SunCoke Energy Inc (SXC) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and welcome to the Q4 2025 SunCoke Energy, Inc., earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Shantanu Agrawal, Vice President, Finance and Treasurer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Nick. Good morning, and thank you for joining us this morning to discuss SunCoke Energy's fourth quarter and full-year '25 results as well as 2026 guidance. With me today are Katherine Gates, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mark Marinko, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

This conference call is being webcast live on the Investor Relations section of our website, and a replay will be available later today. Following management's prepared remarks, we'll open the call for Q&A. 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 things over to Katherine, let me remind you that the various remarks we make on today's call regarding future expectations constitute forward-looking statements. The cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements in our SEC filings apply to the remarks we make today. These documents are available on our website as our reconciliations to non-GAAP financial measures discussed on today's call.

With that, I'll now turn things over to Katherine.

Thanks, Shantanu. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Before we get started, I'd like to congratulate Mark on his previously announced retirement. Mark has been instrumental in guiding SunCoke through critical phases of our evolution including the recent acquisition of Phoenix and the entire SunCoke team wishes him the best in his retirement.

I would also like to congratulate Shantanu Agrawal on his well-deserved appointment as Chief Financial Officer. Shantanu has acquired deep knowledge of SunCoke's business during his 11 years at the company. He is ideally situated to continue our focus on financial discipline, operational excellence, strategic growth, and creating long-term value for shareholders.

I want to share a few highlights from 2025 before I turn it over to Mark to review the results in detail. First, I want to recognize another year with remarkable safety performance. SunCoke, excluding Phoenix, ended the year with a total recordable incident rate of 0.55. Safety is our first priority, and I'd like to thank all of our employees for their continued commitment to exceptional safety performance.

Turning to our financial results. We delivered consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $219.2 million. These results reflect the addition of Phoenix for five months as well as lower terminals handling volumes driven by market conditions.

The Domestic Coke segment was impacted by the change in mix of contract and spot coke sales, coupled with lower economics on the Granite City contract extension and the breach of contract by Algoma. We have extended our Granite City coke making contract with US Steel through December 2026 at similar economics to the 2025 extension. We have also extended our Haverhill II contract with Cleveland-Cliffs through December 2028 with key provisions similar to the previous contracts.

In addition, we have the new take-or-pay coal handling agreement at KRT that began in the second quarter of 2025. We will benefit from a full year of that contract in 2026. We also made great progress on our capital allocation priorities in 2025 with the acquisition of Phoenix. The integration is progressing well, and we are excited for the growth potential in this business.

In 2025, we also returned approximately $41 million to our shareholders via our quarterly dividend. We expect to continue our quarterly dividend throughout 2026.

With that, I'll turn it over to Mark to review our fourth quarter and full-year earnings in detail. Mark?

Thanks, Katherine. Turning to slide 4. The fourth-quarter net loss attributable to SunCoke was $1 per share, down $1.28 versus the fourth quarter of 2024, primarily driven by one-time items totaling $0.85 per share net of tax, including a noncash asset impairment charge, primarily due to the closure of Haverhill I. Site closure costs were primarily related to Phoenix operating sites and restructuring and transaction costs primarily related to the acquisition of Phoenix. Fourth-quarter net loss was also impacted by lower coke sales volumes in the Domestic Coke segment due to the breach of contract by Algoma.

Our full-year net loss attributable to SunCoke was $0.52 per share, down $1.64 versus the full-year 2024. The decrease was primarily driven by one-time items totaling $0.97 per share net of tax, including a noncash asset impairment charge, primarily due to the closure of Haverhill I, acquisition-related transaction and restructuring costs, and Phoenix operating site closure costs.

Full-year net loss was also impacted by the change in mix of contract and spot coke sales coupled with lower economics on the Granite City contract extension in the domestic coke segment, partially offset by lower income tax expense driven by capital investment tax credits.

Consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter 2025 was $56.7 million, down $9.4 million versus the prior-year period. The decrease was mainly driven by lower coke sales volumes due to the breach of contract by Algoma, lower economics on the Granite City contract extension, and lower terminals handling volumes due to market conditions, partially offset by the addition of Phoenix Global.

On a full-year basis, we delivered adjusted EBITDA of $219.2 million, down $53.6 million versus the prior year. The year-over-year decrease was primarily driven by the change in mix of contract and spot coke sales, lower economics on the Granite City contract extension, lower coke sales volumes due to the breach of contract by Algoma, and lower terminals handling volume due to market conditions, partially offset by the addition of Phoenix Global.

Turning to slide 5 to discuss the year-over-year adjusted EBITDA variance in detail. Our Domestic Coke business delivered full-year adjusted EBITDA of $170 million, down $64.7 million from the prior-year period. Results were impacted by the change in mix of contract and spot coke sales, the lower Granite City contract extension economics and the Algoma breach of contract.

