SunCoke Energy - Q1 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the SunCoke Energy Q1 2024 Earnings Call. My name is Angela, and I'll be coordinating your call today. During the presentation, you can register to ask the question by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star 2. I will now hand you over to your host, Shantanu Agrawal, Vice President, Finance and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Thanks, Angela. Good morning, and thank you for joining us this morning to discuss SunCoke Energy's Q1 2024 Results. With me today are Mike Rippey, Chief Executive Officer; Katherine Gates, President; and Mark Marinko, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following management's prepared remarks, we'll 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 later today. If we do not 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 are reconciliations to non-GAAP financial measures discussed on today's call. With that, I'll now turn things over to Katherine.

Katherine Gates (President and CEO)

Thanks, Shantanu. Good morning, and thank you for joining us on today's call. Before we get started, I'd like to congratulate Mike Rippey on his previously announced retirement in two weeks. Mike's leadership and contributions have been crucial to the success of SunCoke during his tenure. I've had the privilege of working closely with Mike over the past several years and look forward to having him as an advisor for the company. The entire SunCoke team wishes him the best in his retirement. Moving to Q1 results, I wanted to share a few highlights before turning it over to Mark to discuss the results in detail. First, I'd like to thank all of our SunCoke employees for their contributions to our very good Q1 results. Our domestic coke plants continued to run at full capacity with strong operational performance.

Our logistics terminals delivered excellent results, handling 5.5 million tons during the quarter. We saw higher volumes at our domestic terminals, due in part to East Coast port congestion caused by the unfortunate incident in Baltimore, which favorably impacted results. Through our collective efforts, we delivered consolidated Adjusted EBITDA of $67.9 million. From a balance sheet perspective, we ended the Q1 with a strong liquidity position of $470.1 million. Our gross leverage was approximately 1.86x on a trailing-twelve-month Adjusted EBITDA basis at the end of the quarter. Looking ahead, we're pleased to have all of our spot blast and foundry coke sales finalized for the full year. With this strong start, we are well-positioned to achieve our full-year Adjusted EBITDA guidance range of $240 million-$255 million.

With that, I'll turn it over to Mark to review our Q1 earnings in detail. Mark?

Mark Marinko (Senior VP and CFO)

Thanks, Katherine. Turning to slide 4. Net income attributable to SunCoke was $0.23 per share in the Q1 of 2024, up $0.04 versus the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA for the Q1 2024 was $67.9 million, compared to $67.1 million in the Q1 2023. The increase in Adjusted EBITDA was primarily driven by higher blast coke sales volumes and higher volumes at our domestic logistics terminals, partially offset by lower volumes at CMT. Moving to slide 5 to discuss our domestic coke business performance in detail. Q1 domestic coke Adjusted EBITDA was $61.4 million, and coke sales volumes were 996,000 tons.

The domestic coke fleet continues to run at full capacity, and the increase in Adjusted EBITDA, as compared to the prior year period, was primarily driven by higher blast coke sales volumes. Our full-year domestic coke sales tons guidance remains approximately 4.1 million tons. As Katherine mentioned earlier, all spot blast and foundry coke sales are finalized for the full year. Given the strong performance this quarter from our domestic coke segment, we are well-positioned to achieve full-year domestic coke Adjusted EBITDA within our guidance range of $238 million-$245 million. Now moving on to slide 6 to discuss our logistics business. Our logistics business generated $13 million of Adjusted EBITDA in the Q1 of 2024, compared to $13.5 million in the Q1 of 2023.

The decrease in Adjusted EBITDA was primarily due to lower throughput volumes at CMT, partially offset by higher volumes at our domestic terminals. CMT also recognized limited API2 price adjustment benefit during the quarter. Our terminals handled combined throughput volumes of approximately 5.5 million tons during the Q1 of 2024, as compared to 5.3 million tons during the same prior year period. Our domestic terminals handled 3.6 million tons in Q1 2024, making it the best quarter in terms of volume for the domestic terminals in the past 5 years. The increase in volume was driven in part by the unfortunate bridge incident in Baltimore, which caused East Coast port congestion.

