Earnings Labs

Centrus Energy Corp. (LEU)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Mar 22, 2016

$192.85

-6.25%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Centrus Energy Fourth Quarter 2015 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A 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, Director, Investor Relations for Centrus Energy. Thank you, you may begin.

Don Hatcher

Analyst

Thank you, Mellissa. Good morning and thank you for joining us. Today’s call will cover the fourth quarter and full year results for 2015 that ended December 31st. 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 news release issued yesterday afternoon. We expect to file our annual report on Form 10-K later today. 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 March 22, 2016 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

Good morning and thank you Don and thank you everyone on the line for joining us. I would like to begin by offering some insight into where Centrus has been and where the company is headed. Then I’ll turn it over to our Chief Financial Officer Steve Greene who is going to dive a little deeper into the financials. We have come a long way over the past year and our results for 2015 reflect the ongoing transformation of Centrus as we implement our plan to become the world’s most diversified supplier of nuclear fuel and nuclear fuel services. We produced a gross profit of $69 million, an improvement of $110 million over last year's performance and $164 million over our 2013 performance. We ended 2015 with a cash balance of $234 million above our guidance for the year. We won significant new sales contracts, extended and diversified our supply base, and position Centrus to begin growing again. We also successfully concluded negotiations over our Russian supply agreement, a top priority since the day I arrived at Centrus. We’ve recruited a new senior management team and have embraced a customer first approach focused on expanding our LEU business and growing into new business lines. Of course we are continuing to face formidable challenges as we have emerged from bankruptcy in the midst of a deep and long downturn in the market but I continue to believe that we are well positioned for future success. Our path forward focuses on three key priorities. First, growing our fuel supply business which we expect will be our largest business segment for at least the next several years and was responsible for approximately 85% of our revenue last year. The cornerstone of those efforts is our revised Russian supply agreement with TENEX which gives…

Stephen Greene

Analyst

Thank you Dan and good morning everyone. As we mentioned on our Q3 call in November, we expected to have a strong fourth quarter, and we delivered on those results. I’ll briefly run through the numbers and then discuss some of the drivers of our performance. In 2015 we generated total revenues of $418.2 million with $355.4 million of that coming from the LEU business. While total revenue was slightly below our previous guidance due to the delay in establishing a contract for our ongoing work in Tennessee which we are working to complete soon, we have surpassed our revenue expectations for the LEU business. The volume of SWU sales declined by 41% compared to 2014, which reflects the reality that we’ve transitioned into a smaller company following the shutdown in 2013 of the enrichment plant we operated in Paducah as well as the successful completion of the megatons to megawatts program. As of the end of 2015 our LEU business had a 2.3 billion long-term order book which extends more than a decade. Although our sales volumes are lower than they were a few years ago we believe this sales order book is a stable source of cash flow and liquidity for the company. Over the course of 2015 we made significant deliveries from the order book by also adding new long-term sales contracts. Although we see limited uncommitted demand for LEU prior to the end of the decade based on current market conditions, we continue to seek and make additional sales including sales for near-term delivery. Earlier this month for example we announced approximately 165 million in new sales contracts that have been signed over the last nine months with deliveries through 2022. Some of those contracts are not included in the end of the year order book…

Daniel Poneman

Analyst

Thanks Steve. I would like to close today by reemphasizing our commitment to the ongoing transformation of Centrus. Our new management team is an experienced and highly focused group who are intent on working hard every day towards our objective of becoming the world’s most diversified supplier of nuclear fuel and services. Looking forward our near-term efforts remain directed on growing our fuel supply business and leveraging our technical capabilities and customer relationships to develop strategic business partnerships across the industry. Longer-term as the market recovers we are committed to deploying an advanced uranium enrichment capability. We appreciate your interest in Centrus and look forward to communicating our continued progress throughout the year. With that I will now turn the floor over to the operator for any questions. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Don Hatcher

Analyst

I don’t believe there is any questions coming in. So we’re going to close out our call now and thank everyone for their time and their participation and as always we appreciate your support.

Operator

Operator

Thank you.

Daniel Poneman

Analyst

Thank you all.