Hulamin Limited (HLM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. I am Mark Gounder, CEO of Hulamin and welcome to our half year results presentation, where Pravashni, our CFO, and I will take you through our performance for the interim period and financial outcomes. We will also provide an update on our simplification strategy that we launched 2 years ago and details on our market-driven capital allocation plan. We will close with an outlook for the remainder of this year and thereby thereafter answer any questions that you may have. At this point, I invite you to type in your questions as we progress through the presentation. Zero harm to our employees is critical in the success of Hulamin. In line with our safety always culture, I will begin by covering our progress on improving safety in our business. There has been an overall improvement in our LTI rate year-on-year. We experienced 2 LTIs in our smaller divisions, extrusions and containers while Rolled products is currently more than a year without an LTI. We continue to drive safety awareness at all levels by strong, visible and proactive management. The first half of 2024 has been tough with us moving from a low base in trading conditions experienced in second half of last year, particularly in the export market. In line with our strategy, our local market grew by 7% year-on-year with can sales making up 67% of local sales. Our European market remained short-term constraint, while our U.S. export plate market experienced a strong recovery. The continued weaker rand-dollar exchange positively impacted our financial performance. The emerging global protectionism market trends in the form of [ CBAM ] and increased recycling content requirements remain a key risk for Hulamin, with appropriate mitigations and investments being integrated into our core strategic direction. I will share more later when we discuss our capital allocation program. On the operational front, Phase 1 of the wide canbody investment was completed during the integrated shut in June and July. We successfully built up inventory of more than 8,000 tonnes to support our customers while we completed the shut. We continue with our focus on executing our capital plan would spend increasing by 114% with ZAR 99 million allocated to our strategic market-driven capital. Our performance in extrusion was disappointing as we continue to experience challenging trading conditions impacting volumes by 15%. The result in financial outcomes were that our overall normalized EBIT was down by 27% year-on-year, but significantly higher than second half of last year. Our gearing at 38% has been impacted by inventory build and capital investment. With our maintained profitability over the last 2 years, net asset value improved by 8%. I will now hand over to Pravashni to take you through our financial results.

