Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. (RS) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2023

April 27, 2023 11:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Reliance Steel & Aluminum Company First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Kim Orlando with ADDO Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kim Orlando

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thanks to all of you for joining our conference call to discuss Reliance's first quarter 2023 financial results. I am joined by Karla Lewis, President and Chief Executive Officer; Steve Koch, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; and Arthur Ajemyan, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. A recording of this call will be posted on the Investors section of our website at investor.rsac.com.

The press release and the information on this call may contain certain forward-looking statements, which are based on a number of assumptions that are subject to change and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties or other factors, including the impacts of inflation, geopolitics and the COVID-19 pandemic and related economic conditions on our future operations. Which may not be under the company's control and may cause the actual results, performance or achievement of the company to be materially different from the results, performance or other expectations implied by these forward-looking statements.

These factors include, but are not limited to, those factors disclosed in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, under the caption Risk Factors, disclosure in our press release this morning and other documents, Reliance files or furnishes with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The press release and the information on this call speak only as of today's date and the company disclaims any duty to update the information provided therein and herein.

I will now turn the call over to Karla Lewis, President and CEO of Reliance.

Karla Lewis

Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss our first quarter 2023 financial results. I'll begin with an overview of our performance and capital allocation strategy. Steve will then speak to our operating results and demand trends by end market, and Arthur will conclude with a review of our financial results and outlook for the second quarter of 2023.

Beginning with our first quarter performance. We started the year off strong as our highly diversified business model continued to yield favorable results in an uncertain business environment. Our first quarter net sales of $3.97 billion increased approximately 10% from the fourth quarter of 2022. Our sales benefited from solid demand in the vast majority of our end markets, with our tons sold up 17.7% from the fourth quarter of 2022 which were partially offset by a lower average selling price. This was the highest sequential increase from the fourth quarter we've seen in our tons sold in the last decade.