RHI Magnesita N.V. (RHIM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the RHI Magnesita Q3 Trading Update. My name is Charlie and I'll be coordinating the call today. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to your host, Stefan Borgas, CEO, to begin. Stefan, please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, to listen in. Ladies and gentlemen, in our industry, we continue to operate at a very high level of volatility. This has been going on for the last 2 years. In RHI Magnesita, we have focused a lot on increasing the speed of reaction to this volatility, because these externalities we cannot influence, of course. For the third quarter of this year, there are really 3 key messages. First one on demand. The demand for refractories on a worldwide basis remains quite solid. I'll give you a little bit more granularity in a little bit. The second key message is energy supply in Europe. We have no more risk here of being supplied. There's a cost competitiveness issue with the European plants, but the supply is ensured. And the third key message of the third quarter for RHI Magnesita is that we've made quite good progress on our acquisition journey. Let me go through the details now of those 3 messages and let me start with the current trading update. The demand conditions in the steel industry have softened in Europe, in line with the expectation that we had anyway. The situation is quite different region by region. And therefore, it's important to be reminded that RHI Magnesita is operating in the steel industry with a very broad global footprint. Therefore, we should not have the same message for everywhere. Let me start with India, West Asia. This is the growth region of the world. Our business is quite significant there. We have stronger-than-expected demand now for the fourth quarter and also for the third quarter. So we have increased volume in this region. I, therefore, announced that especially in this region, we have been successful with our acquisition journey. I'll get to this a little later. In Europe, this is the other side of the metal. The steel industry is weak. Driven by the high cost of energy at our customers and related sluggish steel demand, some steel mills have been temporarily idled in Europe. We expected this and the downturn is more or less in the order of magnitude that we have anyway foreseen. This weakness in Europe is largely offset by the strength in India, from a global perspective, in combination with a quite resilient Industrials business. Our order book visibility for the Industrials business, especially for the project business for the CapEx investments in the industrial area is very strong. Customers continue to invest. Because of high commodity prices that pertain all over the world, we expect that the cement repair season that is coming now will be more or less on the normal level. It's quite possible that the end of 2023 could see some decline in cement demand, but not in the next 6 or 9 months. If I go to the other 3 regions. In North America and in South America, our order book also is in line with our planning. Steel production in both of those regions together is around 4% lower than the year before. But also that was expected because the year before was at a very strong level because of the catch-up. And in China and in Asia, our demand is also quite stable, quite strong. We're performing relatively better there than the steel production because of the segments in which we are present. So from an overall demand perspective, softening in Europe, as expected, but it's counterbalanced with mostly India and the Industrials business. Let me talk a little bit about energy supply as the next topic now. The supply volumes were the big challenge here because of the cut of gas from Russia. We are very proud to report that on a volume perspective, all of our plants in Europe are secured to work throughout the winter. When this conflict in Ukraine happened, we acted very quickly, starting a few days after the conflict with some planning and this resulted in a decision of our Executive Committee in March of this year to reorient a good portion of our production in Europe to other fuels other than gas. In our Hochfilzen raw material plant in Austria, we went to solid fuels, mostly coal. In our Breitenau raw material plant, we went to fuel oil. And in our refractory plants, in the many refractory plants that we have in Austria, Germany and France, mostly we replaced a large portion of the gas with liquid petroleum gas, which is a product that doesn't come from natural gas supply, but it comes from oil supply. We needed new installation in order to be able to handle these different fuels. This is well advanced. This will be ready over the course of the next few weeks, plant by plant. We have secured the shipments of LPG and of other fuels. We have EUR 15 million of additional gas supply stored for the winter, and with all these measures together, we're able to replace 50% of the finished goods produced in Europe not to be dependent on gas anymore. And the rest of the materials, of course, we can get gas from other sources other than Russia. I'm very proud about the team that has reacted so fast on this. The volumes for our global customers are safe. They're secured. Production timing is also secured. We can deliver products as our customers need them. Costs will, of course, increase because of the energy cost in Europe, but that's a topic that I think we can manage very well like we have demonstrated over the course of the last couple of years with increased costs everywhere. So much about the energy. Third topic I want to give you an update on now as a third quarter event is the M&A progress. I'm very happy to report good progress in M&A. It's a vital part of our strategy, because it's one of the main sources of growth for the company. And there are two transactions that I want to give you an update on. The first one is the completion, the closing of our acquisition in Turkey, a company by the name of SÖRMAS, relatively closely located to the raw material plants that RHI Magnesita has been operating for many decades. This business, we spent EUR 46 million in buying 87% of this company. The rest is with small shareholders who we intend to buy out calmly over the next 1 or 2 years. The business generated over EUR 19 million of revenue and EUR 6.6 million of EBITDA in the first 6 months of 2022. If we include the synergies that are at least 30% of this EBITDA, then the merger with RHI Magnesita Türkiye looks to be a very attractive value proposition. The synergies come from SG&A savings, but also from procurement and especially from very substantial production network optimization. And let me give you the essence of this. We will not ship raw materials out of Türkiye anymore to Europe or not to the same extent at all, but we will keep these raw materials in Türkiye now that we have a finished goods plant, and we will reduce freight costs. We will reduce lead times for our Turkish customers. We will reduce working capital, and of course, we would save customs duties for finished products. Therefore, this is one of the major sources of synergies. We will, as a result of this, almost double the local production in Türkiye compared to what SÖRMAS is doing today, but we will move production there in order to cater to the Türkiye customers, but also the customers outside the country. And we will build up a technical team for our customers, so that we can support them locally with a kind of a research and development center in order to give them master tailored solutions based on the local capabilities. So a really great value proposition for that attractive market. The second transaction I want to talk about is a company called Hi-Tech that we announced signing of a contract this morning with the business in India. The company will be bought by RHI Magnesita India Limited by the way of a business transfer agreement, so it's an asset deal. It's a refractory business focused on flow control, we will spend EUR 78 million for this company. It's a very modern setup making high-quality flow control products. It's complementary to our existing operations in India, and this will support the growth in India and in West Asia and become maybe a hub also for some exports beyond this region. It supports the flow control product segments on which we have put additional focus in the last couple of years. The EBITDA of this company is between EUR 8 million and EUR 10 million for 2022. As you know that 2022 year is not finished. It goes until March in India. The time to closing for this transaction depends solely on the approval speed of the transfer of the business license by the local authorities. We expect this to last 3, maybe 6 months. It depends on the speed of the bureaucracy in India. I will give you more details on the detailed plans and on the expectation for the integration here with our 2022 full year results, but the synergies, again, are very attractive here. Just to give you the context in which this happens, RHI Magnesita Group owns 70% of RHI Magnesita India Limited. This is a listed company in India with a very high market capitalization, actually, and with very strong multiples. This business commands a premium valuation because it's located in the highest growth refractory market globally. Steel growth in India is projected to be at least 7% for the next year. We have built this company up after having bought a smaller company in India some years ago called Orient Refractories. And then Orient Refractories under our leadership has made two acquisitions. They were completed in 2021. That's built the RHI Magnesita business. And the integration with the Hi-Tech team now is going to give another push to the success of this company. And of course, inside RHI Magnesita Group, this business is going to do wonders. We are very optimistic with also the people that will join us from Hi-Tech. Let me make a last comment on our production optimization plan before I hand over to Ian. We have, in the third quarter, decided to postpone the second stage of our Contagem Brazil upgrade for the time being. This is a postponement of CapEx into the future. And it's basically driven by the different backdrops in Brazil due to supply chain issues due to significant cost inflation there due to the foreign exchange rate changes that are a little bit more structurally, we think, and freight cost that has remained substantially high. We've decided to postpone the second stage of investment into this side. All the other production optimization plan topics are on drag, especially the investment in Brumado in Brazil, our raw material plant. This is well on track. This is very strategic for us. So we're not turning away from Brazil. It's a specific topic here that we have with the finished goods. We will see more cost savings coming through in 2023 from all of these projects. This is the update on the third quarter. Let me hand over to Ian to give you more financial backgrounds on what happened in the third quarter before I can summarize. Ian?

Thanks, Stefan, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And if I start with costs and pricing, the pace of our cost escalation slowed in the third quarter, but there are still inflationary pressures in spot energy markets and on certain freight rates that we rely on. We have continued to successfully put through price increases to offset cost inflation, and our refractory margin has increased through the third quarter as a result. As we've previously guided, the margin contribution from our raw material production assets has not ever been much lower in the third quarter as magnesite-based raw material prices from China has softened. And at the same time, we've seen higher costs from our own raw material due to higher energy and freight costs as well as currency movements. If I turn to inventories. We maintained inventory at elevated levels during the third quarter. This was done to support customer deliveries that we were planning to make in the fourth quarter, including importantly, for the fourth quarter cement repair season. Whilst inventory volumes were stable, the value of inventory held on the balance sheet increased modestly in the third quarter due to the strength of the U.S. dollar and higher production costs in particular for energy. We have taken steps to accelerate inventory reduction in the fourth quarter by revising our production plans downwards, so that sales volumes exceed plant output. That said, clearly, we continue to be focused on doing so without impacting the service levels for our customers, which has supported our earnings and our market share growth this year. On net debt and gearing, we have given revised guidance for 2022 today, which we are now targeting to reduce to 2.4x by the end of the year. This is higher than what we were previously aiming for, and the context for this is really around 3 issues. Firstly, the need to maintain high levels of inventory to meet customer deliveries into the first quarter of 2023, including for the cement season. Secondly, additional spending on European natural gas for physical storage to support energy security through the European winter. And thirdly, around EUR 70 million of investment in acquisitions in the year-to-date for the purchases of Chongqing in China, the Horn recycling joint venture in Europe, and SÖRMAS in Turkey, which collectively add over 0.1x to year-end gearing. Against this backdrop, the gearing has reduced modestly in the third quarter. We continue to benefit from the significant available liquidity of over EUR 1 billion and the fact that we have no major debt maturities until 2027. And we continue to have very competitive cost of debt at around 166 basis points with 2/3 of that on fixed interest rates. With that, I'll hand you back to Stefan for the outlook.

Thanks, Ian. So summary and outlook. We've very well defended our position as the global market leader in refractory products. In the first 9 months of this year, we've led price increases in all the markets around the world, and at the same time, moderately increased our market share here and there as we have proven ourselves to be the reliable partner for our customers. We used our balance sheet in the third quarter to carry additional inventory in order to deliver these results and to demonstrate to our customers how reliable we are. They acknowledge this engagement. Therefore, this is to our benefit in the long term. That's why we continue to be very comfortably on track to meet the market expectations for EBITDA this year. We have no profitability issue. For 2023, the potential downside to revenues that could come from recession is expected to be balanced out by additional earnings from M&A and the benefits of our strategic initiatives. Our customers, ladies and gentlemen, operate in cyclical industries, mainly due to their price volatility. From a volume perspective, steel in Europe will remain soft whereas Indian customers will require more volumes. RHI Magnesita's resilience comes also from its regional and end market diversification. We have a strong order book in Industrials. Refractories are not a discretionary item for our customers. They cannot operate without refractories. The volatility in steel or other commodity prices has, therefore, not translated to the volatility in refractory demand, because our business is linked to the production volumes of our customers, which are much more stable than their prices. Local volume reduction usually only lasts for a short period of time, because they're linked to a temporary downturn. If you look back 20 years to 5 big downturns in which RHI Magnesita has maintained a consistent 10% to 15% EBITDA margin in every downturn. We remain very confident through this downturn also. I'm very pleased that we made the investments that we did in our production network from 2019 to now, because this places us in an even stronger position going into 2023. We have also put in place specific measures to safeguard our energy supplies throughout the coming months, especially in Europe. On top of this strong foundation, we can now demonstrate to you today that our ongoing progress in M&A in Türkiye and in India are going to be a key driver of the next phase of growth in an industry where consolidation is attractive. India is a real exciting market to be building a business right now. We have high expectations to our business there, and we have delivered or overdelivered to any one of these expectations. Thank you for listening to us. We're now very happy to answer your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Mark Davies Jones of Stifel.

Two from me, which are probably related. Firstly, the kind of offset that you've seen through Q3, Europe weakening, other regions stronger. Obviously, we're looking at what is likely to be more global recession as we go forward. So India may be a special case, but would you expect to see weaker trends across much of the rest of the group as we go through Q4 and into next year. And then the related one was around inventory and the security of that order backlog. Given the backdrop, how firm are those orders, particularly around the cement infrastructure side of things. Is there any risk that those get shifted out or canceled and you're left carrying a lot of excess inventory.

Okay. So the weakening hasn't really happened in the third quarter, also not in Europe. It's only really starting now, and it continues into the fourth quarter and in the first quarter of next year. So we haven't seen very much weakening in the third quarter from Europe. But we have seen strengthening in India. It might be a special situation, but it still benefits each other out. We've been concerned in North America for the weakening in August, September time frame, when we received a lot of cancellations from customers, but half of these have been taken back or added again, which tells us this was an inventory adjustment driven by relatively high steel inventories in the U.S. This is through the system. So I think with this 4% lower reduction for the year, we're going to end up with -- that's going to be the result of the steel demand in the U.S. There's additional downside visible in the U.S. for the winter, but there could be a potentially very significant upside coming towards the middle of the year from the infrastructure investment programs in the U.S., which are now finally happening. We've been talking about this for 2 years, but now this looks like it's finally happening. So for the U.S., we're actually feeling better than we did 2 months ago. South America looks solid, stable. No dark clouds on the horizon here. The competitiveness of Brazil is still outstanding in terms of steel production. So there shouldn't be any reduction here. Middle East looks very strong. East Asia looks very stable, no recessionary discussions here, especially not in the new markets like Vietnam or Indonesia. And also China, we don't suffer very much under the downturn in China because we're in the right segment here. So it's not an issue. On the cement side, we've asked this question ourselves a lot to our customers. So far, they haven't canceled any orders. The probability that they will cancel many orders is rather low because even if they have lower demand coming from the construction market, they would still stop their kilns and repair them and get them ready. This is usually what happens in a downturn. The probability that they will start up later than usual is reasonable. I think it's reasonable to assume this, but that doesn't reduce the refractory demand now. it could reduce the refractory demand at the end of 2023 for the '23-'24 season. That can happen because the kilns have been running less. That's what at least we're expecting at the moment.

Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And can you just comment maybe...

By the way, Mark, we haven't had any substantial inventory write-offs or any substantial accounts receivable collection problems, nothing. That's also an indicator that there's no disaster on the horizon.

Okay. That is encouraging. And then in terms of slowing production in Q4 to clear some of the inventory, is that a global decision? Is that more focused on the European facilities, particularly given some of the energy costs there? How big in scale is that going to be?

Ian, do you want to give a view on this?

So Mark, we're anticipating that our second half sales volumes will be down 5% to 7% on the first half of the year. And we are trimming back production across several sites. So for example, we were in York, Pennsylvania, 2 weeks ago, and there we are reducing some of the dolomite production by switching off one of the rotary kilns over time. There is one at the production lines in China at our Dalian site that we are shutting down for a period. So tactically, we are doing this in a way that allows us to minimize the impact of fixed cost absorption on our earnings and to consolidate our production, so that we run those plants that we're running very fully loaded. But at the moment, it's more tactical than something that is very broad-based.