Weyerhaeuser Company (WY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Thanks, everybody. We're going to go and get started with the 01:05 presentation. I want to thank Devin Stockfish from Weyerhaeuser for joining us. No shortage of topics that are timely at the moment with regards to lumber and/or timber coming out of policies from D.C. at the moment. So lots of headlines and a lot of uncertainty about what is going to be going -- the market going forward. But lot of good things to talk about within Weyerhaeuser as well. So we're going to let Devin run us through a few slides and then leave some time for Q&A and then talk some timber.

All right. Wonderful. All right. We got this on. All right. Well, I'm going to -- I've got some slides here. Thanks, Buck. Appreciate the opportunity to be here to talk about Weyerhaeuser. We've got a few slides. We've got obviously a much larger deck on the website if you're interested in more details. I'm going to try to breeze through these a little bit more quickly than normal because I think there are probably a lot more questions that we want to get to [indiscernible] typical cautionary length. So Weyerhaeuser, we're really focused on 4 key levers to drive value for shareholders. It's about having an unmatched portfolio of assets, industry-leading performance, a strong ESG foundation and disciplined capital allocation. And I'll touch on each of those in a little bit more detail. First, just real quickly, to highlight some of the progress that we've made against the target set out at Investor Day back in 2021. So we're making great progress across each of these levers on the portfolio side. We've done a really nice job of picking up accretive timberland acquisitions over the last several years, about $775 million -- our target Timberlands acquisitions, I suspect we will be at the $1 billion number by the end of this year. So great additions to the portfolio. Through that program we're seeing a nice growth trajectory on our Natural Climate Solutions business. We've taken this from -- essentially no business at all. It's $84 million of EBITDA last year on our way to $100 million by the end of this year and some nice growth there. We're really focused on operating performance. We have been for a while through operational excellence programs. We captured an additional $40 million of OpEx last year. And this is really all about having industry-leading performance across market cycles. So doing some nice work on that front. We have a whole host of work we're doing around sustainability. That really does go back to the early days of the company. It's a priority today just like it's been a priority for many, many decades and will be into the future. And then lastly, on capital allocation, it's all about returning cash to shareholders. And we've been doing a lot of that since we kicked off our new cash return framework. We've returned over $5.3 billion of cash back to shareholders through dividends, both base dividends, supplemental dividend as well as share repurchase. And we did just recently increased our dividend again by 5% earlier in February. For those -- as familiar with the story, we are the largest private owner of Timberlands in North America. We have [indiscernible] million acres of timberlands in the U.S. We manage another 14 million acres in Canada under long-term license agreements. These are some of the premier Timberlands assets, certainly in North America, if not the world. And that is a foundation of business. We have a real estate, energy and natural resources business that's focused on maximizing the value of every acre we own. The business has done a really nice job of growing and that includes our Natural Climate Solutions business, and we'll touch on that more in just a moment. We're also one of North America's largest manufacturers of wood products, lumber, strand board, a variety of other wood products. So that's the business. Each of our business segments has significant scale, industry-leading performance, and it's all managed within a tax-efficient REIT structure. So the Timberlands portfolio that is at the foundation of the company. That's where we started 125 years ago. These are some of the premier assets really in the industry. We have 2.5 million acres in the Pacific Northwest. These are high-quality, highly productive Douglas fir plantations, strong domestic and export markets, really some of the premier timber-growing regions in the entire world up in the Pacific Northwest. Across the South, we have 7 million acres, high-quality Southern yellow pine plantations. This allows us to access all of the key markets across the U.S. South. We also have a little over 1 million acres in the Northeast with a variety of hardwood sawlogs. So just a wonderful portfolio of Timberlands that serves as the foundation of our company. We export primarily out of the Pacific Northwest. We've been exporting to Japan for many decades. These are some of the highest in products that we have is the Japanese logs that we send over to the post and B market. We've had these relationships for a very, very long time, and they're a pretty significant component of what drives value in our Pacific Northwest holdings. We've also been growing our export business out of the U.S. South. It's still a relatively small component of the overall harvest levels, but something that we are growing, particularly into the India market and something I think we have some potential to grow further over time. So this is a component of our business that supplements the domestic markets and drives more tension in some of the wood baskets where we operate. We've been dedicated to growth in our Timberlands business for a very, very long time. This is a core part of what we do as a company, always has been. The latest iteration is a $1 billion target that we set out several years ago. We made really good progress through some acquisitions in Washington State, the Carolinas, Mississippi and then most recently in Alabama. One of the consistent themes in terms of our acquisition targeting is finding those markets that have good sawlog and pulp log markets. We target Timberlands that have good, strong cash flow dynamics. And this is an area where I think we're creating a lot of value. These are some of the best Timberlands these recent acquisitions that we have in our Southern portfolio and should really help with the cash flow growth across our portfolio. If you're managing a resource like this with 10.4 million acres, beyond just managing for timber, there's a lot of opportunity to capture incremental value back to the acre. And that's really what our real estate, energy and natural resources business is about. As you can see from the map, there's a lot of optionality across this land base to drive values that are incremental over and above the base timber value. And we really look at the portfolio and try to manage it end to end to ensure that we're capturing the maximum amount of value across this ownership. One of the ways we do that is through our real estate business. And really, the way we look at this is across those 10.4 million acres, we look at each acre to find those attributes that could potentially support a higher, better use valuation. So lands that are close to a city or have some scenic benefit that you can drive a value and someone wanting to purchase that land at a higher value that they might be willing to pay managing it for timber. We refreshed this assessment consistently, constantly every year. We've identified around 1.2 million acres across our portfolio that we think have the potential to generate that above-market -- above timber market value. We typically saw a little less than 1% per year. And then as part of our acquisition program, we're refeeding that pipeline. So we extend that over time, a very value-accretive component of owning Timberlands is capturing this value to the real estate business. Now one of the newer businesses that we have is our Natural Climate Solutions business. We really kicked this off in earnest back in 2021. And it was, I think, a function of looking out across this ownership and realizing