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spk04: Good morning, my name is Brica and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Q1 2022 Ingenuity Earnings Webcast conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Thank you. Mary Hall, Chief Financial Officer, you may begin your conference.
spk01: Thank you, Brica, and good morning all, and happy Cinco de Mayo. Welcome to Ingevity's first quarter 2022 earnings call. Early this morning, we posted a presentation on our investor site that you can use to follow today's discussion. It can be found on ir.engevity.com under events and presentations. Also, throughout this call, we may refer to non-GAAP financial measures, which are intended to supplement, not substitute for, comparable GAAP measures. Definitions of these non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings release and also in our Form 10-K. We may also make forward-looking statements regarding future events and future financial performance of the company during this call, and we caution you that these statements are just projections and actual results or events may differ materially from those projections as further described in our earnings release. In addition to me, our speakers today include John Fortson, our President and CEO, Ed Woodcock, Executive Vice President and President of Performance Materials, and Rich White, Senior Vice President, Performance Chemicals, and President of Industrial Specialties and Pavement Technologies. We also have President Steve Hume, Senior Vice President, Performance Chemicals, and President, Engineered Polymers, and Eric Ripple, Chief Growth and Innovation Officer, and they will be available for Q&A. I'm also pleased to introduce John Nypaver, our Vice President, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations, who joined us in April, and Meredith Breeden, our Manager of Investor Relations. John previously worked with me at Eastman Chemical, and most recently was the Treasurer and Head of IR for 3D Systems, based in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Meredith has been with Ingevity for 10 years in finance and supply chain roles and spent two years with us in China. She knows our business as well and is a great addition to our IR team. We will follow the agenda on slide three, and Jon Fortman will start us off with a review of key strategic themes for 2022. And with that, over to you, Jon.
spk03: Thanks, Mary, and good morning, everyone. Before I begin, I also want to welcome John Emeritus to our IR efforts. I know they will be a terrific resource for all of you on the phone. I also want to recognize Rich White, who as a co-president of Performance Chemicals, will be speaking to the segment's results today. We thank the world of Rich and know he will do a great job leading and growing this business. In Japan, he delivered terrific results this quarter. We achieved these levels of growth and profitability while focusing on our mission to purify, protect, and enhance the world around us. First quarter 2022 was an all-time record quarter for revenue and a record for first quarter adjusted EBITDA. Our products touch many aspects of daily life and sustainably improve the performance of materials all around us. We saw strong demand across all our businesses. Mary will shortly cover the financial results in more detail, but I want to thank the Ingevity team for all their hard work this quarter. If you turn to slide five, I'd like to discuss some of our key strategic initiatives in 2022. We delivered strong first quarter results in large part due to our ability to capture value for our products. Both segments saw their revenue growth drop through to EBITDA. In many instances, our price increases have been necessary to offset inflationary increases that are impacting energy, raw material, freight, and logistics costs. We took quick action to optimize our mix of products where possible to address raw material constraints and or logistics challenges, resulting in an improved mix of higher value-derivatized products in our performance chemicals segment. Performance materials benefited from a positive geographic mix shift, but also from increased demand for our process purification products. We continue to price all our products based on their performance characteristics and the value that they bring to our customers. Our products are typically sold in comparatively small quantities, but deliver outsized performance in the form of durability, endurance, safety, and environmental benefits. We continue to drive long-term organic growth to innovation. We recently introduced new InvaWet wetting agents and InvaDry additives to the oilfield market to enhance emulsifiers used in drilling and production. In the upper right of this page, you can see a beaker with a clear liquid. That is AFA that was run last week at our Crosset Arkansas biorefinery. Testing of production at scale is happening now. We expect to ramp up sales over the rest of the year. The team in Crosset worked around the clock to get this process started up. This alternative fatty acid is very high quality and we continue to work on this project. We should be able to drive revenue through product substitution and entry into new markets while continuing to drive costs down. and every product substitution allows us to sell more TOFA. We will continue to work with other non-CTO oils to broaden our product offerings. This is a win across our value chain. The polyol expansion in Derrida, while delayed a bit due to supply chain disruptions, is on track for completion in the next few months. In performance materials, we have had considerable success in growing increasingly more profitable opportunities in our process purification markets. For customers, The addition of our carbon improves the efficacy of their processes, which in turn lowers their manufacturing costs. Our sustainability profile is a competitive advantage, and we see ourselves as a leader in this movement. We sell products today with real sustainable value that generates strong economic profit now. To demonstrate this and command higher prices in the