Alcoa Corporation (AA) Presents at JPMorgan Energy, Power and Renewables Conference (Transcript)

Start Time: 09:10 January 1, 0000 9:35 AM ET Alcoa Corporation (NYSE:AA)JPMorgan Energy, Power and Renewables ConferenceJune 18, 2024, 09:10 AM ET Company Participants Molly Beerman – EVP and CFO Conference Call Participants Unidentified Analyst Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to the 2024 JPMorgan Energy, Power and Renewables Conference. We are very grateful to be hosting Alcoa this morning, and we are joined by Molly Beerman, the company’s CFO. And we have Jim Dwyer and Yolande Doctor from Investor Relations here with us as well. Molly, thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. And maybe just to kick off, I will kind of give you a chance to set the scene. Maybe for people who are a little bit less familiar with the story, if you could give us an overview of the business and latest developments? Molly Beerman Thanks, Seth [ph], and good morning to everyone. Alcoa is an integrated aluminum company. We have assets in bauxite mining, alumina refining and aluminum smelting and casting. Through direct or indirect ownership, we have 27 locations in nine countries. We’re organized into two business segments, alumina and aluminum. Our alumina assets are mostly within our Alcoa World Alumina and Chemicals joint venture, 40% ownership by our partner, Alumina Limited. Those assets include five of the top 20 mines and refineries outside of China. Within aluminum, we’re a top five global producer outside of China. We have a smelting portfolio of energy — I’m sorry, we run our smelting portfolio on 87% renewable energy. Our locations are located near our customers’ major markets and our carbon intensity is one-third of the industry average. The company has three strategic priorities; reduce complexity, that means we simplify the way that we operate and structure the company. We drive returns for our shareholders, continuously looking at our competitive position and we advance sustainably, so both financially and operationally to ensure we remain a premier pure-play aluminum company well into the future. It’s been an action-packed first half of the year for Alcoa. We announced the acquisition of our 40% JV partner, Alumina Limited, and we are heading towards closing that transaction on or about August 1. We’re also taking actions to improve our portfolio and to improve our profitability. And lastly, we’re well positioned to take advantage of improving markets both in terms of commodity prices and demand. We will be reporting second quarter earnings coming up here next month and we expect to see improved EBITDA performance primarily on higher prices as well as the actions that we’re taking. There are two call-outs related to our second quarter earnings. The first is with the high run-up in API and the improved EBITDA, we always guide to the alumina costs within the aluminum segment. Those will be $10 million higher than our prior guidance. Additionally, we’re seeing about $10 million of cost impact related to the ramp down of the Kwinana refinery, that is curtailing by the end of June. And lastly, we have about $5 million in additional energy costs in Spain. All-in-all, though, we expect to report significantly improved financial results for the second quarter and dial in or listen in to the earnings call next month. With that, I’ll be happy to take your questions, Seth. Question-and-Answer Session Unidentified Analyst Excellent. Thanks very much. Maybe starting off just at a high level, if you could update us on fundamentals in the aluminum market globally. How things are going in different regions where inventory levels sit? Molly Beerman Okay. Alcoa sees the overall aluminum market to be in balance right now, but that is subject to the speed of demand recovery outside of China as well as expected seasonal curtailments of smelters inside of China. We see demand stabilizing this year with potential for additional recovery in the second half of the year. Across all of our regions, primarily North America, in Europe and all of the end sectors, we’re seeing anywhere from 1% to 4% demand growth with the exception of European building and construction that is still hampered by the high interest rates. If you look at Alcoa’s value-add products, again, we’re seeing demand growth primarily transportation and electrical sectors, but do see some recovery in the packaging sector as well. In terms of supply, there are not many new projects coming online right now. We had expected the Yunnan smelters to restart in China. They have done so that added about 1.2 million metric tons per year, but we still see China staying within their 45 million cap. No signs that they’re going to exceed that yet. Unidentified Analyst And if we turn to the market for alumina and maybe you could give us sort of a similar update including how you talked about our curtailment that’s underway at Kwinana and how that’s affecting the supply side of the market? Molly Beerman So in alumina, you’re seeing the highest prices since the last two years and really related to supply concerns, so Chinese refineries are curtailing primarily due to bauxite shortages as well as environmental issues. We see political instability in Guinea affecting supply and then in Australia, we have our Kwinana curtailment going on now as well as the disruptions in gas supply for the Queensland refineries, so all of that is really impacting alumina price. Recall that alumina is not stored easily, so almost any reaction in the supply shows up in price very quickly. Unidentified Analyst Okay. Excellent. About a month ago, we saw the copper price, the premium of copper to aluminum exceed about 4x. I know you’ve talked before about the potential for substitution at levels above 3.5, I think. I assume that, that premium would have to be maintained for a period of time in order to see that impact. But what are your updated thoughts on that topic of the potential for substitution? Molly Beerman Yes. We do see substitution happening now because really, we’ve been over that 3.5:1 ratio for some time now. The easiest substitution really is in the transmission line. So your high-voltage line where the lightweight aluminum serves it well. Where you have difficulty in substitution is where it’s more technical or they can’t accommodate the higher size or dimensions of the aluminum wire and cable. But we’re seeing substitution, not only in the electrical network, the distribution works, industrial, HVAC as well as some in auto products. Unidentified Analyst Okay. Great. Molly Beerman I’m just going to mention one more thing. As we talk to suppliers for both aluminum and copper wire and cable, they report that about 10% to 15% of the products that are able to be substituted over time. But remember, sometimes they’re being used in very technical applications, so it’s not an easy switch. And one additional adder is if you look at the analyst estimates for demand growth for the substitution anywhere from 0.5 million metric tons, up to 2 million metric tons per year by 2030. Unidentified Analyst Okay. Excellent. Maybe shifting gears a little bit to some of the company’s strategic initiatives. Can you update us on potential buyers of the San Ciprian complex? I think in the past, you’ve talked about potentially getting bids sometime in June. And so what have you seen on that front? Molly Beerman So our San Ciprian, it’s both a smelter and refinery there. That site has built up considerable losses and we are in the process now, really two main work streams. One is to try to find a viable energy contract for both natural gas for the refinery as well as power for the smelter there — both of those sites are fully exposed and we cannot run economically without power. In parallel, we’re going through a sale process. So at this point, we have received letters of interest or bids and we’re working with the potential buyers. I can’t say too much more about that. We’re under confidentiality, but we have made very clear that a successful buyer has to have the financial wherewithal as well as the technical capabilities to be able to continue to operate the site. We are looking for guarantees for both the workers and Alcoa that all of our obligations current and future will be covered. Unidentified Analyst Okay. Excellent. Another topic in terms of financial initiatives, I think you’ve talked about potentially about 650 million of cost savings that the company is looking for over the next few years. You talked earlier about taking action to improve profitability. How has the cost savings materialize year-to-date versus your expectations? What areas are driving most of the cost savings right now? And where is there still room to accelerate that? Molly Beerman So we announced that program with our fourth quarter earnings in January. And we defined several steps to take out 645 million of cost. The first step was related to raw material improvements and that had about $310 million improvement. That particular step is sequential. At this point, we’re well on track to realize that 310 million on a year-over-year basis. Prices of caustic have come down tremendously. Maybe they’ve levelled off recently, but on a year over basis, we’re seeing exactly what we expected. In terms of coke and pitch, which are involved in our smelting process, those prices continue to climb. So we’re seeing improvements there. So we will have that year-over-year benefit in raw materials. The second step was $100 million productivity competitiveness program. That basically is hundreds of initiatives across Alcoa to reduce costs on a sustainable basis. Basically, every department manager in the company lost 5% to 6% of their budget. Those initiatives are on track and our target there is to deliver the full 100 million by the end of the first quarter of 2025. The next group of steps were related to the portfolio. We talked about the Kwinana curtailment. That’s targeted to deliver a $70 million improvement. That full realization will not take place until 2025. We had another step related to Warrick improvements that’s our smelter in Indiana. That was a $90 million improvement. 60 million of that was related to operational efficiencies and that’s tied into a restart of the third line at work which has now been completed. That restart improvements in the cost absorption there as well as another list of improvement initiatives are on track to deliver that 60 million. Additionally, we are hoping to get another 30 million in IRA benefits and we’ll know more about that by the end of the year. And then the last one on the list is the Alumar smelter. We expect that restart to deliver about $75 million an improvement and that one would be fully realized in 2025. So it’s kind of a 2-year program, but each of the steps has a little bit of different timing which is why I wanted to step you through them. Unidentified Analyst Excellent. And there are a couple of pivot points there for things that I wanted to ask about in addition. One was the IRA which you mentioned. Can you talk about the Section 45X provisions and your confidence that those will expand to additional raw materials this year? Molly Beerman So in the fourth quarter of ’23, we did announce that we got the first tranche of IRA funding. So that provided 37 million in credits basically the cost of goods sold in our Warrick smelter as well as our Massena New York smelter. Now we are waiting word on a second tranche of funding through the IRA and this would apply a 10% cost funding related to direct materials. So the government has taken some extra time. They want to make sure there’s no double counting in the supply chain, but we do expect that clarification by the end of the year and we’re hopeful that will come through, that should be another 30 million to 35 million of funding for those two smelters. Unidentified Analyst And how does that — does that have a significant impact on how the company will sort of changing the company’s position in the global cost curve? Molly Beerman That funding alone does not make a material impact on the cost curve. However, that with our efforts to improve our competitiveness and our profitability we do expect to have — to show up in the cost curves. Unidentified Analyst Excellent. Very good. I guess I wanted to ask about capital allocation. You talked about Kwinana and the curtailment there. What are the cash outlays that are usually necessary to idle smelters and refineries? Molly Beerman So curtailing and closure costs will vary significantly by specific assets. If you look back in time when we curtailed our refinery in Point Comfort, Texas or even our Suriname refinery, you’ll see there were significant costs there. We just announced Kwinana going down that took restructuring charge in the first quarter of about 200 million and we will see cash of about 140 million go out in the second half of the year and that will cover the severance as well as water management costs for that site. So while it’s not set you can look back in history and see generally the cost of curtailing and closing. Unidentified Analyst All right. And is that 200 million is that a full — is all of that cash and there’s the delta between the 140 million and the 200 million is still ahead? Molly Beerman That will be cash that will be dispersed beyond 2024. Typically, at a curtailment you’ll see primarily cash cost and at a closure you’ll also have a write-down of assets. So that will be a non-cash part of those restructuring charges. Unidentified Analyst Okay. Excellent. So I wanted to ask a little bit about policy and we’ve seen some policy support for the aluminum industry recently having to do with Russia and having to do with some support through protectionism and reshoring. What are your thoughts on how these various policy occurrence will affect the company? Molly Beerman So on the Russia sanctions Alcoa had been advocating for those for the last 2 years and we’re very appreciative of both the US government and UK government for taking actions on those. Before those sanctions, Russian aluminum supply was 90% of what was in the LME warehouse and we believe that, that distorted the base price for our product. So now since the sanctions we do expect then that the product base price LME can be based on the true supply and demand fundamentals and no longer on a product that nobody wants because everyone was self sanctioning away from Russian metal. So we’re glad to have that sanction in place and now we’re looking forward and hoping that the European Union will take similar action and place sanctions on products there. In terms of what’s impacting the U.S. more, we’ve seen some recent tariff and trade actions. The first is the tripling of the 301 tariff, but that applies specifically to a group of rolled products. So not impacting us directly, but it does impact our customers. It’s good for the rolling mills that we serve. So we’ll be glad to send them more prime metal as needed when — if they have a domestic demand increase there. We’ve also seen the exemptions remove on 232 for some slab products that also could be favorable to domestic production. And lastly, on the extrusions antidumping case, they are investigating if products are being imported into the U.S. that have been heavily subsidized by foreign governments. So