Universal Stainless & Alloy Products, Inc. (NASDAQ:USAP) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Philip Gibbs: To sneak one more in for Chris specifically. Chris, I know you worked a lot on the commercial side and product development along with the rest of the team. As it relates to your comments regarding winning new business with jet engine manufacturers, I would think that, that’s part of the reason why you’re investing in North Jackson a little bit more heavily. Maybe kind of talk about that evolution and how you’ve gotten here, and then what gives you confidence that you can continue to build that moving forward? Thank you.

Christopher M. Zimmer: Yes. One of the benefits of this environment that’s been extremely strong as demand has snapped back coming out of COVID, is the focus that the primes that we’ve been working with to point their engineering resources towards approvals has been as good as it’s been since we purchased North Jackson back in 2011. So we developed a lot of these products early on, but it’s really only been in the past 18 to 24 months where a lot of the prime approvals have started to come in. That’s opened up the door for us to start booking new business for these alloys and it’s 1 of the primary drivers of our backlog, and it’s starting to show up now in our shipments. So that’s really been the game changer has been the prime’s willingness and their focus to mitigate risk in their supply chain, bring us on as a new supplier, and this is for a number of different primes and applications.

So that’s the part we’re really excited about, really being able to fulfill the potential of North Jackson, and I think we’re going to realize that in ’24 and moving forward. The capital that’s going into North Jackson when we talk about the VARs and a couple of other smaller projects really round out some of the pinch points. They pave the way for us to continue to grow. So the majority of those assets are already in place. We still got capacity to grow on a number of them. So the capital is really focused towards our ability to smoothly execute that growth and continue to serve customers. So that’s the primary thing that I would say is what’s changed and what’s really got us excited about rounding out this year and heading into next year as we’ve got this big backlog to work against.

Philip Gibbs: Any way to size up the revenue potential of the premium alloy business or North Jackson as you look out a couple of years? And then how much of that would be dedicated, generally speaking, to the engine guys? That’s my last one.

Christopher M. Zimmer: Yes. I think when we look back historically, we talked about what that investment in North Jackson can mean. We’ve talked about incremental sales of $100 million has been the historical number that we’ve talked about at very rich premiums from a margin standpoint. The markets continue to evolve. I would say that, that number is probably closer to $120 million to $130 million at this point. And that expectation for solid margins remains intact.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Bob Sales from LMK Capital Management. Your question please.

Robert Sales: Hi. Thanks. Just one question on the premium alloy products. With 28% of the revenue in Q3 being premium and the backlog containing 37%, do you have any sort of quantitative guidance for us in terms of what you’re planning towards with premium alloys as a percentage of revenue or total dollars in Q4?

Christopher M. Zimmer: Yes. We expect that to range between 25% to 30%. Right now with lead times, the backlog appears to be higher because we do have a number of products that we continue to book with shorter lead times. So even though the backlog contains 37%, that shows the richness that’s there and the promise that it is coming, but there’s a number of products that we’ll continue to book into 2024 that should bring us back down around that 25% to 30% range going forward.