Earnings Labs

Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. (RS)

Q3 2018 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 25, 2018

$359.92

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Reliance Steel & Aluminum Third Quarter 2018 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Brenda Miyamoto. Please go ahead. Brenda S. Miyamoto - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Good morning, and thanks to all of you for joining our conference call to discuss our third quarter 2018 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, 2017 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 - Reliance Steel…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. Our first question today is coming from Chris Terry from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live.

Jeremy Kliewer - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live

Hey, good morning. This is actually Jeremy from his team. Karla R. Lewis - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Hey, Jeremy. Gregg J. Mollins - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Good morning, Jeremy.

Jeremy Kliewer - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live

Regarding your capital deployment, you guys have done a great job of both share buybacks and dividends. I was just wondering – could you discuss a little bit more, I guess, on your preference for the share buyback versus potential kind of like a supplemental or a special dividend? Karla R. Lewis - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Yeah. I think, Jeremy, we certainly want to continue to reward our stockholders on both of those and return value to them. From a dividend standpoint, on our regular quarterly dividend, our kind of driving principles are to maintain a sustainable level that we would not have to decrease or stop the dividend going forward. So we try to monitor the quarterly dividend. If you look at the difference between a special dividend versus a share buyback, the share buybacks do help us kind of permanently reduce our capital and enhance our earnings per share on a go-forward basis. So while we certainly can look at all of those different options, so far we've preferred the share repurchases over a special dividend. Also, we do continue to grow the company and expect to continue to grow the company. So we also deploy part of the capital to continue both the capital – growth capital expenditures and the acquisitions.

Jeremy Kliewer - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live

Great. Thanks for the color on that. And then, one more if I may. The growing aluminum demand in the automotive industry, that's great for you guys, especially because you're investing more into the business, but will that more than offset volumes lost, I guess, on the steel side? Both – either volumes or revenue kind of outlook would be helpful there. Thank you. James D. Hoffman - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: No, Jeremy. This is Jim. We don't anticipate that. There's still going to be a lot of steel in cars because they have to be, and the steel folks are working real hard to come up with new higher strength steels that they can use to meet the off-weighting (33:25), the regulations that are out there. But aluminum certainly is picking up some of the share and that – which is good for us because we do – we have kind of one-of-a-kind type of equipment that we designed and actually built that can do the exposed aluminum sheet. So – steel is a big part of our toll processing and – but aluminum has gained some ground. Karla R. Lewis - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: And the aluminum is a little more difficult to process and handle than the carbon. So our pricing is a little stronger for the aluminum that we're processing and handling compared to the carbon. So we're comfortable with supporting that shift, but the continued growth on both of those. Gregg J. Mollins - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: The loss in tons on the carbon steel side in our toll processing operations is minimal.

Jeremy Kliewer - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live

All right. Thank you. Good luck. Gregg J. Mollins - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Phil Gibbs from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live.

Philip N. Gibbs - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live

Hey, morning. How are you? Gregg J. Mollins - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Good morning, Phil. James D. Hoffman - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Hi, Phil.

Philip N. Gibbs - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live

The net working capital upside in the quarter was stronger than we thought by a good bit. How should we think about that in the fourth quarter? Is it still going to be a source of cash or should we expect pretty meaningful free cash in Q4? Karla R. Lewis - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Yeah. Phil, typically in the fourth quarter, we throw off quite a bit of cash because we do have lighter shipments because of fewer shipping days. So generally our inventory levels come down from a quantity standpoint, and so do our receivables. So we expect to see that. In Q3, we typically see a little bit of that with tons down, but because we still had some price increases and, in particular, that there is a timing difference between price increases announced at the mill level in the market and when we receive that into our inventory. So we did see it plays into the LIFO, too, that those higher costs coming into our inventory during the third quarter did still cause a net working capital increase. Due to that, with prices flat in Q4, we would expect to throw off some cash and see our inventory levels reduced in the fourth quarter.

Philip N. Gibbs - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live

Okay. Thanks, Karla. And Jim, the alloy sales – or volumes rather were weak-ish at least relative to what we were expecting in the third quarter given how solid the energy demand has been. Any comments on why that may have been down? And is that all correlated to some of the reductions in the footprint that you took in the quarter? James D. Hoffman - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: No, it – I hate to say it, but it was kind of the mill performance there. We're having a tough time to keep it up, which is – it's kind of good in one side because the demand is so good, but they've got real busy, real quick and shipments kind of went the wrong way. The rollout – they'll catch up. They'll catch up. It's still strong.

Philip N. Gibbs - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live

And then, Karla, from these – now you took an impairment in the quarter. Is there any cost benefit savings we should anticipate from some of these – some of these footprint reductions because it sounded like you called a couple of operations? Karla R. Lewis - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Yes. So the bulk of that impairment restructuring charge did relate to downsizing the one energy business. We will see a little bit of savings on our amortization expense from that. So probably about $1.5 million a quarter because of the impairment taken there. And then on the closures, it's a handful of pretty small locations. So certainly we did it with the intent to improve our profitability, but it's going to be fairly marginal. I wouldn't expect to see a big impact on the overall consolidated numbers from that.

Philip N. Gibbs - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live

Okay. That's helpful. And one last question for me is just kind of on M&A and then also on CapEx. This year CapEx, pretty solid, $225 million. Lot of growth CapEx in there to improve your through cycle margins with value-added processing, which is great. Are you expecting more of that to occur in 2019? Should we expect this level of intense CapEx to continue into the next year? Gregg J. Mollins - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: I would think, Phil, that our CapEx next year would be a little lighter than the $225 million. $225 million was the most CapEx spending budget we've ever had. And our average is somewhere around the $180 million, $190 million rate. And I would expect 2019 to drop back to that. And the M&A activity is – as Karla related in her presentation, is very active, and we would expect – hopefully you never know until the fish in the boat. We'll continue to pursue those.

Philip N. Gibbs - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live

Was there a size at all of this Acero deal with the U.S. deal? Was it material at all in terms of the purchase price? Karla R. Lewis - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: It was not material that we did not have to disclose it. So it was the 40% interest. I would say if you look at our income statement, the bulk of what's in that minority interest that shows on the income statement, the majority of that relates to Acero Prime. So you'll see a pickup in the net income attributable to Reliance as we get that 40% of their earnings going forward.

Philip N. Gibbs - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live

Thanks. Appreciate it. Talk to you soon. Karla R. Lewis - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Thanks. James D. Hoffman - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Okay.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Chris Olin from Longbow Research. Your line is now live.

Chris D. Olin - Longbow Research LLC

Analyst · Longbow Research. Your line is now live

Hey, good morning. Karla R. Lewis - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Good morning, Chris. Gregg J. Mollins - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Good morning.

Chris D. Olin - Longbow Research LLC

Analyst · Longbow Research. Your line is now live

Phil might have touched on this, but my question was on the volumes. You missed your guidance by, I think, 1 point, down 5% quarter-to-quarter versus your down 2% to 4%. I guess I was just wondering what drove that 1% difference. Is there anything meaningful in there? Gregg J. Mollins - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: I don't think there is anything meaningful. It's just that we have the holidays that impact us. And depending on business conditions, some of our customers just take a break. All right? And they close – take the 4th of July, the entire week off. Very similar to what we see in during the Christmas holidays and Thanksgiving. So I think we had one lighter shipping day than we did in the second quarter. So I think it was just a combination of customers closing up on one less shipping day and just general seasonality that we experienced at most every year. I think 5% actually is pretty common. We thought in our guidance 2% to 4% that it might be a little bit stronger this year, but it fell more in line with the historical numbers in the past.

Chris D. Olin - Longbow Research LLC

Analyst · Longbow Research. Your line is now live

Okay. That's fair. Do you don't get the sense that perhaps some customers with long inventory and now there's a correction coming or anything like that? Gregg J. Mollins - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: We don't have a whole lot of direct OEM business. Maybe some of those had that, Chris. I'm not sure. But with our customers living hand-to-mouth, $1,800 order sizes, we didn't see any meaningful – we did see a little bit of that in the first quarter. Okay? But not so much in the second quarter.

Chris D. Olin - Longbow Research LLC

Analyst · Longbow Research. Your line is now live

Okay. The last question I had was just I want to make sure I understand the pricing dynamics here. Nickel and aluminum seem like they had a pretty weak month here. So I would assume the surcharges are going to start coming down for some of these non-ferrous products. Is that reflected in how you think about the pricing guidance already? Gregg J. Mollins - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Yes. William K. Sales, Jr. - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Yes, it is. If you look at the surcharges right now, I mean, for Q3, they were down just a little less than $0.03 a pound. The outlook for Q4, they'll be – they'll be down more than that. We're estimating something like around $0.07 to $0.08 a pound. So – but that is reflected in our pricing guidance.

Chris D. Olin - Longbow Research LLC

Analyst · Longbow Research. Your line is now live

Okay. Thank you. Gregg J. Mollins - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We've reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Gregg for any further closing comments. Gregg J. Mollins - Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.: Thank you again for participating in today's call. I'd like to take this time to thank all of our employees, customers, suppliers and stockholders for their continued support and commitment to Reliance. Finally, we would like to remind everyone that we would be in New York City in late November, presenting at the Goldman Sachs Global Metals and Mining Conference, and we hope to see many of you there. Thanks again, and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.