Pyxus International, Inc. (PYYX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Pyxus International Inc. Fiscal Year 2023 First Quarter Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the conference over to Tomas Grigera. Please go ahead.

Thank you. With me this morning are Pieter Sikkel, our President and CEO; and Flavia Landsberg, our CFO. Before we begin discussing our financial results, I would like to cover a few points. You may hear statements during the course of this call that express a belief, expectation or intention as well as those that are not historical fact. These statements are forward-looking and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual events and results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties are described in detail along with our risks and uncertainties in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-K. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements made on this conference call to reflect any changes in management's expectations or any change in assumptions or circumstances on which these statements are based. Included in our call today may be discussion of non-GAAP financial measurements, including earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, commonly referred to EBIT as well as adjusted EBITDA that are not measures of results of operations under generally accepted accounting principles in the United States and should not be considered as an alternative to U.S. GAAP measures. A table, including a reconciliation of and other disclosures regarding these non-GAAP financial measures is included in the appendix to the presentation. Any replay, rebroadcast, transferred or other reproduction of this conference call, other than the replay as provided by Business International, has not been authorized and is strictly prohibited. Investors should be aware that any unauthorized reproduction of this conference call may not be an accurate reflection of its content. During the call today, Pieter will provide an overview of our operating results and share insights into our ESG efforts. Flavia will then provide details surrounding our financial results. Pieter will close the call with 2024 guidance. Now I'll hand the call over to Pieter.

Thank you all for being here today. We are looking forward to sharing our results for the fourth quarter and year-end 2023. Today's call will provide more detail than past calls, sharing both in-depth information about our performance and about Pyxus and our global operations. For the fourth quarter and full year of fiscal 2023, our teams achieved strong results as we had anticipated. For the full year, we exceeded our most recent guidance and generated almost $158.8 million in positive adjusted EBITDA, improved our leverage ratios and aggressively managed our cash flow and working capital levels to ensure sufficient liquidity despite highly inflationary lease costs. Our results were even more impressive considering the significant challenges we overcame. The third consecutive year of La Nina weather patterns drove limited tobacco supplies that increased tobacco costs by as much as 50% in some of our markets. When combined with increasing interest rates and lingering geopolitical issues, they continue to complicate logistics and operations, fiscal '23 was a very challenging year. Despite those challenges, we turned in strong fourth quarter and full year results. We grew top line revenues for the full year by 16.8% to $1.9 billion, increased product shipments and generated strong margin. We offset reduced production in key markets by sourcing tobacco from our global network of more than 300,000 farmers in 30-plus countries to meet our customers' demand for sustainably grown compliantly in a short crop year. Our modeling and on-the-ground agronomy team gave us advance notice that 2023 would be a short crop year, meaning farmer's yields would be significantly short of expected production estimates, particularly in South America and Africa, where we saw a sizable amount of tobacco. At year-end, our inventory levels of uncommitted products were at all-time lows, which reflects the short supply, high demand environment. Looking forward, we expect the momentum created this year to continue through fiscal year 2024. Our current projections