Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (2010) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to SABIC's Q1 2024 Earnings Call. This is [indiscernible], acting as a moderator. Please note that the call is being recorded, and the transcript will be published on the SABIC Investor Relations web page together with supplementary materials. The earnings call will feature commentary from SABIC's CEO, Abdulrahman Al-Fageeh, together with CFO, Mr. Salah Al-Hareky; and IRO, Mr. Moneef Al-Moneef. Moneef Al-Moneef will now guide us through an outline of today's event.

Thank you, [indiscernible]. Good day, and thank you for joining the SABIC 2024 earnings call. Please note that any forward-looking statements are subject to set assumptions, risks and uncertainty. These statements are not a guarantee of a future performance. Actual outcomes might differ materially, please refer to the disclaimer in the presentation and in our financial reports, which are available at sabic.com. Our CEO will start by going over the high-level market context that influenced our industry's performance in the first quarter of 2024. This will be followed by an outline of SABIC's key priorities for 2024 and an update on sustainable value creation. The CFO will then walk you through SABIC's aggregate financial performance with the additional background on market conditions. Our CEO will then conclude and provide an outlook for the remainder of 2024 and open the line for a live Q&A session. We ask participants to keep questions limited to SABIC corporate and avoid addressing any questions related to our affiliated listed companies. Now please join me in welcoming SABIC's CEO, Engineer Abdulrahman Al-Fageeh.

Thank you, Moneef, and thank you to everyone for joining today's earnings call. Starting from a macro view. We have witnessed a greater than anticipated GDP growth, stable growth values and other early-stage indicators market recovery. However, the petrochemical industry continued to deal with challenging market conditions in this quarter of 2024. The market has yet to grow into the recent run of capacity investments and this overcapacity continues to play significant pressure in our industry. The chart that you have seen on the ethylene showcases this dynamic well, we can see how capacity growth outpaced demand growth for -- from 2019 onwards, leading to deteriorating operating rates across the industry. This gap between capacity and demand significantly increased in the intervening years as additional production expansions came online. The gap has begun to narrow, but does not remain in place as of 2024, which puts pressure on the current global market and presents numerous challenges. That said, I would now like to take a few minutes to draw attention to a few recent achievements that showcase SABIC's proven ability to navigate challenging time with resilience and adaptability. First of all, I'm glad to highlight a total recordable incident rate of 0.11 during the Q1 2024. It is no surprise that we are deeply committed to maintaining best-in-class environmental, health, safety and security practices. This TRI rate is a testament of our efforts in this front. Further reinforcing this commitment to safety is the fact that [indiscernible], the our investment in the U.S. with ExxonMobil, the [indiscernible] and Elite Gold Award of 2023 from American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers for setting the standards in industry safety performance. Move on. Our continuous portfolio optimization remains on track. The legacy steel business, Hadeed has now gone through antitrust clearance and will proceed through the divestment process, and we are pleased to announce the commencement of the construction of -- construction phase for the SABIC-Fujian petrochemical complex in China, making a significant milestone in the project progress. SABIC published its first integrated annual report for 2023. We hope to inspire other companies to adopt the same standard. We have jointly inaugurated the world's first large-scale electrical furnaces together with the industrial partner, BASF and Linde. This made a major process innovation milestone in our road map to carbon neutrality. And finally, this is now the fourth consecutive year in which SABIC products have received the Edison Award. We will share additional detail on these last 3 achievements in the context of our 2024 priorities. Our priorities in 2024 fall under 4 focus areas: sustainability growth, customer intimacy, value creation and finally, innovation. We are determined to develop and execute growth option in an affordable and sustainable way, both globally and within Saudi Arabia. We aim to supplement this by establishing a strategic partnership that enable superior performance and offer enhanced risk profiles. We are constantly work to amplify the market-facing organization in order to better serve customer needs with a strong collaboration and partnership. We continue looking to create value within the existing business. Our team places great emphasis on the asset performance, working capital optimization, digitalization, cost control and restructuring of nonprofitable business across the globe. We recently took the decision to close Geleen Olefin 3 cracker in the Netherlands, this action is part of the sites, strategic reorientation and is based on careful evaluation on market conditions. The closure will enable SABIC to position wider Geleen sight for further success in a competitive market. Innovation, together with ESG remains a cornerstone of our business. It is the anchor between the growth agenda, our focus on customer needs and our sustainability goals. We will elaborate a bit more on the coming slide. Bearing in mind, those focus area allows us now to elaborate into the Q1 2024 achievements related to transparency, collaboration and innovation. SABIC's first integrated annual report was published under the theme, "Chemistry that Shapes Tomorrow." The report integrates our primary reporting stream into a single unified narrative covering strategy, governance and financial performance. It aims to enhance the quality of public disclosure to stakeholders, thereby alleviating our standards of transparency and definitely accountability. Collaboration is crucial to advance sustainability within the globe and within the petrochemical industry. Our own long-term e-furnace partnership with BASF and Linde provides testament to this. The recent inauguration of the world's first demonstration plant for large-scale electricity or electrically-heated steam, which is cracking the olefins and the furnaces for almost -- it's going to be for almost 3 years of focused development of engineering and construction. This plant will operate within BASF, Verbund site in Germany, the technology has the potential to reduce the CO2 emission of one of the most energy-intensive production process in the chemical industry by at least 90% compared to technology commonly used today. We have been honored with 5 separate Edison Awards, which is recognized innovation across products, services and leadership. This year, 5 of our groundbreaking solutions in the categories of material science and consumer solutions have received this recognition. The diversity in award categories reflects the wide range of products that SABIC is developing to help meet the world's sustainability challenges. Now, let us look at the demand and sales of individual end markets and serve through the quarter. Market conditions remain dynamic and varied across the users of the industry. First quarter demand has improved in the majority of the sectors, remained stable across Construction, Electrical and Healthcare but taking a downturn in the Automotive. We expect to see stable Q2 of 2024, trends in most end sectors except for the Automotive and Healthcare where the anticipation is an improvement over the prior quarter. The Agri-Nutrients sector, however, is set to contract in Q2. With that said, let us hand the call over to our CFO, Mr. Salah Al-Hareky for the additional commentary on markets and to a review of SABIC financial results. Salah?

