GrafTech International Ltd.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the graph tech second quarter 2021 earnings conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference over to Wendy Watson, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to Graf Tech International's second quarter 2021 conference call. On with me today is Dave Rintoul, Graf Tech's Chief Executive Officer, Quinn Coburn, Chief Financial Officer, and Jeremy Halford, Senior Vice President, Operations and Development. Dave will begin with a review of our safety performance current industry conditions, and our demand and production levels. Jeremy will discuss operational matters and give an update on our ESG initiative. Quinn will cover financial details, and Dave will close with final remarks and open the call to questions. Turning to our first slide. As a reminder, some of the matters discussed on this call may include forward-looking statements regarding, among other things, results performance, trends, and strategies. These statements are based on current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by forward-looking statements are shown here. We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, and these slides include the relevant non-GAAP reconciliations. You can find these slides in the Investor Relations section of our website. at www.graftec.com. A replay of the call will also be available on our website. I'll now turn the call over to Dave.

Thank you, Wendy. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our second quarter earnings call. I hope you, your families, and your colleagues are all well. We begin, as we always do, with safety. Our year-to-date total recordable injury rate is 0.43 through the end of the second quarter, indicating our continued focus on the safety of each and every team member. Health and safety excellence is a core value of Graf Tech. As you can see from this chart, we have made meaningful improvement over the last few years, and our ultimate goal is zero injuries with every employee going home safely every day. Our team continues to be diligent and thorough in our COVID-19 controls and protocols. I am proud of the Graf Tech team and thank each of you for your continued focus and vigilance. Now turning to slide four. Industry conditions remain positive across key indicators. We continue to see improvement in both pricing and capacity utilization rates in the global steel markets during the second quarter. Steel industry pricing continues to increase with most types of steel at or near all-time highs. U.S. hot-rolled coal values are currently over $1,875 per ton, up $375 over an additional 25% since we reported first quarter 2021 earnings. The global steel manufacturing utilization rate outside of China was 75% in the second quarter compared to 73% in the first quarter of this year and 56% in the second quarter of 2020. In the U.S., the steel industry utilization rate improved to 80% in the second quarter from 77% in the first quarter of this year and continues to move upward. Global steel production outside of China was approximately 221 million tons in the second quarter of 2021 compared to approximately 216 million tons in the first quarter according to the World Steel Association. The continued improvement in the global steel industry utilization rates along with the normalization of steel producer inventories of graphite electrodes is driving increased demand for graphite electrodes across geographies. As a result of the increased demand, we are seeing a steady improvement in graphite electrode pricing after bottoming in the first quarter of this year. We are also seeing rising market prices for petroleum needle coke. The strong graphite electrode demand and rising prices continue to provide us with confidence in our outlook for higher realized non-LTA prices in the second half of 2021 and our expectation of continued improvement into 2022. As I mentioned, we are experiencing strong demand for our products and our commercial team remains focused on providing superior services and solutions to our valued customers in this improving environment. We have not changed our estimates for graphite electrode sales and volumes under our LTAs. Now turning to slide six. We are pleased with the sequential and year-over-year improvement we delivered in our second quarter production and sales volumes. In response to strong demand for our graphite electrodes, we produced 44,000 metric tons of electrodes in the second quarter, up 22% compared to the first quarter and 33% compared to the second quarter of 2020. Sales volumes of graphite electrodes rose to 43,000 metric tons in the second quarter, up 16% compared to the first quarter and 39% compared to the second quarter of last year. Our second quarter shipments were comprised of 27,000 metric tons of graphite electrodes under our LTAs, at an average approximate price of $9,500 per ton, and 16,000 metric tons of non-LTA sales at an average approximate price of $4,100 per metric ton. As a reminder, the pricing we recognize in sales and income lag negotiated prices. Thus, the second quarter $4,100 per ton average of non-LTA pricing represents price negotiations that actually took place in late 2020 and early 2021. Net sales in the second quarter increased 18% compared to the second quarter of 2020 to $331 million. I'll now turn the call over to Jeremy to discuss operating items and our ESG progress over the past quarter. Jeremy?