there's even more value out there that we can unlock. And this business really has 4 sub businesses within it, 2 of which we've been sort of doing for a while, the mitigation and conservation and then renewable energy. The new one is carbon capture and sequestration and forest carbon are businesses that we think do have a lot of potential upside over time. The renewable energy business, there's been a lot of demand there. We've signed about 70 solar agreements to date. We just have our first operating solar site come online just here recently. We have two more under construction. Those will, over time, continue to add and they build on each other over a period of time to increase that just yearly recurring revenue stream. Similar with wind, we've got 7 operating wind sites, another one that will be up and running shortly with the pipeline behind that. So really pleased with the direction of the renewables business, carbon capture and sequestration. We have 3 agreements signed up within that business. Now the time line to get a carbon capture and storage operational has extended a little beyond what we had originally anticipated. That being said, as these do come online ultimately, and you start injecting CO2 into the subsurface, that's a pretty meaningful revenue stream that we can see coming as we get a little bit further to the end of this decade. On forest carbon, we've been doing the work for a number of years to build the pipeline. I think 2025 is really going to be an inflection year for us. To date, we have 2 projects that have been approved. We've got 7 more in the pipeline. So we'll see a pretty material uptick in the number of carbon credits that we're going to be selling this year, somewhere between 5 to 10x increase in terms of the number of carbon credits that will come market. So overall, really pleased with this business. We think it still has room to grow on track to get to the $100 million target by the end of this year. And lastly, we're one of the largest wood products manufacturers in North America. We have 34 mills across the U.S. and Canada, as you can see, these are typically in close proximity to our timberland holdings. We are a lumber manufacturer, OSB, a variety of engineered wood products as well as 19 distribution facilities. We've been very focused over a number of years on improving our operating performance in this business. I'll touch on that in a minute, but putting us in a position where we are a scaled, low-cost, industry-leading producer of wood products. So really pleased with the trajectory of this business going forward. A core part of our overall strategy as a company for a number of years has been focused on improving operating performance. And the key component to that is operational excellence. This has been going on for quite some time, and it's really put us in a position where we have low-cost assets really across the board. And when you see what that translates into in terms of relative performance, we really have taken all of our manufacturing businesses to a place where we are industry-leading margins similarly in the West from a timberland standpoint, so just a lot of really great work. It's positioned us to navigate the market cycles that are typical in this industry and really positions us well as you start to get some tailwinds from the market going forward. A lot of work going on in sustainability. I won't get into this in too much detail other than to just highlight. This has been a core part of who we've been as a company, really going back to the early days. It is really important when you're managing an asset like this that you keep your eye on the long term, and we do, and we will continue to do that. As you can see, we've got a lot of work going on around environmental stewardship, governance, social responsibility and that will continue. We think that's what helps us maintain good relationships with our stakeholders and ensuring that we're managing our assets and resources in the right way for the long term. Touch quickly on capital allocation. We have 3 key priorities: returning cash to shareholders. We do that through a combination of dividends and share repurchase, investing back into the business to ensure that we have high-quality assets and ensuring that we maintain an investment-grade credit rating. So those are the 3 key priorities. Our cash return framework is something that we switched up a few years ago to better align to the cyclicality of our business. The way this works is we're committed to returning 75% to 80% of our adjusted FAD back to shareholders every year. That's through a combination of a base dividend, which we've been growing at a 5% per year clip. And then anything between the base dividend up to that 75% to 80%, we return through a combination of supplemental dividends and/or share repurchase. Last year, we returned about $735 million of cash back to shareholders. Last year was a little tougher year. Lumber prices were weaker for most of the year. So it was a little bit of a down year. But I do think this cash return framework. We really demonstrated how this works across business cycles. So in what was a tougher year from a lumber standpoint, we were still able to repurchase shares to continue to invest back in our business and to make some really, I think, high-quality accretive timberland acquisitions. So I think it's working just as we had planned. And as you can see over the period where we put this new program into place, we've returned a fairly significant amount of cash back to shareholders in this program. Investing back into the business is important, being able to do that consistently across market cycles is really how you win in cyclical industries. And we've been able to do that. These are generally high returning investments back into our Wood Products manufacturing, the infrastructure in our timberlands business. One of the drivers for getting to that industry-leading performance place that we've accomplished. We've got $440 million of CapEx planned for 2025 which is right in the range of where we've guided. And these run the gamut from existing capital projects to new and growth product -- projects. As part of what we're trying to do, we always want to make sure that we maintain an investment-grade credit profile. And for us, that means targeting a 3.5x net debt to EBITDA across the market. And so again, even though last year was a little bit of a down year, still sub 3.5% on a leverage standpoint. So balance sheet is strong. We've paid down a fairly significant amount of debt over the last several years, $1.2 billion. We've refinanced some higher cost debt. So that's really played into lowering our overall annual interest cost going forward. So again, just in terms of the 2025 targets, we're getting pretty close on most of these. I think we're well positioned. The $1 billion target. I think we're going to see some nice timberlands come into the portfolio again this year, get to the $100 million EBITDA on the NCS business. We're on our way to the $175 million to $250 million of OpEx improvements, and I think that will be part of our ongoing even beyond this period, how we think about the business. We are at the place now where you're going to really start to see some of the capacity that we've built up in our lumber business, start hitting production. So you should see an uptick in terms of the amount of lumber that we're producing out of our system. We're going to stay focused on ESG. There's a lot of work going on that front. And then again, it's all about continuing to find ways to return cash to shareholders. So again, we've made a lot of progress across each of these value levers. I think we're well positioned to meet the targets that we set out. That, together with the growth opportunities that we have and a little tailwind from the market, which we expect to happen in 2025, I think we're really set up to deliver better performance this year and deliver a lot of value for our stakeholders going forward. So kind of brief through that quickly. I think there's probably some questions people might have on what's going on in the market. So we'll go from there.