We are pleased with the excellent results from our logistics segment in the Q1, and are well-positioned to achieve our logistics full year 2024 Adjusted EBITDA and volume guidance, which remain unchanged. Now turning to slide 7 to discuss our liquidity position for Q1. SunCoke ended the Q1 with a cash balance of $120.1 million. Cash flow from operating activities generated $10 million, and was negatively impacted by the timing of working capital changes of approximately $50 million in the quarter. We expect this impact to reverse over the course of the year, and we are reaffirming our full year operating cash flow guidance of $185 million-$200 million. We paid $9 million in dividends at the rate of $0.10 per share this quarter, and spent $15.5 million on CapEx.

In total, we ended the quarter with a strong liquidity position of $470.1 million. With that, I will turn it back over to Katherine.

Katherine Gates (President and CEO)

Thanks, Mark. Wrapping up on slide eight. As always, safety is our first priority, and we will continue to focus on strong safety and environmental performance. Robust safety and environmental standards set SunCoke apart and are central to our reliable delivery of high-quality coke and logistics services. We remain focused on safely executing against our operating and capital plan for full utilization of our coke-making assets. We also continue to concentrate our efforts on adding new business at our logistics terminals. And while we were able to finalize all of our spot blast and foundry coke sales for the full year, we are still focused on future opportunities to broaden our customer base. As we've demonstrated in the past, we will pursue a balanced yet opportunistic approach to capital allocation. From a growth perspective, we continue to work on developing the Granite City GPI project.

We continuously evaluate the capital needs of the business, our capital structure, and the need to reward our shareholders, and will make capital allocation decisions accordingly. Finally, we're very pleased with the strong results in the Q1, and we expect to achieve our full year consolidated Adjusted EBITDA guidance of $240 million-$255 million. With that, let's go ahead and open up the call for Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, Katherine. Everyone, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. We'll pause here briefly as the questions are being registered. The first question is from Lucas Pipes with B. Riley Securities. Your line is open.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Hey, hey. Good, good morning, everyone. How are you?

Katherine Gates (President and CEO)

Good morning, Lucas.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

So, my first question is on kind of the longer-term outlook for the utilization rates. One of your customers recently commented on an earnings call about kind of the Middletown contract and their desire to replace that blast furnace with a DRI. And I saw you just renewed a maintenance contract with Fluor, so it seems like you have confidence in the long-term need of your existing coke fleet. But if you could maybe comment on that and what your outlook is, maybe through the end of this decade and then maybe post 2032, I would really appreciate it. Thank you.

Katherine Gates (President and CEO)

Sure. Thanks, Lucas. With respect to, I think you're referring to the Cliffs announcement for their Middletown Works. And with respect to that, that announcement really has no impact on us. Our contract with Cliffs runs through the end of 2032. You know, in terms of sort of the next decade, if you will, I mean, there's a long way to go till 2033. We're not gonna speculate on the opportunities that are available to us in 2033 today. But what we've said before is that we have the newest coke-making assets, and we continue to make significant investments in them. We do that because we believe we're best positioned to serve the blast furnaces long term.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Got it. And so when you think about the upcoming more near-term renewals, contract renewals, I think there's U.S. Steel at the end of this year, then Cleveland-Cliffs, I think it's two contracts next year, and then Algoma after that. Do you expect more of those tons to shift into either the foundry or merchant, or rather spot blast furnace coke market, or would you expect kind of your current proportion of contracted to spot volumes to stay roughly the same through the next two to three years?

Katherine Gates (President and CEO)

Well, with respect to the Granite City coke contract, as we've said in the past, that coke contract is part of our GPI project and part of those negotiations. And with respect to our other contracts with other customers, we're always in dialogue with our customers, but we're not gonna comment on any kind of contract discussions.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Okay, but if Middletown were to convert to DRI in 2029, I guess Middletown coke would maybe backfill some of the Haverhill tons. So, should we expect that those contract renewals go maybe shorter in nature than they've historically been?

