Rayonier Advanced Materials Inc.

Good morning. Welcome to Rainier Advanced Materials' first quarter 2022 earnings call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be open for questions with instructions to follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Mr. Mickey Walsh, Treasurer and Vice President of Investor Relations for Rainier Advanced Materials. Thank you, Mr. Wallace. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome again to Rainier Advanced Materials' first quarter 2022 earnings conference call and webcast. Joining me on today's call are Vito Consiglio, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Marcus Maltner, our Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Finance. Our earnings release and presentation materials were issued last evening and are available on our website at rainieram.com. I'd like to remind you that in today's presentation, we will include forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of federal securities laws. Our earnings release, as well as our filings with the SEC, list some of the factors which may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements we may make. They are also referenced on slides two and three of our presentation material. Today's presentation will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, as noted on slide four of our presentation. We believe non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information for management and investors, but non-GAAP measures should not be considered an alternative to GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included on slides 16 through 20 of our presentation. I'll now like to turn the call over to Vito. Thank you, Mickey, and good morning, everyone.

I am pleased to report that we have significantly advanced our efforts to improve reliability and manage inflationary costs in order to position the business for EBITDA growth. Starting on slide five, sales for the quarter increased 10% to $352 million, with price increases across all segments driven by strong demand, including double-digit price increases for our cellulose specialties products. As previously communicated, the EBITDA results started the year slowly as we focused on these historic maintenance outages and managed extraordinary inflationary costs. Turning to slide six, we made great progress on our Jessup and Fernandina maintenance outages with each facility coming back online at the beginning of the second quarter. These outages were some of the largest and longest outages that we have executed in our 95-year history of the company. We made significant investments to increase productivity, including rebuilding a large recovery boiler. To build on this momentum, we recently made the strategic decision to accelerate TARDIS's planned maintenance outage into the second quarter from the original plan in the fourth quarter. This outage, along with Tameska Means second quarter planned outage, will further position our assets to operate with greater reliability and productivity and help mitigate current impacts from supply chain disruptions. Additionally, we are doing our best to absorb and mitigate the impacts of inflation and supply chain challenges. We recently implemented a cost surcharge on all Cellulose Specialties products to help offset the inflationary cost. These actions will allow us to better service our customers and generate improved financial results. As such, we remain on track to deliver improved EBITDA in the second quarter, and we reaffirm our guidance to generate higher EBITDA in 2022. Earlier this week, We also announced the sale of our shares in Green First Forest Products for $43 million. This transaction represents the final consideration for the sale of the lumber and newsprint assets and the culmination of our portfolio optimization initiative. It also represents a 26% premium above the original plan executed nearly a year ago. The sale agreement contains a purchase price protection clause whereby the company is entitled to participate in further stock price appreciation under certain circumstances. Now I'd like to ask Marcus to take us through the financial details for the quarter. I will then come back to provide additional perspective on the business and our market outlook. Marcus?

Thank you, Vito. Starting with high purity cellulose on slide seven, first quarter sales increased 12% or $31 million to $281 million, driven by a 17% increase in sales prices. This reflected a double digit increase in CS pricing per our negotiated contracts, offset by a 4% decline in sales volumes, driven by supply chain constraints, lower production, and improved mix towards CS. Net sales also included 27 million of other sales, primarily from bio-based energy and lignin. EBITDA for the segment declined 19 million to $16 million, driven by higher costs across key inputs, including wood, chemicals, energy, and supply chain expenses. Turning to slide eight, Paperboard segment sales grew by $6 million, driven by a 19% increase in sales prices, partially offset by a 5% decline in sales volumes. EBITDA for the segment held flat at $10 million, as higher sales prices were offset by increased costs for purchase pulp. Turning to our high-yield pulp segment on slide 9, Sales declined $6 million from prior year, driven by a 32% decline in sales volumes, primarily due to supply chain and production constraints, while sales prices increased 17%, driven by strong demand for global market pulp. EBITDA for the segment declined slightly to break even for the quarter, as the price increases helped offset the volume declines. Turning to slide 10 on a consolidated basis, operating income declined $16 million from prior year to a $16 million loss as price improvements across each segment were impacted by higher input costs and supply chain constraints. Lastly, on slide 11, despite the increase in working capital and the elevated capex of $45 million in the quarter, Both impacted by extensive planned maintenance outages and supply chain constraints, the company maintained a solid $302 million of liquidity, including $179 million of cash. With additional outages planned for the second quarter, we expect the majority of our annual $140 to $150 million of CAPEX to be spent in the first half of the year. After making these critical infrastructure investments in the first half of 2022, we expect improved reliability along with actions implemented to offset extraordinary inflationary costs to drive improved cash flow in the balance of the year. Lastly, we continue to monitor capital markets and are prepared to opportunistically refinance our 5.5% senior notes which mature in June of 2024. We expect to deliver improved results for the remainder of the year, which will further deleverage our balance sheet and improve the company's credit profile. We are confident that the company will obtain an acceptable refinancing at the appropriate time. With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Vito.

