Earnings Labs

SunCoke Energy, Inc. (SXC)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, Apr 27, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Connor and I’ll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the SXC First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Steve Carlson with the Investor Relations team, you may begin your conference.

Steve Carlson

Analyst

Thank you, Connor. Good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss SunCoke Energy’s first quarter 2016 earnings. With me are Fritz Henderson, our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer and Fay West, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following the remarks made by management, we’ll open the call for Q&A. This conference call is being webcast live on the Investor Relations section of our website and a replay will be available. If we don’t get to your questions on the call today, please feel free to reach out to our Investor Relations team. Before I turn the call over to Fritz, let me remind you that the various remarks we make on today’s call, regarding future expectations, constitute forward-looking statements. And the cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements in our SEC filings apply to the remarks we make today. These documents are available on our website as the reconciliations to any non-GAAP measures discussed on today’s call. Now, I’ll turn the call over to Fritz.

Fritz Henderson

Analyst · FBR and Company. Your line is open

Thanks, Steve and thanks everyone for joining us this morning. Turning to slide two, I want to highlight some of the progress we’ve made in the quarter. The first quarter was a solid quarter in terms of both safety, environmental and operating performance across the coke and the coal logistics fleet and that was accomplished in the phase of, I think, a challenging environment. We were pleased with the stability and the solid performance of our operations in the quarter and as I look at it, a good start to the year and keeps us on track to achieve our goals for 2016. Looking specifically at Indiana Harbor, which is our single largest operating challenge across SunCoke, we did make progress particularly in the cost side, as part of the balanced approach to the plant in the quarter and we continue to remain keenly focused on achieving operational plant stability and I have some charts and more comments to make later in the presentation on that. From a capital allocation perspective, we supported SXCP’s repurchase of approximately - of $53 million face value of senior notes in the quarter, putting them well in track to achieve the partnership’s de-levering objectives for ‘16. We did successfully divest the remaining elements of our coal mining business in the transaction that simplifies our business structure and also improves ongoing cash flow going forward. And finally, with the first quarter behind us, we’re reaffirming this morning our 2016 adjusted EBITDA guidance as shown in the chart of $210 million to $235 million. On chart 3, I want to highlight some of the actions we took in the quarter to support customers in a response to the industry landscape that we all face. We do continue to work with our customers and support them, which…

Fay West

Analyst · Lee Mcmillan with Clarkson. Your line is open

Thank you, Fritz. For the quarter, consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $53 million was up $5.1 million versus the prior year period and this was driven by the benefit of the CMT acquisition and improved performance at our Indiana Harbor facility. From an EPS perspective, we reported a loss per share of $0.06 in the first quarter and that included a $10.7 million pre-tax asset impairment on our coal mining business and higher non-controlling interests. This was partially offset by a $20.4 million pretax gain, resulting from the partnership’s debt repurchases. Looking at adjusted EBITDA in the next slide, as you could see, the $6 million performance improvement that we had at Indiana Harbor was driven by lower cost and higher volumes. While we are encouraged by the headway we have made on spending, we are still - we are ways away - we have a ways to go to achieve plant wide stability. Fritz will go through Indiana Harbor results in more details later on the call. Excluding Indiana Harbor, the remainder of the coke business was impacted by lost steam revenue due to the restructuring of Haverhill Chemicals and unfavorable volumes and FX at our Brazil coke operations. Additionally, there was $2.7 million of coal transportation costs that were shifted from Coal Mining to the Jewell Coke to reflect our transition to a 100% third party purchase coal model. These shifted costs which would be about $10 million on an annual basis will remain in our Domestic Coke segment going forward. Moving on from coke, in 2015 we recognized a $4 million OPEB curtailment gain that did not recur in the current period. Furthermore, savings from our 2015 staff reductions were offset by the pull forward of legal costs and the mark-to-market impact of stock price changes on our…

Fritz Henderson

Analyst · FBR and Company. Your line is open

Page eight looks at it more detail at Indiana Harbor’s performance. We were I think as I look at it encouraged by some progress we saw in the quarter. The focus continues to be on stabilizing the plan operations. You look at - looking on the left hand side is what we outlined late last year at our Investor Day. If you start with production, we were up 16,000 tons versus the first quarter of '15 and up even more versus the first quarter of '14. What I would say is that we were well prepared for winter this year and we had a mild winter, so that helped us. I would say we didn't achieve all the goals we set in terms of stability of production in the quarter, but nonetheless we were improved and this is an area that continues to be a focus for us through the rest of the year. The second point I'd make is we said we were going to evaluate and analyze the results to maximize the value of the capital deployed particularly as we rebuild ovens. I have some more detail on that in the subsequent chart, but we did see continued stability and improved oven performance from the ovens that we did rebuild and we expect now to increase number of ovens we will rebuild in 2016 relative to what we outlined at the beginning of the year based upon the progress - based upon the continuous consistent performance of the ovens that have been rebuilt already. And finally we did outline an overall balanced approach to the plant both in terms of production, capital and O&M costs and here through good cross-functional work we did achieve cost reductions. We had expected to achieve about $5 million of reductions in 2016…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Lucas Pipes with FBR and Company. Your line is open.

