Koppers Holdings Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to COPPA's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. If you need assistance, please alert a conference specialist by pressing star followed by zero. Following the presentation, instructions will be given for the question and answer session. Please note today's event is being recorded. And at this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to Quynh McGuire. Please go ahead.

Thanks, and good morning. I'm Quynh McGuire, Vice President of Investor Relations. Welcome to our second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. We issued our press release earlier today. You can access it via our website at www.coppers.com. As indicated in our announcement, we've also posted materials to the Investor Relations page of our website that will be referenced in today's call. Consistent with our practice in prior quarterly conference calls, this is being broadcast live on our website and a recording of this call will be available on our website for replay through September 6, 2026. At this time, I would like to direct your attention to our forward-looking disclosure statement seen on slide two. Certain comments made on this conference call may be characterized as forward-looking statements as defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, including risks described in the cautionary statement included in our press release and in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In light of the significant uncertainties inherent in the forward-looking statements included in the company's comments, you should not regard inclusion of such information as a representation that its objectives, plans, and projected results will be achieved. The company's actual results, performance, or achievements may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during this call. Also, references may be made today to certain non-GAAP financial measures. The press release, which is available on our website, also contains reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. Joining me for our call today are Leroy Ball, Chief Executive Officer and Chair of Coppers, and Eric Brenner, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. At this time, I'll turn the discussion over to Leroy.

Thank you, Quynh. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. The second quarter represented another important step forward in the execution of our transformation strategy. During the quarter, we continue to drive significant cash generation, improve our operating footprint, and advance several initiatives that we believe will create meaningful shareholder value over the long term. Most notably, in May, we announced the decision to discontinue distillation and chemical operations at our Stickney facility and transition those activities to our Nyborg, Denmark facility as referenced on page four. Since then, we completed several significant milestones in the project and we're now accelerating the closure by a quarter with a new target date of September 30th, 2026 for the end of distillation activity at Stickney. This action contributed to significant non-cash charges in the quarter that impacted our reported net loss and gap earnings per share. This action represents exactly the type of difficult but disciplined decision required to optimize our asset network and improve the long-term earnings power of the company. We continue to expect this initiative to generate annual adjusted EBITDA benefits of approximately $15 to $20 million, improve adjusted earnings per share by roughly $1 to $1.20 per share annually, and reduce annual capital spending requirements going forward. Let's now move to page five, which outlines our results for the second quarter, including adjusted EBITDA of 71 million, a 13.7% adjusted EBITDA margin and $1.37 in adjusted earnings per share. Second quarter sales were $520 million, an increase of 3% compared with the prior year, led by volume growth in our performance chemicals and utility pole businesses. While we were pleased with our top-line performance, profitability was impacted by a challenging cost environment throughout the quarter. Coal tar costs increased approximately 12% year-over-year and 15% sequentially, while freight and logistics expenses also moved higher as energy markets and transportation networks remained volatile. These pressures were most pronounced within our carbon materials and chemicals business and portions of our railroad and utility products and services segments. Now, as we've discussed previously, there's often a timing lag between when these cost increases are incurred and when they are fully recovered through contractual mechanisms, pricing actions, and product mix improvements. We're actively working with customers across our portfolio to recover these higher costs and have historically demonstrated our ability to do so over time. And despite these headwinds, our teams remain focused on execution Through productivity initiatives, network optimization efforts, and disciplined cost management, we were able to offset a meaningful portion of the inflationary pressure and deliver adjusted EBITDA of $71 million during the quarter. Our focus on cash generation continued to produce meaningful results. Operating cash flow for the first six months of the year was a record $96 million compared with $28 million in the prior year period. Free cash flow for the same period totaled a record $73 million, demonstrating the benefits of our inventory alignment efforts and operational improvements across the organization. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. We're continuing to invest in the business, reduce debt levels, and return capital to shareholders. During the first half of the year, we returned $47 million to our shareholders through share repurchases and our dividend program, while also reducing debt by $22 million. We believe the actions we're taking today better position coppers to deliver stronger returns and create long-term value for shareholders. And to further support these efforts, we're implementing a realignment of roles and responsibilities among our leadership team to further enhance our performance and culture. Effective September 1st, Stephanie Apostolou will be taking on the role of Chief Legal and Strategy Officer, adding oversight of Catalyst, our transformation office, to her responsibilities in order to strengthen the link between strategy and execution. Coinciding with that change, Jim Sullivan is shifting his focus from our broader enterprise-wide transformation efforts to more specifically owning the restructuring and transformation efforts of CMC. While Christian Nielsen remains the global leader of CMC in running the day-to-day operations, Jim will own oversight of the STCNY closure, disposition of the remaining STCNY assets, and sourcing, evaluation, and recommendation of our options to reduce our risk and exposure in the CMC markets. These changes in our operating model will ensure that we're better aligned to execute our strategy, operate more effectively as one enterprise, and strengthen overall performance across the organization. Our broader outlook for the business remains intact. The essential infrastructure markets we serve continue to benefit from long-term replacement and maintenance cycles, and our in-flight transformation initiatives continue to improve the quality, profitability, and cash generation characteristics of our portfolio. While demand remains uneven across certain end markets, we are encouraged by the momentum in markets served by performance chemicals, the strength of utility infrastructure demand, and the progress we're making against our catalyst transformation objectives. We remain committed to our long-term targets of generating greater than 10% adjusted EPS CAGR, more than $300 million of cumulative free cash flow through 2028, and taking the company to a sustainable mid-teens EBITDA margin profile. Next, I want to thank our employees around the world for their continued commitment to safety, operational excellence, and customer service. As seen on page 6, 22 of our 40 operating locations worked injury-free in the second quarter, and we remain committed to our zero-harm vision as the foundation of everything we do. So turning to page 8, we issued our 2025 Corporate Sustainability Report detailing the company's progress in advancing its sustainability goals and introducing the framework for our refreshed 2030 sustainability strategy focusing on people, climate and energy, products, and supply chain. The COPPERS team has embedded sustainability into our culture and core business processes, enabling us to better respond to changing market dynamics and customer expectations while supporting long-term resilience amid our continued evolution. For more information, please use the QR code to access this report. As shown on page 9, Coppers gained additional recognition by being named to Time Magazine's listing of America's best companies for 2026. Moving on to page 10, Coppers will be hosting an Investor Day on Thursday, September 17th in Atlanta. Please mark your calendars and plan to join us for our Investor Day and related activities. Now I'll return in a bit to provide my view on how we're seeing the current year within each business while also reviewing our outlook for the remainder of 2026. But first, I'd like to formally introduce our new Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Eric Brenner, who joined Coppers in late May. Eric has extensive experience in the chemicals and manufacturing sectors, combined with his proven ability to drive capital deployment, operational excellence, and strategic transformation. Please join me in welcoming Eric to the Coppers team. Now, I will turn the call over to him to speak in more detail on our second quarter financial performance. Eric?

Thanks Leroy. Before discussing the quarter, I want to start by thanking Brad Pearce, our Chief Accounting Officer, and the entire finance team for their support throughout my transition. Over the past two months, I've had the opportunity to spend time with our leadership team, visit operations, meet employees across the organization, and engage with investors. What has stood out most to me is the strength of the culture, our commitment to safety and sustainability, as well as the dedication of our people serving our customers every day. I joined Coppers because I believe we are really well positioned. We have leading positions in the markets we serve, and we have a robust $90 million pipeline of improvement initiatives that can unlock significant value through capturing above market growth in the utility and performance chemicals businesses, optimizing our production network, and stepping up our performance and culture. I have seen firsthand a team that is focused on execution and committed to creating long-term value. With that, let me turn to our results for the quarter. I'll begin with the consolidated results, then cover segment performance, cash flow, and capital allocation before turning the call back to Leroy. As shown on slide 12, second quarter net sales were $520 million, up $15 million or 3% from the prior year quarter. Excluding the net unfavorable $16 million impact of our 2025 acquisitions, divestitures, and product line rationalizations, as well as a favorable currency conversion effect of $7 million, net sales increased $25 million or 5.1%. The increase was driven primarily by growth in our performance chemicals business and higher utility pool volumes, partly offset by unfavorable pricing and sales mix in the RUPS segment. On slide 13, adjusted EBITDA was $71 million, down $6 million, or 7.9% from the prior year quarter. This decrease was driven by higher raw material cost, unfavorable pricing in RUPS, higher freight and legal costs, as well as the impact of the 2025 divestitures. These unfavorable changes were partially offset by lower operating costs and improved throughput from our network optimization efforts. Turning briefly to cash flow, operating cash flow for the six months ended June 30th was a record $96 million compared to $28 million in the prior year period. The improvement was driven primarily by working capital gains as we deliberately aligned inventories with forecasted demand and leveraged our production network optimization efforts. The timing of the quarter end also favorably impacted our change in working capital in Q2 of 26. In addition, working capital in 25 was negatively impacted by approximately $14 million of pension funding. related to the US pension plan de-risking activities. Free cash flow was also a record at $73 million compared to $1 million in the prior year period. Now looking to segment performance, I'll begin with our railroad and utility segment on slide 14. Rupp's second quarter sales totaled $246 million compared to $250 million in the prior year quarter. Excluding the impact of acquisitions, divestitures, and foreign currency, sales increased 2% led by volume growth. The sale of our railroad services business in the third quarter of 2025 reduced sales by $12 million year over year. We also experienced price decreases in multiple markets, primarily in cross ties. As mentioned earlier in the year, we made certain price concessions in 26 in order to secure additional contractual commitments. These headwinds were partly offset by approximately 16% volume growth in the North America utility pole business, including the acquisition of a pole procurement business in the Western U.S. and by approximately 2% higher crosstie volume year over year. Rupp's delivered adjusted EBITDA of $26 million in the second quarter compared to $32 million in the prior year period. Profitability declined due to higher raw material cost and lower maintenance of weigh activity, primarily related to the sale of the railroad service business. Net sales price decreases and unfavorable sales mix were partly offset by higher sales volumes in the utility pool business. We continue to make progress moving our Florence cross-tie and our Vance utility pool production to other facilities to improve the ROPS overall cost position for 2027. Turning to slide 15, our performance chemicals business reported second quarter sales of $168 million, up from $151 million in the prior year quarter. Excluding favorable foreign currency changes of $2 million, sales increased 10%. We saw strong volume gains in all regions, including 11% sales growth in the Americas, excluding foreign currency impact. with market share gains in an otherwise flat demand environment. Sales in Australasia increased 26% year over year. These volume gains were partly offset by lower pricing, primarily in Europe. Adjusted EBITDA for the PC business increased to $38 million in the second quarter, compared with $29 million in the prior year quarter. The 31% increase was driven by higher sales volumes and lower material cost. Note that the impact of increased copper cost was partially offset by our copper hedging program. These benefits were also partially offset by higher logistics expense. Slide 16 shows that the CMC sales reached $106 million in the second quarter compared to $104 million in the prior year period Excluding the impact of the phthalic shutdown in foreign currency, sales increased 4%, driven by higher volumes, primarily in Australasia. We saw volume and price increases for carbon black feedstock and volume increases for carbon pitch. However, global prices for carbon pitch declined by 2%, driven by market dynamics, particularly in Australasia. Foreign currency changes from international markets had a favorable impact on sales by $4 million. Adjusted EBITDA for CMC in the second quarter was $8 million compared to $17 million in the prior year quarter. Profitability decreased due to higher raw material, operating, and SG&A expenses of $9 million, partly offset by cost savings from discontinuing orthallic production. As additional context in the market dynamics, average pricing for major products increased by 7%, while average coal tar costs increased by 15% compared to the first quarter of 2026. Compared with the second quarter of 2025, average pricing for major products was lower by 3%, while average coal tar costs increased by 12%. As shown on slide 18, we continue to take a balanced approach to capital allocation. Of the $96 million of cash generated by operations, approximately 25% was reinvested back into the business, 50% was returned to our shareholders through dividends and share repurchases, and 25% was used to repay debt. Year to date, we spent $24 million on capital expenditures, and we continue to anticipate total gross capital expenditures of $55 million for the full year. Share repurchases in the first half totaled approximately $44 million, including shares withheld for tax obligations under incentive stock plans. We have approximately $30 million remaining under our $100 million repurchase authorization. We also continue to return capital to shareholders through our quarterly dividend of $0.09 per share. At June 30th, we had $390 million in available liquidity and $857 million of net debt, representing a net leverage ratio of 3.5 times. We remain focused on our long-term goal of reducing the net leverage ratio to 2 to 3 times. As highlighted on slide 19, our board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend on August 5th of $0.09 per share, reflecting a 12.5% increase from the prior year. While future dividends remain subject to ongoing board approval, maintaining a quarterly dividend at this rate would result in an annual dividend of $0.36 per share for 2026. In summary, our second quarter results showed solid sales growth, record year-to-date operating cash flow and free cash flow, and continued discipline in capital allocation. We remain focused on delivering for our customers as well as safe and reliable operations while executing the actions necessary to improve margins and cash flows. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Leroy for additional commentary.