Katherine Gates (President and CEO)

You know, Lucas, as I said before, I mean, we're not gonna comment on our contract discussions with our customers, and we're not gonna to speculate. So, I really can't help you more than that.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Okay. No, that's appreciated. On the Granite City side, could you maybe update us on kind of what the most recent update is in terms of your conversations with U.S. Steel? Obviously, we're all following the news, and it seems tricky, but would appreciate your color on where the project stands today.

Katherine Gates (President and CEO)

Sure. Well, with respect to the GPI project, we are continuing to work with U.S. Steel on the GPI project. We are doing the detailed engineering for what would be a first of its kind project, right now. And so we'll continue to work with U.S. Steel on the GPI project, and we would look forward to working with Nippon in the future.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Got it. Any sort of timing when that detailed engineering might be completed?

Katherine Gates (President and CEO)

That's an ongoing project with U.S. Steel, and I'm not gonna comment further on it.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Okay, okay. And order of magnitude, if... What sort of capital might we be looking at? I assume there are costs for a conversion. So I, I'd be curious about kind of the cash component, but then also any sort of reclamation liabilities that might be assumed would be very helpful to understand what the capital commitments might be. Thank you.

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Hey, Lucas. Yeah, this is Shantanu. I mean, as we have said before, right? I mean, obviously, kind of, as we, when we, you know, announced this project, we said, like, you know, based on at that point of time, the project was kind of, assumed. And that's how we are progressing right now, is it's going to, you know, be a thinking about from a cash CapEx perspective. It's two years of our free cash flows, plus some revolver borrowing, right? And that still is the case as we move forward with this project. So we haven't really given out, like, you know, specific number, but that's kind of the order of magnitude, is roughly you can think about it as two years of our free cash flows, plus some revolver borrowing.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

That is very helpful. I appreciate all the color. I'll turn it over for now. Thank you.

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Thank you.

Katherine Gates (President and CEO)

Thanks, Lucas.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, everyone, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. The next question is from Nathan Martin with Benchmark. Your line is open.

Nathan Martin (Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone. Congrats on the Q1 results, and, Mike, congratulations on your retirement. Best of luck there.

Mark Marinko (Senior VP and CFO)

Much appreciated. Thanks.

Nathan Martin (Equity Research Analyst)

Maybe moving over to logistics segment for a second. Multi-year highs, tons handled there. I think that's mainly, you know, logistics ex CMT. You guys mentioned in your prepared remarks, a lot of that was driven by increased shipments due to the outage at Baltimore. You know, no update to your logistics volume guidance, it didn't look like. So is the expectation that tons kind of come down in subsequent quarters as Baltimore reopens, or is there a possibility you exceed that original guidance if, if current levels kind of remain elevated?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Thanks, Nathan. I mean, you know, yeah, as we said, you know, Q1, from a domestic terminals perspective, was the best quarter in the last five years, right? So it was definitely an exceptional quarter. As we've seen, right, like you saw the last year, the logistics business could be quite volatile, right? So, I mean, as we sit here today, what we're looking at the market, we are affirming our guidance. You know, if the market kind of remain up and down and weak, that's what we expect. But if, you know, we see a pickup in the out year, you know, later half of the year, then we can pick up more volumes, and you will see that in the results. But as we sit here today, what we are seeing, we confirm our guidance, and we stick with the $30 million-$35 million of logistics EBITDA.

Nathan Martin (Equity Research Analyst)

Appreciate that, Shantanu. I guess just, just thinking, you know, the Baltimore port looks like the main deep draft terminal is not scheduled or targeted to be reopened till the end of May. It, it would just make some sense. Maybe do you still think you'll have some benefit here in the Q2?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Not much. I mean, you know, we saw kind of some pickup, you know, at the start, like when it happened, and then we saw some in Q2, but it's really not driving the results that much as we sit here today.

