JGC Holdings Corp

TSE:1963

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q2

[Shinichi Taguchi, executive]

This is Shinichi Taguchi, General Manager, Group Finance and Accounting Department. I am pleased to explain the outline of the second quarter FY 2021. Allow me to begin with Slide 3. This shows the highlights for the second quarter. Total Engineering segment, thanks to the sure execution on our side, we had several projects having improved profit. Profit margin went above the assumption we had in the beginning of the fiscal year. Functional Materials Manufacturing. In this segment, demand is continuing to recover, particularly in the fine chemical. With this, it has become more apparent this business is growing both in sales and profit. Our negotiations with the client for the Ichthys LNG project resulted in a settlement based upon the final agreement. We were able to finish the number within the range of the extraordinary loss posted in the first quarter. Next, please look at Slide 4, on the consolidated income statement. Net sales was JPY 217.9 billion, up JPY 18.5 billion year-on-year. Gross profit was JPY 20.8 billion, down JPY 700 million. Operating profit was JPY 10.3 billion, down JPY 1.1 billion. Profit declined due to the large onetime increase in profit in the same quarter previous year, but profit ratio became 9.6%, above the 8.1% we had forecasted in the beginning of the year. Ordinary income was JPY 12.6 billion, up JPY 600 million year-on-year. This was driven mainly by the increased profit and investment based upon equity method as well as the decline in the loss by foreign exchanges due to the cheaper yen. Pure net loss attributable to owners of the parent was JPY 48.4 billion on the quarterly basis. We booked extraordinary loss for the Ichthys-related loss. So we are showing the final loss number here. Next Slide 5. This shows information by segment. Total Engineering, this segment is surely increasing the number of the projects at hand. Net sales was JPY 195.6 billion, up JPY 17.1 billion year-on-year. And segment profit was JPY 7.1 billion, down JPY 1.9 billion. The major contributing projects were an LNG project in Canada, a floating LNG project in Mozambique, a refinery project in Iraq and a biomass power plant in Japan, among others. Functional Materials Manufacturing. Its sales and profit growth, thanks to the recovery in the domestic demand here in Japan. Net sales was JPY 21.4 billion, up JPY 1.2 billion. Segment profit was JPY 3.7 billion, up JPY 1 billion. Please refer to the numbers in others for your reference. Slide 6 shows balance sheet. Total assets became JPY 651 billion, down JPY 51.4 billion from the beginning of the year. The provision portion in the first quarter was liquidated as a result of the final resolution reached in the negotiations with the client for the Ichthys LNG project. Due to the posting of the final loss from the extraordinary loss posties for the Ichthys LNG project, net assets went down compared with the end of the previous fiscal year. The shareholders' equity ratio was 55.9%, showing the solid financial condition. The balance of our share of cash in joint ventures, which is not posted in the balance sheet, was JPY 202.6 billion. Slide 7 for cash flows. The balance of cash and cash equivalent is down JPY 9.1 billion from the beginning of the fiscal year to JPY 259.1 billion. Cash used in operating activities amounted to JPY 4.8 billion. This negative cash flow is primarily due to the payments from advances received in previous fiscal year as a result of the progress made with the construction in the Total Engineering segment. Cash used in investing activities was JPY 3.9 billion due to investments in corporate venture capital, capital investment related to the Functional Materials Manufacturing segment and DX-related investment. Cash used in financial activities was JPY 0.9 billion due to dividend payment and others. Slide 8 for new contracts. We forecasted JPY 500 billion in new contracts for the full year, and have reached JPY 123.9 in new contracts. For overseas clients' investment decisions on the large-scale anticipated project are expected later in the fiscal year, and the new contracts only amount to JPY 13.4 billion. In Japan, orders were strong, with approximately 70% of the full year forecast of JPY 110.4 billion achieved. Major project includes the construction of a pharmaceutical plant. Slide 9, outstanding contracts. The order backlog as of the end of September 2021 was JPY 1,128.7 billion, down slightly since the end of the previous fiscal year. By business area, orders related to oil and gas accounted for 41%, and related to LNG accounted for 36%. By region, the orders backlog increased to 22% in Japan, but decreased to 32% in Americas and other, where sales achieved. Finally, Slide 10 for forecast for fiscal 2021. We have raised our forecast for income due to the higher-than-expected income in the first half in the Total Engineering segment, and the trend for higher income due to the recovery in demand in Functional Materials Manufacturing segment. There has been no change to our forecast for new orders, net sales and dividends. An exchange rate of JPY 113 to $1 has been used in these forecasts. We expect the impact of JPY 1 fluctuation in the exchange rate to be JPY 3 billion for sales, JPY 0.3 billion for growth profit and the JPY 0.4 billion for ordinary income. This concludes the overview of the financial results.