Thank you, Abdulrahman, and thank you to everyone joining call. I will provide an overview of the key drivers of performance and then take you through the key financial for first quarter 2024. Let me start by outlining the -- that petrochemical demand in China remains flat, but the latest PMI results and measurement signals a positive sentiments. Chemicals and Polymers project prices showed some improvement during the quarter with logistical strains impacting the import to some regions. In addition, global petrochemical product did benefit from seasonal restocking activities at the beginning of the year with the seasonality-driven supply-demand dynamics. SABIC was positioned to capitalize on these market dynamics, leading average quarterly prices for our petrochemical project rising by 5% over the prior quarter. However, volume reduced by 10% due to some planned turnarounds and inspections. Trends were mixed within Agri-Nutrients. Urea rallied with an Asian supply disruption, funneling demand towards the Middle East, but ammonia trade underperformed as industrial buyers work through carryover SOx. Our exposure to the strengthening urea market was limited by scheduled turnaround work resulting in 18% lower sales volume. With this market context in mind, we will now proceed to the quarterly financial results. Next slide, please. Despite market challenges, we are pleased to share with you our profitability has improved with focus on higher product margins and fixed cost optimization. We recorded quarterly revenue of $8.72 billion, which represents a decrease of 7% over the prior quarter due to an 11% reduction in sales volume following a series of plant turnaround, as I mentioned. The impact of lower sales volume is partially offset by a 4% increase in average selling prices. EBITDA achieved $1.2 billion with a 35% improvement quarter-over-quarter, beating analyst consensus estimate. Accordingly, our EBITDA margin reached 14%, which is an improvement from 10%, quarter-over-quarter. This was supported by higher product margin and fixed cost optimization effort during the quarter. SABIC first quarter net income from continuing operations was $169 million, with improvement of $563 million compared to last quarter. Finally, our credit -- stand-alone credit rating, A+/A1, remain the same, reflecting -- reflecting and showcasing our resiliency and robust financial standing. This concludes the financial highlights. I will now hand back to Abdulrahman for closing remarks.

Thank you. Thank you, Salah. Our guidance for the year ahead include a stable economic growth, reflected in a global GDP growth rate of 2.6% for the 2024. We anticipated [indiscernible] and disciplined approach in managing our CapEx, projecting a spending of USD 4 billion to USD 5 billion for the year of 2024. This concludes the presentation portion of today's call. Back to [indiscernible] to kick off the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Prateek Bhatnagar from HSBC.

I have 2. The first question is on the volumes, right? The volumes have declined 10%. And this trend we have seen across Saudi chemical industry. So could you give some color to us that what were the drivers? How much of it was due to the turnaround? And how was -- how much of this decline was due to the Red Sea disruption? And looking at Q2, should we expect some of this volume to rebound -- volume improvement to rebound? So that's number 1 question. Number 2 is -- also, could you give some color on the clean cracker, which you have shut down? How much improvement in earnings we should expect? Any color? I know you can't give specifics, but any color would be helpful.

Prateek, thank you very much. For the volumes, the main reason for that volume is because of a turnaround, scheduled turnaround, extended the scheduled turnaround. This is the major driver for such kind of volume and also some slippage and some of the shipments, which is not due to the Red Sea, by the way. I mean, the Red Sea does not impact much the supply chain of SABIC. As you may know, Prateek, I mean, the beauty of SABIC that we have, our asset footprint is around the globe, in U.S., Europe, Saudi Arabia, both cities in Jubail and Yanbu in the East and the West, as well as also in China and in Asia. So the impact is not that much. Maybe the impact from the Red Sea is just a little bit, extended time and delivering to our customers, but that does not impact that much. Hopefully, in the Q2, the volume is going to improve since the anticipation of turnaround is going to be less of what happened in the Q1. And clean cracker, this is part of our portfolio optimization for the company. This is part of the -- our plan for to strengthen our European position in a competitive way. And by the way, this does not impact the balance of our olefin use in the -- in Europe. And hopefully, this is going to make us stronger in our operations in Europe.

The next question is from Ricardo Rezende from Morgan Stanley.

Actually, I have 2 questions on potential growth. The first one would be, is there any specific products that you like to target that you're actually missing on your current portfolio? And the second question is more on, given the oversupply dimension and that this cycle of new capacity should continue in the coming years, would you consider M&A as well as part of your CapEx plan? Or are you mostly take greenfields?

Thank you, Ricardo. For the first question and the potential growth of our portfolio. As you may know, the core business of SABIC is petrochemical in 4 areas, the chemicals with its 2 types of basics and also chemical -- performance chemicals. Second one is polymers, including the engineering thermoplastic polymers and also specialty and the last one is the Agri-Nutrient, which is what we call it, the [indiscernible] that serve the Agri-Nutrients. So this is the core business of the company. And this is the focus of the company in the future when we look into the growth of the company and the expansion of our company. And as you may notice that we have made a divestment of this deal of Hadeed because of that reason that we want to focus our strategic investment in the core business of the company. So it is across what I have mentioned to you on the portfolio. Oversupply, this is not only SABIC problem. I think this is the industry problems. Hopefully, there will be a rationalization in the -- in the market. I mean because the petrochemical has become more competitive. The good thing is in SABIC since it has been established that we have established a solid, strong customer base around the globe, over 100 countries that we are serving at this point, complement with our efforts in improving our technologies, our innovations, our applications, our solutions to our customers. So this is what -- in addition, that we keep improving from a year-to-year, our higher added value, our differentiated portfolio that makes SABIC stronger and stronger. So hopefully, this is going to help us, I mean, to overcome the oversupply. In addition, of what you mentioned about the M&A, our focus right now in our organic growth. However, does not harm or does not prevent SABIC from any future opportunity that bring value to our shareholders.

The next question is from Sashank Lanka from Bank of America.

I just have one question. More on the product pricing outlook. I think when I look at the press release, you did mention that some of the prices in Q1 were supported by disruptions in supply, some turnaround activity globally. So how are you seeing the trends in Q2 so far? And how do you look at pricing going over the course of the year as well from what it was in Q1?

Thank you, Sashank. Yes, there was some slight improvement in the prices for most of our portfolio in the Q1 due to the reason that we have mentioned, and that's a slight improvement in the prices, that does help the company to improving our EBITDA margin, no doubt. In addition, the majority of our EBITDA margin also comes from the discipline in our cost spending, in the fixed cost, in the G&A, in the cost of our sold goods. And in addition to that also discipline into spending in our capital. How do we see the Q2 and how do we see this transition into the Q2? There is a stability in the price for the time being. But as you may know, the priors, it depends on so many factors. One of them is the GDP. The other thing is the geopolitical that is happening in the world, the thing in disruption in the supply chain. So all of these has uncertainty at this point of time, even though we are in the -- starting the Q2, even though this uncertainty is not clear. Hoping that there will be a stability, hopefully, this is going to improve but there is no science at this point of time for major improvements in prices.

The next question is from Waleed Jimma from Goldman Sachs.

I just have one. Could you please provide an explanation for the large increase in working capital that resulted in negative free cash flows during the quarter? Appreciate any elaboration on this.

I did not hear the question well.

Can you hear me now?

No. Can you say the question again, Waleed, please?

Okay. Can you hear me now?

No, we hear you well.

Okay. So I was asking you could please explain the large increase in working capital that resulted in negative free cash flows during the quarter?

Clear. Okay. So -- thank you, Waleed, for your question. And before I jump into the big reason why the free cash flow was negative. And by the way, and this is an information. If you look at all the major petrochemical company, you would find that all of them actually on a negative free cash flow. Last year, we've done a great job, a fantastic job. In fact, we had actually improved our working capital. Actually, the free cash flow was around $4 billion, and I remember, $3.7 billion, which was very substantial, very high and this is mainly for the effort, not only focusing on the liability and the asset side and the liability side, but also major, major improvement on our inventory. And now it is customary and at some point, it's normal when you have a huge improvement and then you have a dynamic and changes of the prices. And we mentioned the prices had actually slightly changed. Our -- actually working capital, our actually working capital has actually gone up. But the main reason why it's negative is because of seasonality and our -- and the spending on the cash from operation where in the first quarter, we're actually more of our expenditure, especially employee-related and other -- other operational expenses are paying -- are well paid in the first quarter. I can tell you, while we're negative on the free cash flow. This free cash flow will be improved in the coming quarters. I hope I answered your question. Thank you very much.

We have a question in the chat from [indiscernible]. The question is, what's the impact on earnings from closing of loss making European plant?

Yes. If you mean the -- what you have mentioned about the olefin for Olefin 3 and Geleen, I think the impact is going to be positive. And as I explained, that there is no impact in terms of the supply of our derivatives in Europe. I think -- because I think we have done this in a very smart way, to making sure that all of our derivatives is supplied by ethylene and propylene from our current Olefin 4 plus our cracker and Teesside in U.K.

I may add to the answer. I think this is very critical, very -- and very important. Abdulrahman, I mentioned that the strategy that we're pursuing and pushing very hard is the portfolio optimization. And this was actually underscored by our first divestment of nonstrategic assets, Hadeed. We've actually taken steps on restructuring some of our assets in Europe that Abdulrahman also alluded to. And we continue the effort and it is very well known that when you do these portfolio optimization and you structure your assets, you take an accounting short term, one head in your P&L and then long-term perspective is actually going to be better. At the end of the day, this exercise is very critical, very important for long-term profitability for SABIC, and this is the focus of the leadership here in SABIC.

Thank you. Thank you all for your thoughtful question. I would like to allude that our -- the integrated report is published now in our website. We would like to hear your feedback on our first integrated report. The Investor Relations team is available for pending inquiries and any follow-up from today's call. Contact information is displayed on the screen. The call has now concluded. Thank you again for attending SABIC's earnings call for the first quarter of 2024. You may now disconnect. Thank you.