World Fuel Services Corporation
Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 27 Feb 2021

[Michael Kasbar:]

Okay, we're back on. Sorry for the delay. So it's the music, but hopefully, everybody can hear. If not please figure out a way to contact us. So we're assuming everyone's hearing. So thank you, Glenn, and good evening, everyone. It's good to be here today. As we all know, it's been a year like no other. It was a year when our company, our country and the world were challenged in ways never before experienced. It was also a year in which we learned a lot about ourselves and each other, about how we respond to emergencies, to rapid change, to having our personal and business lives turned upside down, and the health of our family and employees put at risk. The pandemic impacted some businesses more than others. Please support the industries that have been among the most impacted.

[Ira Birns:]

Thanks, Mike. Good evening. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed the extra music. Sorry about that again. But before I begin my financial review, I would also like to reiterate Mike's sentiments. And send a special thank you to our global team who adapted quickly to a rapidly changing environment and support our business with tremendous strategy throughout 2020. Last year was one that brought unforeseeable challenges to our business in the markets we serve. But we couldn't be prouder of what our company has accomplished in the face of such extraordinary challenges. While uncertainty still looms, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel seems to be creeping a bit closer. And we are very confident that our resilience business model will bounce back as the markets we serve begin to recover. More positive news is coming out every day regarding vaccination rates and trends in COVID activity and the progress that is being made should be very encouraging to us all. I'll provide additional details regarding what we have done to strengthen our company during 2020 as I give a more detailed review of our fourth quarter and full year financial results. As usual, please note that the following figures exclude the impact of nonoperational items as highlighted in our news release. The nonoperational income and expense items for the quarter and full year, principally relate to the gain on the sale of our multi-service business, most of which was recorded in the third quarter, as well as our acquisition, divestiture, impairment and restructuring-related expenses. To assist you with reconciling results published in our earnings release, the breakdown of the nonoperational items can be found on our website and on the last slide of today's webcast presentation.

[Operator:]

And the first question comes from the line of Ken Hoexter from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

[Ken Hoexter:]

Hey, great. Good afternoon, Mike, Ira, and Glenn. Great job on managing the balance sheet during the pandemic. But looking forward with $60 oil, typically, lower fuel enables strong internal cash flow. And I know you've made some changes in what you talked about and how you manage the business, and you dramatically lowered your debt. But typically on rising fuel, you move to extend credit. How should we think about cash flow going forward in this rebounding environment and a rising fuel backdrop?

[Ira Birns:]

That's a good question, Ken. Thanks. Prices are a little bit higher. We've been managing our balance sheet really tightly. Our trade cycle blew out a bit in the midst of the pandemic. But it's back to more normalized single-digit levels. So $60 or so will not make much of a dent in terms of working capital and cash flows. The only way that it would have a more meaningful impact, I think we'd all be very happy if the recovery accelerates very quickly and we had a combination of higher prices and significantly more volumes. But even so, in relation to the amount of liquidity that we have available today, the impact from the combination of those two, I would still expecting that to be overly material. So we may reduce the cash flow opportunity that we would otherwise have, but not by a significant amount.

[Ken Hoexter:]

Okay. So it's not like a case where you see it going from generating significant cash to very thin cash because the price of crude goes up?

[Ira Birns:]

Look, it depends on how far the price goes up, and again, more specifically, if prices went way up now, today's depressed level of volumes, the impact would be a lot lower than if it was going up with the level of volumes we were experiencing in 2019, right? So it's really a combo of the two. So again, if prices continue to accelerating and volume, which we began, we'd all be happy if that accelerated rapidly, that would create a scenario where cash flows may be diminished to a much lower level. But you would need that combo for that path.

[Michael Kasbar:]

And Ken, a higher price is not totally negative. Obviously, there's a cash flow impact but there's other dimensions to that, obviously, in terms of our underwriting and unit margin. So there's some sanitary effects to higher prices as well. And so those dimensions of value prop and value-add turns to there. So it's not really a point of concern at this stage.

[Ken Hoexter:]

Yes. No that just highlights that cash generative you have been with the debt we paid down. So Mike or Ira, where do you see the volumes first? Given you've been at the three segments for a while now with land, aviation and marine, are you seeing – Ira, you mentioned a couple – I think two of the three are going to see sequential upticks with aviation. I think it was aviation – was quite sequentially – but are there signs that you start to see at this point in the turnaround on the volume pickup that you look to first in seeing that? And I guess that blends to kind of how you saw bad debt move back down to a normalized level. But let me we stick with the volume part of that question first?