markets, we need to generate the relevant data and research to achieve certain certifications. A few weeks ago, we announced the results of our latest product study. This one on an agricultural dispersant polyphonic H. The study was conducted by ESG consulting firm ERM and found that the greenhouse gas reductions obtained by our products more than offset the greenhouse gases generated in their manufacture by more than 120%. Stay tuned for more of these studies as we continue to certify our products and their benefits for the planet. We also recently received certification from TUV Austria for marine biodegradability related to our Kappa thermoplastic products. This is potentially a huge opportunity for Ingevity. I'm sure you are all aware of the issues associated with plastics in our oceans. Biodegradability will play a large part in solving this for future generations. In addition, in the first quarter, we joined the UN Global Compact as a participant in working to advance important social and environmental goals to improve our world. And be on the lookout for our next sustainability report, which we expect to issue in the coming weeks. Lastly, we continue to maintain our focus on operational excellence. This takes the form of first safety, but also resource efficiency and cost reduction. This is particularly important when there is uncertainty regarding raw material energy supply and costs. As I've often said, we work on controlling what we can control. We remain flexible and adaptive in an environment where so much is influenced by economic and geopolitical distractions. Auto production issues, the war in Ukraine, and COVID issues in China are all a part of a dynamic operating environment. However, these types of environments present opportunities for us to differentiate ourselves from our competition by providing better and more consistent support to our customers. As we move forward into 2022, we continue to focus on both near-term execution and long-term strategy. Our future as a best-in-class specialty chemical company remains bright. Our performance chemical segment has many secular tailwinds tied to the sustainable nature of our products. Our increasing use of alternative oleo-based chemistries, coupled with the important opportunities and engineered polymers that they have in traditional and bioplastic markets presents Ingevity with great opportunities to grow revenue and profits. Additionally, in performance materials, we are continuing to find promising alternative uses for our carbon while we support the auto industry transition to electric vehicles. We will continue to grow the business regardless of the exact rate of change in the auto transition. We continue to develop and supply technologies to eliminate gasoline emissions on ICE autos, and our products will be a critical component in hybrid electric vehicles as that market grows. Across Ingevity, we also are using CAPA products for noise reduction jounces and EVs, and our pine-based materials are increasingly being used to support lithium mining. I am more confident than ever that Ingevity will continue to grow and thrive. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mary to discuss our strong results for the quarter.
spk01: Thanks, John. Please turn to slide six. Here you see our impressive top line improvement with record sales up nearly 20% year over year as strong end market demand enabled our sales and commercial teams to act quickly to recover the substantial increases in cost we experienced in the quarter. For example, we saw increased logistics costs across all modes of transportation, particularly in ocean freight where we saw some routes up as much as 60%. Our gross profit was up over 9% year-over-year, while our gross margin declined due primarily to the mixed shift in revenue from performance materials to performance chemicals. This quarter, performance chemicals represented 61% of sales as compared to 56% last year. We were able to hold our core SG&A spend flat versus last year despite record inflation. This helped to support adjusted EBITDA, which was up about 13% year-over-year to $119 million, which is a record first quarter result. Diluted adjusted earnings per share of $1.62 was up nearly 28% over prior year, reflecting primarily our increased sales and good cost management, supplemented by a lower share count as we repurchased about 1.5 million shares in the last 12 months, with 610,000 shares in this first quarter. Turning to slide seven, we've laid out certain key financial metrics and highlights. In the top left chart, you see our trend in revenue growth over the past few years. Our record $383 million of sales this quarter are largely due to continued strong end market demand for our products and our ability to pass through cost increases and upgrade our product mix where possible and we're happy to note the paving season is off to a good start. Free cash flow was slightly negative at quarter end, reflecting working capital increases primarily in accounts receivable driven by the strong sales. Our leverage is stable at 2.2 times within our target range, allowing us to focus our capital allocation on growth initiatives and opportunistic share repurchases. As you can see in the bottom right chart, We spent approximately $28 million on CapEx in the quarter, with over 40% of that funding growth initiatives, including the de-bottlenecking of the CapriLactone monomer line in Warrington, UK, and our alternative fatty assets project in CrossFit, Arkansas. Also, we spent $40.4 million to repurchase the 610,000 shares I mentioned earlier at an average price of $66.26 per share. We have approximately $262 million remaining under our existing board share repurchase authorization and expect to continue to repurchase shares as a core element of our balanced capital allocation strategy. In summary, our financial results continue to be strong, And we have the balance sheet and liquidity to support our organic and inorganic growth initiatives while continuing to return cash to shareholders. And now I'll turn it over to Rich for more color on our performance chemical segment results.