Thank you, Mark. While the results show a decrease from the first half of 2023, they have improved when compared to the most recent period, the second half of 2023. Although we face challenges with a weaker global market affecting our exports in the second half of 2023 and into the first quarter of 2024. Export demand began to recover in the latter part of the first half of 2024. By June, demand had recovered. Looking at our key highlights when compared to the first half of 2023. Group revenue was 6% down, impacted by lower volumes and the export pricing pressure of the second half of 2023. Rolled product sales volume at 87,000 tonnes being 3% lower primarily due to discontinuing our low-margin hotband product during the first half of 2023. The outcome was normalized EBITDA declining 19% to ZAR 323 million. When comparing these key highlights to the second half of 2023, Group revenue was up 9%. Rolled product sales volume was 11% higher, and normalized EBITDA was 76% higher. On the positive, we continued with our strategic focus on market-driven capital spend. With generated EBITDA being reinvested in strategic capital spend being 114% higher year-on-year. Net debt closed at ZAR 1.3 billion, resulting in debt to equity being 10.2% higher impacted by our strategic decision to use our balance sheet to increase the inventory holdings as we prepared for the June-July integrated shut. Debt reduction remains a priority. And we will take you through our strategic focus in relation to working capital management in our second half. We will cover this in more detail in upcoming slides. With the focus placed on improvements noted from the lower base of the second half of 2023, into the first half of 2024, with a significant step change. As covered in previous slides, normalized EBITDA was down 19% at ZAR 343 million. The impact of softer global demand was offset by rationalized product mix allowing for capacity to be prioritized towards local markets and stable conversion cost base. Considering the external impact, the 3% weaker rand-dollar exchange rate was insufficient to offset the impact by rising inflation and commodity pricing, resulting in a net negative impact of ZAR 66 million to normalized EBITDA. While under control, there was a marginal decline of 4%, primarily driven by the strong sales mix with over 55% local, coupled with strong plate demand having grown by 32%, contributed positively increasing normalized EBITDA by ZAR 111 million made up of ZAR 98 million mix and ZAR 13 million conversions. This was offset by the continued focus on our simplification strategy impacted Rolled product sales volumes with 8,000 discontinued low-margin hotband from H1 2023 to allow for appropriate prioritization of available plant capacity, resulting in normalized EBITDA being down ZAR 40 million. The allocated and rationalized mix benefit was offset by pricing affected by the challenging trading conditions experienced in H2 of 2023 having continued into H1 2024, on the export market, resulting in normalized EBITDA being down by ZAR 54 million. Admin expenses after inflation remains relatively flat with a marginal increase of ZAR 1 million year-on-year. The net gain from remeasurement of previously held investments of ZAR 17 million was offset by the 2023 insurance claims settlement of ZAR 24 million. Extrusions continue to operate under challenging trading conditions, impacting both volumes and margins being ZAR 22 million lower than last year. We will cover in more detail around our recovery plans as part of our operational review. Generation of annual free cash flows to fund our strategic capital investments remains a key and critical part for our business. This is enabled by focusing on the following fundamentals: maintaining positive EBITDA generation through simplification, rationalize mix and stable conversion cost base, and effective working capital management, targeting improved metal and inventory turns. For the period under review, the generated EBITDA of ZAR 712 million was reinvested primarily in inventory and capital expenditure aligned to our strategic objective. Working capital was driven by our strategic decision to leverage our balance sheet to build up sufficient inventory holdings at 48,000 tonnes being up 8,000 tonnes as we prepared for the June-July integrated shut to our wide canbody investments. The focus on H2 is to reduce our debt levels to an appropriate and maintainable level driven by the following initiatives. EBIT performance focused on optimizing and capitalizing on the strong local canbody and automotive demand, coupled with export plates in light of the CCL2 fire having impacted our export can stock. Reduction in inventory holdings and improved stock turns through reduced metal intake and reliable plant performance to reduce inventory down to around for 44,000 tonnes by year-end. This is expected to release significant cash flows and improved cash conversion. The focus remains on optimizing our debtor's mix. as we shift towards more local, an effective balance between exports and local invoicing timing is critical to ensure sustainable cash conversion. We remain committed to maintain an appropriate working capital mix in order to support our order book. This was evidenced by our investment in the right mix of inventory as of June to support and facilitate a successful start-up from the June-July integrated shut. This required an increased inventory holding of 48,000 tonnes with an aim to reduce our targeted levels of approximately 44,000 tonnes through strategies previously highlighted. Our core strategic objective is to invest in market-driven capital expenditure with a 114% increase in capital spend as to continue targets in critical growth areas such as local canbody markets, improved UBC consumption which is aligned to market margin improvement and environmental sustainability requirements and unlocking cold rolling capacities and efficiencies. Some of the critical projects driving the increased spend on strategic slides include side include white canbody Phase 1 of ZAR 44 million, UBC screening and bailing installation of ZAR 26 million to increase our UBC absorption capacity, which was Phase 1 of cheap metal utilization and capability upgrades in S5, support efficiencies of ZAR 18 million as part of our cold rolling capacity and capability improvement to support the demand of our simplified mix. The substantial increase in our intentional maintenance and risk CapEx is due to our focus on client reliability and critical asset risk mitigation strategy. This resulted in group investing in critical spares due to long lead times and obsolete asset mitigation to support the growing demand of ZAR 54 million. Further to this, a large portion of the CapEx was invested in health and safety as we drive behavior change towards zero harm to employees of ZAR 43 million. Mark will now provide us with an overview of operational overview.

