Pablo Brizzio
Analyst · Bradesco BBI. Your line is open
Thanks, Sebastian. Good morning and thank you much for participating in today's conference call to review Ternium performance in the second quarter. As we usually do, I will briefly describe our performance in the quarter and then also, as usual, we will have our Q&A session. Let's begin on page 3 of the webcast presentation. As you may have seen in our press release issued yesterday, we are glad to report a very strong second quarter. EBITDA in the second quarter 2016 was $393 million. This was 30% higher than EBITDA in the first quarter and close to 2 times EBITDA in the same quarter last year. The chart in the upper left side of this slide shows that EBITDA has been improving consistently over the last 12 months. A substantially lower cost of raw material, purchased slabs, another inputs gradually went through our inventories and the steel price environment improved during 2016. Our guidance for EBITDA in the third quarter continue to move in the flat. EBITDA margin continued to increase reaching 21% in the second quarter, equivalent to an EBITDA per ton of $151. In the second quarter 2016, we had net income of $174 million, equivalent to earnings per ADS of $0.78, an improvement compared to earnings per ADS of $0.48 in the first quarter of this year and $0.21 in the second quarter last year. Let's go to the next page now, to review the latest development in our main markets. Our sales in the Mexican market increased in the second quarter 20% sequentially, supported by 10% increase in shipments, which reached a new record of 1.75 million tons in this quarter, a 9% increase in revenue per ton, reflecting with some lag related to the regular price reset contained in industrial customer sales contract, the substantial improvement of steel prices environment in the Americas in the first half of this year. We expect a sequential decrease in the steel shipment in Mexico in the third quarter despite steady end market demand condition, we anticipate decrease in shipments mostly as a result of inventory buildup in the Mexican commercial markets over the past few months as well as third quarter seasonality in the automotive and in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning industries. In addition, although steel market price has been stable over the past few months, we expect to see a sequential increase in average realized price in the third quarter 2016, again as a result of the lag to show in our financial, the steel market price improvement due to the industrial customer sale contracts, which in average reset prices every three months. Let's go now to the Southern region market in the following page. In this market, net sales decreased 3% in the second quarter of the year with 2% decrease in shipment and 1% decrease in revenue per ton. As I commented in our last quarter conference call, the Argentine steel market is adjusting to a period of slower economic activities. We believe this market could begin to recover with the end of the year or beginning of the next one. So the third quarter should continue to show some weakness. On the next page you can see the combined FX development in our two main markets has on our consolidated sales, shipments and revenue per ton. The increase in shipments in the Mexico got us to a quarterly record of 2.6 million tons in consolidated shipments, with Mexico accounting for 67% of Ternium's shipments; the Southern being 21% and the other market, mainly Colombia, the US, and Central America, accounting for the remaining 12%. On the following page, we can see the components of the sequential improvement in EBITDA in the second quarter 2016. EBITDA per ton improved as a result of higher revenue per ton, partially offset by higher cost, and increase in shipment also helped. In Mexico, cost decreased slightly while in Argentina, cost sequentially increased, as a dilutive effect of the Argentine peso depreciation on the value of our Argentine subsidiary inventories gradually wear off. We expect to have slightly higher cost per ton in the third quarter 2016 sequentially. It is interesting to note here that the significant increase of slab market prices during the first half of this year, which peaked on May, should gradually pass through to Ternium's cost of sales, although we will only do so at the beginning of the first quarter of the year. On page 8, we see the same information on a six months basis. In this year-over-year comparison, you can see the strong forces that got us to a 32% increase in EBITDA, which almost reached $700 million in the first half of this year. Although steel prices has been improving in the first half of 2016, revenue per ton was 18% lower than in the first half of last year, or $150 per ton. On the flip side, cost of purchased slabs, raw materials, energy and labor decreased substantially from last year. In addition, cost decrease as a result of the devaluation of the Argentine pesos I have just mentioned. On the following page, there is a description of the drivers of net income in the second quarter of the year. The main reason for the sequential improvement was increase in operating income we have just discussed and better met financial result offset by higher income tax, in part due to the higher effective tax rate, principally related to the non-cash effect of deferred tax of the 8% devaluation of the Mexican peso against the US dollar during the period. The six months view on the next page is exactly similar to that. So let's see now - review the free cash flow generation in the quarter on page 11. Working capital decreased by $49 million and CapEx was $132 million. After deducting cash financial results and income tax, we ended up with a strong free cash flow generation of $231 million in the second quarter. On a six-month basis, Ternium generated free cash flow of $371 million in the first half of the year, with $230 million CapEx and $47 million accumulated decrease in working capital. Finally, in the last page of the presentation, there is a description of quarterly performance of cash flow from operations, CapEx, and free cash flow. We continue to show consistent cash innovation over the quarters and a stable CapEx. This has been related into a steady reduction of net debt, although it increased a little at the end of June 2016, during the second quarter we paid $228 million dividend to shareholders and non-controlling interest, we made $114 million cash contribution to Usiminas in connection with its capital increase process, and we lent $29 million to Techint, the joint venture that is very close to inaugurate its state-of-the-art power plant in Pesqueria, Mexico. So we continue to have a very strong financial position, with net debt of $1.1 billion, our net debt to last 12-month EBITDA ratio of only 0.9 times. So these were the main issues I wanted to share with you of our second quarter results. Now let's go to the Q&A. Thanks.