Constellium SE

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Constellium First Quarter 2022 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. It is now my pleasure to introduce Director of Investor Relations, Jason Hershiser.

Thank you, Operator. I would like to welcome everyone to our first quarter 2022 earnings call. On the call today, we have our Chief Executive Officer, Jean-Marc Germain, and our Chief Financial Officer, Peter Matt. After the presentation, we will have a Q&A session. A copy of the slide presentation for today's call is available on our website at consilium.com, and today's call is being recorded. Before we begin, I'd like to encourage everyone to visit the company's website and take a look at our recent filings. Today's call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements include statements regarding the company's anticipated financial and operating performance, future events, and expectations, and may involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. For a summary of specific risk factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the factors presented under the heading Risk Factors in our annual report on Form 20F. All information in this presentation is as of the date of the presentation. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law. In addition, today's presentation includes information regarding certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please see the reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures attached in today's slide which supplement our IFRS disclosures. I would now like to hand the call over to Jean-Marc.

Thank you, Jason, and good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for your interest in EconStellium. Let's turn to slide five and discuss the highlights from our first quarter results. I would like to start with safety, our number one priority. We delivered best-in-class safety performance in the first quarter with a recordable case rate of 1.6 million cases. per million hours worked. In the first quarter, we had several sites achieve safety milestones with anniversary for a number of years, up to seven for one of our plans, without a recordable case. I want to congratulate all of our employees on this excellent performance. But the safety journey is never complete, and we all need to remain focused on this critical priority. While our performance in the quarter was excellent, we are always focused on maintaining and improving our safety performance. This can never be taken for granted. Turning to our financial results, shipments were 401,000 tons, up 4% compared to the first quarter of 2021, due to higher shipments in PARP and ANT. Revenue increased 48% to 2 billion euros. This was primarily due to higher metal prices. Remember, While our revenues are affected by changes in metal prices, we operate a pass-through business model, which minimizes our exposure to metal price risk. Our value-added revenue, which reflects our sales, excluding the cost of metal, was 652 million euros, up 21% compared to the first quarter last year. Our net income of 179 million euros compares to 48 million euros in the first quarter of 2021. As you can see in the bridge on the top right, adjusted EBITDA was 167 million euros, 38% above the first quarter of 2021, with SPARP adjusted EBITDA increasing by 14 million euros and ANT adjusted EBITDA increasing by 34 million euros versus the prior year. This performance was ahead of our expectations for the quarter, and a new record for us in the first quarter. Underlying this performance was a rebound in aerospace demand and solid cost performance, as well as continued strong demand from packaging and industrial customers. We are experiencing significant cost pressures, which Peter will discuss in more detail, but thanks to our pricing power, contractual protections, and our work on costs, we are managing the current inflationary environment very well. Moving now to free cash flow. We extended our track record of consistent free cash flow generation with 26 million euros in the quarter. As you can see on the bottom right of the slide, we demonstrated our commitment to deleveraging and ended the first quarter at 3.2 times or down 1.4 times from the end of the first quarter last year. we remain committed to achieving our medium-term leverage target of 2.5 times. Overall, I am very proud of our first quarter performance. We delivered a strong adjusted EBITDA, solid free cash flow generation, and further deleveraging, despite significant inflationary pressures. Looking forward, there are clearly uncertainties on the macroeconomic front and on the geopolitical front with the war in Ukraine. which I will come back to later in the presentation. However, on a positive note, we have demonstrated our ability to successfully manage the business through challenging times, and we are demonstrating our ability to offset the current inflationary pressures. In addition, we are seeing a strong order book in most of our businesses. As a consequence, we are optimistic about our prospects for the remainder of this year and beyond, And we are raising our 2022 adjusted EBITDA guidance to a range of 640 to 660 million euros. That increases our previous guidance of 600 to 620 million euros. In addition, we now expect free cash flow in excess of 170 million euros in 2022. That increases our previous guidance of greater than 150 million euros. At our recent Analyst Day, we presented a long-term vision for the company that includes volume growth underpinned by sustainability-driven megatrends, improving profitability and returns, and an ambitious set of sustainability targets. We're highly focused on executing our strategy, achieving our ESG targets, delivering on our long-term guidance of greater than €800 million of adjusted EBITDA by 2025, and increasing shareholder value. With that, I will now hand the call over to Peter for further details on our financial performance.

