Howmet Aerospace Inc. (HWM) Jefferies 2024 Global Industrial Conference (Transcript)

Howmet Aerospace Inc. (NYSE:HWM) Jefferies 2024 Global Industrial Conference September 5, 2024 10:25 AM ET

Company Participants

John Plant – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Conference Call Participants

Sheila Kahyaoglu – Jefferies

Sheila Kahyaoglu

Good morning, everyone. My name is Sheila Kahyaoglu, with the Jefferies Aerospace and Defense Equity Research team, and thank you for Howmet for supporting our conference. We have John Plant. In case, you don't know him. He's Chairman and CEO.

And thanks, John, for joining us. We have Ken in the audience and PT somewhere back there, too. I can't see them through the lights. But John, you've defined the odds and raised all guidance metrics two quarters in a row despite people thinking you wouldn't do that. So thanks for that, really support my buy rating here.

And how would you assess the current state of aerospace build rates, given the schedule changes we've seen? You've been quite conservative and quite right on that. What are your major customers saying to you? How should we think about the underbuilt or overbuild opportunities from here for Howmet?

John Plant

I guess, the most important thing to focus on is why does 2025 look like rather than try to guess a build rate on a particular platform for the remainder of this year. I mean, this year is essentially pretty much over with, I think even though it's probably – doesn't feel like it to yourself, Sheila. And my assumption is that everybody is going to want to try to build more.

And therefore, everybody is going to want more product in the commercial aerospace arena. And I think it's whether it's Boeing, lifting their rate of production higher than where they are today or Airbus, again, raising their rate of production because they originally wanted to be at a higher rate