Thanks, Dave. During 2021, we've been enhancing our capabilities across our manufacturing footprint. For example, we're investing in a pin production line at our St. Mary's, Pennsylvania facility that will be online in the third quarter. This diversifies our pin capability and provides production flexibility. Also, with increased demand for our graphite electrodes, we continue to be very focused on further improving efficiencies in our manufacturing facilities and staffing appropriately to meet the demand. Turning to slide seven, we continue to make good progress with our ESG efforts along several paths. Notably, in the second quarter, we completed a full materiality assessment with the assistance of external experts to identify and prioritize the key ESG issues for our business and our stakeholders. The process allowed us to objectively determine the ESG topics that will drive our sustainability strategy, reporting, and actions moving forward. The assessment included peer and industry benchmarking, a robust series of interviews with internal and external stakeholders, and a full validation of the assessment by our executive team. Slide seven shows the current key material topics to Graf Tech's business and stakeholders, including climate and energy, innovation, material sourcing, and product quality. From here, we plan to set the goals that will drive our performance relative to each of the material topics. Also, we plan to publish our second annual sustainability report during the third quarter. We hope you will find it useful and informative and welcome your feedback as we continue on our ESG journey. Now, let me turn it over to Quinn to discuss our second quarter financial results on slide eight.

Okay. Thanks, Jeremy. We're very pleased with our second quarter financial performance. We earned a net income of $28 million, or 11 cents, of GAAP earnings per share. which included the impact of a one-time pre-tax change in control charge of $88 million that was triggered when the ownership of our largest stockholder, Brookfield, fell below 30% of our total shares outstanding. This charge is comprised of a $15 million non-cash expense related to the acceleration of certain previously granted equity awards and a $73 million cash charge triggered under our long-term incentive compensation plan. Of the $73 million cash charge, $61 million was paid in the second quarter. The remaining $12 million relates to employee and employer payroll taxes and will be paid in the third quarter. Excluding these change in control items and other typical quarterly adjustments, our adjusted EPS was $0.43 and adjusted EBITDA was $160 million. Our cash flow also continued to be strong in the second quarter. We generated 86 million of operating cash flow and 74 million of free cash flow. These amounts included the 61 million cash payment triggered by the change in control. Excluding this payment, our adjusted free cash flow was 136 million. We continued to achieve strong free cash flow conversion with 85% of second quarter's adjusted EBITDA converted to adjusted free cash flow. Now turning to slide nine, we continue to strengthen our capital structure in the second quarter with a $50 million reduction in our term loan that matures in 2025. Through the end of the second quarter, our total year-to-date debt reduction is $200 million, and our total debt to adjusted EBITDA improved to 1.9 times. Notably, over the past two years, we have reduced our long-term debt approximately $800 million from approximately $2 billion in the second quarter of 2019 to approximately $1.2 billion in the second quarter of 2021. At the end of the second quarter, our total liquidity was approximately $360 million, consisting of $114 million of cash and $246 million available under our revolving credit facility. Now turning to slide 10, we're very pleased with the strong earnings and cash flow we delivered in the first half of the year. We expect the significant cash flow generation to continue through the balance of 2021. As we have previously reported, we plan to use the majority of that cash flow to further reduce debt. Our continued focus on a strong capital structure provides us with significant financial, operational, and strategic flexibility as we position the company to capitalize on improvements in the market. We are maintaining our full-year 2021 capital expenditure outlook of $55 to $65 million. We will use these funds to support our high-quality, low-cost global operating assets and to target high-return operational improvements. Now I'll hand it back to Dave on slide 11. Thanks, Gwen.

I will wrap up with some comments on our favorable positioning in the market. Graphtec is one of the largest producers of ultra-high power graphite electrodes in the world. Graphite electrodes are a mission-critical component to the EIF steel industry, and there is no substitute for our product. We have an enviable customer base comprised of the lowest cost producers of steel. who are some of the largest recyclers in the world, producing steel with 75% less carbon emissions compared to traditional integrated steel producers. And the EIF steel industry is committed to taking their leadership in sustainable steel production even further, innovating to increase efficiency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and reinforce material reuse and recycling. As we look forward, we are committed to helping our industry further advance these sustainability initiatives. From its leading position, we expect the EIF steel industry growth to continue to outpace global GDP over the long-term, positioning our products for solid long-term growth. The recovery and strength of the steel industry is having a positive impact upon demand and pricing in our business, and we expect to increasingly benefit from these favorable trends in the second half of this year and into 2022. We have a sustainable and long-term competitive advantage from our low-cost structure and vertical integration into our key raw material, petroleum needle pulp. Our graphite electrodes are highly engineered and require extensive process knowledge to manufacture. The services and solutions that Graph-Tec provides help position both our customers and our company for a better future. Our commitment to balance sheet strength and our proven track record of high quality earnings and significant cash flow generation gives us flexibility to successfully manage through industry cycles. With the commitment of our people and our significant competitive advantages, we continue to strongly believe Graf Tech is well positioned to deliver results today and over the long term. This concludes our prepared remarks, and we'll now open up the call for questions.

Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask an audio question, press star, followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star 1 for questions. Your first question comes from the line of Arun Viswanathan with RBC Capital Markets.

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Hope you guys are well. So I guess, you know, first off... Just wanted to ask about pricing here. You noted, you know, obviously very robust hot rolled prices, you know, well over 1800. You know, we're reading that, you know, possibly could even get to 2000 next month. But if you look at the production and sales volumes for, for graph tech, you know, volume was up 39% in the last year and net sales are up 18%. So that would imply that pricing is, is negative. I guess, what's it going to take for graphite electrode pricing here to start to turn around? I know that there is typically a lag from the steel markets, but it seems like conditions are pretty tight. You've mentioned very strong demand. What is the outlook for pricing? And when pricing does start to turn positive, Do you expect an environment where we could potentially test the highs that we saw in 2017-18, or is it going to be more measured? Thanks.

Hello, Arun. Thanks for your question. I think the best way to think about this is to remember, setting the base here, that as we progressed into the first quarter of this year, we at that time I think shared with everybody that there was inventory on the ground and there was a bit of an inventory hangover that had to be worked through, which by the end of the first quarter, we had done that, stated that, and shared with people that we felt that the pricing mechanisms in the industry had bottomed out early in that quarter. Our experience has been exactly that. We absolutely expect the third and fourth quarter pricing to be higher than what we experienced in the first or second quarter. The only reason you see that small decline is that some of the products that were delivered in the second quarter were negotiated in January when we were at the bottom. So they influenced that average weighted price. And please also recognize that the mixture between LTAs, we sold more non-LTA business in the second quarter. So that has an impact of lowering the average weighted price because of the impact of the mix between the number of tons of LTA and the increased number of tons of spot. And that's all good. It's referencing the fact that the market has been improving. Please be rest assured that the comments we've made earlier will come to fruition in the second half of the year. Our reported pricing and realized pricing of non-LTA pricing will absolutely be higher in the second half of the year. And we think that the supply and demand relationships that are evolving this year will lead to continued improvement as we move into 2022. I actually can't be more positive about that. As we always, we don't provide guidance, so I can't go there, but we are quite happy about the way the market is unfolding.

Thanks for that. I guess just to follow on here, so Looks like your spot prices are kind of in that, you know, as you noted, $4,100 range, but that was, you know, based off of earlier discussions. So have you seen momentum on the spot side? Have you seen willingness amongst customers to, you know, potentially move into the long-term area or, you know, willingness to pay a little bit more for spot businesses? And just to, again, just to clarify, so it looks like your LTAs are in the $10,000 per ton range. Would you consider, what's the strategy here? Are you more interested in getting more of your customers onto some of those LTA volumes or are you interested in broadening out the spot book given what you just said as far as, you know, that you're very optimistic on upward momentum and pricing? Thanks.

So just to reiterate, you know, the LTA numbers that we're reporting are more like in the $9,500 range, just to set that table. But to answer your question directly on where we're heading, recognize that most of the LTAs that we're talking about today don't mature until the end of next year. So our perspective, it's premature to begin discussions about something that won't come to fruition until the end of 2022. It would be more natural for us, and our expectation is that as we get into late August, September next year, so 12 months from now, 13 months from now, there'll be more discussions about the portfolio of products that we can bring to our customers. of which one of those products is absolutely LTAs. And our expectation and belief is that there will be some customers that will want to do that. And we'll do the same thing as we did in 2017, you know, it'll be three- and four- and five-year arrangements, and we'll see how the market goes in. And you're absolutely right. You've caught on something. You know, we wouldn't normally go there until that time next year, but we're in a rising market right now, and I think both us, And our customers will want to see, well, where does life take us over the next 12 months and what makes sense? And, you know, we've got hundreds of customers, so, you know, they'll all have their own view on what best fits their future. So I expect that we'll have, as we've had in the past, a mixture of both LTA and non-LTA businesses.

And sorry, one last one, if I, if I may, um, just want to get your thoughts on, uh, needle Coke. Um, you know, there's obviously been strong demand on the EV battery side as well. So do you think the needle Coke market is tightening up as well? And do you see that as, uh, uh, likely, um, you know, inflation, you know, coming in that market as well. And, and is there any opportunity for, for graph tech to participate in, um, you know, businesses that are outside of electrode manufacturing, you know, is that something that, you know, is an opportunity for you at all or you'd contemplate even? Thanks.

Arun, you hit the nail right on the head there. Our belief would be, yes, the growing improvement in the graph electrode market as well as the movement towards EV and you saw the announcement here in the United States that the president has signed an order that policy that by 2030 half the vehicles sold by the automotive industry you know need to be non-carbon emitting which implies EV. So those pressures are all good from our perspective because it will and should have the effect of putting some pressure on the needle coke market, and I'll remind you that we're two-thirds independent on needle coke. This is an absolutely positive development for graph tech. Increasing prices on needle coke, we are quite fine with, largely because, as you would know, it translates into pressure for our competitors to increase graphite electrode prices, which we're quite fine with. And then it increases our margins across, particularly across the two-thirds that we're self-sufficient on. To that end, in terms of branching out into other needle coke applications, our experience has been is that we like our space and the margins we make on our needle coke in our core product. and believe that that's the optimal place for us to provide the best returns to our shareholders.

Great, thanks.

Our next question comes from the line of David Gagliano with BMO Capital Markets.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. So, I wanted to drill down a little bit and just try to get a little more detail if possible, please. First of all, third quarter. You've talked quite a bit about improving pricing. You've talked about how contracts or prices were negotiated back in late 2020, early 2021 for the second quarter. So obviously you know the price for the third quarter. Can you just tell us what the price is going to be for the spot volumes that are committed for the third quarter? That's my first question. And then the second question, which is related, if you could talk about volumes themselves and how we should expect, you know, those volumes to compare to the second quarter and Um, and as we move into the fourth quarter as well, if you can talk about the volume expectations, that's, that's my first set of questions. Thanks.

Thanks, Dave. Um, you're absolutely right. Um, you know, given that the dynamics of that, um, you're spot on. We, we know today what our third quarter, um, numbers are going to be. And, you know, um, a reasonable portion even of the fourth quarter. And we've always tried to be on this call in our interface with all of you transparent, but very clear in terms of guidance, et cetera, that we're not going to provide it. But that's one of the reasons why when you hear me say we are very clear and happy about where we think the second half will be in terms of pricing, It's not because we're estimating it. We know that. And because of that confidence and the knowledge of it, we can say quite confidently that we are pleased with where the second half of the year is going to be with pricing as well as the developments we start to see for the new year. And not just in terms of what we've done, but the improved behavior of some of our competitors in that respect.

Okay. Well, I appreciate, first of all, if you could just also give me a sense on the volumes. But just to come back on the pricing commentary, again, I appreciate the fact that your confidence and I'm not trying to, you know, confident, I'm not trying to question the confidence. I'm just really trying to help investors get a sense as to order of magnitude of improvement in pricing, which is very important to frame valuation and you know, share price. So from a visibility perspective, it's important I think to at least give a sense as to where you think prices are going in terms of order of magnitude. For example, 4,100 bucks a ton. Should we assume over $5,000 a ton for the second half of this year for the third quarter? and into the fourth quarter. Is that a reasonable assumption or, you know, just at least help give us a framework in order of magnitude would be very helpful. And then if you could also, again, comment on volume expectations on an outright basis or relative to the second quarter. Thanks.

