Universal Stainless & Alloy Products, Inc.
Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 20 Oct 2021

[Operator:]

Good day, everyone. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Universal Stainless Third Quarter 2021 Conference Call. . And now I would like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, June Filingeri. Thank you. Please go ahead.

[June Filingeri:]

Thank you. Good morning. This is June Filingeri of Comm-Partners, and I also would like to welcome you to the Universal Stainless Conference Call and Webcast. We are here to discuss the company's third quarter 2021 results reported this morning. With us from management are Denny Oates, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Chris Zimmer, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer; and John Arminas, Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Before I turn the call over to management, let me quickly review procedures. After management has made formal remarks, we will take your questions. The conference operator will instruct you on procedures at that time. Also, please note that in this morning's call, management will make forward-looking statements. Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, I would like to remind you of the risks related to these statements, which are more fully described in today's press release and in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With the formalities complete, I would now like to turn the call over to Denny Oates. Denny, we are ready to begin.

[Dennis Oates:]

Okay. Thanks, June. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us this morning. Positive business momentum continued to build during the third quarter. Our backlog of $125.1 million increased 27% from the second quarter, reaching the highest level since early 2019 on continued strong order entry. That 27% increase was on top of a 74% increase in the second quarter. Gross bookings remained high at $58 million, and September had the second highest order entry of the year. Bookings are being driven by aerospace, our largest market. Demand has begun to ratchet up and more is expected in 2022 and 2023, with a planned step-up of commercial airplane build rates, travel growth and expanding freight traffic. Our sales momentum moderated in the third quarter. In total, net sales of $37.2 million were off 3.5% from the second quarter. This was not the normal seasonality we commonly see during summer months. Like every industrial business I know, we wrestled with chronic supply chain issues, particularly trucking, coupled with labor shortages. These factors negatively impacted our third quarter revenues by about $2 million to $2.5 million. Our gross margin expanded to 6.2% in the third quarter due to 4 factors

[Operator:]

. Our first question comes from the line of Mike Hughes with SGF Capital.

[Michael Hughes:]

First question just is on the inventory days. I know this is partially a function of the revenue falling off so significantly over the past year, but they've really drifted up over the past few years. I think they're north of 300 days now. Can you just address that issue and where you see them falling out over the next few quarters?

[Dennis Oates:]

If you look at the next few quarters, you will see those numbers improve. And the reason for that will be, you'll see higher sales volume is the #1 contributor to that. The other point I would make is you look at our -- uniquely look at our inventory levels ex the growth in backlog, which has been -- our backlog has basically doubled here in the last 6 months, 9 months, is the fact we carry about $5 million or $6 million of what I'll call R&D inventory as we work on approvals at our North Jackson facility, primarily for premium, what we call premium melted products, vacuum induction melted products. The other issue that I would call out this morning is, and I mentioned in some of my script, we have had a spike in commodity prices, which has caused a fairly sizable increase in our inventory carrying costs as well. From a P&L standpoint, that has a pass-through to the supply chain via our surcharge mechanism, but the cash out the door upfront as we purchase those raw materials and increase our melt schedules is pretty significant.

[Michael Hughes:]

Okay. And then just thinking about the backlog, I think it's roughly $125 million now. And if you go back to -- on a quarterly basis back to 2007, you've historically converted 75% of your backlog into revenue in the following quarter. That's obviously not happening in this environment. And just over the last 3 years, that number of the conversion is 50%. I'm assuming that's not going to happen in the December quarter. So could you just give us maybe a way to think about the December quarter revenue and gross margins? I'm not sure you give guidance, but maybe just some rough parameters?

[Dennis Oates:]

We don't give guidance, but I can tell you that 66% of the $125 million is scheduled to ship next year. And 34% is scheduled to ship before the end of this year.

[Michael Hughes:]

34% of the $125 million?

[Dennis Oates:]

Yes.

[Michael Hughes:]

Okay. And then...

[Dennis Oates:]

So we don't give guidance, but I assume you can figure that one out.

[Michael Hughes:]

Yes, appreciate that. And then just the gross margins on a go-forward basis, it seems like there's a number of things that should drive them higher. Number one, the fact that year-to-date, there's $6 million that you directly charged rather than capitalizing into inventories, that's going to be a nice boost to gross margins on a go-forward basis, right, because it hasn't been capitalized in inventory, your costs are lower in the inventory, right?

[Dennis Oates:]

That's correct. Yes.

[Michael Hughes:]

Okay, and then the second thing, can you help quantify how much the 3 price increases that are going to start to flow through gross margins will help gross margins?

[Dennis Oates:]

In terms of putting an exact dollar figure on it, that's a challenging thing to do. What I would say is if you look at the March increase, we're already benefiting from that. If you look at the grades that we had price increases in and the timing of shipments of those products, those other 3 price increases will start to hit late this year and into next year. But keep in mind in the back of your mind what's transpiring here. We are seeing inflation on parts and consumables, and we're -- our goal is to grow our gross profit margins. To do that, we need to stay ahead of the inflationary trends not only in those categories, but also in labor. So that's essentially what we're doing. So as things go down the road into 2022, rather, you should see higher activity levels that will improve the fixed cost absorption issues we've been wrestling with. We've got process improvements, which will continue to work to improve our productivity and offset some of the inflationary trends. We've got price-based price increases to also offset and then we've got surcharges as a pass-through for the raw materials. So you put that all together and we would expect to see continuous improvement. By that, I mean increases in our gross profit in each quarter going forward.

[Michael Hughes:]

Okay...

[Dennis Oates:]

And the reason I -- I'm not trying to be evasive on a selling price thing. The problem is it's -- there's some variables in there that are difficult to quantify. We know we've got significant inflationary items already that we are buying. So it really depends upon the amount of inflation as we go through 2022 as to what the impact is going to be on the gross profit of the selling prices on a net-net basis.

[Michael Hughes:]

Understood. Just one more question. I think on the last call, you indicated a desire to hire maybe 100 people over the next few quarters. Where does that stand? And if you're short of that number, how much of a gating factor is it on revenue growth?

[Dennis Oates:]

It is a definite issue in terms of revenue growth. It has been to date. I would say that we have seen very modest improvements in terms of applications and hiring over the last 2 or 3 weeks. So it's a relatively short period of time, but we have seen a noticeable improvement there. We are supplementing our hourly workforce with outside contractors as best we can, but there's no doubt there's a challenge there. As far as the absolute number of people we need, that moves around a little bit based upon the backlog. Backlog has continued to grow. So arguably, we need a little bit more than that 100 number as I sit here today.

[Michael Hughes:]

Have you made any progress? Have you hired on a net basis since the last call?

[Dennis Oates:]

Yes, yes, but it's relatively nominal. It's not something I'm jumping up and down and saying that the problem is over. All I'm saying is, directionally, if you're an optimist as I am, we have seen some improvement in applications and in hiring and our net headcount is up, but it's nowhere near where it needs to be. So that is -- that continues to be one of the major issues we're wrestling with, as is everybody that I know in manufacturing these days.

[Michael Hughes:]

Okay, my last question. This came up on the last call, but any additional thoughts on hiring a CFO?

[Dennis Oates:]

We're continuing to work our internal plan, which is to evaluate our internal candidates and compare to outside options. And as I think I said in the last call also, we're going to take this year to do that.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from the line of Phil Gibbs with KeyBanc Capital.

[Philip Gibbs:]

Can you elaborate a little bit on the comment that you made during your script on engine pull-ins and what that means or suggests or maybe related to other cycles just in terms of what that signifies?

[Dennis Oates:]

Well, we've been looking at demand and inventory levels, right? So we've gone through multiple quarters of destocking. So next step in aerospace recycling is to start to replenish inventories. And if you look at that, it'll checklist to what normally happens in recoveries, you're going to start to see some of the OEMs start to pull in requests through forgers and then into us. So we're beginning to hear some rumblings. There's a term I think I use. So I'm not saying that any of our backlog is due to that, but we're beginning to hear some talk about, can you -- in the supply chain about can you accelerate some things. And normally, pull-ins like that. In other words, we need the metal in the forgings faster than we told you before, suggests that things are starting to heat up a little quicker than people anticipated, which from our standpoint continues to support our view that we'll see continued quarterly improvement in aerospace demand.

[Philip Gibbs:]

And then on the oil and gas side, sales picked up marginally, but obviously, rig counts sequentially, I'm talking about, obviously, rig counts are starting to move up, and there's a lot of thoughts for greater spending next year. Maybe talk a little bit about what you're seeing in that supply chain and what your customers are telling you.

