Allegheny Technologies Inc

NYSE:ATI

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Operator]

Good morning everyone and welcome to the Allegheny Technologies Incorporated Fourth Quarter 2020 Result Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Scott Minder, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations. Sir, please go ahead.

[Scott Minder, Vice President, Investor Relations]

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the Allegheny Technologies fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings call. Today’s discussion is being broadcast on our website at atimetals.com.

Participating in the call today are Bob Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Don Newman, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Bob and Don will focus on full year and fourth quarter highlights and key messages, but may refer to certain slides within their remarks. These slides are available on our website atimetals.com and provide additional color and details on our results and outlook.

After our prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. During the Q&A session, please limit yourself to two questions. As a remainder, all forward-looking statements are subjects to various assumptions and caveats as noted in the earnings release and in the slide presentation.

Now, I'll turn the call over to Bob.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Thanks Scott. Good morning. No surprise. We're glad 2020 is over. It was a challenging year amplified by significant uncertainty. Yet we made the best of it. Our team persevered and focused on doing the right things quickly and decisively to position ATI to emerge from the crisis stronger, a company focused on aerospace and defense.

The fourth quarter results reported this morning exceeded expectations as we safely delivered for our customers continued strong cost controls and improved working capital efficiency. For the year, our free cash flow generation was positive overall. At $168 million pre-pension contributions, free cash flow exceeded our full year guidance by 18%.

On today's call my remarks will focus on three major themes, our leadership priorities that drove our actions and results, our transformation to a more profitable aerospace and defense focused company and our outlook for our key markets.

So, let's start with our leadership priorities. 2020 began with reasonably strong customer demand and without a hint of a looming global pandemic. ATI posted solid first quarter 2020 financial results. We enjoyed the benefit of stable jet engine demand bolstered by increased customer volumes that were delayed from the second half of 2019.

While these results will make for a difficult year-over-your comp in the first quarter of 2021, they did help to offset the significant headwinds we faced in the subsequent three quarters of 2020.

When the pandemic took hold late in the first quarter, we responded quickly and decisively. The leadership priorities, shown on slide four, drove our results and continue to guide our actions today.

First and foremost, we focused on keeping our people safe. Safety is a core ATI value. We quickly enacted policies and procedures around the world to ensure a virus free work environment, mitigating the risk of spread. Our efforts continue to be largely successful. We remain vigilant to ensure our people go home safely each and every day.

Second, we took the necessary actions to preserve cash and maintain liquidity. We ended the year with more than $950 million of total liquidity, including nearly $650 million of cash on hand. We extended our debt maturity profile and now have no significant debt maturities before mid 2023. Don will cover some additional achievements in more detail in a few minutes.

Third, we proactively and aggressively optimize our cost structure. Our close customer relationships enabled us to match capacity with their rapidly declining demand expectations. We did what was necessary to ensure ATI would not only survive the global recession, but emerged stronger in recovery. By quickly reducing our costs, we've minimized decremental margins, limiting the steep demand drops impact on our bottom line. We eliminated approximately $170 million of costs in 2020.

We continue to pursue operational improvements. We expect total cost reductions to grow to at least $270 million over the next few quarters as actions implemented in the second half of 2020 reached their full run rate. Importantly, we expect about $100 million of these cost savings to become structural, continuing to benefit ATI as we returned to growth over time. It's worth noting that the additional savings we announced in December as part of our strategic transformation are incremental to these savings.

Fourth, we focused on supporting our customers through continued strong execution and operational excellence. Our customers count on us to deliver the mission critical materials and components to keep their planes flying, vehicles moving, energy flowing and medical equipment and electronics working flawlessly. I'm proud of how the team has led through 2020, focused on our people's health, our company's financial health and strengthening our customer partnerships.

Being recovery ready, our fifth leadership priority positions ATI to serve our customers and become a more sustainably profitable company over the long-term. We've been rewarded with more of our customer's business as a result.

In 2021, our share of jet engine materials and components on key programs is increasing. We have also won new business on airframes and are well-positioned to win upcoming specialty energy projects. The bottom line here, we've accomplished a lot in 2020.

Our actions created the necessary foundation for the transformation we announced in December. You may recall we're exiting standard stainless sheet products by year-end 2021, as we redeploy our capital to high return opportunities. These actions are major steps to becoming a more profitable focused aerospace and defense leader. We're accelerating the creation of significant shareholder value.

In eight weeks since the announcement, we've hit the ground running and are executing. On slide five, you'll see two of the leading indicators we're using to track our progress towards this transformation, a streamlined footprint and an improved product mix. We have a third metric that we'll share in future progress updates. It tracks working capital release to largely self-funded projects, capital expenditures.

So, let me take a moment to review the major actions we're taking. First, we're consolidating our specialty rolled products finishing operations to create a more competitive flow path focused on increasing production of high value differentiated materials. This includes closing five plants within the AA&S segment by year-end 2021. In the fourth quarter, we close to finishing facilities, one in Western Pennsylvania, and the other in Connecticut. The three additional closures are expected in the second half of 2021.

Second, we're on track to exit 100% of standard value stainless sheet products by year-end 2021. In the fourth quarter, sales of these products represented 17% of AA&S segment revenues, down from 22% in full year 2019.

