Reliance Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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February 20, 2025
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Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Reliance Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty four Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode.

Operator

Call.

Operator

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Kim Orlando with ADDO Investor Relations. Kim, please go ahead.

Kimberly Orlando
Senior Managing Director at ADDO Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thanks to all of you for joining our conference call to discuss Reliance's fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four financial results. I am joined by Carla Lewis, President and Chief Executive Officer Steve Cook, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer and Arthur Ojemian, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. A recording of this call will be posted on the Investors section of our website at investor.reliance.com. Please read the forward looking statements disclosures included in our earnings release issued yesterday and note that it applies to all statements made during this teleconference.

Kimberly Orlando
Senior Managing Director at ADDO Investor Relations

The reconciliations of the adjusted numbers are included in the non GAAP reconciliation part of our earnings release. I will now turn the call over to Carla Lewis, President and CEO of Reliance.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Thanks, Kim. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2024 results. Collectively, the Reliance businesses demonstrated resilience in 2024 as strong execution of our model and strategy once again fueled solid financial results in a challenging market. Through our emphasis on smart profitable growth, we grew our same store tons well above industry shipment levels, bolstering our earnings in a falling price environment. Importantly, we were able to grow our tons shipped while also delivering a strong full year gross profit margin of 29.7% squarely within our sustainable annual range.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Additionally, we successfully acquired and integrated four companies in 2024, adding approximately $400,000,000 of net sales on an annualized basis and broadening our geographic footprint and processing capabilities in both new and existing markets. Our 2024 non GAAP earnings per share of $15.92 reflected the benefit of our targeted growth strategies, diverse end markets served, strong pricing discipline and expanded value added processing capabilities, which collectively helped mitigate the impact of declining metal prices. Our profitability and effective working capital management led to the third highest annual cash flow from operations in Reliance's history of 1,430,000,000 I'd like to thank our amazing teams across our entire family of companies who did an incredible job delivering more value to our customers in 2024, while most importantly keeping each other safe. We maintained our balanced and disciplined approach to capital deployment in 2024, investing $430,000,000 in capital expenditures, $365,000,000 in acquisitions, a record $1,100,000,000 in share repurchases resulting in a 6% year over year reduction of outstanding shares and returning $250,000,000 in dividends to our stockholders. Our capital expenditure budget for the 2025 calendar year is $325,000,000 with an expected total cash outlay of approximately $375,000,000 to $400,000,000 inclusive of carryover projects from prior years.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

As I mentioned, we acquired four businesses in 2024, bringing us to 76 acquisitions completed since our 1994 IPO, and our acquisition pipeline remains robust and active. Before I conclude, I'd like to highlight a few corporate developments we announced yesterday. Brenda Miyamoto was promoted to Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning and Programs on 02/18/2025. Loren has been with Reliance for twenty three years, having served in various roles of increasing responsibility, most recently as our Vice President of Corporate Initiatives. In addition, Scott Ramsbottom was appointed Vice President, Chief Information Officer of Reliance effective 11/18/2024.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Scott is a veteran industrial distribution CIO with more than twenty five years experience, and we wish them both the best in their new roles. As we look ahead to 2025, our priorities are centered on striving to keep our people safe every day, increasing our volumes through our smart profitable growth strategy, maintaining an annualized gross profit margin within our estimated sustainable range of 29% to 31%, enhancing our value added processing capabilities, effectively managing expenses and working capital, maintaining our balanced and disciplined capital deployment strategy, promoting both growth and stockholder returns and promoting increased collaboration and sharing of best practices throughout our family of companies. While macroeconomic uncertainty persists, we're excited about 2025 and well positioned to continue to grow our business and have both the capacity and the capability to participate in any improvement in end market demand across our broad and diverse network arising from the many potential opportunities that exist, including infrastructure, military, data center, electrical grid, general manufacturing and many other markets that we serve. Thank you all for your time today. I'll now turn the call over to Steve, who will review our demand and pricing trends.