Thank you, Pravashni. Kicking off with Rolled products. We continue to drive improvement in local sales, which is up 6% from last year. Our simplification strategy continued to contribute positively to our overall mix, with capacity being allocated towards our core streams being canbody, can end tab making up 54% of our total sales in production. This further enabled a strong scrap absorption rate at 22.6% of total production being up 7%. I would share more later on how we're going to improve our recycled content. With our extrusion business, volumes are down 15%, impacted by market conditions, lower automotive volumes and operational challenges. Our view for the remainder of the year is the plant operational challenges have been addressed. Focus is now on capturing market opportunities, review cost -- our cost base to improve competitiveness and execution of our plans to capture remelt efficiencies. Moving to our strategic progress and focusing on our growth opportunities. Our strategic focus and business model remains unchanged. We believe the turnaround and strategic review embarked on a few years back has laid a strong foundation to enable our business in being agile in responding to the market dynamics. Our expected outcomes and core principles are primary on executing our market-driven capital investment and driving a reduced cost base to enable global competitiveness in our efforts to support margin step change. This supports our strategic investments in wide canbody to support the structured growth in the local can market. A strong focus in recycling used beverage cans will improve efficiencies and reduce our cost of production. In short, we have moved our business to be more customer-centric and to respond to our customer needs while tailoring our capital spend accordingly. Thus, our decision to focus on the local canbody market. And I'll expand more as I go through the other slides. So let's start here. It is essential for any capital investments to understand the current state of the market first. Based on data of 2023, the consumption was approximately 66,000 tonnes and growing at a CAGR of 5%. Based on our capacity, Hulamin supplied 60% of the market, which included our narrow alternative to displace imports. In simple terms, the wide canbody allows our customers to make more cans from a wider coil, hence, greater efficiency and lower cost per tonne for them. With us moving to being customer-centric, we currently have commitments from our valuable customers to supply the narrow -- totaled narrow spec instead of the wide import in anticipation of completion of our wide capacity investment next year. We are predicting or anticipating to -- for our market share in 2024 to be greater than 70%. The market opportunity for Hulamin is to capture the current imported wide specs, which is approximately 23,000 tonnes going into the plant. So what is the opportunity? And where our opportunity is due is 7 out of the 9 can lines in South Africa are and will be designed to use wide what canbody calls, allowing for improved efficiency. This investment will position Hulamin well to capture the structured growth in the local canbody demand and replace parts of the imports. This is in line with our market strategy of being able to supply approximately 85% of the local market as we go into our plan. To further increase demand will enable a pull of increased UBC or, should I say, huge beverage cans, absorption and melting capacity, adding another line of approximately 15,000 tonnes at Hulamin. Now why is it important also for our customers? And by us aligned to be customer-centric and continued support for the local beverage can industry. through just-in-time supply, it will provide valuable relief on working capital pressure whilst supporting sustained growth and improving operational efficiencies for our valuable customers. The other huge positive is expected to grow and develop the used beverage can recycling ecosystem in South Africa. Now this is something that we at Hulamin are very passionate about. And it's worthwhile reflecting on this slide. Why is recycling so important to Hulamin. It supports our value chain through environmental responsibility, community development, economic value-added transformation and green market development. Our mission is for every can in South Africa to be recycled, thereby decreasing our carbon footprint for South Africa as a whole, while contributing positively towards the value chain of employment. In summary, the wide canbody capacity expansion is made up of 3 phases. Phase 1 has been completed in June. Phase 2 is scheduled for quarter 4 this year and Phase 3 next year. Production is planned for the during quarter 4 next year. Market-driven capital investment to match the wide -- the capabilities of canbody of imports, drives local sales to increase approximately 36% of to close to 70,000 tonnes over the period of the plan. The total local sales mix will increase to 60% where we're currently at 54% of the local market. At this point, I want to remind you where Hulamin was more than 2 years ago. We were a company where our local sales were between 30% to 40% and the balance being export. But we've transitioned over the last 2 years, we're currently right now, 54% of our sales are local. The increased canbody sales also allows additional scrap utilization, further lowering our cost base. That plan on the increased used beverage can absorption, Phase 1, which entails the UBC bailing and cleaning, which has been completed allows us to move from 6,000 tonnes to next year, 15,000 tonnes and then a further Phase 2 plan for right now in 2026 capital is to take us from 15,000 tonnes to 28,000 tonnes, ultimately increasing the shareholder value for Hulamin as a whole. On the outlook for the remainder of this year, as I said earlier, Phase 2 of the market-driven wide canbody implementation to be completed. Local market conditions predicted to be -- remained resilient throughout the remainder of the 6 months while export demand has recovered. Export can and tab production will resume mid-September post our Line 2 repairs, which is progressing well currently, and we're on track. Continued cost focus, working capital and efficiency improvement with net debt reduction being our priority. The group continues to focus on stable plan performance and effective working capital management. Our road map remains unchanged and is currently being implemented. At this point, I will pause to -- and I invite you to submit your questions, and then we will -- I'll have Norma reading out the questions to us. Norma, do you have some questions?

Thank you very much, Mark. Yes, we do have a couple of questions coming up. The first question is from Mr. [ Walker Skitter ]. It reads, Mark, I see that nearly half of your profits in the first half of 2024 have come from the mid-to-late -- it's ZAR 152 million. Is it already now relatively safe to say that Hulamin will not have the privilege of another metal lag? And then, Mark, the question actually comes like in different branches. If you don't mind that I just pause and then answer that one, and then I'll continue with the question.

Maybe continue the question, and I'll tackle both at the same time.

Okay. And then we'll not have a pressure for another metal lag profits in the second half of 2024. So would it be safe to say that Hulamin will make a loss again in the second half of 2024 as it did in 2023, with no volume growth possible in this period. And what tonnage do you now expect for the second half of this year to achieve, taking the fire into account in the rolling mill?

Good morning, Mr. [ Forgo ]. Always a pleasure talking to you, and you're looking forward to further engaging you -- with you this week. So let me tackle your first question with regards to metal price lag. In the last 2 years, we've been adamant that our key focus area is on normalized profit. And we basically have freed up our inventory flow by our simplification strategy to be able to manage the metal price lag. I agree with you based on predicted numbers right now, that the forecast of the LME trend is going to be partially negative going into the second 6 months. So our key focus as Hulamin is to be how can we quickly turn over our inventory. And that's going to be detailed plans that we are going to focus on to be able to reduce the impact of metal price lag loss during the second part of the 6 months. The next focus area you mentioned with regards to volumes. And I think in my outlook, I highlighted that local market continues to be resilient and export market has recovered. As per our trading statement, the fire we had on the Line 2, coating line, will definitely impact our volumes. But at the same time, we are working -- we are insured and we're working together with our insurers to ensure that the BI claim is settled during this year. Getting back to our volumes, and we're anticipating right now, firstly, strong mix with our core products, that's how we've continued our strategy on focus of our simplification strategy. So right now, we are looking at anticipated similar volumes as H1 and going into the second half of the year by having similar volumes.

The next question is also from Mr. Skitter. It is around the Hulamin extrusions business, it reads, what are your business -- what are your decisions now in response to the loss at the Extrusions business? Another ZAR 19 million loss in this division in addition to the many losses of the pause. A clear decision on this matter is required.

Thanks, Mr. Skitter. Trust me, we had Hulamin share very similar concern as you with regards to our extrusion business. We personally do not want to make any further losses at the same time. But if you look at the market context with South Africa as a whole, very few market. There's little growth in South Africa as a whole. And businesses are having to employ different strategies to be able to at least break even in the tough environment that we have in South Africa currently. I assure you all operation challenges have been resolved. We've set up our structures to be able to explore further market opportunities. At the same time, there is a plan in place that Pravashni has put -- or activated to review our cost base as a whole and look at reducing our costs particularly with remelt efficiencies that we're hoping to deliver in the H2 of this year to most likely try and break even by end of the year.

The next question is still from Mr. Skitter. It reads, I am concerned about your level of inventory. It is the highest level over the last 6 years, nearly double of what it was in 2019. Taking also into account the very long lead, deliberate times of Hulamin in the local and export markets. Please let us know the reason for such high inventory besides increasing your stock due to the shutdown, which was in July?

Thanks Mr. Skitter for another intriguing question. Firstly, I think comparing previously from the inventory levels with Hulamin, as I alluded to earlier, we've moved from focusing on the local market and focusing on core streams. So in the last 2 years, our key focus areas has been to have enough inventory to satisfy our quarter or next quarter sales as such. This time around, I mentioned earlier that 8,000 tonnes was related to support our customers during the integrated shut that we had in July -- June and July. Going forward, a key part is going to be of how do we support on-time delivery of greater than 95% and particularly in the local market. Now if you look at how we performed over the last 2 years, and particularly with our can customers, in particular, we are well over 95% in support of delivery to them from an on-time delivery point of view. Now that does come with a bit of inventory offtake on outside. But it's in the spirit of what our customer requires and us moving to be more customer-centric. Pravashni has other opportunities that she is looking at to be able to reduce the impact on working capital on the additional inventory that we have to carry to support our customer-centric strategy. And we will definitely share those ideas with you later on this week when we see you.

Okay. Our next question is from Mr. [ Tinashe Hove ] from Laurium Capital. It reads, thank you for speaking about the market opportunity for growth to meet our customer needs. But can you please share some metrics and guidance on the incremental profit and target returns behind the CapEx program. This is key considering the size of the CapEx program relative to the balance sheet capacity and market cap of Hulamin.

Thanks, Tinashe. A very important question. And I think I need to assure everyone that we are proudly a South African company. Cost of debt in South Africa is absurdly high. We will not -- we'll not never be embarking on these projects if the returns far exceed the current cost of capital in South Africa. From a capacity point of view, the project not only delivers in our core stream from canbody and getting up to close to 70,000 tonnes over during the plan. It also increases total capacity of Hulamin from average of where we've been from about 170,000 to by the end of 2028 getting up to 212,000 tonnes with 60% of the 212,000 being in the can stream. That will allow us to maintain an 85% market share our local market share in the demand in the canbody. So this will definitely -- these returns and these steps that we're targeting or volumes in our market-driven capital. Definitely, we'll be exceeding our high cost of capital.

Thank you, Mark. There is another question from Mr. Walker. It reads, I see that compared to the same period last year, what is going wrong there? This used to be Hulamin's most important export market. Having stopped supplying there the hot-rolled strip in 2024, explains only 10% of the drop of volume of exports to the United States, having lost their more than ZAR 800 million in sales.

Thanks, Mr. Skitter. We touched on -- I think Pravashni touched on in detail that 8,000 tonnes of hot -- low-margin hotband sales were discontinued, which is in comparison to previous year. Our mainstream and our core stream into the U.S. market going forward is actually our plate business. We've seen a strong demand increase on debt. And hence, the decline in the U.S. market itself, but the decline is largely due to the hot band sales, well, us not progressing low-margin hotband sales anymore and focusing on plate sales only and marginal foil business into the U.S. sector.

Thank you, Mark. Our next question is from Mr. [ Pubus Selius ] from All Weather Capital. It reads, on the used beverage can utilization progression, given that the tonnage is increasing over the next few years, at what point does the need to be another expansion decision?

Okay. I'm not to show if Pubus is talking about the UBCs. As alluded to in my presentation, we've completed capital spend to increase our used beverage can consumption from 6,000 tonnes to 15,000 tonnes by the end of next year. Thereafter, a capital investment will be required right now between the range of ZAR 150 million to ZAR 200 million that we busy quantifying the exact price. That will increase our capacity from 15,000 tonnes used beverage can per annum to potentially 28,000 tonnes. Now the most important step that I'll give you is that next year, we currently will get to about 40% of our total canbody being recyclable material. And that will grow further to short of 60% by the end of the plan after we complete the additional investment in the UBC line. I hope that answers your question, Pubus.

Okay. We have another question from Mr. [ Cor Basile ], still from All Weather Capital. It reads, Hulamin has tended to be more profitable in the second half in the past. Is this still the case? Or has this changed with the new strategy?

Hulamin continues to become agile to react to different market challenges at the same time. Obviously, in our business in the way we're operating. We strive all the time to be more profitable at any point in time. Right now, based on what I said earlier with regards to where we see the market dynamics and the volumes. And together with all the cost initiatives that Pravashni spoke about, we're definitely striving to be profitable going into the future.

There seems to be no more questions from my side. Maybe we should give it another like a couple of seconds to see if there's anything coming through.

Sure, Norma.

Yes. There is another question from Mr. [ Cobee ]. It says, what is the maximum percentage of used beverage cans that can be used in your production process? For WCB and [ can ends ].

I think particularly used beverage can primary, we use it in our canbody sales as such. I mentioned earlier that we are striving to get up to 40% right now. That's where we get into, hopefully, by next year. And thereafter, just short of 60% of the total volume of sales. To guide you, I'll say to you that with the CAGR growth in the local market, we're looking at by 2028 or 2029. We're looking at local sales potentially being close on to or just short of 70,000 tonnes. So if you work with 55% roundabout there with that, that's the potential recycled content we're looking to get to by the end of the plan, and hence, the investment in additional line capacity at Hulamin.

We have a question from the IDC. It says, will a copy of this webcast to be available on the website?

Yes. Norma, we'll definitely have it on the website, and I'm sure you'll arrange for that to happen.

It will be on the same link that you logged into the meeting after 11:00 or like a minute later, you can use the same link to go into the webcast. There seems to be no more questions.

We'll just give it 2 more minutes.

We have another question from Mr. SKitter. It says, the answer to All Weather, Novelis is currently using 80% of scrap in the business of cans production compared to 20% at Hulamin currently.

Thanks, Mr. Volker.

Then we have another question from Mr. [ Cobee ], he says, what benefits pretend does UBCs provide on you on a cost perspective?

Okay. So used beverage can is obviously recycled material far cheaper than raw aluminum in [ Viande ]. You're looking at approximately in the range after taking recycling costs into account in the range of probably 10,000 -- ZAR 10,000 per tonne difference. That's in the range. But it's very dependent on the rand LME price itself. So those are the recycling content or benefits, high level right now. And just maybe to answer [ Corbis ], and I think it was added by Mr. [ Falco ], what our current recycling content is. But post completion of our expansion, which will be the Phase 2, we're looking to get closer to 70% of recycled content in can-body product as a whole.

There seems to be no more questions from my side.

Okay. Okay. Thanks, Norma. I'd just like to say thank you, everyone, for your attention. I'm looking forward to further engagement during the week with all our potential investors and our valuable shareholders and the banks at the same time. Thank you very much.