And finally, as a reminder on the third action, we intend to largely self-fund upgrades to our specialty fishing capabilities in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania. This investment of $65 million to $85 million spent over three years will be largely self-funded through working capital releases triggered by the transformation. We'll make progress on this initiative as we streamline our footprint and we'll report our results as part of our next transformation update later in 2021.

Let's cut to the chase here. With these actions, we're on our way to a leaner, more competitive aerospace and defense focused powerhouse, poised to substantially increase margins in the AA&S segment and generate a significantly higher return on capital for ATI. Success is largely within our control. We know we have more work to do, and we're doing it. With the demand recovery that we know will come, we're confident we'll meet our longer term objectives.

Before Don provides detail about the fourth quarter financial results, let me share my thoughts about our recent experience in key end markets and provide a near to mid-term outlook for each. Let's start with commercial aerospace, our largest end market. As predicted in our last update demand for jet engine forgings increased modestly in the fourth quarter. Demand for engine related specialty materials, principally ingot and billet, continue to soften as customers destock to align inventories with near term demand expectations.

Looking ahead, we expect jet engine product sales to recover slowly in the first half of 2021, with the pace increasing in the second half of the year. We expect continued weakness in airframes sales throughout 2021 due to excess supply chain inventories. This is consistent with the guidance we provided last quarter, which already accounted for decreasing wide-body production rates.

Next up, defense sales. In the fourth quarter, we returned to year-over-year double-digit percentage growth. Each of ATI defense market verticals expanded. Naval nuclear products in support of the U.S. Navy's increased long-term demand for new ships grew by nearly 50%. Military, aerospace and ground vehicle armor each grew at a strong double-digit rate versus the prior year. We expect continued defense growth in 2021, albeit at a slower pace due to uneven demand levels across major platforms supplied by ATI.

Let me give a couple of examples to illustrate what I mean by uneven demand across platforms. Naval nuclear, we expect continued demand growth. And ground vehicle armor, we expect a temporary contraction due to a one-year pause in demand on a customer's major program. Longer term, we expect ATI's advanced materials to be integral to the success of future government defense initiatives, such as hypersonics. We're also pursuing increased participation in defense applications in other parts of the world.

Shifting to our energy markets. Sales continue to decline in the fourth quarter compared to prior year, but at a slower pace than in the third quarter. Our fourth quarter oil & gas and chemical processing submarkets sales dropped by more than 35%. Sales to our specialty energy markets were more resilient, declining only 6% versus the prior year. Growth continued in our civilian nuclear and pollution control product sales, while demand for electrical energy generation products remained weak.

We expect fourth quarter trends to hold in the coming quarters as demand for oil & gas remains soft, especially energy demand will improve due to ongoing nuclear refueling requirements and strength in Asia from land base gas turbines, solar and applications to reduce fossil fuel emissions.

Robust demand for our consumer electronics products was driven by two factors. First, customer product launches in China; and second, the increased need for our specialty alloy powders to support the growth of next-generation consumer products globally.

We expect increased demand levels to continue in 2021 with first quarter sales falling sequentially, mainly due to the impact of lunar New Year shutdowns and our precision rolled strip operation in China.

Our medical markets continued to decline both for MRIs and implant materials, primarily due to the effects of the pandemic. Fewer elective surgeries and restricted hospital access to install new equipment have reduced end customer demand and created excess supply chain inventory. We expect these negative trends to continue until vaccination programs reach critical mass.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Don to cover our fourth quarter financial results and our first quarter and full year 2021 financial outlook. I'll be back with a few final thoughts before we open the line for your questions.

[Don Newman]

Thanks Bob. Over the next few minutes, I'll focus on highlights from two key areas. First, our Q4 financial performance; and second, our expectations for 2021.

2020 was a difficult year for all of us. For ATI, it started with 737 MAX challenges that carried over from 2019. Of course, those challenges grew exponentially with the global pandemic. Its impact on our key end markets, including commercial aerospace, energy and medical was profound. Even with those challenges, we took the strategic and tactical steps necessary to improve our business and position it for a healthy future.

Now let's discuss Q4 performance. For the third quarter in a row, our results exceeded expectations. In the Q3 earnings call, we noted seeing signs of stabilization in a number of our key end markets, like commercial aerospace. At that time, we said we expected our Q4 performance to be similar to Q3. In fact, Q4 revenue increased 10% to $658 million versus Q3 levels. We see this as a further indication of stabilization in our key end markets and a sign that the worst of the lingering aerospace downturn is behind us.

Our adjusted EBITDA increased 39% to $23 million in Q4 from Q3 levels. Adjusted EPS was a loss of $0.33 per share in Q4. This was better than the optimistic end of our EPS guidance range, which was a loss of between $0.36 and $0.44 per share. Our improved performance was largely due to stronger cost reduction actions and a higher than expected sales.

Thinking of cost reductions, in early 2020 we announced targets to cut costs by between $110 million and $135 million for the year. We increased those targets multiple times in 2020, as we built momentum. In the last earnings call, we shared a target of $160 million to $170 million of 2020 savings. The final tally, reductions near the high end of our guidance and nearly $170 million in 2020. That means a run rate of $270 million to $280 million of cost reductions that will benefit full year 2021.

Those cost reductions continue to contribute to favorable decremental margins, which are below 30% for the third consecutive quarter. We expect approximately $100 million of those reductions to be structural. Those takeouts should continue to benefit earnings in the up cycle, increasing incremental margins in the future.

Working capital actions initiated in Q2 and Q3 gain momentum in Q4. Our free cash flow was $168 million for full year 2020, well in excess of the top end of our guidance range of $135 million to $150 million.

We're extremely pleased that we closed 2020 with nearly $650 million in cash and more than $950 million of total liquidity. That's a great outcome. And one that we can build on in the future. We ended two four with managed working capital at 41% of revenue, down 1,000 basis points from the end of Q3. Great progress.

Our goal is to reduce managed working capital to less than 30% of revenue over time. i can assure you this will remain a key focus in 2021 and beyond. In addition to a strong cash and liquidity position, we continue to maintain a manageable debt maturity profile. Our nearest significant debt maturity does not occur until Q3 of 2023.

Another area of success in 2020 was CapEx management, as we adjusted capital spending to fit the new demand levels. Started 2020 with a CapEx forecast of $200 million to $210 million. actual CapEx spend in 2020 totaled $137 million, 33% below the initial forecast. We manage that reduction by carefully analyzing future demand requirements, including recent share gains and adjusting timing on large growth related projects. We also ensure that our facilities were not over maintained in the current period of low demand. We understand the importance of being recovery ready, and we are prepared to handle our customers desired pace of recovery.

Now this move to pensions. Despite the broader demand challenges, we also made meaningful strides managing our pension glide path. Our goal is to reduce our net pension obligations each year. We ended 2020 with a net pension liability of $674 million. That's nearly $60 million lower than the opening 2020 level.

Strong pension asset performance and company contributions in 2020 more than offset an 80 basis point decrease in discoveries. This drove the drop in net liability. So lowering that pension level at the end of 2020 brings multiple earnings and cash flow benefits in 2021 and the coming years. I will detail that when I share the 2021 outlook.

2020 will be a year remembered for severe economic challenges and personal hardships for many. As a company, we have worked through this crisis to improve the business and prepare for the upcoming recovery. The teams work on strategic positioning, liquidity and cost structures should benefit our shareholders into the future.

With that, let's look ahead to 2021. While we are seeing stabilization, there is still uncertainty in terms of end market recovery timing, as the COVID vaccines are in the early stages of distribution. With that uncertainty, we're going to continue the guidance structure that we started in Q2 2020. We'll provide EPS guidance for the upcoming quarter, as well as certain elements of our full year cash flows that we believe we can reasonably estimate. We'll also provide insights into what we're seeing as key trends and indicators in our business.

Bob shared his thoughts regarding our key end markets. Let me recap our forward demand views and the pace of recovery within our business. We expect jet engine product sales to recover slowly in the first half of 2021, with the pace increasing in the second half. Weakness in airframe materials will continue throughout 2021, consistent with our prior estimates. Our defense sales will likely grow at a more modest pace compared to 2020 rates.

Recovery in our other significant markets, namely energy and medical, is dependent on the global pace of containing the pandemic. And finally, our electronic sales should continue to expand.

We expect adjusted earnings to improve in Q1 of 2021 relative to Q4 2020 due to a modest demand pickup in both segments, continued cost management and lower pension expense. We expect the Q1 2021 adjusted EPS loss of between $0.23 and $0.30 per share.

Let's talk about free cash flow. We expect to generate between $20 million and $60 million of free cash flow in 2021 prior to our required U.S. defined benefit pension contributions. Although, we get there using the same discipline applied in 2020 by managing our costs, being disciplined with capital investments and reducing managed working capital and pursuit of our working capital targets.

Now CapEx. We plan to spend between $150 million and $170 million on capital investments in 2021. We adjusted our 2020 capital spending to reflect the new demand levels. In 2021, we will maintain that discipline, but plan to increase spending marginally in anticipation of coming market recovery. As announced in December, we will also invest modestly to enhance specialty finishing capabilities within our specialty rolled products operations.

I have good news on our expected 2021 pension plan contributions. As you know, contributions to the U.S. pension plans in 2020 were $130 million due in part to strong 2020 pension asset returns required contributions to the U.S. plans are anticipated to be $87 million in 2021, a reduction of more than $40 million year-over-year. 2021 pension expense will also decrease dropping $17 million year-over-year. Pension expense will be $23 million in 2021 down from $40 million of recurring pension expense in 2020.

In regard to working capital, we expect to continue improving our levels in 2021. We'll pursue our goal of returning working capital levels to 30% of sales, as our key end markets recover. Working capital reductions related to our transformational project will also support the significant improvement. Overall, we expect working capital to be a modest source of cash in 2021, even after contributing significantly to our cash balances in 2020.

Finally, in terms of income taxes, we do not expect to be a cash tax payer in the U.S. for years to come. That said, we do anticipate paying taxes in certain foreign jurisdictions. We are not able to provide an estimated annual tax rate for 2021 due to uncertainty of the rates and low earnings. However, we can say that we expect to pay between $10 million and $15 million in cash taxes during the year.

We are proud of what our team has achieved in 2020 and look forward to continuing to build on our efforts to make ATI a leaner and more profitable company. We are well-positioned to benefit from the coming aerospace recovery. This will be even stronger for us, thanks to ATI specific shared gains and new business wins.

With that, I'll turn the call back over to Bob.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Thanks Don. Although, we have some pretty good outcomes and we're proud of it. We accomplished a lot in 2020. Even still -- it's still great to be starting 2021 with a clear plan. And we're boosted by the first signs of favorable multi-market trends we've seen in over a year.

As Don described, we ended the year with a strong performance in a challenging market environment. Our progress in 2020 was a total team effort that delivered results. We worked diligently to control what we could and responded nimbly to what we couldn't. Our entire organization remains relentlessly focused on cash generation. I'm proud of how we're living our values, guiding us every step of the way

Today, in 2021, we still battle a fair amount of uncertainty, but there's already a lot less turbulence than we saw last year. We're gaining velocity, aligned and accelerating in a clear direction as we move ahead. We're well-positioned to emerge in this downturn leaner, more profitable ATI, A fierce competitor not waiting for markets to recover as we gain momentum.

Scott, back to you.

[Scott Minder, Vice President, Investor Relations]

Thanks Bob. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we're ready for the first question.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

And our first question today comes from Richard Safran from Seaport Global. Please go ahead with your question.

[Richard Safran, Seaport Global]

Bob, Don, Scott, Good morning. How are you?

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Good morning, Rich. Welcome back.

[Richard Safran, Seaport Global]

Thank you, sir. So, two questions, both related to what a recovery looks like. First, with respect to jet engine products, I wanted to know if you could talk a bit about how jet engine products recover with higher volume. Now, Bob, I think you mentioned forgings in your opening remarks. I think materials lag, but I was curious about how different types of forgings castings and alloy manufacturing, what that looks like in a recovery.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Okay. Great. Yeah. So, let me take the first part on the shape of the recovery from the market aspect. And then I'll let Don talk about kind of the shape of the recovery from the API perspective in light of the transformation that we're going through. So, that's how it will help get to that answer.

I think when it comes to the jet engine materials, you're right. Our isothermal forgings are really kind of the leader of the pack for us in terms of the jet engine business. We've started to see -- I guess, during the downturn, our jet engine customers were pretty aggressive at adjusting their supply chain inventories and the demand pretty quickly. And so, we don't see tremendous amount of inventory in the pipeline. We have a little bit of stranded inventory ourselves that we're working through.

But you're right, the isothermal forgings will go -- will kind of pace with increases in demand pretty quickly. Lead times being what they are. We're starting to see real demand coming back. I think, it will accelerate through mid-year and be stronger in the back half, that's coupled with some share gains that we have coming into 2021 as well. So, I think that the isothermal forgings will be our leader of the pack. We have some smaller aerospace forgings that will go along with that. We're not in the castings business anymore, so we don't have quite as much visibility there, but I would expect they'll follow a similar trend.

When it comes to billet, bar, ingot, we're starting to see what I'd call emerging demand. One of the things that happened in the downturn was that every company -- I hate to say every man for himself, but every company was doing what they thought they needed to do to manage their cash. So not everyone in the supply chain that we supply is well-positioned for an uptake. So we'll see it a little lumpy. There should be some good emergency demand, and we think we're well-positioned to respond to that.

And you didn't ask specifically about airframe, but I think -- by mid-year, I think the billet, ingot, bar will be moving in the right direction for us. We'll start to see it tracking with engines. But I think the airframe side plate, in particular titanium plate, could be slow for most of 2021 before it starts to kind of work its way. And then 2022, we should start to see some increase there. So, hopefully that helps on the jet engine side.

But I think the worst of it for us was Q4, and Q1 is still a little bit of stabilization. We're not seeing the ups and downs that we saw in the order book before.

So, Don, maybe I'll turn it over to you and you can talk a little bit about the transformation.

[Don Newman]

Sure. There's a few different transformation elements that we're talking about in the overall business. But on terms specifically of the jet engines and how we're managing our inventory and being recovery ready, I think, one point to reinforce is we've done, I think, a very good job in managing down our inventory levels, but it's always been with us the mindset of being recovery ready. So as the market does turn and the demand signals are sent, we're in a good position that we can meet those demand.

But there's a broader effort around transformation that we've been doing in the business that are going to benefit us beyond just the jet engine space that you're talking about. And I think it's an important thing to think about as you consider what this business looks like in the recovery.

And so, let me kind of walk you through and give you some perspective. We've got a number of initiatives that we've got in place that we've talked about throughout 2020. Those initiatives include a lot of cost takeout that were delivered in 2020 that are going to have a wrap around effect in 2021. And we've got a transformational project that we announced in December, that's going to materially change our specialty rolled products business.

A fair question to ask Richard, if this was kind of what you were pointing toward is, Hey, how do you -- when you add up all this transformation, what does the new business look like at normalized -- at a normalized level? And so, as you think about that in 2019, which has called it a normalized period for us, we generated $440 million of EBITDA and we generated about 11% EBITDA margins off of that. With the cost takeouts that we have captured through 2020, as well as the transformational project that we spoke to in December, between those two efforts, the result is upward of $200 billion of run rate EBITDA added to what we delivered in 2019.

And so, the effect of that is pretty profound. That's 11% 2019 EBITDA margin, and with a pro forma reflection of what we've captured on cost reductions and where we are capturing and high confidence in head capture with the transformation in the SRP business, really makes it a 17% plus EBITDA margin at 29, 2019 volume level. And so, that's a 600 basis point expansion in EBITDA margin.

So as you're talking about transformation, as you're talking about how all the businesses evolving for 2021 and beyond, that's really how we think about the business and the benefits of these actions that we carried.

[Richard Safran, Seaport Global]

Thanks for that. And just quickly as a follow-up. So specialty energy projects that were referenced in your opening remarks, could you just discuss a bit about how much they're worth and when do you see those decisions being made?

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Yeah. So, those are -- lot of those decisions have actually been made in terms of other two types of things we were talking about. I think there's a pollution control activity, which is kind of nickel, alloy type materials that are going into Asia. A lot of those decisions have been made and, and that'll actually happen in 2021. I think their orders, if they're not in hand, they're here the commitments have been made. We're also seeing continue to strength in the solar space. Certainly, we're starting to see signs of land-based gas turbines kind of coming back.

And then the last piece of that is really probably you referring to as the clad pipes. And a lot of those are being less like right now, right? So, I think there's a pretty good order stack up over the next two, three years of some fairly major projects. We won't win them all, but we're going to be competitive on all of them. And so, I think, we'll start to see that probably hitting in Q2 from a shipment standpoint. That's our expectation. Does that help Rich?

[Richard Safran, Seaport Global]

It really does. Thanks for that color guys. I appreciate it.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Yeah.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from Gautam Khanna from Cowen. Please go ahead with your question.

[Gautam Khanna, Cowen]

Yeah. Hey guys. Good morning.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Good morning, Gautam.

[Gautam Khanna, Cowen]

Just wanted to ask maybe two questions, just first on the quarter itself. The high-performance EBIT margin, stripping out D&A and everything, was a negative 5.4%. I was wondering if there was anything -- it didn't look like mix was materially different sequentially. Was it just working days or something of that nature that brought it down sequentially? And then I have a follow-up.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Okay. So I'll take the first one, Gautam. I think what you saw in Q4 in addition to a slightly weaker mix, a little more transactional business that wasn't in the aerospace category, so that contributed to a dosing that was going on in Q4. We actually have some proactive inventory management. So, we wrote off some inventory that obviously affected the margins in Q4, but there's not going to be an ongoing concern.

[Gautam Khanna, Cowen]

Okay. And just to be clear on your -- it's a follow-up. The -- you're quite convinced, it sounds like that engine destocking has sort of peaked at this point. So on a sequential basis, Q1, Q2, it should get better than what we saw in Q3 and Q4. And obviously, then pick up with rates on the A320 and alike in the second half of the year. I just want to make sure I understood that.

And secondly, as a related airframe titanium, despite all the Boeing 787 development since the third quarter where they haven't been delivering aircraft, that does not change what you previously were expecting on airframe tite in 2021. Thanks.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Okay. So, let's see. So the first answer to your question and I'll add a little cover is yes, we're confident and there's jet engine side, partly because of that the day-to-day pulse with those customers -- I would say there's always going to be adjustments to schedules, but I think what we're seeing is more clarity and we were fairly confident that a lot of the adjustment that came to us really, and jet engine started in late 2019, related to -- issues related to the MAX. So, I think most of those supply chains got adjusted quickly and I think the wide-body issues where we've had probably three quarters since a lot of that activity started to become known.

So, I think the jet engine side, there's always going to be exceptions, but I think generally the answer to your question is yes, we're confident that we should see improvement in really throughout the year, but accelerating in Q or in the first half, and then looking much better in the second half as we get ready -- the pipeline gets ready for 2022. I guess the jet engine question.

And I think going back to your other question about tite plate, yeah, we believe 2021 will be the low watermark. I think we're following and tracking with Boeing's announcement of where they're going on a build. And I think, we are picking up share in the airframe business globally, so that'll help us in the back half of 2021. But I think it's going to be -- it'll be for tite plates specifically what you asked about, I think 2021 will be the low watermark for us there.

[Gautam Khanna, Cowen]

Thanks a lot guys.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Phil Gibbs from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead with your question.

[Philip Gibbs, KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Hey, good morning.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Hey, good morning, Phil.

[Philip Gibbs, KeyBanc Capital Markets]

So, my first question is just on the free cash flow bridge. I think you had pointed to being $40 million positive at the midpoint, excluding pension. When I think, Don about cash contributions, I've got about $100 million of interest, $160 million of CapEx and cash taxes. And then you've got some offset from networking capital. So, I'm ranging somewhere between $225 million and $250 million of cash needs for you all this year. Should we kind of take that as a decent range in terms of what you're trying to communicate and then add free cash flow to that to back into an EBITDA view in terms of what you all view as the potential for the year?

[Don Newman]

Yeah. I think, Phil, your logic is sound. What I would say is I wouldn't expect that kind of cash burn. But you think about where we're at from a cash generation standpoint, we've done a pretty good job pulling the right levers to manage cash through 2020 and ended at a really good -- really, really good spot. I do expect net-net to be a cash burner in 2021. I mean, not to the degree that you're thinking. But one thing that was a great benefit for us in 2020, that will be less of a benefit for us in 2021 is working capital releases.

And why is that? Well, with the decline that we had in the first half of 2020, we had pretty significant releases around our accounts receivables. And then later in the year, we were picking up momentum on our inventory releases. As you think about 2021, as we see 2021 second half, we would expect to see some growth in the business, which would then be a requirement for putting working capital on the ground. But we still think net- net that working capital is going to provide a source of cash for us. So that may be missing a bit from your calculation.

That plus, we are pretty disciplined when it comes to managing our levers. What we did in 2020, we adjust our CapEx pretty significantly to reflect the new demand. Expect that we're going to do the same things in 2021, and we will adjust our CapEx and we will adjust our inventory to really respond to the market signal. So that could be again, a bit of a positive relative to the burn number that you were talking about.

All that said …

[Philip Gibbs, KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Don, I wasn't talking about a burn. I was talking about the slide nine, from what I gathered you had free cash flow -- positive free cash flow of $20 million to $60 million, unless I'm looking at that wrong.

[Don Newman]

We had a positive of -- that's pre -- yeah that is pre pension contribution. And so that's right. I think that the key takeaway, when you think about our cash flow for 2021 is I would expect based upon what we know today to be a cash uner -- our user rather. But I think it will be a modest use and we're going to exit 2021 with still a very, very healthy level of liquidity. And it will adjust to the end market signals from a demand standpoint accordingly, whether that means we need to add more working capital in the form of inventory or whether we need to pull levers to reduce CapEx.

[Philip Gibbs, KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Okay. And then just in terms of a follow-up. I know clearly there were absorption issues for you on the second half. I think, Bob, you had just mentioned, you had written out some -- written down some inventory. Any way to calibrate in terms of how much the under absorption plus some of these inventory write-downs impacted your P&L in the second half of the year. Could it have been $20 million a quarter, that type of thing and when do you expect some of these things to desist in terms of the magnitude of impact? Thank you.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Yeah. I think back of the envelope is not that far off so. As you look at it, there are some adjustments we took in terms of carrying value around inventories. And there's the effect of the under absorption. And to think in terms of $10 million to $20 million a quarter as a combination for those two through 2020, that I think you're not that far off.

How to think about it for 2021? Again, it really depends upon the production level and the demand signals would get in the first half. If we expect first half to look similar to the second half of 2020, then you can -- they can similar -- similar effects to under absorption. And I think from an inventory carrying value standpoint, I would like to think that any net realizable value reserves that we had to had to book, we've already been taken, so we shouldn't see significant effect there. But under absorption would still be a potential for us, especially in the first half.

To get to the second half it's a little bit different. And that really depends upon the pace of growth, right? And so it's hard -- a little bit harder for us to speak to that.

[Philip Gibbs, KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Thank you all. Appreciate it.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Josh Sullivan from The Benchmark Company. Please go ahead with your question.

[Josh Sullivan, The Benchmark Company]

Hey, good morning and congratulations on the quarter here. Actually just following up on those cash burn comments for 2021, is there a scenario in 2022 where demand is going to potentially be picking up a little stronger, where we would continue to see it working capital build in a cash burn. But do you think you'll be set up exiting 2021 where 2022 shouldn't see a burn even in a very strong demand environment?

[Don Newman]

So, there's a -- the short answer is if there's strong demand, I would expect that we will be adding working capital in 2022. It really depends on the pace of the recovery. It also depends upon our -- we've talked a lot in 2020 about our focus on improving our working capital efficiency. And we did a phenomenal job of that in Q4. I mentioned in the prepared remarks that we reduced our percentage of working capital from 50% at the end of Q3, down to 40% in Q4. Our internal goal is we want to get back to the 30% level and lower. Well, the pace for our being able to achieve that goal is going to be an offset to what we need to add to our working capital because of an uptick.

And so, if we're really fortunate, we can do a good job offsetting the requirement for investing in working capital with becoming more efficient with working capital. But generally, I think you should think of 2022 as a year of investing for additional working capital to fund the growth that we're seeing in 2022, which is -- obviously that's a good thing, right? We don't mind investing for growth.

[Josh Sullivan, The Benchmark Company]

Good. No, thanks for that. And then just switching over to the strength in the STAL venture in China, can you just provide us some color on the strength in those markets sequentially? And what we had Apple deliver its largest number of iPhones by pre-summit Smith's ever, is that strength for STAL more broad based than consumer electronics, or is that really the focus market for you guys?

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Great question. So, I'll start off with congratulating the team that runs our precision rolled strip business in China. The fourth quarter was a record performance for them. And that it's -- based on the investments we made, they're probably year and a half to two years ago. So they were well-positioned and they took advantage of it.

Now, in terms of the broad base, I think you start with consumer electronics at the core. We started to see the initial opportunities in solar that we've been kind of waiting for to be candid for a year or two, but we think there's growth there. There are things in our precision rolled strip businesses there that go into medical applications. You can see some things, hypodermic needles, various other things that PRS, precision rolled strip, goes into.

And in automotive, it's still an automotive play for us in Asia. There are -- we're making stainless -- especially stainless, that is the thickness of a human hair. So, there's a lot of applications and more sophisticated automotive applications that are there. So, I think it is broader than just consumer electronics. So, we feel good about. Other than the lunar New Year, which we can't do much about in Q1 seasonally. We expect that trend to continue based on the strength of the underlying markets.