Our Industrial Services segment, which includes the former Logistics segment and new Phoenix Global business delivered full-year adjusted EBITDA of $62.3 million, representing a year-over-year increase of $11.9 million. The increase is primarily driven by the addition of Phoenix Global, partially offset by lower terminals handling volumes due to market conditions.

Finally, our corporate and other expenses, which includes results from our legacy coal mining business and Brazil Coke-making business were $13.1 million, an increase of $800,000 year-over-year.

Turning to slide 6 to discuss capital deployment in 2025. We generated operating cash flow of $109.1 million in 2025. Net cash provided by operating activities was negatively impacted by two items: number one, the accounting treatment of a portion of Phoenix Global's acquisition price, Phoenix's management incentive plan and transaction costs, cash payments totaling $29.3 million were included in the acquisition price but flowed through our operating cash flow as a use of cash. Number two, the $30 million impact from the breach of contract by Algoma, representing the total outstanding accounts receivable and coke and coal inventory on the books at year-end. Without the impact of these two one-time items, our operating cash flow would have been approximately $59 million higher.

Net borrowing on our revolver was $193 million. Cash acquired from the Phoenix Global acquisition was $24.3 million. And after factoring in the $29.3 million flowing through operating cash flow, the net purchase consideration for Phoenix was $295.8 million.

Capital expenditures came in at $66.8 million, which is slightly below our revised guidance of $70 million due to the timing of CapEx payments. We also returned capital to our shareholders in the form of $0.48 per share annual dividend, which was a use of approximately $41 million of cash. We ended 2025 with a cash balance of $88.7 million and $132 million of availability on our $325 million revolver, resulting in strong liquidity of approximately $221 million.

Now I'd like to turn to our expectations for 2026. Slide 8 lays out our SunCoke's historical adjusted EBITDA, free cash flow generation, annual dividends paid per share, and gross leverage. SunCoke has a strong track record of generating steady free cash flow, and we expect the trend to continue with the addition of Phoenix Global. Our deliberate and careful capital allocation decisions over the last several years have strengthened our balance sheet and financial position while continuing to reward our long-term shareholders. We refinanced our debt and prioritized deleveraging in the midst of COVID-19 which allowed us to significantly lower our interest expense, resulting in higher free cash flow conversion.

We expanded both our foundry market presence and participation in the spot market -- spot blast coke market during '23 and '24, while our terminals expanded both their customer base and their services. With our leverage target and sight, we prioritize return of capital to shareholders by establishing a quarterly dividend and increasing net dividend each year for three years in a row. While our 2025 results reflect the challenging market conditions we operated in during the year, we still generated positive free cash flow for the year.

We anticipate meaningful recovery in 2026 with an optimized coke fleet, extended coke-making contracts at Granite City and Haverhill II, improved market conditions for our terminals, and a full year of Phoenix Global. With deleveraging as our priority, we plan to use excess free cash flow to pay down the outstanding borrowing on our revolver and anticipate 2026 year-end gross leverage around 2.45 times, comfortably below our long-term target of 3 times. As Katherine mentioned earlier, we also intend to continue utilizing our free cash flow to reward our shareholders with our regular dividend, which is reviewed and approved on a quarterly basis by our Board of Directors.

Moving to 2026 guidance summary on slide 9. We expect consolidated adjusted EBITDA to be between $230 million and $250 million in 2026. Domestic Coke adjusted EBITDA is expected to be lower by $2 million to $8 million, primarily driven by approximately 220,000 lower contract blast coke sales tons. With the closure of Haverhill I, our revised capacity is now 3.1 million blast furnace equivalent tons. We will be running at full utilization and are sold out for the year.

Industrial Services-adjusted EBITDA is expected to be higher by $28 million to $38 million in 2026, primarily driven by a full year of Phoenix Global and our expectations for improvement in market conditions for our terminals. Corporate and other expenses are expected to be higher by $5 million to $9 million, primarily driven by normalized employee bonus expense and Phoenix integration-related IT costs. We expect 2026 corporate expenses to be comparable to 2023 and 2024 spending.

Moving on to slide 10 to discuss Domestic Coke segment in detail. In 2026, we expect our Domestic Coke adjusted EBITDA to be between $162 million and $168 million, with sales of approximately 3.4 million tons, which includes contract, foundry, and spot blast coke. We have optimized our coke fleet with the closure of Haverhill I operations due to the breach of contract by Algoma. The approximately 500,000 ton reduction in coke production and sales represent our lowest margin tons. As a result, we expect a modest increase in the domestic coke adjusted EBITDA per ton in 2026. Our revised total Domestic Coke blast furnace equivalent capacity is now approximately 3.7 million tons.

We have extended our Granite City coke making contract through December 31, 2026, at similar economics to the 2025 extension. We have also extended our Haverhill II contract through December 2028 with similar economics to previous contracts and will provide Cleveland-Cliffs with 500,000 tons of coke annually. Our coke fleet will be operating at full utilization in 2026. We have approximately 3 million tons contracted under long-term take-or-pay agreements and the remaining capacity is sold out for the year between the foundry and spot markets.

Finally, we are experiencing a slower-than-normal start to 2026. Our Middletown coke plant experienced a turbine failure during a planned outage, which is impacting power production. This is an insured event, and we expect the turbine to be back in operation midyear. Additionally, the severe winter weather we all experienced over the last few weeks has impacted several of our operations as well. The impact of these events is reflected in our 2026 guidance.

Moving to slide 11 to discuss Industrial Services in more detail. 2026 Industrial Services adjusted EBITDA is estimated to be between $90 million and $100 million. Our outlook for 2026 reflects our expectations for improvement in market conditions. We will have a full year of Phoenix Global in our results for the year. As our terminals handling volumes are largely market-driven, our current guidance assumes improved market conditions in 2026.

We have included partial synergies in our 2026 guidance and expect to continue recognizing synergies in 2027. We expect approximately 24 million tons of terminals handling volumes and approximately 22 million tons of steel customer volumes serviced.

Moving to slide 12. Once again, we expect consolidated adjusted EBITDA to be between $230 million and $250 million. Our Domestic Coke segment is expected to deliver adjusted EBITDA between $162 million and $168 million, while the Industrial Services segment is expected to deliver between $90 million and $100 million in adjusted EBITDA. We anticipate CapEx in 2026 between $90 million and $100 million, driven by a full year of Phoenix CapEx requirements. We expect 2026 operating cash flow to be between $230 million and $250 million, and our free cash flow is expected to be between $140 million and $150 million.

With that, I'll turn it back over to Katherine.

Thanks, Mark. Wrapping up on slide 13. As always, safety is our first priority. We're coming off of another year of excellent safety performance and the team remains committed to maintaining strong safety and environmental performance in 2026. Robust safety and environmental standards sets SunCoke apart and are central to our reliable delivery of high-quality coke and industrial services.

In 2026, our focus will be on utilizing our free cash flow to support our capital allocation priorities. We will use excess cash to pay down our revolver balance with a goal of gross leverage below 3 times by the end of 2026 and beyond. We also plan to continue returning capital to shareholders via the quarterly dividend.

In addition, our efforts will continue on the seamless integration of Phoenix, maintaining the strength of our core businesses as well as assessing new growth opportunities across all areas of our business. As always, we continuously evaluate the capital needs of the business, our capital structure, and the need to reward our shareholders, and we'll make capital allocation decisions accordingly.

We continue to see SunCoke being well positioned for long-term success. We continue to invest in our Coke and Industrial Services assets to ensure that they are safe, efficient, reliable, and environmentally-compliant, putting SunCoke in the best position to grow and diversify our customer and product base.

Finally, we're pleased to share that we plan to host a virtual Investor Day on Thursday, February 26. We're looking forward to discussing the recent developments of SunCoke and having some one-on-one conversations.

With that, let's go ahead and open up the call for Q&A.

(Operator Instructions)

Nick Giles, B. Riley Securities.

This is Henry Hearle here on for Nick Giles. First off, Mark, congratulations on your retirement, and Shantanu on the CFO appointment.

Thank you.

So on the last call, you discussed pursuing all legal means to enforce the Algoma contract and recover any financial losses. But now with Haverhill I closed and subsequent impairment charges, could you give us some more color on the current status of litigation and what are some of the likely outcomes?

Sure. And thanks for the question. We continue to pursue Algoma in -- it's in an arbitration. We're pursuing all legal means to recover our losses. So we absolutely believe we have an enforceable contract. This is a clear breach of contract by Algoma, and we expect to prevail in our litigation with them.

The breach by Algoma is actually ongoing. We had sales to them in 2025 as well as in 2026. So if you think about this in terms of the amounts that are owed by Algoma and what we're pursuing, in our third quarter call, we said that we had the impact to the working capital for the breach by Algoma could be up to $70 million, and this is in 2025. So if you look at our guidance summary, there's a deferral of cash receipt from Algoma for $30 million in 2025.

So you can see that we are actually able to do much better and mitigate that potential loss through sales to third parties and also through the turndown of our facility. So that amount that you see, that $30 million, it actually represents part, but not the full amount of the Algoma losses for the breach of contract in '25. But again, as I said, that breach is ongoing, and we are pursuing not just our losses from 2025, but also our losses in 2026.

Beyond that, I can't really provide detail on the outcome of the litigation since it is active litigation, but I'll emphasize again that this is a clear breach of contract, and we expect to recover.