Nathan Martin (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, that's fair. And then maybe specifically at CMT, you guys talked about, you know, the weak commodity markets, weak coal exports. Just curious, did you hit your coal take or pay minimum during the Q1 from a volume perspective? Maybe remind us, is that looked at on a quarterly basis, or is that annual? Because I think it's 4 million tons annually. And then great, just get your thoughts on how you view export coal demand, you know, here over the next few quarters, and, you know, how you expect your API2 price adjustment to trend, and maybe if we use this Q1 result as a, as a baseline.

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Yeah. So on the take or pay, it's an annual take or pay, Nathan. So I mean, obviously, we—you know, you can see we don't provide, like, kind of coal done separately. The total CMT did 1.8 million tons, which is kinda pretty much in line with what our expectation was. And we do expect to hit the take or pay minimum for the full year this year. Again, you know, going back to kind of what the expectation for the volumes and the price of the API2 is, I mean, if you look at the futures, API2 look pretty decent, right? I mean, it's kind of come back from the lows, but it can move pretty quickly as we have seen in the past, right?

Like, kind of it can move $10, $20, $30 bucks in a matter of couple of days. And there is some of our profitability as you know is derived from that, so it's hard to predict, right? What we have put in the guidance, I think we feel pretty good about it. The long run outlook of the CMT terminal remains pretty attractive, and that's why, you know, we really like having this terminal. And as in the past, it has performed really well, and we continue to believe in this terminal.

Nathan Martin (Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks for that, Shantanu. Maybe just shifting over to the domestic coke segment real quickly. EBITDA per ton, looks like, came in above your full year guidance range. Maybe can you talk about the drivers behind that outperformance?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

So, you know, Q1 normally is one of the quarters where we don't have a lot of outages. We are just coming out of the winter, just trying to, you know, kind of get back our facility to run really well in Q2 and Q3. And this, this quarter, except the first, you know, first couple of weeks of January, the weather, weather was pretty good as well, and it helped us kind of, you know, perform really well. On top of that, we talk about, you know, kind of higher blast coke sales volume in Q1. And that is, that is actually timing of that, and, and that is the, the spot blast coke sales volume timing, where it was unusually front, front-loaded in Q1 versus the previous year.

So that helped, our Q1 to be really, really good in terms of domestic coke performance. For the rest of the year, I think as we reaffirm our coke, domestic coke EBITDA guidance of $238-$248, it kind of tells you that we expect to run kind of as expected, as we announced, when we gave out our guidance initially, and we kind of are on track to meet that guidance.

Nathan Martin (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, appreciate that color. Just to make sure I followed correctly, you said the spot blast coke sales volumes were kind of front-loaded, so more in the Q1 than maybe typical. So if that's true, how do we think about maybe the mix, the sales mix in 2Q, 3Q, 4Q? Again, as you allude to, the Adjusted EBITDA per ton is gonna need to come down, obviously, just to get to within your full-year guidance. But is there any kind of additional planned maintenance in any given quarter, you know, that could pressure EBITDA per ton, maybe in 3Q or 4Q, just for instance, or, you know, any sales mix or headwind, tailwind, which we should be thinking about?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

No, I mean, there's obviously, as I mentioned, there was no outages in Q1, so we expect to have outages in, you know... not expect, we have planned outages in Q3 and Q4 of the year, right? So that'll impact our performance during that time. And, you know, kind of from our contracted sales perspective, it's kind of pretty ratably laid out. And then spot coke, if Q1 was heavily loaded, obviously like, you know, the rest of the year would kind of even out based on that. As we said, you know, we have 650,000 equivalent blast and foundry coke sales, coke tons to sell, and that just laid out for the year. It's just heavily loaded in the front Q1, so it's gonna be lower in the rest half of the year.

Nathan Martin (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. I appreciate those comments. I'll leave it there. Best of luck in the Q2.

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We have a follow-up question with Lucas Pipes with B. Riley Securities. Your line is open.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Thank you so much, operator. Thank you so much for taking my follow-up question. I wondered if you could maybe give us a little bit of an update onto kind of the size of the North American blast furnace coke market. There, there's been the idling at Granite City. There, there've been some other changes on the utilization rate of the blast furnace fleet. Obviously, there are changes if you look out at the years ahead, as discussed earlier. But, kind of what's the status quo? Where would you put the size of the market today? Thank you.

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Lucas, I mean, apart from the Granite City idling, you know, things haven't really changed that much in the North American market, right? I mean, there is obviously a lot of announced EAF capacity coming online in the future, in 2, 3, 4 years. But as we sit here today and, you know, you kind of think about versus the last 2, 3 years, apart from the Granite City blast furnace shut down, the, the utilization or the coke demand hasn't changed as a whole in the North America.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Okay, so what's the market size, roughly?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

It's roughly, you know, kind of as we have said in our earnings deck, it's around, you know, 8.5-10 million tons of coke what is kind of being produced in the US in the North American market.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Got it. So this would include Algoma and Dofasco and Stelco up in Canada?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Correct. Correct.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

So, kind of fair to say you have, what, kind of 50% to 40% of the market today?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

We say we have roughly 30%, 35% to 40% of the market. Because-

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Got it.

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Because we only sell 3.6 million tons of contracted capacity, right?

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Got it. Yeah, then, but then you sell some other blast furnace coke in North America as well, right, on a, on a spot basis?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Yes, in North America and all over the world. Yeah. And, and foundry as well, right?

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Yep.

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Which we are not including in that, right?

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Yeah. So the 30% to 35% would just be your contracted volumes?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Right.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Your share.

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Right. Yes. Yeah.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Okay.

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Yeah.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

What is the competition on the merchant coke side? Kind of the next closest merchant coke supplier, how large would they be?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

I mean, this is also, again, as we discussed, the only other merchant coke producer in the U.S. is DTE. You know, their capacity is in the, like, 800,000-1 million ton range.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Got it. They don't have a by-product of an asset, right?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

They do have by-product. They, they have the traditional coke production, coke met-coke production methodology.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay. That makes sense. So kind of the... If I just kind of look at this high level, integrated capacity is still around 50%. Is that about right?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Yeah, a little more than 50%, I would say. Yep.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

How would you describe that fleet? Has it been generally well-maintained, or do you have a view on that capacity?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

I mean, as you know, kind of, you know, the coke plants that have shut down recently, right? So obviously there hasn't been much capital spent on that.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Which one—which are the ones that shut down? Coke facility.

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

The recent announcement was the Clairton, right? The two batteries that shut down.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

What was their utilization rate prior to that shutdown?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Well, Lucas, for that, I guess, you know, kind of, we don't follow that that closely or, you know, you got to ask U.S. Steel for that.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Okay. I'll have to follow up with them. Okay, that's helpful. But your view is that you can compete effectively with that integrated capacity and kind of take share from there?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Yeah. I mean, if you look at last three years, right, like what we have done since coming out of COVID, right? We have maneuvered the market really well. It, the market has been constantly changing, as we have talked about, and we have been able to run full, and kind of, you know, run really profitably, and we continue to believe that we will be able to do that in the future.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Mm-hmm. Okay. In terms of kind of your spot coke sales today, have there been increased opportunities due to customer outages in terms of the spot blast furnace coke market in North America?

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Lucas, on the, you know, kind of, we don't talk about spot blast furnace coke separately. We always talk about spot blast and foundry coke on a combined basis, given the size of the market, and that part hasn't changed. That's the 650,000 equivalent blast furnace coke that we sell, and we intend to sell in 2023, 2024.

Lucas Pipes (Managing Director)

Okay. All right. I really appreciate the additional color. Thanks, thanks so much for taking my follow-up question, and best of luck.

Shantanu Agrawal (VP of Finance and Treasurer)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We currently have no further questions, so I'll hand back over to Katherine to conclude.

Katherine Gates (President and CEO)

Thank you all again for joining us this morning and for your continued interest in SunCoke. Let's continue to work safely and create value for all of our stakeholders.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.