Stephen Koch
Stephen Koch
Executive VP & COO at Reliance

Thanks, Carla, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to begin by expressing my gratitude to the entire Reliance team for a strong finish to the year and for their ongoing commitments to safety and operational excellence. I'll now turn to our demand and pricing trends. Our fourth quarter tons sold decreased 5.1% compared to the third quarter of twenty twenty four, surpassing our outlook of down 6% to 8%. However, fourth quarter tons sold increased 6.7% or 2.8% on a same store basis compared to the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three, significantly outperforming the service center industry's year over year decrease of 3.6% as reported by the MSCI.

Stephen Koch
Stephen Koch
Executive VP & COO at Reliance

For the full year, our tons sold increased 4% or 1% on a same store basis, surpassing the MSCI industry wide decrease of 2%. Underlying demand remains solid in several key end markets, including non residential construction, certain manufacturing sectors, aerospace and automotive. We are pleased with the market share gains we made across nearly every product group, while maintaining industry leading profitability in a challenging year driven by our diversified business model, relentless customer service and contribution from our strategic investments in organic growth and acquisitions. Our fourth quarter average selling price per ton total of $2,170 declined 3.4% compared to the third quarter of twenty twenty four within our expectation of a 1.5% to 3.5% decline. Carbon steel product prices remained under pressure, but we saw aluminum and stainless steel prices start to stabilize in the fourth quarter.

Stephen Koch
Stephen Koch
Executive VP & COO at Reliance

Next, I will turn to an overview of notable trends within our key end markets and products beginning with non residential construction. Carbon steel tubing, plate and structural products, which we mainly sell into the non residential construction market, represented roughly one third of our sales in Q4 twenty twenty four. All three products had significant year over year shipment growth and substantially outperformed industry shipments compared to both fourth quarter of twenty twenty three and full year of 2023, which mitigated some of the impact on sales of lower average selling prices. Our diversified exposure to the non residential construction market, including heightened data center construction and related energy infrastructure projects, as well as publicly funded infrastructure projects supported solid demand for our products and did contribution from our recent acquisitions. Our General Manufacturing business, which also represented roughly one third of our total sales in Q4 twenty twenty four is highly diversified across geographies, products and industries.

Stephen Koch
Stephen Koch
Executive VP & COO at Reliance

Shipments increased compared to the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three and were consistent with the full year of 2023. Industrial machinery, military, shipbuilding and rail remained strong in 2024. Consumer products demand declined year over year, which showed improvement in the fourth quarter. Heavy equipment, particularly in the agricultural sector, experienced weaker demand through 2024. Our industry outperformance across key product groups, shipping to general manufacturing applications, highlights the advantage of our diversified business model in a dynamic and uncertain demand environment.

Stephen Koch
Stephen Koch
Executive VP & COO at Reliance

Aerospace products comprised approximately 10% of our Q4 twenty twenty four sales. Demand for commercial aerospace was stable compared to both the fourth quarter and full year of 2023 despite short term production and supply chain challenges. Demand in defense related aerospace and space programs remain stable at strong levels. We primarily service the automotive market through our toll processing operations, which are not included in our tons sold. Our tolling business, which represented approximately 5% of our Q4 twenty twenty four sales, saw process tons increase 5.8% from the fourth quarter and 3.1% from the full year of 2023 due to healthy demand in both The U.

Stephen Koch
Stephen Koch
Executive VP & COO at Reliance

S. And Mexico and our ongoing investments to increase capacity. Semiconductor industry shipments remained restrained in the fourth quarter with excess inventories in the supply chain. On the whole, Havana remained relatively steady with strength in certain key end markets and market share gains, counterbalancing pressures in subdued markets. We continue to monitor the dynamic trade policy landscape and remain confident that our proven and resilient business model positions Reliance to excel through all markets.

