Koppers at Sidoti Conference: Strategic Shift to Cash Flow Focus

On Thursday, 20 March 2025, Koppers Holdings Inc. (NYSE: KOP) presented at the Sidoti Small-Cap Virtual Conference, outlining its strategic shift from heavy capital investment towards generating cash flow. While the company projects growth and enhanced shareholder returns, challenges from economic slowdowns and market dynamics were also acknowledged.

Key Takeaways

• Koppers projects a 4% increase in consolidated sales to $2.17 billion in 2025.
• Adjusted EBITDA is forecasted to rise by 7% to $280 million in 2025.
• Adjusted EPS is expected to hit $4.75 in 2025, marking a 16% increase.
• Capital expenditure is set to decrease, enabling more cash flow for debt reduction and shareholder returns.
• The company plans a $100 million share repurchase program, viewing its stock as undervalued.

Financial Results

• Consolidated sales are expected to grow from $2.09 billion in 2024 to $2.17 billion in 2025.
• Adjusted EBITDA is anticipated to improve from $262 million in 2024 to $280 million in 2025.
• Adjusted earnings per share are projected at $4.75, up from 2024’s figures, setting a new high for Koppers.
• Capital spending is projected to decrease from $74 million in 2024 to $65 million in 2025.
• The company targets a net leverage ratio of two to three times by the end of 2025.

Operational Updates

• Railroad Products and Services (RUPS) remains a key supplier of cross ties to Class 1 railroads in North America.
• Utility segment leads in supplying utility poles in the U.S. and Australia.
• Performance Chemicals focuses on wood treatment chemicals for residential use.
• Carbon Materials and Chemicals (CM&C) operates in the U.S., Europe, and Australia, supplying chemicals for aluminum and creosote for railroad ties.
• Vertical integration between CM&C and RUPS ensures stable creosote supply for railroad crosstie treatment.

Future Outlook

• Koppers aims to generate significant free cash flow, with plans for debt reduction and share repurchases.
• The company is exploring geographic expansion for utility pole services, particularly in the West.
• A long-term goal is to achieve a net leverage ratio below three by 2025.
• The company is actively negotiating higher pricing with Class 1 railroads to boost revenue.

Q&A Highlights

• Koppers is monitoring economic slowdowns that could impact home repair and remodeling, crucial for Performance Chemicals.
• The company is engaged with Class 1 railroads to secure higher pricing, with some success.
• A $100 million share repurchase program has been approved, reflecting confidence in the stock’s undervaluation.
• Koppers is considering acquisitions or greenfield investments to expand utility pole services geographically.

For more detailed insights, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript provided below.

Full transcript - Sidoti Small-Cap Virtual Conference:

Michael, Host, Sidoti: ask questions, you’ll see a q and a button at the bottom of your screen. Just type in your question and feel free to start now. You know, we’ll accumulate questions on the fly. And then the last ten minutes or so of the presentation, the management team will answer your questions. So just to introduce the folks we have with us today, we have Quinn McGuire from Investor Relations, Monica Snyder from Investor Relations, Jim Hogan, Senior Global Director of Financial Planning and Analysis and Brad Pierce, Chief Accounting Officer.

Brad, why don’t you go ahead and start?

Brad Pierce, Chief Accounting Officer, Coppers: Okay. Yes. Thank you, Michael. So I’m going to share my screen here and put up our investor presentation.

Michael, Host, Sidoti: There we go. Okay. We can see it. Thank you.

Brad Pierce, Chief Accounting Officer, Coppers: Okay. Great. So, yeah, thank you everybody for having us today. Just what we want to cover today is obviously an introduction to copper’s, who we are, what we do, talk a little bit about some of the things that we believe makes Coppers a unique investment opportunity. And we’ll talk a little bit about our projections, our plan for 2025.

And we’ll wrap up with some information on our capital allocation. So starting with the investment thesis for Coppers, we’re really at a change a point with our strategy. So we had a investor conference back in 2021 where we outlined our plans through year 2025. And so we’re not closing in on that strategy. That strategy is really focused on expanding and optimizing our existing footprint, our existing assets, making those sort of key investments that we thought were necessary to improve the profile and the profitability of coppers and also focused a lot on our products and how we can enhance those products and give our customers a better product offering.

So like I said, we’re kind of at the close of that now. That required some pretty significant capital investment, particularly in 2021 through 2023. Our CapEx, as you’ll see perhaps in a later slide, you know, exceeded $100,000,000 in each of those years. We’ve not come to an end of that. In 2024, we for the first time in three years fell below $100,000,000 Our CapEx was at 75 and our projection for 2025 is $65,000,000 of CapEx.

So we’ve slowed down the capital and we’re allowing those investments that we made in those other years to really begin to generate cash for the company. And you’ll get a sense for what we plan on doing with that cash when we talk about capital allocation. We also want to talk a little bit about again our profile and how we are a market leader in critical end markets. And a lot of that is focused on infrastructure, right. So this slide outlines some of our major business lines, starting with railroad products and services.

This is a business that’s really focused on the manufacturing of railroad cross ties, which gets sold into the railroad industry. What’s important for copper is we know we are a leading supplier of cross ties to the Class one railroads in North America, which are the largest railroads. We supply all six of those railroads. Our utility business is also, it’s very similar from a manufacturing process to our railroad business, except instead of treating railroad cross ties, it is treating utility poles. And we are a leading supplier of utility poles in The U.

S. And also in Australia where we have a leading market position. Performance Chemicals is also again aligned within the wood treatment space. It basically manufactures wood treatment chemicals. Right.

So it doesn’t actually treat the wood, but it’s manufacturing the wood treatment chemicals that are sold to different wood treaters. So, again, the largest component of this business is the treatment of residential lumber, which is used for outdoor applications. So a perfect example of that is something like outdoor decking. Right? So, you know, we are we are the the the leader in both, you know, designing and also manufacturing, those wood treatment chemicals.

And finally, Carbon Materials and Chemicals is a business, we are located in three different geographical areas, The US, Europe and Australia. And just at a high level, what this business does is it takes coal tar, which is a byproduct from the metallurgical coking process, it runs it through a chemical distillation process that produces various chemicals that go out into critical end markets being aluminum and also it manufactures creosote that goes to our railroad business for the treatment of cross ties. So this, again, to further break it down, gives us a little bit of a picture of what each of those businesses contributes to coppers. So if you look at the two pie charts over to the far right, you can see that from a sales perspective, you know, these three segments are are, you know, fairly well balanced, right, with the railroad and utility business contributing the most from a revenue perspective at 45%. Moving over to the far right shows the EBITDA contribution of each of these businesses.

And there that actually paints a picture of Performance Chemicals being our most profitable business. You’ll see on an upcoming slide that it presents over EBITDA margins in excess of 20%, at least it did in 2024. From a end market perspective, which is the first pie chart, again, you can see pretty big concentration with the railroads, the aluminum industry and just the whole wood preservative industry. And again, finally, from a geographic perspective, we are a global company, but do derive over 70% of our sales in The U. S, right.

So again, heavy concentration in The U. S. When thinking about this business, particularly the RUPS business, You know, it is a business which, you know, kind of has recurring sort of steady state level of business every year, right? So you think about the utility business and utility electrical distribution systems, there’s over 140,000,000 utility poles that are placed in service You know, through aging, damage, expansion of networks, you know, around two to 3,000,000 poles annually get replaced every year just through the passage of time. There’s a very similar story when we talk about the railroad crosstie business, in that the major railroads have, you know, routine annual maintenance programs that they follow to keep their system operating safely and efficiently, right?

So there are around 18, on average eighteen, nineteen, 20 million cross ties that just get replaced every year as part of their sort of routine maintenance programs. Few comments you know, the business segment overview. So this, again, gives you some financial data from 2024 of each of the different segments that we have. You can see from a margin perspective, our Performance Chemicals business is the shining star from an EBITDA return point of view, returning over 20% in 2024. As we get further into looking at our projections for 2025, we are going to see a little bit of a reduction both in the contribution of this business from a profitability perspective and also from a margin perspective due to some market shifts that have happened in that business.

But again, we still expect that business to be a strong performer in 2025. The one thing I wanted to touch on when we do talk about these businesses is one key advantage that we believe our structure offers, which is some level of vertical integration between some of our different businesses. So, one of the most important ones is the vertical integration between our carbon materials and chemicals business and our railroad business. So again, the primary treatment chemical for wooden cross ties is a chemical called creosote, which is a product that our carbon materials and chemicals business produces. A number of years ago, we made the decision that we would size our Siemens C business, at a level that meets the demand that our railroad business has for creosote.

So if you look at our footprint, all of the Creosote that is produced in Europe, in North America, the vast majority of that Creosote is sold to our railroad business. We think this is important to give our customers surety of supply of the critical treatment chemical for that business. We also have vertical integration between our Performance Chemicals business and our Utility Poll business. If you look and again, our Utility business is mostly located in the Eastern Part Of The U. S.

The raw material for utility poles in that part of the country is Southern Yellow Pine. And there are really three primary treatment systems for utility poles. Our Performance Chemicals business produces two of those three chemicals, right, with our Carbon Materials and Chemicals business producing the third chemical, right. So we have a certain amount again of vertical integration between our businesses. There’s a lot of chemical expertise in our Performance Chemicals business that we can bring to our utility pole business when manufacturing those products.

So, I think with that, you know, that’s, again, an overview of, copper’s and who we are and what we do. I will now turn it over to Jim Hogan, who will talk a little bit about our 2025 guidance. Sure.

Jim Hogan, Senior Global Director of Financial Planning and Analysis, Coppers: Thanks, Brad. So hi, everyone. On Slide 13, we expect consolidated sales to reach $2,170,000,000 in 2025. That’s compared with $2,090,000,000 in 2024, which would represent a 4% increase. Most of that is attributed to stronger volume through market expansion and some improvement in our RUPS segment overall, partially offset by what should be some temporary net market share loss in Performance Chemicals.

If you want to switch to Slide 14, Brad, we’re forecasting adjusted EBITDA of $280,000,000 which represents a 7% improvement over 2024 adjusted EBITDA of $262,000,000. So we believe we can show measurable improvement in 2025 as three of our four businesses are already at trough levels with with nothing but upside in front of them and cost and other benefit measures in progress that will more than offset some of the potential challenges, that lay ahead. By business, you can see on the slide, our EBITDA forecast will largely follow, the top line drivers I mentioned earlier along with some of those cost containment initiatives. Going forward, we’re going to place a greater emphasis on earnings per share, which includes the depreciation and interest burden of some of the investments we made to drive the EBITDA improvement that we’ve been building towards through our current strategy. And I’ll use that as a good segue to direct you to Slide 15, which shows our 2025 adjusted earnings per share and the strong improvement we expect in this current year driven by higher operating earnings and lower interest expense.

So accordingly, we are forecasting $4.75 per share in 2025, representing a new high for coppers and a 16% improvement over 2024. And then finally, Brad, on Slide 16, thank you. We are projecting capital spending of $65,000,000 in 2025 compared with $74,000,000 in 2024. Our 2025 CapEx spending reflects an ongoing normal run rate and will enable us to generate significant free cash flow over the next several years. Much of that cash flow is planned for debt reduction as well as share repurchases if our shares remain a bit undervalued.

And I think Brad’s going to expand on that a bit on a few slides. So that is all I have. And Brad, back to you.

Brad Pierce, Chief Accounting Officer, Coppers: Okay. Thank you. So I’m gonna jump forward here. A few slides to talk a little bit about our use our generation and use of cash. Again, we take what we believe is a balanced approach toward the use of cash.

So the most critical thing to start with is the ability to generate cash. So we do have a track record of generating strong cash flow from operating activities. If you look at 2024, we generated 119,000,000 of cash flow from operating. If you go back to 2023, that was close to $150,000,000 So we do have a kind of a long standing streak here of a number of years of being in excess of of a hundred million dollars And what what do we do with that cash? So obviously, we we look at a couple of areas.

Right? So, you know, that that cash flow from operations goes toward funding, you know, our capital requirements. And I’ve talked a little bit about how we’ve had higher spending during our most recent five year plan, but now those investments have been completed, we are reducing our level of capital spending in 2024 and also 2025. So we’ll be down to around $65,000,000 of CapEx in 2025. With that free cash flow, we really look at three areas on where to deploy that.

Let’s first talk about leverage reduction. So our long term goal is to be to have a net leverage ratio of two to three times. We ended 2024 three point four times largely because we did make a $100,000,000 acquisition in our utility pole business in early twenty twenty four. We steadily worked that down. Our projection is and we’re actively working toward driving that leverage ratio below three by the end of twenty twenty five.

We also deploy our cash into share repurchases. We are actually fairly heavy in this last year, where our repurchases totaled $43,000,000 that was over 1,000,000 shares that were bought back in 2024. The most recent board meeting here in February, the board did approve a new $100,000,000 share repurchase program. So particularly as we look at our stock price and see buying opportunities, I would expect that share repurchases is something that we will carefully consider during 2025. And then finally, we did reintroduce a dividend a few years ago.

We started out at $0.05 a share per quarter and we’ve every year increased that quarterly dividend by a penny. So looking at 2025, we recently declared an $0.08 quarterly dividend and anticipate using declaring $0.08 dividends for the remaining quarters of the year. And then just yes, this is just again highlighting again our most recent dividend declaration, it was a 14% increase over the prior year. And again, I mean, we really introduced that dividend that we believe that opens up our stock to a whole range of investors who paying a dividend is a critical screening requirement in making investment decisions. So so, yeah, it’s right about right on time.

So we did leave about ten minutes, for any questions. I will stop sharing and go to full

Michael, Host, Sidoti: view. Very good. Thank you, Brad. I’ll throw out a couple of questions for you. Maybe I might start with that stock repurchase program.

You’ve allocated $100,000,000 for stock repurchases in 2025. How does that compare to the current market cap?

Brad Pierce, Chief Accounting Officer, Coppers: Yes. So our current market cap is around $600,000,000 So I guess I do quick math in my head for about 20%. Yes, I know, obviously, we had declared had a similar amount, declared a number of years. It took us a number of years to chew through that. I would say at the current EBITDA sorry, the current valuation multiple that our stock is trading at, right, I think that does make stock repurchases certainly puts them on the table for the company.

Michael, Host, Sidoti: A question from the audience relates to kind of a nervous consumer, possible slowing of the economy. How do those risks potentially affect your business?

Brad Pierce, Chief Accounting Officer, Coppers: Yeah. So from a I would say from a consumer standpoint, we do see a correlation with home repair and remodeling. Again, that activity, you know, more or less will drive our Performance Chemicals business. Right? So, you know, if there is, say, a recession and there is some belt tightening on consumers, we will watch that sort of home repair modeling index quite closely.

The thing that generally though works in our advantages for many people, their single largest investment they have is in their home, right? So they do tend to keep investing in their home even in tougher economic times. So that’s something that we are watching closely. With our CM and C business, we kind of watch things like larger consumer goods like vehicles, other manufacturing activity that maybe would require aluminum as part of that equation. So that could have an impact there if there’s a slowdown in manufacturing activity in The U.

S. The big wild card is we don’t know what the impact of tariffs will be. Right? And will that increase US domestic demand or lower it, all things being equal? Very hard very hard to tell at this point.

And then the railroad business can be somewhat impacted by, you know, lower freight volumes of moving product. It can, you know, lengthen the, say, the life of a cross tie. But we’ve also found in previous downturns that when there is less rail traffic, that actually is rails find that a good time to actually do their repair activity because it causes fewer and fewer delays in their traffic. So, yeah, we’re just kind of watching it carefully. We haven’t really seen any trends yet, but again, yeah, you know, any general economic impact, you know, could could come through ultimately and have an impact on our business.

Michael, Host, Sidoti: Interesting. Speaking of rails, often when I hear your CEO Leroy speak, he’ll refer to seeking higher pricing from the class one rails. How’s that going?

Brad Pierce, Chief Accounting Officer, Coppers: Yes. So it’s an ongoing project, right. So a lot of our particularly with our Class one customers and there are six, those are on longer term contracts, which do provide some level of price escalation, but also do provide some caps, right. So in the last few years, we’ve found ourselves bumping up against those caps. We’ve actively engaged with them.

Fortunately, four have kind of medicine in the middle. They’ve granted us some ability to pass through, price increases outside of the existing contract. The two two others are, you know, are more hesitant to do that. But again, we continue that dialogue, that dialogue with them. I think what will really help that business in 2025 from that slide that Jim showed about, you know, again, the increase in in the profitability of that business.

What’s really going to help that is a return to some of the higher volume activity that we’ve seen in previous years. 2024 is kind of a down year on the volume requirements on the railroad side and we’re hoping we see that bounce back in 2025.

Michael, Host, Sidoti: Okay. If we could just turn to utility poles again, your geographic footprint is pretty heavy on the Eastern Seaboard and a little lighter on in the West. Do you foresee potential geographic expansion in the West?

Brad Pierce, Chief Accounting Officer, Coppers: Yes. So, yes, that is definitely one of the initiatives that we do have is, you know, trying to see where we can expand, you know, our service delivery into into areas where we think we would it would be a welcome it would be welcome competition for our customers, right? So we’ve started to do that a little bit. So last year, when we made the Brownwood acquisition that began to provide us inroads up into the Midwest. And we’ve made some capital expenditures on our own to put some peeling and drying assets near to the Texas utility pool market, which has now enabled us to enter and expand into the Texas market, right.

Next step again is looking further westward to see again how we can enter that market, whether it’s through acquisition or just making greenfield investments on our own. That’s something that we’re looking at closely. And when we have our we do have an investor meeting scheduled this year in September where our CEO will lay out our plan for the next five years, I would expect that that would be part of that strategy that is laid out at that time.

Michael, Host, Sidoti: Very good and just to wrap this up, I think we have like a minute left. Could you just summarize the value proposition of copper’s? Why should an investor be considering copper’s and why copper’s now?

Brad Pierce, Chief Accounting Officer, Coppers: Yes. So, I think well, again, sitting here today, again, I think our stock is trading at a 5 or so times multiple. We believe we have more to offer than that and we don’t think we think there is upside in our valuation, you know, just needs to be recognized. And the way that we think that we will get there is showing, you know, again, the strong cash generation ability that the company historically has had and putting that cash to work into lowering our debt and then returning cash to our shareholders either through stock repurchases or a dividend. So we think as we lower our leverage sorry, our leverage ratios, that’s going to provide upside benefit to the stock.

And secondly, again, we think we play in a critical area of infrastructure. And again, we think there will continue to be strong demand and strong spending there. And we think we are in a position to benefit from that.

Michael, Host, Sidoti: Well, very good. We are to the end of the time, unfortunately. I could go on all afternoon, but let’s give everybody back their day. Thank you, Brad. Thanks to the rest of the Coppers team.

And thanks all of you for dialing in. Anybody who has any more questions, please contact Sidoti. We’ll make sure and run down answers for you. Again, thank you everyone for joining and look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you, Michael.

Have a great day.

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