[Masayuki Sato, executive]

This is Masayuki Sato, Chairman of JGC. I am pleased to share our recent market environment as well as our outlook going forward. We announced our long-term management vision and our medium-term business plan back in May, 6 months have passed since then. Though now we are faced with big changes in our current times, it is still possible to predict long-term structural changes to some extent. We now committed ourselves to our long-term vision. We have JGC Group a purpose of enhancing planetary health as our milestones. We are here now to solve 3 social issues, namely realizing both stable supply of energy and decarbonization, efforts to reduce the environmental footprint and resource use, and building and maintaining infrastructure services to support human lives. Over the past 6 months, at COP26, the advanced nations announced their efforts to phase out coal-fired power in the 2030s, and the world as a whole do so in 2040s. A total of 46 countries agreed to this, excluding Japan, the U.S., China and India. We are reminded, and again, the world of energy is further progressing towards low carbon and decarbonization. Mr. Ishizuka will explain our efforts later, how the JGC Group is responding to such a movement. Hydrogen and fuel ammonia, sustainable aviation fuel, chemical recycling and others are now considered as engines for future growth for all our business groups as defined in our medium-term business plan. We believe that we are making a steady progress towards that end. In terms of the energy demand for the entire world, we do feel changes are actually taking place in the past 6 months. Since last year, the global energy demand has continuously dampened by COVID-19. But nowadays, we are observing the infections are settling down. And with the financial stimulus and policy support by some countries, though the situation varies from one country to another, we are now observing the global economy as a whole, moving on recovery trend, and energy demand is recovering. Lately, prices of crude oil and the natural gas have been soaring, and a variety of reasons are behind them, including political ones. And the trend of energy supply shortages has become clear. Needless to say, the trend of low carbon and decarbonization is irreversible, and we need to ensure to respond to this trend. Under these circumstances, I am convinced that the realistic energy transition, which is to realize low carbon and decarbonization while meeting the global energy demand for the time being, is essential for the global sustainable growth. Long-term management vision and medium-term business plan of JGC Group are based on the advancement of such realistic energy transition, and they represent the policy to expand energy demand and promote low carbon and decarbonization in parallel. In 2022 and onwards, presumably, the trend of energy supply shortage will continue, and the energy-related investment, which is currently sluggish, will be resumed. For the JGC Group, since last year, tough market environment has continued, but we assume partly, hopefully, that FY 2021 will be the bottom. On the other hand, we do not have optimistic prospect of sustained one-way expansion of the market from now. As mentioned before, as trend for low carbon and decarbonization is irreversible, we will accelerate the business diversification for other areas other than energy transition, as described in the long-term management vision and medium-term plan. I would appreciate your further support and the corporation. That concludes my remarks.

[Tadashi Ishizuka, executive]

