Nucor Corporation (NUE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Nucor to build state-of-the-art sheet mill call. This call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Leon Topalian, President and Chief Executive Officer of Nucor Corporation. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call today. Joining me today on today's call is Jim Frias, our Chief Financial Officer; and Rex Query, our Executive Vice President of Sheet and Tubular Products. We are really excited to announce this significant new growth initiative for Nucor. I want to share with you some of the details about this investment and how it fits with our overall long-term strategy for value creation. We've posted some of the slides at nucor.com/investors under Investor Events that we'll refer to during today's call. Turning briefly to Slide 2. We will be making forward-looking statements today during our call. Turning to Slide 3. I think it's a good place to begin to remind everyone about our mission statement: to grow our core, expand beyond and live our culture while taking on the challenge of becoming the world's safest steel company. Clearly, this sheet mill fits perfectly within this framework as we seize a tremendous opportunity to grow our core. And I want to note here that for Nucor, this is a growth initiative. We are not replacing antiquated inefficient assets, we are adding additional steelmaking to capture more share of the domestic market for higher-end sheet steel. Now on Slide 4. Before we get into discussing the particular of the sheet mill, I want to spend a couple of minutes on the last part of our mission statement, which is living our culture. It is the most important piece. And it is the reason Nucor enjoys the level of success we have experienced and what will continue to keep Nucor out front. Our culture will also allow us to continue to attract, develop and retain the best and most diverse manufacturing army anywhere in the world, and it is our Nucor team members who will be the difference makers for us on this project just as they are today in everything we do. Many of you have heard me say this before, but I'll say it again, anyone can buy the equipment but no one can execute the way our team does and will. Now turning to Slide 5. Let's get into the heart of the matter. As I said, we are very excited to share this news. We're highly confident that this is the right next step for Nucor. The regional market needs a steelmaking facility of this caliber built and operated by the industry leader. We will build this mill in the heart of the 2 largest sheet consuming markets in the United States where demand is the greatest. These important markets need new, modern and sustainable steel production capacity in order to meet future demand, both from an environmental and capability perspective. We're proud to be one of the cleanest, most sustainable steel makers in the world. As a pioneer of EAS and recycling scrap metal to make steel, Nucor has been a leader in the steel industry for environmental performance. Nucor's performance today is what many of our competitors are aspiring to achieve by 2030, '40, '50 and beyond. Steel is going to continue to be an essential material for our nation's economy and Nucor is proving that it can be produced in a sustainable way that can help meet the world's climate goals. For more than 50 years, Nucor has built a sustainable model of recycling steel to produce new steel and steel products and continue to push recycled steel into products where it was never considered viable. Our greenhouse gas intensity is less than 1/3 of the global average and nearly 1/5 of the average of integrated steel producers. And so I think this is increasingly clear that the steady market share gains by EAF-based steelmaking over the last 3 decades will most likely accelerate in the years to come, modern EAF steel mills just have too many advantages against older, less efficient integrated steel mills, especially when the EAF operators are operated by Nucor teammates. Finally, if our nation has learned anything over the last 18 months, we've realized that having strong U.S. manufacturing supply chains is vital to our success as a nation. America is and will continue to be the cleanest place on earth to produce steel, period. And we believe there will be continued robust and growing demand for modern and sustainable steel production to grow and develop our economy here in the United States. Turning to Slide 6. We expect that many of you listening in on today's call will be thinking about this project and what it means to the broader industry landscape of North America. So I want to take a moment to review where we're at today and to reiterate what I said a few moments ago, that the market needs a steelmaking facility of this caliber built and operated by the industry leader. As we see it, even after the expansions in greenfield projects come online in the coming months, the North American sheet steel base is still down almost 10% from where it was several years ago. And we believe that there are several million more tons that are vulnerable and may become obsolete in the coming years due to cost position in carbon intensity. And while we must remain vigilant on the trade front, we do believe that the scope for unfairly traded imports to disrupt the domestic sheet market is sharply reduced from what it was several years ago. Turning to Slide 7, provides some further details in terms of product capabilities, project time line and I suspect most interesting to many of you, our anticipated run rate EBITDA, which we put at $525 million. For those of you doing the math, that works out to about $175 of EBITDA per ton. When we consider the breadth of capabilities this complex will have combined with the productivity and drive of the Nucor team, we have confidence that we'll achieve this level of performance. Before we take your questions, let me just close by reiterating how excited we are to be seizing this opportunity. For decades, Nucor helped drive shift in the United States steel production base towards current state, one that is now 70% EAF based. With this investment, we expect to continue to take share and accelerate the market transition to more environmentally friendly EAF-produced steel. Operator, we're ready now to take questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question today will hear from Emily Chieng with Goldman Sachs.

Leon, thanks for the update today. I had thought that Nucor strategy previously was not to try to add capacity but to add capability. It sounds like today's announcement is a little bit of a shift from that. So perhaps could you provide a little color as to what was sort of compelling about this project today? And of course, I have follow-up.

Certainly. Yes, absolutely. And Emily our strategy is unchanged. We are adding capability. The ability for Nucor to continue to see the opportunity in this marketplace from several fronts. One being the cleanest sheet steels and providing near net 0 steels to our automotive customers and others as that begins to -- or continues to become a very in-demand product shift as well as moving up the value chain in automotive. As you know, and we've talked about several times, we're about 1.5 million tons into the automotive market today with a goal of doubling that to about 3 million tons. This mill is going to provide Nucor a continued differentiated mix for ourselves as we move up that value chain and move into that space even more heavily. This mill's capabilities, and I'll let Rex speak to this here in a second, in terms of its capability. We're really excited and augment Nucor's move into the automotive industry as well as other grades. But Rex, maybe just touch on as we see the mill's capability for producing higher end steels.

Yes, Emily, thanks for the question. I'll also comment just to lead in about our Gallatin expansion. So as you're aware, we're adding capacity at Gallatin, but it's more than just that. When you think about the capabilities there with the bigger slab for greater reduction, higher quality, the width, we also put in a pickle galv line for applications into the heavy gauge automotive side, on the structural side as well. So this very much fits with our plan. It complements that expansion as well. And we're feeding into that region. So from this standpoint, the new mill we're talking about, we're looking at 84-inch wide. Through the hot side, we would be 76-inch wide roughly. Through the cold mill galv line and focus on automotive construction side of the business in regards to that line. So we would be high-end automotive, but it would also complement the expansions that have occurred at Gallatin. Percent Gallatin mixed rigs. All right. So on the galvanize side, we're probably going to be in the 35% to 40% on the galv side of things. And that's obviously a large portion of that is going to be targeted for automotive. It will go into some other applications as well. And the wider substrate allows us to double malt in some areas where we want to complement. Obviously, we have our Crawfordsville plant that's more narrow, fits well with construction. So when you look at Gallatin, Crawfordsville and you look at this new mill, in that region, largest consuming sheet region in the country, we could provide a full complement of product range and mix for customers from construction to automotive.

Got it. That's really helpful. And then just as a follow-up is just around the raw material strategy. There's clearly a lot of new EAF capacity coming online. One of peers also just announced something new last week. Are there any sort of early considerations as to whether or not new DRI or HBI capacity needs to come from your -- from Nucor's perspective? Or any sort of further color on the scrap and raw material would be helpful.

Yes, Emily, this is Rex Query. On the metallic side, a reminder, we have 4.5 million tons of DRI production inside of Nucor. And we're consuming some of that capacity at plants from a quality perspective that don't necessarily need that DRI. So internally, just rationalizing our consumption of metallics with the various Nucor plants, we feel we can easily supply into that area to that plant, the DRI needed from a quality perspective. So that's internal part of the advantage of us having our own DRI metallics production.

If I could add to that Emily, one of the nice things that Rex and his team have been working on, this decision hasn't been made in a short period of time. We've been working on it for a few months now. And they mapped out all the supply chains of scrap in North America. And so we're confident that we have a strategy around how to supply scrap as well as DRI to our entire portfolio to support this investment.

And next, we'll hear from David Gagliano with BMO Capital Markets.

I just have a quick one. What are the long-term representative hot-rolled coil and scrap price assumptions behind that 525 EBITDA figure? That's my first question.

Dave, this is Jim. We don't have specific numbers to share on that front. But we certainly, as we look at the landscape of the market that exists today, it's well, well, well -- to get at 175 EBITDA, we're well below today's markets. So we believe the 175 is a conservative number. And scrap prices and steel prices tend to move together. And so I guess you'd say 175 is going to be a lower number in steel selling prices and scrap prices than we see today. And again, it's the way we look at things conservatively. We know that today's market is not going to exist forever.

Is it possible to give us maybe a spread or something. You don't have to give the exact numbers anything, but maybe just the spread between...

No, I'm not going to give it.

Okay. I'll just leave it to others.

Yes. And I'd just say, David, the conversion cost of this mill are going to be very, very good. But they're not going to be step change different than other modern mini-mill sheet steel producers. They're going to be in the range. And so I just say that it might be helpful for you to understand.

David, in the process for us looking at this, we -- from a pricing standpoint, we look at margins, and we absolutely did not look at the recent run-up in the last 1.5 years of what's occurred in the marketplace. Is that a newer normal or near new normal, we have no idea. So we looked at historical averages, got a balance of lower market times and better market times and use that balance as we evaluate it. We're fortunate at Nucor. We have several sheet mills. We went line by line through the operating detail, adjusted for what we see with this mill, this equipment and the mix. So that's how we ended up with the margin.

Okay. So I guess the question then is why now? What prompted this announcement?

Yes, a couple of things, David, and I'll start from a high level. As I took over as CEO in January of 2020, our leadership team, our executive team met and each of the responsible EVPs developed a long-term profitable growth strategy. In the Sheet Group, as we think about, again, the mission statement of growing the core, it is the single largest opportunity that we've had. So Rex and his team, MaryEmily Slate, who is our EVP of Commercial and her teams have worked incredibly well over this last year to really understand where or what and how do we grow this market share. And we have a strategy to be a much more significant player in sheet. It's a 60 million ton a year market, as you well know, that we're serving today in that 11 million or 12 million-ton range. And we're going to increase that. And this new mill is the first step in that evolution.

[Operator Instructions] Next, we'll hear from Andreas Bokkenheuser with UBS.

Just a couple of quick questions from me. Following up on the raw material question. Are you seeing any technological advances in replacing prime scrap with obsolete? I think at least one of your peers in the industry have been kind of been talking about that. Maybe there's technological advancements to basically reduce prime usage in the furnaces and then increase obsolete. Are you seeing any of that? And maybe as a follow-up to that, obviously, we're getting a fair amount of questions on the whole Scope 3 on carbon emissions. Is there any scope to reduce pig iron going forward in your furnaces, maybe replacement with DRI, obviously, under Scope 3 pig iron? People are looking at the sources of pig iron and where it kind of falls under Scope 3. So any reduction there in pig iron going forward? Any insights into that would be greatly appreciated.

And Andreas, I'll kick this off and maybe Jim or Rex, if I miss anything, please chime in. Against the backdrop of what you shared, look, Nucor's greenhouse gas intensity today is amongst the cleanest in the world, and that's going to continue. And so as we think about the advantage that we have environmentally, it's significant. And so we have evaluated the broad perspective and subsequently earlier early this year in January, we put together an environmental technical process team to evaluate all the different technologies that are out there, including some that I've spent 4 years of my career overseas in Australia, helping to build, and that is the high smelt technology. So we keep a very, very close watch on what's happening across the globe, who's potentially got unique advantages strategically for the long term as we think about Nucor's raw materials strategy. But also reminding you and the other investors and analysts is that Nucor today is the most flexible supply chain in the industry, and we have that because of the 4.5 million tons of DRI that we can control. And as Rex pointed out and rationalize across the breadth of our sheet mills. And so that's going to be a large piece of what's melted in our new mill, but also as you think and asked the question around a lower Scope 3 emission pig iron stores, we continue to look at that, and there's certainly some advances in some green pay coming out of Brazil that we're going to stay very close to and watch and looking for those unique opportunities.

I'll add 2 things, Leon, if that's okay. One, our David Joseph team is working on technologies and has technologies that they use to reduce the copper content in shredded scraps, so we can use more of it in our sheet mills. So yes, we also have some work underway there and actually have some capabilities that they're fairly significant. And secondly, as part of our Board meeting, this topic that Leon just mentioned, this idea that we've got a team that's been working for months, we reviewed a list of probably over 100 things that we've investigated for our Board and gave them a very comprehensive review of the things we've looked at as well as identifying the 2 or 3 that we think are really exciting to reduce our Scope 3 emissions in particular. We're not ready to announce those things yet. But rest assured, we are the market leader in sustainability with low CO2 emissions, and we're working on making our position even stronger and lower and more competitively advantaged.

That's very clear. And maybe a quick follow-up. Do you think that's then also further scope to maybe go more upstream into securing more raw materials? I mean, one of your peers have been talking about maybe investing in scrap. Is that something that's on the table as well now that you're investing in more hot mill?

Yes. Andreas, we've been investing in scrap for a long time when we bought the David Joseph's company over a decade ago. That investment was a huge piece of that. Those fronts and those acquisitions that we've done in the last 10 or 12 years through DJJ has continued and that will continue moving forward. So we've long had a presence in the scrap and controlling more of that in-house, and that will continue as we move forward.

And Andreas, if I could add to that, our scrap investments are very targeted. We know where our steel mills are. We know where our existing scrap yards that we own are. And so we think very much about the idea of how do we leverage our position in the marketplace to be more competitively advantaged. So as we announce future things that we may do in scrap acquisitions, it's not just adding scrap yards to have more, it's very targeted at regions where we want to have a presence and a strong presence.

And at this time, there are no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Topalian for any additional or closing remarks.

Well, thank you for your time today. Nucor is very excited about this project and the differentiated value proposition we'll provide for our customers and shareholders. The project reflects our focus and mission to grow the core, expand beyond and live our culture that are underway across the entire enterprise. Rest assured, Nucor is a growth company. And we look forward to updating you on further strategic investments in our future. Thank you, and have a great day.

And that will conclude today's call. We thank you for your participation.