Thank you, Jean-Marc, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. Please turn now to slide seven. We began disclosing a new metric for our business, VAR, or value-added revenue, at our analyst day earlier this month. As a reminder, VAR is effectively our gross revenue minus the cost of metal. Going forward, we will report this metric each quarter. Value-added revenue was €652 million in the first quarter of 2022, up 21% compared to the prior year. €28 million of this increase was due to higher volumes in PARP and A&T. €67 million was due to improved price and mix. The price and mix bucket includes a 10 million euro customer payment related to a contractual volume commitment in A&T. The balance of the change was due to favorable FX translation tied to a stronger US dollar. There are two important takeaways from this slide. First, as Jean-Marc noted, the top line dynamics in our business are strongly favorable. Second, with adjusted EBITDA of 167 million euros in the quarter, Our margin on value added revenue in the quarter was 25.7%. Now turn to slide eight and let's focus on our PARP segment performance. Adjusted EBITDA of 82 million euros increased 20% compared to the first quarter of 2021. Volume was a tailwind of 6 million euros as higher shipments and packaging and specialty rolled products offset lower shipments in automotive rolled products. Packaging shipments increased 6% versus last year on continued strong demand. Automotive shipments decreased 6% versus last year on continued impacts from the semiconductor shortage. Price and mix was a tailwind of 24 million euros on improved price, including inflation-related pass-throughs and a stronger packaging mix. were a headwind of €20 million as higher operating costs due to inflation more than offset favorable metal costs. FX translation, which is non-cash, was a tailwind of €4 million in the quarter due to a stronger US dollar. Now, turn to slide 9 and let's focus on the A&T segment. Adjusted EBITDA of €53 million increased 169% compared to the first quarter of 2021. Volume was a tailwind of 11 million euros. Aerospace shipments increased 23%, and TID shipments increased 11%. Price and mix was a tailwind of 32 million euros on improved price, including inflation-related pass-throughs and stronger mix with more aerospace and a better TID mix. As I mentioned before in the discussion of VAR, The price and mix bucket in the first quarter included a customer payment of 10 million euros related to a contractual volume commitment. Costs were a headwind of 10 million euros on higher operating costs due to inflation and production increases. FX was a tailwind of 1 million euros in the quarter due to a stronger US dollar. Now, turn to slide 10 and let's focus on the AS&I segment. Adjusted EBITDA of 37 million euros decreased by 3% compared to the first quarter of 2021. Volume was a 1 million euro tailwind as industry shipments increased 11% on strong broad-based demand while automotive shipments decreased 12% due to reduced demand resulting from the semiconductor shortage. Price and mix was a 13 million euro tailwind on improved price, including inflation-related pass-throughs and stronger industry mix. Costs were a headwind of 15 million euros on higher operating costs due to inflation. Now, turn to slide 11, where I want to give an update on the current inflationary environment we are facing and our focus on cost control to offset these pressures. First, in the first quarter, As expected, we experienced more significant inflationary pressures across the business than in previous quarters, many of which were exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. As you know, we operate a pass-through business model, so we are not materially exposed to changes in the price of aluminum, our most significant cost input. That said, metal supply remains tight today, and we are tactically and strategically doing what we can to to carefully manage our metal inputs. The cost of alloying elements like magnesium are significantly higher this year due to supply disruptions and to the actions we have taken in recent quarters to secure supply. Non-metal costs like labor, energy, maintenance equipment, and supplies, and transportation are all higher compared to last year. With respect to energy, as previously noted, We purchase it on a rolling forward basis, which has helped us mitigate some of the current cost pressures. However, our energy costs will run materially higher this year, particularly in Europe, given the extraordinary energy price increases. Now, let me discuss the various tools we have to offset these inflationary pressures. Our businesses continue to focus on cost control and, again, deliver strong cost performance in the quarter. Our recently announced Vision 25 initiative, which will continue many of the Horizon 22 projects around metal, operating excellence, and fixed costs, will help us combat rising costs in the future. On the commercial side, many of our existing contracts have inflationary protections, such as PPI inflators or surcharge mechanisms. We are also signing new contracts with better pricing and inflationary protections. To provide one notable example, we have had very good success in adding magnesium price protection mechanisms across our customer base. While inflation will be significant in 2022, we believe it is manageable and that it will be largely offset by improved pricing and our relentless focus on cost control. The net impact of inflation and the actions we are taking to offset it are included in our revised guidance for 2022. Now let's turn to slide 12 and discuss our free cash flow. We generated 26 million euros of free cash flow in the first quarter on strong adjusted EBITDA and lower cash interest, despite working capital bill associated with increased activity and higher metal prices. As you can see on the bottom left of the slide, we have continued to deliver on our commitment to generate consistent, strong free cash flow. Since the beginning of 2019, we have generated over 490 million euros of free cash flow. Looking at 2022, we now expect to generate free cash flow in excess of 170 million euros. We expect CapEx to be between 250 and 260 million euros, We expect cash interest of approximately 100 million euros, which represents a milestone for the company and reflects the significant actions we have taken to reduce debt and cash interest. We expect cash taxes of 20 to 25 million. Now, turn to slide 13 and let's turn to slide 13 and discuss our balance sheet and liquidity position. At the end of the first quarter, our net debt was 2 billion euros. This is roughly flat compared to the end of 2021 as 26 million euros of free cash flow generated in the quarter was mostly offset by unfavorable non-cash FX translation with the strengthening of the US dollar. Our leverage reached a multi-year low of 3.2 times at the end of the first quarter or down 1.4 times versus the end of the first quarter of 2021. Given our revised 22 guidance for adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow, we expect leverage below three times by the end of 22. And we remain committed to deleveraging and achieving our two and a half times leverage target. As you can see in our debt summary, we have no bond maturities until 2026. We are proud of the progress we have made on our capital structure and of the financial flexibility that we are building. Our liquidity was strong at 853 million euros as of the end of the first quarter. With COVID-19 hopefully largely behind us, we are likely to reduce the extra liquidity we added during the pandemic over the coming quarters. I'll now hand the call back to Jean-Marc.

