Earnings Labs

Loma Negra Compañía Industrial Argentina Sociedad Anónima (LOMA)

Q4 2019 Earnings Call· Wed, Mar 11, 2020

$11.12

+2.92%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to Loma Negra Fourth Quarter 2019 Conference Call and Webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Also, Mr. Sergio Faifman will be responding in Spanish immediately following an English – by an English translation. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Gastón Pinnel, Head of IR. Please go ahead. Gastón Pinnel: Thank you. Hi, good morning. Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your participation in this conference call. By now, everyone should have access to our earnings press release and today's call's presentation, both of which were distributed yesterday after market closed. Speaking during today's call will be Sergio Faifman, our CEO and Vice President of the Board of Directors together with our CFO, Marcos Gradin. Both will be available for the Q&A session right after the presentation. Before we begin, I would like to make the following safe harbor statements. Today's call will contain forward-looking statements, and I refer you to the forward-looking statements section of our earnings release and recent filings with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect new or changed events or circumstances. Now I would like to turn the call over to our CEO, Sergio Faifman.

Sergio Faifman

Analyst

Thank you, Gastón. Hello, everyone, and thank you for showing up today. I am pleased to welcome you to Loma Negra fourth quarter 2019 earnings conference call. We will begin our presentation with a discussion of the highlights of the quarter, and then Marcos will take you through our market review and financial results. Afterwards, I will make some closing remarks. Finally, we will open the call to your questions. Once again, the company has shown the capacity to adapt to a challenging context of currency depreciation, high inflation, activity contraction, by optimizing the cost of production. Improving margin enabled us to sustain a profitability measured in U.S. dollar. As shown on Slide 3, the fourth quarter was characterized by a long political transition amid great financial instability, both factors ending up postponing the economic recovery and negatively impacting the construction sector. As shown on this slide, net revenue declined by 15%, mostly impacted by Cement and Concrete segment in Argentina, particularly as much of the public and private infrastructure projects were put on hold. Adjusted EBITDA also declined by 13%, but thanks to positive pricing and the commitment in cost control, we were able to expand the margin by 69 basis points. On the back of our competitive leadership and our determination to undertake structural change, we reached, in 2019, an adjusted EBITDA of $189 million. And when excluding the nonrecurring cost of structure adequacy, adjusted EBITDA will have reached $209 million, representing a margin expansion of 378 basis points. We continue executing our expansion project at L´Amali plant as it's part of our strategy and will allow us to continue increasing production, efficiency and profitability. I will now hand off the call to Marcos Gradin. Please, Marcos, go ahead.

Marcos Gradin

Analyst

Thank you, Sergio. Good day, everyone. Turning to Slide 4. Let me start by providing a quick outline of the macro environment and industry trends in Argentina. After the presidential elections in October last year, the outgoing government had to make some measures to recover the stability of the financial system, exchange and capital control and renegotiation of public debt, among others. These measures ended up deepening the ongoing economic and financial crisis, negatively impacting the construction activity, both from the public and private sector. During the fourth quarter, the cement industry declined by 9.4% year-over-year. Taking a closer look at the cement demand by segment, we observed that the trend of the third quarter is maintained where the bag segment continues to recover percentage of sales at expense of bulk segment. Bag segment declined by 3.1% and bulk decreased by 17.2%. Consequently, the share of cement sold in bag increased by almost 4 percentage points from 57% in fourth quarter 2018 to almost 61% in fourth quarter 2019. By the year-end, the incoming government took steps to achieve an economic recovery, reschedule sovereign debt maturities and regain confidence. We are still under this process. Therefore, we do not foresee an economic recovery before the second semester of the year. Last year ended up with an annual volume, 6.8% below that of 2018 and 9% below than 2017 historic record. Economy's expectation for 2020 GDP stands at minus 1.5%. Therefore, we expect a mid-single-digit decline by year-end, with a recovery only by the second half of the year. Now please turn to Slide 5 for a review of our revenue performance by segment. Top line was down 15% in the fourth quarter as a persistent economic contraction impacted the construction activity. Cement revenues dropped by 9.1%, impacted by sales volume…

Sergio Faifman

Analyst

Thank you, Marcos. Now please turn to Slide 10. I would like to conclude by combining our satisfaction with the results achieved in 2019. In the context of economic contraction and high financial volatility, the company showed its flexibility for the adaptation. Our competitive leadership and our determination were a critical factor to carry out structural change necessary to face the changing situation. On the back of these factors, we had reached, in 2019, an adjusted EBITDA of $199 million. And when excluding the non-recurring cost of structure adequacy, adjusted EBITDA will have reached $209 million, with a margin of 31.6%. In this day of the current global uncertainty and volatility around the effect of the coronavirus and the oil price plummet, it's hard to provide an outlook for 2020. However, our previous estimation considered a consensus showing another year of middle single-digit contraction, though with an expectation for a recovery by the second semester. Our long-term perspective has not been conditioned by these short-term challenges and we maintain our costs, betting and trusting in the progress and development of Argentina, contribute to narrow the housing and infrastructure deficit. This is the reason why we continued executing an expansion project at the current L´Amali plant as a part of our strategy and will allow us to continue increasing production, efficiency and profitability to let us thrive in the future. This is end of our prepared remarks. We are now ready to take questions. Operator, please open the call for questions.

Operator

Operator

Gastón Pinnel: Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your interest in our company, and we will look forward to meeting more of you over the coming months and providing financial and business updates for the next quarters. In the meantime, the team remains available to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you very much and enjoy the rest of your day.

Operator

Operator

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