[Dennis Oates:]

Earlier this year, I think I said on the call, what we were hearing in the marketplace was kind of sideways movement with appreciable improvement in the second half of 2021. We haven't seen an appreciable improvement. We basically have seen that mindset pushed into 2022. So as we talk to our customers today, they point to what's happening with the price of oil and natural gas and so forth. The increase in spending has been anticipated next year, more activity. They would also point to the fact that they're working their inventories, however they still have -- they're still a little heavy in certain grades and sizes. So our expectation is we'll see -- we saw a little bit of gradual improvement there in the third quarter, but that should accelerate as we go through 2022. That's what they're telling us.

[Philip Gibbs:]

Denny, you had the overhead charge, carrying charge in the third quarter as well. Is that something that's going to be with you in the fourth quarter, too? Or is that -- dissipation is largely done on that?

[Dennis Oates:]

I can't say for certain it's done. I would say it's 50-50 at this point in time, to be honest with you. It depends upon how things play out here over the next month or so. We're having active discussions on that subject. It's going to be a function of what our activity levels end up being. Generally, our accounting practices have a very specific level of activity at each one of our plants to the degree we exceed a base level based upon historical performance, then we would stop that practice.

[Philip Gibbs:]

And then my last one is a two-parter. I do appreciate it. You said the price to -- price to surcharge is pretty matched in the third quarter. What's the outlook for Q4? And then how should we be thinking about net working capital in Q4?

[Dennis Oates:]

As far as surcharges, obviously, we know they're going to be up in October and November and probably up a little bit in December, but flat lines kind of flattening out a little bit. So as you think that through, I would expect us to be basically in alignment. We're slightly positive in the third quarter, and we should be in balance in the fourth quarter. That said, I have to admit the commodity markets are a little bit crazy right now. They always are, but they're especially volatile at this point in time in terms of getting a read on what the direction is going to be with some of the things that are going on in China with power, some of the capacity reductions -- by the way the strike that's now over, but I know they're struggling to get capacity back up. So there's a lot of disruptions in the supply chain. As far as working capital goes, as you look at the fourth quarter, I would expect working capital in general to be up, but not as much as the increase in the third quarter. We expect to have higher sales. So that should drive higher receivables. We're going to be melting at a comparable level, maybe slightly below in the AOD front, but more on the vacuum induction melting front in the fourth quarter. And if you think about that, you're going to see what we've been melting here over the third quarter, moving through the rest of the operations as we continue to ramp those operations up. So I would think inventory is going to be up, but not nowhere near what it was in the third quarter in terms of increase. And the payables attract what we do from a melting standpoint. So I would think they'd be in the $30 million range.

[Operator:]

. We have a follow-up question with Mike Hughes with SGF Capital.

[Michael Hughes:]

Question on the tool steel plate market. I think you've said that historically a big driver is new auto models. Does that -- will that be the case for EVs? Just how does that business play out on a go-forward basis?

[Dennis Oates:]

Yes, that would be positive for the plate market that we serve. Anything -- any kind of retooling that the automakers do, which requires new jigs and fixtures and so forth. There's a new EV plant going in. Where is that in Tennessee? So those kinds of things will benefit us. It's difficult for me to say what percent or what volume it will be, but that would go into the same general category that we typically reference in terms of new model retooling work that gets done.

[Michael Hughes:]

Okay. And are you one of the few tool steel plate manufacturers in the United States. Is that right?

[Dennis Oates:]

That's correct.

[Michael Hughes:]

So does that mean your margins for that business is a little bit higher than the rest of the business or not?

[Dennis Oates:]

Our margins in that business are attractive.

[Michael Hughes:]

Okay. And is it -- what percent of revenues is from that business?

[Dennis Oates:]

It has ranged over the years from low double digits 10%, 11% up to high teens.

[Michael Hughes:]

Okay. And then last question. In past cycles, did you have the direct fixed cost under absorption charges? I don't remember that happening in the past. Is that wrong?

[Dennis Oates:]

It happened for a couple of quarters in 2016, but not to the magnitude we have today.

[Operator:]

There are no further questions at this time. I'll hand back the call over to Mr. Dennis Oates for closing remarks.

[Dennis Oates:]

Thank you. Once again, I want to thank everybody for joining us this morning. I look forward to updating you on our effort to take advantage of our market opportunities and to move forward on our growth initiatives on our next call, and believe it or not, January 2022. Be well, stay safe. Enjoy your holidays, and have a good day.

[Operator:]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.