Alcoa Corporation (AA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, and good afternoon. I would like to introduce Molly Beerman, the Executive Vice President and CFO of Alcoa for our fireside chat today. And I believe you have some opening remarks, you'd like to start with.

Yes. Thank you, Tommy. Thanks to everyone attending here in person and listening in on the web access. This is my first Morgan Stanley Conference in Laguna and now I can see why my predecessor was such a big fan. Let me open with a few comments about Alcoa and our environment just to set the stage for the discussion. Alcoa has a proud history dating back over 135 years to when Charles Martin Hall invented the first commercially viable means of making aluminum and effectively kicked off the modern aluminum industry and founded Alcoa. We quickly moved into mining, refining and producing aluminum. We now have the -- we're one of the world's largest bauxite miners. We have the longest alumina position outside of China, and we have our aluminum smelters located close to the major markets. We're a commodity company, and we recognize that we need to produce a high-quality product at a low cost. Increasingly, our business is subject to ESG considerations and we believe that Alcoa is well positioned on the sustainability forefront for 3 primary reasons: first, the way we make our products. Our sites are the majority are ASI certified, the Aluminum Stewardship Initiative. We have products across the -- sorry. We have the largest and most carbon-efficient refineries. We're proud of the way we mine bauxite and our rehabilitation practices and our aluminum smelters are running at 86% renewable energy. Our Scope 1 and 2 emissions for the company as a whole put us in the best quartile. Number two, the products themselves. We have a low carbon line that we call Sustana. We have EcoSource, which is the world's only low-carbon aluminum. We have EcoDura, which is a recycled aluminum product with 50% recycled content. And then we have EcoLum, our low-carbon aluminum product. We also are on the forefront of innovation. We just introduced a new alloy aluminum intended for the mega castings industry. Third, we have an ambition for net 0 by 2050. And we have the interim targets along the way to measure our progress. And we have a technology road map to enable our vision to sustain the aluminum industry for the future. Within our technology road map, we have ELYSIS. This is our joint venture with Rio Tinto. There we expect to deploy inert anodes and completely remove carbon emissions from the smelting process. We're building our first industrial scale cell, expect to have that complete this year and to run the technology and improve it for in next year. We have our refinery of the future. It's a suite of R&D projects with a common objective to reduce the carbon footprint, to cut water usage, and to eliminate or reduce bauxite residue. We have ASTRAEA. This is our recycling project. It will take the lowest quality scrap and convert it to the highest quality and purity aluminum. Finally, on the financial front, I'd like to highlight some of our progress over the last several years. Our balance sheet is much stronger. We're running a much more economically viable portfolio. We work to fix, curtail, close or sell a number of our sites and we've used the proceeds from any sales to improve the business and to reduce our liabilities. Our proportional net debt is over $2 billion lower than it was in 2020. We have no significant debt maturities until 2027. We've been consistently paying a dividend since the end of 2021, and we've completed $650 million in share repurchases. Our capital allocation framework has made consistent over the last few years. We use our capital expenditures to improve and sustain our business. We use our excess cash for 3 purposes in no particular order. First, to further improve our portfolio, to position ourselves for future growth and to provide cash returns to shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Tommy for questions.

All right. Thank you, Molly. I think we're going to kick it off with more just a general discussion on what you're seeing in the market globally and maybe more specifically in China in terms of supply-demand. What are the key drivers right now you're seeing on both supply demand fronts? And maybe if you can it give a little color on what's the stimulus in China means for aluminum demand.

Okay. I'll start with China and some of the activity we're seeing there. We still see China as a net importer of primary aluminum, primarily as a result of the first half disruptions in Yunnan. And we also saw sustained growth there. We're seeing positives in automotive, and we see positives in infrastructure coming out of China as well. We haven't seen on the supply side. We do see Yunnan restarting capacity, but not as much as we originally expected. We do see the Chinese policy support is incentivizing the sectors there where they're providing support auto, infrastructure, other transportation.

Okay. Great. And in terms of supply in China, in particular in the Yunnan province, which makes up around, let's say, 7% of supply globally. Recently, there's been a lot of rainfall shortages, which is important because the aluminum industry really there is on the back of hydro power. Do you think this is going to be more of a reoccurring issue going forward? Or do you think this is more kind of a one-and-done issue?

Tommy, if you look across the production loss in Yunnan over the last 3 years, we see that about 15% to 25% of their capacity has been interrupted by the power disruptions. So while Yunnan is bringing up solar and wind power as well as restarting some of the coal-fired power plants to address supply issues. We don't see immediate improvement there. We expect the supply to stay somewhat constrained.

Okay. Great. And for those renewables, do you see that kind of helping out in, say, in the next 2 to 3 years, 12 to 6 months? What's the timeframe there for the additional power to bring online?

We do see that taking a period of time those renewable projects take both time and resources to build and so we look at -- when we look at Yunnan's capacity and about the Chinese smelting capacity, we wouldn't expect them to exceed 42 million to 43 million metric tons.

Okay. Great. And then moving on to kind of the LME inventories. What are you seeing both off and on warrant and in particular, can you maybe talk a bit about the growing percentage of the inventory levels being Russian and what that means for the aluminum price?

Okay. When we look at the current level of on warrant aluminum, in the LME. We do see, when you compare back to 2022 level, that is only about half of what we were seeing in '21 and 1/3 of what we are seeing in 2020. So historically low levels. Now that said, in the third quarter of 2022, we started to see demand wane and the LME levels have come up a bit. So we're about 0.5 million metric tons now in the LME, and that compares to the lows that we saw in August of '22 at about 277,000 tons. We see a similar story in the off-warrant inventories. So low demand in comparison to prior year -- sorry, low levels in comparison to prior years, but getting slightly elevated now on weak rest of the world demand. When you talk about the aluminum metal within the LME, that's now up to 81%. And we see further stockpiling coming. If you dial back to those numbers. So I think in May, it was about 50%. And in June, mid-60%. So the build continues of Russian metal in the LME. We do worry that the LME price reference will be relegated to the price for Russian metal that is now unwanted by most consumers and producers.

Great. I think the last question we'll have just in the general market before we move on to company specifics is, I'd say, maybe over the last 6 to 12 months, there's been a lot of talk about carbon tariffs, maybe potentially replacing Section 232 in the United States. Can we get your thoughts on that?

We don't see near-term changes in the 232 tariffs. However, the GSA, the global arrangement on sustainable steel and aluminum may change that, may impact those tariffs. We hope that the -- both the U.S. and the European Union will use their partnership under the global agreement to really focus on reduction of carbon emissions as well as to protect the domestic industries from unfair competition that comes from the subsidized economies. So we expect the global arrangement should improve the competitiveness for those economies that are under following market behaviors and to exclude the non-market economies, those that are subsidized. And we also expect that, that will remove all trade barriers between the partners to the global arrangement.

Okay. Great. Thank you. So going more into the company specifics. What are your current order book levels looking like? Where are you seeing strength, weakness in what regions?

Yes. So we're seeing strength in automotive for our foundry product, and that's primarily on increasing vehicle production. We're also seeing strength in our rod product. That's in the electrical, the build-out of infrastructure for the energy transition. So we have a solid order book on rod as well. We do see weakness in building and construction, and that's, of course, on the back of high inflation and high interest rates. And then packaging, after being pretty strong during the pandemic, that's fallen off somewhat seeing lower demand there for slab product, primarily because of higher inventories through the supply chain and packaging.

Okay. And then in terms of near-term catalysts for demand, what are you seeing? Is it going to be mainly driven by some government incentives like the Inflation Reduction Act and transitioning to green energy. Or what do you see as the main ones coming up?

Yes. We see demand coming in electric vehicles, probably the primary source. We also see the infrastructure changes for the energy transition as enabling additional demand. And we do expect that in the long run that packaging will pick up as well. We see consumers preferring recyclable content. We'd rather have an aluminum can here versus the plastic that doesn't recycle.

We'll make sure that for next year. Okay. Moving on this has kind of been one of the hottest topics amongst our investor base, I'd say, this year. And it's kind of -- can you maybe give us a bit of an update on the mine approval plan process in Western Australia. And for those who don't know, maybe give a little bit of background on some of the operational issues that are persisting at the moment.

So right now, it's the top priority of the company to work on our annual mine approvals in Western Australia. We are in a period of uncertainty regarding the timing and the outcome of this process. It's important to recognize that we've been operating in Western Australia for over 60 years without any negative impact to the drinking water. However, we do recognize that we need to step up to the new expectations of stakeholders and the environmental concerns in our process of talking to the regulators to secure the mine approvals. We are making commitments in terms of improving our protection of the drinking water, moving our mining further away from the water sources, increasing the rate of rehab and also taking more active management of our social and environmental issues.

Okay.

If you look at our guidance, so in the second quarter, we actually had a financial impact related to moving to a lower bauxite grade. We've done that to extend the mining during extended long -- during the extended approval process that did have an impact of $45 million on the second quarter in comparison to the first quarter. And we've guided that impact will be about $55 million in the third quarter. So a little bit worse because we have depleted some of the higher quality bauxite. Now we're also working very actively to mitigate those ongoing cost impacts as we move forward. Both refineries that are taking bauxite from the Huntly mine are performing better than expected. They do have -- producing at a higher rate than we had envisioned. So we're also implementing cost savings measures. And so that should work the $55 million down that impact over future quarters, and we'll guide to that as that -- as those savings programs take hold.

Okay. So would it be a fair assumption to assume that 3Q of this year will be like the high watermark in terms of costs from this approval process?

I would expect that we're going to continuously mitigate that impact, yes.

Understood. And then maybe kind of looking more into the future of Alcoa, maybe can we talk a little bit more about like ELYSIS, in particular, like how is the construction of the prototype cells at the Alma smelter -- sorry, Alma smelter going, yes.

Yes. So we are building the commercial scale sells at Rios plant in Alma and that construction should conclude at the end of this year. And then next year, we'll run those cells to prove the technology. Both partners are very engaged in the process, and we'd like to develop the plans for the installation in our sites. And then we'll look to possible licensing options after that, but no decisions have been made on licensing. ELYSIS is a technology that, again, uses inert anodes to completely remove all carbon emissions from the process -- from the smelting process.

And once a smelter is converted to ELYSIS, can you give us maybe, at a high level at least, kind of what the economics will look like relative to say this smelter today?

Yes. So once it's running, you should see about a 15% cost reduction in an ELYSIS smelter and about a 10% improvement in your production levels. So the economics are favorable under ELYSIS. I should have mentioned earlier that ELYSIS is designed for either a retrofit of an existing potline or a new potline and this technology can be scaled depending on the size of the potline.

Okay. And in terms of maybe CapEx for both a new smelter or retrofit, can you give us any color there?

We're still working on the CapEx. It will be significant, but we believe we have the ability to pace it over time, but it will not be a giant hit for any one year. And honestly, our expectation is those expenditures would come after 2025 or later.

Okay. Great. And maybe the last one on ELYSIS. What's the -- what are the most near-term catalysts we should be looking for, like any sort of announcement -- sorry, upcoming?

Now the next announcements really will be coming next year as we prove the technology. We're continuing to -- we're getting the no-carbon aluminum now is being sold to customers. Our aluminum is being used in the wheels, fairly Audi e-tron and several other products. But we're still at small quantities now. We would expect to have larger quantities 2 years after the installation in the site.

Okay, great. And while we're on the topic of new technologies, can you maybe provide any updates and on maybe like refinery of the future of ASTRAEA, which we expect maybe over the next say, 6 to 12 months?

Yes. So both the refinery of the future and ASTRAEA are R&D projects without defined timelines right now. So the refinery of the future -- again, it's a suite of R&D concept. So mechanical vapor recompression, electric calcination, all of these efforts are working together, again, on those objectives to improve the carbon footprint, reduce our water and to hopefully eliminate bauxite waste from the process. On ASTRAEA, that again, is our movement into recycling. And there we're able to accept really low-quality scrap from either post-consumer or post-industrial use and convert that to high-grade aluminum. And we expect that will be important in recycling because it can be added at the high grade, the high purity. It can be added to other recycled content to improve it and [indiscernible] operation.

Okay. And if successful, do you think this could be just at large for the aluminum industry like a major contributor to supply going forward?

We believe all of the -- all of our -- all 3 of our technologies really have the opportunity to transform the aluminum industry.

Okay. And maybe moving on to some more -- the kind of like the portfolio transformation. Do you guys believe that you're in a comfortable position for the portfolio. There's other assets that maybe you see there's opportunities to curtail or sell or...

Yes. So we're continuing through our portfolio review. We announced the beginning in October 2019. It's a 5-year review, so that would have us concluding next year. Through this process, we look to either substantially improve, curtail, close or sell our operational sites. And we've had very good success in the review some of our sites, we've actually sold and used those proceeds to plow those back into the company to improve the company and to reduce debt.

Okay. Great. And then maybe in terms of some of the assets you're ramping again like Alumar or San Ciprián. Can you give an update on how that's going, when we should expect them to be kind of fully operational?

Okay. So the Alumar smelter in Brazil is under restart now. At the end of June, we are about 60% of capacity. However, recently, we did slow the new pot starts there, basically wanting to focus on stabilizing the pot lines as well as rebuilding some of the infrastructure at the plant and growing the knowledge and skills of the staff. So we will continue at a slow and measured pace for Alumar focusing really on the stability of the lines and the safety of the employees there. But I expect you'll see slow and steady progress out of Alumar from here forward. The San Ciprián smelter is not scheduled to restart until early '24. It's a very -- the agreement that we had with the workers there. It's a very slow restart. We'll only bring up about 6% of the pots initially, but we have an agreement to get to 100% by October of '25. For the San Ciprián restart, we did secure renewable power contracts that cover about 50% of the power supply, those are wind contracts. Those wind contracts of the wind development is still in process. And so we're watching the permitting and developing process to make sure that, that availability of the power under those wind farms will be available for our restart.

Okay. Great. And where do you expect to get the additional 50% of supply for energy for San Ciprián.

Yes. We are still working on the contracts for the remaining 50%.

And that will also be renewable?

Our goal is to have renewal, yes.

Okay. And then maybe moving on from the operations. Maybe can we go -- talk a little bit more about capital returns, like how you see buybacks and dividends going forward?

Yes. So we have been consistently paying dividends since the end of 2021. It is at a level that's, I think, appropriate for the market that we're in today. Obviously, our board watches that carefully. We have very active discussions about dividend returns. I mentioned we've been able to repurchase $650 million in Alcoa shares over the last few years and repurchases -- further repurchases would be dependent on excess cash and market conditions.

Okay. Great. Is there anything that we haven't discussed yet that you'd like to kind of highlight or ...

I'll just say that we remain very bullish on the long-term view for aluminum. We think we're a great product for the future, and we believe we're a company that's well positioned on sustainability and well positioned to deliver into the future.

Okay. Great. Well, thank you for your time today. We really appreciate it, and yes, thanks again for coming to the Laguna for the first time.

Thank you.

Thank you.