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spk00: 2023 Second Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to hand the conference over to Rich Manson, Chief Financial Officer at Olympic Steel. Please go ahead, sir.
spk03: Thank you, Operator. Welcome to Olympic Steel's earnings call for the second quarter of 2023. Our call this morning will be hosted by our Chief Executive Officer, Rick Mirabito, and we will also be joined by our President and Chief Operating Officer, Andrew Greif. Before we begin, I have a few reminders. Some statements made on today's call will be predictive and are intended to be made as forward-looking within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and may not reflect actual results. The company does not undertake to update such statements, changes in assumptions, or changes in other factors affecting such forward-looking statements. Important assumptions, risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are set forth in the company's reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q and the press release filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. During today's discussion, we may refer to adjusted net income per diluted share, EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA, which are all non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is provided in the press release that was issued last night and can be found on our website. Today's live broadcast will be archived and available for replay on Olympic Steel's website. At this time, I will turn the call over to Rick.
spk04: Thank you, Rich, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Olympic Steel's 2023 second quarter results. I'll begin with an overview of another strong quarter for Olympic Steel. Then Andrew will review our segment performance and provide some comments on market conditions. Following that, Rich will discuss our financial results in more detail. And then, as always, we'll open up the call for your questions. Olympic Steel delivered another quarter of strong and steady performance as we continue to benefit from our diversification strategy and our investments in enhanced processing capabilities. We reported second quarter sales of $569 million with net income of $15 million and adjusted EBITDA of $31.2 million. These results are indicative of the success of our strategic actions. which strengthen our ability to deliver consistent profitability even in the face of market challenges. After benefiting from rising prices at the beginning of the year, this quarter we faced headwinds in carbon steel as hop rolled index pricing fell 24%. We also continue to navigate the industry-wide reduction in stainless steel shipments, while at the same time absorbing a 10% reduction in grade 304 surcharges. Despite these challenges, our adjusted EBITDA was up $2.6 million from the first quarter. Our second quarter results include the full earnings effect of MetalFab, which we acquired in January 2023. It was the second largest acquisition in our history. MetalFab was a strong contributor to our second quarter earnings, and we'll begin to see the benefit of Olympic supply synergies in the second half of 2023. In addition, several of our capital expansion projects came online during the quarter, and we continue to move equipment into our new fabrication facility in Bartlett, Illinois. We expect Bartlett will be fully operational by the end of the third quarter. Andrew will provide some additional details on our capital projects in his remarks. With a strong balance sheet and borrowing availability of more than $340 million, we continue to evaluate additional investments and actively seek acquisition opportunities that will further our strategy to expand into higher return, value-added products. We have a proven M&A track record, and we're confident in our ability to identify the right deals and execute seamless integrations to foster additional profitable growth for Olympic Steel and our stakeholders. While we continue to invest in our business, we are balancing these investments with our commitment to debt repayment and rewarding our shareholders. We reduced debt by $21 million during the second quarter, and we expect further reductions in the second half of the year. We also continue to pay our higher quarterly dividend rate of 12.5 cents per share. which allows our shareholders to directly benefit from our consistent performance and strong financial results. Now I'd like to take a moment to provide some color on how we are thinking about market conditions and our outlook for the rest of the year. While the near-term economic environment plays out, we do expect demand from our OEMs to remain steady in the third quarter, subject to normal seasonal trends. Longer term, We remain optimistic about the future of the domestic steel market. We expect that the solid outlook for manufacturers, increased government spending to support infrastructure and other projects, as well as bipartisan support for steel tariffs and quotas will continue to benefit domestic steel producers and metal service centers. In addition, our value-added processing capabilities put us in an excellent position to continue capitalizing on growing demand for fabrication as more customers look to outsource this work. I'm confident that regardless of what market environment we face, we have strategically positioned Olympic Steel to deliver more consistent results and higher returns than in the past. We are stronger than ever, and we will continue to execute on our strategy to further reduce the impact of market cyclicality on our business and deliver profitable growth. Now, I'll turn the call over to Andrew to provide more detail.
spk02: Thank you, Rick, and good morning, everyone. Olympic Steel continued to build on the strong start to the year in the second quarter. As Rick noted, we earned $31.2 million of adjusted EBITDA despite facing carbon pricing headwinds and industry-wide pressure on stainless steel demand and surcharge reductions. This performance reflects the great progress achieved to reduce the impact of market cyclicality on our business. The deliberate steps we have taken to strengthen Olympic Steel have made us more resilient, and we are proving that we can deliver more consistent performance in any market environment. Now, turning to our performance by segment, our carbon segment accounted for $18.4 million of adjusted EBITDA for the quarter. The carbon team's ability to maintain its discipline and focus on the fundamentals of inventory and expense management was critical to our success this quarter. Additionally, the ongoing successful integration of our metal fat acquisition bolstered the segment's results. To date, MetalFab is performing extremely well, and the integration has been smooth. Congratulations to David Gia and the entire carbon segment on their outstanding work and performance this quarter. Our pipe and tube segment, led by Bill Zielinski, also delivered very strong results with adjusted EBDA totaling $10.1 million for the quarter. This is Pipe & Tube's fourth strongest quarter of profitability ever, a big accomplishment achieved by focusing on margin improvement and capitalizing on growing demand for our value-added processing capabilities. We believe we are particularly well positioned in this segment due to our capacity to handle outsourced fabrication work, which is increasingly in demand among our customers, and we expect this trend to continue. As expected, specialty metals, led by Andy Markowitz, continued to experience soft market conditions during the quarter. Despite these market challenges, specialty metals earned $7.7 million of adjusted EBITDA. We continued to make progress on our new fabrication facility in Bartlett, Illinois, which will provide additional capacity as we look to continue capitalizing on the strong demand in this area. To support the growth opportunity in both carbon and white metals fabrication, we welcome Max Fitzgerald to the Olympic team in the newly created position of Vice President, Fabrication. In this role, Max will lead the execution of our fabrication strategy with a focus on strengthening the organization's fabrication-related commercial presence facilitating operational standardization and implementing new technologies. Supporting Max is Matt Gruesing, who has been promoted to Director of Sales of Fabrication. Matt will report directly to Max and focus on developing and implementing strategies to grow the company's fabrication business. We are excited to execute on our growth strategy in fabrication and look forward to helping them succeed in their new roles. We're pleased to report that a number of our capital projects came online this quarter. At our Winded Georgia facility, our second automotive stamping press, which includes a fully automated packaging line, is now fully operational and performing extremely well. At our Beaufort, Georgia operation, we installed two new 10K lasers, two new robotic welders, as well as a new 20K laser, which provides high-speed precision cutting of thicker gauge material. We are operating very well. These investments support our strategy to prioritize automation and safety and are instrumental in driving increased efficiencies and growing our business. As Rick mentioned, while we work through the near-term market dynamics, we remain confident in the actions we have taken, and we are optimistic about our performance and the future prospects of the domestic metals industry. Thank you to our entire team for another quarter of steady performance. Now, I'll turn the call over to Rich.
spk03: Thank you, Andrew. It was another strong quarter for Olympic Steel and one that reflects our ongoing investment in the business and our capacity to meet customer demands. As we review our second quarter 2023 results, keep in mind that year-over-year comparisons will be more difficult due to the January 2023 acquisition of MetalFab, whose results roll up through our carbon segment. For the quarter, net income totaled $15 million compared to $37.6 million in the second quarter of 2022. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was $31.2 million compared to $58.8 million in the prior year period. During the second quarter of 2023, we recorded $1 million of LIFO pre-tax income compared to no LIFO adjustment in the second quarter of 2022. Consolidated operating expenses for the quarter totaled $101.6 million compared to $94.8 million in the second quarter of 2022. Our operating expenses for the second quarter of 2023 totaled 17.9% of sales and $365 per ton versus 13.4% of sales and $346 per ton for the same period in the prior year. Our second quarter and year-to-date operating expenses reflect the addition of metal fab, which does not report tons sold. Therefore, operating expenses per ton at the consolidated level and for the carbon segment will appear higher year over year. Consolidated operating expenses for the second quarter include $10.5 million of metal fab operating expenses and $6.6 million of lower variable incentive expenses when compared to the second quarter of 2022. Inflationary pressure on operating expenses has been declining over the past two quarters sequentially. We estimate the impact of second quarter 2023 inflation at just under 2%. We reduced debt by another $21 million in the quarter, bringing our total debt at the end of the second quarter of 2023 to $238 million. Cumulatively, since the $131 million metal fab acquisition in January 2023, we have reduced debt by $59 million and we expect additional debt reduction in the second half of the year. At quarter end, our credit availability was a near record $343 million. We remain in an excellent position to continue our acquisition efforts as well as investing in organic growth opportunities to further strengthen Olympic Steel. Capital expenditures totaled $15.1 million for the second quarter of 2023 compared to depreciation of $10.3 million. We continue to estimate 2023 capital expenditures in the $30 million range. Additionally, our second quarter 2023 effective income tax rate was 30.3% compared to 27.1% in the second quarter of 2022. This increase in our effective tax rate is primarily attributable to increased Mexican transactional sales and profits, which carry a higher effective tax rate than our U.S. operations. We expect our effective tax rate for the balance of 2023 to approximate 28 to 29 percent. Also, during the quarter, we paid our quarterly dividend of 12.5 cents per share. Our Board of Directors approved a 12.5 cent per share dividend payable on September 15th to holders as of September 1st. We have now paid dividends to our shareholders for 73 consecutive quarters. Our efforts to diversify our product offerings and invest capital in higher return opportunities helped drive our strong performance in the second quarter, even in the face of some challenging and uncertain market conditions. Looking forward, we remain optimistic and we will continue to seek opportunities to further diversify and strengthen our business. Now, operator, please open up the call for questions.
spk00: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Your first question comes from Samuel McKinney with KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hi, good morning. Good morning, Sam.
spk02: Good morning, Sam.
spk05: First, I wanted to start in Piping 2. Gross margin was great in the first quarter, typically your strongest quarter, but those strong margins held firm in the second quarter, even though the second quarter typically doesn't see the rebate income the first quarter does. Do you attribute all that margin strength to the value-added lasers and outsourced work? And how sticky are those 30% margins moving forward?
spk02: So, Sam, it's Andrew. Great question. We do see those margins continuing. You know, as we take a look at value-added today, that probably represents somewhere in the 34% to 35% of sales. We think by the end of the year that's going to get closer to 40%. It's been the objective of CTI to really get that number approaching 50%. So we've spent good money in value-added equipment and really do expect that that's going to continue to grow, elongating the margins.
spk05: Okay, thanks, Andrew. That's helpful. And then HRC pricing overall declined sharply during the second quarter and has continued to fall in recent weeks. I know your order books weighted more toward contract versus spot, but can you talk us through how you're thinking about carbon flat segment pricing into the third quarter, especially given the seasonal volume effects you're expecting?
spk02: Yeah, another great question. I'd say we're seeing, you know, as we take a look today, lead times on hot roll is still running four to five weeks. we still see the market being very steady, but there is more capacity coming on stream. So we do think that prices will be a little challenged, but relatively steady, I think, to where we're seeing it today. And then we'll see whatever seasonality there will be as we get into the fourth quarter. But I think the mills are running well, and I think at the moment... You know, unless lead time really gets, you know, greater than four to five weeks, we're going to see consistency as we're seeing it today.
spk06: Okay.
spk05: Thank you. And then lastly for me, turning to specialty metals, inventory levels at service centers are continuing to fall, you know, at their lowest level in the last couple years. Can you talk specifically about the impact of those falling inventory levels and if you're feeling any import pressure?
spk02: Yeah, so I would say that for us, our inventory is probably a little bit higher than where we would like it to be. Import certainly is a big factor. We're seeing probably similar to what we have seen over the last three to four months, not like we saw last year. Last year around this time, we were seeing stainless imports in the 45,000 to 50,000 tons a month. We're not seeing it as high right now. But there certainly is pressure. Demand is relatively flat, and I think inventories still need to come down a little bit for the service centers to start feeling comfortable. You're right. They are down according to the metals activity report, but I think you'll see over the next month or two, I think you're going to see them come down a little bit more.