Thank you, Marcus. Turning to page 12. I want to provide an update on each of our businesses and a market outlook. We continue to see strong demand for our key cellulose specialty products. The cost surcharge announced earlier this quarter has been successfully implemented as planned. Customers are focusing on securing volume and passing on their own inflationary costs to the end users. We expect to realize higher prices for commodity high purity cellulose products in the coming quarter as demand for these products remains stable and supply for fluff products is constrained. However, we remain cautious about supply chain constraints and a uncertain outlook in China related to a resurgence of COVID-19. As previously discussed, we are executing our planned maintenance outages to drive improved reliability and productivity. Overall, we expect HPC profitability to improve sequentially and produce significantly better results for the full year 2022 as we realize the benefits of our key initiatives. In paperboard, we are also experiencing strong demand for packaging and commercial print products. We expect to realize higher prices to outpace inflation in the coming quarter and generate improved EBITDA. Similarly, in high-yield pulp, we expect to realize higher prices along with higher volumes to generate improved profitability from the most recent quarter. However, there are greater risks in this segment related to supply chain disruptions and demand from China, which are currently uncertain. On the corporate expenses, We expect an increase in the coming quarter before normalizing to around $50 million for the full year. Given the nature of these corporate expenses, we expect continued volatility. We remain focused on executing our planned outages within our $140 to $150 million CapEx guidance for the full year. As noted, we recently received $43 million related to the sale of our shares in Green First. and we expect to receive $21 million of tax refunds within the year. Lastly, on slide 13, we're excited about the future of RIAM. With our unique biorefinery assets and sustainable business model, we are embarking on a new journey into the bio future, applying science to nature. Coming very soon, we will be rolling out a new brand that represents our vision to drive renewable, to remarkable. In the coming quarter, expect an updated website and signage. Going forward, we will refer to the company as RIAM to distinguish and simplify our image. We will continue to build upon our 95 years of sustainable history as we grow into the biofuture. With that, operator, please open the call to questions.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. And for participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question is from John Babcock with Bank of America. Please proceed.

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. I guess to start out, I was wondering if you could review guidance, ultimately how you're thinking about this relative to last quarter when you gave initial guidance for 2022 for growth overall. I want to get a sense, I guess, more specifically just around pricing, whether or not – I assume you're probably having more pricing now than you had expected back then, but at the same time, costs are an offset. So I was wondering if you might be able to Just balance all that and also, you know, broadly if you're thinking about more growth in EBITDA this year relative to last quarter or if it's, you know, largely in line just given offsetting factors.

Well, good morning, John. I appreciate your participation and great question. I'll highlight a couple of things and then I'll have Marcus fill in the blanks on a few of those items. We have been seeing the pricing start to flow through. in the first quarter, and that was diluted a little bit because of the fact that we had some carryover from the prior year. So that's starting to come to realization. You'll see that come through more in the second quarter. Additionally, with the pricing surcharge, the cost surcharge that we've put into the marketplace, it's helping us to mitigate the extraordinary costs that we've incurred that came in very heavy in that first quarter. So from that standpoint, you should see some good growth as we had noted on our prior call in the second half of the year, which will really start to pick up here in the second quarter. I'm not changing the outlook from our prior communications. We feel confident that we will be in a better position and we will deliver higher EBITDA this year. And I don't see anything that's impeding that right now. And we're confident in the position in the market. Marcus?

Yeah, just to build on Vito's comments, maybe just on the businesses such as Paperboard. In that business, John, you've probably seen in the marketplace some announced pricing by others. So certainly that's a business where we're seeing good demand and further price increases. And as well in the high-yield pulp markets, BEK has been seeing increases, and we tend to move along with that product as well. So there's certainly some positive signs on pricing, but in the context of that inflationary environment that Vito mentioned.