Sure. Well, let me give you the last one first. On the volume side, you know, we had a pretty sizable increase in our volume in the second quarter. quarter and running at a pretty high utilization rate. And so as we move into the second half of the year, I should point out, and we normally do this every year in the third quarter, we have a short repair schedule every year in the third quarter, repair outage at are in our European facilities, so that's no secret. And then fully, that's only, you know, 10 days or so long, 10, 12 days long, 10 in one plant, 12 in another. And then we go back into the fourth quarter, you know, petals of the metal. So I think you'll see that these higher volumes for the balance of the year and that good utilization rates in our facility. I would point out that we are seeing increased demand for larger size electrodes that take a little bit more processing time. And I think that as the world is evolving to more, I'll call it green EAS, that's probably not a surprise. because these furnaces tend to be the larger furnaces. You think through the new furnaces that are coming online in the United States. All of them are larger furnaces with larger graphite electrode sizes. So it's not a surprise as the world is improving and demand is improving and there's more EIS going towards flat roll applications that require larger furnaces. and the larger furnaces by default have larger electrodes. So I think all of this is good. Part of the, as you think about it, post-COVID, an expected development as we move through the next, you know, 12 months or so. On the pricing side, just to do a bit of a gut check here, you know, if... using your numbers would constitute a 20% increase in price in one quarter. That's a pretty big jump. I recognize the steel guys have moved heaven and earth, and they've been successful in price increases that none of us ever imagined. While I'm quite optimistic about where our performance on pricing is going, I think 20% jumps a quarter are asking a little bit much. I think we're going to do darn good, but I'm trying to help calibrate you somewhat without getting too far over my skis. Hopefully that's helpful.

Yeah, even that is helpful. Thank you very much for that calibration. And then just last question from me. You mentioned, obviously, higher petroleum needle coke prices. Maybe perhaps you can talk about order of magnitude on cost increases for the non-self-sourced petroleum needle coke as we move through the second half of the year as well.

Oh, sure. Dave, this is Quinn. Yeah, we've talked about the needle code prices. We expect them to increase over time. They have increased over time. The last numbers we gave was kind of a range of $1,300 to $1,800, and we're at the higher end of that range. We continue to see pressure on those prices and continue to see an upward trajectory, and we expect to continue to see that. into the first quarter, first half of next year. So absolutely we're seeing upward pressure on those needle coke prices, and we'll know more when the period to contract for the first half of next year comes around.

Okay, that's it for me. Thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Kurt Woodworth with Credit Suisse.

Thanks. Good morning, Dave and Quinn. Morning.

Hey, Carly.

You know, in the past, you have referenced some data points with respect to needle coke pricing. I think maybe it's been import data. Is there any color you can provide on, you know, where you see needle coke today for our models?

So... You know, it's interesting. We're beginning to have discussions about next year, but nothing has completely firmed up yet. I think on the last call, Quinn, correct me if I'm wrong, we talked about $1,500-ish.

Yeah, we talked about the high end of our range, which was $1,300 to $1,800, and we were in the high end of that range.

Yeah, and that was on the last call. We made a few purchases earlier this year. Jeremy, you might want to talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, thanks, Dave. Kurt, all of our commitments for this year have already been sourced, and so pricing on those were set a while ago, so we don't have direct feedback in terms of pricing that we're seeing in the market. We will say that... We are seeing tightness. We know of the winter storm that affected us earlier in the year, and we think that that may have had some impact on the industry in total. But all of this is really kind of pointing us in the direction of tightening supply. And so as we look to the future, as Quinn said, being at the high end of the range, Last time we made some purchases, I don't see anything that would drive that down.

Okay. And then back to the pricing discussion, I appreciate you don't give guidance, but when you published the 10-K, you did provide guidance of, I think, $4,100 for the first half of this year back in February. So there's some precedent on giving guidance to the street and You know, I think people really struggle with the opaqueness and transparency of this market. So I think it would be helpful to think about giving more specific guidance as it pertains to non-LTA in the third quarter. But I accept, you know, it is what it is at this point. You know, one of the questions I have is, you know, clearly pricing is going up for needle coke and electrodes. And so to some degree, it's what matters is the spread between the two. Because theoretically, the Coke could be going up faster than the electrode, which hypothetically is negative. So I'm just curious, can you kind of talk to how you see relative scarcity value between electrode versus Coke? Would you expect the spread to widen into the back half of this year for your non-LPA?

Yeah, so look, let me try again on the pricing to give everyone – as much as we can without crossing over this guidance line. I said to Dave earlier that 20% increase in a quarter would be a pretty awesome number that any industry would probably get. And we're not likely that we're in that genre. But I will tell you, I can go so far as to tell you we've crossed over the double digit. area. So that should narrow it for you a little bit. And I'm sorry, that's about as far as I think we can go without, again, getting too far over our skis on pricing for the second half.

Yeah, that's helpful.

In terms of that spread, again, we are in a bit of a unique position because we have so much of our own needle coke that we're in no danger of having our spread jeopardized by needle coke this year. And as Jeremy referenced earlier, we're just not far enough along in the 2022 either graphite electrode negotiations or needle coke. I don't expect that to be problematic, candidly.