[Josh Sullivan, The Benchmark Company]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Timna Tanners from Bank of America. Please go ahead with your question.

[Timna Tanners, Bank of America]

Yeah. Hey, good morning.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Good morning, Timna.

[Timna Tanners, Bank of America]

Good morning. I just wanted to ask two things. One is if we could kind of continue the discussion about cash usage, but talk a little bit instead of working capital, maybe about CapEx needs going forward. Because I caught onto your comments about putting out some projects and just wondering what that looks like when you catch up and how you're thinking about that. And then I have a high level question.

[Don Newman]

Sure. Timna, I'll take a run in answering that. As you think about 2020, we went into 2020 with the intent that we were going to invest somewhere between $200 million, $210 million in CapEx. And then, of course, when the pandemic hit, we hit the brakes. We did it in a very thoughtful way, but we really peeled back on that investment, took it down to the mid 130s ultimately for 2020.

As we look at 2021, our guidance is $150 million to $170 million. The increase year-over-year is a modest increase with the idea that we -- we do expect to see some end market recovery that is going to create some demand pull for investment and certain assets. It's in support of specific customers. This is not a bill that, and they will come kind of approach. That's not how we -- how we do our CapEx. So, I think, if the 2021 plays out like we expect it will be, we're going to be in that $150 million to $170 million range.

Then to think -- if you're thinking past that, okay, what's the right way to think about capital investment post 2021, I think the $200 million to $210 million investment level that we were thinking for 2019, which was part of a normalized -- coming off of a normalized 2019, getting ready for organic growth that we saw in the business. I can see where that number could come back to life in 2022 CapEx, as we're preparing them for that delayed growth that we -- that was put on pause with the pandemic. And, of course, that -- I wouldn't expect that that's going to be an ongoing run rate for CapEx, but that's one way to think about 2021 and 2022.

[Timna Tanners, Bank of America]

Okay. Great. That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for that. And then, I guess, I know I'm asking you to kind of speculate here a little bit, but -- and some of these things are still evolving. But in light of the Biden administration kind of announced interest in shifting away from fossil fuels and kind of -- it seems a bit aggressively toward alternative energy. Can you remind us of the ATI suite of products and opportunities and where you might get hit because you used to supply some of those other areas, but also the opportunities? I know you've in the past been big in nuclear and maybe other green energy focused.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Yeah. Good question. I think when you start with -- you started with nuclear and we're still big in the nuclear space. So, I think that's an upside opportunity for us out of our Oregon operations. I think we're starting to see opportunities in solar, which although they tend to have a stainless space, they tend to be on the specialty end and really light gauge, tight tolerance types of things, kind of following the same issues with consumer electronics from a product standpoint.

Then you add into that emission control systems. I think the flue gas desulfurization as to what we used to call it, but it's really about what's going on with emissions globally. It's not really a U.S. issue. It's more of a global issue. And then I think the other thing you'll see more of is a resurgence of land-based gas turbines. There's still a shift from coal and oil to various things.

I think when you look at our product mix in the energy space, it's going to be the bigger chunk for us in the future. It's going to probably be 60% to 70% of what we do versus historically the oil &gas -- we spent in the old ATI, not the old, too all the ATI. But the prior product mix had a lot of oil & gas, consumer -- or I'm sorry -- chemical processing, hydrocarbon processing. I think you'll see us play less there. They tend to be more standard stainless type pipes and infrastructure types of things.

So, I think, the -- we're going to be worth corrosion, franked high temperature, unique issues are. And I think for the specialty energy sector, corrosion is kind of be a big material science issue that people are going to have to work through. So, I think we're well-positioned in some parts of the world. That's a matter of which parts of the world go first.

And I think, an electric vehicles, battery storage, hydrogen as a fuel -- hydrogen as -- and producing hydrogen there's opportunities there for more specialty materials. So, I think, nickel and titanium will play probably more on the nickel side in most of these applications.

So, does that help with the answer you were looking for Timna?

[Timna Tanners, Bank of America]

Yeah. It does. I just don't know how much of what you'd be losing that used to be hydrocarbon focused is versus what you'd be gaining with regard to the green energy. Is there a mix that's higher value add, or is it an offset or just rough numbers? What you think about incremental?

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Okay. Yeah. So, two parts to that. So, our decision to exit the standard stainless sheet is obviously a lower margin stuff. And the stuff we're moving into is definitely on the higher margin nickel, alloy type products that are harder to make different dimensions and specifications. So, we think it's a positive from a product mix standpoint, and it's a positive from -- fit with our material science technology. And it's part of the fundamentals of why exiting stainless was the right thing for us to do. So, yeah. It's a positive margin shift for us.

[Timna Tanners, Bank of America]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Paretosh Misra from Berenberg. Please go ahead with your question.

[Paretosh Misra, Berenberg]

Thanks and good morning guys. I was hoping if you could just elaborate a little bit about your isothermal forging business a little bit. So, first of all, just to confirm that is that 13%, 14% of your total sales? And then how much of that is direct sales to OEM versus selling powder or feedstock to those customers so that they can forge it at their own facility.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Okay. There's a lot of questions in there, Paretosh. I'm going to have to quibble about. So far a kind of at the end. So, yeah, isothermal forging is obviously what we do in our forged products business primarily in Cuday, Wisconsin. I don't know if we've actually ever said what percentage of our business is isothermal.

You asked the secondary question, which was, Hey, are you selling, ingot, billet and bar to other foragers? I would say today, depends on the grade, depends on the alloy -- I mean, our long-term goal was to make sure that our forging operation was 100% supplied by our own feedstock. Some customers provide the feedstock to forging. So over time, I would say today probably 40% is what we consume and 60% would be sold to other people to forge, but it's somewhat -- it's a directed by situation.

And then back to your first question, when you look at our forgings business in general, it's in the HPMC segment obviously. But it's about 30% of HPMC businesses, the actual forging business, and that would include the forging itself, plus the value out of the raw material that we pull through. But that's 2020, and obviously that's depressed in the current environment. And as we look forward that team's done a great job of positioning the business for share increases and kind of focusing on jet engine and still has a non-jet engine business, but it's less important.

So, let's go back -- and did that kind of cover the ground you were looking for an answer in?

[Paretosh Misra, Berenberg]

Yes, very much. Appreciate all the details here. And then maybe as a follow-up on your free cash flow guidance. So just a quick one, is that also the free cash flow guidance after the -- any dividends paid to non-controlling interest? Like I'm guessing primarily your JV in China, because it seems like you paid $7 million in 2020, but a bigger amount about $15 million dividend in -- sorry -- $7 million in 2020 and $15 million in 2019, so is that guidance after that?

[Don Newman]

Yeah. That would be excluding, because the dividends that are paid to the minority owner are actually in the finance section. So, they're not a part -- they're not part of the free cash flow definition or calculation. And the numbers that you -- that you've mentioned are kind of in that right area. I expect them to be kind of in the seven plus million dollar range.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from Matthew Fields of Bank of America. Please go ahead with your question.

[Matthew Fields, Bank of America]

Hey, everybody. I just wanted to sort of touch on liquidity and sort of uses of cash. And I just find it interesting that you ended the year basically with exactly the same amount, $956 million of liquidity that you ended 2019, just a weird quirk there.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

It is hard work. It's hard work to get to that number.

[Matthew Fields, Bank of America]

Yeah. Maybe that's not such a coincidence. But you kind of said heading into the pandemic that you wanted to sort of boost liquidity and you didn't -- you wanted to get your hands around kind of how deep the hole was going to be and for how long the hole was going to be before you kind of made any other moves. I just want to -- if you see kind of demand picking up in the second half of 2021, when do you feel like you're going be at a point where you can kind of deploy some of this potential excess liquidity on maybe debt reduction, or other things?

[Don Newman]

Sure. This is Don. Let me take a run at that. The -- yeah, the outcome for 2020 was an outstanding outcome. As you can imagine, when you look at what was happening in the business and the decline to the top line, being able to maintain flat liquidity in that kind of environment was an outstation, right? You have the choices wanting to start pulling the lever, and that's going to be driven by how we're seeing our end markets. What we see as a trajectory for the end market recovery, nine months before that demand really hits us. We're not going to deploy the capital any sooner than we need to. And so, it's hard for me to give you a definitive answer other than to tell you…

[Matthew Fields, Bank of America]

Demand comes back, it seems like you're trying to signal that there'll be a use of working capital, CapEx could kind of ramp back up to that $200 million number. It seems like 2022 will be sort of a more demanding cash year. Can you talk about kind of when we get further down the road this year in 2021, as you see 2022 coming more into focus, what the choice might be between organic investment and debt reduction and kind of where you ultimately want to end up on that debt reduction lever and sort of how we get there?

[Don Newman]

Sure. The temptation runs around cash as to look at one element of it and try to extrapolate and understand. The reality is we get to 2022 we're going to have a few different impacts to our cash flow. First and foremost is profitability. So, it's easy for -- as we're talking about cash to see the downside of needing to invest more in capital. But the reality is that means we're generating more cash through our activities through sales, which is a good guy for us.

We're still going to have the same leverage available to us to manage our capital, to manage your liquidity in 2022 as we do today. And that will be our working capital. Again, we've been, I think, pretty successful in becoming more efficient with working capital and we intend to continue to become more efficient as we continue to make progress toward our longer term goals. Same thing with CapEx. We'll be making decisions around CapEx, that'll be driven by the opportunities that exist at that time.

And so I wouldn't read too much into 2022 at this point, other than the say, if you're in the up cycle and you're seeing robust growth in the core business guys, that's what we make money. That's what we print cash. And so, if I need to dedicate some more of that to working capital, specifically, inventory and receivables on the shelf, it's not a bad environment to do that. We're happy in a high growth environment. We'll manage that very, very well.

So that kind of answers your question.

[Matthew Fields, Bank of America]

Yeah. That's -- those are all fair points. Thanks a lot and good luck in 2021.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

All right. Thanks, Matt.

[Don Newman]

Okay.

[Robert Wetherbee, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Okay. Well, thank you to all the participants and listeners for joining us today. That concludes our third quarter 2020 conference call.

[Operator]

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.