Gotcha. And then, you know, next question is on the cellular specialty side of things. You mentioned that, you know, demand is broadly pretty strong. I was wondering if you might be able to delineate, you know, broadly across the different categories how demand is faring right now, you know, especially on the acetate tow side, just given your exposure there. But then also, if you could talk about Europe, the impact you're seeing from the Russia-Ukraine conflict and also the broader economy in that market, particularly since GDP numbers in the first quarter were probably a bit less robust, I think, than people have been expecting.

John, let me comment a little bit. And again, I'll have Marcus fill a couple of the blanks in here. Specific to Europe, there has been extraordinary challenges there. in terms of securing materials to make sure that we're running smoothly. And albeit you haven't asked yet, this is one of the reasons why we looked at the TARDIS opportunity very opportunistically, right? Two key factors there. Some of the challenges that we're having in securing materials without interruptions, and more importantly, the successful shutdowns we've had at both Jessup and Fernandino, which really enable us to accelerate our support plan with additional in-house experts. So I think we're doing a nice job of managing through that. Overall, our demand is very strong within all the segments right now. I think the supply chain constraints are really driving an acceleration of that right now because there's significant delays in vessel deliveries through our customer base. So I think we've seen and will continue to encounter a strong demand throughout that portfolio. Marcus?

Yeah, Vito. Maybe touching on some of the manufacturing inputs, John, given where gas pricing has gone in Europe, certainly seeing that manifest in higher chemical cost inputs. Think of ammonia. And again, on the energy theme, given the trucking and logistics matters that Vito mentioned, certainly diesel costs have an impact on that as well. So yeah, certainly inflationary pressures affecting some of the operating inputs.

Okay. And then, you know, last question just before I turn it over. You know, just on that surcharge in cellular specialties, I don't know if you're able to provide some sense of the magnitude of that. And then also, when you say it was successful, does that mean it went in as full and as announced? Or were there, you know, any challenges in getting that through?

Okay, John. You know, what I would say is our customers understand the need for the surcharge, and they all have been encountering similar inflationary impacts. The cost increases that we incurred are clearly evidence in the chemical industry and witnessed by recent earnings releases and market indices. We have pretty strong partnerships with our customers, and that's been instrumental in our alignment and our path forward. So from that perspective, we did implement on April 1st, and we are happy with the results that we've realized so far, and we're going to continue to grow upon that. Marcus?

Yeah, and John, that cost surcharge is denoted on our invoices separately, so it's very transparent and, as Beto mentioned, openly discussed with our customers.

Okay, great.

Thanks for all the detail. Thank you, John.

Our next question is from Prakash Misra with Barenberg. Please proceed.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Can you talk about just your cellular specialty pricing, cellular specialty pricing through the year? How should we think about the quarterly progression in price, Q1 versus Q2 versus Q3? Q2 is... price will reflect all the price hikes that you have announced, or some of that might get pushed into Q3?

Good morning, Paritash, and thanks very much for your participation. Regarding the CS pricing, I don't know if we're going to get the full impact in Q2, but we should see a very strong acceleration of that. We will see strong acceleration from a standpoint of the cost surcharge. And additionally, we talked earlier about the diluted kind of realization of pricing that was implemented last year. It kind of drizzled through on Q1. So I think you'll also see an acceleration of that as we begin to get through this quarter. So from both standpoints, I don't think you're going to see the full realization of till you'll definitely see a full realization when you get into Q3 and Q4. But you will see evidence of that coming through the marketplace right now, because we've been invoicing and receiving accordingly in terms of our AR. So from that standpoint, I think we're in a pretty good position. Marcus, if you have any additional comments.

And Paritosh, you know, we're actively watching this, right? It's a very dynamic situation. This is all a call on how long inflation stays strong, right? So we got to have a lens on how long does this inflation continue, but consistent with Vito's comments, right? Sequentially, definitely pricing improvement due to these initiatives.

Got it. And on the commodity cellulose, so for viscose and fluff, you're expecting Q2 pricing to be higher than Q1 if if the current market conditions hold, right?

Yes, very much so. We've seen the evidence in the marketplace, and I think even this morning it recently issued a report to the market denoting some of the increases that have been sustained out there. So we're seeing the same evidence of that, Paritash, ourselves.

Great, thanks. And the last one for me, I don't know if you covered that in your prepared remarks, but any update on TempSilk and what kind of opportunities you're seeing for that product?

We haven't made a lot of comments about that right now. We are continuing to develop and I would say stay tuned to some of the feedback that we have there. As you know, some of the marketplace in order for us to do business right have been mitigated by some of the pandemic situation. So that right now is not an area that we've seen a tremendous amount of development in only because it's been subsidized or kind of mitigated by the conditions of the marketplace. So we'll provide an update for you in the next queue. I don't know if you had any additional comments on that, Marcus.

MARCUS HILLIARD- No, not on that one. But Paritosh, maybe just to highlight back on your comments on pricing on fluff. That is something you should take note of in your modeling, given the recent announcements by RISC. The April index for fluff in North America was just under $2,000 a ton. Just around $125 per metric ton increase again.

Wow, interesting. Thanks, guys. That's all I had. Thank you, Paritosh.

As a reminder, just star 1 on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask a question. Our next question is from Richard Coos with Jefferies. Please proceed.

taking my questions. Just a couple of quick ones here. In terms of maintenance cost, how much of that was in CS in Q1? And then how much do you expect to impact EBITDA in Q2?

Good morning, Richard, and thanks for your question. I really, really appreciate your participation. I'm going to volley that one over to Marcus because I know he's got the details on that. So if you could, Marcus.

Yeah, good morning, Richard. So the You know, the majority of our CS maintenance activities were focused on our Jessup, Georgia facility. And those costs are actually amortized over time. So we would have deployed the cash to support those activities. So think of a number in the first quarter of around $30 million that would then be amortized over a 12-month period to the next shutdown and hit our P&L.

Got it. So in truth, the EBITDA impact of the maintenance shuts that you guys had in Q1, the EBITDA impact there really wasn't that big. It was really price cost that drove the year-over-year decline.

Yeah. Very much a story of our manufacturing cost inputs, wood, chemicals, energy, and the logistic supply chain costs we mentioned. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I understand. And that was on the bridge, Richard. If you look on page seven, that's that $47 million. largely cost inputs.

Got it. And then just in terms of Q2, compared to that $30 million that you had in Q1, what does the cost look like for Q2?

Yeah, so in Q2, it's, Comiscaming has the major emphasis on its major outage. And that one will be slightly less. Think of in the range of $10 million, that would be a cash disbursement and then amortized. Got it understood.

And then maybe lastly for me, you know, how do you guys think about contingency plans for the cap structure? You know, let's say you don't get to your guide, you know, how are you thinking about addressing the cap structure as you look to the second half of the year?

Yeah, so again, we're looking, it's really a key area of focus for us, our capital structure. It's something we're actively in a dialogue with with our advisors and staying close to developments We've said we're going to be opportunistic, you know, we're very focused on executing on our operational strategy to demonstrate improved results sequentially and we really feel this will further the leverage and improve our credit profile and then at the same time using a Vito mentioned the recent sale of the green first forest block shares, and we mentioned tax refunds in the future. That, in sum total, is close to $70 million. We would see ourselves right-sizing the next refinancing and then approaching the markets at the right time with that improved credit profile and that momentum with us. Okay. I got it.

And at that time, Richard, we're going to be fully out of all of our shutdowns. And right now, we've already got past that 60% hump. So we're in a real good position to continue on that momentum. And you'll see that occurring and hitting us strongly in the second half of the year. I see. Okay. Thank you for taking the questions. I appreciate it.

Thank you very much for your participation.

Our next question is from Paul Quinn with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Yeah, thanks very much. Morning, guys. Just trying to clarify this cost surcharge. So that 146 is just on your high purity stuff, like the 520,000 tons or so, 520, 550 a year for the nine months. So it should be somewhere in the $55 million range.

Good morning, Paul. We figured that you'd focus on that, and we appreciate your insight, your questions here. Yeah, listen, I'm not going to give specific guidance on exactly what that's going to amount to, but in terms of where you're looking right now, you're probably in the range of the areas that we're focused on. So there's going to be a flux of what is actually going to be coming through, but we feel pretty strong in terms of our ability to implement, which we've already executed upon, and drive that through. Now, listen, if the market conditions change dynamically, we'll have to make adjustments accordingly. So I would say that could be up or down, and you have to consider that in terms of your modeling.

Okay. And then just on the special needs volume, you mentioned it's down 4% year over year, but the mix improves. So If you could split out that high purity cellulose from the commodities, the high purity, I guess it was down less and the commodity volumes were down more.

Yeah, Marcus, I think I'm going to – you've got those details, if you could provide that.

Yeah, definitely the commodity volumes were down more, Paul. So you're spot on on your comments, and CS was negligible.

Yeah, CS was just a little bit, I think, about 1%. Yeah. Okay, that's helpful. And then just on what you're seeing, I mean, you referenced really strong flop pricing, which, I mean, I've never seen these kind of increases, so it'll be interesting to see how sustainable it is. But there's a lot of volume coming in on the DP side. Just wondering what you're seeing in that market.

Yeah, it's a really good point, Paul. You know, the demand has been tremendous for us right now, and I think that's exacerbated by the supply chain constraints. So for us, we're in a really good position. We provide a high-quality material into the marketplace, and we see the demand extraordinary at this point. If we could make tremendously more, I think we'd be in a better position.

So on the dissolving pulp side, the commodity side, you're not seeing any weakness because of the extra volume coming in from some of these new mills?

Paul, what we did see is, you know, you saw – Mention of the the flooding in South Africa certainly affecting the hardwood supply You're probably reading the same materials ostracel did start up again, so they're coming back into softwood and Everything I've seen from RISI on on the new line in Brazil was mainly started up on BK and we're starting to see signs that they're producing DWP now Okay, that's good and

Just trying to understand, like most people on maintenance, they try to move these things out into a longer-term schedule. And you've moved up TARTAS and cited the difficulty securing materials. What are the materials that you're having trouble securing? And then additionally on that facility, I mean, you put in green energy project last year. Could you give us an idea of what the energy self-sufficiency is there, just noting that European energy price has gone up so much?

Sure, Paul. I'll make a couple of comments on that. You know, for us right now, you know, there's a great opportunity in the region to really take advantage of the situations that approaches on ammonia. That's one that has been difficult for us and to a point where we were concerned about continuing and having the flux through to meet our customer demands. We got through that but thought also Now that we've got some great resources that are available to execute, we put a task force team together that helps us during these shutdowns. We had all the critical personnel available and the team members available to take advantage of it. And you can look at it from a standpoint is if we can execute this thing now, you know, we've got a greater advantage as we go through the year rather than delaying because some of these things are enhancements to the way that we're running right now. So that's how we looked at it, and that's why we pulled it forward. We are in a pretty good position from that standpoint, and it kind of It allowed us to address two birds with one stone, so that's why we took advantage of it. Marcus?

Yeah, Paul, maybe to your question you had on the energy side. As far as electricity load, you know, a portion of that load is fixed based on the electrical rate in France, and the rest floats. So we're not fully exposed to electricity rates. and some exposure on the gas where we use gas, but we're actually a net producer of electricity. So in totality, we certainly have the ability to mitigate some of these headwinds that we're seeing. And then you saw us monetize a portion of our carbon credits this quarter as well, which you really should look at that as a whole energy offset, right, because they kind of move together.

And as you've noted, Paul, we're going to continue to make investments in that area. So that's been also positive for us.

Okay. So just so I understand, you're a net producer of energy at TARTA. So this higher energy regime right now should be a benefit to you, right?

Aside from the floating rate in France has increased, right?

So there is that exposure to any producer in the country.

Right, but you're a net producer, though, so you're going to be a beneficiary of a higher rate overall.

Remember, the generation contracts tend to be fixed, right, and then indexed, and then you're going to have that exposure on the market rate that might compress part of that, but you're still gaining, right?

Yeah, you're purchasing and you're selling, so that's where it kind of gets one or the other, but we aren't impacted directly. as much when you have extraordinary situations.

Okay, sorry for having trouble understanding that. No, that's really our fault, Paul. The flexibility in opportunistically repaying this June 24 note, what is your flexibility around that?

And my flexibility, can you clarify it?

Is there any restrictions at all on any cash that you come in over the next two years? Can you apply that on the debt right away?

Yes, certainly. We've always thought of doing something holistic, so something to address a full refi. Other than the callability at par in June, there's nothing else.

That's all I had. Thanks, guys.

Thank you very much, Paul. We appreciate your participation. Again, it was great questions. Thank you so much.

We have reached the end of our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Vito for closing comments.

I would like to thank you again for your time today. We're confident in our ability to execute on our near-term initiatives to drive improved profitability in 2022, and we're excited about the biofuture of Ryan. Thanks so much.

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