Okay. And then just one last one. Obviously, your utilization rates have gone up a lot. The steel industry has. I assume a lot of your electrode peers have as well. Do you have a sense for where the global utilization rate is today in the electrode market? And are you seeing any change in kind of competitive behavior from China? Thank you.

I think that everybody's running pretty hard. I can share with you, and I won't say who it is, but just this morning, I had my weekly session with the commercial team, and we've got a couple of requests, one from a pretty substantial customer that is asking for some help because one of our competitors is... having a tough time staying with them. And we already supply them, so we're going to move heaven and earth to give them a hand here. So to me, that's good news. Not that I wish bad on any of our competitors. It just tells me that everybody's running pretty hard and that there's not a lot of room for any issues or difficulties. In terms of the Chinese, I think we see the Chinese domestic market moving forward. So I would expect they're always slow to react to these kind of things. But I think we will see that, that we see it in their home market. And we certainly see our broader competitive competitors their behavior changing in the marketplace. There's no question on our mind about that.

Great. Thanks very much. Best of luck.

Okay.

Once again, if you would like to ask an audio question, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Alex Hacking with Citi.

Hiya. Morning, Quinn and Dave. Not to beat a dead horse on the pricing, but have prices been effectively going up steadily since January? We're in August now. Has it sort of been a steady increase going up every week, every month? And any sign of that upward pricing momentum stalling out yet? Thanks.

Yeah, I think it's fair to say that. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's been perfectly linear. I would suggest that of late, it's probably at a higher rate of change than it was back in March and April. I think as soon as we got that inventory number in line at the end of the first quarter, we saw pretty much an ongoing improvement. and it's picking up a bit of a head of steam.

Okay, thanks. I was going to ask about the inventory. So, you know, your view is the inventory today is fully normalized?

Oh, yeah. It was pretty much fully normalized at the end of the first quarter.

Okay, thanks. And then just one final one, an accounting question. Maybe I'm being dumb here, but... The $88 million of change of control costs, how much of that was in COGS and how much was in SG&A? If I look at SG&A at $76 million, it seems like $55 million would be in SG&A and the rest in COGS. But if you could specify, that would be helpful for our model. Thanks.

Yeah, sure, Alex. You're right on. It's $55.5 in SG&A and $32.5 in COGS. Perfect. Thank you so much. You bet.

Your next question comes from the line of David Gagliano with BMO Capital Markets.

Hi, thanks for taking my follow-up. I just wanted to ask about other cost pressures aside from petroleum and neocode. Can you just comment on, again, some sort of framework around other input cost pressures, if there are any, and just order of magnitude what you're seeing there? Thanks.

Yeah, sure, David. It's Glenn. So we talked a little bit about this last quarter. One of the things I mentioned was we were seeing increases in freight. That's no surprise. Freight costs have increased, I think, globally for everyone shipping anything. So we did see headwinds with regards to freight costs in the quarter. That was probably the biggest single headwind with regards to cost. To a lesser extent, some headwind on other raw materials. And then, of course, with the higher volume, we are using more third-party needle coke. So those were all cost headwinds. On the other hand, we were able to benefit from the higher volume in that we had a lower fixed cost per metric ton. We could spread our fixed costs out over more volume, and that helped offset some of the headwinds that I just mentioned. So all in all, our cash costs For the quarter, we're about 1.5% higher than Q1. We felt good about our ability to maintain those. And we'll continue to see headwinds going forward, certainly with freight. That tends to be a bit of a wild card. Certainly with the higher usage of third-party neocoke, we'll do our best to continue to offset those higher costs and those headwinds in the coming quarters.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. So order of magnitude in terms of reasonable assumption moving forward outside of the petroleum neococcal line, it's sort of a 1% to 2% quarter-over-quarter cost increase per unit basis, a reasonable expectation for each of the next two quarters, or is it going to stabilize in your view?

Yeah, like I said, freight is a bit of a wild card, but based on what we know, it's probably not an unreasonable assumption with the caveat that freight really is a wild card. We're seeing some you know, unusual increases there, but again, we're working very hard to manage those.

Okay, great. Thanks very much.

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. David Rental for closing remarks.

Thank you, Hillary, and thanks to all that participated for your questions and interest. I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone on the call health and safety in the coming months. We thank you for your interest in Graphtec International, and we look forward to speaking with you in the next quarter. Thank you very much, and have a nice day.

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.