spk07: Thanks, Mary. And hello, everyone. I will continue on slide number eight. Our performance chemical segment saw strong revenue growth versus the prior year's quarter on solid in-market demand and continued price improvement, particularly in engineered powders and industrial specialties. These increases were necessary to keep pace with the dramatic increases we are experiencing related to energy, raw materials, and shipping. We continue to see strong demand across all of our business segments and are selling everything that we can make. Segment sales were up 30% quarter over quarter to $234 million. Our engineered polymers business grew 34% as business increased pricing to offset inflationary costs for raw materials, logistics, and especially energy that spikes in Q4-21 and has remained at a high level. From a regional perspective, sales in Asia for Capra Lactam products were both robust in the quarter due to demand in automotive and UV coatings applications. This was offset by a decline in Americas where some polyurethane customers experienced availability issues with key raw materials. As mentioned earlier, Steve Hulme will be available for Q&A. Industrial specialty sales increased 29% versus the prior year quarter with strong performance across all markets, particularly in oil-fitting adhesives. Solid end-market demand and price increases drove a significant portion of the growth The supply-demand dynamic for Chinese gum rosin continues to be favorable as the market for gum rosin continues to be tight, and prices remain 50% above levels in late 2020. The last two harvest seasons have had poor output. This provides support for increased pricing of all our tall oil rosin products. The increase was supplemented by an improved mix shift to high-value derivative products as growth in higher-end additives to oil-fed and adhesive markets outpaced growth in merchant TOFA sales. We also saw a sharp increase in sales in customers. Pavement Technologies also had, or Pavement Technologies had a record Q1 with sales up 30%. While we did implement some price increase, most of this growth was driven by improved volumes. The business has commenced the paving season strongly with much of the volume increases in America and Europe. Performance chemicals EBITDA of $41 million in Q1 was up almost 30% versus prior year quarter, while our adjusted EBITDA margins remained relatively flat. This speaks to how critical it is for us to react to inflationary pressures with downstream pricing to maintain margins. I want to thank not only our sales and commercial teams, but also supply chain, logistics, customer service, sourcing, and operations for their excellent work in this difficult environment. I'll now turn the call over to Ed to discuss performance materials results.
spk02: Thanks, Rich. If you'll turn to slide number nine. Sales for the performance materials segment were up 5.5% at $148 million versus the prior year's quarter. This is the second best quarter ever for the segment. And the comparison to last year's quarter is a tough one. If you'll recall, the first quarter of last year was quite robust as the auto industry rebounded from the pandemic lockdowns. The impact of the chip shortages began to take place shortly thereafter. In the quarter, demand for our automotive carbon and honeycomb products continued to be strong. Prices were up versus the prior year. And while volumes were generally flat, ordering patterns are stable. Growth for these products continue to be constrained by lower vehicle production globally, driven by ongoing supply chain challenges and the global microchip shortage. North American vehicle production of 3.46 million units was down 3.9% in the first quarter versus last year. U.S. light vehicle inventories remain very low. In fact, at the end of March, they were almost half of what they were a year ago. However, our sales were up due to price increases and product mix, with an increased proportion of sales in North America, offsetting lower volumes in China where COVID-related shutdowns impacted production. Our sales in South America grew dramatically in the quarter, as Brazil has launched the implementation of its Proconvi L7 emission standards. We expect revenue will grow progressively during the three-year phase-in as they move to higher capacity onboard refueling vapor recovery canisters while continuing to meet the stringent diurnal emission standards that will benefit from honeycomb systems in some cases. In other regulatory news, We are encouraged by the recent comments from the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, who indicated the new regulations proposal would be prepared for release in July. With this, we're anticipating implementation of new regulations in the EU in 2025 or 2026. Also, the outlook for a near zero standard in China, or what may be termed China 7, is still on track. We're anticipating implementation of a regulatory package that would benefit from Honeycomb Systems beginning sometime in 2027. Our sales to process purification customers grew in the quarter based on volume and price increases. The efficacy of these products in use is well regarded, and we're able to leverage our longstanding relationships to place volume when we need to. Our results in this business also reflect our ability to adapt our manufacturing network to changing market conditions. We are pleased with our performance in a very turbulent environment. For the quarter, our segment EBITDA of $78 million was up almost 6% versus the prior year's quarter, and our adjusted EBITDA margin has remained steady at over 50%. Based on IHS data, we estimate the impact to our first quarter from the chip shortage was approximately $8 million in revenue, which is less than what it was a year ago. However, we also estimate that new disruptions, such as other parts shortages and COVID-related shutdowns, have negatively impacted revenue such that the overall impact of supply chain and operational disruptions was similar to last year. We expect microchip supplies to continue to be constrained throughout 2022. Despite the challenges, we had a very strong quarter and our operational and commercial execution was excellent. I'll turn the call back to John to discuss our guidance for 2022. Thank you, Ed.
