Innospec Inc.

This is David Jones. I'm Inispec's General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer. Late yesterday, we reported our financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2022. The earnings released in this presentation are posted on the company's website. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, and other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results implied by forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties are detailed in Inspec 10-K, 10-Q, and other filings of the SEC. Please see the SEC site or Inspec site for these and other documents. In our discussions today, we've also included non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure is contained in the earnings release. The non-GAAP financial measure should not be considered as a substitute for or superior to those prepared in accordance with GAAP. They are included as additional items to aid investor understanding of the company's performance in addition to the impact that these items and events have on financial results. With me today from InnoSpec are Patrick Williams, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Ian Clemonson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. And with that, I turn it over to you, Patrick.

Thank you, David, and welcome everyone to InnoSpec's second quarter 2022 conference call. This was another very good quarter for InnoSpec. volume, price, and mix improvements drove double-digit increases in sales and operating income in all businesses. Our manufacturing supply chain teams have remained extremely resourceful through these ongoing global imbalances, and we continue to build on our reputation as a consistent and reliable partner to our customers. Performance chemical sales grew in all end markets. Operating income was up 61% over last year, and EBITDA margin surpassed 20%. Personal care demand drove most of the margin in operating income improvement over the prior year and more than offset weaker demand in smaller segments like European home care. To support personal care growth, we are adding capacity under our current two-year $70 billion organic investment program. In addition, this quarter we opened our new 20,000 square foot global technology center which supports R&D and technical services across all our performance chemicals business segments. To further position for long-term growth, last week we closed on the purchase of significant additional land adjacent to our primary U.S. performance chemicals manufacturing facility in North Carolina. Fuel Specialties delivered an 11% increase in operating income over a strong comparative quarter last year. Gross margins remain at the lower end of our target range. However, we expect improvement as inflation normalizes and higher margin in markets like jet fuel fully recover. We continue to have success in introducing our innovative technologies into new applications and in markets. Several of these segments, like low-slope marine fuel, renewable fuels, and non-fuel application areas, have delivered double-digit growth over the past several years. These opportunities have exciting growth potential and are aligned with global sustainability objectives. Oilfield services operating income approximately doubled versus the prior year. Despite continued growth in our production chemicals segment, recovery in our completions business and overall performance is still below our internal expectations. We expect sequential operating income and margin expansion to continue in the coming quarters. Now I will turn the call over to Ian Clementson, who will review our financial results in more detail. Then I will return with some concluding comments. After that, Ian and I will take your questions. Thanks, Patrick.

Turning to slide 7 in the presentation, the company's total revenues for the second quarter were $467.6 million, a 32% increase from $354.5 million a year ago. Overall gross margin decreased slightly by 0.7 percentage points from last year to 29.9%. EBITDA for the quarter was $52.9 million compared to $50.6 million last year and net income for the quarter was $32.3 million compared to $22.4 million a year ago. Our gap earnings per share were $1.29 including special items. the net effect of which decreased our second quarter earnings by 29 cents per share. A year ago, we reported gap earnings per share of 90 cents, which included a negative impact from special items of 40 cents per share. Excluding special items in both years, our adjusted EPS for the quarter was $1.58 compared to $1.30 a year ago. Turning to slide eight, Revenues in performance chemicals for the second quarter were $169 million, up 32% from last year's $128.2 million. Volumes grew 6%, with a positive price mix of 34%, offsetting an adverse currency impact of 8%. Gross margins of 25.8% were up by 1.2 percentage points, compared to 24.6% in the same quarter in 2021. benefiting from the growth in higher margin personal care business. Operating income increased 61% from last year to $28.8 million. Moving on to slide 9, revenues in fuel specialties for the second quarter were $176.4 million, 23% higher than the $143.1 million reported a year ago. Volumes grew by 3% and there was a positive price mix effect of 27% offsetting a negative currency impact of 7%. Fuel specialties gross margins are 32.3% with 2.7 percentage points below a relatively strong quarter last year and will remain at the lower end of our expected range until inflation moderates. Operating income increased 11% from last year to 31.5 million. Moving on to slide 10, revenues and oilfield services for the quarter were £122.2 million, up 47% from £83.2 million in the second quarter last year. Gross margins of 32.2% were broadly the same as last year, and operating income of £4.5 million was a £2.3 million improvement from a year ago. Turning to slide 11, Corporate costs for the quarter were £18.5 million compared with £11.6 million a year ago, due mainly to higher personnel-related expenses driven by increased share-based compensation and performance-related accruals. The effective tax rate for the quarter was 23.6% compared to 44.1% a year ago, which included the enacted change in the United Kingdom tax rate impacting deferred tax. The adjusted effective tax rate for the quarter was 22.8% compared to 24.2% last year. Moving on to slide 12, cash generation for the quarter was impacted by a 43.7 million cash outflow for working capital, which resulted in an operating cash outflow of 7.5 million before capital expenditures of 9 million. As of June 30th, Innispec has $71.4 million in cash and cash equivalents and no debt. And now I'll turn it back over to Patrick for some final comments.