indicate a partial recovery of the tobacco supply compared to last year and continued strength in demand and pricing. Based on our insights and our improved operating and financial management performance, during this call, we will share our 2024 guidance. Turning to our results. Total shipments for the year grew by 1.8% to about 388,000 tons. Margins per kilo increased by 13% compared to fiscal year 2022 results and adjusted EBITDA by 25.3% to $158.8 million. Our focus on working capital management has proven successful, resulting in achieving positive free cash flow on an LTM basis for the last two consecutive quarters. Regarding our balance sheet, which Flavia will explain in greater detail momentarily, the successful exchange transaction completed in February resulted in the exchange of $580 million of the company's secured debt. This provides us relief from several restricted covenants, adds to our financial flexibility and extend near-term maturities to February and December 2027. As a result of this transaction, and which 100% of the 2 tranches of secured term loan and 93% of our secured notes, accepted the exchange, we are in a stronger position to execute our long-term strategy. Before I turn the call over to Flavia, I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone listening of Pyxus' role in the tobacco industry. We have a 150-year legacy. And today, we are 1 of the 2 largest publicly held tobacco merchants responsible for supplying manufacturers in the global retail tobacco product industry with high-quality, sustainable and compliant leader. But we are much more than [ much ]. We have a diverse global agricultural footprint that helps us mitigate risk while enabling us to meet customer demand. We provide agricultural support and training to our contracted farmers, many of whom are considered small holders growing on less than 5 acres of land, while conducting nearly 1 million farm visits annually. During these visits, we also collect tens of millions of data points, which inform our business decision and support our ability to sell into approximately 90 countries worldwide. Described more simply, Pyxus is the connection between our customers, the world's largest, most discerning tobacco companies as well as regional and small tobacco product manufacturers with our global contracted farmer base. Pyxus is also an ESG leader. We take pride in improving the lives of our farmers and their communities, while working diligently to improve the environment where we operate. ESG is a true differentiator for Pyxus and is ingrained in both our business strategy and day-to-day operations. The ESG initiatives that we undertake not only have improved the livelihoods of our contracted farmers and the communities in which we operate, but also mitigate risks and create operational efficiencies for our business while complying with the rapidly evolving regulatory landscape. Our ESG efforts deliver value to our customers as they work to achieve their own ESG targets and many partner with us to fund local ESG programs. The cost savings generated by our businesses, sustainable and innovative actions, help position Pyxus as a trusted partner to our customers and the farmers with whom we contract. I'd like to share a brief example to help bring this to life. In Malawi, we contract with tobacco farmers to produce groundnut, a complementary crop to tobacco, helping them increase their income potential and overall livelihood. Once purchased, the groundnuts are cleaned and shelled in our groundnut factory prior to being sold domestically or exported. Since the shelling process generates waste, which can be costly to disposal, our teams have identified an alternative purpose for the shell, reverting them into a sustainable fuel source for the boilers and our adjacent tobacco processing facility. During fiscal year 2023, approximately 50% of the fuel used to power our boilers in Malawi was produced from our groundnut shell waste, which generated a 20% cost savings for that operation and contributed to our 2015 net zero target. We plan to convert an additional 20% of boiler fuel from coal to groundnut shell this season. with the goal of reaching 100% during calendar year 2024. Now I'll turn the call over to Flavia to give details on our results. Flavia?

