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spk07: In the paperboard segment, EBITDA decreased by $1 million compared to 2022, primarily due to lower sales volumes from customer to stocking, partially offset by decreased purchase pulp, maintenance, and logistics costs, along with market-driven downtime taken in response to the weak market conditions. High-yield pulp EBITDA decreased by $20 million versus 2022, driven by lower sales volumes and prices amid weak market demand, increased wood cost, and market-driven downtime taken in response to the weak market conditions. Corporate segment EBITDA declined by $11 million primarily due to less favorable foreign exchange rates and discounting and financing fees incurred to support working capital enhancements. Next, I would like to offer some high-level commentary on a few significant events that occurred in the fourth quarter, each of which will be elaborated on by Marcus. First, the finance team secured a covenant amendment for our 2027 term loan facility. In January, we announced an amendment to expand the net secured debt covenant to 5.25X. While we are confident in our ability to manage within the original covenant, as evidenced by the results of a 4.2X for Q4, we wanted the operational flexibility that the expanded covenant and resultant liquidity would grant us. so we could continue to execute on our strategic initiatives. We also believe that the enhanced flexibility would also reassure key stakeholders. Second, we conducted a review of our existing assets and determined that impairments were necessary for our temiscamine HPC plant and the C-line at our Jessup plant. Regarding the Jessup C-line, we have made the strategic commitment to focus its capacity of fluff production going forward, and conversely, focus the Jessup specialty cellulose production on the A and B lines. The write-off related to the temiscamine HBC plant reflects the transition of the temiscamine HBC facility to BISCOS production, which we are doing to leverage its low unit variable costs. The total impact of these two non-cash write-offs is $62 million. I'd like to pass the meeting over to Marcus to walk us through the financials for the year. Marcus?
spk04: Thank you, Delisle. Beginning with our high purity cellulose segment on slide five, sales for the year decreased by 23 million or 2% to 1.3 billion due to a higher mix of commodity sales and lower market demand in certain specialty markets. The decline was primarily driven by a 13% decrease in commodity sales prices partially offset by an 11% increase in CES pricing, highlighting our commitment to securing fair value for our specialty offerings. Sales volumes increased by 4% to 955,000 metric tons, resulting from the increased sales into commodity markets. Commodity sales volumes rose by 39% compared to the prior year, whereas CES volumes decreased by 18%. The decline was associated with lower market demand and substantial customer destocking, primarily in construction markets. Other sales for the year were $98 million, which included $49 million of green energy sales. EBITDA for the segment decreased by $6 million to $144 million, primarily due to a less favorable sales mix, declining commodity prices, and increased labor costs due to inflation. These impacts were partially offset by higher CS sales pricing. As Delisle mentioned earlier, we undertook a review of our existing assets and concluded that impairments were necessary for our Temiscaming HPC plant and the Jessup Sea Line. The total non-cash impact on operating income amounts to $62 million. This will result in a lower annual depreciation expense of approximately $5 million. Turning to slide six, sales in the paperboard segment experienced a decline of $31 million, mainly due to a 13% reduction in sales volumes due to customer destocking. Year over year, sales prices improved slightly, and EBITDA for the segment decreased by $1 million to $52 million, primarily due to lower sales volumes, which more than offset the benefits of reduced purchase pulp, maintenance, and logistics costs. Turning to the high-yield pulp segment on slide seven, sales declined by 24 million in comparison to prior year, mainly due to a 12% drop in external sales prices and a 5% reduction in sales volumes. The reductions were a consequence of weaker market demand. Segment EBITDA stood at negative 1 million in contrast to 19 million generated in the prior year. Transitioning to slide eight, our consolidated operating loss for the year amounted to $65 million, inclusive of the $62 million non-cash asset impairment charge recorded in the fourth quarter. Sales price improvements in CS and Paperboard were more than offset by the impact of unfavorable HPC sales mix, lower sales prices in HPC commodities, and high-yield pulp. Costs remained relatively stable compared to the previous year, with deflation in certain input costs being offset by increased labor expenses due to inflation. SG&A and other costs increased by $57 million, mainly due to the $62 million non-cash asset impairment charge, unfavorable foreign exchange rates, discounting and financing fees incurred to support working capital enhancements, as well as higher ERP project costs and professional fees. These costs were partially offset by lower variable compensation and one-time severance expenses from the previous year. Now let's turn to slide 9. Total debt ended the year at $777 million, a reduction of $76 million from the same period in 2022. Net secured debt, reflected in our financial covenant ratio associated with the term loan, ended the year at $698 million. Our primary focus for 2023 was on free cash flow and debt management. Consequently, we executed opportunistic downtime at both paperboard and high yield HULP facilities, as well as at our TARTAS HPC facility, all key factors in supporting the impressive $93 million working capital benefit generated during the year. In January, management took a prudent and proactive approach and successfully amended the covenant associated with the term loan. While we remain confident in our ability to navigate through the covenant, we believed it was important to ensure the company maintained operating flexibility to fully implement our strategic initiatives while alleviating any liquidity concerns. Structurally, the amendment expands the adjusted net leverage test from four and a half times to 5.25 times, gradually stepping down until 4.5 times is reached after Q4 of 2024. Net secured leverage closed the year at 4.2 times within the original covenant test. Liquidity ended the year at $199 million, reflecting $76 million of cash, $118 million available under our ABL facility, and $5 million for our French factoring facility. We remain committed to adhering to the original four and a half times covenant test, and we'll focus on all levers at our disposal to maintain appropriate liquidity levels and execute the company's exciting growth opportunities. With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Dilal.
spk07: Thank you, Marcus. Let's now turn our attention to slide 10, where I'll outline our key initiatives for 2024. Our top priority for the new year is to refinance the 2026 senior notes before they go current in January 2025. To best position us to execute on this refinancing, we will continue to prioritize debt reduction. We are targeting a gross debt reduction of $70 million in 2024 financed through business-generated free cash flows and a potential monetization of $35 to $40 million in passive assets. Additionally, as announced last year, we are exploring the potential sale of our profitable paperboard and high-yield pulp businesses to further reduce the debt before the refinancing. The sales process is being managed by Houlihan Loki, and it remains on schedule. We received expressions of interest from both strategic parties and financial sponsors, and we'll provide further updates on this project as it develops. We are working hard to implement our asset optimization strategies to address our HPC commodity exposure, given the drag this exposure has on our profit margins and earnings stability. To highlight the importance of this effort, our non-fluff commodity sales had an EBITDA loss of minus $60 million in 2023, and currently we project a minus $48 million EBITDA loss in 2024. Obviously, it's just a strategic imperative to mitigate its exposure to non-fluff commodities. As you know, a key element of our strategy entails transferring a significant portion of our viscose production to our temiscaming HPC facility, which benefits from the lowest variable cost among our HPC lines. I'm pleased to announce the project is progressing according to our initial timeline, and I will provide updates as we move forward. Our final, perhaps most compelling initiative is to continue realizing the exceptional opportunities within our biomaterials business. Our TARDIS bioethanol plant is currently going through testing, and if all goes well, we expect to begin bioethanol production in March. This project is expected to generate $4 million in EBITDA this year as we ramp up production, and then $8 to $10 million in 2025 and thereafter when we achieve steady state production. This project is the first of several biomaterial projects that we plan to launch over the next couple of years. As highlighted during our investor day, upcoming projects in the pipeline include a bioethanol plant at our Fernandina facility, the AGE project at our Jessup facility, which is the production of green energy for sale to Georgia Power, a prebiotics additive plant to also be located at our Jessup facility, and crude tall oil projects in France and in the U.S. As previously disclosed, these projects will primarily be funded by low-cost green project capital and are expected to generate significant margin expansion due to co-product economics and economies of scale. Last night, we announced a MOU with Verso Energy to explore e-fuels, specifically e-SAF, from renewable resources including biogenic CO2 at our TARDIS plant. SAF, or sustainable aviation fuel, would be used by the global airline industry as a drop-in sustainable replacement for current jet fuel. We'll be working with Verso Energy to explore the feasibility of capturing the biogenic CO2 produced at the TARDIS plant to produce the eSAF in combination with green hydrogen. While we are still in the early stages of evaluating this opportunity, the potential impact to RIME is substantial. We look forward to keeping you updated as this project progresses. Let's move to slide 11, where I'll present our EBITDA and free cash flow projections for 2024. We anticipate 2024 enterprise EBITDA to