spk06: All right. Thank you. That's it for me. Thanks, Sam.
spk00: Next question, Dave Storms with StoneGate Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk01: Morning. Good morning, Dave. Good morning. Hoping you could just touch on a lot of the work you've done to diversify your offerings. Looks like it might have changed a little bit last quarter with carbon flat products taking up about 55% or more of your revenues. Is that just from the metal fab acquisition, or is there more to that story?
spk03: Dave, I think it's two points. I mean, I think in general, yeah, it's up a little bit because of metal fab, but I think the bigger story there has been on the stainless side. So industry-wide, it's been slower stainless sales, and we're not immune to that, as well as the average price of stainless has come down. So, yeah, I think we popped, I think it was about 50, it used to be about 53% on carbon flat. I think it was 55% for this quarter.
spk01: That's very helpful. Thank you. And then just looking into the second half of 23, should we just expect typical seasonal factors, or is there any unusual planned downtimes, anything like that, that we should have on our radar?
spk03: Yeah, I think, Dave, what we typically see, Q3 sequentially after Q2, historically is 3% to 5% down just because of less effective shipping days kind of due to the holidays in July. And then what I would tell you is that 2023 has been very typical of a seasonal steel year. So I would kind of expect those trends to continue.
spk01: That's perfect. Thank you. And one more for me. Just all, you know, unemployment is still right around the three and a half percent. Is that having any impact on your ability to get labor and maintain it?
spk04: This is Rick. We've seen a little bit of relief on the labor side, so it's a little bit easier to hire compared to last year and certainly two years ago. But, you know, at low unemployment levels and the demographics that we're looking at, I mean, I just think this is kind of where we are is kind of going to be the new reality in terms of, you know, manufacturing in the United States. But it... The real pressure from the COVID impacts, we've seen a little relief from that.
spk01: That's very helpful. I appreciate the time. Thank you. Thank you.
spk00: Next question, Chris Sakai with Singular Research. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hi, good morning. Just had a question on specialty metals flat. Wanted to get your sense of demand there. and also the cost of the materials sold at Specialty Metals Flat. What are you guys seeing for the rest of the year?
spk02: Well, I would tell you, Chris, that nickel plays, as you know, an important role in stainless. Nickel's been in that 950, 960 range. Prognosticators think it's going to come up a little bit. You know, aluminum, again, is probably pretty steady. So just talking to the analysts, they think this is about where you're going to see it maybe now, the balance of the year maybe up a little bit. And what I would tell you is if imports stay the way that they are in the domestic mills who are running pretty well, you know, pricing is going to stay right around where it is. I mean, we've seen a real fall off on the nickel surcharge these past three months. I think we're going to see a little bit of steadiness as we come into September. And then it's hard to really say for the balance of the year. But, you know, most are predicting that it's going to stay relatively steady, which will mean our prices are going to stay about steady.
spk06: Okay, sounds good for that. And can you talk more about fabrication and what are your opportunities there?
spk02: Yeah, that's a great question. So it's really a driving part of what we're looking at. So as we take a look at the industrial OEMs, Chris, what we have seen is that the need for value-added fabricated parts has grown, and it's really taken off since COVID. You know, the manufacturer today, we really think about that they're looking in three key areas, and that's R&D, assembly and marketing, and their real need for welded, fabricated parts has grown. We have been fortunate to participate in that. We're continuing to invest heavily in downstream value-added equipment. It's why we brought Max Fitzgerald in to be our new vice president of fabrication and promoted Matt Grusing to be his number one guy in this. It's going to be a big growth area for us, and we will invest big in downstream equipment there.
spk06: Okay, great. Thanks for your answers. Thank you. Thanks, Chris.
spk00: Thank you. I would like to turn the floor over to Rick Marabito for closing remarks.
spk04: Thank you, Operator, and thank all of you for joining us on our call today. We certainly appreciate your continued interest in Olympic Steel. And we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Thank you, and have a great day.
spk00: This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.
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