[Ira Birns:]

Yes, anybody's guess, listening to the major airlines and they had to say, talking to real folks. We expect and we are seeing some very modest signs of the commercial aviation volumes increasing slightly. Still, of course, nowhere near the levels where we started. We're assuming that it's a reasonable opportunity for that volume in aviation, which was the most significantly impacted, of course, to really accelerate more in the second half of the year. Again, still not expecting to get anywhere to the levels of 2019, but a whole lot better than where we were at the bottom in 2020. So again, that depends on what will transpire over the next couple of months with – in terms of COVID rates, vaccination rates and the impact on travel restructurings. There's a lot of pent-up demand for travel life. Personally, I haven't been on a commercial aircraft in a year, for the first time, probably four decades, right? And so there are a lot of people that once they're comfortable that it's safe to be out there that are looking to start booking at a bunch of flights. And that tide can start turning very quickly. I don't not think we're there yet, but when that tide will start turning, aviation volumes will have the opportunity to accelerate pretty meaningfully. Again, not necessarily bring us back to where we started, unfortunately, overnight, but bringing us closer to where we were in 2019. Land volumes didn't get impacted as much. And marine volumes did get impacted as much. The real punch line of volume is aviation. And we're hoping, again, to see that number start moving north in the second quarter and the third quarter and then into the end of the year.

[Ken Hoexter:]

Great. I appreciate the time and thoughts.

[Michael Kasbar:]

We'll see, obviously, the cruise market was factored into aviation somewhat related but different and we continue – tanker dry bulk is going to be more broader economy based. So as you see that start to pick up, you'll see some knock on effect there. On the land part in terms of our diesel activity and retail gasoline, that business is moving progressively and taking market share. So we feel good about that. And then the natural gas and power business is growing. More natural gas than power, but you'll see us start to do a bit more activity in the power side as well. The heating oil, obviously, in the UK somewhat contained market. But some of it is the broader-based market of the economy coming back. I think you're seeing that the length is starting to kick in on some of the energy management business although that's small, we'll be looking to grow that business.

[Ken Hoexter:]

Great. I appreciate the time and thoughts guys. Have a good afternoon.

[Michael Kasbar:]

Thanks, Ken.

[Operator:]

The next question comes from Ben Nolan from Stifel. Please go ahead.

[Ben Nolan:]

Thanks. Yes, I wanted to dig in a little bit on a couple of things. The first is on the aviation business. Just kind of looking at it, the volumes were pretty similar, but the gross profit was off some. And I know you had mentioned Afghanistan. But just in keeping with sort of flat volumes, what was really the main – or the pressure point on your margins in the aviation business? Or was it all Afghanistan stuff?

[Ira Birns:]

Sure. Good question. And obviously, that number was off clearly on a sequential basis. So three issues that I'll try to hit on in my prepared remarks that I'll elaborate on. The government piece is actually the smallest piece of the three. That was only off a little bit. We're talking about that for a moment since we grew that showing some resiliency every time you think it's going away, it doesn't, and obviously with the change of administration now, you don't have the same level of excitement about trying to bring all the troops home. That seems to have waned and troops that remain may remain indefinitely. We don't know. So that was actually a pretty small piece of the pie. We'll see that declining a bit more in the first quarter, but not materially. The bigger pieces were the lockdowns that were reinstituted in Europe effective – they – almost all of our physical locations, these are the locations that we picked up in the Exxon acquisition you remember several years ago, we operated over 100 locations today, most of which are in Europe, many of which were basically shut down with next to nothing going on. And those are higher margin pieces of our business, right, because they're – because of the physical nature, not just to back-to-sale or actually on the ground, providing the servicing fuel. So that was probably 40%, 50% of decline sequentially. And then there is a significant amount of inventory volatility, most specifically in November. And we had a much weaker result on the inventory side of our business sequentially. We’ll be getting a little bit of that back, some of that is timing. We got a little bit back in the first quarter, but not a whole lot. And that was the second biggest piece. And again, government was the third piece. As we look to the first quarter, the reason I guided flattish is because we only have a partial quarter of shutdowns in the fourth quarter, we're expecting in many of the European countries, it's probably going to be just about the full quarter. But offsetting that, we don't anticipate the inventory piece of the puzzle. And we're seeing a little bit of growth in other markets. Cargo was actually really strong. Business aviation is coming back. So we believe that will offset any incremental negative impacts in the European physical network of the locations that we operating on airport. And then if you look beyond the first quarter, we're hoping to start seeing some improvement little by little Q2, Q3, Q4.

