Ryerson Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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July 30, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Strong long-term focus on $650 million in network modernization since 2021, aiming to boost lead times and on-time delivery as CapEx projects complete.
  • Positive Sentiment: Ryerson outperformed the market in Q2 with shipments down 1.2% vs. industry down 2.1%, gaining share in carbon long, carbon plate and stainless long driven by transactional growth.
  • Negative Sentiment: Elevated expectations for metal costs fueled a $13 million LIFO expense in Q2 and a revised full-year $40 million LIFO charge, pushing net income to the low end of guidance.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Generated $24 million in operating cash while improving cash conversion cycle to 66 days; net debt of $479 million resulted in 4.4× leverage above target, with plans to reduce in H2.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Q3 guidance assumes volumes down 2–4%, average selling price up 1–3%, revenues of $1.14–1.18 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $40–45 million and EPS of $0.00–0.06.
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Earnings Conference Call
Ryerson Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Day, and welcome to the Ryerson Holding Corporation's Second Quarter twenty twenty five Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. There is a question and answer session later. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Justine Carlson. Please go ahead.

Justine Carlson
Justine Carlson
Senior Manager - FP&A and ESG at Ryerson

Good morning. Thank you for joining Ryerson Holding Corporation's second quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. On our call, we have Eddie Lehner, Ryerson's President and Chief Executive Officer Tim Clawson, our Chief Financial Officer and Molly Cannon, our Chief Accounting Officer and Corporate Controller Fred McFarland, our Senior Vice President of Supply Chain and Jorge Berestein, our Vice President of Finance, will be joining us for Q and A. A recording of this call will be posted on our Investor Relations website at ir.ryerson.com. Please read the forward looking statement disclosures included in our earnings release issued yesterday and note that it applies to all statements made during this call.

Justine Carlson
Justine Carlson
Senior Manager - FP&A and ESG at Ryerson

In addition, our remarks today refer to several non GAAP measures. Reconciliations of these adjusted numbers are also included in our earnings release. I will now turn the call over to Eddie.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

Thank you, Justine. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us to discuss our second quarter twenty twenty five performance. As we continue winding through protracted industry downturn with PMI print showing contraction in 30 of the past thirty two months and with carbon and stainless commodity bellwethers continuing to grind lower through the second quarter, self help is the name of the game as we continue building operating leverage for the next cyclical upturn. As necessary trade policy resets along with relatively high interest rates, stagflation fears, global overcapacity management challenges, and tariff uncertainty impede short term manufacturing and industrial metals activity, there is optimism when looking toward the medium and longer term secular demand trends that have been suppressed through this unique and extended downturn. Ryerson continues operationalizing its CapEx, systems, and acquisition investments where we have deployed more than 650,000,000 in capital since 2021 to modernize our network of intelligently connected service centers.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

As these investments become fully operational and the network stabilizes around greater consistency at scale pertaining to lead times, service levels, on time delivery, and value added processing. We expect to continue to see improvements in our performance and the experience we offer to our customers. While we continue to complete projects and improve the quote signal to noise on quote ratio throughout our network, whereby investment related disruptions give way to network and service center consistency and stability, we are positioning Ryerson well for the next cyclical upturn. During the second quarter, we saw customer activity turning increasingly cautious, particularly within our OEM contract book of business, while self help driven transactional field of business pulled the plow with market share gains realized even amidst ongoing bellwether price declines in carbon and stainless steel commodity index. It is still a price market as competitive intensity for orders among service centers is high, and customers in general are buying to minimum requirements, quoting less.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

That said, as we are early in the third quarter, we are seeing price trends stabilize, albeit amid slowing and below trend demand. We are in the dog days of this extended downturn, so the playbook calls for execution around continuing to take out nonvalue added costs, precise working capital management, and hustling for every order and proving out our investments and renovated operating model. At this point, I'll turn it over to Jim Claussen to discuss market conditions and our financial results.

James Claussen
James Claussen
EVP & CFO at Ryerson

Thanks, Eddie, and good morning, everyone. Given the market dynamics Eddie discussed, North American industry volumes as measured by the MSCI or Metals Service Center Institute performed well below normal seasonal levels in the second quarter, decreasing by 2.1% relative to the first quarter. By comparison, our North American shipments decreased by 1.2% quarter over quarter, generating incremental market share gains with particular strength in carbon long, carbon plate and stainless long products compared to the industry. Total company tons shipped were up fractionally quarter over quarter with relative strength among customers in our consumer durable sector, particularly in appliances and recreational vehicles and also among some of our customers in the HVAC sector. On the other hand, we saw orderly sequential volume contraction in our construction equipment sector.

James Claussen
James Claussen
EVP & CFO at Ryerson

We noted subsector industry bright spots in data center and public infrastructure projects driven by federal investment spending. And finally, we saw relative quarter over quarter weakness in our commercial ground transportation sector as the industry appeared to align build rates with a cautious replacement cycle environment illustrated by the order data published by ACT Research. Given that market backdrop, let's transition to our second quarter performance compared to guidance and our third quarter twenty twenty five outlook. During the second quarter, we achieved adjusted EBITDA excluding LIFO at the high end of our guidance range with revenue and shipments within our range. Late in the quarter, we saw supply side increases in all three of our primary product lines increasing our second half pricing and cost expectations.

James Claussen
James Claussen
EVP & CFO at Ryerson

This rise in expected metal costs led to a higher LIFO charge for the second quarter as our full year estimate for LIFO grew to approximately a $40,000,000 expense. This LIFO catch up drove net income to the low end of our range. We know that given our inventory levels and the nature of many of our contracts, we require more than one quarter of duration to see price changes realized in the market. We also recognize that given some fluidity in trade and tariff policy, some of these increases may be short lived. Looking ahead to the 2025, we expect volumes to soften during the quarter by 2% to 4% as we anticipate that the demand environment will remain challenged by continued uncertainty across many of our large end markets as well as normal seasonality patterns.

James Claussen
James Claussen
EVP & CFO at Ryerson

However, we do anticipate that the pricing environment will remain supportive, leading to average selling price appreciation of 1% to 3% and revenues in the range of $1,140,000,000 to $1,180,000,000 We expect that gross margins will benefit from modest price resets in our contract business, but given a reset demand outlook, we expect flatter pricing expectations and margin pressure in our spot business. In all, we forecast third quarter adjusted EBITDA, excluding LIFO, in the range of $40,000,000 to $45,000,000 and earnings per share in the range of $00 to $06 per diluted share. We expect LIFO expense to be between 9,000,000 and $11,000,000 in the quarter.

James Claussen
James Claussen
EVP & CFO at Ryerson

Turning to our investments in the business. In the second quarter, our capital expenditures totaled $10,000,000 and included investments in processing capabilities and maintenance projects. Year to date, we have made $18,000,000 in CapEx investments and remain on track with our stated $50,000,000 full year target, which follows a record three year investment cycle and focuses on operationalizing final components of those investments while returning to a more normalized level of investment.

James Claussen
James Claussen
EVP & CFO at Ryerson

In the second quarter, we generated $24,000,000 in cash from operations as our receivables normalized relative to the first quarter, but were partially offset by a modest inventory build as overall inventory cost per ton increased in the quarter, more than anticipated as previously noted. Overall, although working capital was higher nominally than anticipated, we effectively managed our working capital during the second quarter, achieving a cash conversion cycle of sixty six days, which is slightly lower than the first quarter and eleven days lower than the year ago period. We ended the second quarter with $510,000,000 of total debt and $479,000,000 of net debt, which represents a modest increase compared to $498,000,000 and $464,000,000 respectively, for the prior quarter. Our countercyclical trailing twelve month adjusted EBITDA, excluding LIFO generation, coupled with this sequential net debt increase of $15,000,000 resulted in a second quarter leverage ratio of 4.4 times, which remains above our target range of 0.5 to two times. As we move into the back half of the year, we expect cash flow generation to move our leverage ratio back towards our target range.

James Claussen
James Claussen
EVP & CFO at Ryerson

From a global liquidity perspective, the company's profile remained healthy, and we ended the second quarter at $485,000,000 of liquidity compared to $490,000,000 at the end of the first quarter. Turning to shareholder returns, Ryerson distributed $6,000,000 in the form of dividends during the second quarter. We paid a quarterly dividend of $0.01 $8.03 $75 per share and have announced a third quarter twenty twenty five cash dividend of the same amount. We did not repurchase any shares in the second quarter and ended the period with $38,400,000 remaining on our share repurchase authorization. As we look forward to the third quarter and into the rest of 2025, we will continue to prudently evaluate our overall capital allocation and tightly manage our expenses and working capital.

James Claussen
James Claussen
EVP & CFO at Ryerson

I will now turn the call over to Molly Cannon to discuss our financial performance highlights for the second quarter.

Molly Kannan
Molly Kannan
Corporate Controller & Chief Accounting Officer at Ryerson

Thanks, Jim, and good morning, everyone. In the 2025, Ryerson reported net sales of $1,170,000,000 an increase of 3% compared to the first quarter, with average selling prices up 2.8% and tons shipped up fractionally. Average selling price growth quarter over quarter was driven by increases in aluminum and carbon products, which were up 6.82.1%, respectively. Gross margin during the quarter contracted by 10 basis points versus the prior quarter to 17.9%, influenced by a higher than anticipated LIFO expense of 13,000,000 as rising commodity prices in the period translated to material costs increasing faster than average selling prices given the lag nature of pricing recognized in our contractual business. Excluding LIFO, gross margin expanded sequentially by 40 basis points to 19%.

Molly Kannan
Molly Kannan
Corporate Controller & Chief Accounting Officer at Ryerson

On the expense side, second quarter warehousing, delivery, selling, general and administrative expenses increased to $2.00 $4,000,000 or by $1,500,000 compared to the first quarter as a result of one additional business day. Expenses decreased sequentially both on a percentage of revenue and on a per day basis, illustrating our continued commitment to expense management. Second quarter net income attributable to Ryerson was $1,900,000 or $06 per diluted share compared to net loss attributable to Ryerson of $5,600,000 and diluted loss per share of $0.18 in the prior quarter. In summary, our adjusted EBITDA excluding LIFO achievement of $45,000,000 in the 2025 compared favorably to generation of $32,800,000 in the prior quarter. And with this, I'll turn the call back to Eddie.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

Thank you, Molly. I would like to conclude our prepared comments by thanking the Ryerson team for working safely and productively during the second quarter as we remain focused on what we can control, integrating our new advanced capabilities into our interconnected network to provide our customers with a higher level customer experience while also managing the business well through the current business environment. As challenging as current and near term conditions may be, we are proving our resiliency and expanding our earnings quality through the cycle as we look forward to a revitalized US manufacturing economy, glimmers of which are already materializing in the form of negotiated trade deals and emergent reshoring data points. As I mentioned, during a prior call and backed by popular demand from the movie The Crow, it can't rain all the time. We're just looking forward to a period of some extended sunshine.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

With that, and after the q and a, we would like to share a video on the upgrades at our Shelbyville facility. For those of you dialed in, the video is also available on our Investors Relation website. Operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator

Yeah. Thank you. If you are dialed in via the telephone and would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press 1 to ask a question.

Operator

If you are in the event via the web interface and would like to ask a question, simply type your question into the ask a question box and click send. Our first question is going to come from Samuel McKinney, KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Samuel McKinney
Samuel McKinney
AVP - Equity Research at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Hi. Good morning, Eddie and team.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

Hey, Sam. How are doing?

Samuel McKinney
Samuel McKinney
AVP - Equity Research at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Good. Hey, the presentation calls out North American market share growth in Carbon Long and Plate, and the release noted another quarter of increasing transactional business. Just wanted to give you the opportunity to talk more about some of the biggest wins for this demand as more of your CapEx projects have become full contributors.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

Yes, Sam. I mean, at the risk of going deep under the hood of the car, you know, as you bring up these investments and you and you find out that what happens is you you disconnect things within your European environment, for example. So you take out all these work centers, you build the equipment, cash goes out, and then you install the equipment, and you get through a commission and then start up curve. All things that I know, you you know, you're aware of. It's it's the pithy things when you go back to set up things like material masters, and you set up fill a material routing, and then you set up shuttle routing between processing centers and service center, and then it's delivery.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

And all that stuff needs to get connected up again. So over time, you have a better service model, but you keep refining it, refining it. You take out frictional cost in your network, which is really a big part of this. And and, you know, CapEx cycle being extended to the extent that it has been, we start to see improvements in lead times, service levels in terms of where inventory is placed, getting to the customer faster, and really consistency, being more consistent on every order. And some of the tools we've built on the system side, the ERP conversion, very difficult.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

But once you start to move further and further away from that, some of the tools that we developed to quote faster, to convert faster, those things start to take center stage and start to become more prominent so that you can go out and provide that better customer experience. It's a process, but over time, we continue to improve, and those are the things that we can fundamentally control.

Samuel McKinney
Samuel McKinney
AVP - Equity Research at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay. Thank you. And then next one for me. The second quarter EPS enjoyed a tax benefit of over $0.25 a share. Just talk about the mechanics there and if we should expect a similar tailwind during the third quarter in which you expect EPS to be relatively

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

Yeah. I'm gonna kick that over to Jim Claussen, my partner over here.

James Claussen
James Claussen
EVP & CFO at Ryerson

Good morning, Sam. Really, what we what we saw in the second quarter was with, you know, obviously, reduced earnings comes, you know, a lower tax provision. So that's in line. But we also did get some discrete state tax credits in the quarter. You know, occasionally, there's discrete tax items that come through on on either a state or federal level.

James Claussen
James Claussen
EVP & CFO at Ryerson

So what I would expect going forward is, you know, basic effective tax rate around twenty twenty 25 to 26% between state and federal.

Operator

And our next question is going to come from Katja Janik from BMO Capital Markets.

Katja Jancic
Katja Jancic
Metals & Mining Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

Maybe going back to the transactional sales, can you update us what the split currently is between transactional and contractual sales?

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

Sure. On a on a shift in book basis, we're up to about 46% transactional, about 54% program.

Katja Jancic
Katja Jancic
Metals & Mining Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

And and how are you thinking about the split moving forward?

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

Yeah. I the way we think about the split is continue to perform well enough consistently so we get that we get more and more of that spot building material business in the market, Katya. So it's it's really how you compete day in and day out, and it really goes back to the fundamentals of having inventory placed close to the customer, having processing lead times that are short, quoting lead times that are short. And then when customers call any anytime there's a jump ball, we win the ties. And not just winning the ties, but it's just a more consistent experience of being able to quote fast, locate the the material, process the material, and ship on time more consistently, and you do tend to win more transactional business when you do that.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

We've noted the disruptions. I mean, coming out of '21 and '22, obviously, very, very strong years. And then really going through what I call the great unwinding those things. A lot of commodity bellwether disinflation or deflation if you will, demand has been falling. And then we had this investment cycle really over a three to four year period where we disrupted ourselves.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

And now that we come out of that disruption and we operationalize these investments, we can go to market in a much more consistent fashion. I mean, where we have new service centers and major new service centers, whether it's in the Pacific Northwest or University Park in the Chicago land area, customers still have to reacquaint themselves with Ryerson. We have to reacquaint them with Ryerson in those geographies and providing those consistent experiences. And where we do that, we start to gain share and we start to gain more transactional opportunities as as two of the more prominent examples.

Katja Jancic
Katja Jancic
Metals & Mining Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

I think Jim mentioned that data centers is one of the area where there's strong demand for steel. How much of your exposure goes to that market?

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

It's a it's a subvertical, Katya. It's it's really hard to get an exact fix on that. We know that it's a secular build out, and we're certainly getting our share of those opportunities and and booking to that to that opportunity. But it is a subsector, and we're refining more in a more granular fashion what that impact is.

Katja Jancic
Katja Jancic
Metals & Mining Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

And one one more, if I may. When looking at your CapEx, you maintained 50,000,000 for 25,000,000 But when I look at the first half of the year, it's trending below that. Is that just the timing, or is there opportunity for CapEx to come below that 50,000,000

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

It's really a function of timing. I mean and and even having said that, I mean, you you time the payments to when you hit certain milestones of commissioning and start up. So we're gonna stay with 50,000,000, but we'll certainly have a better picture of how we're gonna finish out the year when we see again in three months.

Katja Jancic
Katja Jancic
Metals & Mining Analyst at BMO Capital Markets

Thank you.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

Thanks, Katya.

Operator

Our next question is going to come from Alan Weber from Robotti and Company.

Alan Weber
Research Associate at Robotti & Company

Good morning. How are you?

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

Hi, Alan. How are you?

Alan Weber
Research Associate at Robotti & Company

Good. So, Eddie, can you talk about I don't know if it's possible. The investments that you've made over the last few years, how do you think about the benefits of what you ultimately expected? How far along are you really? Or what inning are you however you wanna, you know, phrase it.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

Yeah. I mean, it it's Alan, it's it's hard to run away from market conditions. I mean, if if you if you have higher volumes and and I would say if you have more duration around an upturn in pricing and demand, the whole thing is gonna is gonna look better. That said, if if we focus on Shelbyville, we're gonna play a video at the end of at the end of the call. Shelbyville right now is probably at about 67% of its volume ramp up.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

And so what you really what we're really looking for out of Shelbyville, where we've made a significant investment in our stainless franchises to get that to 100% of the expected volumes, meet that internal rate of return case and really start to provide a better service and lower cost model out to the market because we're taking in heavier coils, we can process those coils more efficiently at a lower cost, and we can span that material out both to our service centers and to our customers with a better overall value proposition. I think the timeline of return, just given market conditions, has become a little bit extended, but the thesis is intact as you bring these investments up to full maturity. We operationalize these things. And then customers get used to that experience, and we can also sell to those assets and where that product is gonna go. You know, right now It sounds Go ahead.

Alan Weber
Research Associate at Robotti & Company

It it sounds like what you're saying is I I I understand market conditions, but if market conditions were flattish, it still sounds as though you're in the early stages of seeing the improvements there. And they'll come even if it takes a little longer than originally expected.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

Yeah. No. I I think that's accurate. I mean, varies by project. But here's some encouraging news.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

Right? I mean, contract tons are down 50,000 tons year over year. Transactional tons are up 46,000 tons year over year. You typically don't see an inverse relationship between those different segments of our business when when we look at order type. And I I believe that the transactional pickups are are really a result of us being in being able to normalize things in our network to a greater extent.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

You know, for example, we put a new cut to length line into Dallas, and that is now fully operational. So we can start to get better volumes and throughput into that Southwest marketplace as an example. So happy about the transactional progress. We gotta continue to push on that. And at the same time, our program business, we know it's gonna come back and just really getting these projects up and going to their fullest extent.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

But you're correct. I mean, it's still early in that return cycle for sure.

Alan Weber
Research Associate at Robotti & Company

And then just a little bit unrelated. Can you talk about second half cash flow, what you're expecting and what you kind of where you hope to get leverage ratio, say, by the end of the year?

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

Yeah. I mean, it's it's gonna be it's gonna be a function, obviously, of EBITDA as we've as we've discussed before. We we believe we're gonna generate cash through the balance of the year. It is dependent on where prices go and where demand goes. I mean, frankly, if demand spiked upward and prices went up too, I wouldn't mind it so much.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

So we we might have to finance working capital build in that case, but I do think our base case right now is we're gonna generate cash for the balance of the year.

Alan Weber
Research Associate at Robotti & Company

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

Thanks, Alan.

Operator

And there are no further questions in the queue at this time. I'll now pass it back over to Eddie for closing remarks.

Edward Lehner
Edward Lehner
President, CEO & Director at Ryerson

We appreciate your continued support of and interest in Ryerson. Please stay safe and be well. I look forward to being with all of you in October for our third quarter twenty twenty five earnings release and conference call. And please stay on the line or stay connected, and I hope you enjoy this video in Shelbyville.

Hi. My name is Tim Monhollan, operations manager for Ryerson. I'd like to welcome you to our Bluegrass facility at Shelbyville, Kentucky. As part of Operation Bluegrass, an entire new bay was added to the building. Ryerson Process Metals is comprised of 11 sites. Our capacities for RPM give us the opportunity to serve all of our Ryerson markets.

We streamlined our process flow. We've rearranged all of our existing cut to link lines. We've added cut to link capability with our new high speed efficient U. Cut to link lines. We've added two new shipping lanes to improve our load out times.

Automated storage retrieval system has 2,200 pockets that will hold up to 5,000 pounds each of aluminum and stainless sheet. We're going to be able to store sheets ready for shipment next day. We can fill sheets faster than I've ever seen in thirty years. Increased our lot of of technology, our equipment. You We've know, we've been added some great work to jobs to Shelby County. We've added almost 20 employees to our staff over the last year. These folks take a lot of pride in what they do. The metal that we ship out to our customers goes into many different products in the hospital industry, transportation industries, washers, dryers, hospital beds, many things that affect all of us every day. We're very proud of that fact.

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