Thanks, Pieter, and good morning, everyone. We are very proud of our team's work this quarter in delivering an outstanding year. We exceed our most recent guidance in 2023, achieving an adjusted EBITDA of $158.8 million, an exceptional sales growth by executing against our operational and financial strategy and aggressively managing working capital and liquidity. At the core of our adjusted EBITDA success were significantly higher sales and volume. During this year, Pyxus grew total revenues year-over-year by about $275 million or 16.8% to $1.9 billion. At the same time, we increased shipments by 1.8% or roughly 6.8 million [ kilos ]. All those match rates were driven by improved demand in higher product pricing as Pieter mentioned. It's very important we fit this globally diverse footprint enable us to reach almost immediately to the short crop in review in Africa and efficiently source tobacco from Asia, where we have a strong presence to meet demand at prices at or pace of solid return. Pyxus also increased our margin per kilo by the year by 13%. This is a noteworthy achievement. Growing margins per kilo in a short crop, high-demand market means that we are able to pass through the high cost of green tobacco to our customers. There are several key drivers that increase our margins, namely our global geographic footprint and marketing coverage optimizing our product and customer mix, the contribution of our highly profitable value-added business, full year returns from return of customer integration strategies and increase in spot purchases in Asia. We also focused on strengthening the company's balance sheet and improving our credit profile, which result in resisting our net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio to 5.4% in 2023, a significant improvement compared to a net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of 6.9% in 2022. At the same time, we improved our interest coverage to 1.3x compared to 1.1x in 2022. 2023 is the third consecutive year where we have reduced the company's leverage ratio and improved our interest coverage ratio. The improvement of our leverage and profile were driven by the company's strong adjusted EBITDA performance and our team's efficient management of working capital and liquidity. Our success from recent purchase of more tobacco 2023 at significant higher prices than in 2022, while reducing total debt by $65.9 million, net debt by $3.9 million and maintaining net interest expense almost flat. Turning now to SG&A. For fiscal year 2023, we have SG&A increases to only 6.7% year-over-year despite significant growth during the year and the impact of inflation. This increase was primarily due to accrued compensation benefit costs incurred in conjunction with debt exchange transaction, higher travel costs and rising health care costs, offset by lower results and professional fees during 2023 compared to the prior year. It is important that I address some notable items. Tax expenses totaled $34.1 million this year, which includes $20.8 million related to the debt expense transaction with our operating taxes totaling $13.3 million. Pyxus paid cash taxes of about $18.7 million in 2023. In 2024, cash taxes will include a $12.3 million payment related to the debt exchange transaction. Operating income in 2023 totaled about $93.8 million or 4.9% of the total revenue compared to 2022 totals of $41.7 million or 2.5%. As mentioned, net interest expenses increased only $4.8 million despite our growth and increase in borrowing at higher interest rates. Now I would like to discuss an emphasize how our focus in working capital in liquidity management help strength the company's balance sheet and improve our credit profile. It is a testament to our finance and capital markets team that even in this challenging year, manage our working capital to efficiently fund higher purchasing levels in fiscal year '22 and GAAP debt levels threat. We achieved this by aggressively managing cash flow and leveraging more flexible regional credit lines effectively lower our borrowing costs, giving it an increasing interest rate in Bio-Ag. We also improved our cash position by advancing customer shipments and accelerating receivables payments using securitization facility. Normally, we used working capital most intensively during the first half of the year will be fund crop planting and by our green leaf tobacco to build up inventory. During the second half of the year, we sell issue products to customers. This builds cash and receivables, which would quickly convert to cash using securitization programs. The geopolitical events during the past 3 years significantly stands at the normal business cycle into subsequent growing season. Our working capital management program have reduced the length of our operating cycles by speeding up receivables turnover with securitization facilities and accelerated growth. So over the past 3 years, we shortened our cash conversion cycle from 231 days in 2021 to 221 days in 2022. And in 2023, we're able to further shorten the cash conversion cycle to 189 days. This was a main contributor of improving free cash flow by $35.3 million in 2023, resulting in $11.1 million of free cash flow in 2023 compared to a negative free cash flow of $24.2 million in 2022. When we ultimately achieve a normal cash conversion cycle, which should reach predictable free cash flow, which we can allocate to grow our business and continue to grow our cost of capital by paying down expense of debt. During this quarter, we reduced our total debt by $65.9 million, primarily the partial pay down of our ABL facility, which reduced our cash and cash equivalents by a similar amount. While the debt exchange transaction had almost nil effect on our long-term debt in the fiscal year of 2023, it will have a profound impact in the future. The new debt profile adds to our financial flexibility and extend near-term maturities to February and December 2027. In closing, I want to leave you with this. Take this strategy as a result, we now are generating of improved adjusted EBITDA and our working capital management has provided substantial free cash flow and liquidity to fund operations and growth as evidenced by our '23 results in our guidance for 2024. With that in mind, we believe our debt and equity are trading well below the decent debate on our story, our position in the industry and the company's financial performance. Our leadership is energized to remedy that situation and continue to deliver improved performance across our business. I will turn the call back to Pieter to share our guidance for the fiscal year 2024.

Thank you, Flavia. We have entered fiscal 2024 with relatively low inventory levels and are rapidly progressing in our purchasing of what at this point in time, we believe to be a larger Southern Hemisphere 2023 crop, which is needed to achieve our fiscal 2024 target. We do expect 2024 to build on the momentum and results delivered during 2023. With this in mind, for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024, we expect sales to be between $1.9 billion and $2.1 billion, and adjusted EBITDA to be between $155 million and $180 million. With that, operator, please open the phone lines for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Bruce Monrad with Northeast Investors.

A couple of questions. Let's see, the guidance for 2024, the potential improvement, is that back-end loaded, front-end loaded? Or is the visibility on 1Q? Or how would you characterize that?

I actually think, Bruce, purchasing is proceeding more rapidly than it was last year in larger crops, particularly in Brazil and Africa. So it's a matter of converting those products into pack products in our facilities around the globe. And at this point in time, we see generally that our customers are willing to ship or see packing ships. So we are actually anticipating some acceleration as we go through the initial quarters of the year. So we should be able to see that relatively early in the year.

And that's aligned with our strategy of expediting and have cadence earlier than the previous year. So we decreased the operating cycle base.

Okay. Great. One way to look at you is EBITDA-based, another one when I sort of stare at the $700 million of inventories to think of you as in part sort of a bank. And I guess my question goes something like this, a bank that has $700 million of sort of carrying stuff for your customers should get paid for that. And if the cost of capital is going up, if interest rates are going up, have gone up, you need to kind of get paid for that ultimately through your EBITDA. So my question is what determines your ability to put forth margin increases with your customers. How do those pricing discussions? I guess maybe you could write a book on it, but is there any way you could give me a quick answer on how you go about making sure you get paid for the services that you're providing, including holding $700 million worth of inventory when interest rates are going up?

Yes, I can. So there's 2 parts of that, okay? So the first one is, yes, part of our price, that we'll calculate internally includes interest rates cost. But the main thing here is actually to ship faster. So that's -- So as fast as we ship and the customer gets the tobacco, is less cost for us and for the customer.

Okay. Okay. And then okay, thank you. And freight is not a problem anymore that's being -- that's in good shape?

Yes, generally, in most markets, we're back to availability of containers and the vessels similar to pre-COVID levels. So we get the occasional issue in certain markets, but nothing that's abnormal.

Okay. And my last question. Last question, sales and operating revenues all -- or what do those typically include?

That basically includes the nontobacco businesses. So in there, you've got e-liquids, you've got some value-added agri ...

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Reddy with TD Cowen.

Pieter, Flavia, Tomas. That's a really strong quarter and year-end. Just had a quick question for you on Slide 7. We obviously, supply tobacco is down. So pricing is up, you're able to offset that nicely with your pricing. Can you speak to the regional volume increases and decreases and what's driving that and then what you would expect for next year?

Yes, Chris, thank you for joining the call. Yes, on this slide, this reflects last year's volume. So what would have been the 2022 crop. And we saw in those crops, obviously, short supply out of South America and particularly in Africa, in Malawi, in particular. So the Malawi Burley crop was down to [ 69,000 ] tonne. What we're seeing this year around about a 10% increase in the crop size in Brazil. We're seeing Malawi Burley returned to around about 100,000 tonne level from that 69,000. Some increases in Zimbabwe, and a little bit in Tanzania. So we're more reflecting a normal crop size this year. Obviously, we did enter the year with a relatively low inventory. We do have a need for increased participation in these crops. And also, we continue to be very much focused last year. We utilized our strong global footprint, particularly out of Asia and certain other regions in order to fulfill customers' demand. We'll continue to do that this year. And really, that's the benefit of us having that very diverse global footprint as well.

Great. And then as far as -- you cited Asia was up 1.8%. Is that specific to just increased demand? Or is it also an overlay of the opening of the economies there in travel and the like?

I don't think we focused on Asian demand. We talked about Asia sourcing. And our footprint in Asia includes India, Indonesia, Thailand, China, all of the -- that was part of the reason we were able to offset it.

Your next question comes from the line of Oren Shaked with BTIG.

Flavia, can you maybe touch on working capital a little bit more? How much more opportunity do you see to drive improvement there?