they’re being sold at unduly low prices, and that could impose additional duties there. When you look at those three actions together, that’s almost 750,000 tons that could be a shift into domestic supply — to devoid those tariffs. So potential improvements there for the industry. Unidentified Analyst Excellent. And we talked a little bit about the curtailment. So I wanted to talk a little bit also about additions. You mentioned Warrick and the additional line there and the ramp at Alumar. Can you talk about the steps that are necessary that are — where these assets are headed in terms of their ramp and the level of profitability that you expect here once they’re ramped up? Molly Beerman Okay. Starting with Warrick, we did complete the restart of the third line there in the first quarter. That came up on time, on budget, no safety issues. And as mentioned that should really improve our cost absorption for the site and the profitability there. We’ll still have additional actions to take at Warrick, but that will continue over time again, to deliver the 60 million operational improvement we’re going after. When you look at the Alumar smelter in Brazil, we’ve been at that restart now for 2 years. That’s been a challenging one. The asset had been curtailed for 8 years. The equipment was not in as good a shape as we had hoped. We had issues with raw materials, supply as well as quality. And we lost our trained and knowledgeable staff over the 8 years. So we have been busy adding expert support. We’ve changed some of the leadership there. I think we’re over the worst of the equipment issues now. But we’ve had a little bit of a change in direction. We purposefully slowed the restart there. We took some of the unstable pots offline trying to improve the overall line stability. And now we’re letting the folks on the ground set the course and the pace for the restart. So we won’t predict now when they will finish, but it is going much more smoothly, much more stably now. That asset, we do believe in it will be profitable once we complete the restart. It’s got a very competitive long-term energy contract, 100% renewable sources. We’re able to monetize some VAT credits that we didn’t have an ability to do before the restart and we’re selling into a market that’s in deficit for aluminum. So it has a lot of good advantages and we do believe we’ll get there over time. Unidentified Analyst Excellent. Very good. I guess I wanted to ask one question on the sustainability front. Aluminum is material that’s pretty much infinitely recyclable. Your customers and producers continue to push for lower carbon consumption. Could you speak to what the company is doing in terms of developing lower carbon and carbon-free products? Molly Beerman So our Sustana brand covers our low-carbon products and we have them both in alumina and aluminum. We’ve seen continued demand for those products over the last few years, particularly demand for our EcoLum, our low-carbon aluminum in Europe, but also seeing more demand coming out of our North American customers recently as well. For EcoLum, we see those volumes increasing and the margins overall are improving about 20% year-over-year. So still very modest in terms of financial impact but as our customers are getting very serious and aggressive about reaching their decarbonization goals, we see them turning more and more to our product. In Europe, about half of our product now going out is our low carbon product. So we see good potential for the future for those sales. And we hope as well that the premiums will come up as the supply is constrained. But right now, there’s plenty of supply to meet the demand. But I think as times get more and more aggressive, it will get the supply will get tighter. Unidentified Analyst Right. Excellent. Excellent. Very good. And so maybe just to wrap this up here as we get towards the end. Do you have any closing comments you have and maybe also an opportunity to lay out anything you feel like it’s important for investors to understand about Alcoa that they don’t understand right now? Molly Beerman Okay. Well, as I mentioned earlier, it’s a really exciting time for Alcoa. We are scheduled to close our Alumina Limited acquisition. We believe that will be beneficial for both sets of shareholders. So great support for that and coming to shareholder votes on the 16th and 18th of July and scheduled and on time for close on August 1. Second, just talked about the portfolio actions. We’re really demonstrating our bias for action and moving aggressively to position the portfolio to be profitable through all the market cycles. And lastly, I think that the markets are working in our favor right now. We see very positive outlook and expect prices to continue to hold and improve and we see demand right now really stable. And for us, in particular, I would say, strong in our markets and all sectors. So thank you for your time. I appreciate your interest in Alcoa. Unidentified Analyst Excellent. Thanks very much, Molly. We really appreciate it. A – Molly Beerman Thank you.

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