Reliance, Inc. (RS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Great. Good evening, everyone. Thank you very much for joining us. My name is Davis Sunderland. I cover sustainable energy and mobility here at Baird. We're very happy to have the team from Reliance here to present with us today. We're going to do a 15, roughly, presentation and then transition to a fireside chat format. It's a small enough room, just raise your hand if you have a question. Please -- I guess I shouldn't speak for the team, but please interject at any time with anything you would like to say. And I will turn it over to President, Karla Lewis.

Great. Thanks, Davis. And when you kick it off with good evening, like -- then we really appreciate you guys still being here this late in the day. So I'll try to give you a quick overview of Reliance, and then we look forward to a little more interaction on the questions and answers. So at Reliance, a leading global diversified metal solutions provider, we're the largest metal service center company in North America. Our sales last year were about $15 billion. We've been -- this year is our 85th year in business, our 30th year as a publicly listed company on the NYSE. We have over 300 locations, primarily in North America. We do have a few international operations, and we think the broadest customer and product base in our space. This, we show our family of companies. So Reliance has been very acquisitive. Since our IPO in '94, we've acquired 76 companies. We try to buy good, well-run companies. We leave their brand in place. So a lot of people don't recognize the Reliance name, but you might recognize some of these brands that service the local communities out there. And we think the way we acquire companies and run them post-acquisition is typically attractive to the sellers of a lot of these companies. And as a metal service center, at the end of the day, we're buying and reselling commodity products, but we think Reliance is a bit differentiated. Really that broad product diversification and market diversification, which we believe makes our earnings and our results less volatile, also opens up more opportunities to us. We operate in a very decentralized model, trying to have kind of an entrepreneurial culture at the location with our management teams there, making the day-to-day transactional decisions, which feeds more into some characteristics we'll talk about before as-needed inventory management. We try to manage our inventory well. Like speed to market is really important to a lot of the customers that we focus on, which is primarily not direct to OEMs, although we do some of that, but really to a lot of the job shops subcontractors in the supply chain is kind of our sweet spot. And then with that, we need strong pricing discipline to really make sure that we're earning -- we're getting paid for the value that we provide to our customers. Mainly spot business, spot on the buy, spot on the sell. We stay away from contractual business for the most part because there's more risk and lower profit levels, although we do have some contractual, primarily in our aerospace businesses, and really just focus on organic growth as well as acquisition, seeing a lot of opportunities come in from our customers. This slide just reflects a little more, as I mentioned, the diversification we go for. So from the standpoint of end markets, and we have submarkets within these end markets regionally, like I said, primarily in the U.S. And then from a commodity standpoint, we're primarily carbon steel. But if you look further into the breakdown, you see that the flat rolled portion, which is kind of the most competitive, is a smaller part. A lot of companies in our space, their overall product mix has about 70% flat rolled. We're combined, between carbon, stainless and aluminum, closer to 25%. So we think that's a big differentiator. We try to be in some of the higher end, less commoditized shapes and products within the commodities. And a little more about our focus on customer service. Our average order size last year was $3,200 an order. When you have $15 billion of sales, that's a lot of orders. 40% of those orders, customer calls today, we deliver it tomorrow morning. That's where that speed to market is really important to a lot of the types of customers that we're serving and allows us to be able to earn the profitability levels we go after. To do that, we need that decentralized model to get to our customers next day. We also manage, for the most part, our own fleet of trucks, which also allows us to do that. And an area we've been focusing on for the past 8 to 10 years on growing is the amount of value-added processing that we do for our customers, which also puts us closer to the customer, makes us more important to them. And that, historically, had been more about 40% of our orders, so we've been able to increase the amount we're doing. And with that, to get the returns on the investments we're making in this value-added equipment, we've increased our gross profit margins, we think, sustainably. These are the ranges that we've given. So kind of a 400 basis point lift in gross profit margin on $15 billion of revenue, we think is showing that we understand how to service our customers, how to price it to put that value to our bottom line. And for years, we obviously get kind of grouped with the metals companies out there. There aren't very many metal service center companies that are publicly traded, then you have the mill producers. And so we get lumped with those, typically from when people are looking at us from a multiple basis, but our financial results historically have been superior to the metals companies. And we respect all those metals companies, but we said, "Gee, we think we should garner a higher multiple based upon our superior performance." And we've really started to try to get some more traction in saying, "Maybe you should value us more like an industrial distribution company that really started with investors and the way they looked at it." And so we're just showing here how we think that we should trade more consistently with an industrial distribution group. We do have metal price volatility that impacts our earnings, but we think we've made some good progress in that. And then just highlighting, we sell into cyclical end markets. We deal with metal price volatility, but we do have countercyclical cash flows. So if the market starts to turn down, we're able to throw off a lot of cash, which we've done in cycles in the past. Continue, we think we lead from an investment standpoint, both with our organic investments and our acquisition activity, and also with a big commitment to stockholder returns, both from a consistent dividend that we've paid for 65 years, and we've never reduced or stopped paying a dividend. We try to consistently increase it. And then also on our share buybacks, we try to opportunistically go in the market. Probably a little more active in the past few years, with about $1 billion of share repurchases in 2024 so far. And just reflecting that 30-year trading history where we demonstrated in different intervals, we've outperformed the S&P 500, and over the 30 years, had a 17% return on our stock price. So that's a little bit about Reliance, and now we're happy to go into questions.