Stephen Koch
Stephen Koch
Executive VP & COO at Reliance

Please refer to our earnings release for additional commentary on our end markets and product diversification. We are very proud of our team's extraordinary execution, which enables our continued industry leading performance. Reliance's unrivaled scale and strong balance sheet makes us a highly attractive partner to our mill suppliers in all market conditions. We continue to win new business from new and existing customers who value the breadth and depth of our product offerings, value added processing capabilities and recognize the quality and reliability of our service. I will now turn the call over to Arthur to review our financial results and outlook.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

Thanks, Steve, and thanks, everyone, for joining today's call. Our underlying operating performance for the fourth quarter was stronger than anticipated due to better than expected shipment levels and an improved gross profit margin when excluding the impact of non recurring items along with year end LIFO reserve and income tax rate adjustments. Overall, our fourth quarter non GAAP earnings per diluted share of 2.22 included an unfavorable year end LIFO true up impact of $0.74 per share net of an income tax rate true up compared to the assumptions used in our non GAAP earnings per diluted share guidance of $2.65 to $2.85 More on that shortly. While on the fourth quarter sequential decline, our average selling price was in line with our expectations, our tons sold were better than we anticipated, leading us to once again outperform industry shipment levels on a same store basis across nearly all products. On a non GAAP FIFO basis, which is how we measure our day to day operating performance, our gross profit margin improved sequentially from 27.9% in the third quarter to 28.8% in the fourth quarter, reflecting better alignment of replacement costs and our inventory on hand.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

As Carlo mentioned, our full year gross profit margin of 29.7% was within our sustainable annual range. Our strong pricing discipline and value added processing capabilities, which warrant a consistent premium irrespective of the underlying price of metal, bolstered our gross profit margin and stemmed the impact of a declining pricing environment on our gross profit margin and bottom line. For the full year of 2024, we performed value added processing on approximately 50% of our orders. We were able to keep this metric relatively consistent year over year as we grew our business on both the processing and distribution side. More specifically, we grew our same store tons sold with processing by 3.6% in 2023 and a further 1.3% in 2024.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

Our fourth quarter gross profit margin declined to 28.3% from 29.4% in the third quarter largely due to the recognition of $5,600,000 of LIFO expense as compared to our $50,000,000 of LIFO income estimate. This resulted in 2024 annual LIFO income of $144,400,000 compared to the original $200,000,000 annual income estimate. As discussed on our last earnings call, our LIFO adjustment for the fourth quarter trues up our interim annual LIFO estimate based on year end inventory levels and factors such as inventory cost per tonne trend and changes in product mix. These impacts were heightened in the fourth quarter by the receipt of certain long lead time, high value specialty stainless steel and alloy products, which will ultimately shift LIFO income from 2024 into 2025. Accordingly, for the full year of 2025, we estimate LIFO income of approximately $60,000,000 It's important to note that this estimate reflects the carryover and normalization of specialty stainless steel product inventory from 2024 rather than an expectation of declining metals pricing in 2025.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

As of 12/31/2024, the LIFO reserve on our balance sheet was $435,000,000 which remains available to benefit future period operating results by recognizing LIFO income and therefore mitigating the impact of potential further declines in metal prices. On the expense side, our fourth quarter same store non GAAP SG and A expense increased a modest $8,000,000 or 1.3% year over year due mainly to general wage inflation offset by lower incentive compensation consistent with lower profitability. As a reminder, our model inherently normalizes expenses by rightsizing incentives as profits trend down. Sequentially, our same store non GAAP SG and A expense was down $3,000,000 or less than 1%. We also incurred impairment charges of $11,700,000 in Q4 associated with the consolidation of one of our operations into existing facilities to streamline operating efficiencies.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

I'll now address our balance sheet and cash flow. We continue to generate strong cash flow from operations in both the fourth quarter and full year at $473,300,000 and $1,430,000,000 respectively. While lower relative to 2023 levels, higher working capital release helped offset declines in our profitability. This cash enabled us to put capital to work in the fourth quarter through $110,900,000 in capital expenditures, $61,200,000 in dividends paid to stockholders and $142,400,000 in share repurchases at an average cost of $271 per share. Year to date, in 2025, we have repurchased an additional $2.00 $3,000,000 of our shares at an average cost of $273 per share, resulting in cumulative 7.5% reduction in our total shares outstanding since 12/31/2023.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

We have $1,150,000,000 remaining for additional share repurchases under our existing $1,500,000,000 share repurchase plan that we recently refreshed in October 2024. Our leverage position also remains favorable with a net debt to EBITDA ratio of less than one, providing significant liquidity to continue executing our capital allocation priorities. I'd now like to spend a few moments discussing our outlook for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. We anticipate demand across the majority of our end markets to improve modestly in the first quarter despite continued uncertainty about domestic and international policy. We estimate our tons sold will be up 6% to 8% in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, consistent with seasonal trends and up 3% to 5% from the first quarter of twenty twenty four with 0.5% to 2.5% attributable to same store growth.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

On the pricing side, we expect our average selling price per ton sold to be relatively flat compared to the fourth quarter. We anticipate our FIFO gross profit margin will continue to improve in the first quarter of twenty twenty five as the alignment of replacement costs and inventory costs on hand continues to improve. Importantly, this outlook assumes no significant trade policy disruption either positive or negative to carbon steel, stainless steel and aluminum product market demand and pricing. Based on these expectations, we anticipate non GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $3.3 to $3.5 for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. This concludes our prepared remarks.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

Thank you again for your time and participation. And we'll now open the call for your questions. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. Our first question is coming from Martin Englert from Seaport Research Partners. Your line is now live.

Martin Englert
Senior Equity Research Analyst - Metals & Mining at Seaport Research Partners

Hello. Good morning, everyone. Appreciate the time, Martin. I wanted to dig in a little bit on demand activity and it seems like activity in The U. S.

Martin Englert
Senior Equity Research Analyst - Metals & Mining at Seaport Research Partners

Market for steel and metals is picking up in recent weeks. I would be curious to hear your thoughts on how much you would attribute to seasonal gains quarter on quarter, potential demand pull forward due to tariffs and possibly rising prices versus an organic cyclical recovery in U. S. Steel And Metals?

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Hi, Martin. We can't really speak to what's happening at other companies, but at Reliance, overall, our volumes were pretty steady through 2024 in most of our major end markets. We were looking for growth. Our people performed very well as we commented in our remarks. We were growing at a higher rate than the industry, in particular, non res construction.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

We saw good activity there, not necessarily growing, but maintaining, subject to the seasonal trends. And we look for that to continue in Q1. We think there's momentum as we move further into 2025 for some other markets to pick up a little more. But overall, I think we've seen pretty steady demand.

Stephen Koch
Stephen Koch
Executive VP & COO at Reliance

Yes. In addition to that, Martin, coming into 2025, our January activity was pretty strong and that's even in spite of some bad weather pretty much countrywide. So as far as pull forward goes with the impending tariffs in March, we have seen a little bit of customer activity trying to make sure that they get their material before the price increases. So we're pretty optimistic about the first quarter.

Martin Englert
Senior Equity Research Analyst - Metals & Mining at Seaport Research Partners

Your comment in that response about the expected momentum potentially developing as you're moving into or through 2025, what specific end markets may you be anticipating that for?

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

It's more from an overall standpoint, Martin, but there does continue to be uncertainty as you had asked about and Steve just commented, maybe a little extra right now because of the potential tariffs. But we think once there's final news on that and everyone understands the playing field that we'll see people buying on a more regular basis again. We think different parts of the general manufacturing sector will improve. Hopefully, infrastructure starts to flow, especially if permitting and funding is a more efficient process, we could start to see some of the infrastructure money going. Certainly, data center, everything related to the electrical grid, There's a lot of strength there and so many different Reliance companies touch that type of business in many different ways through many different products.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

So we're pretty positive about 2025.

Martin Englert
Senior Equity Research Analyst - Metals & Mining at Seaport Research Partners

Okay. I appreciate that. I'm curious, maybe there's a couple of parts of this question and you had alluded to policy and tariffs, if maybe you could walk through some of the positive and negative factors that could evolve for the company. And then also I would like to understand what you're seeing out there in today's market.

Martin Englert
Senior Equity Research Analyst - Metals & Mining at Seaport Research Partners

I understand you're a large domestic buyer and often

Martin Englert
Senior Equity Research Analyst - Metals & Mining at Seaport Research Partners

probably at the front of the line when you're buyer and often probably at the front of the line when you're buying from upstream metals and steel producers. But what are you seeing in the overall supply side of the environment in The U. S. In recent weeks? And anything changing or extending with lead times or reduced availability?

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Yes. As you mentioned, Martin, I mean, we have been a very long time domestic buyer. We prefer to support our mills here in The U. S. It also helps us manage our inventory well, turning our inventory, which is what we look to do.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Historically, when there have been tariffs or different trade policy enacted and it reduces the amount of import material coming into The U. S, we generally see prices increase in The U. S, which has been positive for us. We currently anticipate that would be the impact again, but until we start operating in that environment, we won't know. But we do see potential upside on the pricing front.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

We do think we're well positioned to receive inventory. We've already seen, especially on the aluminum side, some movement upwards. You've seen some pricing movement upwards on some of the carbon steel products as well, which is all positive from our view.

Martin Englert
Senior Equity Research Analyst - Metals & Mining at Seaport Research Partners

Okay. Appreciate all the color and congratulations on the strong underlying results exiting the year.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Great. Thanks, Martin. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Next question is coming from Katya Yanchek from BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now live.

Katja Jancic
Katja Jancic
Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Carla, you mentioned initially that one of the things you will be focusing on in 2025 is on increasing volume. Is that going to be more driven by organic growth or does that include also some acquisitions?

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

It would be both. As in 2024, where we saw a lot of growth, a little more than half of our bump up in 2024 was from the four acquisitions we completed in the year. But we also grew our same store tons and that's we talk about smart profitable growth, which is go after more volume while also maintaining your margins. Don't take every order, but take those that will be accretive at pretax income dollars. And we think our people have executed extremely well on the organic side going out and getting a little more volume, especially with the declining price environment that we had in 2024.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Those additional earnings off of the increased volume was very helpful in adding to our earnings and offsetting some of the higher costs we have.

Katja Jancic
Katja Jancic
Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

And maybe on the value added processing, I think when we saw what we saw during the quarter is that the interest in value added processing increased. Could this environment where you have increasing production as policies drive another like higher on interest in domestic value added processing?

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

I mean, it potentially could certainly if there's less of that being done offshore. That's part of the reshoring that's been happening in the last few years. But even before a lot of reshoring, we've just seen a change with a lot of our customers where they've looked at what they're doing internally, trying to drive cost out, be more efficient. And they realize that because reliance companies are serving many different customers, we're able to oftentimes do the same type of processing for them more cost effectively than our customers doing it in house. So we had already seen a trend from our customers.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

And then, yes, with the reshoring trends, that certainly could potentially drive it up more. We have seen some of our customers come to us when business has come back from Asia or wherever and it's come back to The U. S. So that could drive it higher. I will say though, we did increase the number of tons, the number of orders we did processing on in 2024, but we also grew the distribution side of our business, especially with some of our acquisitions.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

And we just are able and ready to continue to invest in whatever our customers need us to do for them on a profitable basis. And we do expect to continue to see more of that activity.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

And Katya, I would add to that that general our sales into the general manufacturing end market, those are the products that we ship to that end market naturally lend themselves for value added processing at a much higher rate than other products. So as general manufacturing activity picks up, we should see a pickup in our value added processing sales as well.

Katja Jancic
Katja Jancic
Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

Great. Thank you. I'll call back into the queue.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

Thank you.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Phil Gibbs from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live.

Philip Gibbs
Philip Gibbs
Director, Metals Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Hey, good morning.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Hey, good

Stephen Koch
Stephen Koch
Executive VP & COO at Reliance

morning, Phil. Hey, good morning, Phil. Hey, good morning, Phil. Hey, good morning, Phil. Hey, good

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

morning, Phil. Hey, good morning, Phil. Hey, good morning, Phil. Hey, good morning, Phil. Hey, good morning, Phil.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Hey, good

Philip Gibbs
Philip Gibbs
Director, Metals Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets

about 4% year on year. You had a 4% uplift in volumes ex tolling, but you did have a decline in your FIFO gross profit. So not a ton of leverage maybe relative to some historical years. So showing that there's still maybe some either some excess cost in your supply chain and or inflation within the business is pretty sticky. Any opportunities to lean that out or they're just going to be through operations you're going to have to grow into?

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Yes. Hi, Phil. So certainly, costs are up, wage inflation. We continue to want to pay good fair wages to our employees. So we do have some wage inflation.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Some of our incentive comp is down because of the lower FIFO profitability that you talked about. We are always looking for ways to take some costs out. We do have some instances where we maybe have to carry a few more people to longer training time in general when we're bringing new employees on now. But all of our folks out in the field are looking at ways to potentially take cost out, but also at the same time, we need to retain our good employees who are trained, who know how to work safely in our environments. So we're reacting the best we can, but certainly there has been some inflationary increase.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

Yes. And so I would add to that. At a high level, we've been able to keep our operating cost per ton pretty steady the last three years at roughly in the $40 to $50 a ton in that range. But also, Carla spoke to smart profitable growth. And as part of that initiative, we're really trying to, to your point, grow into the cost structure.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

So as we bring additional business, we're trying to get more efficient and not increase our expenses. So that's part of the smart profitable growth, not just kind of from a margin perspective, but from expense perspective. So we've been able to have get some really good traction on that front and we're looking to continue with that strategy going forward.

Philip Gibbs
Philip Gibbs
Director, Metals Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Thank you. And can can you speak to and I don't know if you mentioned in the prepared remarks, but maybe talk about cash CapEx in 2025?

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Yes. We're estimating that our current year budget for new projects is $325,000,000 dollars but we still have carryover from some projects that roll into this year. So we're estimating $375,000,000 to $400,000,000 of cash outlay this year.

Philip Gibbs
Philip Gibbs
Director, Metals Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Thanks, Carla. And then semis, you talked about being soft and historically I thought about you guys as having more semis infra. So there's still that build out occurring. The comments seem to be more of semi's production. Maybe that's through some of the aluminum plate business, I don't know.

Philip Gibbs
Philip Gibbs
Director, Metals Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets

But maybe qualify what you're seeing there and what you expect over the next few years?

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Yes. I think certainly long term, we're still bullish on the semiconductor industry, especially as you're referencing a lot of the build going on here in The U. S. I would say on the infrastructure side of that where we participate, when they're building new plants, it's been like pretty choppy. I think different of the semiconductor manufacturing companies, whether it's permitting, whether it's workforce, whether it's other internal issues that they're dealing with.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

One project will be pretty busy and then all of a sudden that stops and another project heats up a little bit. So it hasn't been as smooth or as steady of a build, but we are participating in the projects that are active.

Philip Gibbs
Philip Gibbs
Director, Metals Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Thank you.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Thanks, Doug.

Operator

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Mike Harris from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live.

Michael Harris
Michael Harris
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Yes. Thank you. If I could, I wanted to get just a bit more clarification around the first quarter guide for tons sold being up 6% to 8%, but pricing roughly flat. I guess I was a little surprised you're not more optimistic around pricing all considered. And is that because there's maybe an unfavorable mix in that 6% to 8% that could be Capna pricing?

Michael Harris
Michael Harris
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Or you just being ultra conservative, Aaron, to the conservative side at this point?

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

So Mike, we're not baking in anything from the tariffs, not at this point, we think it could be positive for pricing. But yes, we typically take a conservative view. There have been some price increase announcements, but sometimes uncertain products, but sometimes it takes a little time for those to really be effective in the market. So that's the way we guided for the quarter and hopefully there will be some upside to that.

Michael Harris
Michael Harris
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Okay. Okay. That's fair. And then just for the first quarter, how should we think about working capital and perhaps speak to your expectation for inventory days on hand?

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

Yes. Mike, you can look at typical seasonality in our business, go back to the last two, three years and just look at seasonally going into Q1, what happens from Q4 and as you have higher shipment levels typically in Q1, you'll end up building some working capital. And then the typical trends are Q1 and Q2, you might end up building working capital and then Q3 and Q4, you have releases. So that's sort of the typical seasonality and we would expect it to be consistent with those historical seasonal patterns.

Michael Harris
Michael Harris
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Okay. Thanks for that additional color.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

Yes. You got it.

Operator

Thank you. Next question is coming from Alex Hacking from Citi. Your line is now live.

Alex Hacking
Alex Hacking
Equity Research Analyst - Metals & Mining at Citigroup

Yes. Thanks for the call. Just turning back to tariffs again, you mentioned higher pricing is generally good for you. But can you just remind us what's your do you have any exposure to material coming across the border from Canada or Mexico? Thanks.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

So

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

we certainly we have locations in all three countries in North America. They typically are buying domestically. Our toll processing company in Mexico does have a license to import metal for their customers from The U. S. So there could be some impact there.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Overall, international is a fairly small part of our business. We're typically most of our locations are within The U. S. We're typically shipping within about 150 mile radius. And so we don't anticipate a significant impact, but we could see some disruptions in that part of our business that flows across the borders.

Stephen Koch
Stephen Koch
Executive VP & COO at Reliance

Yes. And I agree with Carla. We'll see some disruptions, but since we are 95% to 96% domestically sourced. We think that an overall strong U. S.

Stephen Koch
Stephen Koch
Executive VP & COO at Reliance

Steel market with higher prices supports Reliance supports the companies that are investing billions and billions of dollars into our infrastructure. So we will deal on a case by case basis with some tariff disruptions. But overall, we're very positive.

Alex Hacking
Alex Hacking
Equity Research Analyst - Metals & Mining at Citigroup

Okay. Thanks. Just to clarify, you said about 95% plus of your business is domestic. Did I hear that correct?

Stephen Koch
Stephen Koch
Executive VP & COO at Reliance

Domestically sourced, yes.

Alex Hacking
Alex Hacking
Equity Research Analyst - Metals & Mining at Citigroup

Okay.

Alex Hacking
Alex Hacking
Equity Research Analyst - Metals & Mining at Citigroup

I guess, and then just kind of on the accounting side, you mentioned that FIFO gross margin continued should move in the right direction in 1Q. I assume that was still a metals price is generally rising, that does create probably a LIFO headwind for the first quarter that's baked into guidance?

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

Yes. So I think we guided to LIFO income and as we alluded to in our remarks that it's not that we're expecting prices or costs to decrease for the remainder of the year. So some of that was timing related to some specialty stainless steel and alloy products. But generally speaking, the gross profit margin improvement has more to do with cost alignment, meaning costs on hand getting better alignment with replacement costs. And then to the extent that there's any average selling price uplift, you're right that there will be some additional pickup on the margin side from that.

Alex Hacking
Alex Hacking
Equity Research Analyst - Metals & Mining at Citigroup

Okay. Thank you very much.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

You got it.

Operator

Thank you. Next question is a follow-up from Phil Gibbs from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live.

Philip Gibbs
Philip Gibbs
Director, Metals Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Hey, thank you. Arthur, maybe you can explain a little bit more the LIFO credit. I know it's a I think I understand it pretty decently, but just for the benefit of the kind of investment community out there, what it implies? I mean, I think you targeted the commentary around a lot of your stainless and alloy inventory. But mechanically, what does that actually imply within the business?

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

Right. So LIFO mix and costs per time changes, it does affect the LIFO calculation. So in the specialty stainless product case, longer lead times essentially create a lag between what happens between your selling prices and costs on hand. And that's that was something really atypical that we experienced. So had lead times been normal, a lot of that inventory would have gotten flushed through the system and but that wasn't the case.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

So really what we're saying is $60,000,000 of estimated LIFO income for 2025 is just timing effectively it pushed LIFO income from 2024 into 2025. So if you remove that component out of the LIFO guide, we're saying essentially coming out of the gates, we're saying flat LIFO. So essentially pretty much zero, right? We're saying we kind of expect prices to be where they are now, costs. And as we said in our guidance, we're not necessarily factoring in any tariff impact on either our selling prices or on our LIFO guidance at this point for the remainder of the year.

Philip Gibbs
Philip Gibbs
Director, Metals Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets

So related to that longer lead time item material, I would imagine you have a good bit of that in places like aerospace and maybe to a lesser extent defense. Within that pocket of inventory specifically, is the implication that you'll have less of that material on hand at the end of twenty twenty five versus the beginning or is the expectation is that the pricing for that falls? I mean, what's more of the embedded expectation there? Thank you.

Arthur Ajemyan
Arthur Ajemyan
CFO & Senior VP at Reliance

Absolutely. You nailed it. That's correct. So we expect to have less of that by the end of this year.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Yes. Because Phil, for those products, some of those specialty products, the mills that we acquire that from, they kind of caught up on some of their production. Lead time started to come in on those items. And so they were shipping more to us at the end of the year. At the same time, Aerospace, as you referenced, is a home for a lot of those products.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

And as everyone knows, there were some disruptions here. So as build rates increase on airplanes, we should see that inventory move out of from our inventory into the customer supply chain.

Philip Gibbs
Philip Gibbs
Director, Metals Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Thanks so much.

Operator

Thank

Operator

you. We reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Carla for any further or closing comments.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

Thanks again to all of you for joining our call today and for your continued support of Reliance. And before we close out the call, I'd like to remind everyone that we'll be presenting at a few upcoming conferences. First, BMO's Global Metals Mining and Critical Materials Conference in Hollywood, Florida and also JPMorgan's twenty twenty five Industrials Conference in New York City. We hope to meet with many of you there. And once again, we'd like to thank all of our Reliance employees for everything they do every day.

Karla Lewis
Karla Lewis
President & CEO at Reliance

And please keep each other safe out there. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.

Executives
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Key Takeaways

  • Reliance delivered a 2024 full‐year same‐store tons growth well above industry levels, achieved a 29.7% gross profit margin, generated non-GAAP EPS of $15.92 and produced $1.43 billion of operating cash flow.
  • The company completed four acquisitions adding ~$400 million of annualized net sales, invested $430 million in CapEx, spent $365 million on acquisitions, returned $250 million in dividends and executed a record $1.1 billion of share repurchases, reducing shares by 6%.
  • In Q4 the business grew same-store tons sold by 6.7% year-over-year—outperforming the MSCI industry decline—driven by strength in non-residential construction, general manufacturing, aerospace and toll processing.
  • For 2025, priorities include maintaining an annualized gross profit margin of 29%–31%, expanding value-added processing, driving smart profitable volume growth and deploying capital in support of infrastructure, defense, data center and other end markets.
  • Q1 2025 guidance calls for tons sold up 6%–8% sequentially, flat average selling prices, improving FIFO margins and non-GAAP EPS of $3.30–$3.50 per share.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Reliance Q4 2024
00:00 / 00:00

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