Thanks, Devin. I appreciate that. I'll kick it off with just a couple. And why don't we start with the tariff topic and go from there. And can you explain to us, for those not as familiar, the duties arrangement, the softwood what duties that go forward, kind of what's in place with Canada now, how that's going to adjust in August of this year and then what these potential new tariffs mean on top of that? .

Yes. Yes. So it's really important to differentiate the two different concepts here. So when you talk about the tariffs, so these are the tariffs the administration is talking about put place as early as tomorrow, the 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican products coming into the U.S. That's one bucket. There's another bucket which is the duties that are part of a long-standing dispute between the U.S. and Canada around softwood lumber. The tariffs may or may not happen. We'll see what happens with that. The duties are going to happen. So these are duties that are paid on every stick of lumber that comes into the U.S. from Canada. Currently, it's a 14.5% duty. Those are going to go up meaningfully later this year. A component of that was announced of the new duties that will come into place in August was announced this morning, and they've gone up. I think all in, you're probably looking at almost doubling the existing duties on lumber coming into the U.S. from Canada. That is going to happen because that's part of a long-standing trade dispute that has rules around how that's determined and processed. So if the tariffs go into place, at least as of a month ago when they talked about at the first time, it sounds like that will be incremental to the softwood lumber duties. So it could be a pretty material amount of duty/tariff on lumber coming into the U.S. So it could be pretty meaningful. Just for frame of reference today 25% of the lumber that we use in the United States comes from Canada, 30% of the OSB oriented strand board that we use in the U.S. comes from Canada. So just for context, if you were to put a significant tariff on that, that probably would have some impact on pricing. TBD, the amount, obviously, it would depend on how long that stays in place as to the overall impact.

