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SunCoke Energy, Inc. (SXC)

Q2 2017 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 27, 2017

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Tishan and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the SunCoke Energy SXC Second Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Kyle Bland, Director of Finance and Investor Relations. The floor is yours.

Kyle Bland

Analyst

Thanks Tishan. Good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss SunCoke Energy's second quarter 2017 earnings. With me today are Fritz Henderson, our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Fay West, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following the remarks made by management, we will open the call for Q&A. This conference call is being webcast live on the Investor Relations section of our website, and a replay will be available there for a few weeks. If we don't get to your questions on the call today, please feel free to reach out to our Investor Relations team. Before I turn the call over to Fritz, let me remind you that the various remarks we make on today's call regarding future expectations constitute forward-looking statements, and cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements in our SEC filings apply to the remarks we make today. These documents are available on our website, as are reconciliations to any non-GAAP measures discussed on today's call. With that, I'll turn it over to Fritz.

Frederick Henderson

Analyst · Mangrove. Your line is open

Thanks, Kyle, and thank you all for joining the call this morning. Before I hand it over to Fay to review the results in detail, I want to highlight a few things from the second quarter. First, our assets continue to perform in line with expectations. We did so again here in the second quarter despite working through a scheduled major outage at our Granite City plant. And we have also commenced in the quarter our 2017 rebuild campaign in the Indiana Harbor. On the Indiana Harbor rebuild project, we are off to a good start on the 2017 campaign. We currently have 12 ovens already completed, back in service and another 31 ovens at various stages in the process, but out of service today. In total - before I get to that, in parallel we are also commenced in the second quarter, implementing improvements in the 48 2015 rebuild ovens to incorporate lessons learned to date and we expect all of those ovens including the rebuild ovens to be completed by the end of November. Just to give you a sense of what's happening at the plant and that really commenced in the second quarter. We had intended this year to rebuild 53 ovens. Given the encouraging results we've seen and our ability to execute, we've increased that slightly from 53 to 58 ovens. With buffer ovens, which we take offline, when we rebuild an oven, we take the adjoining ovens offline in the blocks. That would include when we take our 58 ovens out of service to rebuild to 75 and then we're also repairing 48 additional ovens in the year. We are impacting production on almost 50% of the ovens in the plant in 2017 and a significant amount of that work has begun in earnest in…

Fay West

Analyst · Lucas Pipes with FBR & Company. Your line is open

Thank you, Fritz, and good morning, everyone. Turning to Slide 5, quarterly EPS loss of $0.38 per share was down $0.31 versus the prior year period. The year-over-year impact of debt extinguishment on EPS is $0.24. Last year we had a small gain from our buyback activities and this year we had a $20.2 million debt extinguishment costs related to the refinancing activities completed in the quarter. From an adjusted EBITDA perspective, we finished the second quarter in line with expectations at $47.5 million up $1 million versus 2016 is higher Coal Logistics volumes were offset by the planned outage at Granite City and the impact of oven rebuilds at Indiana Harbor. Turning to Slide 6, and taking a look at our adjusted EBITDA bridge. Indiana Harbor second quarter adjusted EBITDA loss of $2.7 million was down $4.7 million versus the prior year period, reflecting continued degradation of the non-build ovens as well as lower volumes and higher operating and maintenance expense related to the commencement of our 2017 oven rebuilds campaign. As a note, there were no oven rebuilds in the second quarter of 2016. After six months, Indiana Harbor remains on track to achieve its full-year 2017 adjusted EBITDA guidance target. Excluding Indiana Harbor, the remainder of the Coke business on balance performed as expected with various pluses and minuses across the fleet, notably the planned major outage at Granite City, which lowered energy sales by $2.5 million and also increased O&M year-over-year was offset by favorable contracted coal prices at Jewell, an increase technology and licensing fees at Brazil Coke. Our Coal Logistics business was up $4.6 million due primarily to the increased volumes at CMT, which continue to benefit from attractive coal export market dynamics. And when adding the $1.3 million as favorable results in our…

Frederick Henderson

Analyst · Mangrove. Your line is open

Thanks Fay. I'm wrapping it up on Slide 12. We in 2017 remain focused on operational execution and maximizing the capabilities, performance of our Coke and Logistics asset. At Indiana Harbor specifically, we continue to maintain a measure base on our 2017 rebuild campaign in order to maximize long-term sustainable performance and profitability of the facility. On capital allocation, we continue to prioritize capital deployment in the most accretive manner for SXC shareholders and we've got a good start with respect our SXCP unit repurchase program. And finally, we will again be focused on delivering on our commitment to shareholders and achieving our full-year financial targets and remain on track to do so after a strong start in the first half of 2017. With that, we want to open it up for questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And your first question does come from the line of Adam Gui with Mangrove. Your line is open.

Nathaniel August

Analyst · Mangrove. Your line is open

It's Nathaniel on for Adam again. It sounds like you have increased your rebuilding activity at Indiana Harbor. Could you help us understand what the incremental expenses associated with that and how much of that goes through CapEx as opposed to how much goes through your income statement?

Frederick Henderson

Analyst · Mangrove. Your line is open

Sure, Nathaniel, so first thing I would say is that we've been encouraged by this beginning of our 2017 program as well as by the performance of the 2016 ovens that we rebuild. With that, we decided to expand the scope in 2017 from 53 to 58. That would increase capital spending slightly - it will increase capital spending at the harbor, but obviously as Fay mentioned, we intend to stay within our $80 million approximate estimate for capital spending across the company. With respect to the capital associated with additional five, what you should think about it is you've got about $400,000 of capital and $100,000 of expense for oven. That's a good general rule or $500,000 in total. The ovens can differ slightly based upon their level of degradation, but in on average that's about what it is.

Nathaniel August

Analyst · Mangrove. Your line is open

Do you also incur incremental expense associated with taking the adjacent ovens out of service?

Frederick Henderson

Analyst · Mangrove. Your line is open

Well, it obviously affects production, but I wouldn't call it expense. But it does affect production for sure, because you do have - what we've been doing - and one of the batteries have been moving down. So in this particular case, every time we take a block of ovens out of service, you do take two other ovens out of production that surround that block. In the particular case that I'm talking about here, we've had very little levels of production in that particular battery. But I think in general as I mentioned early on, when we take a block of ovens out, there's always two ovens around it that come down at the same time. Not expense, but it does affect production and profitability.

Nathaniel August

Analyst · Mangrove. Your line is open

Great, okay. So by moving your rebuild activity from 53 to 58 and also adding in the 48 additional ovens that you're doing additional refurbishments on, how much does production get affected in 2017 relative to your original production thoughts and then how much is EBITDA affected?

Frederick Henderson

Analyst · Mangrove. Your line is open

So first thing is as Fay mentioned, we do expect to be able to operate the plant in line with our targets for this year of about $13 million adjusted EBITDA loss. Production will be approximately 850,000 tons. We came into the year. We thought it could be close to 900,000 tons. What we saw in the first quarter itself was because of the work that carried over from 2016 into the first quarter 2017. We saw lower production in the first quarter, but the good cost control of the plant away - I mean one, we've been executing the oven rebuild program aggressively in line with our targets. But we've had good cost control of the plant. We've been able to make up the loss production and stay within our targets for EBITDA.

Nathaniel August

Analyst · Mangrove. Your line is open

Okay, thank you.

Frederick Henderson

Analyst · Mangrove. Your line is open

You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Lucas Pipes with FBR & Company. Your line is open.

Lucas Pipes

Analyst · Lucas Pipes with FBR & Company. Your line is open

Thank you, and good morning, everybody.

Frederick Henderson

Analyst · Lucas Pipes with FBR & Company. Your line is open

Hey, Lucas.

Lucas Pipes

Analyst · Lucas Pipes with FBR & Company. Your line is open

I also wanted to ask a few questions on the oven rebuilds. Could you just give us a reminder and you may have mentioned this earlier in terms of how many more ovens in total would have to be rebuilt? And do you still intend to - do you intend to rebuild all of the ovens at Indiana Harbor? And at what time approximately would you say is that Indiana Harbor process completed? Thank you.

Frederick Henderson

Analyst · Lucas Pipes with FBR & Company. Your line is open

So there is 268 ovens at Indiana Harbor. When we complete the work this year, we'll have rebuilt the 144 of them. So it will be 54% of the plant. We haven't articulated our goals for next year. As Fay mentioned in her comments, we will do that at the conclusion of the third quarter when we can update investors on both the performance of the 2017 rebuilds, but also what our game plan is for 2018. But you can expect another substantive investment next year in oven rebuilds and Indiana Harbor. With respect to profitability, we do anticipate from an adjusted EBITDA perspective that we would be profitable next year with both continued improved performance of oven rebuilds as well as the contract reset, which is effective 1/1/2018. And our goal is through the rebuild activity and continued aggressive cost control of the plant is to have a long-term sustainable level of profitability in cash flow from the plant respectively. Beyond that, I'm going to reserve my comments regarding our future plans till we get to the third quarter.

Lucas Pipes

Analyst · Lucas Pipes with FBR & Company. Your line is open

Got it, okay. That's helpful. Maybe a follow-up question on Granite City, there's been some talk in the industry regarding the U.S. steel plant there. And I wondered kind of what's the current status, where is Granite City currently shipping and have you been contacted in regards to maybe going back to the original arrangement there regarding the Coke supply from that oven? And then thirdly, what would be the upside in terms of Granite City. I assume it's not running at full capacity right now? Thank you.

Frederick Henderson

Analyst · Lucas Pipes with FBR & Company. Your line is open

Well, first thing I would say is that our Granite City plant we obviously had the major outage in the second quarter, which was planned. But our Granite City plant has been shipping its Coke to another one of U.S. Steel's blast furnaces in that last year, continues this year. The plant is expected to operate in accordance with its normal contract term. U.S. Steel was asked on their call about what might happen to the Granite City plant? You would have seen the comments about that. We would be encouraged if they would have bring back one or two of blast furnaces, but we don't make that call they do. But I would say in terms of upside of Granite City, I mean the plant generally operates at or around contract maximum. So we have been able to run our plants above contract maximum from time-to-time in the past based upon demand. But I wouldn't necessarily view that as a significant upside probability. It would simply be - we'd like to be able to run the plant full out, but today we run it pretty much contract max anyway.

Lucas Pipes

Analyst · Lucas Pipes with FBR & Company. Your line is open

Okay, got it. Well that's helpful and appreciate the detail and good luck with everything.

Frederick Henderson

Analyst · Lucas Pipes with FBR & Company. Your line is open

Thank you.

Fay West

Analyst · Lucas Pipes with FBR & Company. Your line is open

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And I currently don't see any further questions over the phone. I'll turn the call back over to the presenters.

Frederick Henderson

Analyst · Mangrove. Your line is open

Okay. Again thank you very much for both your interest and your investments in SunCoke Energy. Thank you.