Thank you, Peter. Before updating you on our end markets, I want to address a war in Ukraine as it relates to Constellium. Please turn to slide 15. I need to start by recognizing the tragedy of this conflict and the humanitarian crisis it is creating. This is a horrible situation for Ukraine and totally unnecessary. Thus far, the war has had a limited impact on Constellium beyond its broader impact on commodity prices. We have no operations and de minimis sales in either Russia or Ukraine. We do buy a limited amount of metal from Russia. We also, like the rest of Europe, get a portion of our natural gas from Russia. To date, our operations have not been materially affected. We are obviously monitoring the situation very closely. Let's turn now to slide 16 and discuss the current outlook for our end markets. For those of you who were able to participate in our recent analyst day, the messages remain consistent. Demand generally remains very strong in the markets that we serve. We are benefiting from sustainability-driven secular growth trends, such as consumer preference for infinitely recyclable aluminum cans, lightweighting in transportation, and the electrification of the automotive fleet. Constellium is well positioned today with our diverse and balanced portfolio to capture this growth. Starting with packaging, packaging is a core market for Constellium and represented 44% of our revenue over the last 12 months. The growth in demand for aluminum cans is underpinned by consumer preference for cans versus other alternatives such as plastics or glass. Aluminum cans are infinitely recyclable, making them the most sustainable beverage packaging container and a well-understood participant in the circular economy. The packaging market is strong in both North America and Europe. We expect mid-single-digit demand growth in the medium term, which is supported by can-maker capacity additions in both regions, as exemplified by recent announcements of two new can lines and the expansion of an existing plant by adding another can line in Europe. We are doing our best to meet the needs of our customers. We recently announced a series of projects to unlock 200,000 tons of capacity by 2025 to serve this growing market and another 140,000 tons by 2030. These brownfield projects will expand our capacity in both North America and Europe and come with very attractive returns for our shareholders. Now let's move to automotive. Automotive represented 25% of our revenue over the last 12 months. Now, Stadium is well positioned in both sheet and extrusions to benefit from the secular shift to aluminum in automotive and the electrification of the automotive fleet. Electric vehicles need to be light to meet their range objectives, which makes aluminum the logical material of choice for auto body sheet, crash management systems, structural components, and battery enclosures. We also expect continued lightweighting of internal combustion engine vehicles to meet increased regulation, the societal focus on sustainability, and demand for improved safety and performance. Near-term, automotive demand continues to be hindered by the semiconductor shortage. OEMs experienced production stoppages again in the first quarter. We expect these to continue in the second quarter of this year and to modestly improve in the second half. From an end market demand perspective, however, we remain very positive on this end market and in its growth potential. Dealer inventories remain low, and we believe underlying consumer demand remains very strong, especially for light trucks, SUVs, and luxury vehicles, where Constellium has greater exposure. Let's turn now to aerospace. Aerospace returned to year-over-year growth for us in the first quarter. Over the last 12 months, aerospace represented 7% of our revenue, which is down from 15% in 2019, pre-COVID. Major OEMs have announced build rates increasing in the near term, and we are now seeing this translate into increased customer orders, though we still expect the path to full recovery to be gradual. Over the longer term, we remain confident that the fundamentals driving aerospace demand remain intact, including growing passenger traffic and greater demand for new, more fuel-efficient aircraft. Turning lastly to specialties, specialties represented 24% of our revenue over the last 12 months. We continue to execute on our strategy of expanding in niche products in a diversified range of markets. In general, these markets are dependent upon the health of the industrial economies in Europe and North America. It is also of note that many of the sustainability-driven secular growth trends impacting our other coal markets are very much at play here as well. For example, light weighting is driving increased applications for aluminum in rail, trucks, and boats. In addition, increased investment in renewable energy is increasing demand for our extruded products. Specialties markets are generally strong today in both Europe and North America. Turning to slide 17, we detail our key messages and financial guidance. Constellium's performance in the first quarter of 2022 was very strong. We delivered record adjusted EBITDA of 167 million euros through solid operational performance and strong cost control in the face of significant inflationary pressures and other supply chain challenges across our business. Importantly, we also further extended our track record of free cash flow generation and further deleveraged our balance sheet to a multi-year low of 3.2 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA. Looking forward, we are well positioned to deliver a strong performance in 2022 and beyond. Demand remains strong across most of our end markets, I strongly believe the demand growth we are seeing across our end markets is durable, given the sustainability-driven secular growth megatrends behind them. We are confident in our ability to offset the current inflationary pressures with improved pricing and our relentless focus on cost control. We remain focused on execution, and we are excited by the opportunities to grow our business and enhance its profitability and returns. For 2022, we are now targeting adjusted EBITDA of 640 to 660 million euros and free cash flow in excess of 170 million euros. Our guidance assumes business conditions remain roughly as they are today. Long-term, we are targeting adjusted EBITDA in excess of 800 million euros by 2025. We remain focused on operational performance, cost control, free cash flow generation, the achievement of our ESG objectives, and shareholder value creation. I'm very optimistic about the future. With that, operator, we'll now open the Q&A session, please.

Certainly. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. And our first question comes from the line of Emily Chang with Goldman Sachs.

Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. My first one is around the updated EBITDA guidance and free cash flow guidance there. I believe historically you've seen some seasonality in your EBITDA profile, and Q2 and Q3 have historically been the stronger quarters. So I guess given this robust performance that we've seen in Q1, is that what's driving the increased confidence in raising full-year guidance, or is it increased visibility on cost control throughout the course of the year?

Yeah, good morning, Emilie, and thanks for the question. Well, both. You're right that there is seasonality in our business, and Q2, Q3 tend to be stronger, Q4 tends to be weaker. We are seeing very good results of our ability to pass through inflation pressures onto our customers. We are seeing good results in terms of executing in our plants and managing costs, and also the visibility in our order book has grown. This is a substantial raise to our guidance, and a lot of it has to do with the aerospace market. And we saw the order book firming up for the rest of the year quite recently, and this is a very good omen for the future. So that's what's driving the guidance update.

Understood, and that makes sense. My follow-up is taking a different route there, and we've seen some news headlines around a gas delivery halt from Russia to a couple of countries in Europe. Any early impacts at this point that you can foresee to your customer base or to your own operations in Europe at this point?

Yeah, so you're right to point that out. They announced yesterday that they would stop deliveries in Poland and Bulgaria. We don't have operations there, so it doesn't have an impact on us. And as far as customers are concerned, we do have some customers that have operations in Poland, and that could have some impact on them. I don't know. It's very recent. But I don't think that would be material to the rest of the company. But clearly, we are monitoring this situation very closely because, you know, should that situation involve other countries, then it would have a detrimental effect on our operations and on the operations of our customers as well.

Understood. Thank you.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Kurt Woodworth with Credit Suisse.

Yeah, good morning, John, Mark, and Peter. Congrats on the start. Thank you. Good morning, Kurt. First question is just within the A&T segment. You know, it seemed like volume and mix, certainly within aerospace, was significantly maybe better than you expected last quarter. So I was just wondering if you could provide details a little bit more color on what you're seeing on the aerospace side of the business and how you see volume and margins trending into 2Q. And then just within the pricing, you called out $32 million of price in A&T. Was the $10 million one-time benefit included in that number? And can you parse out the pricing benefit between leverage to aero versus the TID segment? Because my understanding is that typically the aerospace pricing is fairly fixed. Thank you.

Sure. I'll start and Peter will help me, Kurt. So to give you a bit of color of what's happening in Arrow, I mean, it's useful to go back in time, right? We commented a while ago about our sales in Arrow going down 50% compared to where they were before, when actually the build rates were not going down by as much. And the reason for that was, you know, massive destocking as throughout the supply chain, people were holding cash. and depleting inventories as much as they could through the crisis. And now what we knew would happen at some point is happening. The timing of when it would happen was always unclear because you never know until you know. And typically what we've seen in the past cycle, it takes a couple of months for the supply chain to experience a bullwhip effect and start back up very quickly. So that's what's happened recently. in the first quarter. And we didn't know initially whether that was very strong and durable, but we are now seeing it with our order book as being durable. And, again, that's why we've got quite strong visibility for the rest of the year. So this is happening, and what this is creating is customers wanting to buy outside of the major contracts we have in excess of what they – they would buy typically on the spot market or in short-term contracts, and therefore that creates a lot of excitement throughout the industry to get all these volumes ramped up and ready. We are fortunate enough that we had made the bet that 2022 was the year when it would snap back, so we brought back some resources, and that's why you're seeing some increased costs as well in it. to make sure we ramp up and meet the demands of our customers. So we're in a good place, and we're looking at the rest of the year as being strong and getting progressively stronger. So that's a good thing. When it comes to your question on pricing, yes, the $10 million one-off payment is included in the, I think, $32 million we're showing. So that's a one-off, clearly. And maybe, Peter, you want to add a few comments?

