SunCoke Energy, Inc.

Good morning. My name is Dennis, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Suncoke Energy Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the conference over to Shantanu Agrawal, VP Finance and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Dennis. Good morning, and thank you for joining us this morning to discuss Suncoke Energy's third quarter 2022 results. With me today are Mike Rippey, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Marinko, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following management's prepared remarks, we'll open the call for Q&A. This conference call is being webcast live on the investor relations section of our website, and a replay will be available later today. If we don't get to your questions on the call today, please feel free to reach out to our investor relations team. Before I turn things over to Mike, let me remind you that the various remarks we make on today's call regarding future expectations constitute forward-looking statements. The cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements in our SEC filings apply to the remarks we make today. These documents are available on our website as are reconciliations to non-GAAP financial measures discussed on today's call. With that, I'll now turn things over to Mike.

Thanks, Shantanu. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us today. Today, we announced Suncoke Energy's third quarter results. And before I turn it over to Mark, who will review the results in detail, I want to discuss a few highlights. First, I would like to thank all of our Suncoke employees for their continued best-in-class safety performance while achieving record third quarter results. For our collective efforts, we delivered consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $83.7 million. Our domestic Coke business performed exceptionally well during the quarter, which allowed us to fully realize the benefits of a strong export Coke market. In our logistics segment, we continue to see elevated levels of customer demand and favorable pricing. Our foundry and export coke initiatives continue to perform well, and we are pleased with the positive impact they've had on our financial results. Looking forward, we are experiencing softening in export coke markets, particularly in pricing, driven by global economic uncertainties. We are pleased to announce that our board of directors approved a new capital project that will enable our dual facility to produce 100% foundry coke. Suncoke has become a highly reliable supplier in the foundry market, and we continue to see strong demand for our quality product. This project, which is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2023, will allow Suncoke to continue to grow in the foundry market. Importantly, the Juul facility will not lose the flexibility to alternate between blast and foundry coke production after this project is completed. Our gross leverage ratio at the end of this quarter was at approximately 1.9 times on a trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA basis. Lastly, recognizing our year-to-date financial performance, we now expect to surpass the high end of our full year adjusted EBITDA guidance range of $285 million. With that, I'll turn it over to Mark to review our third quarter earnings in detail. Mark? Thanks, Mike.

Turning to slide four, adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter 2022 was $83.7 million, an increase of $9.8 million over third quarter 2021. This increase was primarily driven by higher margin on export sales. The third quarter net income attributable Suncoke was 49 cents per share, up 22 cents versus the prior year period. primarily driven by higher margin on export Coke sales, as well as income tax benefits from foreign tax and research and development tax credits. In the current quarter, the company recorded deferred tax benefits of $15.9 million as a result of the release of a valuation allowance established on the deferred tax assets attributable to existing foreign tax credit carry forwards. and the recognition of research and development credits. Turning to slide five to discuss our liquidity position for Q3. Suncoke ended third quarter with a cash balance of approximately $59 million. Cash flow from operating activities generated approximately $54 million. We spent approximately $22 million on CapEx during the quarter and reduced our debt by almost $34 million. We also paid $6.6 million in dividends at the rate of 8 cents per share during the quarter. In total, we ended the quarter with a strong liquidity position of approximately $342 million. Now turning to slide six to discuss our domestic Coke business performance. Third quarter domestic Coke adjusted EBITDA was a record $76.6 million and Coke sales volume was 1,022,000 tons. The $11.5 million increase in adjusted EBITDA as compared to the same prior year period was mainly driven by higher margins on export Coke sales and higher energy sales pricing. All uncontracted sales tons are committed for the remainder of 2022. Given our record year-to-date performance, we anticipate surpassing the high end of our domestic Coke adjusted EBITDA guidance of $255 million. Coke sales volume guidance remains unchanged at approximately 4.1 million tons. Turning to slide seven to discuss our logistics business. The logistics business generated $12.9 million of adjusted EBITDA during the third quarter of 2022. as compared to $11.6 million in the same prior year period. The increase in adjusted EBITDA was primarily due to higher volumes and pricing across the terminals. Our logistic terminals handled 5.7 million tons of throughput volume during the quarter, as compared to 4.9 million tons during the prior year period. CMT handled approximately 200,000 additional tons as compared to the same prior year period. Our domestic terminals handled almost 600,000 tons more than the same prior year period, driven by increased demand for handling services from existing and new customers. We expect this strong performance continue through the balance of the year. Our logistics full year adjusted EBITDA guidance range of $48 to $52 million is unchanged. With that, I'll turn it back over to Mike.

Thanks, Mark. Wrapping up on slide eight, as always, safety and operational performance is the top priority of our organization. Our efforts will continue to focus on safely executing against our operating and capital plans. As I mentioned at the beginning of this call, we are pleased with our continued success in the foundry and export coke markets. We are now focused on executing the foundry expansion project, which will allow some coke to meaningfully grow in the foundry coke market while also preserving flexibility to switch between blast and foundry coke production. Although the foundry market remains stable, the export coke market is experiencing significantly increased volatility. We realized the benefit of favorable market conditions and export Coke sales through the third quarter. We are now seeing softening in the export Coke market, which is factored into our guidance. We are pleased with the sustained demand for our services and new customers at our logistics terminals. Based on current projections, we expect a solid finish to the year for our logistics business. We remain focused on making progress on our capital allocation strategy. From a growth perspective, we continue to work towards a mutually beneficial agreement with U.S. Steel on the Granite City GPI opportunity. We also continue to reward shareholders with substantial dividends, which were increased by 33% last quarter. Finally, on the debt side, we continue to make good progress reducing our revolver balance and expect our deleveraging initiatives to continue through the balance of the year. As we have done in the past, we continue to evaluate the capital needs of our business, our capital structure, and our commitment to reward shareholders on a continuous basis, and we'll make capital allocation decisions accordingly. Finally, based on the outstanding performance of our operating segments aided by favorable export Coke market conditions, We look to surpass the high end of our full year adjusted EBITDA guidance of $285 million for 2022.

With that, let's go ahead and open the call for Q&A.

At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, simply press star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question is from the line of Lucas Pipes with B Reilly Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, operator. Good morning, everyone, and good job on the quarter. Thanks, Lucas. Mike, my first question is on the sustainability of the Coke margin. So really good work there. You commented on the volatility. What do you think is a reasonable... margin per ton between good operations. Um, and then also the shift to the foundry business would really appreciate kind of your thoughts on what you think is, is most sustainable in the, in the Coke business. Thank you very much.

No, it's an excellent question, Lucas. And obviously when we discuss, uh, with great regularity here at Suncoast, uh, as we said, the, uh, the third quarter of this year really benefited, uh, from, you know, what were very strong export, uh, market conditions and you saw we produced a million tons and generated 76.6 million of ebitda so that was uh exceptional work by our teams we produced at a very very high level and we took full advantage of uh those uh excellent operating uh uh results by by exporting a lot of coke you know if you you think going forward and you know it's hard to predict the future but certainly uh export market conditions have softened and pricing has come well off of what we're able to realize in the third quarter. So, you know, and I look back and I think about, you know, kind of Q3 of 21, where we produced very similar levels of output. The output is down a tad, but that relates to the fact that we're selling now more foundry. So we produced a full output here in the third quarter of 22, as we did in the third quarter of 21. Going back to the third quarter of 21, and you see that on slide six, we generated $65.1 million of EBITDA. So, you know, kind of a $60 a ton type run rate. So, you know, if you're looking for, you know, a run rate in more normalized conditions, that wouldn't be a bad place to focus your attention. But again, you know, export, you know, seaborne Cove markets will demonstrate volatility, again, as we experienced in a very positive way in the third quarter, and we'd expect some return to more normal conditions going forward. I hope that helps you.

That's helpful. Really appreciate the color. Switching topics to the logistics side, a lot of reports about challenges in the lower Mississippi with low water levels. Is that an opportunity in that maybe more traffic shifts to the rail and then to your CMT terminal? Or is it more of a risk because you are in the Delta? And I imagine that may impact loadings as well. So I would appreciate your thoughts on this. Thank you.

Another good question. Really, for us, it's a neutral. We don't see any pickup in in traffic because of those low water levels. And of course, we don't see deterioration because we accept most of our materials inbound by rail. So it's kind of a neutral to us. We do utilize barge deliveries to our Granite City facility on the Koch side. And to date, that hasn't been an issue for us. Should it become, of course, we have backup plans in place to keep the facility well supplied in coal. very much a neutral for our company.

I appreciate the call, Mike. To you and the team, best of luck.

Appreciate it.

Thank you. Once again, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, simply press star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. And at this time, there appear to be no further questions. I will now turn the call back to Mike Rippey for any closing remarks.

Okay, well, good. Again, as always, we appreciate you joining us on the call this morning and, of course, your continued interest in Suncoast. So with that, we'll end today's call and look forward to talking to you guys out ahead. Thanks again.

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.