Earnings Labs

Centrus Energy Corp. (LEU)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 11, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Centrus Energy Corp.'s Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Don Hatcher. Thank you, Mr. Hatcher. You may now begin.

Don Hatcher

Analyst

Thanks Rob. Good morning and thank you for joining us. Today’s call will cover the third quarter of 2015 that ended September 30. Here today for the call are Dan Poneman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Steve Greene, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer; and John Dorrian, Controller and Chief Accounting Officer. Before turning the call over to Dan, I’d like to welcome all our callers, as well as those listening to our webcast. This conference call follows our earnings release issued yesterday afternoon. We expect to file our quarterly report on Form 10-Q tomorrow due to the SEC's closure today for the Veteran's Day Holiday. All of our news releases and SEC filings including our 10-K, 10-Qs and 8-Ks are available on our website. A replay of this call will also be available later this morning on the Centrus website. I’d like to remind everyone that certain of the information that we may discuss on this call today may be considered forward-looking information that involves risk and uncertainty, including assumptions about the future performance of Centrus. Our actual results may differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those in our forward-looking statements is contained in our filings with the SEC, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Finally, the forward-looking information provided today is time sensitive and is accurate only as of today November 11, 2015 unless otherwise noted. This call is the property of Centrus Energy. Any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the expressed written consent of Centrus is strictly prohibited. Thank you for your participation. And now, I will turn the call over to Dan Poneman.

Daniel Poneman

Analyst

Thanks, Don. Good morning everybody and thank you for joining us. I am going to offer some thoughts from a 30,000 foot level about the progress that we are making, what our results mean and where we are headed and then I will turn the floor over to our Chief Financial Officer, Steve Greene who can provide more detail on our third quarter results. Bottom line up front, the third quarter was difficult for Centrus but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Our revenues this quarter were low in large part because a number of significant customer orders will be delivered in the fourth quarter. In fact, we are anticipating that about 40% of our revenue for the year will come in the fourth quarter. This kind of quarter-to-quarter volatility and lumpy distribution of deliveries frequently occur in our business. The good news is that our annual projections for revenues and end of year cash balance have not changed. We are on track to finish the year with total revenues between $425 million and $450 million and a cash balance ranging between $175 million and $200 million. As Steve will explain in more detail we also had a re-measurement of our pension obligations which accounted for almost half of our net loss during the quarter. The re-measurement was made as of September 30, which as all of you know was during a low period for the market this year. Our LEU business is expected to account for about 80% of this year's annual company revenue. We've made important progress this year to strengthen our position as a long-term nuclear fuel supplier. We remain focused on aligning our sources of supply with our existing contracts, pursuing sales opportunities and adjusting our costs to fit our business objectives. We have a solid…

Stephen Greene

Analyst

Thank you, Dan and good morning everyone. We reported revenue of $29.2 million for the third quarter a decrease of $91.5 million compared to the same quarter in 2014. Revenue for the nine-month period of 2015 was $260.3 million a decrease of $130.2 million in the same period in 2014. The timing of customer orders affected revenue in the third quarter, but as Dan mentioned, our annual outlook has not changed and we expect to generate approximately 40% of our annual revenue in the fourth quarter. As a reminder, we recognize revenue for the LEU business segment at the time product is delivered under the terms of customer contracts and a relatively small change in the timing of customer orders due to a change in the customers; refueling schedule may cause operating results to be substantially above or below expectations. The volume of SWU sales declined 88% and 58% in the three and nine-month periods of 2015 compared to 2014 reflecting this variability in timing of utility customer orders as well as the expected decline in SWU deliveries in 2015. The average price billed to customers for sales of SWU declined 24% in the three-month period and increased 6% in the nine-month period compared to 2014 reflecting the particular contracts under which SWU were sold during the periods. Cost of sales for the third quarter was $53.6 million a decrease of $72.5 million compared to the corresponding period in 2014 due to the lowest SWU sales volumes partially offset by higher direct charges. For the nine-month period of 2015 cost of sales was $273.5 million a reduction of $139.8 million compared to the same period in 2014 due to lower SWU sales volumes and lower direct charges partially offset by higher Uranium sales volumes and higher costs in the Contract…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. At this time, I will turn the floor back to management for further comments.

Don Hatcher

Analyst

Nothing further here. I would like to thank everyone for your participation and a reminder that this call will be rebroadcast after 11:00 AM this morning on our website, www.centrusenergy.com and with that thank you again and have a great day.

Daniel Poneman

Analyst

Thank you.

Stephen Greene

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Today's conference has concluded. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines at this time.