That's great. Again, just raise your hand if you'd like to interject. I can kick things off. I believe earlier this year you guys did a rebrand. Maybe just from a strategy perspective, could you talk to why you did that? And maybe what that might imply as to the name change?

Yes. So I would say part of that is to reflect that Reliance is more than metal. Our name previously, Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co., anyone who looked at it, especially from an investor standpoint, said, okay, it's steel. I don't invest in steel. I'm going to stay away from that. They see smoke stacks, from an ESG perspective. And we really didn't think that was as reflective of our company as what we do, especially as we're doing more value-add. And it's not just the processing that we're doing. We do storage. We do specialty packaging. We -- our delivery services, our supply chain management that we work with our customers on. So we wanted to reflect that we're more than just a metal distributor. And quite honestly, to get maybe a broader investor base to look at us and recognize us more similarly to like the industrial distribution group that we just talked about.

Certainly. You mentioned, in your opening presentation, a couple of the actions that you've taken to kind of, I don't want to say lock in, but maybe protect some of the margin longer term, especially with price fluctuations in some of the commodities. Could you maybe talk about what some of those actions are, how they've played out to date and how you see them transforming the business longer term?

Yes. I think from locking in that margin, really that value-added processing or additional services, it's -- our sales people, we had to train a little differently, too, when we started introducing this more advanced, more expensive processing equipment to try to keep them from just automatically pricing based on the competition, who may not have made the investments or have the resources that we have in place. And it used to be they would go in and talk to the purchasing manager in their office and say, "Can we -- do you have any orders for us?" And now they try to penetrate and get back into the production area of our customers and walk with maybe the plant foreman or an engineer and say, "Oh, I see you're doing this to this product. We actually offer that service, or we could offer that service, and we think we could do it more cost effectively." And so really trying to ingrain ourselves a little more into our customer's supply chain, we believe helps us lock in some of that margin that also then isn't as metal price sensitive. Because we know we're going to have metal prices going up and down, but if we can keep kind of this consistent pricing for the additional services we provide, that helps us with our margin.

Yes, I would just add to -- we buy most of our products domestically. 95% comes in from North America. Speed to market is really important to us. So products coming in with short lead times, and it's going to right back out to our customers. We're not taking big positions overseas, waiting for our vessel to come in when the markets can kind of go up or down. So we are investing in U.S. manufacturing. They're investing in us. We appreciate that. So we want to make sure that our dollars are spent there.

And the only thing I would add there is, especially this year, where we've had 12 consecutive months of declining prices, had it not been for our value-added processing capabilities, we would have seen much greater margin compression. And then that is something that is truly a differentiating factor for us, that navigating a challenging pricing environment, and at the same time, maintaining that margin profile. A lot of that has to do with our value-added processing capability.

Certainly. You guys play in several different end markets, of course, across many different geographies. Could you maybe talk about some of the pockets, if you will, that you're seeing greatest opportunities for growth, maybe not as much growth that could turn around, looking into maybe the remainder of this year and into 2025?

Yes. So we're very diversified, as we talked about. Probably almost 1/3 of our revenue dollars are in general manufacturing, but we touch so many different parts of general manufacturing. And a lot of times, we don't always know what our customer is doing with the metal. But overall for us, general manufacturing has held in, in most areas, I would say. The weak parts have been heavy ag equipment, which has been going on for a little while now. But where we've seen a lot of strength, I think, is kind of military-related, defense-type projects. A lot of different things going on with the military. They've got a lot of money to deploy, and we participate in areas there. Consumer products had been a little weaker, but we've seen a little pickup in that more recently. Industrial machinery had kind of plateaued, but still at decent levels for us. Our largest end market or -- about 35% to 40%, nonresidential construction, which we include infrastructure in because, again, a lot of times, we're not sure where the product is going. But we participate, in the service center world and especially at Reliance, we're typically kind of doing the 4- to 5-story buildings and below. So we're not the primary on the huge projects. That being said, like the chip manufacturing facility fabs that are being built in the U.S. now, we are selling metal in to them for the build, but we're not the primary. We'll do -- we've seen a lot of strength this year in data centers, a lot of manufacturing buildings, with the onshoring that's happening. They need facilities to operate in. So there's been a lot of strength there. A lot of schools, hospitals, airports, stadiums. So those are a lot of the projects we've been in. And with infrastructure, we haven't seen the big projects or the big dollars being released yet under the Infrastructure Act, but certainly a lot of small bridges and different activity there. We sell into the automotive industry, but Reliance, strategically, has preferred not to sell metal direct to the auto OEMs because we think the margins are usually pretty thin there. But we have a very large toll processing company, one here in the U.S., one in Mexico that their major end market is automotive. So toll processing means that they do not take ownership of the metal. And generally, our customer would be the metal producer, whether it's steel or aluminum. And on their behalf, we're inspecting, processing, storing, maybe putting a special coating on, delivering to the auto manufacturer on behalf of the producer. And so we take on less risk because we don't have the metal price volatility to worry about. And so it's a pretty consistent good margin business with strong cash flows. And so in those businesses on automotive, although there seems to be some negative sentiment out there, that market has held up for us well this year. We -- and we're -- we've been making continued investments in that part of our business. One of the major growth areas for us on the automotive tolling part of the business is on the aluminum side. So with there being increased aluminum content in autos, we believe our company there is one of the best at handling and processing the surface exposed aluminum for the automotive industry. So we've grown the capacity there quite a bit and continue to do that. And our lines are full. We've got a lot of customers coming after us. So that's been a good growth area. So even if the overall automotive market would shift down a bit, we think our company and where we have exposure, which even on the carbon side is primarily light trucks and SUVs. So those platforms have remained strong. Aerospace, we participate in. Aerospace is probably overall about 10% of our revenue dollars, about half of that commercial. And we do -- that's serving both Boeing and Airbus, a lot through their subcontractors, not direct. And certainly, there have been a few challenges in that supply chain. Our activity has remained pretty steady. But we anticipate there may be a little temporary blip if there's too much inventory in the supply chain, but overall, very constructive on aerospace long term. And then also within aerospace, defense, space, private jet, has continued to be strong for us. Semiconductor, we service in a couple of different ways. That's been a little weaker than last year because there was a glut of inventory in the supply chain. We're starting to see that worked out. And just looking long term, we're very bullish on the semiconductor side as well. Did I miss anything?