Lucas Pipes

Analyst · FBR and Company. Your line is open

Hey, good morning everybody. Fritz, in your prepared remarks, you were going through the corporate holiday, corporate overhead cost holiday and the IDR giveback, but you were addressing it pretty quickly. Could you remind us what’s the latest status of these programs? And then from there I have a few follow-up questions. Thank you.

Fritz Henderson

Analyst · FBR and Company. Your line is open

What we did in the first quarter, the support that was provided at MLP was done through a corporate cost holiday and the corporate cost allocation and then IDR giveback basically for going our IDRs in the first quarter. In the second quarter, we revised that approach to provide one-year payment terms for both of those. So we’ll continue to provide support but do so in a modified way in the second quarter and then we’ll continue to evaluate beyond the second quarter on a quarterly basis.

Lucas Pipes

Analyst · FBR and Company. Your line is open

So, should I think about essentially SXCP going to be is going to be paying back this capital to SXC in the future is that the right way to think about that modification?

Fritz Henderson

Analyst · FBR and Company. Your line is open

Yes.

Lucas Pipes

Analyst · FBR and Company. Your line is open

And then just a quick update in terms of what you’re seeing from your customers, are you getting increase for maybe increasing coke demand, also coke production in response to these improving market conditions kind of what's your dialog right now with your customers?

Fritz Henderson

Analyst · FBR and Company. Your line is open

Stability would be the way I would say the dialog, I mean I would say our customers are basically running their assets well but I would say obviously we have two plants that we serve both Granite City and Ashland that the blast furnaces are at this point temporarily idled and I think both U.S. Steel and AK Steel run the rest of their facilities or running the rest of the facilities at high level of utilization. So I wouldn't say we've seen any marked poll for more coke, I would also say we haven't seen any marked push back against coke in other words the adjustments we made in the first quarter to support our customers I think are doing the job. I would note that we talked about hot rolled coil prices and when I look at what's happened with Platts with the prices net coke actually, it’s increased sharply, we just have to see what happens to utilization rates but I would say sitting here today, feel okay about stability.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Dean Graves with Eaton Vance. Your line is open.

Dean Graves

Analyst · Dean Graves with Eaton Vance. Your line is open

I wanted to follow up on the prior question with respect to the sponsor support. So, I’m trying to clarify is the first quarter support then was that non-reimbursable and now this is a fresh sort of one year through the first quarter of ‘16, ‘17 sorry?

Fritz Henderson

Analyst · Dean Graves with Eaton Vance. Your line is open

‘17.

Dean Graves

Analyst · Dean Graves with Eaton Vance. Your line is open

‘17. And then that one year would be reimbursable?

Fritz Henderson

Analyst · Dean Graves with Eaton Vance. Your line is open

Yes.

Dean Graves

Analyst · Dean Graves with Eaton Vance. Your line is open

Thank you for the clarification.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Lee Mcmillan with Clarkson. Your line is open.

Lee Mcmillan

Analyst · Lee Mcmillan with Clarkson. Your line is open

I just had two questions on domestic coke guidance. Can you elaborate a little bit on what’s responsible for the declined EBITDA per ton guidance, it’s seem to be a mix of coal transport impact and then maybe the customer accommodations. And then I'm also wondering where that gets made up, so that full-year guidance didn’t have to be lowered or is it just that the range was wide enough that it can accommodate but I think it’s maybe like an $8 million shift? Thanks.

Fay West

Analyst · Lee Mcmillan with Clarkson. Your line is open

So, once again kind of the customer accommodation do not impact our full-year consolidated adjusted EBITDA guidance. So that remains the same but we did lower our adjusted EBITDA per ton guidance and it reflects two things. The first is the shift of $10 million roughly from coal mining to domestic coke and that’s related to the transportation cost of procuring coal from third-party as well as kind of the per ton calculation is also impacted by the production decrease at Haverhill 2 and that’s expected to be about 75,000 tons lower, so that’s what’s driving the per calculation.

Fritz Henderson

Analyst · Lee Mcmillan with Clarkson. Your line is open

The reclassification has zero effect on consolidated adjusted EBITDA but it does lower your coke adjusted EBITDA for that segment as well as per ton.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time, I will turn the call back over to Mr. Henderson for closing remarks.

Fritz Henderson

Analyst · FBR and Company. Your line is open

Well, thank you very much again for joining us this morning for your interest and for your investment in SunCoke Energy and we’ll talk next quarter. Thank you. Bye.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call, you may now disconnect.