Thanks, Eric. I'll spend the next few minutes on what we're seeing across our major end markets. How those views have evolved since the first quarter and how they are informing our outlook for the remainder of 2026. While the macro environment remains uneven, we continue to see clear areas of resilience and opportunity, particularly in the two businesses that are fueling our evolution to a higher margin, stronger cash flow portfolio, Performance Chemicals and Utility and Industrial Products. We'll start with Performance Chemicals on page 21. As expected, overall residential treated wood demand has remained relatively flat. That said, our PC business delivered year-over-year volume increases led by market share gains and continued industrial demand. This volume growth reinforces the strength of our leading market position in recognition of our reputation for innovation in a market that is not broadly expanding. The housing backdrop remains challenging overall. The national average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 6.76% as of July 31st, marking a 12-month high. Existing home sales declined 2.4% month-over-month while increasing 2.8% year-over-year, and the National Association of Realtors' current forecast continues to estimate a 4% increase in existing home sales for 2026. At the same time, the leading indicator of remodeling activity now forecasts renovation and repair spending growth to slow to 0.5% in the second quarter of 2027. Reduced housing starts and the persistent economic uncertainty are continuing to limit gains in remodeling spending. On the cost side, copper prices remain at historical highs and are forecast to stay at $6 per pound or higher. That will require meaningful price increases in 2027 as the remainder of our copper hedges for 2026 roll off. In addition, the Iran conflict and the changing tariff environment are creating added volatility around input costs. As a result, my takeaway for PC is this. Residential demand remains steady, but not growing. Share gains are helping offset a flat residential market, and we are preparing for the pricing actions needed to address sustained copper inflation and a volatile cost environment for our remaining raw materials. Moving to utility and industrial products on page 22. This business remains one of the more constructive parts of our portfolio. Organic demand was up 12% in the second quarter and 10.5% year-to-date compared with the prior year periods. Volumes also benefited from our new Douglas fir supply assets, which are helping to increase our market reach and improve our access to fiber. Gross margins improved in the second quarter, although they remain under pressure from higher fiber and diesel prices, while pricing has stayed relatively flat. Despite a higher reallocation of corporate overhead expenses to UIP, second quarter profitability still exceeded the prior year quarter. Market sentiment remains bullish for the balance of 2026, primarily driven by the continued build-out of AI infrastructure, which is contributing to increased electricity demand. The investor-owned utility market remains strong, and we expect that strength to continue into 2027. The constraint regarding fiber availability remains, particularly because demand is concentrated in a relatively narrow range of pole classes and lengths. We're also monitoring raw material inflation risk. Forest harvesting has slowed as lumber demand has weakened, and pulp and paper mill closures are putting additional pressure on supply. Overall, however, this is a strong market for coppers, and we remain focused on capturing that demand while actively managing the cost side of the equation. Turning to page 23, in railroad products and services, the market remains varied. In the second quarter, an unfavorable mix in lower average pricing more than offset the benefit from higher year-over-year volumes. Commercial sales backlog remains solid for the second half of 2026, providing a partial offset to the pullback in Class I volumes and improving our visibility for near-term revenue. That's when railroads have tightened their capital budgets during the quarter, which reduced treated tie procurement volumes and compressed order timelines across their networks. That has created a more challenging demand environment for treated ties. We also see some positive indicators. Rail shipment strengthened during the second quarter, with North American rail traffic up 3% year-over-year through late June and car loads up 2.5% in May, which marked the fifth consecutive monthly gain. The pullback in Class I demand is having a negative impact upstream, however, particularly on sawmills. Reduced production and widespread mill closures are affecting the hardwood supply base. Recent sawmill closures removed an estimated 100 million board feet of industry capacity, which equates to roughly 4.5 million cross-tie equivalents. Long-term hardwood supply and pricing remain uncertain as these closures accelerate. On the operational side, we are making steady progress. Consolidated working capital improvement was largely driven by RPS with the wind down of our Florence plant as a main contributor. In addition, second quarter operating expense was the lowest it has been since the second quarter of 2022 with the Florence consolidation on pace to deliver expected benefits. To summarize, while the Class I market is pressured in the near term, we have secured a strong backlog of business that will drive profitability higher as we continue to realize operating improvements from our consolidation actions. Moving to carbon materials and chemicals on page 24, globally, carbon markets remain volatile. The Middle East conflict is continuing to drive oil and tar prices higher, and aluminum prices have risen steadily to approximately $3,600 per metric ton, more than 20% above first quarter levels. Several Middle Eastern aluminum producers are operating at reduced throughput, creating an opportunity for producers in Australia, Europe, and North America to increase production and supply. The financial impact on CMC from the spike in oil prices during the second quarter was approximately $2.3 million, with another $4.6 million impact expected in the second half of 2026. The most important operational update is the acceleration and ceasing production at our facility located in Stickney, Illinois. We've moved up our previously communicated target with the discontinuation of distillation now expected by September 30, 2026. We recently overcame a potential hurdle by extending the collective bargaining agreement with the Stickney workforce through June 2027, as we will need key personnel during post-production activities. Our new U.S. terminal is operating as planned, receiving its first shipment and delivering its first rail car to our customer. Coppers now supplies both pitch and creosote oil from Europe to the U.S. market, and this capability provides a competitive advantage over many European and U.S. competitors who are more exposed to capacity rationalization. In short, CMC continues to face a difficult market environment, but our decisive actions will improve the business structurally, Strengthen our supply chain and position the segment for better performance over time. Taking a step back, all these actions connect directly to Catalyst, our strategic transformation program, the details of which are shown on page 25. Coppers is in year two of this multi-year transformation process, and through our transformation office, hundreds of individuals across the organization have identified, evaluated, scoped, quantified, planned, and executed hundreds of commercial and cost-saving opportunities. The objective is straightforward. Maximize performance across every dimension of the company and establish a new way of working that elevates coppers to the next level. Through June 30th of 2026, we achieved $33 million in year-over-year benefits, including $6 million in PC, $9 million in RUPS, $6 million in CMC, and $12 million at corporate. Examples include purchase card cost savings, volume growth, procurement contract savings, and plant process changes. We also reduced working capital by $17 million through June 30th. Looking forward, we've identified more than $90 million in benefits for 2026 through 2028, which includes the $15 million to $20 million of annual adjusted EBITDA benefits from the action we're taking at the Stickney facility. Our 2028 objectives remain clear. We're targeting adjusted EBITDA margins above 15%, a three-year adjusted EPS compound annual growth rate above 10%, that leveraged between two to three times average annual free cash flow of $100 million in a portfolio where PC and RUPS represent more than 85% of our sales. The central point is that Catalyst is not an isolated cost program. It's a comprehensive effort across process, technology, and talent designed to generate meaningful earnings growth, improve cash flow yield, and increase capital efficiency. Now let's take a look at our updated 2026 guidance. As we think about the balance of the year, we're incorporating the market conditions I just reviewed, the progress we're making through Catalyst, and the structural actions underway across the portfolio. Beginning on page 27, we continue to expect 2026 sales to be in the range of $1.9 billion to $2 billion. The key message here is that we're adjusting the range for each segment to reflect current visibility across our businesses, which is anchored by a strong backdrop for utility pole demand. increased market penetration in PEC and UIP, pullback in RPS demand, and continued volatility in carbon markets. Moving to adjusted EBITDA on page 28, we're now expecting a range of $240 million to $250 million for 2026, excluding special charges. The bridge reflects several moving pieces across the portfolio. We continue to see benefits from PEC with an expected contribution of $17 to $20 million. Rops is expected to be down $8 to $11 million, with RPS driving that decline. And CMC is expected to be down $19 to $23 million, reflective of its continued challenges. Now, the outlook reflects the combination of stronger PC performance, continued cost and market pressures in RPS, and the significant input cost and market volatility affecting CMC. Turning to page 29, we now expect adjusted EPS for 2026 to be in the range of $3.80 to $4.20 per share, excluding special charges. The EPS range reflects a realistic view of the near-term environment while still preserving the path toward our longer-term catalyst objectives, including more than 10% adjusted EPS CAGR over the 26 to 28 period. On page 30, you'll see that free cash flow remains a central part of our investment case. Operating cash flow improvement is coming from all areas other than operations and supports what would be a new all-time high operating cash flow of $175 million. We plan to deploy $55 million to CapEx, leaving $120 million of free cash flow to deploy, which is on pace to be split fairly evenly between debt reduction and return to shareholders. Even in a volatile market environment, we continue to expect strong free cash generation supported by disciplined capital spending, working capital improvement, and the benefits of our catalyst transformation initiatives. Finally, onto our capital expenditure plan on page 31. We still expect 2026 capital expenditures of approximately $55 million by category that includes $34 million for maintenance, $12 million for zero harm and $9 million for growth and productivity. Excluding capital for growth and productivity and STICNI, our new base repair and maintenance and safety capital should be between $35 to $40 million on an annual basis as a starting point going forward. Now to wrap up, the second quarter reflected both the challenges and the opportunities across our portfolio. Market conditions remain mixed with continued volatility in raw materials, housing, rail, and carbon markets. At the same time, we're seeing encouraging results in performance chemicals, strong demand in utility poles, continued progress on working capital, and meaningful benefits from Catalyst. Most importantly, we're taking decisive actions to improve the long-term earnings power, cash flow profile and capital efficiency of coppers. We believe those actions position us well for the balance of 26 and more importantly for the 2028 objectives we've reiterated today. So with that, we would be happy to take your questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then 1 on your touchtone phones. If you are using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please pick up the handset prior to pressing the keys. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and 2. Once again, that is star and then 1 to join the question queue. We will pause momentarily to assemble the roster. Our first question today comes from Gary Prestapino from Barrington Research. Please go ahead with your question.

Good morning, Leroy, Eric, and Quynh. Hi, Gary. I was going through my notes from last quarter. Your target for Catalyst was $30 to $40 million of benefits. You've already achieved $33 million. And you didn't really mention anything about that range. Is it possible that we could be seeing more than, you know, that $40 million at the high end in catalyst benefits this year? Or was it just accelerated for the first six months of this year?

Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit of both. I mean, yes, I would expect that we will probably come in over the high end of that range, Gary. But as we've seen over the course of our transformation efforts, all of that is essentially going to offset the headwinds that we're experiencing across our portfolio of businesses. So I would expect that, yeah, that number would come in higher, but that would be absorbed within and offset by some of the other headwinds that we've mentioned before.

Yeah, okay. I just want to make sure. And then just getting back, you mentioned several different input costs that impacted you in Q2. I would assume there's still a fairly high elevated levels in Q3.

Yes, we don't see that situation abating in the near term. It's volatile markets out there right now. The Middle East conflict certainly is having downstream impacts. We mentioned that primarily within our carbon material and chemical business. That's one of the reasons we've seen that business struggle as much as it has this year. But it also has impacts within our freight and logistics network across the business lines and even impacts on some other key raw materials that we utilize within PC. So it's It's drips and drops that unfortunately accumulate into millions of dollars that create the headwinds that we're working to continue to offset through the Catalyst Transformation Program. So yes, we don't expect the challenges we're facing currently from an input standpoint to abate any time in the near term. Certainly getting some resolution Again, on the Middle East conflict and having markets settle down a little bit will be helpful. We do believe that, again, either through contractual mechanisms that are already in place, primarily in the CM&T business, as well as some contracts that we have coming up here in the back half of this year, heading into 27. It positions us to be able to reset some things as we go into 27 and put us in a better position.

When you're talking contractual, do you have the same kind of contractual issues with your other two segments or is it just basically CMC?

Well, CMC is the one that's bearing the biggest brunt of things. And so depending upon regions and customers, there's opportunities to reset pricing anywhere from We have a portion of our business that's spot related where we're able to actually adjust pricing as the situation changes pretty fluidly. But within some of our larger pieces of our business, it's more three to six month resets. But within other parts of the business, again, there's longer term contracts that are coming up for Thank you. Thank you. But certainly it would be helpful if we could reduce the volatility that we've been seeing over the past six months, six plus months, as it relates to the impacts from the Middle East. Okay. Thank you. Yep.

Our next question comes from Liam Burke from B. Reilly Securities. Please go ahead with your question.

Sure. Good morning, Leroy. Good morning, Eric. Hey, Liam. Leroy, when I'm looking at RUPS, how much is a gating factor on profitability? How much are the class one relationships a headwind or tailwind to profitability?

Yeah, so right now, the situation where we had a couple different circumstances with contracts expiring that enabled us to compete for, in some cases, larger shares of business, which we were able to get. In other cases, it was to be able to consolidate capacity, and we made price concessions to secure that business and enable us to plan an orderly exit out of our Florence facility. As volume ramps up from that customer base and we're able to take costs out of the system through that consolidation, we're going to see those improvements run through RPS. Right now, we're in the early parts of that. We haven't seen the demand moving up yet to the levels that we expect them to. and we're still treating ties out of Florence, which we expect to finish up in the fourth quarter of this year. So again, we're gonna be in a much better position heading into 27 as some of these contracts move up with higher volumes coming through and more costs getting taken out of the system. So we're in a good spot, it's just right now we're working through this period where Things haven't ramped up fully, and we're still bearing cost of the plant at Florence that eventually will go away.

Got it. Thank you. And you talked about market share gains in PC. Where is that coming from, and how is that working through the second business? Yes.

Yeah, so we had announced, I think, in the early part of this year that we had got some volume back, some volume that we had lost in the previous year, as well as adding some market share from a customer base that had made an acquisition and made a decision to move some of their chemical business that they had with a competitor over to coppers. We benefit from operating leverage and getting more volume through our plants. We've seen that reflected this year in being able to add and a number of others. at least a pretty good sized customer on that side of the business that was rebuilding inventories in the first half of the year. So that contributed to some stronger demand than may be typical and we'll see that tail off in the back half of the year now that they've kind of normalized their inventory. Great. Thank you, Leroy. You're welcome, Liam. Thank you.

And our final question for today comes from Michael Matheson from Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead with your question.

Congratulations on the quarter, you guys. Thank you, Michael. Turning to my questions, PC saw a big increase in margins this quarter. Can you comment on what drove the increase and is 20 plus percent the new normal?

Thank you for the question. I think we were very pleased with the PC business and the performance in the second quarter. As Leroy highlighted, we had some nice market share gains and with that improved our customer as well as product mix. And I think when we look at the margins, it is both from customer and product mix with that industrial growth driving higher margins versus the prior year quarter.

Terrific. Then turning to CMC, do you guys expect to retain all of the CMC clients who had been receiving product from Stickney or will there be a small amount of client loss, do you think?

So there's certain product lines that we will likely not continue to participate in, but in our main product lines, We expect that we will continue those relationships and continue to supply. There will be a small erosion of our customer base, but the predominant amount of our customers and volumes will remain, except they'll be sourced out of Europe.

Got it. And then one last question. Regarding your priorities for deploying free cash flow going forward, does the rising interest rate environment lead you to consider allocating a little bit more cash toward debt reduction versus share buybacks?

I think that we've continued to take a pretty balanced approach. We've talked before about the inherent constraints we have on share repurchases in our credit facilities. So we already have a mechanism that limits our ability to repurchase shares up to a certain level. With the strong free cash generation that we're expecting to continue going forward, I would expect that at least half, if not more, of the free cash that we generate will be going to reduce debt. So we'll make meaningful We'll see meaningful reductions over time in terms of our debt while still being able to opportunistically repurchase shares as we continue to see the strong cash flow yield that we're producing.

Okay, great. Well, thank you for taking my questions and good luck in the coming quarter.

Thank you, Michael.

And that will conclude our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to CEO Leroy Ball for closing remarks.

Thank you. I want to just again take a moment to thank everybody for your time today and participating on today's call and for your continued interest in coppers. Until next quarter, take care.

The conference has now concluded. We thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.