So we -- as we mentioned, our cycle Day, it went dramatically down from 271 in '21 to 221 and '22 and 189. We still have opportunities here and the major piece here is cadence of shipments. So there is a possibility to decrease this even further by shipping faster. And that also relate to lower interest cost. And that's exactly our strategy. We continue to be more efficient in that and increase our interest costs, have more cash flow to be able to grow the business and pay off debt.

Got it. Okay. And do you see an opportunity then to continue to drive down pricing on the seasonal lines of credit as well?

That's correct. I mean, with the credit profile getting better, leverage getting lower. We already saw this past year, some significant decrease in cost and we'll continue to see that on the next year. We also -- just to add how we're doing this, we actually have more banks in our portfolio that lend us. And it's always nice to create competition with a better credit profile.

Your next question comes from the line of Joe von Meister with Intermarket Group.

I have quick questions. Thanks for hosting the call guys. The first one is, what do you expect your cash interest cost to be in 2024 -- fiscal 2024, assuming LIBOR SOFR rates are hold at current levels. And the second question is how much inventory do you still carry as a result of the supply chain issues experienced in '21 and '22?

Okay. Joe, we don't give guidance on the interest cost. But that being said, what I can tell you is we are a massive as you can see this year. As you can see this year, the average borrowing was higher and our interest cost was almost flat. We actually went through a very big height of cost of green leads, and we were able to find that with current lines on a pretty much flat interest cost. So we would need to work on that by creating competition with other banks into play and also by opinion of that faster.

And with regards to the inventory, we have -- we still have some shipping later than it would have done [indiscernible] equipments. And at the moment, we are -- it may -- there may be an opportunity at the end of the [indiscernible] whether there's an opportunity to accelerate that from what would be next year into this year. But at this point in time, we're not sure.

[Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from the line of Stan Manoukian with Independent Credit Research.

I just have one quick question. Pieter, the willingness of your customers to more quicker, replenish their inventories. Is it related mostly to the fact that their inventories have been depleted to an extent that they just can't wait for replenishing them faster or it's something to do with the inflation so that these guys are kind of piling their inventories in advance anticipating high prices? What do you think is going on in the industry at this point?

I think, Stan, you've got a combination of all of those factors that you highlighted there, and you have certain customers that certainly need to replenish inventory that we weren't able to fulfill their purchasing requirements last year. Obviously, everyone is aware of the high interest environment that we're operating in at the moment. So accelerating shipments potentially does reduce the interest cost. And when you look at the global supply chain disruptions over the last few years, whether it's weather or COVID or logistics and so on. I think there is a renewed focus on ensuring continuity of supply within various customers' factories and ensuring you have the inventory on hand to ensure that you can still continue to manufacture consumer products and put them on the shelves. So all of that, I think we have very solid discussions with customers. We're seeing that acceleration last year. We continue to see that this year. And really, it's a matter of us acquiring the tobacco having our factories operate around the clock in order to be able to manufacture the product, getting it ready for shipment and then moving it out. So we're certainly focused on continuing to accelerate.

And to what extent is your visibility on how quickly they will replenish their inventory because the cycle is not indefinite? At some point, they will replenish their inventory to the level where they feel comfortable. And then you will be kind of stuck with the situation and uncertainties about the future. And how do you manage this process?

I don't see us as being stuck. I think we need to get the customer in the correct inventory positions, produce the crops that are required for future demand and pack and ship those as efficiently as possible. And we understand that we are producing a sustainable, traceable crop of tobacco under increasingly stringent regulatory requirements for certain markets. So we are a key component of those customers, particularly if they want to ship tobaccos into various markets. So we do see significant opportunities for continuing to actually supply those customers and potentially grow our market share with the footprint that we have.

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I will turn the call over to Pieter Sikkel.

Thank you, operator. Before we sign off, I'd like to take a moment to thank our global teams, the management team, our Board of Directors and our contracted farmers around the world for helping Pyxus achieve this impressive quarter and year-end. We appreciate your trust in us and look forward to reaching new heights as we work together to grow a better world. And thank you, everyone, for joining us on the call today.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines.