Relations, please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Sean. Good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss SunCoke Energy's third-quarter 2016 earnings. With me are Fritz Henderson, our Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer; and Fay West, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following the remarks made by management, we will open the call for Q&A.

This conference call is being webcast live on the investor relations section of our website and a replay will be available for a few weeks. If we don't get to your questions on the call today, please feel free to reach out to our investor relations team.

Before I turn the call over to Fritz, let me remind you that the various remarks we make on today's call regarding future expectations constitute forward-looking statements, and the cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements in our SEC filings applies to the remarks we make today. These documents are available on our website, as are reconciliations to any non-GAAP measures discussed on today's call.

With that, I will turn it over to Fritz.

Thanks, Kyle, and thank you all for joining us this morning.

Starting off on slide 3, I thought I'd share a few perspectives on the quarter. In our cokemaking fleet, similar to what we saw in the first and the second quarter of this year, we continued to achieve solid safety, environmental, and operating performance across the fleet and on track for performance in line with our targets for 2016.

Middletown particularly has had a very good year and is on track for a record year. In Indiana Harbor, we continue to see meaningful improvement and traction in the area of cost control and with operations and maintenance spend year over year favorable. And we've recently begun our 2016 oven rebuilds here in the fourth quarter.

On the logistics front, we saw modest improvement over our Q2, with sequential improvement over our Q2 logistics volumes. But overall volumes remain below our targets. We were encouraged by recent developments across the logistics fleet, actually, as we look into the fourth quarter at KRT, as well as the Convent Marine Terminal, and we are going to touch on that a bit more later in the call.

From a capital allocation perspective, we continued our deleveraging efforts and reduced debt outstanding by over $25 million on a consolidated basis in the quarter, including $20 million repayment of our revolver at SXC, leaving the parent in a positive net cash debt position. And so, we felt good about what was achieved at both the MLP, as well as at the parent in the quarter.

And finally, we are reaffirming today, with nine months in the books, our adjusted EBITDA guidance of $210 million to $235 million for 2016, based upon the stability of our business model and our take-or-pay contracts.

A few thoughts on the next chart on market conditions. Most notably within the quarter, our two primary customers at Convent Marine Terminal reached clarity on a number of items that were up in the air earlier in the year. Foresight Energy successfully executed its out-of-court restructuring with its bondholders in the quarter and Murray Energy successfully ratified its contract with its labor force and received covenant relief after reaching agreement with its lenders.

Our customers are pleased and we are pleased as a result with this development, and we look forward to supporting their future export coal needs through our Convent Marine Terminal.

Another point, in the quarter and most recently we have seen a resurgence in the API2 price. We have seen it over the last two quarters, but we have seen it accelerate more recently. Fay will have a chart where we will walk you through our estimates of export profitability. Actually, we did this earlier on the SunCoke Energy Partners call, but when you look at that chart, exports are solidly profitable for our two customers at the Convent Marine Terminal. And we do expect increased volumes in the fourth quarter relative to what we saw in the first, second, and third quarter this year.

These encouraging signs in the logistics business come at the same time we are seeing continued stability in the steel sector. So while we have seen pullback in hot rolled coal prices in the third quarter, we are still well ahead of where they were at the beginning of 2016. US steel producers continue to petition the government against unfairly traded imports, and their efforts have provided some price support in the market and reduced level of imports, which are down approximately 20% year to date.

What we have seen is -- we have seen volatility in the equity markets within our steel customers, but the credit markets themselves showed significant improvements in the quarter relative to where we were in June of this year.

Then finally, most importantly, I thought we'd point out even with the volatility we have seen, the cyclicality we have seen over the last 12 months, our basic earnings power hasn't been impacted, once again demonstrating both the stability of our business model and the strength of our take-or-pay contracts.

At this point, I would like to turn it over to Fay to discuss the quarter's results.

Thanks, Fritz, and good morning, everybody.

For the third quarter, consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $49.4 million was flat to 2015 as cost improvements at Indiana Harbor and lower costs due to the divestiture of our coal business were offset by lower coke and coal logistics volumes, as well as the impact of scheduled outages.

Before moving forward, and as a reminder, our adjusted EBITDA results exclude coal logistics deferred revenue, which, in response to the new SEC guidelines, is recognized in adjusted EBITDA when it is recorded as revenue under GAAP accounting, in our case typically by December 31 of each year.

Deferred revenue in the third quarter was $8.8 million. From an EPS perspective, earnings were $0.10 per share, up $0.46 versus the prior year. The comparison to the prior year is impacted by the lapping of a $0.30 per share impairment loss on our India joint venture that occurred in the prior year.

Turning to the next slide and looking at our adjusted EBITDA results, you can see the $3 million performance improvement at Indiana Harbor that was driven by disciplined cost management, but was partially offset by lower volumes and yields. Fritz will discuss Indiana Harbor in more detail on a later slide.

Excluding Indiana Harbor, the remainder of the coke business was impacted by several items, including lower volumes, due primarily to the timing of shipments; lower energy sales as a result of scheduled outages, primarily at Haverhill; the timing of O&M spend at Jewell; and $1 million of coal transportation costs that were shifted from coal mining to Jewell coke.

Moving on from coke, our corporate segment benefited from the lapping of severance costs and Convent deal costs, which were recognized in Q3 of 2015, but was offset by higher stock compensation expense that was driven by favorable changes in our stock price during the quarter.

At coal logistics, the $4.3 million contribution from our Convent facility was comparable to Q3 2015, and KRT and Lake terminals were impacted this quarter by lower throughput. Volumes across all terminals remain below expectations, but we expect a sequential improvement in volumes in the fourth quarter.

And finally, we continue to benefit from the divestiture of our coal mining business and realized $3.3 million in cost savings as a result.

Looking on slide 7 at our domestic coke business, we delivered solid second-quarter adjusted EBITDA per ton of $52 on about 1 million tons of production. While our quarterly results were impacted by the previously mentioned factors, including continued cost improvement at Indiana Harbor, the timing of coke sales, and lower energy sales, we remain in line with expectations and are on track to achieve strong coke-adjusted EBITDA results in 2016, which are underpinned by our record performance at Middletown.

I'll now turn it back over to Fritz to provide some additional comments on Indiana Harbor.

Thanks, Fay.

As I mentioned earlier, Indiana Harbor continues to realize the benefits of a holistic cost management approach that has netted us about $13 million in O&M improvement year to date and was the driver of the improvements in the third quarter versus the third-quarter 2015.

However, as I discussed, in the second quarter we continued to experience operational disruption, driven partially by higher-than-expected oven degradation across non-rebuilt ovens at the plant. Looking at oven rebuilds after evaluating another quarter of data from our oven rebuild pilot -- our oven rebuild program from 2015, we remain encouraged by the sustained performance across the 48 ovens we rebuilt last year.

We continue to analyze and monitor results, and incorporated our learnings from those ovens rebuilt into the 2016 rebuilds, which are underway here in October. This wave of rebuilds will be targeted across our C battery -- the Indiana Harbor plant has four batteries, A, B, C, and D -- and we are targeting the lion's share of our rebuild activity on the C battery this year. And it will be done in distinct blocks of ovens, with each block being taken out -- entirely out of service, excuse me, in order to perform the rebricking in the walls and the floors. Including capital and expense, in total we expect to spend about $15 million on those 38 ovens.

Moving forward, and as we wrap up the 2016 rebuilds, we will continue to optimize scope and incorporate lessons learned into our 2017 capital plans, which we anticipate will include a substantial amount of oven rebuilds at the Harbor. And we will provide an update on this when we provide our 2017 guidance and targets.

At this point, I would like to turn it back over to Fay.

Thanks, Fritz.

Looking at slide 9, in the quarter we had sequentially higher coal logistics volumes. However, we were below our targeted run rate.

On the domestic coal logistics side, low natural gas prices and high inventories pushed volumes down in the first half of the year, but with the favorable natural gas price movements and warmer summer weather, especially in the South, volumes increased over Q2.

On the met coal side, higher inventories drove lower-than-expected volumes, but the recent upswing in prices should encourage additional volumes in Q4.

At Convent, we earned $4.3 million of adjusted EBITDA in the period on 841,000 inbound tons. As I mentioned on a previous slide, these results do not include the $8.8 million of deferred revenue earned for pay tons in the quarter.

While we saw below-target volumes at CMT, we are encouraged by the continued rise in API2 prices and expect sequential improvement in volumes in the third quarter.

Fourth quarter.

I'm sorry -- in the fourth quarter.

On slide 10, we have a few recent developments at Convent that we wanted to highlight. First, we are excited to announce the piloting of a new line of business at CMT. We have engaged a US-based utility to move volume through Convent for the domestic thermal coal market.

While the first trains have just recently arrived at the terminal, we expect the fourth-quarter opportunity to be between 50,000 to 100,000 tons and look forward to proving out our domestic-facing capability, with a goal of securing additional merchant volumes.

Secondly, we are in the process of commissioning our new ship loader and expect it will be fully operational by the end of November. With the new machinery in place, our annual transloading capacity will increase to 15 million tons per year, which positions us well as we continue to develop additional lines of business and pursue new customer relationships.

Lastly, we have reached an agreement with Murray and Foresight to provide some volume-based incentives in the form of ancillary revenue rebates in exchange for a limited one-year contract extension. These rebates, which phase out as API2 prices rise and are only in place for 2016 and 2017, are intended to incentivize our customers to ship more coal during periods of low API2 prices. Most importantly, this arrangement does not impact our base take-or-pay volumes or rates, and there is no change to our full-year 2016 CMT adjusted EBITDA guidance.

Looking at liquidity on slide 11, we ended the quarter with nearly $300 million of consolidated liquidity, including $105 million of cash and more than $190 million of combined revolver availability. In the quarter, over $40 million of operating cash flow was used primarily to pay down debt and to fund CapEx and distributions to SXCP unitholders. Including outstanding letters of credit, SXC has now fully repaid all borrowings under its revolving credit facility.

Moving on to page 12, we are looking at capital deployment for the first three quarters of the year on this slide. And as you can see, we have generated very strong operating cash flow of over $166 million year to date and have put that cash flow towards value-enhancing actions, including divesting of our coal mining business; funding targeted investments at our operating facilities; and repurchasing a significant amount of debt at a discount.

Additionally, as I just mentioned, we entirely repaid the SXC revolver through the first three quarters of the year and now maintain cash in excess of our remaining debt at SXC.

With that, I will turn it back to Fritz.

Thanks, Fay.

Wrapping up on slide 13, we continue to adapt to the headwinds, challenges, and changes that are faced by our industry and our customers on a daily basis. We are seeing significant improvements, however, in the underlying industry and customer dynamics from what we saw earlier in the year. We are mindful, however, of the risks that remain in the business. And so, I think the important thing is to then be flexible and responsive, and that's we have been focused on in 2016.

We are particularly pleased with the recent milestones that each of our two CMT customers reached in the quarter.

From an operations perspective, we remain focused on improving performance at our Indiana Harbor coke plant, and the 2016 oven rebuilds that have started here in the fourth quarter is another step in that direction in the journey to bringing Indiana Harbor to where it needs to be.

Now we look to continue to deliver on our track record of strong operational, safety, and environmental performance across the rest of the cokemaking fleet. And we are excited about the opportunities we have in front of us at CMT and our other logistics assets.

Lastly, we are on track to achieve our consolidated 2016 financial guidance and deleveraging targets and remain focused on delivering these commitments to shareholders.

With that, I would like to turn it over to Q&A. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions). Lucas Pipes, FBR & Co.

Fritz, just a quick follow-up on Indiana Harbor. It sounds like things are maybe -- well, this point, tentatively moving in the right direction. I just wondered if you could follow up on how quickly you think we are going to get more data on this and when you will make a final assessment, and ultimately where you see that performance on an EBITDA basis at Indiana Harbor longer term.

So we will talk about Indiana Harbor in 2017 and longer term when we publish our targets for next year.

What I would say is when I step back and look objectively at 2016's performance, I think -- about a year ago, when it was clear that we weren't -- I didn't feel we were going in the right direction at Indiana Harbor, we took a number of actions and made a number of changes, one of which was to be more holistic in our evaluation of the plant and secondly is to make sure that we stopped and monitored our performance and gathered data so that as we took action, we did it in a more measured way.

And that manifested itself in two ways this year in terms of Indiana Harbor's performance. One, what you've seen is improved O&M because I think we have been much more disciplined. We have been very disciplined in terms of the cost management of the plant.

Second is we have doubled, basically, the ovens we intended to rebuild from that which we had actually identified earlier this year when we entered 2016. So instead of doing the 19 ovens that we had originally planned, we have doubled it because we've been encouraged by the results we've seen with the 48 ovens we rebuilt last year.

That being said, we took the lessons learned because while we've been pleased with our performance, there are areas where we could continue to improve. And so, we've factored that lesson learned into the 38 ovens we are rebuilding.

And then, we'll make an assessment as we measure the performance of the ovens we are rebuilding in 2016 and we'll make a final call as to what we want to do in 2017. I do anticipate a significant rebuild activity in 2017, but we'll have more to say about that when we publish our targets for next year.

I would say, as I think about it, volumes -- what we've seen is cost control has been solid; yields, which is something that we had concerns about last year, we've seen improvements in our yields through 2016. In the third quarter, actually, it was slightly favorable year over year, slightly.

But production has been below our target. And what that's been a result of is both accelerated -- the degradation of the non-rebuilt ovens, as well as driving stability across the plant in terms of our management of the plant, workforce, equipment reliability, and the basic blocking and tackling of running a coke plant. We need to continue to improve in that regard and we will do so while we take on these oven rebuilds and work to change the culture of the plant.

I would say, as I think about it, Lucas, we've stopped going backwards is the way I would put it. But I am not at all satisfied with where we are. I think what we need to do as we rebuild these ovens is continue to make progress on operational stability, equipment reliability, and then use the time to measure the effectiveness of our actions as we plan out 2017.

I'll have more to say about both 2017 and longer term the Harbor's potential when we publish our targets for next year.

All right. I look forward to that.

And then, maybe shifting gears, and this is really more of a big-picture question, but when you look across the assets at SXC versus SXCP, how do you think about this current dual structure, two listings? What do you think would maybe make sense longer term?

You got out of coal earlier this year. Any vision there for how these entities should go forward?

Our Board obviously continuously evaluate your structure. In this case, obviously, the MLP structure is something that the Board would regularly look at.

You know, I would say we don't have anything to announce today. But I would say when you look at it, we have been encouraged by the improvement in yield at the MLP. And it has basically been from the price going from the low $5s to where it is today.

But nonetheless, when you look at the absolute level of yield at the MLP, it's not a cost-effective financing vehicle for us -- and in an MLP, that's what it is -- to finance growth.

So I would say this is something the Board will continually look at as part of continuously looking at the business, and we'll update investors as appropriate.

And Fritz, when you say that even the current yield is not effective, what would be an alternative?

When I say the current yield is not effective, if you just look at it where it is, it couldn't be used -- you can't really do drop-down transactions that could be accretive and attractive to parent. You can't use it to finance a growth project.

And so one alternative is, obviously, wait to see how things correct, but I would say many companies -- I wouldn't say many, but a number of companies in the MLP space are in our position and are evaluating the cost-effectiveness of their MLPs prospectively. Beyond that, I'm just not prepared to comment.

All right. I appreciate that and good luck with everything. Thanks.

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions). And there are no further questions. I turn the conference back to the presenters.

Okay. Thank you very much for your time this morning and your interest in and investment in SunCoke Energy. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.