Alpha Metallurgical Resources, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Alpha Metallurgical Resources Second Quarter 2022 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Emily O'Quinn, Senior Vice President at Corporate Communications. You may begin.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Before we get started, let me remind you that during our prepared remarks, our comments regarding anticipated business and financial performance contain forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those discussed. For more information regarding forward-looking statements and some of the factors that can affect them, please refer to the company's second quarter 2022 earnings release and the associated SBC filing. Please also see those documents for information about our use of non-GAAP measures and their reconciliation to gap measures. Participating on the call today are office chairman and chief executive officer, David Stetson, and president and chief financial officer, Andy Edmund. Also participating on the call are Jason Whitehead, our chief operating officer, and Dan Horn, our chief commercial officer. With that, I'll turn the call over to David.

Thanks, Emily. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Just over six years ago, I joined the office team During those years, we have certainly experienced our share of obstacles and hurdles, and on many occasions we had our share of people questioning whether Alpha would survive those ordeals. I come before you today as proud as ever of the accomplishments of the Alpha team, humbled by the opportunity given me six years ago to be part of that team, and confident that this team will be stronger and achieve more in the coming years than during my tenure as CEO. We have always been transparent in our goals at Alpha. We knew that a heavy debt load would make navigating markets more difficult. We knew it was essential to invest in our people and our assets to grow output. And lastly, our shareholder base has been very loyal, and that loyalty had to be rewarded. Over the past four years, we've clearly laid out the plans and actions we needed to take in order to accomplish those goals. To that end, let me share with the great news from the second quarter. This is our first earnings call since fully paying off the remaining term loan balance in early June, completing our long-term debt elimination. As you know, deleveraging has been a top priority for us. Just over a year ago, Andy laid out a plan to reduce and possibly eliminate our debt by 2023. His laser-focused approach to our financial management, as well as actions taken to shore up all aspects of our balance sheet, enabled his time frame to be realized in the second quarter, well ahead of anyone's expectations. Couldn't be prouder of Andy and the entire executive team for their discipline in seeing this through to completion. It has not only transformed our balance sheet, but I believe it marks the start of a new chapter for the company as a more flexible, resilient organization that is better able to withstand the inevitable cycles of our industry. The strategic and tactical decisions of the team, along with strong markets we experienced this year, allowed us to post back-to-back record performance, with the second quarter generating a just EBITDA of nearly $700 million. The decision and leadership of Jason over the past three years of bringing on new and more efficient minds, as well as upgrades to our preparation and transportation infrastructure, is reflected in this record EBITDA. Our shareholders have been loyal and supportive of both our short and long-term strategies over these past years. Our board's decision in May to increase our share repurchase program to $600 million reflected our appreciation for that loyalty. We have made significant progress in buying back our shares with approximately $268 million spent to acquire 1.9 million shares representing roughly 10% of our issued and outstanding shares when the program began. In our previous earnings call, we not only spoke to you about our dedication to eliminating debt, but we began the conversation of our plan for the long-term growth and sustainability of Alpha. I tasked Dan's team to provide us with a marketing plan that would complement our vast and diverse resource base, and Jason's team with aligning our safe production with our vision of those future markets and demands while maintaining a competitive cost structure. As always, both Dan and Jason generated not only a roadmap to bridge our current production and customer base with our vision of what Alpha will be in 15 years from now, but they've already begun executing on that next chapter of what we fully expect to be a long, successful life for Alpha. In order to fully execute on these strategic goals, we need the company to be staffed and running well administratively. Behind-the-scenes efforts of Roger's team allows Alpha to stay focused on our safety and environmental stewardship efforts while maintaining the critical support framework a company needs in areas like legal, human resources, and land. In addition to his duties as general counsel, Roger leads all these support and efforts. We have been engaged in succession planning to ensure the company is equipped with leadership it needs for the near term and that we are continually cultivating a deep bench of talent within the organization. to step up as needed in the future. After all, any well-run company is larger than a single person. It should leverage the expertise and knowledge of the team to advance the company's goals. And I believe this tracks exactly how Alpha has achieved so much in recent history. Over these past years, I've been fortunate to be surrounded by the best management team in the industry, a team that navigated some of the most difficult financial operations and marketing hurdles that could have easily led to value destruction. Instead, with courageous decision-making and flawless execution, we are reporting another record quarter now as a debt-free company with robust capital return programs. I believe the future is bright for Alpha, and that confidence has informed my decision to make an important personal announcement today. I've been thinking about retirement for some time, especially knowing that we've built a strong and experienced team that can lead Alpha for decades to come. So I've decided that later this year is the right time to hand over the CEO reins to Andy Edson. The board of directors met last week and formally and unanimously appointed Andy to serve as CEO beginning on January the 1st, 2023. He will join the board as a director at that time. As of December 31st, 2022, I will transition the role of executive chairman of the board which allows me to step away from day-to-day management and take on a higher-level oversight role. Andy and I have been working closely over the last few years, taking steps to prepare for a seamless transition. Over this time, he has taken on an increasingly broader scope of responsibility and has complete confidence in his ability to step into the CEO role at the end of the year. Andy is intelligent, experienced, and highly qualified. He shares my vision for continuing to solidify Alpha as the industry leader that we are. I know he will serve Alpha extremely well as the next CEO. I want to thank my board of directors and our shareholders for the dedicated and unwavering support during my tenure as CEO of Alpha. With that, I will now turn the call over to Andy to share some additional details about the transition plan for his current role and his vision for the company. Thanks, David. Good morning, everyone. Before I get started, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the incredible work that David has done as Alpha CEO. I've had a front row seat to the positive impact he's created, and I can attest to the critical role he's played. When we achieved a win, he never failed to give the team credit, and when we faced serious challenges, he never wilted, but seized the opportunity to turn setbacks into even greater wins. His fingerprint will forever be on this company, and we cannot thank him enough for what he has done. As he mentioned, today's announcements are a window into what Alpha's next act will look like. After paying off our debt and significantly reducing our legacy liabilities, the company is entering an exciting new phase. It will be different without the weight of our previous debt load, but I believe that the discipline, resilience, and leadership vision that brought us to this point are the same things that will propel us into an even more successful future. What this team has accomplished over the past three years is nothing short of incredible, and that is due primarily to two things. strategic vision of foundation that David created, and the unparalleled efforts of the world-class alpha team members. This new phase will continue to honor that foundation. In addition to the CEO transition we have announced today, I'm pleased to report that the board has selected Todd Monti to take over the duties of CFO as of tomorrow. Todd served the company as SV team controller since 2016, and prior to that in a number of high-level roles in our tax and accounting House Coopers. The Board has named Todd to the role of Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer effective as of August 9. I have great confidence in Todd's ability to excel in this new role and we look forward to bringing him into the earnings call process next quarter. Additionally and very importantly, I want to highlight one more change that will happen at year end. The Board has appointed Jason Whitehead to serve as Alpha's President in addition to his effective January 1, 2023. We all know what an integral part of this organization that Jason is. In my opinion, he's the best operator in the industry, and I'm super excited for him to take on this broader leadership role. Before I turn to the quarter's results, I want to echo David's comments about the strength of this team. Alpha will retain the benefit of David's wisdom and guidance as Executive Chairman of the Board. I think Jason, Roger, and Dan are the best in this industry, best in class, and Alpha is very lucky to have them on executive team. I'm truly humbled by the opportunity to lead this phenomenal company, and I couldn't be prouder to be a part of this team. Turning now to look at our second quarter results, I'm pleased to say that we achieved yet another record in back-to-back quarters. Excuse me, back-to-back-to-back quarters. That's three in a row. Our $695 million investment and Q2 was 38% higher than first quarter's adjusted EBITDA of $504 million. In terms of volumes, we sold 4.3 million tons in the second quarter with 4.1 million tons of that coming from our MET segment. As we mentioned in the press release, thermal market volatility has created some opportunities for crossover MET tonnage to be sold into the thermal market. We have taken advantage of this opportunity and slightly increased our shipment tons for the thermal byproduct piece of the MET segment as a result. As expected, realizations on export tonnage continued to improve quarter over quarter, with an average of $337.38 per ton realized on export business for second quarter, compared with $278.01. Export tons priced on the Australian indices continued to lead our quarter realizations to $350.56, while coal priced against Atlantic indices and other pricing mechanisms in U2 realized $321 per ton. Total weighted average realizations for our pure MET production as a whole were $304 per ton for Q2, an increase of 20% over the prior quarter's $254 per ton. Realizations in the all-other category were $61.41 for the quarter, up in comparison to the $57.39 realized in Q1, with indices having fallen off from their highs earlier in the year. We expect to see that downward pressure flowing through our realizations over the next couple of quarters. However, even with a significant drop from recent record highs, current pricing levels are still very strong relative to historic norms. Our second quarter results reflect the elevated pricing environment from the first half of this year. As a result, higher royalties and service taxes continue to drive costs higher. Met segment cost of sales in the second quarter increased to $111.36. up from first quarter levels of $103.61. Cost of coal sales in the all-over category remains flat against the prior period at just under $50 in the second quarter. SG&A, excluding non-cash comp and non-recurring items, increased to $16.8 million in Q2 as compared to $14 million in Q1. As a result of increased incentive compensation due to outperformance against budgeted metrics, we're increasing our SG&A guides for the year to a range of $55 to $59 million. This is up from a prior range of $50 to $54 million. Future capex was $41.9 million, up from $28.1 million in the prior quarter. Going to the balance sheet and cash flows, we closed out the second quarter with $161.7 million in unrestricted cash and $91 million of unused availability under our ABL. Total liquidity increased again quarter over quarter to a level of $252.8 million at the end of June. This amount is also net of our final term loan payment, which was $99.4 million on June 3 and eliminated our remaining balance and $176.3 million in share repurchases during the quarter. Cash provided by operating activities increased from $336 million in Q1 to $466 million in the second quarter. As of June 30, our ABL had no borrowings under $64 million of letters of credit outstanding, a significant reduction from one's $121 million of LLCs outstanding. We're making additional progress in our committed and priced business for 2022 with 69% of our MET tonnage in the MET segment committed and priced at the midpoint of guidance at an average price of $260.69, another 29% $89.91, and we're fully committed in price for 22 and our all other categories with an average price of $83.38. The Board of Management team has been focused on capital allocation strategies to create value for our many stakeholders and ensure that we're making the best use of our resources. To this end, we've evaluated a few potential transactions in the M&A space, but after careful consideration, we concluded that our best course of action would be to to devote resources to our share repurchase program. Since our last earnings call, we've made significant progress in buying back shares using a programmatic approach that allows for opportunistic purchasing and maximizes the efficiency of our dollars being spent. As a reminder, the board authorization is for $600 million in the program. As of August 5th, we spent a total of $268 million, or nearly half of the authorization. require roughly 1.9 million shares of Alpha's common stock at a volume-weighted average price of approximately $140 per share. As of today, we have approximately 17.17 million shares outstanding, not including the impact of approximately 220,000 fund exercise reports. With that, I will turn the call over to Jason for some details on our operational performance.

Thanks, Andy, and good morning, everyone. I'll start by congratulating our teams on another outstanding quarter. In addition to our everyday focus on safe production, the quarter was also positive in terms of advancing the ball on several of our special projects. What I want to highlight is the Glen Island mid-ball mine that will feed into our Marfork preparation plant. Our teams have worked incredibly hard and against a number of supply chain obstacles to keep this mine's development on track. and I'm pleased to report that the Glen Allen mine took its first cuts of coal in June. We're excited to bring this mine into our portfolio, and we continue making progress on the plant upgrades and other various CapEx projects we announced late last year. Additionally, we closed on the purchase of the Crown Hill dock at the end of June. This is a river barge loading facility in Kanawha County, West Virginia. and we believe this property will provide some future optionality for logistics and transportation of our coals. We continue to see volatility in the global coal markets, with thermal coal having had an especially volatile span in recent months. This is due to several geopolitical factors, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its effect on the European energy landscape. Thermal coal indices have jumped higher than even the highest quality met coals, inverting what has historically been a predictable pricing hierarchy. As a result, high volatile metallurgical coals are finding their way into thermal coal markets, and Alpha has taken advantage of some opportunities in this regard. We have high vol B commitments for both Q3 and Q4 for servicing thermal markets, and we continue to mine to reclamation on our Black Castle surface mine. where we're producing incremental thermal production while cleaning up legacy ARO on the balance sheet. Similar to this, we will resume production in the fourth quarter of this year on two permits on our Republic surface mine. These permits will produce nearly half a million tons of high BTU thermal coal through 2023 and position the permits for final grading and seeding that will take place near the end of next year. The radically changing economics in the thermal market have also increased the reserve life at our slab camp deep mine. Formerly planned to idle this year, more resource tons have been identified and mine plans are being developed. Our last pure-play thermal mine is now expected to operate into the first quarter of next year. As a result, we've increased our guidance for the incidental thermal byproduct of the MET segment by 200,000 tons on either end of the range. We moved from a previous guidance range between 800,000 to 1.2 million tons to a new range of 1 million to 1.4 million tons. This also slightly increases our total shipment guidance to 15.6 to 17.2 million tons for 2022. Before I wrap up my remarks, I want to again highlight the collective efforts of our employees that have fueled Alpha's back-to-back-to-back record quarters. Without their daily focus on safety, environmental compliance, and efficient, reliable production, we wouldn't be able to post financial results like we have announced today. Our employees are critically important to our success, and therefore, we've continued to invest in our workforce and incentivize strong performance toward our safety, environmental, and production goals. Since the beginning of 2021 and on an annualized basis, we have invested an additional $120 million in our employees in the form of wage increases, expanded benefits offerings, and incentive bonuses. We believe Alpha is the employer of choice, and we strive to continually maintain that distinction by sharing the company's financial success with our employees when possible. I will now hand the call over to Dan for some additional information on the markets and our sales efforts.

