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Text: With us on the call today are Michael Kasbar, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Ira Birns, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
If not, you can access the release on our website.
Before we get started, I would like to review World Fuel's safe harbor statement.
A description of the risk factors that could cause results to materially differ from these projections can be found in World Fuel's most recent Form 10-K and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
As with prior conference calls, we ask that members of the media and individual private investors on the line participate in listen-only mode.
I hope you're all well, and I hope you are as optimistic as I am about the medium and long-term future market opportunities.
We opened the year with a strong first quarter, once again demonstrating the resiliency of a well-diversified portfolio.
And considering current market conditions, all of our businesses performed well.
Our balance sheet and cash flow has never been stronger.
We believe we had a significant medium- and long-term opportunity to deploy capital in our North American C&I, meaning commercial and industrial, liquid fuel business and globally in fuel, gas, power, carbon and renewables to serve our aviation, marine and land customers and drive the energy transition.
As I mentioned last quarter, the work we have done over the last few years in talent, culture and leadership is having a positive impact.
We are converging our organization and business solutions in line with the transitioning marketplace.
Combining functions and the business itself is creating greater efficiencies and effectiveness as well as greater mobility and career opportunities for our global teams.
Consolidating our global origination, fulfillment and support with our digital and sustainability competencies gives us a forward-ready business as the world emerges from this global health and economic crisis.
We are already a globally diverse group, and the inclusiveness that convergence drives is accelerating value creation as our customers see comprehensive solutions and pathways to lower carbon footprints and supply chains.
We are maintaining the cost discipline achieved so far on operations as markets reopen.
We have grown market share in our global land business with higher quality, ratable business activity.
We see a long runway of growth opportunities in this space.
And now, as we experience the world's growing commitment to sustainability, we view this as an incredible opportunity to tap into our ability to create innovative solutions.
I am personally more excited and enthusiastic about our future prospects as a global team than I have been in years.
We have been through our most challenging stress test ever, and our global teams performed flawlessly.
We have never been tighter or more coordinated.
Building a global, diverse and increasingly digital energy and logistics solutions business is not easy.
So that is exactly what we have done.
And we are highly motivated to continue to build and leverage our platform.
It's not easy to have global share of anything, but we have achieved that in two businesses, and we are well on our way to do that in our World Connect global land business, simultaneously creating lower carbon synergies for our global marine and aviation businesses.
We are not only becoming more sustainable ourselves, but driving sustainability for the marketplace.
We are truly helping to build the better tomorrow by accelerating the green and digital agenda within and for our partners around the world.
It is hard to find an energy-related subject or a problem anywhere in the world that we cannot address in one way or the other.
World Connect is the emerging brand for comprehensive energy solutions.
And finally, more of our teams are getting fully vaccinated.
And this is both raising optimism and providing opportunities for greater engagement with each other and the market.
I hope you are all doing well and finding ways to return to some sense of normalcy.
Although the pandemic continues to present significant challenges across businesses globally, there has certainly been some encouraging developments, which has many of us a bit more optimistic about the prospects of increased levels of business activity.
I am extremely proud of how well our team has performed in the face of a multitude of ongoing challenges.
And our results this quarter are a testament to the value of our diversified business model, our expertise in the markets we serve and the dedication of our global team.
The nonoperational items for the quarter principally related to acquisition, divestiture and restructuring-related adjustments and expenses.
Now let's begin with some of the first quarter highlights.
Adjusted first quarter net income and earnings per share were $21 million and $0.33 per share respectively.
Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $62 million.
We generated another $103 million of operating cash flow during the first quarter and increased our net cash position to more than $210 million.
Consolidated revenue for the first quarter was $6 billion, an increase of $1.3 billion or 27% sequentially, but still well behind the pre-COVID revenue levels, which is principally driven by the year-over-year decline in volume in our aviation and marine segments when compared to 2020.
Our aviation segment volume was 1.1 billion gallons in the first quarter, essentially flat sequentially, but still well below pre-COVID activity levels.
While cargo operations and business aviation activity remains strong, overall aviation volume remains significantly below prior-year levels, driven by continued softness in global commercial passenger aviation activity, principally given slower vaccine rollouts abroad.
In the U.S., we have been experiencing increased activity with TSA daily throughput back to nearly 65% of prepandemic levels.
But despite some modest improvements in parts of Europe in the first quarter, continuing restrictions in most of Europe and Asia will likely prolong the broader recovery until vaccination rates accelerate in these regions.
Volume in our marine segment for the first quarter was 4.2 million metric tons, flat sequentially and down 13% from the strong prior year results we generated where the new IMO 2020 regulations were implemented last January.
Our land segment volume was 1.3 billion gallons or gallon equivalents during the first quarter, that's down 6% year-over-year, but up 2% sequentially, principally driven by increases in our World Connect natural gas operations as well as some seasonal improvement in the U.K. Land volumes have now rebounded to 97% of first quarter 2019 prepandemic levels.
Consolidated volume in the first quarter was 3.6 billion gallons, up slightly on a sequential basis, but down year-over-year, again, related to the items already mentioned.
Consolidated gross profit for the first quarter was $192 million.
That's a decrease of 18% compared to the first quarter of 2020 with an increase of $26 million or 16% sequentially.
Our aviation segment contributed $77 million of gross profit in the first quarter, down 15% year-over-year, but up 9% sequentially.
