Universal Stainless & Alloy Products, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Universal's famous second quarter conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, June Filingeri. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jacinda. Good morning. This is June Filingeri of ComPartners, and I also would like to welcome you to the Universal Stainless Conference call and webcast. We are here to discuss the company's second quarter 2024 results reported this morning. With us from management are Chris Simmer, President and Chief Executive Officer, John Arminas, Vice President and General Counsel, and Steve DiTomaso, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before I turn the call over to management, let me quickly review procedures again. After management has made formal remarks, we will take your questions. Our conference operator will instruct you on procedures at that time. Also, please note that in this morning's call, management will make forward-looking statements. Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, I would like to remind you of the risks related to these statements, which are more fully described in today's press release and in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With these formalities complete, I would now like to turn the call over to Chris Zimmer. Chris, we are ready to begin.

Thank you, June. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. The second quarter was a period of significant achievement for Universal. Sales reached a record $82.8 million. Gross margin hit an all-time high of 25.4% of sales. Record net income of $8.9 million or $0.90 per diluted share and adjusted EBITDA was a record $18.5 million or 22% of sales. Our ability to achieve this level of sales and profitability is the direct result of our strategic focus and capital investment in our aerospace market capacity and capabilities. namely in premium alloys and other critical products for commercial aircraft and defense applications. That focus has delivered a richer product mix and a broader base of customer approvals in a market with substantial growth potential for the foreseeable future. As evidence of our progress, we achieved record aerospace market sales of $68.6 million in the second quarter, representing 83% of total sales. with premium alloys at 25% of total sales, mainly driven by aerospace. An important profitability driver is the targeted and sustainable margin improvement projects we continue to put in place. These projects, combined with the change in our mix towards aerospace and premium products, represent a structural change in the level of margin we are achieving. The acceleration of our margins in the second quarter and the growth of our adjusted EBITDA, which increased 47% quarter over quarter and 135% year over year, are indicators of this new level of profitability. Additionally, our second quarter benefited from higher base selling prices along with stabilizing commodity prices. We continue to invest in our premium alloy capacity, and we are adding a second 18-ton furnace shell for the VIM at our North Jackson facility in the middle of 2025, and a new box furnace this quarter to support growth at the forge. We also remain fully focused on managing working capital and generating positive cash flow to fund our strategic capital expenditures, as well as paying down debt. In the second quarter, net cash generated by operating activities totaled $7.3 million, and total debt reduction was another $3 million, bringing the total debt reduction over the past four quarters to $15 million, a decrease of 16%. Backlog remains solid at $297 million at the end of the second quarter versus $325 million at the end of the first quarter. We are continuing to work with customers to manage order entries in order to pull in lead times, which better serves them while strengthening our competitiveness. From an operations standpoint, total production in the second quarter was up 4% sequentially. That follows a 12% sequential increase in the first quarter, as we further benefit from our capital modernization project throughout the plants. Through those projects, we are realizing process improvements and an increased ability in our manufacturing process, enabling our production levels to ramp. There was positive news on the workforce front earlier this month with the signing of a new five-year collective bargaining agreement with the hourly production and maintenance employees at our North Jackson facility. It's a good contract, serving the best interests of our employees, our customers, and our shareholders. The capabilities of our North Jackson facility and our capital investments there have an essential role in our growth strategy. A further positive development in the second quarter was the return of Universal Stainless to the Russell 2000 and 3000 indexes. We believe it reflects our substantial progress over the past year in achieving our growth objectives and in building value for our shareholders. Turning to our end markets, Let me begin with aerospace. Second quarter sales were a record $68.6 million, up 14% from the first quarter, and up 34% from the second quarter of 2023. Year-to-date sales increased 29% to $128.8 million. I've just returned from the Farnborough Air Show where the enthusiasm and optimism about the future of the aerospace market, demand, remained as strong as ever. The importance of the show for Universal was the opportunity to make further inroads in expanding our base of major customer approvals, as well as in deepening current customer relationships on both commercial, aerospace, and defense. We were successful on both