Huntsman Corporation

The question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone today should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. Please note that this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'll now turn the conference over to Ivan Marcuse, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Mr. Marcuse, you may now begin.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Huntsman's fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. Joining us on the call today are Peter Huntsman, Chairman and President, and Phil Lister, Executive Vice President and CFO. Yesterday, on February 21st, 2024, after the U.S. equity markets closed, we released our earnings for the fourth quarter 2023 CFO. press release and post it to our website, huntsman.com. We also posted a set of slides and detailed commentary discussing the fourth quarter of 2023 on our website. Peter Huntsman will provide some opening comments shortly, and we will then move into the question and answer session for the remainder of the call. During this call, let me remind you that we may make statements about our projections and expectations for the future. All such statements are forward-looking statements as well. They reflect our current expectations. They involve risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance. We should review our filings with the SEC filings for more information regarding the factors that could cause actual results that differ materially from these projections and expectations. We do not plan on publicly updating or revising any forward-looking statements during the quarter. We will also refer to non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income or loss, and free cash flow. You can find reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings release, which has been posted to our website, huntsman.com. I'll now turn the call over to Peter Huntsman, our chairman, CEO, and president.

Ivan, thank you very much. Thank you for joining us this morning. Last evening, we released our prepared remarks for the fourth quarter 2023 results. Before opening the call to questions, I'd like to take a few minutes and share with you our latest plans and views as we enter the second half of the first quarter. At the outset, I remind you that we have complete financial results for the month of January, but still have two more months until we know the full results of the first quarter. I'm also still a bit haunted by the ghosts of a year ago when many of you and most companies were projecting 2023 to have a weak beginning, but a very strong second half. The second half proved to be nothing short of a disaster. Let me begin by saying by sharing with you our five main goals for this year. First, this will be a year wherein we will recover some lost sales from 2023. A year ago, we showed strong pricing discipline early in the year, and in many cases, we held the line and kept pricing from falling faster than they otherwise would have. In some cases, we lost business competition who were pushing volume over value. Going forward, we will be pushing much-needed price increases in most of our product ranges, but we will also be negotiating to get back some of that lost volume. Our second priority will be to improve our free cash flow generation. This will be at the top of our incentive pay targets for 2024. We will do this through a continued focus on working capital, controlling both indirect and direct costs, and moving more volume in higher prices. Our third priority is to maintain discipline in our cost structure. We will complete our previously announced cost reduction programs in each of our divisions and our corporate functions. We will also be focused on offsetting projected 3% to 4% inflation increases. Our fourth priority will be to continue as we have for the past several years, assessing our portfolio on an ongoing basis to ensure that we are the best owners for the businesses and assets that we have. We will continue to look for M&A opportunities to expand our more differentiated downstream businesses. Lastly, and most importantly, we will invest to continue improving our environmental and safety stewardship and our operating reliability. This focus on managed risks will also apply to our investment grade balance sheet. Our board of directors remains committed to returning cash and value to our shareholders. To this end, we will be raising our dividend by 5% a share to 25 cents a quarter. While we do not plan to buy back any shares in the first quarter, we look forward to restarting our buyback program as soon as market conditions warrant. As I said at the beginning, It is still too early in the quarter to make bold predictions. However, the order patterns that I'm seeing in most areas of the world tells me that in most of our divisions, we have seen the end of a very long period of inventory drawdowns, and prices and volumes look to be gradually improving. With the restarting of China's economy post-New Year celebrations, I feel more optimistic than I did at year end and see more proverbial green shoes than I have over the past 12 to 18 months. We have a lot of recovery before us, but I believe we're taking the right steps in the right directions. Thank you very much. And with that, operator, why don't we open the lineup for any questions?