You did not. I have nothing to add.

No, that was very thorough. You touched many, many good things. You touched many things that I want to circle back to, mainly some of the tailwinds for infrastructure, some of the funding incentives. But maybe first, I'm just thinking about all these different end markets. Could you speak just broadly to visibility in your business, whether it's a backlog or pipeline? Or I don't know how you guys define that, but just knowing that you're kind of selling into cyclical end markets, what you guys can see?

Well, when 40% of our orders, the customer calls us today and we deliver it tomorrow, we don't have great, firm visibility on our orders. But we do think we have really good people running each of our local businesses, and we really talk about local intelligence. We rely on them to know what's going on in their markets. They're making the decisions on what they're buying, how much of it they're buying, what they're stocking. And again, with that decentralized model, we think that's important. If we were trying to make centralized buying decisions, our inventory would probably be a mess. And with that, we believe the way we've built our compensation structures for those local management teams really incentivizes them to drive the right behavior. And so aerospace, we maybe have a little more visibility on backlog, but it's really us relying on the people we have out there managing.

Yes. I mean we have 1,200 inside salespeople. We have 600 outside salespeople. They are getting a feel for the pulse of the industry. We touch all of the different products we have in stock, processing those products. But our customers don't always know what's going to be down, what's next, but based on our intelligence that we gather in the field, then they communicate that with our purchasing people, we try to have the right material in stock for when our people -- what our customers are looking for.

Maybe circling back now to a few of the policies that you mentioned, the Infrastructure Act, CHIPS Act. Inflation Reduction Act is one that's touched my coverage significantly. How are your customers or maybe you guys benefiting directly or indirectly from this? And where are we, I guess, in realizing some of these benefits?

So we think we're still early in most of those. I would say the IRA, we saw a more immediate uptick initially from that. And we believe that's because that was -- the funding there came in the form of tax credits, so you don't have to wait for an approval. So we participate in fossil fuels, but also in the renewable energy space. And so we thought we saw a bump up in that initially, but a lot more to come. On the infrastructure side, I think I mentioned we've seen some bridge work, but we think that's -- a lot of that's waiting on approvals. So we're waiting to see more of that, especially the bigger projects, come through. Again, we're probably not going to be the lead on some of those big projects, but we will benefit from it. The other thing that happens is when demand is strong, pricing overall goes up. So we can participate in direct volume growth from the projects, but then even indirectly, with stronger pricing, that benefits all of our business for those different products. And on the CHIPS Act, we've been selling some metal into the construction of the facilities, but then once -- and then kind of one of the phases of the construction we participate directly in. Overall, it's a smaller business, but it's an exciting business for us, that they supply the ultra-high purity gas systems, the tubing that feeds all the gases into the clean rooms. And our company, we've owned it since the early 1980s, has grown a lot in the U.S. than in South Korea and China. Like whenever a fab goes up, we're qualified for most of the majors to supply that very high value product. So even though it's small, it's an exciting part of the business. They'll participate in that. And then we'll have some products that will just go in. The equipment manufacturing, manufacturing equipment for semiconductor, some of the consumables, so we'll pick up some activity on that as well.

Question that's come up in many presentations this week and really just over the last week and all of the companies in our markets has been impact from the election. And steel, aluminum, several of the metals that you guys serve with has been, let's say, amplified many, many times on the national stage, geopolitically speaking. Do you anticipate any impact from the change in administration in the U.S., whether it be through tariffs or other?

It's the first time anyone's asked us about the elections today. Since this is our ninth meeting, we've had a little practice now. Yes. So I think in 2018, the Trump administration enacted the Section 232 tariffs, which was very positive for our industry from a pricing standpoint, in particular, keeping some imported material out. The Biden administration continued those policies, strengthened some of it. So going into the election, we felt confident that, from a trade standpoint that, that protection would remain in place, which is good for our industry, potentially strengthen if some of the tariffs that were talked about go into place. If that drives more manufacturing to the U.S., that's a positive for us. It doesn't have to be just steel related, just general manufacturing in particular. So we don't know exactly how everything is going to fall out, but I think with Reliance because of the diversification of our products and all the end markets we participate in, our model has us very flexible to be able to go after whatever opportunities are out there. Speculation right now is it's going to be a higher growth environment, which would be good for Reliance and the industry.

Yes. I mean what I would add is the United States or North America, the strongest markets in the world. So products are coming from all over, from Asia, from Europe, coming up from Mexico, down from Canada. So I think that all of the money that -- we've spent over $1 billion in the last couple of years, the mills, these mills are $2 billion, $3 billion a shot. I think that to have the new administration come in there and look at the tariffs and the laws that are in place and bolster them, I think, would be the right thing to do for U.S. manufacture.

[indiscernible] do you think it will be a broad percentage of all imports or more targeted to countries?

Good question. I mean we don't really know. I think there could be a combination of both. I think probably certain countries will be targeted, but I think there may be some other...

Yes. A lot of negotiating.

More broad-based.

So 2 questions. One is kind of what's your view, kind of the internal ways you forecast for next year on steel pricing and sort of commodity pricing in general across your basket? And then two, on the M&A side, do you also acquire kind of service providers or maybe a little closer to the OEM in terms of being vertically integrated? Like folks that are doing metal parts that are sold to OEMs, or you're solely focused on more of the kind of service model?

Yes. So on the first part, from a pricing standpoint, as I think Arthur mentioned, prices have been declining for many of our products consistently for about 12 months. We think, for a lot of the carbon products, in particular, that we're near the bottom, but we thought that in second quarter and we thought it in the third quarter. So we think maybe in the fourth quarter, but there may be room for certain of the products to continue down a bit. But overall, we think going into 2025, we're very optimistic. At some point in 2025, we expect pricing to get better, demand to get better. When prices are declining, a lot of our customers hold back on purchasing because it might be less expensive next week. So kind of that buyer is sitting on the sideline, a lot of them were citing the election as creating a lot of uncertainty, not knowing when does the impact of the lower interest rates kick in. So we're pretty positive, both from demand and pricing, for 2025. And then as far as acquisitions and like going more downstream, so at Reliance, we don't want to directly compete with our customers, and we appreciate our suppliers taking that view. But we have, in certain instances, bought a couple of more downstream small fabrication companies, generally where we're not competing with our customers. And there are times where even some of those fabrication customers come to us and say, "I'm going to keep doing this in my business, but when I have overflow, I'd like Reliance to have this type of processing capability so that I can push some overflow to you." So we'll continue to look at opportunities both at the service center and down the level, and it really -- it's kind of company by company, which ones really fit within Reliance that we'll go after.

Maybe one more in our last half minute here.

Yes. You guys have stepped up CapEx over the last few years. Is that something you guys are looking to sustain? Because that does distinguish you guys from other industrial distributors [indiscernible] percent of sales on CapEx.

Yes. So we -- starting, like I said, about 8 to 10 years ago, we did step up and we've seen the growth, we think, through the margin bump that we've proven that we're getting the returns on that equipment. But we've been record levels last year and this year. Part of that was because for a lot of the equipment that we acquire or even greenfields that we're doing, like the lead times extended significantly coming out of COVID. There was a lot of backup. So we probably doubled down a little bit on some of those CapEx investments because the lead times were so long. So a lot of the budget dollars are going to be coming online this year, next year, maybe even the year after. So going into '25, we're anticipating a lower CapEx that we approved. Spending dollars out the door might be pretty consistent with this year as we do that catch up, but because lead times have come in a bit, we've been able to do that. But we still see opportunity to continue to grow our value-added processing capabilities.

Great. I think we'll leave it there. Thank you very much, team.

Thank you.

Thank you.