Operator
Operator
Greetings and welcome to the Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. Second Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Ms. Brenda Miyamoto, Investor Relations for Reliance. Thank you. Please go ahead. Brenda Sumiye Miyamoto - VP-Corporate Initiatives & Head-Investor Relations: Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thanks to all of you for joining our conference call to discuss our second quarter 2016 financial results. I'm joined by Gregg Mollins, our President and CEO; Karla Lewis, our Senior Executive Vice President and CFO; Jim Hoffman, our Executive Vice President and COO; and Bill Sales, our Executive Vice President of Operations. A recording of this call will be posted on the Investors section of our website at investor.rsac.com. The press release and the information on this call may contain certain forward-looking statements, which are based on a number of assumptions that are subject to change and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties or other factors which may not be under the company's control, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievement of the company to be materially different from the results, performance or other expectations implied by these forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to those factors disclosed in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015 under the caption Risk Factors and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The press release and the information on this call speak only as of today's date and the company disclaims any duty to update the information provided therein and herein. I will now turn the call over to Gregg Mollins, President and CEO of Reliance. Gregg J. Mollins - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I would like to start off by saying that I am extremely proud of the outstanding execution by our managers in the field, which contribute to our sixth consecutive quarter of FIFO gross profit margin expansion. Over the past few years, we have made significant investments in cutting-edge, value-added processing equipment to provide higher value to our customers, which has benefited our gross profit margin. And as we have discussed in previous quarters, in 2015, we focused our efforts on reducing our inventory levels, resulting in a $433 million reduction in inventory. In addition to improving our inventory turn and working capital management, we believe our improved inventory position has also contributed to our increased gross profit margin by allowing us to be more selective in our efforts by focusing on higher margin business. During the second quarter, our gross profit margin further benefited from a rising pricing environment, most notably for carbon steel products. We were able to enhance our gross profit margin as we pushed through mill price increases in the marketplace. As a result of all these factors, our second quarter FIFO gross profit margin reached 31.1%, up 540 basis points from the second quarter of 2015. The metals pricing environment continued to improve as the second quarter progressed, with multiple price increases announced on certain carbon steel products. The mill price increases were supported by many factors, including steel demand and the filing of multiple trade cases by U.S. producers that have reduced import offerings. In addition, the domestic producers have maintained production capacity discipline and raw material costs have increased. Despite these positive factors, however, the overall pricing environmental remains below 2015 levels and far below peak levels. Our average selling price per ton sold during the second quarter of 2016 was 10.1% lower than in the second quarter of 2015. In regard to customer demand, we experienced the sequential increase in tons sold of 1.1% in the second quarter of 2016, which was in line with our expectation of flat to up 2%. Although end demand is not as strong overall as we had anticipated going into 2016, we believe demand is generally healthy with certain markets such as automotive and aerospace continuing to perform at high levels. Our strategy in diversifying our product and end market exposures, along with our ongoing investments in state-of-the-art value-added processing equipment and our relentless focus on customer service has allowed us to increase our market share. For the first six months of 2016, we once again outperformed the industry with our same-store tons sold down only 2.1% versus the MSCI industry average shipments, which were down 6.9% as compared to the first six months of 2015. Turning to M&A, we have completed two acquisitions so far in 2016. On April 1, 2016, we acquired Best Manufacturing, Inc., a custom sheet metal fabricator of steel and aluminum products on both a direct and toll processing assessing basis. Best is a great company and has been performing above our expectations since joining the Reliance family. Tubular Steel, which we acquired at the beginning of the year, is also performing well given these end market exposures. Both of these acquisitions meet our criteria of acquiring well-run businesses that are immediately accretive to earnings. Given the specialty products or high value-added services provided by these companies, they perform above our company-wide profitability levels. Strategic M&A opportunities and organic investments will both continue to be integral growth drivers for Reliance. Our balance sheet is strong because our managers have done a great job expanding our margins and rightsizing our inventory levels. Together, these actions have produced high levels of cash flow, enabling us to execute on our balanced capital allocation strategy, allowing for growth of the business as well as stockholder returns, including our 6.3% dividend increase effective for the third quarter of 2016. We have paid regular quarterly cash dividends for 57 consecutive years and increased our dividend 23 times since our IPO in 1994. In summary, I believe our execution in the first half of the year has been outstanding. Our strong financial performance is the result of margin expansion due in part to favorable pricing environment, as well as diligent expense and inventory management to drive improved profitability. Going forward, we will continue executing our strategy with the goal of extending our track record of delivering industry leading results. Reliance wouldn't be the company it is today without the incredibly talented team that we have in place. On that note, this month marks Dave Hannah's official retirement as Reliance's Executive Chairman as part of the executive leadership succession plan we announced in May of 2015. Dave will continue as a member of Reliance's Board of Directors. We thank Dave for his leadership and many contributions over his 35-year career at Reliance. We all wish Dave the very best in his retirement. I will now hand the call over to Jim to comment further on our operations and market conditions. Jim? James Donald Hoffman - Chief Operating Officer & Executive Vice President: Thanks, Gregg, and good morning everyone. First, along with Gregg's comments earlier, I would like to thank our operators for their tremendous efforts in achieving a 31.1% gross profit margin in the second quarter of 2016. To all of you listening in on the call, congratulations and keep up the good work. Now, I'll comment on both pricing of demand for our carbon steel and alloy products as well as our outlook on certain key end markets we sell those products into. Bill will then address our aluminum and stainless steel products and related end markets. Demand for automotive, which we serve as mainly through our toll processing operations in the U.S. and Mexico, remained robust throughout the second quarter. In addition to strong carbon steel demand, we're continuing to see increased demand for aluminum processing in the automotive industry. We recently opened a new facility in Mexico to support the increased automotive activity in that area. We also added a second line to process aluminum for the automotive industry in our Michigan facility in the second quarter of 2016. And we will be opening a new facility in Kentucky in 2017 to support both aluminum and steel processing in that area. These investments provide us with additional capacity to service this important end market in processing carbon steel, as well as aluminum where volumes are increasing at a rapid rate. We are very well-positioned from both the technology and capital perspective to continue to support this growth. As a reminder, while only a small percentage of our total sales dollars, our toll processing activities represent a far greater proportion of our total overall profitability. Second quarter demand in heavy industry, which includes railcar, truck trailer, ship building, barge manufacturing, tank manufacturing, and wind and transmission towers remain flat to slightly down from the first quarter of 2016 levels. Our exposure to heavy equipment also includes sales to agriculture equipment OEMs, which have been weak for the larger ag equipment. That said, Reliance's exposure is mostly to small and mid-sized agriculture equipment which has held up better than the heavier items. We are hopeful that the five-year infrastructure bill that was passed in December of 2015 will improve further demand trends in the infrastructure and road construction equipment markets beginning in 2017. Demand in non-residential construction continues its gradual, but steady improvement and we are seeing increased activity in these markets we serve with our tons shipped slowly improving. Despite volumes being well below peak levels, we believe that demand will slowly continue to improve in 2017. We have made investments in processing equipment for many of our businesses that support this market in order to provide higher levels of processing to our customers. Increased volumes will be absorbed into our existing cost structure as this end market continues to improve. Demand for energy, which is mainly oil and natural gas, has fallen further in the second quarter of 2016 from already weak levels due to continued reduction in drilling activities. We have been and continue to be proactive in reacting to these market conditions and managing our expenses accordingly. Although our outlook for energy remains weak in the near term, we have begun to see early signs of new activity in this end market. Although pricing for carbon steel products remains well below peak levels, prices continue to improve throughout the second quarter, primarily due to increases in raw material costs including scrap and multiple carbon steel trade cases filed in the U.S. that have resulted in reduced import offerings. The most significant price increases were for carbon steel flat-rolled products, which represent only about 15% of our total sales, with multiple price increases announced by the mills in the first half of the year. Carbon steel plate and structurals represent the single largest components of our product mix, with each accounting for 10% of our total sales. Plate volumes have been down in 2016 mainly because of the weakness in heavy equipment; however, prices have increased in both quarters of 2016. Demand for carbon steel structurals has increased in 2016 mainly due to the steady improvement in non-residential construction. Base prices for alloy products, the majority of which were sold into our energy end markets, have declined, although they have held up better than we expected considering the significant reduction in demand. I will now hand the call over to Bill to comment further on our non-ferrous markets. Bill?