And just around ballpark numbers, like what is cash production costs for a Canadian producer typically versus where you guys are at? And what's the differential there? And like how does that just assuming the duties go to 30%, what would their cash cost go to...

Yes. So I mean if you're talking about lumber, it's differential depending on what province you're in, British Columbia is a higher cost production than Alberta. British Columbia, a good rule of thumb, probably around the mid-400s is a good way to think about that. So to the extent that you have to have a lumber price that is sufficient for them to be cash flow positive, if you bake in that additional duty, obviously, that's going to push that breakeven price up higher.

Yes. Wish I had a better news for you in the housing market, but it is a little sluggish in terms of the spring selling season. Are you getting any indications of uptick in the R&R side of the business? I mean new home demand seems to be steady, but kind of sluggish at the moment. But got a lot of deferred maintenance and repair and remodel activity. Any signs of life from...

Yes. I mean -- so our general view from an R&R standpoint is we're going to see a slight improvement this year, not a material improvement, but year-over-year, call it, low single digits, and that's really a reflection of a few things. One, I mean we are getting feedback from some of our key customers in the R&R space, the big box stores, some other folks in the retail channel that seem to support that. There's a lot of home equity built up across the U.S. with the run-up in housing prices, that's just really put a lot of dry powder on the sidelines ready to jump in to do more R&R. I also think during the pandemic, you did see a little bit of pull forward of R&R projects. Our view, I think we've largely worked through that, so you don't necessarily have that same overhang. And then the other component, which I think it's debatable how much of an impact it has, but it has some, I think, is just the amount of existing inventory that has been available on the market. Historically, when you buy and sell a home, that's a point in time where you're doing some repair and remodel work. With the lock-in effect and just so few houses on the existing market selling last year, I think that was a little bit of a headwind as well. I don't see that unwinding in a material way because you still have that same lock-in dynamic, but you are starting to see a little bit more existing inventory hit the market. So if you see that transact a little bit more that should be supportive of repairing a model as we get into this year. So overall, we think it's going to be a slight uptick, which if you think about lumber in general, last year was a tough year. R&R was down, call it, mid-single digits. Single-family was actually okay last year, but multifamily was down quite a bit. So that combination of a pull down in R&R and the impact of multifamily really put some pressure on the lumber market. That resulted in a lot of sawmills closing down last year, somewhere to the tune of 4 billion board feet. And if you think about 72 billion board feet is the capacity North America wide, that's pretty material. And so even if demand stayed flat, if you take that capacity out of the market, the supply-demand dynamic does change a bit. So we're expecting a better year in lumber, even putting tariffs and duties aside.

Interesting. Very good. I'm going to jump around topics, and I apologize for mixing and matching with housing with the policy. But I want to go back to that because this is a topic just hitting the news wire basically today with the executive order from the administration about opening up federal lands for forestry or trying to harvest existing resources on federal land. Can you walk us through, like, is there any real potential risk or impact to your log pricing or your log activites from an order like that or any of these federal actions?

The short answer is no. But just for context, I will say I don't know any time in the last 4 or 5 decades that we've heard a President talk more about lumber, right? This is an administration that is focused on the forest and focused on the wood products industry and I think, to some extent, rural communities as well. And so notwithstanding the specific language even in some of these executive orders, there is a focus at the administration level on our industry, which I think creates a real opportunity. I mean, obviously, we have to make sure that the policies are crafted in the right way. But there's a focus on the industry that you really haven't seen in a long time. And I think net-net, that's probably positive for our industry. In terms of that specific executive order, look, the reality is there's only so much logging capacity. This is really an issue primarily in the Northwest and Montana, Idaho because there's not as much federal ownership in the U.S. South. There's only so much logging and hauling capacity. You still have the Endangered Species Act. You still have NEPA. You can still sue. That's one of the primary reasons that you don't see more harvest activity today is because any time the forest service wants to do a timber sale, it's challenged through the legal means under ESA and NEPA. Those things haven't changed. Even over and above that, the reality is the mills today are not built for really big logs because you haven't had federal timber coming for a long time, it's built for the wood that the private timberland owners bring to market. So if you have a mill that can only take a 24-inch log diameter, you can't send a 36-inch log through that mill, right? So there are a variety of reasons where I think as a practical matter in the near term, it will be hard to meaningfully increase the amount of federal timber coming to market.

