AMAG Austria Metall AG (AMAG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. I think we can start. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to AMAG Austria Metall AG's conference call for the first half year of 2026. My name is Christoph Gabriel. I'm joined today by our CEO, Victor Breguncci; as well as our CFO, Claudia Trampitsch. Together, they will guide you through the development and results for the first 6 months of this year. As usual, the presentation, the press release, as well as the half year report, have been published this morning on our website under the register, Investor Relations. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin the presentation, I would like to briefly draw your attention to the disclaimer that is included in our presentation slide deck. With that said, I would now like to hand over to our CEO, Victor. He will start with the presentation. Thank you. Please start the presentation.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Christoph. Welcome, good morning, to our call of the first half of '26. So when moving to the first page, Page 3, I would like just to show, this is the official first talk to you that this -- our [ constellation ] have been working together for the last 100 days. We know each other for some time already, and this is working very well, I have to say. Alex Moser started in his new job, Chief Sales and Innovation Officer. And Claudia and I have been working already together for -- since I'm here at AMAG, but as Board members, for the last, for sure, 3 years. Good. Let's go into our summary financial performance. I give you a highlight in Page #4. But then, of course, Claudia will deep dive with you on these numbers. But important is, we have important positive information to share. Revenue, 8.2% up versus first half of last year, EUR 850 million, driven for sure for growth in the Rolling Division, but also in the LME prices, as we all have seen. But on the second level, you look at the EBITDA, which is a very important level of how we're generating cash, we see that we are above EUR 100 million, a 25% growth versus last year, which has to do, as I said before, with a very strong operational performance in Ranshofen, as I said in the end of Q1, a very positive market environment for our Canadian smelter in Alouette, and also driven by the LME price performance. So we see an EBITDA margin of almost 12%, which is an impressive growth versus the 10% of last year. When we translate this into net income after taxes, it's a more impressive result, 74% growth, which shows how the strategy that we have developed so far is really paying off, and I'll talk about this coming down in the next slide. But important is, all 3 divisions have performed positively well in the first half of '26. Free cash flow. This is where the challenge resides, minus EUR 76 million. It's a big impact mostly for building working capital to make sure that the ramp-up that we're doing in the first half takes place, but also the devaluation effect of our inventories, and the working capital that is attached to LME takes its toll on us. So we have seen that on one side, the EBITDA has positively impacted, but the free cash flow, for the moment, we are adjusting it to really reflect what we're doing in terms of growth. As a consequence, liquidity and debt, although our stability remains untouched -- we are there. We're prepared for whatever impact we have on the need of liquidity, EUR 186 million, a reduction of 30% versus last year in the first half, but indeed, stable, solid 2.7 net debt over EBITDA versus the end of '25, which was 2.3. But this is not something that keeps us worried. We are where we should be. And to finalize my financial performance summary, we are adjusting our bandwidth from EUR 170 million to EUR 190 million EBITDA versus the EUR 150 million, EUR 180 million that we had announced in the beginning of this year, based on the current performance in our Rolling Division, the situation of the aluminum market, the LME pricing, but at the same time, taking into consideration risks and the whole geopolitical tariff, inflation scenario and how this market will persist in the coming 6 months. So going a little bit on the operational performance in the first half of '26 on Page 5, we brought here some key highlights that brings why are we having this extraordinary -- or this positive performance in the first half compared to '25. So first and foremost, the successful ramp-up in Ranshofen. So we see that we are able to perform from where we were end of last year to where we are now. Q2 was a record quarter in shipments. We achieved 62,000 tonnes in this quarter in the segment Rolling, driven by strong performance in our mill productivity and -- but still remaining quality delivery performance at a strong level. And this is an important element that we would like to share with you. This ramp-up, that took place from the end of last year, and I'll tell you where it's coming from. It's also important to say that we are achieving very good levels of safety. This is something that I want to bring in every meeting we have. We are achieving a TRIFR, which is our KPI of safety, of 0.7 in the first year of '26 versus 1.3. So I give you -- when you compare ourselves to the majority of the rolling mills in the world, this is indeed a very important indicator of how we are performing in terms of keeping our work safe. Our employees come and perform their work, the task and go back home safe, and satisfied with their performance. So we are going in the right direction. This is a daily work. This is not something that changes when we achieve it. Keeping the high level of performance safety is a task of every leader in the company, but everybody in the organization. When I move to the right, order situation in the Rolling Division, we see that our strategic positioning, it's paying off, as I said. We have 2 very important rolling mill sets, [ Mill #1 and Mill #2 ], in one facility in Ranshofen. And we are being able to gain market share in specific areas where we play some premium products, which is the heat exchanger market, even driven by the data centers and the cooling material that is needed to keep the data centers cool. So we're getting some very strong position there, but also strong bottleneck limitations in North America, which drove additional demand for us, and we were able to capture. I'll talk about this later on. But not only this, we see, versus first half of last year, an improvement in the aerospace sector, which is a reflection on the build rates coming from our main OEMs, our main customers. But also, we see a slight improvement in the sentiment of the industrial side, specifically in Europe. When I move into Page 7, I bring a little bit more information on numbers. So half -- first half of '25, we had a little bit above 200,000 tonnes of shipments -- 220,000 tonnes of shipments. And in first half of '26, we are in around same level, 0.5% growth. But below the water, when we look at below this number, what changed, and then I explain. So in the metal shipments, we -- of course, we are reacting to the tariff discussions we're having between Canada and North America -- and the U.S. So a portion of our production that naturally would go into North America, into the U.S. is now coming to Europe, even to us here in Austria. We received shipments in the magnitude of 5,000 tonnes in [ consortium ] coming directly from our [indiscernible] participation. And we see that in the first half of '25, we shipped 9,000 tonnes more, but we're going to see this reflection back in the second half of '26 because we're adjusting and optimizing logistics there. In our Casting business, we performed very well in this first half, additional 2,000 tonnes. Very important margin increase in this segment as well despite the intense market for scrap, when you say scrap availability and also scrap pricing that has a direct impact on our P&L. So when you see the numbers in the back half of this presentation, you see that we are 4% below in the usage of scrap in our site, which is a reflection of how tight this market is, but also about -- also regarding mix that we produce in Ranshofen. So all in all, a very important element of our strategy. In summary, 8,500 tonnes more in the Rolling Division. We shipped 117,000 tonnes in the first 6 months, which is an 8% increase versus 2025. When I come to Page 8, I go -- we do a deep dive here on the relevant markets. This is something we wanted to share with you to give a little bit more information on how we see the market today. So when you go into the first box, we have automotive and transport. And here, I want to say is, our long-term strategy is paying off. We have been always looking at qualifications, customers that we need to develop together, being patient in developing these new customers. And we see -- when the opportunity came, we grabbed it. So we see an impressive growth into the automotive segment in our business, but also in the magnitude of 30% growth versus 2025, as you can see there. And we see that the market is driven -- CRU forecast transport growth of 4.3%. And as you see the PMI, June '26 is around 51. So we see, despite the pressure that the OEMs are feeling, reading the newspapers, all the difficulties that we see in the major OEMs, we -- for those platforms that are intense in aluminum, we are well positioned. On the second one, we have heat exchangers, very positive demand, as I said, driven by data centers, battery systems. And we are capturing all the market share opportunities we can. Our sales rose 23% in the first half versus last year, and it's driven by a very strong, not only Eurozone 51 in the PMI, but also U.S. 54, where we are also shipping globally in this segment. Aerospace, a key market for us, a positive outlook for the next 10 years. It's all a matter of supply chain, how this destocking, build rates, supply chain capabilities, the ramp-up together with our key OEMs takes place. And raw material, as we are -- with plate and sheet, we are in the beginning of the supply chain. So we have to cope with this volatility that they have in their challenging supply chain. But even though this happened, we have shipments going in the magnitude of 9% versus '25, so which is a very important element of our strategic commercial strategy. Industrial applications, this is where we have a big impact in terms of how can we ship overseas into North America. We have been successful in getting our product inside North America, but we're also taking advantage of this shift in the geopolitical battle for where the markets -- where the products are going to go. We're taking advantage of the semiconductors business in Southeast Asia, and also a more timid recovery in industrial and the machinery in Europe, specifically in Italy and Spain and Germany, not in the magnitude that we would be expecting, but we see signs of change being executed there. Packaging, a very key market to us over the history of the company. We adjusted our shipments in the first half of '26 together with the customers to -- by around 20%, which enabled us to bring this capacity in other markets where we needed the cold mill capability. But this has been all adjusted and negotiated. The market remains stable. We have capacity developed for this business, but this ability to play with the mix is an important part of our portfolio. So this is what happened in packaging. We see a stable demand, 3.3% annum in the CRU, but also in the Eurozone, the main market for us is 51 in the PMI index. So it's a good number. Last but not least, we have, on the others -- these are small tonnage markets but with very important margin that we see stability. No significant change in architectural. In the sports area, we see a little bit of volatility there. But in the end, shipments grew by a little, 3%, which is important for the overall positioning of our portfolio. And going to Page 9, we show in our mix, in our pie chart of how we ship and where we are, we saw the main growth that I mentioned before. The pie grew. And also, there is a little bit of change in the mix. Automotive and heat exchanger are positive. Relevance in our mix, aerospace, other transport and sport, there was no change. And in our mix, industrial and packaging lost a little bit of representativeness, although in all of the markets, but packaging, we grew versus 2025. So finalizing -- and then we can talk more in the Q&A, finalizing the view of where we are today. And I ask to be more transparent here on the target range. So we are very well booked until most likely the end of this year. We saw the evolution in the order intake, mainly driven for the new orders and new contracts we had in automotive, as I said before, especially in the supply chain bottlenecks in North America, but also in the market share gains that we had in heat exchanger, and the growth in aerospace and industrial, which is still very positive for us. In essence, we are finishing the first half presenting to you a positive result, but still a very positive result for what's coming in the second half of '26. I'll come back in the end. I give now to Claudia, so Claudia can go over the financial performance of the company.

Thank you, Victor. I will now give you some more details and information how that all ends up in our financial performance. First of all, I want to draw your attention on the market prices for raw materials and for aluminum that we were facing this first half. And as you can see on the slide, when you look for the prices, let's say, for the first -- for the second quarter last year and this year, but also for the first half last year and this year, in both comparisons, we saw attractive developments for our business. First of all, the aluminum price is higher than in the respective quarters last year. And also, the Midwest premium rose. This is due to U.S. tariffs, as you know, but they are also fully reflected in there. So it's built in the premiums already. And on the other side, we still saw the decreasing of the alumina price, which is a very important raw material for our Canadian smelter business. And therefore, we could gain attractive margins. When we now take all this information we gave you into how our financials came out, we -- first of all, I want to give some information on our group revenues. And here, as we already saw it in the tonnage here, you can see that we could drive our revenue up to EUR 850.7 million for the first half of this year. What does it influence? Mostly, of course, our revenues are always quite hugely impacted by the volatility or development of the aluminum price. And this also, you can see in our revenues here. So a big part compared to last year is due to aluminum price. But as Victor already mentioned before, we are not just driven by market price, but also our actions on the sales side. And here, we saw regarding mix and volume increase as well. On the other side, a decrease due to mainly FX changes, euro-U.S. dollar, in our calculation. So therefore, we end up with a revenue of EUR 850.7 million. This now brings me up to the group EBITDA. And when I give you an overall view on our group EBITDA, we can say that we had a very good EBITDA this first half of the year despite all the market circumstances we are facing. And why are we having this? There are many reasons. So first of all, Victor already mentioned, we had -- we could increase our sales. We have an operational performance that's extraordinary. We could do a ramp-up. And what we also did is not just taking the market conditions and the operational performance, but additionally, optimizing where it's possible. And one example for that is that we saw before that we had a decrease in volumes out of the Metal segment, and this is due to that we decided to logistically combine shipments which are now not happening every month when we go into Europe, but to combine it in bigger ships so that we are able to have a higher margin, but it will not occur every month, but every second or third month at the end. On the other side, we are very hard working on being also, on the financial side, efficient on our plants to look at every -- to look at our costs to make it a lean company. And this also already pays off in our results so that we see, at the end that, we could raise, compared to last half, our EBITDA by 25.4%. When you see, on the negative side, we have some influence on the -- out of valuation and rollover results, so the Metal -- this is compared to last year. And here, we have faced this year a backwardation on the forward curve on the aluminum price because when aluminum price is quite high, immediately, it was quite seen on the market as a short-term effect. And therefore, on the long side, a few months ahead, it was lower, and therefore, you have a backwardation that kicks in. And also, we had some -- last year, some higher valuation effects regarding the -- at the 30th of June, which are now lower, and this is also resulting in here. When I now go to the divisions, first of all, Metal Division, I already told you that we decided to have lower shipment volumes this half -- the first half of the year, but this will come back in the second half of the year. So that's just a temporarily a shift of these margins. And on the other hand, the production at our smelter is high. So we are -- the lower volumes are not driven by lower production, but by decisions when to ship. But nevertheless, due to the high market prices and our possibility and usage of selling to the U.S. or to Europe or even through [indiscernible] as we did it, we are able to really optimize our EBITDA in the Metal Division additionally to having attractive prices. On the Casting Division, even as it is a challenging business, as Victor said before, we could -- with being very focused on scrap availability, scrap prices, cost efficiency in this place, we could raise our EBITDA in this division there EUR 2.7 million. On the Rolling Division, we had an extraordinary EBITDA this month -- this half year. All the details regarding operations and sales, Victor already mentioned. I also want to add that also here, we are looking at our costs. We are looking at being efficient, even having a ramp-up, being efficient and driving our productivity at the rolling department, but also doing a good job at looking and evaluating energy prices and having hedges in place when needed. If we just look at the second quarter, which amounts to EUR 44 million out of the half of the year, which were EUR 101 million, we see that most of the points that are raised out for the EBITDA of the first half of the year, the same point here drove to a higher EBITDA. But for example, alone the aluminum price, 2/3 of the increase of the aluminum price compared to last year was realized in the second half -- second quarter. And as we explained in the first quarter -- after the first quarter that although the price rise -- this price was higher, it will kick in later. This is what we are now seeing that we are also having here smart hedging strategies, could participate on rising aluminum prices, and this is now the case, and you see it in the second quarter. Other than that, there is nothing specific we say that in the second quarter to be mentioned additionally. In our net income after taxes, so when we look further down our P&L, we have no unusual extraordinary topics to be reported. So it's just influenced by the positive trend in the EBITDA, but we have no additional topics here to mention. We heard before, and it's given that when we have high aluminum prices, that does not only affect our revenues and our EBITDA. It also affects our working capital because of higher prices of raw material, but also higher valuation of inventories, and for sure, as the numbers are higher, higher receivables in our balance sheet. And when you have -- as we have it in our case, you have, at the one hand, this attractive market prices, which also lead to higher valuation. And on the other side, a rising in orders and production and tonnage should be delivered, which means we have to build up our stock to be able to produce this in time. We have 2 main topics that affect our cash flow this year temporarily that you can see. And this is something that we or I -- in our sensitivities and in our liquidity management, are preparing for. So when we have both of it in 1 year, like we have it now to have a ramp-up in the rolling mill and the higher prices, this affects our cash flow. But even though we have now a free cash flow that's not -- that's negative, the operating cash flow at minus EUR 57 million and the free cash flow of minus EUR 76 million, I can tell you that nothing that worries me because I exactly know where it's coming from. It's something that we could have calculated -- we had calculated before. We were prepared for that, so our liquidity management preparing for that, and know that this is -- as it's driven by action in our group that will be paying off in the future, in the near future, we really could deal with this and see us, even though it's for the first half of '26, a negative cash flow as a positive -- the positive results will occur in the future. And Also, as I said before, we were able due to be prepared for temporarily negative cash flows, also be able to take decisions like selling out of the Metal Division later on and making more revenue or margin out of that. Having said that, when we look at our net financial debt, it's -- as we already said before, our net debt -- EBITDA to net debt was rising a little bit to 2.7, but it's still stable. We know where it's coming from. It's under control, and we have all our possible measures in place so that we can very much use all the opportunities the market and sales are now facing to raise the EBITDA and the revenues we can make this half of the year and the next half of the year as well. When we -- to finalize it, when we look at our equity, equity is stable. We could raise the equity by 3%. And equity ratio is a little bit lower than at the end of the year, also given the increase in total assets because of, I would say, the higher valuation I mentioned before, and still, yes, as we said, high level and very good results for us. Finally, I give you a short overview on the key ESG indicators. And we always want to talk about our scrap utilization rates, our energy consumption, and most importantly, already mentioned the safety KPIs. And all of this sounds solid range, good level, energy consumption going down. So we are -- also on the ESG side, we have a very strong performance. And given all the effects of having a ramp-up and producing more than last year, we are really on a very good side on that. Now, I hand over for Victor to tell you what -- out of what we have had in the first half, we expect for the second half of 2026.

Thank you very much, Claudia, for running through with everybody the numbers for the first half. Let me give you what we -- how we see the year of 2026. As I said in the beginning, we are adjusting our guidance to EUR 170 million to EUR 190 million based on 3 main elements. All divisions are performing well. We are seeing stable production in Alouette for the Metal side, the attractive price levels of aluminum and the benefit of the alumina price, but still being impacted, as Claudia mentioned, from the metal lag and also the falling -- the backwardation that we're living today. So this is to be observed because this impacts the P&L, in the end very, very heavily, depending on how it changes, on all the geopolitical topics we're having. Casting, stable, performing very well. A challenging market, especially driven by the automotive industry in Europe, but we see challenges in all levels of platforms, but we are able to capture the needed level of scrap and absorbing the price fluctuations on the scrap at the same time, but most importantly, is capturing the prices and driving the cost efficiency. So we see stability in what we deliver until the end of the year, also a positive trend. And in Rolling, it's very good teamwork in sense of delivering the orders that we need to have so that we can really ramp up the site in the right way, but also the excellent operational performance, quality, delivery performance and stability, having the right mix, and again, also an important level of focus on cost. All the 3 drivers -- all the business are driving positive trends. So we adjusted to EUR 170 million to EUR 1 million (sic) [ EUR 190 million ]. When we go to the second page of the outlook, I need to bring what makes us be a little bit more cautious, which is, market prices can change, especially for metal, from one day to the other, depending on how the whole geopolitical situation happens. There could be stronger impact on our business when we're shipping into North America, rolled products, where the tariffs today have an important impact. So how this communicating basis would happen, and especially, if there is an installation in the Middle East, what will be the availability of metal coming into Europe, which could be an opportunity for a company that has a very intense usage of scrap in the mix. So we're confident that the guidance is a realistic and positive one, addressing all the elements that were mentioned before. So with no further ado, I think it's time now for the questions that you might have. And thank you very much for your attention on the last minutes. Christoph?

I think we can hand over to [indiscernible] the introduction of how the Q&A session works. Thank you.

Thank you very much for the presentation. [Operator Instructions] And we move to the first participant, Patrick Speck.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Good. First of all, congrats on another strong quarter. My first question is -- maybe starting with one of your latest comments on the risk factors. My first question is, we see a strong increase in -- especially in gas prices recently, especially in Germany. I don't know the situation in Austria, to be honest. But how do you see this going? Because such a strong increase so far, and you are heavily relying on energy. Is this fully regarded in your guidance?

Thank you for your question. Yes, it is regarded in our guidance. We are managing the gas reality very closely. This is there. I have to say, when you compare electricity power with gas, gas is 2/3 of our demand of energy, right? So in the end, we manage this very closely. I see an equivalent in the whole European market on the pricing of gas. So this is not something that I would lose effectiveness because we're all in the same boat. But we have a very strong management on that. And this level of gas pricing that we see is reflected in our guidance. So if I answer your question, this is our answer.

Very good. Secondly, you mentioned a strong development in the automotive -- or coming demand from the automotive sector. This is a very positive surprise to me because, I mean, we know that the sector is struggling. How is that coming? You mentioned there are bottlenecks in the U.S. Are you gaining market share from competitors? Or yes, could you elaborate a bit on that?

Yes, of course. Yes. Well, first of all, we have to look at the market when we look at overall, right? Automotive as a whole has been impacted, most of the OEMs. But we have to look at the platforms in those OEMs that are in aluminum intensity, which has a different dynamics. So we are well positioned in the platforms that are growing. This is one answer. But we recognize the difficulties that our main customers in Europe are having, especially in Germany. And we work side-by-side with them to see how to compensate this volatility and this fluctuation. There is supply -- there were supply chain bottlenecks, driven by not a positive, how can I say, positioning of one of our competitors. I don't like to address that, that way, but it is a reality, that gave the market in the U.S. a reality of the needed material coming from outside the domestic market. And that's why I said that our strategy paid off that we've been working side-by-side with these key OEMs for a long time. And when the opportunity came, we were ready to absorb that fluctuation and get the additional tonnage that we absorbed in the first half of this year. So if you look in our guidance in Q2 -- in Q1, when we did the press conference in February, we already addressed that opportunistic -- or the opportunity that's coming from automotive we already see in the end of last year, and it materialized, as we said. So we're gaining market share. We're sustaining possibly. This is something we're developing right now, what could stay for '27. But the other side of the equation is the heat exchangers that is driven by automotive as well, but mostly by data centers, as I said before, that needs battery cooling. And this is where we're really gaining market share. This is a very strong sales execution process. And in both sides, we were well positioned from a capability and a quality and a certification point of view.

Understood. Next one is on the valuation effect. I was a bit surprised that this was such a -- had such a negative impact in the second quarter. We now see a stabilizing aluminum price recently. So how do you see this effect going in the third quarter so far?

First of all, it's not just that everything of this materializes in the second quarter, but it's the difference to the second quarter last year. So it's -- even as we had positive effects last year, it seems to be even a bigger valuation effect than we would show if we just have the quarterly results. So it's more out of the waterfall. But mainly what's in there is that we have valuation effects that are affected by many different things. And I just point out a few so that it's not just the metal price. So it's -- I would say, 1/3 is out of the, let's say, the metal lag, the backwardation, the rolling over of metal hedges. But there is also included a part for valuation of -- FX valuation. And we have there, the valuation of risk -- risk valuation of onerous contracts. So, that we -- the risk provision where we see the -- for IFRS, we have to take provisions if we have [ proof of ] negative contracts. And this also always influences the position we have in the valuation effect. So it's not just driven by the market. So now, to your question for the second half of the year, there -- I also want to split that, for example, for the backwardation and metal lag in this part. We now see -- for example, in April-May, we saw a backwardation for a few -- just if you look a few months forward in '26, for minus $40 at the peak, and now we are at minus $5. So we are putting this into our sensitivities, I would say. So we have [ the position ] there. At the moment, it's lower. For the year-end, we took some sensitivities on that because we saw this year, it's been quite volatile. This market is quite -- the price -- aluminum prices at the moment, not only driven by the demand in the market and the shortage because of the Middle East, but also headline driven by the Middle East conflict. So it could be that there is still a lot of volatility until the year-end. And some -- fourth quarter, it also could be the part where we do -- where we have long-term contracts that could also perhaps affect our valuation effect. But this is all implemented in the guidance and shows the chances and risk we are taking there.