World Kinect Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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October 24, 2024
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Operator

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to World Connect Corporation's Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. I would now like to hand the call over to Bralio Medrano, Senior Director of FP and A and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Braulio Medrano
Braulio Medrano
Senior Director of FP&A and Investor Relations at World Kinect

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to World Connect's Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call, which will be presented alongside our live slide presentation. Today's presentation is also available via webcast on our Investor Relations website. I'm Bralio Medrano, Senior Director of FP and A and Investor Relations. With me on the call today is Michael Kasbar, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Ira Burns, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to take a moment to announce that Elsa Ballard will be leaving World Connect after this earnings call.

Braulio Medrano
Braulio Medrano
Senior Director of FP&A and Investor Relations at World Kinect

We would like to recognize and thank Elsa for the fantastic job that she has done with our Investor Relations efforts by improving communication channels, driving greater transparency and improving the quality of our materials. As she moves on to new opportunities, we want to wish her the best in her future endeavors. Thank you, Elsa. And now, I'd like to review our Safe Harbor statement. Certain statements made today, including comments about our expectations regarding future plans and performance, are forward looking statements that are subject to a range of uncertainties and risks that could cause actual results to materially differ.

Braulio Medrano
Braulio Medrano
Senior Director of FP&A and Investor Relations at World Kinect

Factors that could cause results to materially differ can be found in our most recent Form 10 ks and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commissions. We assume no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revisions to these forward looking statements in light of new information or future events. This presentation also includes certain non GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is included in our press release and can be found on our website. We will begin with several minutes of prepared remarks, which will then be followed by a question and answer period.

Braulio Medrano
Braulio Medrano
Senior Director of FP&A and Investor Relations at World Kinect

At this time, I would like to introduce our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Kasbar.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

Thank you, Braulio, and thank you, Elsa, for all the great work that you did for us. We really appreciate it and best wishes on all your future endeavors. Good evening, everyone. Last quarter, we spoke about challenging market conditions in our land business. And even though some of these headwinds persisted in the Q3, our land segment rebounded from the Q2 as expected.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

Our overall business also performed in line with the guidance provided last quarter, highlighting our progress towards more predictable financial results. Consistent with my messaging in prior quarters, our management team remains focused on implementing a more leverageable business model across all of our company's operations. Our capital allocation strategy remains consistent, prioritizing opportunities that drive more predictable returns within an acceptable risk profile, all while leveraging our last half mile value added energy distribution solution platform. That's a mouthful, but that's what we do. This disciplined approach to return, risk and cost management is the key to achieving the operating efficiency targets we shared with you at our Day earlier this year.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

Our commercial business and general aviation platform continues to be a great example of this strategy and we marked another quarter of excellent momentum. This scalable platform of diversified yet highly complementary offerings combined with robust summer demand in both the passenger and air cargo sectors propelled aviation to double digit growth in operating margin. Operating margin in aviation also benefited from the strategic sale of Avanode last quarter as growth in core revenue contribution more than offset the income from Avanode, but with a lower expense profile. As we noted last quarter, we reallocated some of the proceeds from the Avanode sale to the acquisition of a tuck in bulk aviation fuel distribution business, which was completed at the beginning of Q4 and is expected to be fully integrated into our aviation platform by year end, expanding our distribution network and customer base. While relatively small, this strategically complementary acquisition is a great example of the core investments we will prioritize to drive operating leverage, growth and returns.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

Our Global Aviation business is well positioned to capitalize on the long term growth trajectory in aviation. Although more cyclical than aviation, our marine business also operates on an efficient and highly scalable platform, delivering outsized financial results from small improvements in market conditions, while still creating value and contributing cash flow even in less favorable economic environments. So in the Q3, while Marine generated an 8% year over year increase in gross profit, Marine operating margin improved by 4.50 basis points, demonstrating the power of the platform to create operating leverage. Marine continues to represent a valuable diversification component of our portfolio, a business with minimal working capital requirements and significant potential upside under the right conditions. As I stated in my opening remarks, land rebounded significantly in the Q2 of this year as market conditions improved in our North American fuel business as well as natural gas where prices and volatility edged upward from the uncharacteristically low levels experienced in the Q2.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

Ira will share more details in his comments. As discussed in New York in March, growing and scaling the more predictable offerings in our land business is our largest opportunity for value creation. In our North American liquid fuel business, we now have a clear path to improving operating efficiency and margins by consolidating and standardizing on a single technology and operating platform, much as we have done in our Aviation and Marine segments. We will be completing this migration over the course of 2025. Not only should this initiative increase the profitability of our existing North American fuels business, but it will establish a vehicle for effective integration and synergy capture.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

Rapid and efficient acquisition integration has been an effective growth strategy for our aviation marine segments that will finally be replicated in our land business. Doing so in what is still a relatively fragmented land space, a market significantly larger than the combined marine and aviation markets is a key driver as we discussed at our Investor Day to accelerate attainment of our medium term operating margin target. And finally, as always, we wouldn't be here without our outstanding global team. It's their passion, innovation and dedication to serve our customers, suppliers and partners with the essential energy and logistics supply assurance that they require that makes us who we are and what we are. Thank you for what you do every day.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

It is truly a pleasure to serve with you. Ira will now provide a detailed financial and business update. Ira?

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

Thank you, Michael. And one last time, thank you again, Elsa, and good evening, everyone. Before I begin the core financial review, please note that our 3rd quarter non GAAP results reflect approximately $3,200,000 of total after tax adjustments. This includes approximately $2,100,000 associated with the incremental tax expense related to the sale of Avanode and approximately $1,000,000 principally related to an impairment charge within our Land segment. Reconciliations of our non GAAP measures are always available on our Investor Relations website and also in today's webcast presentation.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

On a consolidated basis, our Aviation and Marine segments delivered solid year over year results and our Land segment made meaningful improvement sequentially as certain market conditions that impacted us in the Q2 improved. Total volume of $4,400,000,000 was down slightly year over year and consolidated gross profit declined 5% from last year's Q3 to $268,000,000 in line with the guidance we provided last quarter. The year over year decline was primarily due to lower gross profit in our Land segment, partially offset by higher gross profit in both aviation and marine. Our aviation volume was down approximately 16,000,000 gallons or just about 1% year over year. Again, this was impacted by our decision to exit certain low margin bulk fuel business during the Q4 of last year.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

If you exclude the impact of exiting this bulk fuel activity, volume was up approximately 4% year over year and also 4% sequentially benefiting from summer seasonality. Aviation gross profit increased $3,000,000 or 3% year over year, positively impacted by stronger physical inventory related profitability in our core commercial business when compared to the Q3 of 2023. This is offset in part by the sale of Avanode, which contributed approximately $10,000,000 of gross profit in last year's Q3. Also as Mike mentioned, we recently closed a small tuck in acquisition in Business Aviation. This transaction will expand our network of FBO and Aviation fuel card customers in the United States.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

As we look to the Q4, we expect a sequential seasonal decline in gross profit. We also expect a year over year decline in gross profit in aviation driven principally by the impact of the Avanode sale. In the Land business, volumes decreased 3% year over year, principally driven by decreases in our North American wholesale and retail business activities, offset in part by increased natural gas and power volume. Natural gas and power represented 33 percent of volume in the 3rd quarter, flat with the Q2 and up from 31% in the Q3 of 2023. In land, while our core North American fuel and natural gas businesses improved from the soft second quarter contributing to a 26% sequential increase in gross profit on a year over year basis North American fuel activity was still lower.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

This combined with the continuation of the unfavorable market conditions in our Brazilian operations that we discussed last quarter contributed to a 16% year over year decline in gross profit for the overall land segment. Looking to the Q4, land results should continue to improve on a year over year basis with gross profit expected to be flat to up slightly year over year. As we have discussed throughout the year, we remain focused on refining and optimizing the portfolio of activities within our land business. As we head towards 2025, we have identified several opportunities to significantly improve the profile of this business, which should drive improved margins and returns benefiting the broader business and strengthening our foundation to achieve our medium term financial targets. We hope to share more details by the time of our next earnings call in February.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

In Marine, volumes were down 3% year over year and gross profit increased approximately 7%, principally driven by strong performance in our core resale business activities including year over year growth at several of our physical locations throughout the world. As we look to the Q4, we expect marine gross profit to be effectively flat sequentially but lower year over year principally related to reduced market volatility and somewhat lower bunker fuel prices compared to the Q4 of 2023. As we look to the Q4 on a consolidated basis and with the backdrop of the related segment gross profit comments shared a moment ago, we expect consolidated gross profit to be in the range of $253,000,000 to $260,000,000 That's $253,000,000 to $260,000,000 Now let's turn to adjusted consolidated operating expenses, which were $195,000,000 in the 3rd quarter, down 6% year over year, also consistent with the guidance provided last quarter. For the Q4, we are expecting adjusted operating expenses of $194,000,000 to $198,000,000 generally consistent with the Q3 and a decline of approximately 5% year over year impacted in part by the elimination of Avanode related expenses offset in part by expenses associated with the recent Aviation tuck in acquisition.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

We remain focused on our medium term consolidated operating margin target. As mentioned earlier, ongoing efforts in sharpening our portfolio of activities and greater operating efficiencies in our land business should be a significant factor in making progress towards this target. But we also remain focused on driving additional efficiencies across the broader business, which should contribute to the achievement of this target as well. Interest expense was $24,000,000 in the 3rd quarter, down about 16% year over year and below the guidance provided last quarter as we benefited from the recent interest rate reduction and we also had lower utilization under our liquidity facilities during the quarter. We expect another year over year decline in interest expense in the Q4 to $23,000,000 to $25,000,000 with our full year 2024 interest expense on track to come in approximately 18% below fiscal year 2023.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

Our adjusted effective tax rate in the 3rd quarter was 24.7 percent, that's slightly higher than anticipated and up slightly year over year. Based upon what we know today, our adjusted effective tax rate for the 4th quarter should be in the range of 20% to 23% resulting in a full year 2024 adjusted effective tax rate of 17% to 19%. In the 3rd quarter, operating cash flow was actually negative $39,000,000 The use of cash in the 3rd quarter was principally related to increased capital requirements associated with seasonal increases in business activity, most specific to our Aviation business. As we work through the 4th quarter, we are focusing on every opportunity to drive a solid cash flow outcome to finish the year. Also during the Q3, we repurchased an additional $28,000,000 of shares increasing total year to date repurchases to $57,000,000 And we also announced the $200,000,000 increase to our share repurchase authorization further demonstrating our commitment to returning capital to shareholders.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

In closing, I want to leave you with a few thoughts. Aviation delivered solid year over year results driven by strong performance in our core commercial business offset in part again by the impact of the sale of Avanode and we recently closed the small tuck in acquisition which further expands our core offerings in the United States. Our Land segment rebounded nicely from the significant weakness experienced during the Q2. We remain highly focused on driving greater ratability across our business by continuing to carefully sharpen our portfolio of business activities, including the refinement and optimization of activities within our land business. Marine also delivered year over year growth principally related to higher profit contribution from our core resale business activities.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

And again, we repurchased $28,000,000 of shares during the quarter increasing year to date repurchases to 2,100,000 shares. Finally, we remain highly focused on making progress towards our medium term financial targets, we shared in March. The achievement of these targets will further strengthen our balance sheet, enhance profitability and improve our return on invested capital, all driving greater shareholder value. Thank you. I will now turn the call back over to our wonderful operator, Latif, to begin the Q and A session.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

Latif?

Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Ken Hoexter of BofA. Your question please, Ken.

Ken Hoexter
Ken Hoexter
Managing Director at Bank of America

Great. Good afternoon, Ira and Michael. And I'll throw my thoughts in. I also thank you for the discussions over the time. Ira, maybe just looking at the business review you just talked about and now your cost focus is, is there any other avinodes out there that you look to monetize?

Ken Hoexter
Ken Hoexter
Managing Director at Bank of America

Are there other pieces that you look to refine as you review the businesses?

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

I wouldn't necessarily put anything in the Avanode category because that was obviously an outstanding achievement considering the valuation that we got for that business. But yes, there's certainly other opportunities to look at pieces of the business that we may be able to move on from and reallocate capital into our core businesses. There's lots of discussions around those topics. But again, Avanode was a great, but an outlier in terms of not necessarily part of our core. Now we're more focused on our core activities and where accelerating investment makes sense and also where it may make sense to either pump on the brakes or even consider exiting certain activities, which in land in particular should the goal is to simplify the land story, improve our operating margins and profitability and simply allow us to focus more of our time on what really matters, which should only benefit our efforts to drive greater levels of growth across the business.

Ken Hoexter
Ken Hoexter
Managing Director at Bank of America

So let me take the flip side of that because when years ago, you kind of when we launched Cover's, you were very, very acquisitive over time and that seems to have decelerated. So I guess alternatively, given the elongated freight recession, is there is it creating any additional sellers like the tuck in one you announced this quarter? Are you seeing more opportunities like that?

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

Yes. There's a few things. Obviously, we were digesting a we lived through COVID. We were digesting a very large acquisition in flyers and interest rates were skyrocketing, which didn't favor M and A for anyone really. Flyers is integrated.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

We're actually benefiting from their very efficient platform within our North American fuels business and rates are starting to come down, which I would say is bringing more opportunities out of the woodworks. Would say there's greater opportunity today than there has been in a while to find opportunities to grow inorganically, but we're always very, very careful about where we make those investments and take our time to make those decisions. But I would say the pipeline and opportunity set is growing and we have greater confidence in our ability to quickly integrate those types of businesses because we've worked our team has worked phenomenally hard on moving to a platform that's highly leverageable, something we didn't have many years ago.

Ken Hoexter
Ken Hoexter
Managing Director at Bank of America

Great. Appreciate that. Let me wrap up with the core business, right? So you talked about land maybe being a little disappointing in terms of performance. I just want to understand, you kind of listed a bunch of things.

Ken Hoexter
Ken Hoexter
Managing Director at Bank of America

Is it was it more seasonality than you thought? Was it just, I guess, different things impacting the business? Maybe can you walk through that a little bit more?

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

Yes. A lot of the things that we talked about last quarter, which was very weak on a comparative basis year over year, started to improve. One of the things we talked about last quarter was nat gas because you had an oversupplied situation, extremely low prices. That market has stabilized and we did much better this quarter. On the flip side, we talked about Brazil and Russian imports and single supplier market aside from those imports and that hasn't improved.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

So the year over year comparison there remains weak. And then last quarter, we talked about our fuels business in North America. Specifically, we talked a bit about what was going on in the West Coast. That hasn't changed that much, but we did see improvement in other parts of the country. So we certainly had a better outcome in our North American fuels business in this quarter than we did last quarter, but still down a bit from last year.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

So I think as we enter into 2025, I think with your previous question and market conditions hopefully continuing to move in a better direction and maybe reshaping the portfolio a bit more, the land has an opportunity to perform certainly at a higher level next year. And we need that, right, to start moving more significantly towards the targets we've shared for operating margins in particular and even our EBITDA target.

Ken Hoexter
Ken Hoexter
Managing Director at Bank of America

Great. Appreciate the time. Thanks guys.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Rehaut of JPMorgan. Your line is open, John.

John Royall
John Royall
Executive Director at JP Morgan

Hi, good evening. Thanks for taking my question. So I think you both touched on it a little in the opener and sounds like maybe we'll get some more details soon. But I was hoping you could dig in a little on the path from here to the 30% operating margin you're targeting in land. How much of the bridge from where you are today, these headwinds coming back and normalizing and how much is maybe some of these more controllable levers that you've discussed?

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

Look, the market conditions normalize, it could only help. But to be honest, the part 2, which you've nailed is even bigger, right? There are things that we control that and strategic moves that we can make that could provide us with significant progress towards that goal relatively quickly. None of it is an overnight exercise and that's why we've given ourselves till 26 with the targets we shared. But we have some businesses that significantly outperform the operating margin target in our portfolio and unfortunately we have some that significantly underperformed that target.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

Simply by doing less than the underperforming category, your number and your that metric moves in the right direction, right? So we're focusing on things like that. And also the right type of M and A could help as well because if you look at the card lock business, for example, that operates at a premium to our target operating margin, right? Because that's an extremely low cost higher margin, low cost operation. So there's multiple levers, right?

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

Rebound in the existing business that you mentioned, things within our control that we could change or stop doing, and then strategic M and A right up in the middle of the fairway that could drive growth and synergies with our existing platform. So there's a lot of that umbrella of items that I described is within our I would say is within our control and we're spending a lot of time focusing on moving in that direction and we're really hoping we'll have more tangible details to share by the time we get to the February call.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

Just to add a little bit of color to that John, it's more of less that has less variability into it in terms of its market profile. So again, distribution, plus we come from the commodity side and we're pretty good at it. But disproportionate and the variability of it obviously is not kind to results and then platform. So the flyers platform is what we're going to consolidate under and that is going to make all the difference in the world. So the right portfolio selection with the right profile and the right both commercial and financial dynamics and the right team with the right platform.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

So the combination of all of those and as Ira has said and is working on is stopping and the rest of the team stopping and exiting some of the parts of the businesses that while are okay, are not necessarily additive. And there's some amount of trading activity that is perfectly good, but variable, but they've been disproportionate. And it's been difficult obviously to have the predictable results and to be able to communicate, then they don't really fit with where we're going. So there's a clear focus, there's a clear plan, the platform is going to be transformative. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of color.

John Royall
John Royall
Executive Director at JP Morgan

Yes, it's really helpful color. Thank you. And then my follow-up is just on working capital. It was a pretty sizable headwind over $100,000,000 in 3Q. And I know Ira mentioned some seasonality there.

John Royall
John Royall
Executive Director at JP Morgan

So given that seasonality, is there a natural reversion there where we could see some offsetting tailwinds in future quarters? And then, relatedly, was there any of that headwind in 3Q? Was any of it price related?

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

Yes and yes. So we certainly our goal is to recover from our first negative cash flow quarter in a while. It was a strong seasonal quarter from on the aviation side. So we had some investment in working capital. We had some customers coming to us asking for temporary increases in their credit line because of the expected strong summer, which came to pass.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

So that increased some of our receivable requirements. So that was part of it. And then there are some price related timing differences that we encountered from time to time on our inventory positions around the world. So that impacted us a little bit as well. And so we're shooting for a positive cash flow quarter in Q4 and we remain confident that we should be delivering in the approximate range that we shared longer term on an annual basis in 2025 and beyond from an operating and a free cash flow standpoint.

John Royall
John Royall
Executive Director at JP Morgan

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Pavel Molchanov of Raymond James. Your question please Pavel.

Pavel Molchanov
Pavel Molchanov
Investment Strategy Analyst at Raymond James Financial

Yes. Thanks for taking the question. Standard question to start, low carbon was 12% of gross profit in Q1, 8% in Q2. What was it in the most recent quarter?

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

Gross profit was 11% this quarter.

Pavel Molchanov
Pavel Molchanov
Investment Strategy Analyst at Raymond James Financial

Okay, clear. As you look at SaaS, you've had a series of announcements along those lines over the past few months. I mean, still not huge volumes, obviously, in the grand scheme of things. But on a percentage basis, how much more volume do you think you'll do in SAF this year versus the year before?

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

Well, it's a long the law of small numbers because we're still only doing a few 1,000,000 gallons. So on a percentage basis, arguably it could be a pretty high percentage, but that doesn't contribute millions and millions of gallons, but it is additive and generates incremental gross profit. And you also made reference to a couple of announcements. 1 of them is a bit larger than the other depending on the timing and how that pans out that could further accelerate some growth here in the U. S.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

So again, if you're only doing a few 1000000 gallons a year, a 1000000 gallon increase would be a 25% increase. So it's tough to give you an exact number, but the pace of growth is definitely picked up little by little each year. And hopefully that will accelerate as we head through 2025 and 2026 compared to where we've been in the past.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

You're being a little blase.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

I'm being blase.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

We've been at this for about 15 years. And so we're one of the largest distributor of SAF in the U. S. And the world. And we've got tremendous capability to not only deliver it, source it, but also integrate and help our clients understand all of the technical regulatory attributes to it.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

We have some of the most accomplished people in the space. So and it is the only solution for decarbonizing the aviation industry. So combined with the incentives in the U. S. And the regulatory in Europe is going to become materially bigger part of what we do.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

So it's strategically important as is all of the renewables. You can't really talk about energy without talking about the renewable space. And we certainly have a significant competitive advantage compared to most of our other participants. So drop in fuel and it's strategically important. There's virtually no conversation that we have about jet fuel that there isn't a discussion about SAF.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

So it's an important part of what we do. And from the digital booking claim, physical distributions, we basically do it from soup to nuts. So there will be more of that in our future because it's where the market is heading to.

Pavel Molchanov
Pavel Molchanov
Investment Strategy Analyst at Raymond James Financial

Yes. If I can follow-up on natural gas, so kind of a macro question. We're seeing lot of rhetoric about data centers, appetite for Natgas, particularly with the AI build out. Is that something you're observing in your conversations with enterprise customers?

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

Data centers are that backup energy is something that we've developed a certain capability at and within the various hyperscalers, we're engaged with conversations on the data center side. So it's a perfect combination. I mentioned this in our Investor Day. The energy consumption is just going to continue. There's no GLP, semiglutide solution for energy consumption.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

The more energy that you're using, the more that you want, seems to be the name of the game. So cutting across all of those sources of energy, our ability to participate is pretty broad from advisory to brokerage to services to digital to merchant to logistics. And we cut across practically every single source of energy. So we're extremely well positioned within our platform and we're engaged within data center operators and hyperscalers and a broad range of different activities. So obviously it's focused.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

You can't do a little bit of everything. But the beauty of our orientation

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

is

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

there isn't really any part of the energy spectrum where we can't provide some type of service. So any case, I don't want to take too much time on that, but that gives you hopefully a fulsome answer. And I think that's the beauty of our participation model. Clearly, when you're looking at physical activity and density and location, there are cost structures based on that and having the appropriate platforms and the focus so that we could leverage is what we're highly sensitive to, so that we're able to have a discussion, but our participation model is clearly focused on what is leverageable.

Pavel Molchanov
Pavel Molchanov
Investment Strategy Analyst at Raymond James Financial

Got it. Thank you very much.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

Pavan, I'm just going to go back to SaaS for a second because Mike was right. I wasn't bullish enough. But they are small numbers, but I'm not going to give you a going forward number, but our volume year to date year is 40% above what it was last year. So the growth is accelerating, albeit I'll say it for the 5th time, a small base, but we're seeing that number continuing to increase. So you have that metric at least.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

It's just going to be more and more important because the aviation segment, there's really no other solution at this stage of the game. And while it represents somewhere about 3% of global emissions as the rest of the market decarbonizes, you're going to see aviation stick out as a larger percentage. So there's going to be a greater demand for it. So we're extremely well positioned to play that distribution service, understand the data required and provide really a full last half mile solution from soup to nuts, both on producers and consumers. So again, it fits within our model.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

It's a drop in fuel. So moving molecules is what we do, regardless of whether they're fossil or renewable. We're dealing with today's reality of a broad based energy diet. And we're understanding the electrons and renewable electrons. And as you're seeing data centers go to nuclear, you're now going to see that opening up P2X with different types of renewable molecules, which once again we're well positioned to be able to take advantage of.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

So any case, hopefully that gives you a little bit of color in terms of how we think about it and how we're positioning the company for the future.

Pavel Molchanov
Pavel Molchanov
Investment Strategy Analyst at Raymond James Financial

Appreciate it.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

Thanks, Pavel.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ben Nolan of Stifel. Your question please, Ben.

Benjamin Nolan
Benjamin Nolan
Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp

All right. Thanks, Latif.

Benjamin Nolan
Benjamin Nolan
Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp

So I've got a couple, but first of all, well, actually, I'll start on the results in the quarter. You came into the guidance range, although it was a little bit on the lower end. And while I'm on the guidance range, that's one of the things that I think Elsa helped you guys to implement. And boy, has she done a fantastic job. So hats off to Elsa.

Benjamin Nolan
Benjamin Nolan
Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp

But can you maybe talk through a little bit of how things moved or maybe shifted you a little bit closer to the lower end of that range or maybe what came up as a surprise relative to what you had originally expected?

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

I love you. You hit this up like $1,000,000 variance. Nothing really, I mean, basically, it was hard to answer that question because I would say maybe the best of the 3 aviation was maybe $1,000,000 shy of what we had forecast. Everything else came out pretty much in line with what we expected. So the midpoint of our guidance versus where we were, I think it was about like a $1,200,000 difference or something like that.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

So really doesn't happen every day, but if you saw our internal forecast, the actual results were close on every line. The variances were interest came in better than expected going into the quarter and tax came in a bit higher. But in terms of gross profit and operating income, both of those numbers were almost exactly where we expected expenses were exactly what we had guided and projected as well. But I will give you the fact that we were off by $1,000,000

Benjamin Nolan
Benjamin Nolan
Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp

No, no. Well, I was really asking sort of as a way to compliment Elsa there. But the my next question relates to and this Brazil, I know it was a problem last quarter and there was a little bit of a lag effect or rollover into this quarter, which you guys had noted 3 months ago. You talk a lot about the opportunity for growth in the land business, but that is almost always when I hear you or maybe exclusively always North American land. I know you have the operation in the UK, there's Brazil.

Benjamin Nolan
Benjamin Nolan
Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp

Do you see those international land businesses as core or is that not how you view them?

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

Ben, it's really about focus. When you look at the size of the market, you can't compare, right? So where's the runway? I mean, in the U. S.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

Market, used to be 26% of global energy consumption, not exactly sure where it is today, but that U. S. Market is sizable. And so clearly, there's a greater opportunity for growth. There's a much bigger runway.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

So that's got to be the priority for us. Certainly, our global logistics capability, I think is just quite unbelievable in terms of where we came from to the level of global expertise we have in inventory management, distribution, digital, in terms of third party, our own physical inventory distribution and our digital capability for fulfillment, I think is quite extraordinary. But once you get into physical markets, you want to make sure that they've got a certain amount of size. And clearly, there's no comparison from the U. S.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

Market to other markets. We do fulfill on inducement, let's say, or somewhat opportunistically off of our large aviation footprint where we have our distribution assets. But the focus is really the U. S. That's where there's the biggest runway.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

We're pretty excited about the flyers platform. And our team is doing a great job. And that's going to give us the ability to acquire, do tuck ins, you'd be able to eliminate costs and have EBITDA drop, which is what we're really looking forward to. So we're certainly open. We are a global business.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

We're doing business in lots of places, as you know, but it's consolidating and looking at markets where there is an opportunity to be worth the chase. So I don't know if you want to add some more color to that.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

No, I think I'd be saying something very similar, so I don't want to be repetitive. But again, we've got pretty much double digit market share globally in aviation marine. In North America, our market share in land is still very, very small. And as Mike mentioned, it's a massive market and we haven't necessarily hit it out of the park historically. We know that.

Ira Birns
Ira Birns
Executive VP & CFO at World Kinect

So I think Mike and I both agree that we've got a lot of heavy lifting to do in North America alone before we spend a lot of time diving into other international opportunities. There may be some niche opportunities that Mike referred to that will always make some sense, but it's really all about north. If anything, I think our focus is going to in the short to medium term going to move to a higher concentration of North America than where we are today as opposed to vice versa. And as we get that machine running in a similar fashion to marine and aviation, we'll have more time to think about focusing on opportunities in other parts of the world.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

We've got plenty to chew on in the U. S, that's for sure.

Benjamin Nolan
Benjamin Nolan
Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp

Right. Okay.

Benjamin Nolan
Benjamin Nolan
Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp

And then lastly on the marine business, the margins were improved even though the volumes were down a little bit. I think Ira, you mentioned that part of the reason for that was you had some wins or some growth in the physical some of your physical facilities. It seems like it's a little bit of a departure from, I don't know, historically where you're mostly just a back to back seller. Is that an area that you're looking to do have a greater presence in an actual physical marine market?

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

So Ben, listen, we got into physical in a real way in I think it was 2,004. We acquired a UK company called Tramp Oil and that was our first foray into marine physical. They were doing it in a very interesting manner. We brought a good amount of discipline to it and that was a good earner for us. We expanded, we ended up buying Shell's all of their assets lock, stock and barrel and I think it was 2010 in Gibraltar.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

You've got 110,000 ships that pass through the Gibraltar Straits. So that looked like a pretty good idea. And now we've got a network of about, I think, 12 locations and it's niche locations, not dissimilar to what we have in aviation, which by the way, when you look at the growth in aviation, you're seeing a greater interest. There's a big demand in Europe. There was an article in the journal, I think yesterday or the day before, a couple of days ago, in terms of cabin fever from COVID is continuing.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

People are wanting to travel and they're wanting to travel to new locations, which is generally favorable to us, because our network tends to have those locations. But back on marine, when you look at the story from a broker to a reseller is really underwriting. We took financial instruments and I think we're extremely creative and one of the mavericks in terms of embedding those into physical instruments. And then distribution, while we first took inventory with a large airline in 2,002 and then develop that capability and then our physical distribution assets, most notably with our Odyssey acquisition, our ExxonMobil acquisition many years ago. But the thing is that we've really become quite, I think, an effective distribution business.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

So inventory management, we're in dozens of countries with our own personnel and the combination of that 3rd party network, our own physical inventory and distribution assets, our digital fulfillment, the combination of all of that is kind of a heady brew. It really is very effective and it allows us to dial in what is the right method of fulfillment and gives us that sort of optionality as well as the customer and optionality to be able to come with a fulsome solution. So we like that. It is a good business mix and it could offset obviously, if you look at manufacturing, we're not likely to buy a refinery anytime soon. You do have a lot of companies that are making the product.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

They don't necessarily want to distribute it. So that is a great value add for producers. And then you've got a lot of our customers that want a specific solution. So there's certain parts of the market that can't get a solution and they actually come to us to ask us to basically set up a physical operation to deal with their specific requirements. So we've got that ability to fulfill that and it really sets us apart from some of the companies that don't have that capability.

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

And they're looking for a company that they can trust that is a solid counterparty that they understand the quality that they're going to get in the level of service. And I'd say I'm very proud of the team. Our physical operations team really does a phenomenal job. It's really quite impressive. So it's definitely a transformative story and that is a part of the mix and kudos to the team that has developed that and we now have the ability in niche markets typically where we are now a physical participant.

Benjamin Nolan
Benjamin Nolan
Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp

Okay. That does it for me. I appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. Thanks, Mitch. I would now like to turn the conference back to Michael Kasbar for closing remarks. Sir?

Michael Kasbar
Michael Kasbar
Chairman and CEO at World Kinect

Okay. Well, thanks everybody for participating and thank you to our team and Elsa, good luck to you. So everyone be safe and look forward to talking to you next quarter. Bye bye for now.

Operator

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

Executives
    • Braulio Medrano
      Braulio Medrano
      Senior Director of FP&A and Investor Relations
    • Michael Kasbar
      Michael Kasbar
      Chairman and CEO
    • Ira Birns
      Ira Birns
      Executive VP & CFO
Analysts
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Earnings Conference Call
World Kinect Q3 2024
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