Well, the only thing I'd say is that... So, again, the aerospace tons, as we've said in the past, they are very remunerative tons, so the margins on those tend to be very good. We are in long-term kind of contracts on the aerospace tons, so we haven't renegotiated a lot of aerospace contracts in the context of this period. But I would also say that the TID margins are very strong currently And we have negotiated a number of TID contracts, and we are able in those contracts to get higher prices and including some of the inflationary pass-throughs. So you're seeing that effect, too, in that price bucket.

Okay. And then within automotive, can you just comment on what you're seeing there in terms of the supply chains, the visibility, and if you could maybe compare and contrast kind of how you're seeing trends evolve between U.S. and Europe into the second quarter. Thanks very much.

Yeah, so we're still seeing disruptions in the supply chain and, you know, production stoppages at the different OEMs, which come with, you know, very short notice. And we expect that state of flux to continue for the rest of the year, with maybe some improvement in the second half, but I think a year ago worse. also hoping for an improvement in the second half of 21, which didn't materialize. At the moment, what it means for us is that we are typically running 15, 20% below full capacity utilization, so that gives us some margin to grow, and we believe this will normalize at some point. We've got a contract to fill out our lines, so we hope this situation resolves itself at some point, but In our revised guidance, we are not expecting for it to be resolved this year.

The only thing I'd add is that, again, in packaging, in the part business, we have the benefit of being able to supplement packaging tons for missed auto tons. In our AS&I segment, we have the ability to supplement incremental industry tons for auto structures tons. That gives some offset. We've kind of calibrated that at about a 5 million euro per quarter run rate, and we'd still be somewhere in that zip code. In other words, not a major improvement from what we saw in the fourth quarter.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of David Gagliano with BMO Capital Markets.

Thanks for taking my questions. I just have a couple of clarification questions on some of the commentary. First of all, in the A&T business, 961 euros margin per ton, if we simply take the 10 million divided by 55,000 tons, it's 181 euro margin benefit. Is that right? Should we back that out on a go-forward basis, which gets... you know, margins per ton down to about 800 euros. Is that a reasonable assumption moving forward for the A&T business?

Well, I would definitely back out the one-time adjustment. And then, you know, we've guided to 700 to 800 per ton for that business. Now, if Aero comes back, then we should get into that range. But I would definitely make the one-time adjustment.

Okay. And it is straight, right, just 10 million divided by 55,000 tons? That's straight to the margin line? That's exactly right. Okay. On the natural gas exposure to Russia, you mentioned it's more material than obviously the other raw materials. Can you quantify how much exposure there and can you talk through direct implications for natural gas exposure to Russia outside of Poland if things change?

In terms of price, we have essentially the guidance we give you consider that we have locked in and we have locked in natural gas prices for the rest of the year. So we don't have really a price exposure. We could have an availability exposure if Russia decides to shut off the gas or if Europe decides to not buy from Russia, you know, in varying degrees of it. Now, we are most... Our biggest users of gas are our plants in France, which is less dependent than the average of Europe and certainly Germany, less dependent on Russian gas for their supply. Now, what happens in case there's curtailment of gas deliveries for whatever reason is impossible to fathom, right? Because you get to a place where you don't know what priorities are going to be given by what governments to what sectors to, you know, the private consumer versus the industrial consumers. So I wouldn't venture into trying to assess, you know, different scenarios because there's a multitude of them and it's impossible to tell.

Okay, yeah, understood. Obviously, extremely complex situation there. But can you just give us what percentage of your – natural gas supplies for your operations in Europe comes from Russia?

It depends by country.

And we don't buy from Russia. We buy from the local utilities. And then, you know, if you get to a government mandate or you get to a war economy, right, where utilities are going to be allocated and rationed, I think you get to a place where you know, your exposure to Russia becomes, you know, a theoretical thing. You just say, you know, France needs 20% of gas, natural gas in France comes from Russia, for instance. Now the French utilities will decide, and depending on what the government will tell them to do, who's getting the 80% of the gas that is left. And we don't know how that works. There's no way to tell. So I'm not trying to dance around the question. I think there's no answer that anybody knows at this stage.