Thanks, Ian. Global economic and supply chain uncertainty is expected to continue in the coming quarters. This will not distract our focus from safe operations, product innovation with exceptional customer service and support. Although we are seeing some signs that cost inflation could begin to moderate parts of our business, we continue to manage price actions in close collaboration with our customers. Coming into the third quarter, we see strong demand across all our businesses. Personal care volumes, which drive over 75% of Performance Chemical's operating income, are supported by multi-year contracts with recent capacity additions sold out as they come online. Fuel Specialties has historically been a relatively steady business during slower economic periods due to our chemistry's critical performance in our customers' products. We feel that Oilfield Services continues to have significant growth potential with the target returning to pre-COVID operating income levels over the medium term. This quarter, we continue to return value to shareholders with our $15.6 million semiannual dividend and $1.8 million of share repurchases. Despite any near economic volatility, we believe that our strong balance sheet positions us for further dividend growth and share repurchases while funding our organic investment priorities and M&A. Now I will turn the call over to the operator, and he and I will take your questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for a name to be announced. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A.

This will take a few moments. Now we're going to take our first question.

And it comes from the line of Mike Harrison from Seaport Research Partners. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Hi, good morning, and congratulations on a strong quarter.

Thanks, Mike. Thank you, Mike.

I was wondering if you could walk through the trends that you're seeing in Europe in both your performance chemicals business and fuel specialties. Where are you seeing pockets that are softening, and where are you seeing some pockets that might be more resilient?

Yeah, Mike, it's Patrick. You know, in Europe we're seeing still strong personal care, and that's globally. The weaknesses that we're seeing in Europe are strictly in the home care area. Now, it's a smaller part of our business. Therefore, we're still seeing significant growth in that region. And I think we're seeing the same in fuel specialties. We have nice growth in Europe. We're seeing really good growth in the United States and South America. You know, it's still a little slow in ASPAC due to some of the Asian countries still shut down due to COVID. But overall, we're really still seeing strong demand and strong growth in most of our markets.

And then I have to ask this question that's being asked of a lot of companies right now, which is in terms of the potential for energy rationing and maybe some natural gas shortages in Europe. Can you talk about facilities that might be impacted or maybe more broadly how you might be impacted? But I believe that you have a facility in Germany that is reliant on ethylene by pipeline. What do you think happens there? And I guess as it relates to fuel specialties in Europe, I would think of those products as being pretty essential to having the economy function. So would you expect to be in a position to be higher on the priority list if there were some rationing going on.

Yeah, Mike. So we've run our contingency plans on all of our plants in Europe. We have two plants. One you just mentioned that has a plant that sits off an ethylene line, but it sits in a major manufactured industrial facility. We could run that plant for quite some time off of steam if there was a severe natural gas shortage in that area. The other plant is in Castelloni that would require us to either A, increase inventory, or B, move it to one of our other diversified plants where we can react the same products. So the good thing about our business when we ran our contingency plan is we have planned for both of those plants on a just-in-case basis and it goes to a 20% to 80% cut on natural gas. So we think we're in a good spot. Now, we can't control what happens to the consumer. We can't control what happens to raw materials coming in. What we can control is our plants, and we think we're sitting in a pretty good position.

All right, and then wanted to ask about the additional land that you acquired for the performance chemicals facility in North Carolina. It suggests that you have a vision of future capital programs beyond the current $70 million in projects that you're spending on currently. So can you help us frame up the future scope of that facility in North Carolina and maybe what additional capabilities or technologies or product lines you're going to be looking to add to?

Yeah, it really stays within the strategy of 1,4-dioxane-free, nitrosamate-free, sulfate-free strategy. It gives us continuous acreage. It gives us more than enough ability to expand and add more reactors, as well as roads and expand offices if needed. It would be in addition to the $70 million if and when we use that expansion, which I would assume it will be sometime in the next five years. But over the next two years, you'll see us staying where we are and expanding on the current facility that we're at right now. It just gives us the ability, Mike, as we grow our strategy and our strategy increases in the market, it gives us the ability to add on to that area of business focus that we're at right now.

All right. Sounds good. And then the last question for me is on performance chemicals and the gross margin performance there look pretty good. Not many companies are showing gross margin improvement right now. Can you comment on how you're seeing price cost play out in the second half in performance chemicals and maybe how some of the fixed costs related to this additional capacity are flowing in and might impact your margin performance as we think about the second half?

That's a good question, Mike. What we're seeing right now is really good demand, particularly in our performance chemicals business. And that's what's really driving that gross margin improvement. We said earlier in the script that the sales mix is very strong for us, which is pushing our gross margins to that 25 percentage point range. Right now, we'd be expecting to be somewhere between 24 to 25 for the remainder of this year. As we add additional volume on, like we were alluding to earlier, that's only going to help with the gross margins. And I think it's worth just looking back a number of years. And if you go back to probably 2017 when we first did the major acquisition in performance chemicals, our gross margins were in that sort of 18% range. And we knew that we could probably get them a lot higher. And we've worked very hard, and we've added five, six, seven percentage points on. Now, from here on in, it's going to be pretty much incremental. But certainly, as we sit here, additional volume, pricing is sticking, customer demand is good. So we're looking pretty solid for the rest of this year in that 24% to 25% gross margin range.

And I guess the last piece of that is on cost. Are you seeing some at least moderation in the rate of inflation or any signs of stabilization in some of your input costs?

Yeah, so specifically in performance chemicals, I think we are just about starting to see some moderation towards the back end of the quarter three. Sorry, back in the quarter two. Let's see what happens in quarter three and beyond. Fuel specialties, we didn't see any relief so far in quarter three, in quarter two, but we're hopeful that we'll start to see some in quarter three or quarter four, and it's the same in oil fields. So it's still pretty difficult for us out there, but we're doing a great job working with our customers, suppliers, being creative, managing our way through that, through additional inventories, through lots of price increases, and we're going to have to see that continuing into Q3.

All right. Thanks very much.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Thank you.

Now we are going to take our next question. Please stand by.

And the next question comes to the line of John Tan Van Tang from CJS Securities. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Good morning. This is Stephanos Christ calling in for John. Thanks for taking our questions.

Morning, Stephanos. Morning.

Could you just give us a little more detail on the home care business and how that relates to just what you're seeing in consumer demand and sentiment and just where you see that trending going forward?

Yeah, again, as we said, it's mostly in Europe, and it is a little consumer demand has come off a little bit. We don't think it's going to be long-term. It is market-driven. We've well-positioned that business, and being that it is a smaller business, portion of the business it's not a big concern we have the products the markets there it's just strictly a demand issue right now and it's not way off stephano it's it's just off a little bit gotcha thank you um and just quick one in here um what are you seeing in the m&a pipeline and you know any potential targets and maybe a possible time on it any further m&a Yeah, I mean, you're seeing multiples start to retract a little bit, you know, just strictly due to interest rates. I think that people now who are highly leveraged in a concerning market of potentially of a recession are looking at things more strategically, which gives us an opportunity to potentially take something off the table. We're looking at a lot of deals. We've walked away from a lot. There are some that have interest. But I think that, you know, we're just being very cautious. And, you know, we're in a volatile market right now, and we just need to be careful. We've got more than enough organic growth for this company to move forward in a controlled way. And so it's just really right now, once we find that deal, we won't let it stop us, but we haven't found that deal that we're looking for. But I will tell you, I do think something could pop up over the next six to 12 months is our hope.

Sounds great. Thanks so much for taking our questions.

Thank you.

Thank you. There are no further questions, and I would like to hand back to our speaker, Patrick Williams, for closing remarks.

Thank you all for joining us today, and thanks to all our shareholders, customers, and InnoSpec employees for your interest and support. If you have any further questions about InnoSpec or matters discussed today, please give us a call. We look forward to meeting up with you again to discuss our third quarter 2022 results in November.