Western Forest Products Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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May 4, 2023

There are 2 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Western Forest Products First Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. During this conference call, Western's representatives may make Forward Looking Statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements can be identified by words like anticipate, Plan, Estimate, Will and Other References to Future Periods. Although these forward looking statements reflect Management's reasonable beliefs, expectations and assumptions that are subject to inherent uncertainties and Actual Results May Differ Materially. There are many factors that could cause actual outcomes to be different, including those factors described under Risks and Uncertainties in the Company's Annual MD and A, which can be accessed on SEDAR and is supplemented by the company's quarterly MD and A.

Operator

Forward looking statements are based only on information currently available to Western and speak only as of the date on which they are made. Except as required by law, Western undertakes no obligation to update forward looking statements. Accordingly, listeners should exercise caution and Relying Upon Forward Looking Statements. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Steven Hoefer, President and CEO of Western Forest Products.

Operator

Mr. Alfer, please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Paul, and good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to Western Forest Products 2023 First Quarter Conference Call. Joining me on the call today is Stephen Williams, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Glenn Montell, our Vice President of Corporate Development. We issued our 2023 Q1 results yesterday. I will provide you with some introductory comments and then ask Steve to take you through our financial results.

Speaker 1

I'll then follow Steve's review with our outlook section before we open the call to your questions. The Q1 of 2023 continued to face a 2nd quarter. Headwinds from interest rate increases and slowing growth are being felt throughout the economy. This has resulted in significantly weaker lumber demand and prices compared to the same time last year. Despite the more challenging environment, we continue to advance opportunities to position our business for long term success.

Speaker 1

This has included a strong focus on our strategic priority of operational excellence throughout our business. Areas where we are focused on include Value Added Manufacturing. During the quarter, we saw progress with better on time shipments to customers and greater consistency in our lumber shipments throughout each week of the quarter. In addition, we broke ground on our continuous kiln project at our Salt Air Summit. This investment will support the production of more kiln dried lumber products and will move our products further up the value chain to drive increased profitability over the long term.

Speaker 1

In support of maximizing value back to our logs, we launched an internal yellow cedar initiative, redirecting certain logs to our saw mills to produce kiln dried products, including lamb stock. While it is still early days, we see potential long term opportunities for the use of yellow cedar as a durable wood product Advancing Collaborative First Forest Planning Activities and Partnership Opportunities with First Nations and Growing Our Engineered Wood Products division. We remain focused on maintaining a strong balance sheet and continuing with our balanced approach to capital allocation. I will now turn it over to Steve to review our key financial results. Thanks, Stephen.

Speaker 1

First quarter adjusted EBITDA was a negative $5,000,000 as compared to $65,400,000 in the same quarter last year. Compared to the same period last year, results in the Q1 of 2023 were impacted by Lower lumber prices and shipments. Our mix of lumber sales with specialty lumber shipments representing 40% of total lumber shipments as compared to 51% in the same period last year, higher per unit timberlands tots and sawmill operating curtailments. These were partially offset by increased log, byproduct and other revenue and lower total freight and duty expenses. In our Engineered Products division, we continue to be pleased with the performance of our Calvert acquisition, delivering another quarter of EBITDA margins in Test of 20 percent on revenue of $7,300,000 We are also successful in advancing Hemphur testing in support of increasing its utilization in mass timber construction.

Speaker 1

This included certifying our Callery division to produce hemp fur NUAN to the current APA standards. While this is a first step, we plan to look for opportunities to increase the utilization of hemp fur and engineered wood products over the long term. The investments we are making at our BC manufacturing facilities, including an MSR machine at dew point and a continuous kiln to sell there will help support this. Turning to Q1 cash flow and capital management. We continue to make progress on our previously announced BC strategic investments.

Speaker 1

As Steven noted, this included breaking ground on our continuous kiln project at Saltair. For 2023, we expect total CapEx to be between $60,000,000 $70,000,000 2, returning $4,000,000 to shareholders via dividends. We expect to receive an income tax refund of approximately $15,000,000 in the 2nd or Q3 of this year. Our balance sheet remains strong, ending the quarter with $205,000,000 in available liquidity. We will continue to prioritize financial flexibility of our balance sheet to support our strategic initiatives and manage through the current market conditions.

Speaker 1

During the Q2 seasonality. Typically in the Q2, our harvest volumes increase as snow recedes and we expand operations across the entire timber harvesting land base. As our harvest activity moves further up the hillsides, our costs tend to rise as steeper and more difficult terrain Increases Harvesting Complexity. From a market perspective, North American lumber consumption typically increases as we move into the more active spring season. That said, we expect lumber markets to remain volatile in the near term and plan to match production to market demand.

Speaker 1

Stephen, that concludes my comments. Thanks, Steve. Turning to our market outlook. We are seeing some indications of demand team improving at certain lumber segments. However, overall lumber demand and prices are expected to remain below historical levels in the near term.

Speaker 1

We remain excited about the growth opportunity for engineered wood and mass timber build in North America and the role of wood products Path to Play in a Low Carbon World. We remain optimistic about future opportunities Western has to deliver long term shareholder value as we continue to execute on our strategic priorities. We will continue to focus on profit margin across our business, all while driving to provide best in class service to our customers. With that, Paul, we can open the call up to questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now take questions from the telephone lines. Star 1 on your device's keypad. The first question is from

Speaker 1

Sean Steuart.

Operator

Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 1

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Couple of questions. Wondering if you can give us an update on the APD review process and any insight on the various avenues 2 that are under consideration as you move forward with options there. You bet, Sean.

Speaker 1

I appreciate the questions. As most of you aware, the mill has been curtailed since the fall of 2022 and previously was operating only on a single ship basis. So we formed a multiparty working group, including representatives from our company, the USW, indigenous partners, We need to establish or was established to explore some potential viable industrial manufacturing solutions for the facility. So last week, we announced the conclusion of that 90 day working group. And at this point, we've commenced some negotiations and due diligence Processes related to proposals received.

Speaker 1

As far as timeline and next steps, we're working diligently to move forward as quickly and efficiently as 2. And we expect to be able to provide an update by the end of June. Okay. Thanks for that, Steve. Question on the acquisition opportunity set as you think about diversification outside the BC Coast.

Speaker 1

I'm wondering if you still got a lot of balance sheet flexibility, but as you use up some of your liquidity, Does that change how you might be thinking about scale of acquisition opportunities? Does it temper What you might be looking at from that perspective and any perspective on what the opportunity set might look like right now? Well, as I shared earlier, we really like the engineered wood business that we have at Calvert. We're learning a lot, Learning something new every day. We like the vertical integration play that that has right back to our timberland.

Speaker 1

So We're certainly exploring all the opportunities that are in front of us in terms of how we might be able to identify some additional tuck in type acquisitions in that space. Early on, but we're excited about some of the opportunities that are in front of us. And we're mindful of the balance sheet and we'll be taking that into consideration as we look at these relatively smaller tuck in type opportunities as opposed to transformative type acquisitions. Okay. Thanks for that detail.

Speaker 1

That's all I have. Thanks, Sean.

Operator

The next question is from

Speaker 1

Paul Quinn.

Operator

Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 1

Sounds so funny. Good morning, guys. Sorry, afternoon. It's been a long morning already. Just wondering, The government introduced these 8 forest landscape planning tables.

Speaker 1

Wondering how many you're involved with and what's your level of optimism that we'll actually get a timely outcome and something that you can work with down the road. Thanks, Paul. So the government announced 8 forest landscape planning tables 2nd quarter. Here in BC, the regional planning tables have not kicked off as of yet. We've been engaging in these types of planning processes directly with First Nations long before this government I did these announcements.

Speaker 1

Our view is that stability for the sector in BC is going to be built from the ground up in these collaborative Planning Processes and not centrally from Victoria or Vancouver. We're really proud of the track record in sustainable forest management And the work that we're doing with First Nations to develop these plans and the overall stable profitable sector on the coast. So We've had some good engagement with government. We have we believe there's basically The best practices when it comes to developing these forest landscape plans, and we're well ahead of the curve in terms of our own involvement with the First Nations with respect to our tenures. Okay.

Speaker 1

So given your long term engagement, at least To some participants, when do you think your what's your thought on timing of getting a resolution Paul, I think they'll be phased in over a period of time. But I think as we go through This year, we'll start to see the culmination of some of these planning processes. Okay. So sorry, the culmination suggests that there'll be a decision or outcome sometime in 2023? Yes, I think it will vary type of thing, but I think as we start moving through the year, as some of these planning processes will start to Time to Fruition.

Speaker 1

Okay. And then just turning back to your markets. I mean, you guys have had a difficult go here last number of months. Do you see a slow steady recovery? Or how do you see the your major sort of Specialty Markets Bouncing Back Going Forward Here in 2023.

Speaker 1

Well, I'll touch maybe on Japan. Sorry, Japan first, Paul. We've been we're starting to see some stabilization now in terms of overall inventory. Japan was Really faced with an abundant amount of cheap fiber coming from Europe, as well as a significant increase in domestic production of sugi and hanoki at relatively cheap prices due to the logs being heavily subsidized by the government. It seems like today, overall, our order file in Japan continues to improve some modest Price Appreciation, but I don't think we'll see 2022 pricing levels here this year.

Speaker 1

Certainly from a demand standpoint, it's kind of stabilized and we're able to continue to book out our quarterly business. In North America, when we look at Jan, Feb, March, typically in February March, we'd see A bit of a spring buy in our key geographic markets. That didn't happen on specialties. We had really difficult weather in California, really difficult market weather in Texas and in some of our key Midwest markets. So that's really the story behind the 40% Specialties in the quarter was just could not get in front of the weather in these key states.

Speaker 1

On a bit more optimistic note though, we have feedback from our customers that in some of these jurisdictions, April Was their best month in a long, long time. So we're slowly getting back into it. Modest opportunities on price appreciation. The upper portion of the woodpile, the Clears, the shop and better in the timbers, relatively stable demand, stable pricing. It's that we call it the meat in the middle of the sandwich, the naughty 2 inch decking, trim, fascia, those type of products were just hadn't been able to get out in front of it from a takeaway standpoint.

Speaker 1

So We're optimistic, Bill, that what we see for order file, inbound inquiry that will Get the business repositioned here in Q2 to our normal levels of specialties. All right. That's all I had. Best of luck. Thanks.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Thank you.

Operator

There are no further questions registered at this time. I will turn the call back to Mr. Offer.

Speaker 1

Okay. Well, thanks everyone for joining our call today. We certainly appreciate your interest in our company, and we look forward to our next call in August. Thanks, Paul.

Operator

You're welcome. Thank you. The conference has now ended. Please disconnect your lines at this time. And we thank you for your participation.

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Earnings Conference Call
Western Forest Products Q1 2023
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