No, that's helpful. I appreciate the additional color. Thanks.

Sure, David.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Tim McTanners with Wolf Research.

Hey, good morning. I wanted to just maybe, sorry if I'm being a little pedantic on the guidance. If we do back out the kind of more one-time item and then annualize, it does seem like Q1 is kind of a steady story for the rest of the year, but I also understood that you were expecting perhaps better volumes in the second half and steadily improving aerospace. So should we interpret the guidance as saying that higher volumes will be somewhat offset by higher costs, or is there something I'm missing there?

No, I think that's a reasonably good summary. I mean, again, with aerospace hopefully continuing to improve through the year, Our other businesses are generally strong. We're not assuming that there's a big change on auto, maybe a slight improvement in the back half of the year. So aerospace is probably the big mover there. And then we will have higher costs as we go through the year, and energy in particular, as we've talked about or as we mentioned in our prepared remarks. So I think that's a fair summary, Timna.

Okay, so margin expansion opportunity is not embedded in this guidance, but in the past we have seen a bit of it just in volume recovery. Is it just fair to say that for now you're not assuming much expansion in margins or volumes?

Yeah, we're assuming that margins are staying relatively constant over the rest of the year. And, you know, again, if aerospace comes quicker, that could be some upside to that. If auto comes back stronger, there could be some upside to that. So there are some potential benefits. But, again, you know, it's early in the year and it's hard to call these things in, particularly when you have the backdrop of, you know, some of the craziness going on on the macroeconomic and the geopolitical fronts.

Sure, I appreciate that. Thanks again. Yep.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Corinne Blanchard with Deutsche Bank.

Hey, good morning, Jean-Marc and Peter. Most of my questions have been answered, but maybe just can you give us a little bit of more view and background on the pricing trend between packaging and auto products? I think you're seeing some improvement from the packaging side, but just trying to understand the mix in that segment.

Yeah, sure. So packaging, we do see an improvement in pricing. It's continuous. And we see it on the occasion of contract renewals and in our ability to pass through inflationary pressures. Automotive is a little bit trickier in terms of pushing inflation – to customers. But we expect that this will normalize over time. So when you look at the bridges that Peter shared in his prepared remarks, you see that there is quite a bit of a, you know, the net of price and cost is very favorable in part, and is kind of neutral in AS&I, which is more exposed to automotive. And that gives you a bit of a flavor for, you know, the differentiated ability we have in increasing pricing in automotive versus packaging. But over time, I expect us to be able to further increase prices in automotive. It's just not happening as quickly as in packaging in 2022.

Yeah, and just like we experienced in the packaging business, you know, you have to be patient, right? These are long-term contracts, and we believe that the supply-demand relationship is going to tell the story, and ultimately it's going to turn in our favor, and we'll have opportunities there.

Great. Thank you. And maybe one more on the free cash flow guidance. And if you can just comment on the cadence that you're expecting throughout the rest of the year and working capital as well.

Yeah. So on trade working capital, again, You know, we did have a build of trade working capital in the first quarter, and that's really tied to a couple things. You've got some seasonality there. You've also got, you know, the aerospace recovery, and you have some impact from higher metal prices. So we expect that working capital should be maybe a modest use for the rest of the year. And then, you know, CapEx, we tend to spend our CapEx on a more back-end weighted basis, and that has to do with the fact that the best time to do CapEx is when our customers are shut down, and that tends to be, you know, kind of in the later part of the year. So, yeah. And in EBITDA, remember that on EBITDA, we have our first two quarters are typically the strongest, with Q3 being also a good quarter. Q4 tends to be a little bit lighter. And I would expect the overall free cash flow to be more or less equally distributed. To get to the 170, more or less equally distributed over the back half of the year. There's some kind of puts and takes in each quarter. But obviously it will likely improve in the second quarter. It will improve from the first quarter.