Year-over-year, in addition to the COVID-related profit declines from depressed commercial passenger aviation activity, the decrease was also related to the decline in government-related activity associated with the continued drawdown of troops in Afghanistan.
These declines were partially offset by higher average margins from a more profitable core business mix.
As we look ahead to the second quarter, aviation gross profit should increase sequentially, principally driven by the continuing recovery in domestic commercial passenger activity, partially offset by a further decline in our government business in Afghanistan.
As I am sure you are aware, earlier this month the U.S. and NATO announced its final withdrawal from Afghanistan by September, and therefore we expect further declines in this business activity over the balance of the year.
The marine segment generated first quarter gross profit of $25 million, that's down 57% year-over-year, but up 12% sequentially.
In addition to the pandemic-related impact, the year-over-year declines were principally driven by the strong results we saw in the first quarter of 2020, again related to the IMO transition to very low sulfur fuel oil.
But as we forecasted on last quarter's call, marine gross profit increased sequentially relating to strong results from our physical operations.
As we look ahead to the second quarter for Marine, based on what we've experienced through the first few weeks of April, we expect Marine gross profit to increase sequentially, driven by improvement in our core resale business activity.
And as we look to the latter part of the year, there's an increasing likelihood that cruise lines will begin sailing again, providing opportunities for additional improvement in the fourth quarter and into 2022.
Our land segment delivered gross profit of $89 million in the first quarter, up 5% year-over-year when excluding the profitability related to the multi-service business from last year's results and actually up 24% sequentially.
As we anticipated, we experienced solid sequential improvement in our U.K. heating oil business, driven in part by lockdowns for most of the quarter, but we also generated additional profitability during the quarter related to improved performance in our U.S. natural gas supply activities that was principally driven by the extremely cold weather in parts of the U.S. in February.
Looking ahead to the second quarter, we expect the traditional seasonal decline in land gross profit, which will be further impacted by the strong natural gas product contribution in the first quarter.
We believe the land segment has many opportunities ahead, from global sustainability initiatives to potential infrastructure bill spending, which would all benefit our commercial and industrial fuels business as well as our natural gas power and sustainability activities.
We continue to manage our operating expenses prudently.
Core operating expenses, which excludes bad debt expense, were $146 million in the first quarter, down $29 million or 17% from the first quarter of last year.
Looking ahead to the second quarter, operating expenses, excluding bad debt expense, should be generally in line with the first quarter in the range of $144 million to $148 million.
We had debt expenses in the first quarter with $3.6 million, down both sequentially and year-over-year and down materially from the elevated levels in the second and third quarter of 2020.
This is further evidence of the solid team effort in managing our receivables portfolio through this stage of the pandemic.
Adjusted income from operations for the first quarter was $42 million, down 38% from last year but up 68% sequentially related to the segment activity that I mentioned previously.
Adjusted EBITDA was $62 million in the first quarter, down 29% from 2020 and up 39% sequentially.
Again, the year-over-year decline in income from operations and adjusted EBITDA was principally driven by the impact of the pandemic as well as benefits from supply imbalances and price volatility arising from the IMO 2020 implementation in the first quarter of 2020 for our marine business.
First quarter interest expense was $8.7 million, which is down 44% year-over-year and approximately 20% sequentially.
Total interest expense continues to benefit from lower average borrowings and interest rates.
At the end of the first quarter, we again had no borrowings outstanding under our revolver and ended the quarter in a net cash position in excess of $200 million.
We expect interest expense in the second quarter to be approximately $9 million to $10 million.
Our adjusted tax rate for the first quarter was 35.8% compared to 30.6% in the first quarter of 2020.
At this time, we expect our effective tax rate to remain elevated in the near term, primarily due to the current mix of U.S. and foreign earnings as well as the continuing effects of guilty and valuation allowances on certain of our foreign entities.
Our total accounts receivable balance increased significantly on a sequential basis to approximately $1.7 billion at quarter end, principally related to the 37% rise in average fuel prices from the fourth quarter.
We remain focused on managing working capital requirements, which resulted in operating cash flow generation of $103 million during the first quarter despite a significant sequential increase in accounts receivable.
In closing, despite continued weakness in the commercial passenger aviation market, we delivered a solid quarter, driven principally by very strong results in our land segment.
And we again delivered strong operating cash flow.
With vaccination rates up significantly in the United States, we are encouraged by the recent trends we are seeing in domestic commercial passenger activity and are hopeful that other parts of the world will begin to catch up over the next several months.
While we are appropriately inwardly focused over the first 12 months of the pandemic, during which time our team performed at a level of excellence for which they should all be very proud, we can now more clearly see the light at the end of the tunnel.
And we are coming out of the pandemic with a strong balance sheet, actually a stronger balance sheet than where we started prepandemic.
This strong balance sheet, including $735 million of cash, provides us with capital to further grow our core business organically as well as the ability to capitalize on strategic investment opportunities which should drive scale and efficiencies, most specifically in our land and World Connect business activities.
Our balance sheet liquidity and solid operating cash flow also provide us with capital to repurchase shares and fund dividends to further enhance shareholder value.
In demonstration of our commitment to enhancing shareholder value, over the past two years we've repurchased $134 million of our shares, and we increased our cash dividend twice, most recently, a 20% increase during the first quarter.

user
compname reports q1 adjusted earnings per share of $0.33.
q1 adjusted earnings per share $0.33.
qtrly revenue $5,957.9 million versus $8,015.2 million.

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