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Cleveland-Cliffs, the largest flat-rolled steel producer in North America, supplies iron ore pellets to the automotive, infrastructure, and manufacturing sectors, as well as other key industries. Founded in 1847, the company employs approximately 30,000 workers and has undergone a significant transformation in recent years through the acquisition of AK Steel and ArcelorMittal assets.

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Q3 2024

Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Cleveland-Cliffs

cleveland-cliffs

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Daryl, and I am your conference facilitator today. I would like to welcome everyone to Cleveland Cliffs Third Quarter 20 24 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

The company reminds you that certain comments made on today's call will include predictive statements that are intended to be made as forward looking within the Safe Harbor protections of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Although the company believes that its forward looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially. Important factors that can cause results to differ materially are set forth in reports on Forms 10 ks and 10 Q and the news releases filed with the SEC, which are available on the company's website. Today's conference call is also available and being broadcast at clevelandcliffs.com. At the conclusion of the call, it will be archived on the website and available for replay.

The company will also discuss results excluding certain special items. Reconciliation for Regulation G purposes can be found in the earnings release, which was published yesterday. At this time, I would like to introduce Lorenzo Gonsalves, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Dara. Good morning and Happy Election Day to the Americans listening in on the call today. Throughout my 10 years with Eclipse, we have worked very consistently to position the company to benefit no matter what candidate or political party is in power. This year is no different. At this point, it's clear to us that with either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris as President of the United States, our executive branch will work to improve conditions and support a domestic steel industry owned and operated by American Producers.

American Steel Companies are way ahead of all others in the entire world, both in steelmaking technology and access to capital markets. We have a domestic market for steel that's the envy of other nations and we have the American people willing to work for us and benefit from these favorable conditions. It still touched several important areas, national security, infrastructure, manufacturing, supply chains, middle class union and non union jobs, just to name a few. It's exciting that both presidential candidates are concerned about all these areas and also that both have similar pro steel views. We have had a thorough dialogue with surrogates from each campaign and we definitely believe that critical points we have made about our American steel industry have been heard, accepted and understood.

Our number one topic of conversation with these officials is trade. While steel imports are a fact of life in the United States, not all imports are created equal. A country like Canada, for example, follows the rules and does things the right way, and this is a large part of the rationale behind Cleveland Cliffs acquiring Stelco, the steel company of Canada. We received all approvals within the timeframe we expected we would and close the deal in 3 months. That's how M and A is done.

When we have 2 honest counterparties working collaboratively, the deal closes, bankers and lawyers get paid, and shareholders are rewarded. In our release yesterday evening, we provided Stelco's financial results. While operating on a smaller scale, Stelco provides amazing resilience in a not so good steel market, as well as substantial upside in a strong market, all driven by the best in class cost structure and emphasis on spot sales versus the primarily contractual book of business that standalone Cliffs relies upon. Based on these current market conditions, the acquisition of Stelco will allow us to average up the overall EBITDA margin of Cleveland Cliffs. The standalone Cliffs is primarily a company centered towards serving the automotive industry.

Our specialized equipment capabilities, our material flows and our robust customer and technical service efforts are distinct from any other steelmaker. When automotive is humming, our footprint hums nicely along with it. Conversely, in an environment like we had in Q3, where the automotive industry is low down well below expectations, the fixed costs associated to our configuration become more difficult to overcome. With Stealth as part of our company, our overall cost structure is significantly improved, making us better suits to serve the non automotive markets. As a supplier to primarily non automotive end users and service centers, Astelco runs a much lower fixed cost and nimble operation.

They are geared to thrive selling to these end markets at mid cycle, peak and trough spot pricing levels because of their cost advantages. These advantages are well documented, currency, iron ore cost, plant layout, healthcare and power costs. With these advantages Lake Erie Works became the benchmark in low costs of our new operating footprint from day 1. Our Lake Erie cost structure for hot rolled is lower than anyone else's in North America, EAF mini mills included, and the numbers are unquestionable. Unlike the acquisitions of AK Steel and ArcelorMittal USA, which were either underperforming or underinvested when we acquired them, Stelco is both well invested and a standout performer in the industry.

Based on our experience from the previous acquisitions mentioned above, we are convinced that we have the opportunity to generate $120,000,000 of cost synergies within the 1st year. Stelco will keep its name, structure and most of its leadership and the Canadian flag will continue to fly proudly at each operational facility. I will now kick it to Celso for his remarks.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Our Q3 results were impacted by weaker steel demand and pricing throughout the quarter, which were partially offset by a great cost performance by our team. These factors drove an adjusted EBITDA of $124,000,000 on 3,800,000 tons of shipments during the Q3. North American automotive build rates in Q3 were the lowest since the depths of the semiconductor shortage a few years ago, with only 3,750,000 units built during the quarter. The latest expectation for automotive builds this year is around 15,500,000 units, which is about 1,000,000 units less than what was expected at this time last year.

With our position as a large automotive supplier, this drove our shipments, average selling prices and unit margins down quarter over quarter. And compounding this, our non automotive business also saw continued weakness in demand and pricing, both in flat rolled and plate. Overall, average selling price fell $80 per ton and shipments fell 150,000 tons compared to the prior quarter. Given the ongoing demand weakness, we temporarily idled 1 of our blast furnaces in Cleveland to better align production with our order book as both automotive and service center customers reduced their order activity during the Q3. The idle temporarily takes offline about 1,500,000 net tons of annual capacity, and we don't plan to resume operations until market conditions improve.

From a cost standpoint, we reduced unit costs by over $40 per ton during the quarter, exceeding our previous guide on both an absolute and mix adjusted basis. This came ahead of expectations despite running our mills at reduced operating rates. The belt tightening at the operational level was reflected in both capital spending and SG and A costs as well. Our quarterly SG and A of $112,000,000 and capital spending of $151,000,000 remained substantially below our averages for the past 4 years. Along these same lines, we are taking a similarly lean approach to our capital expenditures budget for next year.

We have guided to a capital spend of $600,000,000 for 2025 on an ex Stelco basis, which would be our lowest standalone CapEx since our transformation in 2020.

This is a function of reduced needs across the footprint and updated spend estimates on our 3 strategic growth projects at Middletown, Butler and Weirton. In 2025, we also see the favorable impact of improved coal supply contracts to the tune of a $70,000,000 cost improvement year over year.

That said, our most critical recent accomplishments on the finance front were completing the necessary steps to close the Stelco acquisition. As you may recall, we originally intended to fund the acquisition with a combination of financing instruments, including a term loan, secured and unsecured high yield notes and our ABL. But as we began to market the deal to investors, we noticed strong receptivity to the story and grew conviction we could raise what we needed without tapping either the secured bonds or the term loan markets. The resulting financing structure leaves us in an ideal and flexible position to weather any economic downturn and to delever quickly when cash flow starts to heat up. Now that we have Stelco closed, we'll be reprioritizing debt repayment over share repurchases with future cash flow generation.

Looking ahead, the Stelco acquisition's assets to the footprint is exactly what we need at this time, a nimble operation that thrives even in down markets. The North American flat roll market has long been in need of consolidation and we continue to do our part to make that a reality. The deal is EPS accretive, credit positive and we maintain ample liquidity to navigate the current cycle. Based on what we're seeing in the marketplace, we expect the tide to turn soon. And regardless of who wins the election today, it's easy to get bullish on the expectations for 2025.

And our upside for that is further amplified with the Stelco assets. With that, I'll pass it back to Lorenzo.

Thank you, Celso. In other news, each one of our three key strategic projects continues to progress well. We have received Phase 1 funding approvals for the Department of Energy for our efficiency projects at Middletown and Butler, allowing us to proceed. As for our transformer plant at Weirton, we are pleased to report that we have all of the necessary equipment ordered to begin making transformers in late 2025 early 2026. We have secured a joint venture partner who we feel can complement our capabilities, a partner with technical expertise and customer relationships in this space.

We will report more news with respect to the joint venture partner in the near term. From the Cliffs side, we are bringing a lot to the table, a large and skilled workforce, a plant site with all of the essentials already built and in place, and most importantly, the internal supply of grain oriented electrical steels from our Butler, Pennsylvania plant. Our actual Q3 results were certainly not a reflection of what we think a mid cycle environment in our industry should be. Demand was the weakest it has been since COVID and achieving our 4,000,000 ton sales target would have forced us to chase prices even lower. As we have done historically in similar markets, we acted with discipline and reduced production by idling our blast furnaces.

Going forward, based on the trend of falling interest rates, election certainty, import economics and manufacturing on shoring, we are getting more and more comfortable forecasting a rather strong 2025 for both our automotive and non automotive businesses. I'll end my remarks with a note of recognition to our workforce. Our safety metrics in 2024 are the best I have ever seen in my entire career in the steel industry. Specifically for our union partners, we thank you for your support this year. We now have officially added another 1800 USW members in Canada.

Welcome to the team, each one of you. With that, I'll turn to Daryl for Q and A.

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer Our first questions come from the line of Lucas Pipes with B. Riley Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Thank you very much, operator, and good morning, everyone. Congratulations on the timely close of the Stelco acquisition. Lorenzo, given that the deal closed mid quarter, I wondered if you could maybe speak to Q4 volume price and cost expectations? Thank you very much.

Yes, I'll talk on volume and market expectation. Let's also talk about the cost portion. As far as volume, we believe that our clients, as soon as we have a little more clarity, which should happen in the next few days on the election, customers will start placing orders and things will start to hit up fast. I am anticipating a very strong Q1, and I believe that we are going to have volumes back to normal by the first half of next year. I also believe that the automotive clients, at least 2 of the big 4 that decide to go for lower prices, are starting to feel the pain of their decisions, and this business is already coming back to Cliffs.

So, the automotive side of business should be much better as well because we will have that business that was taken away for absurdly low prices coming back to us. I'll let Celso answer to the cost portion of the question. Thank you.

sure. Hey, Lucas, and thanks for your comments. From an average selling price standpoint, we expect it to be Q4 to be similar to Q3 on a standalone basis. We'll have a little bit less HRC and a similar level of automotive and not a big impact from the October auto contracts. From a shipment standpoint, our standalone shipments will obviously be a little bit lower in Q4, but Stelco will kind of bring us up.

So what we lose on a standalone basis kind of gets backfilled from what we bring from Stelco. So you can expect similar shipment levels in Q4 relative to Q3. And then from a mix standpoint, it will likely be more weighted toward HRC obviously from having the Stelco footprint as well. We'll get 2 months of contribution from Stelco, obviously, given where we closed the deal. And then other things like working capital, should see a build of call it $50,000,000 to $75,000,000 as inventory could be impacted from the C6 outage, but will be partially offset from a release in receivables.

And then from things related to acquisition costs and things like that, it will be pretty minimal in Q4.

detail. Bigger picture question on the CapEx guidance for 2025, a very meaningful reduction versus prior commentary. So I wondered if you could maybe walk through the changes. And then you're still going ahead with your strategic projects that you outlined could add $600,000,000 of EBITDA. Could you remind us how quickly that EBITDA could flow through and attribute that $600,000,000 to the various projects?

Yes. Look, it's Lorenzo here. We are basically pairing the CapEx needs with what we expect in terms of what will be the next year in terms of our automotive demand. Remember, we spent a lot of money in the last couple of years bringing the equipment, particularly the one that we acquired from ArcelorMittal USA. ArcelorMittal is running the assets to destruction, and we had to really do a lot of catch up maintenance to bring the equipment back to snuff.

And now they are. So, we don't need to spend as much as we thought that we would need going forward. Things are in good shape as far as the equipment goes. The other thing is that it's clear that our clients are not transitioning to electric vehicles as fast as they said that they would. Actually, some are really doing a completely 180 on their strategies and going back to ICE and some starting hybrids.

So, we are taking the automotive clients word with a grain of salt going forward. And that makes us less eager to be spending money to change things here to upgrade for what they say they would be. So, that's what you get when you are price driven as a client. So, we're going to be a lot less aggressive in bringing our equipment to what they expect us to be. As far as the new plant, Stelco, we believe that we are going to spend between $80,000,000 $100,000,000 in CapEx as maintenance CapEx.

The equipment is in good shape. Like I said in my prepared remarks, different from previous acquisitions, we don't believe to have anything meaningful to do there other than normal course. And so the number is pretty realistic. And with a higher price environment, we expect that the overall impact will be a very net positive. I don't know if Soso has anything else to add to what I just said.

Yes, sure. So I mean just to put some numbers to it, the cadence of the capital spend, Lucas, 2024 will end the year around, call it, 625 stand alone. And then as we look forward to next year, we've reduced the sustaining level down to $500,000,000 And then when you add in the strategic investments, the Middletown spend for 2025 is about $50,000,000 That's the Cliffs portion. But you have an offset in terms of other CapEx savings on Middletown on about the same level. So they net out.

And then Wheaton the Cliffs portion for Wheaton is about $30,000,000 and the Butler spend, the Cliffs portion is about $35,000,000 So all in for next year, before Stelco is around $565,000,000 and then you add another call it $100,000,000 $110,000,000 for Stelco brings you to about $675,000,000 total for 2025.

Thank you very much. And on the timing of the positive contributions from the growth projects?

I'm sorry, say one more time, Lucas, time of contribution of what?

In terms of Middletown, Weirton, Butler and the EBITDA contribution from these growth projects, could you speak

to Yes, Middletown is a long term project. Middletown, we will be operational by 2027. So, it takes a long time to get there. It's a long, long project, but it will be a little earlier, but probably still late 'twenty six, early 'twenty seven and we are working hard to start up our plant in the Q4 of 2026 I'm sorry, Q4 of 2025. But the timeframe or the official timeframe that we have right now is still on Q1 of 2026.

So, these are all big projects and we need to receive equipment that has long lead time, things like that. But assuming everything goes well, Weirton should be operational by the end of the next year. But we're still working with the late 2095, early 2026 timeframe.

Gentlemen, I appreciate all the detail. I wish you and the team all the best of luck.

Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Lawson Winder with Bank of America. Please proceed with your questions.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, Lorenzo and Sels. So nice to hear from you both. Also maybe for you just on cost heading into Q4, pretty remarkable cost savings of $40 per ton in Q3. Is something of that magnitude potentially achievable heading into Q4?

Yes. Thank you for the comments, Lawson. Yes, we've like I said, we've been tightening the belt a lot of costs. So the quarter over quarter performance is remarkable. I'm very proud of the team here of what we accomplished from a cost standpoint.

We were down $40 a ton versus our guide of $30 and that's really, really difficult to do. So that should be commended. And that comes from improved operational efficiencies and just continuing to be disciplined. These Q3 costs are the lowest level since, I think, 2021. So we're going to continue to bring cost down.

Stelco is obviously going to be a big benefit. It's going to benefit us a lot on the cost side, but we also have the Cleveland 6 idle, which bring cost up. So I wouldn't expect to see the same magnitude of cost reduction going into Q4, but we'll continue to bring costs down as you guys have seen.

Okay. Well, that'd be great. And thank you for your comments on the auto contracts. Could I maybe just follow-up on that and ask a follow-up question as to how the current contracting cycle, so the October 1 contracts compared to the prior year's contracts in terms of pricing? Are we looking at fairly stable pricing there?

part of the ones that did not move much in terms of tonnage. One of them didn't move at all. So we only increased with new models, so what's normal course. But make no mistake, I had to be a lot more flexible in taking lower prices, not to dump the prices that competition was throwing in the marketplace, fermented by foreign owned companies operating here inside the borders of the United States. We have one and we almost had a second that we had to block.

I believe we did to be seen, let's see what's going to happen, but we can't allow foreigners to dump from the inside. They are very good at dumping from the outside, but dumping from the inside is a new development that I learned in 2024, but we acted upon. So our prices of the contracts for the next year are lower, but the tonnage is preserved, except for 2 of the clients that really elected to go to lower prices. So, coincidentally, these are the 2 car manufacturers that are really underperforming the competition. So, there's a lot of work to be done going into next year.

We are good with prices. We acquired Stelco. We have a big, big, big barrier now to the situation that we had to suffer through in Q3 and let's see 2025.

All right. Thanks very much for those comments, Lorenzo. Thank you to you both for your responses.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Carlos De Alba with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your questions.

Yes. Good morning, gentlemen, and congratulations on closing the Stelco. Just to make sure then on prices quarter on quarter, so given the mix with higher spot, higher HRC in the Q4 with Stelco, do you expect them prices quarter on quarter to be down at least slightly?

Yes, probably slightly just given all the dynamics that we have going on at the moment, Carlos.

All right. Makes sense. And then, Lorenz, if I understood correctly, the 2025 prices, auto prices would probably decline a little bit versus what you guys will average in 2024. Also on top of this, you have other industries on fixed annual prices. Can you talk about how those are evolving for 2025?

Yes. Look, you're correct about the automotive contracts. So far, we agreed with slightly lower prices in our renewals, nothing really to change meaningfully from dollars per ton standpoint. Now it's all about the tons. Let's see how many cars the car manufacturers will project.

They underperformed themselves by a lot in 2024. And we being the most automotive driven supplier, and I insist with that, not being in the business of dumping from inside the domestic market into the domestic market. We suffered more than anyone else in Q3. That's a fact. For the other contracts, it's more of the same.

It's CRU minus a number, low single digits number, and let's see where CRU will go. Without imports, I believe that price will go up. What do you think, Carlos?

Yes, yes. That's for sure. Without less supply, prices tend to be stronger. Now on the cost side, I wanted to just explore the $70,000,000 lower cost overall next year because of lower coal contracts, are you expecting anything else on the coal side or that is it for 2025? And what else on cost, any big initiatives that maybe you can highlight and what the expectation will be in terms of cost reduction for next year?

That's a big component that we will have for next year. We found a very significant spare capacity on coke making in Canada, in our new footprint at Stelco. And with that, we definitely will be buying less outside the company, so affecting our costs very significantly in terms of cutting costs. We haven't quantified exactly how much that will be, but it will be a number that will be significant going forward. The impact will be more in 2026 because we need to go through the tail of the existing contracts, But in the next negotiation, we are going to be negotiating a lot less tons with the outside.

Yes. No, maybe just to round that out, Carlos, if you allow me, on both the average selling prices and costs, right? Stelco will bring an impact on both sides, right? The ASPs will be impacted here from Q3 to Q4, just given their less rich mix and spot exposure. But this will also come with a cost benefit.

And then as we think about costs going into 2025, the reduction in coal costs that you mentioned are very meaningful. And then there are other levers or other drivers, I should say, such as scrap, which will offset the increases that we'll see in things like labor and alloys and other costs. So you got to think of it all together.

for the color, Selso. Thank you, Lorenzo.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bill Peterson with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your questions.

Yes. Hi. Good morning, Lorenzo and Soso, and thanks for all the color. I wanted to come back to the market environment. And you touched on weak demand, you talked about weak auto demand.

I guess, were you seeing any other pockets of weakness, especially heading in Yes

Yes. Bill, the weakness in the demand is actually a lot more driven by high interest rates. It's very interesting to see day after day after day, the Fed officials going, giving speeches and talking about how great things are and how fixated they are that the economy is doing well. And all things are great and then they go to 25 basis points, they continue to keep interest rates up. Let me tell you what happens in real life.

In real life, a consumer that has, let's call it, a suburban that's 5 years old and he wants to replace with a new suburban, he goes to the dealer and the price tag is higher, not because of steel, because in 5 years the steel did not change, but the car prices doubled in 5 years. So that's number 1. And number 2, because almost nobody really pays the price tag cash, they finance. So, he's going from a payment plan that has like 1.52 percent interest rates to a payment plan that will have a 7.5%, 7.8% interest rate. And then the dealer tells you, okay, you can if you don't want to increase your payment plan, I can give you this Equinox here.

And so, instead of the Super Bowl, we have a brand new Equinox, and the guy says, thank you very much, I'll keep my car. And that's how cars don't move at the dealer. It's not an EV against IC or all this beautiful conversation. It's all about money. It's all about interest rates, and people are employed because companies are afraid to let people go, because we went through hell to hire people recently.

So but the situation is a lot more complicated than it looks like on television. Guess what, interest rates need to come down. What I explained for automotive also works for houses. People don't sell their house because they have low interest rate mortgage and if they try to sell, nobody will buy their house and if they try to buy, they will be confronted with very high interest rates mortgage. So I'll give a minute for people in the call to think about what I'm saying, think about your own situation.

You would like to go to a higher a better house, but you know what, my mortgage is good if I go into this. I'm not sure if I'm going to sell my house and I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to afford the new mortgage. That's what high interest rates do for the company, for the country, just because people want the 2% target to be achieved. We are in good shape. It's time to bring interest rates down and it's time to get consumers going again.

Once this is done, the weakness of the market goes away very quickly.

Yes. Thanks for that color. And I drive a 10 year old car for those reasons. But my next question is actually on infrastructure. We brought this up in the past and it feels like the infrastructure related projects still seem to be continuing to be delayed, but one would think this may not be as interest rate sensitive.

Are you seeing any signs there? Maybe more broadly, can you speak to what you're seeing in the plate market?

The infrastructure projects, they have 2 problems. 1 is red tape, particularly between the bickering on what's federal and what's local, and the second one is the inability to finance stakes, so because interest rates are high. So that's also affecting the big ticket items. I was using the consumer because in our day to day business here, that's what we deal with a lot more because we're a lot more in light flat roll than in plate, but affects plate through the big ticket items. We see projects being delayed because money is expensive.

This should be corrected next year as well. So that's what we expect.

Yes, thanks for that. Thanks for the color. Good luck.

Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Alex Hacking with Citi. Please proceed with your questions.

Yes, thanks. I just have one follow-up question for Celso. On your commentary on the 4Q volume,

Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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