[Ben Nolan:]

Okay. I appreciate the granularity there, Ira. That's helpful. I want to shift a little bit to capital allocation, if I could. You guys are on track to be at $700 million of cash pretty quickly here. The debt is not really falling. I assume you're sort of with revolver or fully paid, you're sort of against some limits there. It looks like you did a little bit, $12 million, $13 million of share repurchases in the quarter. But yes, I – as we sure – and maybe to Ken's point earlier, if oil prices are going higher and especially if volumes increase, and there's going to be need for some of that for working capital. But is there any thing you're thinking about maybe really ramping up the buyback program? Or is it going to – are you thinking a little bit more just sort of gradual in nature?

[Ira Birns:]

You probably can answer that question. Good question. We always look at all the pieces. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we have organic growth initiatives, especially as parts of the market come back. To Ken's question earlier, we always want to have liquidity available for working capital, again, in the event that if you take a look at cargo receivable there, we're down from $3 million to $1.2 billion. Obviously, the accounts payable are way down as well. But eventually, we'll be investing something in working capital. So that's always critical. And then there's M&A, right? There's a lot of opportunities some maybe better after the circumstance to 2020 than maybe before. Most specifically in our land business, either the commercial/industrial side of the business, where our team continues to do a good job identifying opportunities for the connect side of our business, which is one that I believe has maybe the greatest growth potential of any of our businesses with lots of opportunities out there on the power, gas and sustainability side of effects. So those – I would say, those come first. But depending upon the level of activity on the amount of capital we need to working capital, it's always the dividend, obviously, and we always seem to find a certain amount of dollars to repurchase shares. Whether that will become a materially greater number, I would probably argue unlikely. But you never know. It really depends on our overall liquidity, our cash flows and what we may have on of the table in terms of opportunities to invest. So we always try to do as much as we can within reason, but we're never going to be a company that goes overboard from a share repurchase perspective. That's the best way to put.

[Ben Nolan:]

Okay. No, that's helpful. And then lastly for me. Ira, I think you'd mentioned in – when you were talking about the marine business that in the first quarter, you've seen an uptick in hedging activity for your customers. That's the first time I've heard about that in a number of quarters. Any color on sort of what's happening there? Is it just sort of opportunistic? Or does it feel like there's some sustainability to that perhaps?

[IraBirns:]

Yes. I don't know about sustainability. Obviously, prices have moved pretty significantly a very short period of time to a level we haven't seen in a while. So that – it doesn't take a lot of that to kind of trigger some sell-in a marine procurement person trying to say they want to lock in press, right? And so we're seeing a little bit more on that. And that accelerates further, really depends on people's view on pricing going forward, continue to increase, is it going to level off or drop. You're right. You haven't heard that for a long time because it's kind of been some dormant. So there are some signs of life there, they're small. And really, any further growth in that regard we spend on what they happen from a pricing perspective or pricing expectations, which reasonably is important because that's really what is driving the people like that going forward.

[Michael Kasbar:]

It's been a sluggish market. The point of supply as what a lot of demand is off. So we'll perhaps see some changes there. If you really do see some volatility in pricing but that remains to be seen, just not a normal scenario there. So a lot of this cross management, risk management. We trended during the downturn and in terms of looking at other activities, we're evaluating other participation models within that space. A lot of it is really going to be the core activity of some of our physical locations and produce coming back in some of the other markets coming back, and just broad based economic activity.

[Ben Nolan:]

Okay. Yes, that makes sense. All right. I appreciate guys. Thanks.

[Michael Kasbar:]

Thanks, Ben. Okay, well, I guess that's it. So listen, thanks once again to our global team, especially and all of your families. It's been quite a year. So in course of shareholders and we look forward to actually seeing you soon. So hopefully, that will occur. So stay well, stay safe, take care. And we'll certainly talk to you next quarter. Bye-bye for now.

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you for participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines.