Peter Matt
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open
Thank you, Jean Marc, and thank you all for joining the call today. Turning now to Slide 8, you will find a change in adjusted EBITDA by segment for the second quarter and the first half of 2017, compared to the same periods of last year. For the second quarter of 2017, Constellium achieved €127 million of adjusted EBITDA, an increase of €20 million or 19% year over year. I will walk through each of these segments at a high level here and then go into more detail in the following slides. A&T increased adjusted EBITDA by €10 million to €41 million in the quarter. AS&I adjusted EBITDA of €33 million increased €4 million year-over-year. P&ARP adjusted EBITDA of €57 million was up slightly from last year. Lastly, Holdings and Corporate improved by €5 million compared to the second quarter of last year. This was due to lower corporate cost and €2 million of onetime items. Looking forward, we now expect agency cost of approximately €6 million per quarter which is at the lower end of the €2 million to €3 million a month of the Company has historically guided to. This reduction in agency cost is largely a result of the benefits of Project 2019. At the bottom of the page, we present the first half of 2017. Constellium achieved €220 million of adjusted EBITDA in the first half, an increase of 11% compared to the first half of last year. Now turning to Slide 9 and focusing on the P&ARP segment. Adjusted EBITDA of €57 million was €1 million above last year. As you can see at bottom of the slide, we have included a bridge of the major drivers of adjusted EBITDA performance at the business units. Lower volumes drove a €5 million in adjusted EBITDA, as P&ARP shipments fell 3% on lower packaging volumes. This effect was offset by improved price and mix largely the result of our strategic shifts towards increased Automotive Rolled products shipments. As we noted last quarter, we are completing a major investment program to enable the production of auto body sheets sub-rates at Muscle Shoals. We are pleased with the progress of this initiative, however, we are incurring incremental costs through the planned outrages we have taken and will take through the second quarter of 2018 to complete this program. Despite the automotive readiness program, we were able to improve cost by €2 million in the quarter. Our goal is to continue to offset the impact of these planned outrages with cost saving and productivity gains. Turning to Slide 10 and focusing on the A&T segment. Adjusted EBITDA increased €10 million to €41 million. The volume in the quarter increased 2% resulting in a €1 million improvement in adjusted EBITDA, as higher TID shipment more than offset the decrease in Aerospace shipments. Better price and mix drove a €9 million improvement in adjusted EBITDA as we benefitted from new customer contracts and increased shipments of Airware in the quarter. Our operational performance during the quarter was at also strong with a €2 million improvement related to cost. Turning now to Slide 11 and focusing on the AS&I segment. Adjusted EBITDA of 33 million was a quarterly record and increased 12% compared to the second quarter of 2016. Volume represented a €4 million improvement as Automotive extruded product shipments were up 4% and other extruded products shipments were increased 6%, both on strong market demand. AS&I continue to demonstrate solid cost performance across the business units, representing a €2 million improvement compared to last year. Turning to Slide 12, I want to say just a few words about our balance sheet and liquidity. Our net debt position as of the end of the second quarter was approximately €2 billion. Our leverage peak at 5.5 times in the first quarter and I'm pleased to note that it fell to 5.1 times at the end of June. Our cash plus amounts available under our committed facilities was €557 million at the end of the second quarter. As you can see in our debt summary profile at the bottom right-hand side of the slide, we have no bond maturities until 2021. We remained very comfortable with our current liquidity position and our debt profile. In the second quarter of 2017, Ravenswood and Muscle Shoals consolidated their secured asset-based revolving credit facilities into a single $300 million pan U.S. ABL due in 2022. This financing further simplifies our capital structure, lowers our cost and extends the maturity of our liquidity facilities. During the second quarter of 2017, the Company also entered into a new €100 million two-year secured revolving credit facility on the inventory. This facility further enhances our liquidity. Lastly, while not on the slide, free cash flow in the first half was an outflow of €54 million compared to an outflow of €125million in the first half of last year, excluding the cash impact of factored receivables the Company's free cash flow in the first half of 2017 was positive and an improvement of over €200 million compared to the first half of last year. Turning to Slide 13, I would like to spend a few minutes discussing Project 2019. The cash improvement initiatives we launched in March. We've put into place the project organization and governance and remained very confident in the opportunity that presents. You will recall that there were three pillars to Project 2019, cost reduction, working capital reduction and capital expenditures reductions. On cost savings, I'm pleased to say that we've achieved €10 million of annual run rate cost savings through the second quarter of 2017. This figure represents savings from initiatives that have already been auctioned and secured as of the end of the quarter. We have a wide range of additional initiatives underway and we report further progress as we achieve our objective. I would like to walk you through just a few examples of the initiative underlying our €10 million of savings. As previously noted, we've significant opportunities to reduce the cost in the day to day activities of our operations. In our automotive structures business for example, we’re in sourcing the maintenance activities in both our North American and European operations. This will results in cost savings of over a €0.5 million. We also highly focused on metal management and there are number of ways this will produce cost savings for us. And one of our major A&T operations, we have begun in sourcing scrap processing this represents over a €0.5 million of cost savings. At the Analyst Day, we talked about the need to reduce the number of outside advisors and their cost. We've created cost savings of over €2 million through these initiatives thus far at the corporate level. We remain confident in our ability to improve working capital performance over the coming quarters and are track to reduce our capital spending to our guidance level of €275 million, an improvement of over €80 million compared to last year. Turning to Slide 14, I would like to spend a few minutes discussing another important Project 2019 initiative, Constellium's intention to move its corporate domicile from the Netherlands to France. As you know we have no operations in the Netherlands, but we bare the cost of keeping an office in the Netherlands as well as the Dutch corporate structure. Moving our corporate domicile to France will allow us to simplify this corporate structure and enable us to benefit from potential cost savings. We currently expect to realize direct cost savings of approximately €3 million per year and future tax benefits of as much as €6 million per year. I want to be clear that as these savings have not yet been secured, they are not included in the Project 2019 run rate we just discussed. We will communicate further details on this project in the coming months. We expect this process to be completed by the middle of 2018 and the move is subject to shareholder approval. Additionally, we intend to start the process of delisting from Euronext Paris to further reduce cost and complexity. I will now hand the call back over to Jean Marc.