Good afternoon, welcome to Hydro's Q4 2017 conference call. As always, we will start with a short introduction by President and CEO, Svein Richard Brandtzæg, followed by a Q&A session, also joined by CFO Eivind Kallevik. With that, I'll leave the word to you, Svein Richard.
Good afternoon. Let me start with a brief overview of the key developments in the fourth quarter of 2017. Underlying EBIT for the fourth quarter was NOK 3.6 billion, up from NOK 2.4 in the third quarter. The main explanation for the higher result is higher all-in aluminum and alumina prices, with realized alumina and aluminum prices are by $101 and $171 per ton respectively, partly offset by increased costs, both variable and fixed. Downstream results are down compared to the first quarter due to normal seasonal development. The fourth quarter is also the first quarter fully consolidating Extruded Solutions into the results as the sixth business area. Energy is delivering higher results on the back of higher volumes and slightly higher prices.
On the BETTER program, we are on track for the updated 2019 target of NOK 3 billion despite setbacks last year. Towards the end of January, we started production at our world-class technology pilot at Karmøy. We are currently ramping up and expect to reach full production during the first half of 2018. For 2017, Hydro's board of directors proposes a dividend of NOK 1.75 per share, reflecting Hydro's strong operational performance for 2017 and solid financial position. Finally, when it comes to the market side, we iterate our expectation of a largely balanced global market for 2018. Provided at our capital markets day in December with global primary demand estimated to grow by some 4%-5%.
Our key priorities for this year are, of course, safety, that will always be the number one priority. We had a disappointing 2017 and need to improve going forward. Good financial and operational performance do not stand alone, and it has to go hand in hand with safety performance. Another important priority for us is the big and challenging task of integrating Sapa into Hydro, making sure we realize additional values and synergies, and we have confirmed the synergies of NOK 200 million. We will also ramp up our main growth projects during the year, the Karmøy technology pilot in Norway, the Automotive Line three, and the PPC line in Germany.
Our improvement ambitions, is always high on the agenda, and we had a setback in 2017 due to performance in our whole business as well as some challenges in Alunorte refinery in Brazil. I'm confident that we will still be able to beat the increased NOK 3 billion target for 2019. Lastly, I would like to emphasize the importance for focusing on innovation and technology to stay in front of our competitors. These are key strengths for Hydro that we need to make sure we can also capitalize on going forward.
Thank you, Svein Richard. Operators, we're now ready for questions.
Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, that is star one to signal. We'll go first to James Gurry with Credit Suisse.
Thanks very much for taking my question. The first one, I just want to elaborate again, on the eliminations line. Can you explain clearly that we're likely to see most of that NOK 400 million reverse out as profit, perhaps going forward through the year? Can you just run over your market view, especially over the coming two quarters in China? In previous presentations, you've definitely presented the cost curve for the industry. I don't think it's in today's presentation, but can you generally describe where you see the marginal cost of production, especially relative to your cost of production, which is about NOK 1,850? Thanks very much.
Eivind you may start with the elimination.
Hi, James. Remember that the reason why we have these eliminations is because we sell parts of our alumina portfolio production into primary metals. As the margins have been widening in B&A in this quarter, quite significantly, as you will see, that alumina goes into primary at a higher cost. Now we cannot realize the profit on the alumina sales in terms of alumina sales until the metal that contains the alumina that we produce ourselves has actually been sold into the third-party market. Which means, in at least in theory, if everything stays completely flat between Q4 and Q1, that NOK 400 million would then be realized as a positive elimination in Q1. It's more a timing difference than anything else.
As I said on the presentation this morning, you know, negative eliminations actually indicate that we have widening margins in parts of your parts of your business.
Yeah. Hi, James. With regard to the China situation going forward, in our presentation earlier this day, we showed you at least the expectations of largely global balanced market, certainly with a surplus in China. You know there has been taking out capacity as a part of the supply chain reform. All that was ongoing during the year, and then we had the Blue Sky initiative at the winter shutdowns on top of that, which did not have the same impact that was expected from some players. I think we talked about it with capital markets there and also were a bit cautious about Blue Sky initiative and the results due to the fact that some of this capacity already was taken out as a part of the supply side reform.
This is a capacity that is available for restart. It seems that China now is establishing a quota system, where it is possible to sell quotas from old technologies, from old smelters, to new capacity that could be restarted, which means that it doesn't necessarily imply a big surplus. Of course it remains to be seen after the winter shutdown if there will be a restart of capacity that could lead to some oversupply in China. When you go to the cost curve, we have seen increased prices of input materials, both with regard to alumina production and aluminum production. We discussed the sodium hydroxide or the caustic soda price that has gone up.
We have discussed for the smelters that alumina price has gone up and also the anode materials, petroleum coke and coal tar pitch has increased their prices. That will have an effect on the global cost curve. We see the global cost curve has gone up, which is also then giving support to the pricing of aluminum, which is today significantly higher than it was one year ago. We have said previously that the pricing of aluminum is very much based on the, or at least correlated to the 90th percentile on the global cost curve. When the global cost curve is going up, that means that there is a good chance that the price of aluminum is also going up, which we in fact also have seen.
We say the same is the case for alumina, where we also have seen a steeper and higher cost curve. Alumina is also priced close to the 90th percentile on a global cost curve. Additionally, for at the current level, it may be that it is even a bit higher than 90th percentile, and that could at least mean that there is a downside risk on alumina pricing. We feel that on aluminum metal pricing today, it is quite close to the 90th percentile on the global cost curve.
Where do you see yourselves on that cost curve given how currencies have moved? That's the end of my questions.
This is, of course, difficult to give exact figure on that if you are really on the 30% tile on the global cost curve or what it is. We, we are definitely below the 50%, and we are probably not in the lower part of the first quartile, but this is now a moving target depending on currencies. I think we are probably in the, yeah, in, probably both in alumina and metal products, we are on the lower part of the second quartile.
Thanks a lot.
I think there are some estimates showing that we are at the 35 percentile on the cost curve. Again, this is a moving target depending on many different factors.
We'll go next to Fraser Jamieson with JP Morgan.
Yeah. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. The first one was addressed to some extent in the morning. Just wanted to talk about the Rolled Products division. Very unusual to see the margin improving quarter-on-quarter there, which we obviously saw on this occasion. You talked about some of the kind of one-offs on mix and inventory. Just wondering, yeah, to what extent those were one-off and to what extent you feel like we're kind of coming out of the, you know, the period of pretty poor performance there and addressing various issues in that division. If you're willing to give any sort of specific commentary on where you think margins could be in 2018, that would be great.
The second one was just, yet again, back to eliminations. You said if everything stays flat quarter-on-quarter, then that entire kind of NOK 436 million reverses out on the basis that alumina prices are significantly lower quarter-on-quarter thus far in Q1. Is it fair to say that what rolls out will actually be, as we stand today, a much lower number than what has gone in because of the moves in alumina? Thanks.
On the Rolled Products side, we said that EBIT moved sideways between Q3 and Q4, NOK 95 million for both quarters. In Q4, we had a positive one-time effect of NOK 45 million, which means that there is an online reduction in the core Rolled Products results. It's driven by two things. One is lower volumes, seasonally lower volumes between Q3 and Q4, which is quite normal. What we also see is that we have a better product mix in Q4 than what we had in Q3, driving operational margin.
What I also said this morning, as we get into Q one, we should expect significant margin pressure within the core areas that we have. That I think gives you an indication of development that we expect to see. You should also expect to see volumes coming up in Q one, based on normal seasonality. It's a little bit of a, of a mixed bag, if you like. Of course, you have to remember that last year we had quite substantial issues, as I indicated this morning, in terms of operational startup, in world. Then, we haven't guided on anything so far this year, but I think it's fair to assume that so far things are looking better from an operational stability perspective.
Well, just on that one. Sorry, if you roll those two things together, do you believe that you can improve margins year-on-year? You know, if you net off the margin pressure versus the improved operational performance.
I think we should be a little bit careful with it. I think, you know, there will be continuous margin pressure in this business. That should rather be context with the improvement programs that we have, which really has to compensate for the margin pressure and the inflationary pressures that we see in our business. As we indicated, we target NOK 200 million for that in 2018.
Yeah.
If I may add, Fraser, to the operational issues, we are now serving the automotive customers, more or less according to plan with regard to volumes, but we are running Automotive Line 1 and 2 in addition to the new Automotive Line 3 because we are not at the speed of the ramp-up curve on Automotive Line 3. That implies a higher cost for our volumes going out. That's a negative effect on margins, of course. If you go to the juice, the beverage can line that we have talked about before, we also had the ramp-up problems last year. We did a modification in the fourth quarter last year and saw that the volumes are now coming faster.
The problems has been addressed, and some of the problems this up to us to really solve going forward. On the automotive side, it's also very much up to the customers to take the time necessary to qualify. This is not only our issues, it is in fact the issue for the whole products industry that are producing body in white for the automotive industry, because it takes time in this industry for them to qualify the material. Some of these factors we can influence ourselves, but there are also some factors that are depending on the customer decisions there.
That's your question of eliminations. Again, you have to make a lot of assumptions when you make these forward estimations, I think. Again, if you assume everything flat in terms of volumes, because volumes also impact the amount of elimination. If you assume that all volumes stay flat, all prices stay flat with the exception of alumina pricing, and you have a less margin in Q 1 than what you had in Q4 , you should actually see eliminations over and above the NOK 400 million that we have this quarter. We carry also a little bit. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks.
We'll go next to Jason Fairclough with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Hi, guys. two sort of quick ones for me. The first one I think should be pretty easy. Just in terms of Karmøy, the pilot plant, will you be reporting it separately or just amalgamating it into primary metal? With that, are you capitalizing startup costs or are you fully expensing it? The second question was just on costs. The slide that you've given on slide 34, that's really helpful. What I wanted to understand was in terms of thinking about the costs which are actually coming through in the Q4 numbers, are those indicated by the bars here, or actually the costs that are coming through are a lot lower, and so we still have quite a dramatic step up in cost to feed through in the income statement?
When it comes to the pilot, I mean, what we will be capitalizing is really governed under different IFRS regulations. Parts of it will be capitalized and what we can expense if the lifetime of cost is less than, you know, 12 months, we will be expensing that. It's, it's a mixed bag, Jason. When it comes to communication, I'm pretty sure, and you should expect that we will give updates on the developments on Karmøy going forward in terms of performance and progress, and not necessarily in terms of profitability per ton produced. That gives you an indication.
Is it going to be going into primary metal then?
Yes, it is.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you.
When it comes to the, costs that we indicate on, is that page 35?
34.
That is the market prices. 34. That is the market prices that we've observed in any relevant period. There is a time lag period until it actually hits our P&L. Depending on what type of raw material, there's anywhere between one month time lag to three months time lag.
Just to push on this, just to make sure that I understand. For example, if we look at caustic soda, since that's a big one, you know, the price that you're realizing, you know, through the P&L is probably more akin to the Q3 price instead of the Q4 price. That's the sort of order of magnitude of step up we should think about in terms of that particular input?
Yes. This goes for all parts, right? For caustic, we expect an increase of roughly 20% between Q4 and Q1.
Yep.
That's for what?
Yeah. Okay. just to follow up then, and if you're willing to go there, I mean, it does seem like then that the raw materials for Q1, in a way, they should be largely dealt, it should be struck, right? I mean, is it possible to get some guidance on what you think, alumina unit costs might go up by quarter-on-quarter? Because we know what's happened with caustic. you know, similarly on primary metal, have you got a feel for how much those should be going up?
I do. I think if you look
Something you wanna share?
If you look to B&A, all together, you should see, an increase on the coal and the caustic side, of around NOK 200 million, give or take.
Mm-hmm.
Of course, we'll get some additional depreciation effects, like I said, it's around NOK 70 million for the quarter.
Mm-hmm.
When you look to primary, we do expect the most significant brunt of the cost increase of alumina to come in Q1 of the Q4. That is, we estimate to be between NOK 350 million and NOK 400 million in each quarter, in the next quarter. Also more significant increase on carbon costs, in Q1 versus Q4, just because of time lag and the timing effect.
Okay. Okay, all right, thanks. That's very helpful.
We'll go next to Menno Sanderse with Morgan Stanley.
Afternoon, gents. A lot of numbers thrown around in rolling. I'd just like to go back to it and understand it slightly better. Can you just help us or give us the total losses of UCB and the famous Automotive Line three combined at EBIT level in 2017, and how you see that progressing into 2018? I assume you want to reach break even at some stage. I assume in 2019 you want to make a bit of profit. In addition to all the numbers you mentioned about, you know, the huge price pressure, it's correct to add NOK 400 million to the EBIT in rolling in 2018 or 2017 just for the power as well. Is that correct?
Yeah.
I think, you can add energy. Maybe you could comment on the other details. On energy, we have a new contract at the start, you know, for Hamburg from January that will have a impact for the full-year of NOK 400 million.
I think on the, on the cost side, if you look back, for 2017, Menno, we had roughly NOK 200 million in, let's say, negative contributions from the Automotive Line three and the UCB line, in 2017. What we've indicated is that, most of the UCB issues have been fixed. Not making it a huge profit maker in 2018, but certainly in a better place than what we were at 2017. You should also remember that there were some operational issues in Hamburg and Alunorte in 2017, adding up to roughly NOK 80 million , which we don't foresee should be replicated in 2018.
Okay. Okay, good. Continuing on this on this trend, then a huge price pressure in some of the old, product lines, let's call it that, which on a capital [inaudible] is still not very good. This morning you mentioned this is, this is an industry issue. You've had a lot of patience. You actually put extra money in it. It's now been six years. It's still not really where it should be. How serious are you looking at alternatives, and are there any alternatives to sort this out, or is this just gonna be a drag on the performance for a long time?
we are, of course, concerned about the low level of profitability over the time in Rolled Products. we are really looking closely into it. We will come back to what can be the end game of it or the solutions. in the meantime, we will continue the work to get in place the ramp ups and, of course, the other potential start within the Rolled Products. Rolled Products really need improvements. of course, the target is to have Rolled Products business that are delivering return above cost of capital, and that is not the case as it is now. this is a big concern for us.
We are looking at all levels of what we can do to improve the situation.
Okay. Thank you. Finally on cost curves, and shifting of cost curves, do you see steepening of cost curve taking place as well? What is driving that steepening, both in alumina, aluminum, which element, in the cost, composition is driving that steepening if you see it?
Well, it's depending when are we going to start. To see when are we having the reference point. Because we, in alumina we would say we have some steepening of the cost curve. I wouldn't say the same is the situation for aluminium. You can maybe argue that there is a steepening of the cost curve, but the cost curve in alumina is steeper than what you see in aluminium metal. That is at least the case.
Yeah. Okay. Okay, thanks.
We'll go next to Daniel Major with UBS.
Hi there. A few questions. Firstly, sorry not to keep going on about these eliminations, but, is my understanding correct that your guidance for about NOK 300 million-NOK 400 million of increased costs in primary from alumina is effectively, is it fair to assume that's gonna be broadly offset by, you know, by the internal eliminations in the first quarter? Is that the way we should be thinking about it?
If you assume that everything around us stays flat, yes.
Okay. Perfect. I guess going perhaps back to Jason's question on sort of interpreting your guidance on various inputs on unit costs. If I look at those inputs, if I were to take the NOK at 7.7% and sort of run that flat for the rest of the quarter, would it be fair or does it seem the right ballpark to have about 10% unit cost inflation in primary and B&A quarter-over-quarter? Does that sound a ballpark sort of number, unit cost inflation?
Ballpark, yes, you're correct on B&A. Might be slightly higher in the underlying, slightly higher in the primary, driven by the fact that alumina costs are going up more than 10%. That's a big part of the cost base in the production part.
Cool, thanks. Last just quick one on, obviously P&L tax was very low this quarter, and you don't break out the cash tax in your cash, in your statement. What was the cash tax you actually paid in the quarter?
We paid around NOK 500 million, which you will see more clearly in the cash bridge, between the Q3 and Q4.
Okay. Last one on the market. You've seen a pretty substantial spread between LME and Shanghai in primary aluminum, and you mentioned that around the outlook for exports of products in the short term. Do you have a view on that spread? You know, assuming it's unsustainably large at this level, do you think it's a greater risk you see the Shanghai price move up or the LME price move down in terms of the tightness of the relative markets?
Well, it is a spread that we have also communicated today, but we have also seen that before. There are some correlation between the spread and the magnitude of the spread and the export level. When we look at the export from China on semi-fabricated products, they decreased with 5% in 2017. But in percentage of total production in China, it has actually gone down in 2017. It doesn't seem that China is really building up capacity for serving the deficit outside China. A bit more using it as flexibility. It's quite natural. It is a deficit outside China. We will use that opportunity to export.
It's difficult to say what will totally happen with this arbitrage here going forward. It's not, we should expect still export, but not necessarily dramatic changes, even there is the gap has widened lately.
Great. Thanks.
Once again, that's star one to signal. We'll go next to Jatinder Goel with the Citi.
Hi, good afternoon. Just a question on the dividend policy again. Do you reckon the business can actually sustain a higher payout or a higher floor? Do you think, given the volatility and your capital commitments in the next three years, it's just being more conservative and staying on the current floor of NOK 1.25 and 40%? Thank you.
Hi, Jatinder Goel. I think what we said pretty clearly today is that the NOK 125 million at the floor stays at the floor. There is no change in that. The board has now decided to propose NOK 175 million for 2017. That is based on continued strong financial position that we have in our company, as also based on the strong earnings that we've generated for 2017. What the dividend will be, whether that will be the floor or something else above that for 2018, is something that we will address at the end of next year.
Okay. Thank you.
We have no other questions at this time.
Okay. If there's no further questions, we can end this quarters call. Thank you for joining us today. If you have any follow-up questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you. Have a nice evening.
That does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.