ATI Inc. (NYSE:ATI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

So I think you should expect to see continued expansion into the kind of range that we talked about in our investor conference, which I believe we said expect for HPMC margins in the 20 — kind of low to mid-20s, and we still see ourselves on track to accomplish that in that time frame.

Seth Seifman: Okay. Excellent. And then on — or I guess on the titanium, we think about the incremental titanium growth coming in 2023 — on the airframe side. I guess, should we think about most of that coming in AA&S? And then you talked a little bit about the growth catalysts for 787, and we are at a place now where you think Boeing should be moving toward higher rates, but more — I guess, is that the main driver of the increased demand that you’re seeing? Or is it much more broad-based? And to the extent it’s more broad-based, can you touch on the other drivers?

Bob Wetherbee: Yes, a couple of questions in there, Seth. I think the question. The first one was around near-term titanium impact. So we’re going to be ramping up here in the first half, and it takes a little while to go from melt to final product in the back half. So from a top line perspective, we’d expect $50 million, $60 million of top line revenue from this additional melt in 2023 is probably a good estimate that Don would let me get out there for you. And then in the second half, yes, clearly, in the second half, you asked about AA&S and HPMC, I think it could probably be 50-50 between the 2. It’s titanium 64 for the most part. So it can go a lot of different ways. So if you’re modeling it, I feel comfortable 50-50 between the 2 segments.

I think that was the first set of questions. The second part was around 787 demand. And is that the principal issue I would say we’re not done with the titanium share reapportionments from the prior sources. People still have material flowing from Russia, and they’re working hard to get their supply chain resort or reaffirmed up for what they want. You remember the VSMPO guys are a very integrated business. And the alternative is not so integrated. So there’s still a lot of work to be done, I think, in that supply chain. So we’re seeing part of that still continuing. I can’t speak for our customers. But we obviously exited our joint venture with the Russian and we did it for our customers. It just took us a little while to exit from that. So it’s not unusual that they would do that.

The widebodies in general, we’ve repositioned our mix that we’re more and more agnostic as to which OEM we’re supplying. And certainly, the wide-body phenomenon in the short term has been in the U.S. in terms of the shortfall, but Europe’s been good. Airbus has been good on the wide-body and we’re benefiting from our relationship with them there. So I think the catalyst that I would say is, yes, 87 demand, wide-body in general, realignment of supply chains. And then I think we’re on the verge of starting to see some of that early 777 stuff. I know it’s a ways before it enters into service. But I think that catalyst is coming very, very quickly, probably in the 2024 time frame given the long lead times that we see. So we’re pretty excited across the board on widebody in general.

And our long-term guidance when we did our 2025 guidance of about 100 narrow bodies, 20 wide bodies by 2025, those estimates are looking a little more conservative than we thought. So we’re pretty excited about all the catalysts coming together.