Thanks, Jason, and good morning, everyone. As Jason mentioned, coal markets continue to shift in response to a variety of factors. Overall weakening of the global economy, the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, inflation concerns, and recession fears have all influenced the pricing and movement of coal across the globe. Trade irregularities resulting from the Russian invasion created inefficiencies in trade flows, as well as an imbalance in the typical pricing hierarchy for coal coal. On the metallurgical side of things, concern regarding global steel demand has caused markets to soften in recent months, with indices retreating significantly from their record highs earlier. While current levels are still considered strong relative to historical averages, they represent a meaningful drop from where they started earlier in 2022. The Australian Premium Global Index dropped from $480 per metric ton on April 1st $302 per metric ton at the end of the second quarter. After the quarter, the PLD indices continue to drop further, down to roughly $203 per metric ton in recent days. As a comparison, the U.S. East Coast Low Ball Index declined from $485 per metric ton at the start of the quarter to $317.50 per metric ton at the end of June, and is now down to around $232 per metric ton. The East Coast Highball A index started the quarter at $480 per metric ton, declined to $330 per metric ton at quarter close, and came down now to roughly $245 per metric ton. Correspondingly, the East Coast Highball B index fell from $455 per metric ton down to $320 over the course of the second quarter, and is down now to around $243 per metric. we monitor several economic indicators to understand the health of the steel industry, with one of those being the World Steel Association's crude steel production. According to its reports, June global crude steel production decreased about 6% as compared to the year-ago period, with all regions represented in the analysis posting a decline against their June 2021 levels. Among office key markets, the European Union's June 2021 22 crude steel production represented a decline of about 12% compared to its year-ago levels. South American production was down about 5% against June 2021, while here North American production decreased by 2.4% as compared to that year. Moving over to the thermal market, the war has created an energy crisis in Europe, which has caused certain thermal coals command a higher price in premium cooking coals in some markets, further challenging pre-pandemic coal market norms. Looking at the seaborne market, where this is most pronounced, the API 2 index started the second quarter at $260 per metric ton on April 1st and rose to $370.35 per metric ton as of quarter close on June 30th. This has come back down to hover around $278 per metric ton recently. As a comparison point, central outpricing for 12,500 BTU coal on CSX has been around $190 per short time. Despite the slowing down of steel production, we are receiving consistent interest in our products, and as Jason said, we continue to capitalize on opportunities to sell some incremental tonnage into the thermal markets to take advantage of the current price of While metallurgical coal pricing has significantly declined from the all-time highs we saw earlier this year, the recent levels are still quite strong relative to historic averages. I am optimistic about the upcoming domestic season negotiations and beginning the process of putting together our 2023 commitments. Alpha is well-positioned to finish 2022 strong and get off to a great start for the coming calendar. Before we move into the Q&A section of the call, I want to end on a positive note regarding our transportation providers. The beginning of the year was bumpy as our rail partners worked to address their labor challenges and establish new operating practices to create a more reliable service framework. Hoffa generally continues to see improvement from our rail partners, with service moving toward our pre-pandemic benchmark levels at certain times within the second quarter. We understand that labor issues are complex cannot be fully solved overnight, but we are grateful for the effort and cooperation of the railroads that resulted in significantly improved performance in recent months. I will now turn the call back over to David. To follow on Dan's comment, I want to thank both CSX and Norfolk Southern for their work to improve rail service over the past couple of years. We appreciate those partnerships. With that, operator, we are now ready to open the call for questions.

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Lucas Pipes with B. Reilly Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you very much, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and congratulations on a strong quarter, being debt-free. David, I want to congratulate you on your well-deserved retirement, and Andy, Todd, and Jason also, congratulations on your promotion. So lots really going really well here, and this is terrific to see. I want to turn my first question to the market and the inversion we've seen on thermal versus metal prices in you're taking advantage of it this year. What are the limits to maybe switching more tons into the thermal coal market so next year when you have maybe a freer hand, where could this go and how would you frame that up? I appreciate your thoughts. Thank you.

Hey, Rufus. Thanks for the question. Yeah, that's a Where could it go is a question I wish I could answer. But what we're doing at Alpha is we're looking at these opportunities as they come along. And by the way, we've been selling some thermal coal into the market for several months here, not just lately. But some of the constraints that do affect it are some of the things you've probably read already, ball matter, FSI, sizing of the coals. There's a lot of the utilities, particularly in Europe, that haven't used a lot of cap coals in several years. So there's some technical issues to overcome. as well as some of the logistic issues. But, again, for us, that's where DTA comes in handy for us. We can use DTA as a platform to move some additional thermal over. I should have started by saying that we still expect the met market to be strong. We have a great group of customers, and they are still in the market. We continue to talk to them globally. We still – We still get interest from Asia, including China. We have discussions. There's still plenty of opportunities out there. The thermal market does have some limitations. Not every ton of coal can shift to the thermal market. I suppose if you're looking for a number, we can add easily several hundred thousand tons more into the thermal market going forward in the coming months if we see something we like. Hopefully that answers your question.

And that was on an annual basis, that number?

I don't know about anyone. I mean, we're already doing roughly a million tons a year of thermal, so we would add to that, yes. With Jason's production increases, we'd be adding something to that. But I honestly don't have that number in front.

Okay. That's helpful. Dan, I think you mentioned the contract season for 2023. Can you elaborate a bit on how you're approaching domestic versus export medical sales here in this environment? Obviously, The medical market has softened a bit internationally. You have a debt-free balance sheet that may allow you to take more risk in the international markets. So, you know, a few cross-currents here, but I would appreciate your thoughts as to how you think placement could make sense and if there might be any deviation from... This is David.

I'll make the comment and then Dan can clean it up for me. But... You know, we're right in the middle of our budget process for 2023, and we'll look across the board where our portfolio is. As Dan mentioned, we have a lot of our existing customers that are already speaking with us both domestically and internationally. And then we've also, with relationships we've developed, we're also exploring new markets in Asia. This will be, you know, if you look at historically at Alpha, we've historically been right around that 35% domestic, 65% international. We like that for a lot of fundamental reasons that I'm not going to go into detail on a public call on, but, you know, that's still kind of our sweet spot. But, again, we're going to approach the season like we do always. We've got some great product, great quality, great diversity, and we have strong interest across the board, both domestically and internationally. So that... That decision will be made as we enter the domestic markets. We see what we like. We see the pricing that we believe will fit within our profile. We will take advantage of it. And then we obviously have our international side as well. It's growing every quarter. So that is a decision that will probably be made in the coming months. And certainly in our November call, we will have some updating information on how we come out on the domestic side. Dan, do you want to try to clean up my comments? I think you said it well, David. I will take a quick issue, Lucas. You know, the export market is slowing down. I guess to some other companies, yes, but I mentioned on previous calls that last year, about a year ago, when the market started moving up, we and other companies signed more long-term contracts than we had in the past. So a big report, just because there's no new deals in the market, Doesn't necessarily always mean that business is slow if you're shipping on a lot of previous contracts. So you'll see our numbers here. We shipped 4 million tons in the previous quarter. So, you know, we're, I take little exception to the volume part of that. Certainly the indices come down, but the volumes for Alpha at least remain strong. But we're absolutely looking to jump on any opportunities on the thermal side, as I mentioned earlier. And then with regard to the domestic met, you know, We're still working on the RFPs, for goodness sakes. They're not even due until the next few weeks. So it's really too early to comment with any detail on what we expect to see there.

I appreciate the caller, and I'll ask one final one for today, for now. David, you mentioned the improvement on the rail side, and that's great to hear. Could you frame up how the service is today versus an optimal? Is it at 90% better than that? Where is there still room for improvement, if at all? Thank you very much for your perspective.

You may have more on the logistics side. I can just simply reemphasize what I said. You know, earlier this year, our railroad partners came under a lot of scrutiny. Right before the Service Transportation Board, people were writing letters. We were having private conversations. We prefer as a company to have conversations with our partners in a private setting versus a public setting. But just as they were experiencing labor issues, we were experiencing the same in our industry. And so... We appreciate what they've done. We've certainly seen significant improvement on both CSX and Norfolk Southern. We appreciate their ability to try to ramp up. They're doing better every day. But with that, Dan, you're closer on the logistics side. So any insight you might have for him? Well, I think I'll just add that when we saw the changes coming with the railroad, in the case of one railroad, there were several new changes. I've got to give a shout-out to my team, the logistics team, for reacting quickly and changing some of the way we do things. And a shout-out to Jason's team, the people at the prep plants and loadouts, to react to these changes as well. So part of the reason I think we're more successful here in the last quarter is due to everyone stepping up and realizing it's a bit of a different world on the transportation side. We had to change things we do in the business. That means loading the train on a Sunday or whatever. You know, we respond to that, too.

That's very good to hear. Gentlemen, again, congratulations and continued best of luck.

Thanks, Lucas. Thanks, Lucas.

Our next question is from Nathan Martin with the Benchmark Company. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good morning, guys. Congrats on the results and echo Lucas's comments. Congrats on all the transitions being made there by the team. Appreciate you taking my questions. Maybe I'll start with Jason. I appreciate all your comments related to the thermal business and kind of what's behind increased guidance for this year. But I just want to make sure I caught everything. It sounded like slab camp was extending through the first quarter. I think you also mentioned bringing back, I think it was a half a million tons at the Republic surface mine. I think it was. Did I hear all that correctly? Maybe you can kind of give us one more rundown. And then where are those tons going to be flowing through? Is that the other segment or is that still within the thermal piece of the MET segment? Thank you.

Good morning, Nate. I think the answer to your latter question is probably both. So let me start with slab camp. You know, the mine's been, we've been talking about it for a year. You know, it's been depleting. But, you know, as the markets shift, tons that were once considered resources, you know, are now much more economic. So, you know, therefore, we're able to bolt on small sections to the mine. And, you know, mine them at a relative good cost, you know, to where the market is. So you did hear me correct. We expect Slab Camp to operate you know, into and maybe mostly through the first quarter. But again, you know, we're mining the very end of the mine life, so, you know, things are subject to change, but, you know, we're ready to move and adjust accordingly. So, slab camp would hit the all-other segment. And then the Republic permits that we plan to start in the fourth quarter of this year. You did hear me right that it's upwards of half a million tons, and these are, I guess, currently inactive surface mine permits, but they would be in the all, I'm sorry, they would be in the MET segment, but they'd be incidental thermal tons to the MET segment, but available, you know, and will be sold into thermal markets. Does that answer your questions?

Yeah, no, that's perfect, Jason. I think the other one maybe that you mentioned, if I caught correctly, was Black Castle.

Yeah, and I thought we mentioned that on the last earnings call, but maybe my memory's fuzzy, but we have been releasing tons, not large amounts, from Black Castle in the second quarter, and that'll continue through most of the year, but it's smaller volumes. I would I would estimate that somewhere between $80,000 and $110,000 that would be in the MET segment but would be in the other incidental thermal bucket.

Got it. That's very helpful, Jason. Thank you. And then maybe stick with other thermal for a second, kind of on the cost side. If you guys maintain cost guidance, $58 to $62 a ton, obviously the first half is done extremely well below $50. what do you foresee kind of increasing the cost in the second half there, if that's the case? Is that kind of getting to the end of the flat camp mine life that you spoke about?

Yeah, I think you nailed it there. It's just, you know, there'll be recovery-type work and mine close-up-type work, you know, being spread across, you know, fewer tons and probably expect to see a bit of an increase there. And I'll let Andy comment if he has anything to add.

No, that's it, Jason. Nailed it.

Great. Appreciate those thoughts, guys. And then maybe just kind of shift into a high-level question. You know, on the cash return side, you guys raised your regular dividends slightly this morning. You know, your clear preference has been share buybacks, nearly completing half of that $600 million program so far it looks like. Now that you've essentially paid off all your debt, what are kind of the priorities for cash going forward? How are you thinking about balancing shareholder returns with other uses of cash, whether those might be investing in the business organically, I think you pointed out earlier, M&A, things like that, and then any minimum liquidity or cash levels you guys would like to keep? Thank you.

Yeah, Nate, this is David. That's a broad question, so let me a stark high level and we can drill down as much as you want to. As we stated on previous earnings calls, our priority was paying our debt off, so we checked that box. Our other priority was twofold. One, to increase cash balances, and the other was to reward our shareholders for their loyalty over these past years. So we commenced our earnings program earlier than the last quarter. We increased it to $600 million. We have spent, as we heard earlier, approximately 50% of that has been spent in the market. So from our perspective, we're going to continue our shared purchase program. We believe our shares are undervalued. Therefore, it's a good place for our investment. We'll continue to increase our cash balances as we move forward. As Amy mentioned, we've dabbled our toe in some opportunities in the M&A side, but to no avail. So We, as you know, we have a large and diverse reserve base. We're constantly evaluating that reserve base for the purpose of bringing on new production. But you also recall the previous quarter, we went through a 15-year mining plan that showed that for the next 15 years, we simply mined what we currently have in play. We do not need any large capital projects. On the other hand, we're constantly evaluating opportunities to either hold on and make some incremental production increases and or replace existing mines with more efficient mines. From my perspective, we're not deviating from our strategy. We're going to continue to do a share return program via our share repurchase. We're going to continue to build strong cash balances. That is where our future is, Andy. I'll let you provide any other additional commentary? Yeah, I think that hits it all, David. The other question that you hit us with was minimum cash or minimum liquidity levels, and while that's not a hard and fast rule and there's really not much of a sign to it, I do think that, broadly speaking, we like to look at somewhere in that $250 to $300 million range for total liquidity target. Of course, including an ABL in that mix, ABL could be as volatile as anything else based on where the markets are. You can't always rely on the ABL to provide roughly $100 million of liquidity, so we need to probably be thinking a little bit less on that over the full cycle. Probably somewhere in that $250 to $300 million range is what we're going to target. That will naturally wax and wane. As David mentioned, we've got the 15-year plan as a bit of a guide. We're also going through our budget cycle for 2023, and that will inform what kind of capital projects we'll be looking at for next year. But as we've said in the past couple of calls, we don't have those huge projects that really require any material deviation from any of our plans. We can kind of do most of the things we want to do at once. And I think that in the decent markets and up to the really good markets we're experiencing now, that has certainly been the case and should be Going forward.

Got it. Appreciate those comments, guys. I'll leave it there. Thank you for the time and information. Best of luck in the second half. Thanks, Dave. Thank you, Nate.

Our next question is from Jonathan Navarette with Cowan. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good morning, everyone. I'm Lance. Congrats on the quarter as well as everybody with the new promotions. My first one is, can you touch maybe a little bit on the cadence of shipments for the remaining of the two quarters?

I think, John, sitting here today, I think, you know, part of that is I don't see any big changes. We have a fair amount of our book committed. We're just starting to talk about Q4 with our seaborne customers. Typically, we start to find out what their – schedules are in August. But at this point, you know, I would say, you know, the pro rata shipping level. Now, whether some of those times convert from MET to thermal is still to be determined. I expect some of them will. I don't have a number in my head yet, though. We're in discussions with just multiple thermal pool customers at the moment. So more to come on that.

Understood. Okay. And I guess it's somewhat related, and I'm sorry if I'm beating a dead horse here, but in terms of revenue, can we expect the second quarter to be the peak of the year, or can we maybe expect a gradual decrease quarter-on-quarter from here until the fourth quarter?

Hey, Joss, and this is Andy. Yeah, I mean, just based on actual realizations and where the futures are sitting, through the rest of the year, at least pointing right now. I think Q2 does appear to be the high water mark, and goodness knows it was very, very high water. But yeah, it looks like while the curve is still in a bit of contango going into Q4 and Q1 of next year, it looks like there's overall going to be a down leg as compared to Q2.

Yep, that makes sense. And then just to more on my end, I know the increase in SG&A guidance. Is all of that really composed of incentive comp, or are there other items embedded in there?

Yeah, it's a combination of multiple items, Jonathan, but the primary thing, the primary impact is coming from just cash impacts on our LTIP program and incentive compensation. Naturally, the outperformance the first half of the year drives bonus programs, and so we're just adjusting the accrual for that. Now, depending on where the pricing goes, it may come down a little bit over the back half of the year, but that's just kind of getting us caught up based on an extraordinary first half and a super extraordinary second quarter.

Okay, got it. And just my last one. In terms of inflation and labor, what are your expectations, or how are you guys looking at it in terms of the second half of the year?

I'll let Andy grab that one. We haven't changed guidance on our costs. No, I think it's obviously a struggle. Jason mentioned in his prepared remarks the amount of additional costs that we've put into the system to maintain our employment and keep our folks happy and productive, and to try to battle some of the exodus from the coal industry. But all of that's baked into the cost. We're obviously seeing some productivity improvements elsewhere, and Jason's team is always finding a couple of places to find some productivity enhancements to reduce costs to offset some of these things. I don't think there's anything specific that we can point to as far as additional cost impact from labor inflation. But Jason, if there's anything you want to add specific on just what you're seeing in the labor markets.

No, I think you said it, Andy. As we've mentioned, we've done what's necessary to stay competitive. And I think Andy said it. I believe we'll be able to stay in the range through the rest of the year.

Thank you, and congrats again. Thanks.

We have reached the end of the question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to David Stetson for closing remarks.

I want to thank everybody for getting on the call today. I want to reiterate my appreciation and being humbled to have led Alpha for these past six years. I so much appreciate the team being not only my executive team, but but the people that work for us day to day in our minds and in other parts of our company, I really can't tell you how much I appreciate it. And obviously the support of my board of directors and our shareholders over the past six years has been phenomenal, and I want to thank each and every one of them for that support and loyalty. With that, we'll close the call. Thank you once again for joining us.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.