Earnings Labs

Mercer International Inc. (MERC)

Q3 2021 Earnings Call· Fri, Oct 29, 2021

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to Mercer International’s Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. On the call today is David Gandossi, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mercer International and David Ure, Senior Vice President, Finance, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary. I will now hand the call over to David Ure.

David K. Ure

Management

Good morning, everyone. As usual I will make a few opening remarks about our financial performance before turning over the call to David to discuss our operations, our strategic capital program, the markets, and of course our recent acquisition. I would like to remind you that in this morning’s conference call, we will make forward-looking statements and according to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, I’d like to call your attention to the risks related to these statements, which are more fully described in our press release and in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We achieved record EBITDA in Q3, primarily due to solid overall production and sales, strong end product pricing in most markets, and relative to Q2 a much lighter scheduled maintenance program. While somewhat mixed depending on the particular market, our average NBSKs price realizations remained stable and relatively high in the quarter. We also benefited from the impact of a stronger U.S. dollar on our Euro and Canadian dollar denominated expenses. These tailwinds to our earnings were partially offset by modestly higher wood costs, particularly in our wood products segment along with the weakening of the U.S. lumber market. As we recorded in July, we also operated our Rosenthal pulp mill for the quarter without the benefit of its turbine generator. The absence of green electricity generation at Rosenthal during the quarter negatively impacted our results by about $12 million. We are now roughly midway through the process of repairing the turbine generator. But as expected, the largest contributor to the sequential improvements in the quarter was the absence of heavy scheduled maintenance and capital downtime that we took in Q2. You will recall that we took 105 days of downtime in Q2 to both…

David M. Gandossi

Management

Thanks Dave. Now this has been an exciting quarter for us. We return to normal production levels after an extensive period of maintenance and capital shuts in Q2. We achieved earnings while navigating the ongoing complications of the pandemic and we advanced a key element of our strategic growth plan with our entry into the mass timber space. I'll talk more about how this CLT acquisition fits with our view of a low carbon high value add future for Mercer in a moment but let's first review our operating performance. I'll begin by saying I'm very pleased with our record operating results this quarter. These results reflect the hard work of our teams during the period, often under challenging operating conditions along with the benefits of our recent investments in Stendal and Friesau. In Q2 Stendal completed the work necessary to increase annual NBSK pulp production by 80,000 tons and despite ramping up that equipment in Q3, still managed to achieve near record pulp and energy production. In addition, Friesau has been plainer, scanning, edge trimming, controlled drying and sorting capabilities are providing expected benefits of maximizing our production efficiency and great outturn. Overall our mills ran very well and strong production combined with overall steady demand for products when compared to Q2 were the key drivers in our strong results this quarter. I believe these results highlight Mercer's cash flow generation potential considering we achieved these results with Rosenthal's turbine being down for most of the quarter along with a long Peace River mill outage with recovery boiler rebuild. Both of these situations will generate significant business interruption and insurance claims which as of yet have not been finalized. Our pulp markets were mixed due to regional differences that were primarily the result of global logistical challenges. We saw…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from the line of Hamir Patel from CIBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Hamir Patel

Analyst

Yeah, hi, good morning. David, what level of sales would you be targeting for 2022 from the CLT plant and should we think of the initial year as kind of being a break even in terms of profitability and where would you see sort of steady state EBITDA contribution from that plant when it is fully ramped up?

David M. Gandossi

Management

Yeah, thanks for the question Hamir and good morning. You know I think the honest answer is we we're just going to have to wait and see. We haven't been in this business before. It's an emerging business and we're booking our first projects for the plant and what the margins are going to be is really going to depend on things like fixed cost coverage, doing a good job of matching the wood cost with the panel quotes and those sorts of things. And so we're working hard on those strategies. You know it's a very modern facility, it's got all the electronic scanning capabilities of the grading and certification the panels can be top end. And it's got a lot of horsepower, a lot of capacity so I'm very optimistic about it but I can't -- I really can't. I'd be kidding if I tried to imagine what the -- how quickly we're going to have that crestfallen and what the margins are going to be. But I do believe in the fullness of time. I believe it's going to wrap up faster than most would expect. We're seeing all kinds of inbound interest and the coding on projects as we speak. Yeah, I'm expecting we'll be making panels by the fourth quarter and I believe we will be investing in capacity enhancements in our facility in the coming year too as well which will further take us down that road of generating good EBITDA levels.

Hamir Patel

Analyst

Fair enough and Dave just turning to the lumber side, going through some further moderation in prices in Q4, is there any way you could maybe scale what the domestic price in Europe levels are or at least what sort of maybe sequential change you would expect there in Q4?

David M. Gandossi

Management

Yeah it's been a pretty shallow slope downwards. I mean it is just like a softening. I don't have a percentage for you. It is nothing like the U.S. in terms of the correction. It's just a psychological feeling in the market that there should be little more product available because less product going into the U.S. market, I don't know how much truth there is to that. It is more an impression that the market has I would guess. So it's a slight downward movement but not the big correction maybe the way it is described.

Hamir Patel

Analyst

Thanks and just a last question from me for David Ure. Could you remind us of the timing of major maintenance outages in 2022?

David K. Ure

Management

Yeah, we haven't pinned those down formally yet. I mean I think probably February would be a better time but it should be, I can’t say that it'll be a more normal year next year. So each mill will have a typical shut. So you'll recall that we have a one or two mills that can go on 18-month schedule. But for 2022 all four of the pulp mills will have a typical two to three week shut next year.

David M. Gandossi

Management

And Dave, I can maybe add on it. I have got a pretty good idea where they're going to follow. I think Peace River and Celgar will be Q2 and standalone Rosenthal will be Q3 will be my guess.

Hamir Patel

Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks. That’s all I had, I will turn it over.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Sean Steuart from TD Securities. Your line is now open.

Sean Steuart

Analyst

Thanks, good morning guys. I want to follow-up on Hamir’s questions on the CLT facility. Can you give us David some context on I guess how you are marketing the product, is it all inbound calls at this point, or is there a formal process you're setting up to sell the product into the market? And I wanted to follow-up on little bit vague in terms of the response with respect to the ramp up time frame and what EBITDA might ultimately look like. But if you're spending $50 million to acquire the asset, what are the return parameters you're focusing on over the long run for that investment, any detail you can give us there?

David M. Gandossi

Management

Yeah. Yeah, I don't mean to be evasive but I don't want to blow sunshine either Sean and it's like I said we haven't operated the facility like this before. And in the early stages, the growth in demand for CLT is staggering. It means that the forward looking CAGR could be 35% to 40% growth per year range. There's more projects in design today that have been built in the previous five to seven years. So how these are all going to be -- how these projects will all be priced by the various competitors I just don't know. But the demand is significant and the amount of things we have to work on is significant, the way we -- what we've been doing is building our team. We've got a gentleman with us that everything -- I believe he got very good operations personality, got very good marketing support, and we're continuing to build some of our technical sales support staff as well. There is a number of different facets to the marketing CLT. I mean some of it is the custom buildings like you might think of the architect Michael Green and the type of buildings he would do which are all custom big showy architectural wonders by all stretches. But then CLT is also becoming almost like a catalog component for architects and owners JC's that are wanting to build a building. So, certain sizes of respect and designed and more or less a catalog and these engineering firms that are supporting architects will just pick out of a catalog the different floor plates or walls or the components that they need. And when you get specified, it takes you away from bidding on every project. You become a component of a bid from a bigger -- like a big -- like you're not bidding just your piece, you feed into a bigger project that is being bid to an owner type deal, if that makes any sense. So, obviously we're in this business to make money and we've got a very modern facility and similar to what we did when we entered the lumber business, we are going to build our team to win. So we're not -- we're going to expect to grow this business quite aggressively and so we are recruiting and bringing in top talent. And we just honestly need a few quarters to really get a better feel for how it's all going to ramp up just being honest.

Sean Steuart

Analyst

Understood and is the intent to break this out as a separate segment in your financial disclosures going forward?

