Commercial Metals Company (NYSE:CMC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Paul Lawrence: Timna, with respect to your question on the increased capital spend, it’s really twofold. Significantly, we are anticipating increased spend in this current year on Steel West Virginia, the announced facility. As Barbara outlined on her comments, we’re expecting to receive the permit in the coming months and that will allow us to accelerate some of our site preparation and earthmoving costs. We’re also taking the precautionary steps of preordering a lot of equipment that has had very long lead times in today’s environment. So we can ensure the project is maintained. So those require some down payments to be placed, which has increased our spend. And naturally, we are seeing some inflation in some of our CapEx projects that we have and that’s a portion of it as well.

Timna Tanners: Great. Thanks for all the information. A – Barbara Smith Thanks, Timna.

Operator: And our next question will come from Tristan Gresser with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Tristan Gresser: Yes. Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one, thank you for providing the steel intensity figures for residential infrastructure. When you look at the spending in billions for on the reshoring side that you also laid out in terms of the steel intensity there for those facility, I was wondering if you had a number in mind and maybe if you can share, is there any kind of difference by type of also in terms of the timeline, when you start building and you complete those type if facility, any kind of information that can help us out putting the number behind this kind of a higher rate reshoring trend that will help you out as well.

Barbara Smith: Thanks Tristan. Really great question. A couple of comments I would make and staying with some of the examples that we laid out. Because we’re involved in a number of chip facilities. I think we have a really good understanding of the steel intensity for those types of projects. And those projects are multibillion dollar projects as you’re well aware. And there is a very significant steel intensity, for example, in a chip facility because of the structural integrity that you need. I would also say those projects are generally constructed in phases. And so, they will begin and complete Phase 1 and then they’ll move on to Phase 2, et cetera. And of course, given our breadth of capability and breadth of products and size and scale and geography, we’re really well positioned to provide excellent customer support to these really large real intensive projects.

I’d also say — the other example of LNG, again, depending on the size and scale of the project, we know from our experience of supporting these projects historically kind of what the level of steel content that goes into that. But I would further add on a LNG facility that requires some different types of structural steel, cryo bar, high strength steel, as well as traditional black bar. And CMC is one of very few that can extend to our customer that full range of products that they need to support that. And so, I’m not prepared to tell you X number of tons per project because they all vary. They’re all very, very different. I think that the message that we’re trying to convey is that the activity is real, there are multitude of these projects, they are multi-year, they are funded before they begin.

Corporates have very strong balance sheets. And so they’re less affected by the earlier question around some of the banking challenges that are going on in the marketplace. But that in our view is going to provide significant support to business activity levels going forward, unlike when we’ve been into multiple times in the past or unlike periods in the past.

Tristan Gresser: That’s really helpful. If I may just follow-up just trying my luck there. In terms of steel intensity, is it fair to assume that we’re closer to some — the steel intensity you provided for infrastructure rather than non-residential?

Barbara Smith: I’m sorry, Tristan. Can you repeat, because I was — it was breaking up a little bit on my end.