The other thing that I can say that might provide some color and be helpful is that if you're looking at bridging our 2025 to our 2026 guidance, is really as a matter of coincidence, the losses from Algoma in '25 are very similar to what we would have expected to have lost in 2026. So in other words, what we would have made last year with Algoma and this year with Algoma is not meaningfully different. And so hopefully, that's helpful if you're thinking about bridging the years. But really beyond that, I can't say more because we are in active litigation.

Okay. Yeah, that's very helpful. And then moving over to Phoenix Global. Are you guys still anticipating an annual EBITDA contribution of roughly $60 million and synergies of $5 million to $10 million in this 2026 guidance?

Yes, we are.

Okay. And then could you also remind us of any -- of the one-time integration costs that you incurred with Phoenix Global in 4Q? And then should we expect any more in 1Q of this year?

So that -- related just to Phoenix, the one-time is you had some site closure costs of about $3.9 million. That's really related to some international sites that during due diligence, we identified that we would like to close down. There were some transaction costs of about $600,000 as well.

Really related to the Phoenix?

That's the Phoenix side, yes.

Nathan Martin, The Benchmark Company.

First, I would also like to congratulate Shantanu on his upcoming promotion and of course, wish Mark well in his retirement.

The Haverhill I closure. First question there, is that permanent? Or would you guys be able to reopen if market conditions improve? And then what savings, if any, do you see on the cost side from the closure?

Sure. So the Haverhill I could be restarted, but it would require a significant capital investment and it would take about 12 to 18 months to restart. So that facility was taken down completely cold. So we would certainly be willing to restart that facility, but we would need to see a meaningfully -- a meaningful return to do it.

And sitting here today with the market conditions being what they are and Algoma's breach, we don't really see any economic value in the asset. I think it's important to note that we do not have any sort of environmental or other remediation-related costs for Haverhill I, so no reclamation, no remediation. We have some nonmaterial costs to remain in sort of compliance. But they are minimal.

And then in terms of the savings that we'll see from Haverhill I we have a reduction in our workforce and obviously some other costs related to ongoing O&M for that facility.

And Katherine, I'm assuming all those costs are incorporated in guidance already?

They are.

Okay. Perfect. Second, I wanted to touch on maybe EBITDA cadence? Like how should we think about that as we go through the year. You guys called out the Middletown turbine failure.

I think that said come back maybe midyear. Obviously, the recent Arctic weather impacting operations as well. So maybe a couple of things there. Like what's the cost on the turbine? Again, how should that impact operations?

And it sounds like the first half? And then additionally, like when will most of the IT integration and bonus expense items hit that you guys talked about?

Sure. Why don't I start with the weather and the turbine outage. So obviously, you've seen this across the space. We had an absolutely brutal start to the year. So between the extreme storms, the extreme freeze, as Mark mentioned, really, all of our facilities were impacted, Phoenix sites, terminals, and our coke plants.

And the impact was really the most acute at Indiana Harbor, which sits on a Peninsula on Lake Michigan. And so there was significant lost production there. And you're going to see that come through in the first-quarter results. But we do have the balance of the year to make that up at our other facilities.

With respect to the Middletown turbine outage, so not only did that impact our fourth quarter because we had six weeks of lost power that was not built into our revised guidance. But we also had the entire really first half, as you mentioned, where we will have that turbine down. We will be addressing the unexpected failure. And it is an insured event, but we won't see any earnings associated with the power production at Middletown until the turbine is back up, and we have recovered the amounts that were owed for that lost power from the insurer.

So while I'm not being able to give sort of plant-specific EBITDA, as you know, that we don't do. What I can tell you is that the impact from those events, the Middletown turbine and the weather that impacted the first quarter, that's going to aggregate to approximately a $10 million impact in the first quarter. And then, again, we don't expect to see the turbine up and the recoveries from the power in the second quarter. So that may help you a little bit as you're trying to build out the cadence of the year.

Appreciate that. And then maybe just related, while you're talking about the power production, is there anything we need to think about for power at Haverhill I with that being down, any losses there?

No. That facility did not produce power. So no impact.

Okay. Appreciate that. Maybe one last question. Could you kind of walk us through what's driving the expected improvement in tons handled in the industrial segment? Is this mainly the KRT expansion and the take-or-pay there, you mentioned earlier.

How should we think about CMT? I believe you guys still also have some small take-or-pay there for '26 as well?

Sure. So yes. We have built into our guidance a full year of the new contract that we began in the middle of 2025 at KRT. We're also expecting some modest recovery overall across both KRT and CMT. And you're seeing that come through in the guidance as well.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Katherine Gates, President and CEO, for any closing remarks.

Thanks. I want to thank everyone for joining us today and, again, thank the SunCoke team for their hard work and excellent safety performance in 2025. We're looking forward to speaking with everyone on the 26th. Let's continue to work safely today and every day.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.