Great. Thank you. That's it for me.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Josh Sullivan with Benchmark Company.

Hey, good morning.

Hey, Josh.

Just to follow up on aerospace, you know, clearly a strong backstrap here. But you have some longer timeframes, 787, 777X, you know, that were telegraphed to the market. You have Raytheon looking at some titanium constraints longer term. Are these factors in the outlook? You know, how are distributors maybe looking at these issues against that overall restocking trend?

Yeah, so, Josh, we're not expecting a lot of good news on the wide-body side in 2022 in our outlook. So really what we're seeing is the increased pull from our customers for narrow-body single-aisle aircraft. So that's what we're seeing for 2022. And for our long-term guidance 2025, we think we'll be in a place where, you know, the wide-bodies will have normalized back to where they were pre-COVID by and large. So that's what we have embedded in our short-term outlook and long-term guidance.

And we don't see, like you called out titanium, we don't see titanium as a 22 issue.

Okay. And then just as aerospace man does pick up here, how does that impact your TID capacity? Are you able to get some extra piercing power out of TID as aerospace maybe eats up a little bit more of that supply?

Yeah, so typically, you're absolutely right. And when aerospace pulls heavily, TID pricing improves. So we expect that to continue. The challenge will be for us to keep all the volumes we have in TID when aerospace goes back to its full potential. And that's why Ingrid was talking at the analyst, Ingrid York, was talking about investments we're making and the focus we have on debuttle making our plants and adding some more capacity. so that we can maintain our TID volumes, grow our aerospace, and enjoy the benefits of better pricing power, even better pricing power.

Thank you. Thank you. As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. Once again, to ask a question, please press star 1. Our next question comes from the line of Carl Blunden with Goldman Sachs.

Hi, good morning, and congrats on the strong results. Just two clarification items. One was the volatility in energy prices. I appreciate your commentary around the timing that that flows through. Is there any change that you're looking into for contract structure, for example, to account just for the higher volatility we're seeing, particularly in the European region?

Yeah, it's a good question. Yes is the answer. We're always looking at ways to do this better. And typically, for the most part, what we do is we buy our energy, as Jean-Marc said, from our local supplier, and then we kind of do the price fixing with them. And there are some limitations on how far forward you can buy the energy when you're buying it from the supplier. And so there are opportunities to potentially use the, you know, financial markets to buy a little bit further out. So we're investigating some of that. But in the short term, we're trying to find the opportunities to lock in energy prices that are, you know, kind of manageable over the next couple of years. So – and, you know, the curves are quite backward-headed, so there are opportunities to – lock in longer-term energy prices now despite the current elevated prices.

And on the commercial side with our customers, we want to make sure that the contracts we enter into factor in the elevated price of energy. So that's also a big topic for us to make sure that we are not left with exposure on the energy side.

That makes sense. Just on Aero, there's been some discussion already that you anticipated higher volumes and prepared for that through some investment in resources, a little bit of CapEx. Is there kind of a sense for how much growth in shipment volumes you can support before you need to see another step change in how much you are investing in the business? Do you feel quite comfortable with the current trends?

We feel quite comfortable with the current trends, and we believe that we can – go back to the pre-COVID levels and maintain the higher TID shipments with the investments that we discussed at the analyst day just a few weeks ago overall for the company. So we feel we're in a good place. I mean, it's going to take a lot of work and strong execution to get there, but we feel we can do it.

Thanks for the time.

Sure.

Thank you. I'm shown no further questions. So with that, I'll turn the call back over to John-Marc Germain, CEO of Constellium, for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you very much, everyone, for your participation today. As you can see, we are very pleased with our performance now and our outlook for the year. I think these very challenging times and lots of uncertainties, obviously, but we're showing again that we are able to navigate troubled waters, we're able to pass through inflationary pressures, we see continuing demand for our product, and we look at the future with as much optimism as is possible given the circumstances. Thank you so much and have a good day. Bye-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect.