Canfor Corporation

Good morning, my name is Michelle and I will be your host today. Welcome to Canfor Corporation's second quarter analyst call. At this time, all lines have been placed to mute to prevent any background noise. A Q&A session will be available after today's presentation. During this call, Canfor's chief financial officer will be referring to a slide presentation that is available in the investor relations section of the company's website. Also, the companies would like to point out that this call will include forward-looking statements, so please refer to the press release for the associated risk of such statements. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Susan Yurkovich, Campus Corporation President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, Susan.

Thanks, Michelle. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our Q2 results conference call. I'll start off with a few comments before I turn things over to Pat Elliott, CAMFORCE Chief Financial Officer. I'm also joined by Stephen MacKie, our Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Pankratz, our Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, and Brian Yuen, our Vice President of Pulp and Paper Sales, who are available and can help with questions following our remarks. Our lumber business generated solid EBITDA in the second quarter with improved pricing driven by leaner inventories, industry capacity rationalizations over the last several years. and ongoing transportation constraints in the US South. While supply reductions have supported lumber pricing in 2026, we do remain cautious on our near-term outlook as demand continues to be impacted by global economic uncertainty, ongoing trade disputes and persistent affordability challenges. Pulp markets also remain under significant pressure with elevated inventories and a structural shift in market dynamics contributing to weak pricing over the last several quarters. Despite these headwinds, we are seeing improvements in our underlying performance, supported by the significant changes we've made to our operating platform over the last several years. While we're encouraged by our second quarter results, we remain focused on strengthening our platform and positioning the business to navigate the challenges facing our industry. As part of these efforts, we recently announced the closures of our Northwood pulp mill later this year, along with two sawmills in Sweden and our Fox Creek sawmill in Alberta. These are incredibly difficult decisions that impact our employees, their families, and our local communities. We've made changes across our platform that are gut-wrenching, but we are putting our business on a more sustainable footing. The changes will allow us to utilize the economically viable fiber supply across our operating regions more effectively and support a stronger, more competitive platform going forward. In the case of Northwood, reducing our pulp capacity will improve our cost structure Lower our capital intensity and enhance the long-term competitiveness of our intercom facility and specialty paper business, which continues to perform well. In our lumber business, the closure of Urschel, Orphor and along with Fox Creek Sawmills will allow us to optimize fiber procurement efforts, support our cost structure and overall profitability as we concentrate production and fewer more productive facilities. As we optimize our operating platform, we're also investing in higher value opportunities. Earlier this month, we completed the acquisition of Pinkwood, which we believe will strengthen our asset base in Western Canada, further diversify our earnings profile through increased exposure to value-added products. Taken together, these actions reflect our continued focus on building a stronger, more resilient company positioned to create long-term value through the cycle. With that, I'll turn it over to Pat to provide an overview of our financial results.

Thanks, Susan, and morning, everyone. In my comments this morning, I'll speak to our second quarter financial highlights, and as always, a summary of this is included in our overview slide presentation in the investor relations section of our website. Our lumber business generated adjusted EBITDA of $145 million in the second quarter, $116 million higher than the previous quarter. These results have been adjusted to exclude one-time items totaling $16 million, comprised of restructuring and impairment charges, net of a $7 million recovery of previously recorded inventory write-downs. Results included $37 million of adjusted EBITDA in our European lumber business, reflecting moderately higher pricing, increased shipments, and modest log cost relief. In North America, improved lumber pricing, increased volume, and cost structure improvements supported solid earnings, particularly in the US South. Our pulp and paper business reported adjusted EBITDA loss of $12 million, $4 million lower than the prior quarter, reflecting the impact of planned maintenance downtime and weakness in global pulp markets. As Susan mentioned, we announced the closure of our Northwood pulp mill later this year, driven by a structural shift in pulp market fundamentals and Challenges Securing Economically Viable Fibre Supply. As a result, we anticipate recording restructuring costs of approximately $30 million in the third quarter. In addition, we announced the closure of our Fox Creek Sawmill due to challenging market conditions, elevated duties and declining fibre availability in the region. As a result, we anticipate recording an asset write-down and impairment charge of approximately $35 million also in the third quarter. Turning to our balance sheet, Canfor ended the second quarter with available liquidity of approximately $1.2 billion and net debt excluding the duty loan of $316 million. Available liquidity improved by $215 million in the second quarter, supported by solid earnings and a seasonal working capital unwind. We anticipate capital spend of approximately $210 million in 2026, including approximately $35 million for our pulp business, and the remaining spend associated with our Bruiser facility in Sweden and our Iron Mountain facility in Arkansas. Following completion of these projects, capital spend will moderate supported by our strong lumber platform and right-sized pulp footprint. And with that, Michelle, we are now ready to take questions from the analysts.

Thank you. We will now take questions from financial analysts. If you have a question, please press star 1 1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you'd like to withdraw your question at any time, please press star 1 1 again. And our first question is going to come from Ben Isaacson with Scotiabank. Your line is now open.

Great. Thank you very much. And good morning, everyone. Two questions, both on closures. First, could you give a little bit more color on the Fox Creek closure and specifically the Alberta fiber basket? How rapidly is it declining and are there any other assets in your portfolio that are at risk or are on the fence?

Hey, good morning, Ben. It's Stephen here. Thanks for the question. Well, maybe I'll sort of work backwards, but I would say there's no other assets in our Alberta portfolio that are at risk. We think that this move, as difficult as it is, really a result of the wildfires that we've experienced in Alberta over a that impact of the fiber supply along with some other sort of regulatory constraints and that are being applied on the land base and when we look at our overall portfolio of assets in Alberta this strengthens it and we're confident that we've got sufficient fiber supply to support the remaining facilities.

That's great and then just a broader question so you've done a lot of footprint rationalization recently and presumably you're only shutting those assets that are losing money and so if that's correct then what is the uplift to normalize EBITDA or how do all these closures improve the earnings power for the company?

Hey, Matt, it's Pat. Yeah, hard and probably not proper to give you too good a guidance, other than to say clearly there's a lot of this that's been baked in since we started rationalizing in 2023. But I guess I would just guide to there's more to come. You mentioned Fox Creek with the Northwood closure, that pulp cost structure changes materially. We're still doing an upgrade and finishing an upgrade at Bruja in Sweden. We're still doing an upgrade at our Iron Mountain facility in Arkansas. So As we get into 2027, I would just say that there's more to come. And so I just have to wait for those results, but it's still more to come.

That's great. Thank you.

Thank you. And the next question will come from Sean Stewart with TD Cohen. Your line is open.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Pat, just to build on that last response, when you say more to come, you're talking about savings to come in 27, not necessarily more closures, correct?

Yes. Thank you for clarifying. That's exactly right, Sean. Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

Wanted to make sure. You guys had really strong Q2 lumber price gains in North America, which outpaced comps. and the published benchmarks. I know there was disproportionate strength for wider dimension stuff in the south, but any further comment you can give on mix that might have helped this quarter and if mix was a factor, is that a sustainable trend into the back half of the year?

Hi Sean, it's Kevin here. Yeah, I think you noted the wide widths, especially in 6-inch and 10- and 12-inch, and we're seeing it across all species too there, Sean, so we'll expect those spreads to maybe moderate somewhat because it is out of the normal pattern, but we expect that to continue through Q3 and then typically come off there by Q4. Okay, that helps.

Thanks, Kevin. Susan, the recent iJoyce acquisition you touched on in Alberta, just outside Calgary, I know it's a small deal, but I guess, can you qualify the company's broader interest in EWP expansion? Is this a precursor to M&A interest in other deals on that side of the business?

Yeah, we're constantly looking at things. This is a really good fit for us. Of course, we operate in Alberta. We provide a lot of furnish to that facility already, so we know these folks culturally are a really good fit for us. We think it adds nicely to our portfolio. We're continuing to look at a number of opportunities. We're fortunate that we have a balance sheet where we can be opportunistic. Of course, we're being prudent, but we like this acquisition and we see opportunity to grow that business.

Organically or through M&A or both?

would you like? As usual, we're looking at all kinds of things and when we're ready to share something with you, we'll be happy to do so.

Got it. Okay, understood. One last one. The Northwood closure, I understand the context. I guess the question is how concentrated, let's say over the last few years, how concentrated were the losses in the pulp segment at Northwood versus Intercon. And can you give some context on broader benefits tied to residual procurement for Intercon going forward as Northwood's taken out of the mix?

Yeah, I'll do it. I'll start, Sean, and my colleague Stephen might help me here. So, yeah, I think we didn't, we didn't, the procurement was done jointly, I guess is what I would say. So, it's a balanced, balanced losses, if you call it that. The opportunity here of sort of tightening the supply, reducing kind of some of that further distanced fibers like residual supply and or whole hog supply in combination with I guess an increased focus on a smaller site really allows us to generate, I would say, material synergy and material improvement to that structure. Again, not ready to quantify that. We'll see that as we get into 2027. But I just say that it's a material step down in the cost structure for intercom specialty paper relative to the balanced portfolio we have today.

Yeah, I think the only thing I would add there, Sean and Pat, is just that it proportionally changes our mix quite dramatically as well and leverages the greater exposure to the paper business, which has been quite solid and stable and has generated positive returns for a long period, a number of years. So I think it reduces our exposure to market pulp, which, along with the cost structure improvements that Pat referenced, are going to position that business, we think, quite well going forward.

That's great detail. Thanks, Stephen. That's all I have. Appreciate it.

Thank you. And our next question will come from Ketan Memtoro with BMO Capital Markets. Your line's open.

Thank you, and thanks for taking my question. Maybe to start with, you know, on the European lumber business, really nice improvement in the second quarter. Can you talk about What is driving this trend there and sort of what trends you are seeing so far in July?

Sure, Kayden. Yeah, so it's kind of a balanced trend, I'd say. As I said in my comments, we saw both improvement in the lumber price and we saw a reduction in the log cost. I think you'll know for the last number of quarters, we've seen rapid escalation of the log cost in Sweden, in our operating area, and that is starting to moderate as we hoped and suggested that it would do. And I think as we look to the rest of the year, Q2 is probably a good proxy for where we'll be. I think there's continuing pressure. That fiber supply is pretty balanced in South Sweden. And the markets obviously are, as the markets here in North America, are sort of subject to the broader global situation. But we do think that we've kind of entered a period where we can have sort of sustained earnings for the remainder of 2026.

In fact, generally Q3, just seasonally, volumes are lower in Europe. That should still be sort of consistent with the seasonal trend?

Yeah, exactly. There's usually, you know, 100 million or more feet that come out as a result of the July downtime in Sweden.

Understood. Okay, that's helpful. And then switching to North America, can you talk about, you know, sort of the transportation, freight, bottlenecks? What was So this order of magnitude, how much of a drag that was on your results? How much of an impact on cost, just on the lumber side?

The cost? Well, yeah, for sure. So on transportation, we did not have any real issues at all in Canada. It was predominantly a U.S. South situation and largely in trucking. It's probably hard to quantify the cost, but obviously we're dealing with fuel surcharges that are somewhat embedded in the pricing. I think that helps support the elevated pricing in SYP. partially offset their Catan with increased rail shipments that allowed us to reach to markets and customers. And so I don't really see the trucking is moderated somewhat, but it's still at an elevated level of tightness. And we don't really see that fundamentally changing for the balance of the year. But as far as the cost go, it's kind of hard to quantify other than the fuel surcharges that are still elevated.

Okay, now that's helpful. And then just last one from me. On that Pinkwood acquisition, is there any part of the business that's exposed to, you know, kind of the tariffs that were just recently announced?

No, the iJoyce are not subject to tariffs. They're not paying tariffs now, and they are not subject to the 338 or 301.

Got it. Okay, now that's helpful. I'll turn it over. Good luck.

Thanks. Thank you. And as a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone. Our next question comes from Hamir Patel with CIBC Capital Markets.

Your line's open. Hamir, your line is now open.

Related to Northwood, how do you think about long-term environmental liabilities associated with the pulp business?

Amir, can you repeat your question? Because we only heard about half of it.

Sure, yeah. Pat, in your prepared remarks, you referenced the Q3 restructuring charges you'll recognize related to the Northwood mill. How should we think about longer-term environmental liabilities associated with the site?

Yeah, Hamir, a lot of that will have to do with what happens to the site in the longer term. And, you know, at this point, we're just focused on sort of a safe wind down of Northwood pulp. You know, we'll see. But I think that's quite a ways out in terms of dealing with that. So too early to say yet, Hamir.

Okay. Fair enough. Susan, we've seen one of your peers decide to shrink its corporate presence in BC and consolidate functions in the US. Just given some of your own portfolio changes, do you see some cost-saving opportunities to perhaps do something similar?

We have no plans to move our corporate office.

Okay, great. That's all I had. I'll turn it over.

Thank you. I am showing no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Susan for closing remarks. Susan, go ahead.

Thanks Michelle and thanks all for joining the call and we'll see you next quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you very much for your participation. You may now disconnect.