Hello, everybody. This is Ishizuka. I am pleased to explain the business overview. Please turn to Page 2. Today, I will explain following those in contents. Please turn to Page 4. First, Total Engineering orders. The target in the beginning of the fiscal year was JPY 500 billion. I will go into details later, but overseas energy, JPY 260 billion; overseas infrastructure, JPY 80 billion; and domestic business being JPY 160 billion. So putting them together, the target was JPY 500 billion. As Mr. Taguchi already explained this, the actual order for the first half was JPY 124 billion. But if we look at the latest number since we closed Q2 up until today, the order number is now JPY 140 billion. Out of the JPY 124 billion, the domestic projects accounted for much of it. It has made remarkable progress. They include [ NGL project, Singapore catalyst plant ] and floating LNG FEED. So as of now, it stands at JPY 190 billion. It represents about 40% vis-à-vis the JPY 500 billion target. So we still have JPY 310 billion to go. I will cover this later, but we are firmly determined to achieve this target. Please turn to Page 5. As for the market environment, as Mr. Sato has already explained this, we are still having uncertainties overall, but our clients resumed orders for feasibility studies and FEED. I believe we are now seeing somewhat brighter signs. As has been explained also, we have received orders for feed for LNG project, FEED for the ethylene projects in the Middle East as well as the feasibility studies for chemical projects. Furthermore, we are receiving more inquiries about low-end decarbonization as well as clients' planned investment for resource circulation. And out of those inquiries, we are actually reading some real orders for feasibility studies and FEED. Being more specific, we are receiving possible feasibility studies for the blue ammonia, green hydrogen, gasification of chemical recycling of waste plastics. As for the large LNG project, we do have some expectations, say, FY '22 and onwards. At the LNG facility side, we do expect to have opportunities, say, for stopping flaring to burn extra gas for the sake of lower carbonization. This type of LNG utilizing a low-carbon technology, we believe, will become the mainstream. As for the domestic market, it has become quite strong. Active CapEx is continuing particularly in the pharmaceuticals and chemicals. We are already receiving many inquiries about vaccine in manufacturing facilities, for example. So I do expect the domestic market continues to be strong for some time to come. Please look at Page 6. The numbers I have already referred to earlier, JPY 260 billion, JPY 80 billion and JPY 160 billion. First, the Energy Solutions, JPY 260 billion. As of now, we have received orders as much as JPY 75 billion coming from FEED, for NGL expansion and LNG FEED. Going forward, we expect to receive orders for the large gas processing project in Saudi Arabia and the third phase construction in the U.S. for ethylene and gas chemicals. This is our long-standing client. In Thailand, there is a rather large joint chemical project. We have already submitted our quotation. So we do hope to get results, say, by the end of this year or by the end of the current fiscal year. Now the right-hand side on Page 6, on infrastructure. Here, unfortunately, opportunities are heavily concentrated in the second half. So first half performance is not that good. That said though, it is my pleasure to inform you here that we have LNG receiving-based project in Thailand and project in Malaysia in pharmaceuticals, and also the biomass fuel plant in Vietnam. We are now finally getting the fruits out of this we had planted in the past. With these opportunities coming up, we do hope that we can increase the numbers as much as possible. Now please, Page 7. This is domestic EPC. As has been explained several times, the domestic business is strong. In the first half, we received an order of JPY 110 billion. Included here is the largest ever for us, pharmaceutical manufacturing plant to produce specific drug substances. And going forward, well, we have already orders to date, JPY 115 billion. We will aim at JPY 160 billion or more from pharmaceuticals, FEED plants and maintenance and others. Now please look at Page 8. Here, I would like to update you on the 2 management projects we are now engaged in. First is the LNG project in Canada. This is a picture from the site. At the center is the main cryogenic tower. This is the main facility to cool down LNG. We have completed this installation. As shown in the picture, we still have some available land where we are going to install those modules now being produced in some countries. I will touch upon them later. Yes, our projects were affected by COVID-19. But we had completed a good round of negotiations with our client, concerning the adjusted delivery time as well as the additional cost. So the project is proceeding rather smoothly. Next, Page 9. This is the module that I was earlier talking about. Left shows the module now being made in [ Jingdong, ] China. This process module weighs 7,000 tonnes. The right one is now being made in Florence, Italy. This is a compressor module. Moving on to the next page. This shows modules to be shipped out from Indonesia. Pleased to inform you that the first shipment arrived at Canada today. So it is going rather smoothly. Please turn to Page 11. This is a project in Basra, Iraq that we received order in the previous year. And currently, it is in the procurement and engineering phase. This was also affected by COVID. But by having design meetings with clients in Dubai and other locations, we are progressing the project, minimizing the impact. This picture shows the groundwork on site. We will ensure thorough crisis management, including those for contingencies to complete that project. Please turn to Page 12. Functional Materials Manufacturing. Initial targets are shown in the middle, JPY 40 billion of net sales and JPY 5 billion of segment profit. As Taguchi mentioned before, they were revised upward due to strong demand to JPY 43 billion for net sales and JPY 6.6 billion for segment profit. As of today, JPY 21.4 billion of net sales and JPY 3.7 billion of segment profit were achieved. As for catalyst, chemical catalyst recovered strongly. In Fine Chemical products, demand for silica sol, cosmetics materials and coating agent for glasses and the polishing materials for semiconductor production equipment have also been robust. Page 14. Medium-term business plan includes 3 key strategies: first one is transformation of EPC operation; the second one is expansion of manufacturing business for high-performance functional materials; and the third one is the establishment of future engines of growth. Let me briefly comment on them. But as I would like to spare more time for Q&A session, I'd like to walk you through the topics here. Page 14 shows the transformation of EPC operation. To accelerate the transformation of overseas EPC operation, Mr. Farhan Mujib, who joined the company in May 2020 was appointed as a President of JGC Corporation effective January 1, 2022. He was formerly the President in charge of project delivery at KBR, Kellogg Brown & Root. Second, for the EPC DX, 250 members are working to complete this EPC DX. From April 2023, we will realize complete digitalization under the slogan of digital project delivery. Third one, strengthening framework for domestic pharmaceutical business was already press released. We acquired a pharmaceutical plant EPC business of IHI Plant Service, and will pursuit the drastically growing pharmaceutical business. The last one is to start the preparations to establish regional headquarters for Asian market. Preparation has finished. And from January 2022, the operation will start. Please turn to Page 15. Second key strategy is the expansion of manufacturing business for high-performance Functional Materials, responding to higher semiconductor demand. We are considering the expansion of production capacity of CMP polishing materials to increase production. As for venturing into high-speed communications materials, as you know, with the progress in 5G, new materials are required, and we are developing these materials. And we are expanding application for future life science materials, including antibacterial and dental materials. In fine ceramics, we concluded basic agreement on transferring the ceramics business of Showa Denko Materials, which was former Hitachi Chemical, one of our peers, to expand the portfolio of our ceramics business. Please turn to Page 16. Establishment of future engines of growth. Sato mentioned this before, not only devoting to the immediate EPC business, but we are also seeding for the following years and for the future. The top one is SAF, sustainable aviation fuel. We are developing SAF with Revo International and Cosmo Oil, targeting the market supply in 2025. As for green chemical, as mentioned before, feasibility studies were awarded. And in Fukushima Prefecture, we work with Asahi Kasei for green chemical demonstration project. SMR, small modular reactors, was also press released. We invested in the U.S.-based new scale power to participate in projects in Asia, among others. Recently, under Biden administration, it is reported that SMR will be introduced in Romania, and we expect the increasing opportunities in the future in this field. As for circular economy, we are working jointly with universities and manufacturers in plastic waste recycling through oilification and gasification and textile recycling. The initiatives presented in this future growth engine will not be reflected in the business results immediately. But we'll continue to work on these as seeding for the future growth of the group. This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your attention. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]