And part of it's just road networks and accessibility like..

Many, many different challenges. Now that all being said, the ultimate goal I think for the administration is to try to facilitate more lumber being manufactured in the U.S. I mean that is really truly at the heart of all of these things. And that's something that would play out over time if it comes to fruition.

And dive into the Climate Solutions business just a little bit and kind of you're on your path towards $100 million of sustainable EBITDA. What are your longer-term targets and potential outcomes there? And what's most -- gets you most excited about the potential that's out there between solar or carbon capture sequestration credits. What's out there longer term?

Yes. I mean so if you sort of stack rank the magnitude of opportunity, I think carbon capture and storage is probably at the top of the list. Now unfortunately, the time line to get these projects in place has really extended longer than we had expected. The permitting process to get CCS projects in place has really taken much longer than the of us expected. Ultimately, this is going to happen because heavy emitting facilities, there's no way for them to meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions other than CCS, not any time in the near future. So it is going to happen. It's taken a little bit longer. But there's a pretty significant revenue stream at the end of that rainbow once these things really start coming into production. So excited about that. That's probably pushed out a little bit further towards the back end of this decade. In the near term, really excited about the direction of forest carbon and carbon offsets. Even since last year when we were here, I think we've seen a growing appreciation and understanding for how high-quality urban credits can work and a lot more market acceptance of these if they're done in the right way. So we're really scaling this up. We're going to see a pretty significant uptick in the number of credits that we're taking or get. At least as today, the demand feels pretty strong. I think there's a realization from the big players in this space that as you get towards 2030, there are not going to be enough high-quality carbon credits available to meet the demand. So feel very good about that. Wind and solar, I mean, these businesses are just going to keep chugging along. Every year, you add a few more projects, and that builds the revenue stream. The beauty about those types of projects is -- they're steady. They're steady for third years, just increase revenue. So each solar project, each wind project that you add on top of that it just rose that revenue stream. So we're excited about it all. As with anything, there will be bumps in the road. I think the tone from this administration, obviously, is going to be a little different on some of these things. But I think the practical reality of what we need and what needs to be done really doesn't fundamentally change. So still feel good about the trajectory.

Just got about 2 minutes left, but I'm going to ask one more about capital allocation and really just really the TimberStrand project that you guys are starting. So why now? What does that do for your network and what are the economics for doing a new TimberStrand mill now?

Yes. We're super excited about this. This is one of the best projects that we've had in a very long time. TimberStrand is one of our engineered wood products. It is different in the sense that most engineered wood products are made with veneer. The log you need to make veneer is a higher quality, higher cost log. What TimberStrand does is it takes the lower value wood. So think pulpwood, you strand it, you glue it together at the right angles and you can come up with a beam and a product that has good strength, but you can use low-value wood to create a high-value product. TimberStrand is one of the best margin products that we have across our engineered wood products. We are really excited. It's a $500 million investment. We expected to generate around $100 million of EBITDA when it's up and running. There are additional benefits because we're building it in Arkansas in a region where we own a lot of timber. So 80% of the wood that goes into that mill is going to be from our land. It's in a region where it doesn't have strong pulp log demand today. Putting a TimberStrand mill there is tightening up the pulp log demand in that region. So a whole host of benefits. This product has lots of different end use in multifamily, single-family, industrial, all the way up in mass timber. So we're really excited about it. We should break ground this spring, it should start coming up in 2027, then you have a little bit of 12-, 18-month kind of time frame to start ramping it up. But this is a really exciting opportunity for us to grow our EWP business.

All right.

Yes. We don't break them out individually just for competitive pricing regions. But it is -- you can look at the EWP suite of margins in our financials, and it's going to be on the high end of that.

Yes. All right, guys, well, thank you so much for the time. Thanks Devin, for the great presentation. We have a breakout downstairs if anyone would like to join us. And congrats to all the progress.