fronts. As expected, Boeing and Airbus announced major deals at the show. They were encouraging wins for Boeing, including an order for 20 787 Dreamliners for Japan Airlines, an order for 20 777-9s from Qatar Airlines. Airbus also won orders, including one from Japan Airlines, for both wide-body aircraft and the single-aisle 321neos. Boeing's focus at the airshow was on safety, quality, and their plan to meet customer commitments. While Boeing recently pushed back by a few months their production plans for the 737 MAX, COO Stephanie Pope told reporters at the air show that they are seeing significant improvement in the flow of their 737 factory, and she confirmed their production target of a steady rate of 38 737 MAX airplanes per month by the end of this year. They also plan to return to producing five 787s per month later this year as the supply of parts continues to improve. To date, Boeing has continued to work with the supply chain to ensure reliability and sufficient inventory for the ramp up in production rates. While our customers are closely monitoring the recent pushback in production target dates, we have only seen minimal order adjustments and there have been no cancellations. Confidence in aerospace demand is based on the fundamentals underpinning the commercial, airplane, and defense aerospace market, which point to an extraordinary and sustainable growth opportunity. Not only has air travel recovered to pre-COVID levels, but TSA screened a record 3 million passengers on July 7. The surge in air travel and forecasts of continued growth are driving up demand from airlines for new, more fuel-efficient planes to replace aging aircraft and support their fleet expansion plans. The need is increasingly urgent as airlines have had to postpone route expansions as they await overdue deliveries. Somewhat ironically, the delay in new planes is driving another aerospace segment, the parts aftermarket and MRO, which we estimate to be about 5 to 10% of our aerospace business. The potential size of the commercial aerospace market can be seen in the combined net bookings of Boeing and Airbus, which totals more than 14,000 aircraft. All of this translates into substantial need for premium alloys today and in the years to come. Strong fundamentals are also driving demand and defense. Ongoing geopolitical conflicts have resulted in record global military spending which reached $2.4 trillion in 2023, including increased military budgets at NATO countries. In the U.S., $884 billion defense budget for 2024 is aimed at modernizing weapons systems and technology and expanding capacities and capabilities for advanced jet fighters, military helicopters, drones, and combat vehicles, all require specialty and premium alloys. The defense industry is a growing and increasingly important part of our aerospace sales, representing 15 to 20 percent. That demand, combined with strength in commercial aerospace and the extensive number of new OEM approvals that we have received in recent years, are the primary drivers of our overall growth. Our company is in the strongest position we have been in to respond to the aerospace market opportunities. Turning to the balance of our markets, heavy equipment market sales were $5.2 million, or 6.3% of the second quarter sales, which is 11% lower than the first quarter. Customers remained hesitant to build inventory in the face of changing market demand for EVs versus hybrids and gas engine vehicles. GM, for example, saw second quarter sales strengthen in gas-powered vehicles while the pace of growth of their EV models slowed. Given the slowing pace of EV demand growth, they are pushing back plans for a new Buick electric vehicle, although they do plan to introduce other new EV models in the coming months. Model changeovers are a positive driver of tool steel demand, whether for gas-powered, hybrid, or electric vehicles. We expect our heavy equipment market sales to pick up later in the year and in 2025 demand to return to historic robust sales levels post-election once the automotive industry has better clarity and direction and the confidence to make substantial investments into new production lines. Energy market sales totaled $5.1 million in the second quarter or 6.2% of sales. which is 15% lower than the first quarter, but up 17% from the second quarter last year. The energy category combines our oil and gas and power generation sales, which we reported separately prior to 2024, and better reflects our strategy in the energy market as we have shifted production capacity to aerospace products in recent quarters. We plan to increase our energy market sales in future quarters as our production capacity continues to expand. General industrial markets totaled $3.3 million, or 4% of sales in the second quarter, which is 22% lower than the first quarter, but up 3% from the second quarter last year. We had expected our sales in this market to grow, which are mainly from semiconductor manufacturing, but general industry demand continues to remain modest. The long-term prospects in this market remain positive as U.S. semiconductor sales are continuing to gain traction amid the rampant development of AI and as semiconductor manufacturing returns to the U.S. with the help of the CHIPS Act. We expect our general industrial sales to improve post-election and remain poised to benefit from strengthening market dynamics in 2025. Looking at the balance of the year, our strong backlog puts us in a great position to increase sales next quarter and further expand our margins, generating more free cash flow from operations. Now let me turn the call over to Steve for his report on our financials.

Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone. As you can see in the numbers, our sales growth has continued in the second quarter, consistent with our expectations. This is fueled by the effort from our team to execute on a robust market for our aerospace products, delivering record top line quarterly sales of $82.8 million. Our overall shipment volume increased compared with the first quarter by 2%. This included a strong increase in the aerospace end market shipments, partly offset by lower shipments in the heavy equipment end market driven by soft demand and lower shipments of conversion services. Our expectation is strong recovery for heavy equipment in 2025 after completion of the U.S. election cycle later this year. Additionally, continuous improvement projects layered throughout the organization have delivered lower costs and better yields. This has delivered record profitability as measured by gross margin, operating income, net income, EBITDA, or adjusted EBITDA. Our diluted earnings per share of 90 cents trails only the fourth quarter of 2017, which benefited from tax adjustments driven by new tax laws, and two quarters from much earlier in the company's history when the diluted share total was much lower. Gross margin totaled $21 million in the first quarter, or 25.4% of sales, compared with 18.9% of sales last quarter and 14.3% in the first quarter of last year. The significant sequential improvement is primarily driven by three sustainable factors. First, the impact of cost and yield initiatives executed to specifically improve product profitability. Also, a richer mix of aerospace products. And finally, the ongoing recognition of our higher base prices. Our expectation is to continue to drive profitable growth for the foreseeable future through execution of the margin project initiatives while maximizing our supply to aerospace and defense. Selling general and administrative costs totaled $8.2 million in the second quarter, compared with $7.4 million in the first quarter and $6.8 million in the second quarter of last year. Quarterly SG&A has increased compared to 2023 due to higher employee-related costs, business insurance expenses, and audit and accounting support expenses. We expect SG&A to approximate $8.5 million per quarter through the second half of this year. Our operating income for the quarter is $12.8 million, which is a company record. We committed on our last two calls that we will see meaningful operating income growth each quarter as the impact of the margin initiatives fall through to the income statement, and we realized the benefit of the 16 price increases that were announced over the last three years. There is more good to come from both of those factors in the balance of the year. We also reduced interest expense by $150,000 to a total of $1.9 million for the quarter. $100,000 of the decrease relates to our lower total debt levels, and $50,000 relates to lower average interest rates. Term SOFR, which drives our rate for the majority of our debt, was flat, but we achieved a 25 basis point reduction in our spread above SOFR for our bank debt near the end of the first quarter. This reduction benefited Q2 and will benefit our rate going forward. And we have the opportunity to reduce the rate by another 25 basis points in Q3 and expect to see that benefit in the Q4 income statement. We recorded income tax expense of $2.1 million for the first quarter, resulting in an effective tax rate of about 19%. For the year to date, The effective tax rate is 19.3% and includes a projected annual ETR of 20% and $100,000 of a discrete benefit related to share-based compensation items. Net income for the quarter was $8.9 million or 90 cents per diluted share. This more than doubles Q1 diluted EPS and brings the year-to-date figure to $1.33. The current quarter diluted EPS is the highest since Q1 2007, excluding the fourth quarter of 2017, which benefited from the tax adjustment. EBITDA was $17.9 million. Adjusted EBITDA includes an add-back for non-cash share compensation and with $18.5 million, a 46% growth over Q1 and the highest level in company history. Our income, adjusted for non-cash items, generated $16.2 million during the quarter. We grew net working capital by $5 million as AR grew from the timing of our Q2 sales and inventory grew along with increasing vim melt production to support ramping vim sales we spent five and a half million dollars on capital expenditures bringing year-to-date capex to about 11 million we expect full year 2024 capital expenditures to total approximately 18 million dollars our debt pay down was about three million dollars in q2 we expect to pay down our revolver and decrease our net debt each quarter for the rest of the year. That concludes the financial update, and I'll hand the call back to Chris.