range between $180 and $200 million for the year. Cash interest expense is expected to be in the $85 million range, which is inclusive of $14 million attributed to the timing of interest payments. On a normalized basis, the estimated annual interest expense would be around $70 million. Maintenance expenses is set at $85 million, a figure we consider sufficient this year to maintain the reliability of our assets. We project a $15 million benefit from working capital an additional $10 million benefit from tax receivables to be realized during the year. With some offsets related to deferred energy payments and other accrued liabilities, we expect adjusted free cash flow to range between $20 to $40 million for the year, which will be used to reduce debt and invest in strategic capital projects. Currently, we forecast such strategic capex spending of around $10 million in 2024. mainly to finance the ERP project and pursue high return cost reduction projects at the plants. This guidance differs from the $225 million EBITDA estimate that are presented during the investor day. I believe it's important to emphasize the factors driving this variance. Since the investor day guidance, we realized a $14 million decrease in paperboard EBITDA versus expectations due to unforeseen levels of stocking toward the end of the year. High-yield pulp experienced rapid price declines post-Investor Day as pulp markets encountered weak demand, resulting in a $3 million impact versus expectations. We also now expect the stocking at a couple of large acetate customers, which will impact EBITDA by $23 million in 2024. Additionally, corporate charges were primarily affected by higher discounting and financing fees encourage to support working capital enhancements due in part to higher interest rates, totaling approximately $5 million. On slide 12, I delve deeper into the expected performance of each of our businesses. For 2024, we expect to achieve EBITDA in the range of $180 to $190 million for our HPC segment. On average, cellulose specialty prices are expected to increase a low single-digit percentage as compared to 2023. Cellulose specialty sales prices are expected to remain flat in 2024, with increased volumes from market share gained that accrue to us from a competitor's plant closure, offset principally by lower shipments due to the stocking to select acetate customers. Demand for RIEM cellulose specialties is anticipated to be mixed, with improved volumes in construction ethers, albeit at lower than historical levels, and relatively stable acetate markets. However, as noted, we expect acetate will undergo some level of destocking. We also anticipate strong demand in the other CS grades. Additionally, we expect resilient market demand for commodity products. The fluff and visco price is expected to improve from Q4 2023. Moreover, we foresee modest tailwinds from ease raw material and logistics input cost in 2024. As part of our growth strategy, we are actively pursuing strategic investments in our biomaterials business to capitalize on the increasing demand for sustainable products. The TARDIS bioethanol plant is set to begin commercial production in the first quarter of this year with an expected EBITDA contribution of $4 million in 2024 which is expected to reach $8 to $10 million upon full production. That is expected in 2025. Regarding paperboard, we expect to achieve EBITDA in the range of $50 to $60 million in 2024. Prices are expected to decrease slightly as compared to 2023 Q4 levels, while sales volumes are expected to improve as the stocking eases and production scales up to meet the improved demand. Raw material prices are expected to see a slight uptick as pulp markets rebound. We expect to achieve EBITDA on the range of $5 to $10 million in 2024 for our high-yield pulp business. High-yield pulp prices are expected to increase in the first quarter as we realize higher index pricing observed in the later part of 2023 Q4. However, we are beginning to see pricing pressure related to the Chinese pulp markets thus expect pricing pressure in late Q2 and possibly Q3. We are diversifying our portfolio globally to mitigate this exposure. Additionally, sales volumes are projected to improve in Q1 as production ramps up to meet improved customer demand. For 2024, we expect corporate costs in the range of $55 to $60 million, flat to up slightly versus 2023, as we are in the final year of our multi-year ERP implementation. As the ERP project concludes, we anticipate annual cost reductions of $3 to $5 million starting in 2025. It's important to note that these costs may vary due to factors like currency fluctuations, environmental charges, and other non-cash expenses. We illustrate the trajectory of our EBITDA margin growth and net leverage decline on page 13. In 2024, we anticipate our margins to be in the 10% to 11% range, reflecting a weighted average of the strong margins in our cellulose specialty and paperboard segments, counterbalanced by low positive high yield margins and the anticipated negative margins in our non-fluff commodity sales. The forecast for net secured leverage at the end of the year stands at 3.3 times Covenant EBITDA. Our commitment remains resolute in achieving our target net debt leverage ratio of 2.5 times by 2027. With that, operator, please open the call to questions.
spk01: 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. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question is from Daniel Harriman with Sidoti and Company. Please proceed.
spk06: Thank you. Hey, good morning, everyone. I just wanted to talk about kind of the transition from 2023 to 2024. And obviously, 23 was a tough year in the fourth quarter. was certainly weaker than what you expected. Would you mind providing just more color to us on why you're confident that 2024 will be better, particularly, you know, in the first half of the year, such that you can kind of prove and show, you know, earnings power within the core business to potentially refinance by the end of the year? And then what do you see right now as the biggest risk to not meeting your guidance for the year?
spk07: Good morning, Daniel. This is Delisle. To answer your question with respect to the transition from 23 to 24, The biggest driver is around our core business, our CS business. And the expectation is that CS business is going to improve roughly $30 to $35 million relative to last year. And what's really driving that is a couple of things that gives us confidence that we'll see this improvement. One is the gains that we saw in market share relative to the fully closure. We expect in total gain in market share around 50,000 tons and the value of north of the $35 million that we had guided to, let's say something north of $40-plus million of value over the period. We also expect to see some improvement, as noted in the call, in Ethers. We expect that the stocking has largely run its course, but that demand continues to be muted because of the construction market and the high interest rate market. There may be some risk to that number, but we do think that we will see improvement because we do think destocking has largely concluded there. Noted that there is some destocking going on at acetate. I would say that this is a one-time hit. Don't think that it's going to be beyond the impact as noted. driven by the congestion that we saw in the supply chains in 22 and 23 and the uncertainties expressed or held by our Asian customers given the long supply chain that was in place. And I would think that given that these customers got comfortable as the supply chain demonstrated that things had normalized. The acetate to stocking roughly cost us $23 million relative to expectations and to what we were expecting should be pretty close to the number for the year. High yield, if you were to ask about where's some risk, it would likely be in the high yield space. There is some activity going on in China right now that's of some concern. There's quite a bit of underutilized capacity of new paperboard plants that are fully integrated back to their pulping operations. These facilities, to generate any kind of cash, are running their pulping operations and selling that pulp at substantial discount to the imported material that we're bringing in. And so there's some risk to the pulp forecast, but we're doing all we can to mitigate that by moving the product into other regions that are less impacted by that dynamic. Paperboard, we believe the stocking has ended. We've got higher confidence that the numbers that we're projecting will be realized with our customers. And then finally, the corporate charges, I would suggest, again, are going to be relatively flat, and certainly that's an area that we have tight control on. So I hope that answers your question.
spk06: Yeah, it did. Thanks so much, Delisle. I'll get back in the queue.
spk01: Our next question is from Matthew McKellar with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed.
spk02: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, could you maybe give a little bit of color on when you might expect destocking by your acetate customers to fade and confirm if the strong finish to 24 for the CS business you had described is based on acetate markets improving?
spk07: First off, good morning. Matthew, I know it's early for you. With respect to, you know, sequentially looking into 24 for the next couple of quarters with respect to the stock and for ad state, it's largely going to play out in Q1, Q2. So let's say the first half. And the market should get stronger as the year progresses. But the largest impact should be felt in the first half. With respect to, you know, sequentially how the RCS businesses to participate, we expect it to essentially be in line with what we saw in the fourth quarter, for the first quarter.
spk02: Okay, thanks very much for that, Keller. I think also for the HBC business, you mentioned you expect raw material inputs and logistics costs to be lower in 24. Can you maybe just provide a little bit more color on what you're expecting across different input costs and the magnitude of the cost relief you're expecting?
spk07: You know, there's a lot of puts and takes with respect to that, as you would expect. I mean, labor costs, of course, are up. up significantly, particularly here in North America. But that's being offset by lower chemical costs, wood costs, logistics costs. And I would say net on net, we're expecting lower manufacturing slash logistics costs to the tune of roughly $7 million right now we're forecasting. So overall, I'm expecting cost to come down by about that amount.
spk02: Thanks. That's very helpful. And then maybe the last one for me. Are you able to give a sense of where discussions are at with respect to developing a second bioethanol plant in Florida?
spk07: We're going through the permitting process both with the community as well as with the state. On top of that, we're going through the final detail engineering on that project. I expect that as everything moves along as expected that hopefully that we'll start construction later in 24 and maybe early 25.
spk02: Great. Thanks very much. I'll hop back in the queue.
spk01: Our next question is from Dimitri Silverstein with Water Tower Research. Please proceed.
spk05: Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my call. Just wanted to follow up on your memorandum of understanding with Versa Energy. So the idea is that you will work jointly to – see if you can produce the SAP, the aviation fuel substitute. How does that fit in with your bioethanol plant in Tartar? And as you're looking at the production, are you going to be putting this, if it does go forward, are you going to be putting this in the Tartar plant or the Florida plant, or are you going to have to build a new facility?
spk07: Good morning, Dimitri. With respect to SAF, which the acronym stands for Sustainable Aviation Fuel, and it is a direct substitute, a drop-in replacement for the current kerosene that makes up aviation fuel today. The deal with Verso is... is to jointly develop a feasibility study on this opportunity. The size of this opportunity for us can be very significant, but it largely depends on how we decide to participate in this opportunity. And really the opportunity, what it is for us in TARDIS, is to capture the biogenic CO2 that we produce right now and is just emitted into the atmosphere would be to capture that and then with green hydrogen convert that into the hydrocarbon, the sustainable aviation fuel hydrocarbon, that would then be sold to commercial airlines, for example. So we don't have to bring in any additional raw materials or anything. We actually would just use a byproduct of our current process to participate in this. It would likely include the construction of carbon capture and other facilities to make this happen. But TARDIS has the land. Water is available. locally and again, the demand for this product is not only something that the airline industries I think would be interested in, but it's being required by the regulatory agencies in France and the EU for the commercial airline industry to increase over the course of the next 15 to 20 years. And on top of that, the last thing, just like with the bioenergy or the bioethanol plant that we have in TARDIS, the regulatory agencies in the state are willing to participate and help fund both the study as well as potentially the project itself going forward. So really that's why our initial focus is in the EU.
spk05: Okay, got it. So, Delisle, to follow up on your comments around Ether's market recovery, can you kind of delve a little bit deeper into why you think the market will recover now that we've gotten through hopefully the majority of the destocking, but the market, particularly for construction, is still not particularly strong. What will be driving the recovery in Ethers other than easier comps as you get into the back end of the year and you're not comping against inventory reductions by your customers?
spk07: Yeah, that's a great question. It's actually a question we continue to wrestle with a little bit here at the company about how strong Ethers is going to rebound. But we do, because at the end of the day, you're absolutely right. The demand continues to be muted and weak in the construction markets there in Europe. Why we got some confidence in the increase in demand is because the stocking has ended, right? and it's bottomed out, and as a consequence, the underlying demand now becomes revealed, and as a consequence, we expect that the orders we'll see in 24 will be greater than what we saw in 23, but the demand continues to be somewhat muted, continues to be muted.
spk05: Got it. Okay, and then on the, just to make sure I understand what's going on in China, so there's a underutilized capacity in high yield pulp or paperboard that produces more high yield pulp and then therefore makes your product less appealing from the price perspective as you're importing this product into China. Do I understand that correctly? And if that's the case, how long do you think the underutilized capacity will be underutilized? In other words, what needs to happen in the Chinese market for that capacity to become absorbed so your import products can have a better footing in terms of competition with the local producers.
spk07: Dimitri, your description of what's going on is largely correct. What's happened is the paperboard industry in China just overbuilt and they've got a lot of unused capacity now and this new capacity is fully integrated back through pulp manufacturing. In other words, these paperboard plants can also make their own pulp, similar to what we do on temiscamine. To realize any kind of cache, these plants are running their pulp lines relatively hard, and generating excess pulp, which they then ship regionally to other paper pulp producers to use to make paperboard. And the offset there is less imports from other parts of the world, including potentially us coming out of Canada. And they are offering this locally produced pulp at substantially priced discounts relative to what we're currently have been seeing in the fourth quarter and going into the first quarter for our pulp products. So that's the threat and the concern. Your question about how long this is gonna last, feel that that's a question that we're still trying to get our hands around. think that this problem is going to last likely through Q3, at which point the expectation is that we'll start seeing that reduce, either because this new high-purity pulp capacity will get itself sold out and therefore will no longer be a problem, or paperboard demand picks up and begins to satisfy that supply. That's currently what our thinking is.
spk05: Got it. Got it. Okay. Thank you very much. That's all the questions I have now. Thank you.
spk01: As a reminder, there's star one on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask a question. Our next question comes from Andy Burns with Steeple. Please proceed.
spk03: Hi. Good morning, everyone. And thanks for all the detail about 2024. Maybe just to talk a little bit about the HPC business. First, maybe just to clarify, the volume pickup from the Foley closure, is that all in specialties or is some of that on the commodity side also?
spk07: That was all in specialties. It was across the three different grades, but primarily the other CS.
spk03: Okay. And then I just wanted to see if you could elaborate a little more on the comment you made in terms of bridging the 24 that 23 had a favorable customer contract term that's not repeated. Anything more you could say? Was that just on the volume side and or also pricing? And if it was more on volume, is there the opportunity to regain those volumes sometime this year or 2025?
spk07: Yeah. Um, I know, and I know that was a little confusing, Sandy. Um, the, um, The change in the INCO terms really was going from, let's say, a CIF or delivered terms to more of an FOB ship point term, all right? And that allowed us to realize revenue sooner than what we had historically at some of our accounts. What happened in 23 is when we negotiated that change, we had some deferred sales volumes that were delayed at a 22 to Asia, that because of this change when it did ship in 23, we were able to realize immediately. And so really the increase in volume and sales really was capturing the deferred sales that we had coming out of 22. But also because of those changes in those income terms, we didn't have a similar impact or deferrals coming out of 23 into 24. And so we won't capture that kind of deferrals that we experienced coming out of 22. The total volumes, roughly 22,000 tons, roughly equivalent to about $7 million in EBITDA. And really, it was a one-time impact. Shouldn't expect any changes going forward.
spk03: Right. But I guess, importantly, it doesn't sound like it was a customer loss. No, not at all.
spk07: No, it was just a change in, you know, essentially the Incoterms that allowed us to recognize revenue earlier. Great.
spk03: All right. Thank you, and good luck this year. Thank you.
spk01: There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Blomquist for closing remarks.
spk07: Well, thank you all once again for joining us today. I do sincerely appreciate your interest and your support for RIAM. I do want to note that I'm incredibly proud of all the collective efforts made by our team, particularly during the difficult 2023 year, and also express that I'm fully confident that we will continue to focus on enhancing our profitability and work diligently to reduce our debt and our leverage. I look forward to providing further updates on all of our ongoing projects and initiatives, and we here at Ryan continue to value your support and look forward to delivering to you long-term success and growth of the business. We are committed to transparency in open communication. So if you have any questions or if you require further information, please reach out to us at any time. Thank you again for your participation.
spk01: Thank you. This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect at this time.
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