World Fuel Services Corporation

Today's conference is scheduled to begin shortly. Please continue to standby and thank you for your patience. THE END Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the World Fuel Services Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. My name is May and I will be coordinating the call this evening. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Instructions on how to ask a question will be given at the beginning of the Q&A session. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Glenn Clevitz, World Fuels Vice President, Treasurer, and Investor Relations. Mr. Clevitz, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, May. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the World Fuels Services Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Glenn Kravitz, and I'll be doing the introductions on this evening's call alongside our live presentation. This call is also available via webcast. To access this webcast or future webcasts, please visit the World Fuel Services website and click on the webcast icon. With us on the call today are Michael Kaspar, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Ira Behrens, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. And now you should have all received a copy of our earnings release. If not, you can access the release on our website. Before I get started, I'd like to review WorldFuel's safe harbor statement. Certain statements made today, including comments about WorldFuel's expectations regarding future plans and performance, are forward-looking statements that are subject to a range of uncertainties and risks that could cause WorldFuel's actual results to materially differ from the forward-looking information. A description of the risk factors that could cause results to materially differ from these projections can be found in WorldFuel's most recent Form 10-K and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. WorldFuel assumes no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revisions to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. This presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined in Regulation G. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is included in World Fuels Press release and can be found on its website. We'll begin with several minutes of prepared remarks, which will then be followed by a question and answer period. As with prior conference calls, we ask that members of the media and individual private investors on the line participate in listen-only mode. At this time, I would like to introduce our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Kasbar.

Thank you, Glenn, and thank you to everyone joining us today. As I mentioned last quarter, our organization continues to evolve within a fundamentally changed marketplace. We have made progress within the digital and energy transition and performed well within a constrained supply chain. The choppy start-stop reopening of markets and borders has added challenges. There is no historical analog for the dynamics we are experiencing. Despite this, we have done an extraordinarily good job of managing risk and supporting our customers, suppliers, and partners. From cyber to driver shortage to credit risk and lockdowns, our team has done an exceptionally good job of supporting a very different market. And while conditions in many parts of the world remain fragile, our team again performed with both commercial and operational excellence in the second quarter, delivering solid results. I can't possibly thank our global team enough for their spectacular efforts over the past year and a half, and look forward to finally reconnecting in person when we reopen our offices this fall. The aviation market continues to recover, with North American commercial passenger activity now back to 80% of pre-pandemic levels, while international activity still has a longer way to a full recovery. I recently returned from Europe where it's clear that airports are getting busier and activity is picking up. So the prognosis for commercial passenger activity is clearly improving each quarter. At most of our 80 operated locations outside of the U.S., activity was substantially ahead of where we were a year ago. Lastly, as well publicized in the media, our government business in Afghanistan is generally coming to an end, as most places have now been closed. I would like to specifically thank the hundreds of employees who have supported us in that region for the past 10 years. We expect some activity to continue, but this is expected to be modest. Many sectors within the marine industry are performing well. The container segment is especially buoyant, dry bulk is strong, with tankers looking more positive over time, and the cruise market slowly entering restart mode. While our marine business continues to perform well, we've been impacted by the lack of volatility and the current reduction in demand for our risk management offerings. Our highly experienced marine team continues to build its logistics capabilities and add complimentary services, which includes sustainability offerings, leveraging our deep expertise within our World Connect business. Our land business continues to evolve with a growing emphasis in natural gas, power, and sustainability-related services. The pandemic's impact on our land business was less pronounced, with volume inserted back to pre-COVID levels. Strong seasonal first quarter results in Europe continued into the first month of the second quarter, and our commercial and industrial and retail businesses all performed well during the quarter. We continue to gain traction in supporting our long-term fuel customers with our natural gas and power and growing suite of sustainability offerings. On the technology front, our team continues to develop a broader suite of offerings to complement our core business activities. And while it's been a long haul, we are getting closer to completing the integration of our North America land operating platforms, with one step in this process successfully completed in the second quarter. This integration will drive efficiencies and will facilitate more synergistic integrations in the future. I'm proud of the team's efforts in these areas, which are critical to our long-term success. Finally, our balance sheet and liquidity profile remains strong. We remain poised to invest in organic growth as markets continue to recover, and we'll be supplementing organic growth with strategic investments, which should accelerate our growth in our core businesses and drive increasing shareholder returns. I'd like to turn the call over to Ira for a financial review. Thank you, Michael. And good evening to everyone listening on the phone and on the webcast. I hope you are all enjoying the summer while continuing to stay safe and healthy. Our business continues to perform well in what remains a challenging operating environment, and I am proud of our people and all the great work they have done supporting our customers and managing our business through this extraordinary period in our lives. We remain extremely engaged with our customers and suppliers and are proactively offering them support. And we are pleased to see that many of the markets we serve are showing increasing signs of improvement, Others, including our aviation business in parts of Europe and Asia, have been slower to recover. Meanwhile, we remain focused on enhancing our value proposition in all the markets we serve, and we're excited about the long-term prospects and opportunities that exist across our business. Before I walk through our second quarter results, please note that the following things exclude the impact of non-operational items as highlighted in our earnings release, and the comparison periods exclude the operating results from the multi-service business that was sold at the end of the third quarter of last year. The non-operational items principally relate to acquisition and divestiture, asset impairment, and restructuring related to adjustments and expenses. To assist you in reconciling results published in our earnings release, the breakdown of the non-operational items can be found on our website and on the last slide of today's webcast presentation. Now let's begin with some of the second quarter highlights. Adjusted second quarter net income and earnings per share were $25 million and 39 cents per share respectively. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter was $60 million. Volume improved significantly as markets continued to recover, with second quarter consolidated volume up 9% sequentially and 33% year over year. And lastly, we generated $37 million of cash flow from operations during the second quarter and $500 million over the past 12 months, increasing our net cash position to more than $200 million, further strengthening our balance sheet. And now we'll review our financial results in greater detail. Consolidated revenue for the second quarter was $7.1 billion, an increase of $1.1 billion, or 19% sequentially, and an increase of $3.9 billion, or 126%, compared to the second quarter of last year. The year-over-year increase is driven by the significant increase in volume across all of our operating segments, as well as a 130% increase in average fuel prices compared to the second quarter of 2020. Our aviation segment volume was 1.4 billion gallons in the second quarter, an increase of 230 million gallons or 20% sequentially, and double the volume generated in the second quarter of last year. The volume increases both sequentially and yearly spanned our commercial, passenger, and business and general aviation businesses. Although we have continued to experience increased activity with overall segment volume at more than 60% of pre-pandemic levels, at this time we remain optimistic about the second half of the year and beyond. However, uncertainty remains in many parts of the world where travel restrictions remain in place and Delta variant cases have been increasing. Regardless, we remain in close contact with our customers and suppliers and are ready to meet their needs across our global footprint. Volume in our main segment for the second quarter was 4.6 million metric tons, an increase of 360,000 metric tons or 8% sequentially, and an increase of nearly 600,000 metric tons or 15% year-over-year. Our land segment volume is 1.3 billion gallons or gallon equivalents during the second quarter, flat sequentially, but an increase of 120 million gallons or gallon equivalents or 10% year-over-year. The year-over-year volume increases in the land segment came from improvements in our retail, commercial, and industrial and wholesale businesses in North America, as well as continued growth in our natural gas, power, and brokerage businesses. Consolidated volume for the second quarter was 3.9 billion gallons, an increase of 310 million gallons, or 9% sequentially, and an increase of 960 million gallons, or 33%, compared to the second quarter of 2020. Consolidated gross profit for the second quarter was $185 million. That's down 4% sequentially and 6% year-over-year. Our aviation segment contributed $88 million in gross profit in the second quarter, an increase of 15% sequentially, but a decline of 3% year over year. The year-over-year decline was driven by a reduction in our government-related activity in Afghanistan as a result of the ongoing military withdrawal, which should be substantially completed by the end of next month, as well as a decline in margins principally related to a more normalized business mix, as well as lower physical inventory profitability in our core aviation business when compared to the second quarter of last year. As we look ahead to the third quarter, we expect mediation gross profit to increase sequentially, driven principally by the continuing recovery in North America and international commercial passenger activity. The main segment generated second quarter gross profit of $23 million. That's a decline of 11% sequentially and 39% year-over-year. The year-over-year decline is principally a result of lower profitability compared to the second quarter of last year, which benefited from volatility arising from the implementation of the IMO 2020 regulations, as well as the impact of competitive market conditions during this past quarter, where price volatility was also limited. As we look ahead to the third quarter, we expect marine gross profit to increase modestly on a sequential basis based upon some quarter-to-date improvement in our core resale business activity. As we look towards the latter part of the year and beyond, we expect cruise line activity to accelerate and should contribute incrementally to our financial results. Our land segment delivered gross profit of $74 million in the second quarter, a decline of 18% sequentially, but an increase of 8% year-over-year when excluding the profitability related to the multi-service business from last year's results. Sequentially, we experienced a traditional seasonal decline in our UK business, as well as a decline in gross profit related to our business in Afghanistan. Year-over-year gross profit in our North American retail and commercial and industrial businesses, as well as our Connect business, all showed increases when compared to the second quarter of last year, demonstrating continued progress in growing our core land business activities. Connect's growth is reflective of our increasing focus on natural gas, power, and a growing suite of sustainability solutions, and it now represents nearly a third of land's overall gross profit. Looking ahead to the third quarter, we anticipate land gross profit will be relatively flat on a year-over-year basis when excluding the results of multi-service. We continue to believe that our land segment has many opportunities for growth, both organically and through strategic investments, principally in our commercial and industrial and connect businesses. Core operating expenses include which exclude bad debt expense, or $147 million in the second quarter, which was in line with our guidance for the quarter as we continue to manage our controllable costs well. Looking ahead to the third quarter, operating expenses excluding bad debt expense should remain in the range of $146 to $150 million. As previously discussed, our team has continued to do an excellent job managing our receivables portfolio throughout the pandemic, with more than 90% of our portfolio now current. Our team's efforts have been paying off, with no recent losses of any significance compounded by successfully collecting certain high-risk receivables which had been previously reserved for This resulted in a credit to band debt expense this quarter of approximately $1 million. Adjusted income from operations for the second quarter was $39 million. That's down 7% sequentially, but up 17% year over year related to the segment activity that I mentioned earlier. Adjusted income for the second quarter was $60 million, down 3% sequentially, but up 11% compared to last year. Second quarter interest expense was $10 million. That's flat year over year. As total interest expense continues to benefit from low average borrowings as well as low rates, and we again enter the quarter with no borrowings on a revolving credit facility and in a net cash position, again, in excess of $200 million. We expect interest expense for the third quarter to be approximately $9 to $11 million. Our adjusted effective tax rate for the quarter was 10.3%, which is significantly lower than our tax rate in the second quarter of 2020 and the rate we had previously forecast for this year's second quarter. As a result of certain business initiatives, we recently updated our forecasted global jurisdictional income mix, which significantly reduced our second quarter tax rate. Furthermore, we also had a discrete tax benefit relating to a change in the UK statutory tax rate that was announced during the second quarter. In a nutshell, our second quarter tax rate was much lower than forecast for the reasons just explained, but the forecast for changes in income mix will also contribute to a lower tax rate compared to when we started the year, with our tax rate for the second half of the year now expected to be in the range of 29% to 33%. Our total accounts receivable balance increased to approximately $1.8 billion of core rent, principally related to the increase in volume in our aviation and marine segments, as well as the sequential rise in average fuel prices. We remain focused on managing our working capital requirements, which resulted in an operating cash flow generation of $37 million during the second quarter, again, despite a 14% sequential increase in prices and a 9% increase in volume. This further strengthened our balance sheet. In closing, in the face of continued travel restrictions in many parts of the world, our business continues to recover, delivering solid results this past quarter. And despite rising prices and increasing volumes, we again generated a healthy operating cash flow, which now aggregates to nearly $750 million over the past six quarters. As noted many times in the past, this cash flow supports our balance sheet with significant liquidity to grow our business organically as the recovery continues and inorganically as strategic opportunities arise. Yes, our business has been meaningfully impacted by the pandemic through its effects on the needs of many of our customers we serve throughout the world, but our results have also shown our resiliency and evidenced by our ability to manage expenses prudently, manage our balance sheet extraordinarily well, and maintain and grow our relationships with our customers during this unprecedented time period. We believe these relationships and our global platform, which combines our liquid fuel offerings with natural gas and power, with a broad portfolio of services and a growing suite of sustainability solutions, will serve us very well as the recovery in global markets accelerates. Thank you once again for your continuing support, and I will now turn the call over to May, our operator, to facilitate the question-and-answer session. Thank you.