Thanks, Steve. In summary, our sales and profitability reached new levels in the second quarter with record sales of $82.8 million, record gross margin of 25.4%, record net income of $8.9 million or 90 cents per diluted share, and record adjusted EBITDA of $18.5 million. The combination of our focus on aerospace and premium alloys with targeted margin improvement projects has been transformational as we've created a structural change in the margins we can achieve. That change is sustainable going forward and we plan to build upon it. We continue to invest in our premium alloy capacity and efficiencies while also reducing debt. We remain fully focused on managing working capital, generating positive cash flow to further fund capital investments and debt reduction. For the balance of this year, we continue to see opportunities to grow our top line and expand our gross margin. As I said in today's release, we remain highly optimistic about our growth momentum and strategy for 2025 and beyond. This concludes our formal remarks. Operator, we're ready for questions.

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.

Our first question comes from Phil Gibbs at KeyBank.

Hey, good morning. Hey, good morning, Phil. The question was just on some of the capital spending initiatives that you have and what you mentioned incrementally this morning. So currently you have the VARs being commissioned at the current time, and then you mentioned more de-bottlenecking initiatives or growth in size of the potential. That sounds like it's more relegated to next year, but kind of take us through where you are on some of the bigger items this year and then what you announced today and what the goals are.

Yeah, our capital this year, capital spending is going to be in the $18 million neighborhood. You can expect half of that, a little more than half of that, to go towards what we call sustainability. So this is the maintenance and the upkeep of legacy equipment. We've got about $4 million going towards modernization projects. So this is the ability for us to be able to implement technology throughout the plants. helping a new generation of workers in the plants work more efficiently and safely and get back to some of the production levels that we had enjoyed when we had what I call the pre-COVID workforce and all the tribal knowledge that they contained. And these modernization efforts are really starting to take hold as we've been expanding our production levels each quarter. And finally, the growth and ROI side of the capex spending is going to be in the neighborhood of 5 to 6 million. These are going to be things like furnace capacity, number of the alloys that we're producing that are more advanced, require a little bit more time in the furnaces. So we're adding furnace capacity at the forge and downstream, putting investments into a number of areas that are either down money for investments next year like the VIM, Or areas to be able to enhance our pull through on the finishing side I Give you a little bit of color.

Hopefully that answers it Phil What would you describe as your your primary bottleneck right now in terms of in terms of Capacity or capability and then secondly I on the labor front, are there any thoughts that you need to add into more targeted areas there? Or do you feel like you've got the right set of folks coming up the curve at the moment?

Yeah. So let me talk a little bit about what's been pacing lead times. For our premium products, VIM, primary melt, has been the area that has really been pacing lead times. We did have a very strong quarter, ramping melt production there. We're on track to have another record production quarter at the VIM here in the third quarter, all in line with what we've got baked into the backlog. Aside from VIM melt production pacing lead times, finishing, particularly on small diameters, has been another area that has also been pacing lead times, simply because of the nature of the labor intensity of the smaller diameter product. From a labor standpoint, we have seen better stability, but I'm not where we want us to be. We still have opportunities to continue to pull through and retain workers at a higher level. As we get them working safely and efficiently following instructions and working to the levels that we need them to work at, I think we're really close to getting back to those pre-COVID production levels, which we're just shy of right now. But I expect as we move through the second half of this year into 2025, we'll return to those production levels. So labor has improved. It's stabilized. But I think we can still continue to get better fully staffing up and securing those reliable good workers that we need.

And how should we be thinking about networking capital over the balance of the year? And then, you know, within that, have you, and I know the margins have been obviously outstanding, but was there any misalignment still going on or is that still over? So I guess two questions, one on the networking capital and one on whether or not there's any raw material misalignments.

Yeah, so you'll see that inventories went up a little bit in the second quarter. The primary driver there is that we did get a little bit ahead of ourselves in melt by design late in the second quarter, knowing that we had some planned annual maintenance outages at our melt shops. So we will bring our inventories and our working capital levels back down to ending first quarter levels by the time we exit the third quarter here. So getting those inventories back under control Getting back realigned on that commitment to grow our top line while keeping our inventory levels flat to down. And remind me your second question there, Phil.

Was there any raw material misalignment in the second quarter? And what do you expect in the back half? Thanks.

Yeah, it was very minor. It was only an adverse about $500,000 to $600,000 that we see the misalignment impacting the second quarter. It got to the point where we didn't specifically call it out, so just modestly negative, but we're now seeing enough stability in surcharges and in the raw material flows that I don't expect it to have any type of a misalignment here in the third quarter.

Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Phil.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Bob Sells at LMK Capital Management.

Hi. Can you hear me?

Yes. Hi. Good morning, Bob.

Good morning. Nice quarter. A couple questions. First of all, on the premium alloy mix, how much, if you were to guess, how much of that premium alloy goes into defense versus commercial era?

The majority. So the premium alloys lend themselves to structural components within defense applications, both on fixed-wing fighter craft and on helicopters. The premium products also lend themselves to the engine part of the business. So obviously you've got engines and fighter jets, but these premium products are also going into engines that are in the commercial aerospace side of the business. So, rough cut, I'd say about two-thirds of those premium products are aligned with defense applications, and about a third of it ultimately into engines for commercial applications.

Okay, thank you.

And then, can you touch on the backlog a little bit? I think you mentioned, can you expand on what you mentioned about the fact that order entry you're working with customers on order entry i i assume that meant that earlier in the year uh you were you were putting more orders into the system that you were constrained by and that's given some and you probably have some relief with throughput now but i'm not sure i'm right so can you expand on that a little bit yeah the primary driver there uh as you look back particularly in 2023 when we hit a high water mark for backlog

At that time, we had premium alloy lead times that were out in the 70 to 80 week range, depending upon the size range of products. It makes it very difficult for our customers to plan on demand being that far out with the visibility that they have. So we've been working with customers, assuring them an allocation so that they feel comfortable that they are going to have a spot in line with us. but we've been walking back our lead times. And these days we've gone from call it mid 70s to right around 45 to 50 week lead times on those premium alloys. And we've done that just by controlling order entry on a controlled basis, periodically opening up the order book for customers to layer in new orders. So that total level of demand on aggregate of what we expect in the quarters to come continues to increase, but we've just been walking in the lead times. So this has been very helpful to our customers. It's given them the ability to layer in a higher assurance that the sizes and the grades that they're ordering align with what they need. This has been a very good thing for customers, and it's also helped to enhance us from a competitive standpoint. So as we continue to walk those lead times back in and ramp our production levels, it's going to put us in a better position to sustain our growth trajectory.

What level do you feel will be, for your premium, what level do you feel like will be normalized lead times?

Well, that's a good question because I think we're still in an environment for the foreseeable future, and by that I mean years, where we've got an environment where demand is going to outpace supply. And I'm speaking for the industry, not just Universal Stainless. So the capacity is going to come as we ramp our efficiencies, and we've got some modest increases that are going into the equipment at our VIM facility to be able to give us more capacity and throughput there. But I suspect that living in the, call it 10- to 14-month range industry-wide is probably going to be the new norm. A lot of that is going to depend upon the sustained growth and demand of these premium alloys. and the ability for Universal and the industry, for that matter, to continue to ramp our throughput and production levels.

Okay. And then lastly, in backlog, so we don't draw any erroneous conclusions, do you expect backlog continues to trend down over the next several quarters as you make improvements, or do you expect that it will maintain the level that we've seen this quarter?

Well, I think my bias would be that it would move sideways to slightly down. I think the one wild card there is, while it's clear that the aerospace and defense business continues to remain extremely strong, we continue to win new pockets of share as we gain approvals. But those markets outside of aerospace continue to be a bit muted. We think that some of it is tied to the election. The market's looking for some certainty moving forward. So we're turning in record results right now and we're not quite firing on all cylinders. Once that tool steel plate market, our heavy industry market starts to pick back up, energy market, semiconductor, that will help to bolster up our backlog and it's going to help to fuel the top line as well too. I've got a bit of a conservative approach. I'm not sure that we'll see that economic benefit in those other markets for us until the latter half of 2024 going into 25. But, you know, if the markets wake up and they decide that they want to start surging on order entry, we're poised and ready to be able to meet that demand.

Thank you, and congratulations on the performance.

Thanks, Bob. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

As a reminder, to ask a question, please press Star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

Our next question comes from Phil Gibbs at KeyBank.

Oh, thank you.

My question was around the comments and the release on the sustainable cost improvement or efficiencies that you garnered as part of your gross profit margin outcome, something certainly that appeared new to the discussion. So maybe talk a little bit about what that means and why you highlighted it this quarter. Thanks.

okay sure yeah these i'm going to have steve talk a little bit about it he's worked closely with our industrial engineers technology and operations group quantifying these initiatives to reduce material costs ops costs improve yield so steve you want to touch base a little bit on these initiatives and why we're just now calling it out sure so we implemented uh some specific projects

in our in 2023 as part of our 2024 plan to drive margin improvement so some examples of those are actively reviewing heat charge makeups for our melt shops and we trialed and successfully implemented lower cost methods of melting product without sacrificing quality another example would be yield improvement So we carved out subsets of our product categories. We attacked our flat rolled plate business and some different components of our round bar business to drive yield improvement. So as I described those, right, melt and yield improvement, they took some time and effort to implement. They worked through our inventory and reached the P&L upon shipment. So we're really starting to see the benefits of those projects pop in q2 which is why we're calling them out now they're they're a significant part of that margin improvement and we we wanted to highlight them to drive home the message that they're sustainable these are things that that you know we've implemented and won't go away now lastly for me kind of on a different track you've been

You've been adding capability to the operations recently and then also over time when you made the big acquisition a decade plus ago to sort of get you where you are with North Jackson. So there's certainly interest in building certain capabilities for the industry and And there's a sort of a limited asset set of places that can do these things. Is that drawing more interest in the M&A environment? Do you think the M&A environment could get more You know, active, I think one by one by one, we've seen, you know, obviously with the titanium operations that used to be out there in the marketplace, Latrobe or Ladish, things like that over time, PCC, things have kind of gotten gobbled up. So there's sort of a lack of assets out there seemingly in your wheelhouse. But are there any thoughts that there should be more consolidation in the market? Is that something that's being talked about? more broadly by the industry?

Yeah, I think you're spot on on the idea that what we do is a unique spot in the specialty metals industry. There's not a lot of players out there doing what we do. We know about Acirinox acquiring Hanes. It looks like that deal is getting ready to go through final approvals and to happen. As a public company, we're always susceptible to having those types of discussions, but I can tell you that our focus right now has been around executing on our strategy. We've got a big backlog that we need to be able to eat into that I think is going to continue to drive better results. As we look around the industry at opportunities for us to be able to supplement our growth, where we can find capacities, we're utilizing them. Assets out there in the marketplace that had historically supported automotive demand, for example, being able to partner up with some people to help us on the finishing side. And we do that in kind, too. Wherever we've got some available capacities, we'll offer out those conversion services to other customers. But you're right, the market is tight. BIM supply is tight. Demand is fantastic, and it's only going to get stronger. But this is an industry that needs to find a way to grow. It needs to find a way to support all these planes that we need to build. But in short, our focus right now is just being able to execute, realize the full potential of the assets that we have. A very organic structure there, but keeping our eyes open on ways that we can find partners to help us accelerate that growth.

Thanks, Chris and team. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Our next question is from Bob Sales at LMK Capital Management.

Chris, I did have one more question for you. You don't consistently tell Denny Oates that this business is really easy to run, do you?

No, no, no. I've been having fun in the new role. We've got a really good team here, so it's made the successful transition a lot easier for me because we've got a really good team here.

I'm sure Denny is listening, so I couldn't resist the question.

Thank you.

I'm showing no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over back to Chris Zimmer for closing remarks.

Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining us this morning. The first half of 2024 was one of substantial progress and momentum, and we're focused on continuing to achieve both of those during the rest of this year. I look forward to updating you all on the progress during our third quarter call.

Thanks and have a great day.

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