David M. Gandossi

Management

You know I think that's our understanding is that it will need to be, it's a different order fulfillment process, different customers, quite a different business to lumber. So initially it'll be in the corporate segment but as it becomes more material it will be broken out on its own is what I've been told by our finance team.

Sean Steuart

Analyst

Okay. The second question for me, Friesau this quarter there was seasonal down time. I think in the last call you suggested that Q3 production would that still be around 125 million board feet even with seasonal shuts. Any context on the discrepancy there, is it just the fact that North American markets rolled over so are you more inclined to take more downtime than you might have otherwise, any detail there?

David M. Gandossi

Management

No, no there's been no reason to take any kind of market curtailment downtime. It's really just more of a function of your number factors that the maintenance is a kind of a rotating outages like potpourri [ph] take everything down all at once at our saw mill, we would take the log, put lying down, then we would take a saw lying down, take another saw lying down, go on order that sort of thing. So, it is just a coordination of all of those different pieces of work. I think there was some COVID delays in there, not transmissions within the mill but availability of contractor support. I think the average log dimension that we procured in the quarter was a little narrower than had been planned and then that reduces the volume as well. All in all I would say it was a great quarter for the mill, they got all their work done, they got it done safely. Mills, [indiscernible] and it is moment that we are very positive about the direction that lumber markets are going to go as well.

Sean Steuart

Analyst

Okay, thanks very much David. I'll get back in the queue.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Marcus Campeau from RBC capital markets your line is now open.

Marcus Campeau

Analyst

Hey, good morning and thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, could you help us understand what you're seeing from that Chinese pulp market currently including the sectors that are most impacted, how much production is actually being curtailed, and when your customers expect the mandated curtailments to and?

David M. Gandossi

Management

Yeah, so it's not everywhere in China but particularly along the coastal regions where there's a lot of people production they're having these really provincially mandated caps on power usage. So, maybe on average paper mills might be able to run three days out of the week. So there -- it is really a shock to their system. It’s really a shock to their system. It is quite unusual for them to operate that way. So, and then as well as not being able to operate fully. It's also really important to understand the de-globalization of the different fiber markets right now. So like a Chinese paper producer cannot get papered into any of its export markets economically bikers, the freight costs are just crazy like 10 times what they would normally be. So they don't have the electricity to produce but they don't have the export market to serve either. So it's really all driven towards domestic consumption. And this is where -- I personally think that this China concern that is a little bit overblown like I made a comment in my prepared remarks when China comes back we've seen many times how quickly it can recover. The paper companies are not going to be sitting on massive overhangs of paper stocks. There's not going to be a lot of hope in the pipeline for them and when logistics normalize which could be sometime second or third quarter next year, I am guessing, but they'll all normalize. There'll be back and they'll be back with abandon. And so, I just don't think we need to be as negative about China's as we are being and I think also in the midterm. The other markets are pretty stable because they don't have competition on the end product side coming from inputs. So that's the situation as I see it, Marcus.

Marcus Campeau

Analyst

Alright, thanks for the detail, that's helpful. Maybe jumping over to the wood products business, then, your unit manufacturing costs, that's up pretty materially quarter-over-quarter here. Part of that is probably due to the downtime but there's also increased usage of green wood in the mix. Are we through most of that field damage would now and should we therefore expect an upward shift in the cost structure going forward?

David M. Gandossi

Management

Yeah, for the sawmill, I think that's right. A lot of our competitors in Germany can't handle veal killed wood. Basically, like a lot of the European sawmill owners don't clean and kiln dry they're producing green products. So there's been steady demand on fresh wood and as -- sorry, there is more fresh food is more fresh wood available. We can create a good margin with that wood. So we do buy it. We also buy beetle wood, if we can see if it's the right length and the right dimension. For now, I'd say pulp log prices are going to inch up slightly. I think we're going to get through the spruce beetle by next year. So we'll see some pawpaw cost inflation going into next summer probably. I think we can see where German saw logs are going. I think we're at a level now where it kind of feels topish to me. But, it has moved up quite a bit in the last three or four months.

Marcus Campeau

Analyst

Okay, great. And then maybe lastly, still in the lumber business, your average selling prices were down quarter-over-quarter but all your European peers were also reporting higher quarter-over-quarter pricing. I know you have a bit of a higher exposure to the North American market but is there anything else in there that could help to explain the quarter-over-quarter decline in pricing?

David K. Ure

Management

No, no, I think it's primarily the U.S. market.

Marcus Campeau

Analyst

Alright, thanks. That’s all I had.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Your next question comes from the line of DeForest Hinman from Walthausen and Company. Your line is now open.

DeForest Hinman

Analyst

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. First one, can you just give us a little refresher on revenue recognition as it relates to -- if there's product on the water and all this stuff we're dealing with on the logistic side, was there any issues with being able to recognize revenue on stuff that's floating or stuff that's on a dock as it relates to revenue recognition?

David M. Gandossi

Management

And yeah, I think David hinted in his comments DeForest. So if you're shipping to Asia by vessel, if the product if you've got the order, and it's more or less committed, you recognize the revenue or the sale when the ship leaves the dock. It's the push off that is the transfer of risk and we did have I think about 15,000 tons on a vessel that was supposed to go in September, they got pushed into October. So it just simply gets booked like the day after the month end. With rail it's usually FOB your plant or the customer depending on the customer's wishes. But a lot of times we book it when it's received by the customer.

DeForest Hinman

Analyst

Okay, perfect. And this is more of a big picture question. You see your share price at the current levels. You talked in your prepared comments about looking to build a sawmill, knowing the costs that are out there but you had previously purchased Friesau with invested money there. You probably had some expectation or thought around what the value of that asset is. You put a mark on cross laminate timber was $15 million investment. And then, you probably are thinking about replacement values for your pulp mills, and you put that all together, and you have your debt, and you have your cash balances. And you're weighing making a pretty substantial investment and spend on saw mill, but when you see your share price at the current levels, and having a pretty good understanding of replacement values and having a pretty substantial amount of cash and not near term debt maturities to worry about, should the board be thinking about buying back some amount of the shares?

David K. Ure

Management

DeForest, it's -- we talk about it every quarter. Somebody always brings the question up. And our Board, we do think a lot and hard about capital allocation. But the way we see it right now is, our leverage is a little bit high for the comfort of some because of the cyclicality of the business. So in time, our goal is to continue to chomp away at the debt levels, bringing those down. These are not levels I'm nervous about by the way, but I think bringing, taking some capital and buying back debt, or refinance, on refinancing opportunities to try to bring that down makes good sense. I think one of the challenges we have as a company and our stock is that we're a smaller size company compared to many of our peers. And I think a bigger market cap would provide more liquidity, which would unlock some of that liquidity discount that we believe is inherent in the start. I think another piece is that, we're -- we really believe that this company is going to be on the right side of the climate equation, and that type of assets we operate and the way we operate them, and the way we engage with stakeholders, and all this work we do around logistics in time is going to become recognized. And in a fiber constrained world where people are worried about carbon and industrial players that are not on the right side of this stuff, we're going to find failures. And that will be us. And so we believe the inherent value of our portfolio smells is significant. And I agree with you, it's under undervalued by the market. But we're here to create long term value, taking our liquidity and buying back stock. You can do the math, run an enterprise value calculation, it psychologically feels like the right thing to do, if you had massive amounts of liquidity, like some of the companies have had, it just make sense to start buying themselves back, that's great. But in our case, the amount of stock we would buy back, while trying to keep all of our other options open for these growth opportunities. it just doesn't feel like the right thing to do. It hasn't felt like the right thing to do so far. So we're focusing on growth, we're focusing on maintaining liquidity. So we've got flexibility, deploying our capital in a very smart way. And, focusing on debt reduction as and when we see the opportunities and that's -- that may change over time but that's been our strategy for quite some time. And I don't see that changing in the short term.

DeForest Hinman

Analyst

Okay, just for clarity though, when you talk about debt reduction, are you thinking in terms of the mathematical of higher cash, net debt falling and maintaining that dry powder or open market purchases of bonds [Multiple Speakers] refinance those bonds early?

David M. Gandossi

Management

Well, we've got a long track record of working on our bond portfolio, in transactions that makes sense stress at the time. I always look for, can we do this in an NPV positive way, continue to bring the rate down and bring the levels down and I'm not trying to do something -- we're not talking machete stuff here. We're just talking, proper financial engineering to recognize that they are seeing some debt reduction, I think would be appealing to some of our investors and make sense to me as well. And meanwhile grow the -- continue to grow the platform of assets and ensure that they're fit for the future. And, once that light bulb goes on for the market, I think the stock is going to perform really well. So steady.

DeForest Hinman

Analyst

Okay, you bet.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Shapiro from Lawndale Capital. Your line is now open.

Andrew Shapiro

Analyst

Hi, good morning guys. I have a few questions here, quick ones. On the business interruption insurance claim status here, regarding each of these large claims, is there any beyond normal negotiations that are going on between the company and your insurers or is this just standard stuff or disputes right now?

David K. Ure

Management

Yeah, I wouldn't even call it a dispute. I mean, it's a strong word. It's a ton of work to get your claim together. And then you have to get it over to factor neutral. And they have to review it and be discussed and check all the assumption and inputs and all that kind of stuff. So this is just, this is process. The generator is a little bit unusual. You don't see many generator failures. And so how the waiting period or in other words the deductible gets applied is always a question, making sure that we really get that right, before we submit the claim. So yeah, it's -- I mean these are proper insurable events, and we will resolve them, I'm sure in the next few months.

Andrew Shapiro

Analyst

And the 20 million was that both of them combined or that was just…?

David K. Ure

Management

No, no just Peace River. Just Peace River and business interruption.

Andrew Shapiro

Analyst

And there is no estimate.

David K. Ure

Management

No, I don't want to give guidance on a generator until I know what we're talking about.

Andrew Shapiro

Analyst

Claim we don't know yet. And what's the expected timing of resolving what is owed on the Peace River? And then I guess you haven't submitted Rosenthal yet. What is the general timing after -- for you to get this together to submit and then, hash it out with the insurer?

David K. Ure

Management

Yeah, our team feels that we've got a pretty good shot at getting this all into the fourth quarter.

Andrew Shapiro

Analyst

Both of them?

David K. Ure

Management

Yeah.

Andrew Shapiro

Analyst

Oh, good. And when it does come in, and the payment comes due whatever it is, for accounting purposes is it above the line and where or where will it flow through on the income statement?

David K. Ure

Management

Dave, do you want to take that?

David M. Gandossi

Management

Yeah, generally they go in the cost section, the cost of sales section. So in EBITDA, but in the costs.

Andrew Shapiro

Analyst

Okay. And on the CLT business, did you say or can you say what the burn rate of operation is at present and do you expect the burn rate to increase before starting its move towards profitability?

David M. Gandossi

Management

Yeah, no, it's interesting. It doesn't -- it is such a modern facility, I think we've got roughly 20 employees today, and we will be hiring probably about 10 more. Half of that are the marketing order fulfillment side and half on the operation and maintenance side. So it's not a big burn. And what we're doing today is we're making what's called Long Mike's finger joint material. So we buy dimension lumber in the market, two by six. And whatever length we get and we finger joint it into long lengths. We can finger join up to 40 foot boards. So the average length that the market seems to want is somewhere around 28 feet. And there's a pretty good margin on that value add product. So I would say it's -- that covers the overhead more or less, plus some. And, so it's not going to -- it's not going to be a dream but then the real margin will come as we start loading up the press and getting those higher value added products out of the facility. So it's not a big number of people Andrew.

Andrew Shapiro

Analyst

Okay, and where's it optimal the source of your timber for the plant and is your lumber from Germany of the type that would ever be needed to be used and could be used if the supply costs surged again?

David K. Ure

Management

Yeah, no, we wouldn't -- we don't need to buy from Germany. There's lots of local options for us around the facility in Spokane, and we're -- our procurement strategy is one that there's, you need a number of different qualities to make CLT. You have always got number 2s on the outside longitude panels, hearts, and you can put number three on the inside. And you've got all the finger joining capacity. So basically it's a strategy of local suppliers that are sort of selected based on optimizing what you're getting for what you're paying, I know it sounds complicated but sawmills have their premium qualities and their grades that they want to ship to the market right away. And then they often have some out of profile or maybe they've got some shorter lengths or different material that needs to be discounted to move it. That's the kind of stuff we can buy and just rebrand it ourselves, we create our own lamp stock. In effect, everything that we buy, we saw of wet boards go one way, dry boards go another way. They're all electronically scanned, they go into a whole bunch of different bins. And then we dry and we plane and create our own stock. So it's really no reason to focus on bringing in our own product, I think we do a much better job buying from all the local mills around us.

Andrew Shapiro

Analyst

Okay. And I asked this a few quarters ago, and your guidance was to give it X amount of time. So I'm asking now, is the time period for the first harvest for Santanol and the sandalwood business? Still around the end of this year? And what are the metrics that will be involved, I don't know if you want to call it KPIs or otherwise, is it acres, tons of trees, is it pounds of oil, what -- how are we going to start thinking about this and measuring the ramp up of that business?

David M. Gandossi

Management

Yeah. Well, when we announced results, I mean, you've got the timing right. Next year will be a year where you'll start seeing some results. And, we'll be describing how many hectares we harvested, how many tons of wood we processed, how many kilograms of sandalwood oil we produced, and our sales cost of sales and dividends. That's all to come.

Andrew Shapiro

Analyst

And around when might you be expected to provide an estimate of the quantity of oil to be produced and the potential price range of those oil sales and margins, in other words kind of setting forth the business model and your expectations since the way that business [Multiple Speakers] you have like a crop each year that's going to start coming in as an annuity.

Andrew Shapiro

Analyst

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, we'll definitely be working on helping the street understand that business as it unfolds. Am I allowed to take your guidance o to give guidance today on pricing or volumes. But in time in time, I think we'll be able to signal pretty clearly what that business is going to be looking like going forward? Okay, and last, what are your plans for virtual or in person on investor relations activities in the coming month?

David M. Gandossi

Management

Yeah, I'll let Dave take that. We've got a few things on the books here.

David K. Ure

Management

Yeah, we'll have a pretty busy next few months. Goldman Sachs is hosting us for a call it a client fireside in the third week of November. And then in the first week of December, we'll be attending conferences sponsored by BofA and also the RBC Forest Products Conference, an annual conference. And then in mid mid-January, we'll be presenting at the CIBC industrials conference, and also the disability small cap conference. So a pretty, pretty busy couple of months. If there's anything there that's of interest to folks. Don't hesitate to give me a call at all aligning up with the right people.

Andrew Shapiro

Analyst

Excellent. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Roger Spitz from Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Roger Spitz

Analyst

Thank you very much. On the insurance proceeds, I just want to make sure I heard that you were not going to give an estimate of insurance proceeds you could receive or did you give one, I heard 20 million versus Peace forever, but I wasn't sure if that was the right number at all?

David K. Ure

Management

Yeah Roger, David in his remarks suggested that the Peace River business interruption will be in excess of 20 million that we're comfortable saying that. We don't have the number for Rosenthal yet. The event is not over and so we're for Rosenthal yet the event is not over. And so we're just not going to put a guess out. We need to find out when the turbine is ready to bring back into service and then add up all the chips and make our claim.

Roger Spitz

Analyst

Got it, of course, you did call out 12 million headwind just in Q3 related to the Rosenthal turbine.

David K. Ure

Management

So the way to think about it is at some point, during the event, we will be through the deductible component and the business interruption will compensate us for everything we're missing under normal operating circumstances. And it's a question of go ahead.

Roger Spitz

Analyst

Have you given the amount of the deductible and I suspect it's a per incident deductible, meaning there's a Peace River deductible and a Rosenthal deductible?

David K. Ure

Management

You know, I don't think we really talked about it. It's pretty complicated for the street to get their head around it. Typical waiting days deductible for a turbine would be 45 days. And then, as David mentioned, because the generator is down for repairs. 2022 was the year we were going to do a full revision of the turbine and generator, the once every 10-year revision. We've pulled all that other work forward into this period. So that roughly that's a 50 day chunk of work. So we're just rather than doing that next year, we're doing it all this year, while the turbines down anyway, so that's another factor in determining what the VI is going to be.

Roger Spitz

Analyst

Okay, so…

David K. Ure

Management

It'll get sizable claim, because of the length of time it's taking to repair the generator.

Roger Spitz

Analyst

Got it. So when you said you're going to get some proceeds in Q4, it sounds like that is just the Peace River component that we're speaking about high non-compliant although are you saying you might get -- Rosenthal?

David K. Ure

Management

Can’t promise. I mean, if you're far enough along and you know what it's going to be, then you come book it, right. And it's just a question of where we get to, it might be a bit optimistic to think it will come in the fourth quarter, but it's possible that it could.

Roger Spitz

Analyst

So in terms of accounting, how you said it's going to go and cause a sales and EBITDA, will that just be the BI portion of the proceeds or would you be also including the casualty amount that you have proceeds from fixing the plants?

David K. Ure

Management

Yeah, that's just the BI. But imagine the capital, the cost of the actual repair is actually not particularly high. It's really the downtime. In this case, that's creating the loss.

Roger Spitz

Analyst

Got it? And then shifting to the 44 days of downtime, I didn't think I heard it, did you break it down number of days at each of the nodes that made up the 44 days.

David K. Ure

Management

[Multiple Speakers]. My primary like Rosenthal was the primary, little bit of Peace River, and sort of a bit of Stendal in there, three components?

David M. Gandossi

Management

Yep, that's right.

Roger Spitz

Analyst

Okay, got it. And have you given any -- or can you give any thoughts on what working capital in Q4 might look like and the inflow or outflow in 2022 among other things, presumably you will need to build inventory as you on the CLT plant, I would think.

Hamir Patel

Analyst

Yeah, I think so the what we saw for working capital here in Q3 would certainly be the largest change in the year. So you can imagine we're coming off of a period in Q2 with a lot of maintenance shuts. So we're building the inventory up again, and at fairly high prices. So now that we're running full again, the mills are backedup, I would say the inventory in terms of the finished goods should be relatively stable. We have a little bit of inventory built of wood, just preparing ourselves for the winter, our notorious provides a little bit. And then depending on your view on pricing, and the impact that has on accounts receivable, we might have some changes there. But I would say it's going to be more stable than material changes going forward to the winter here. And then sorry, as far as CLT, sorry, I am just missed a few parts of your question. In terms of CLT, the inventory is -- it's remarkably smaller than you might have in other parts of our business. For example, we don't have the wood, the large log inventories. Really just you're buying lumber, different grades of lumber, so you'd have inventories there. But because the end products are generally made to order, you wouldn't have large inventories of panels, for example, going forward. So it will not be not be as material as you you'd see at a pulp mill or even our sawmill

Roger Spitz

Analyst

Kind of lastly from me is, is there any steer if not guidance on 2022 CAPEX we can put into our models.

David M. Gandossi

Management

I think it's going to be ambitious, with quite a bit of carryover from the shear obviously is, we've got the two wood rooms. And so, you know, I think I'd be before your model, you think about moving from 150 to 175, something like that will give you a better feeling in February. But I think it'll be ambitious. We've got lots of good things we're working on.

Roger Spitz

Analyst

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will turn it over back to David.

David M. Gandossi

Management

Okay, well, thank you everyone and thanks for joining our call. And as always, Dave and I are we're around, happy to talk one on one if anybody wants to take the time to call us and otherwise I look forward to speaking to you all again on our next call in February. Bye for now and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.