spk03: On slide 10, I'd like to review our outlook and guidance for 2022. We are adjusting our guidance for 2022 by increasing the top end of the range for sales to be between 1.525 and 1.65 billion and adjusted EBITDA to be between 430 and 470 million. These adjustments reflect that one quarter end, we're off to a great start for the year. Demand across the company is strong. Road paving has commenced and it looks like it should be a good season. We have been successful in reacting quickly to and keeping pace with inflation. If we stay on this trajectory, it will be a very good year. However, uncertainties do remain out there that could temper our performance in the year. Auto production issues, the situation in Ukraine, and COVID in China all could impact the rest of the year. Regardless of how things play out, we are ready and will be flexible to best serve our customers and maximize our profitability. I'm confident that Ingevity, with our team focus on operational excellence, will deliver strong performance this year. In closing, I appreciate the ongoing hard work and efforts of our employees worldwide. It's really inspiring to be a part of this great team. We hope you share our enthusiasm for Ingevity, and at this point we'll take your questions.
spk04: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press Start, then 1 on your telephone keypad. We will pause momentarily whilst we compile the Q&A roister. The first question comes from John McNulty of BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead when you're ready, John.
spk13: Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations on a strong start to the year. So I had a question regarding the commentary around some potential new European regs. I guess Can you give us any insight, if you have any, as to the kind of level that that might push Europe to? Would it get us as high as kind of, you know, the tier two that we all kind of refer to? Is that kind of in the cards? Is it less than that, I guess? Is there a way to kind of level set us on that?
spk02: Yeah, John, this is Ed. You know, what we're expecting from Europe is an ORVR standard, which was a U.S. tier two type standard. where you're capturing the refueling vapor emissions and returning those refueling emissions back into the engine. We're expecting potentially some overall vehicle emissions requirement as well that could drive the addition of activated carbon honeycombs on those systems. And we are obviously eagerly anticipating the outcome and what they decide to do in July. And obviously, we'll be able to respond to the capacity that's needed to be able to meet that demand. And the other side is that it's a big uptick in revenue. If you think of the diurnal canisters that they're using today, we may have $1 to $2 of content on them. With the ORVR requirement, it would be anywhere from $6 to $9.
spk13: Got it. No, that'll be huge if it comes out that way. Okay, no, that's great. And then I guess the second question was more about capital allocation. So, you know, your balance sheet's looking clean and it looks like you've got a really strong year ahead, assuming kind of the cash flows work out toward, you know, in the back half of the year the way I think they will. You know, you'll have enough flexibility for as much as, you know, $900 million or so of balance sheet flexibility, if you figure whatever, a leverage level up to three times or so, which I think in the past is kind of the peak of what you've looked for. So when I think about opportunities in terms of deploying capital, whether it's for buybacks or whether it's for a larger scale M&A or smaller scale M&A, I guess, how do you kind of lay out those opportunities? Do you see you know, do you see chances for a larger scale M&A in your future, or should we kind of stick to what we've seen over the last year or two, which is, you know, little onesies and twosies investments in some of your existing business and buybacks? How should we think about that?
spk01: Good question, and I'll start with that one, and John or others can chime in. So, you know, we said long term our target is that two to two and a half times net debt to EBITDA, so we're consistent there. We have elevated that net debt to EBITDA when we found acquisitions that make sense for the company and expect we would do that again. When I think about, you know, our deployment of that free cash flow, so for example, You know, we did say in our last call that organic capital expenditures would be elevated this year into that 150 to 175 million area. As we've talked about, we have a number of very exciting, we think, organic growth projects that, you know, from the expansion of Derrida and engineered polymers, various de-bottlenecking to continue to successfully meet demand, et cetera. And then as you'll note, if you look at our share repurchases over the last couple of years anyway, we've deployed better than $100 million a year through that avenue as well. So we continue to have a robust M&A pipeline. We intend to be active. in that space and are looking at bolt-on acquisitions which to me are kind of that small to medium size but but also as you kind of indicate we do have the capacity to look at some larger things if we believe the street strategic merit warrants it john no i think that was very well said i mean the only thing i would add is it does feel john after um
spk03: you know, a year, a year plus of some, you know, amazing, a very active M&A market. It feels like the valuations are getting to a better place for a strategic to really be able to create some value. So, you know, we're looking and we're going to continue to look. And as Mary said, if we find the right opportunity, we're in a good position to do it.
spk13: Got it. No, that's all helpful, Culler. Maybe I can sneak in one last one just With regard to the Chinese gum rosin situation where it does seem like things are tight and it's a good environment, can you speak to the impact of China lockdowns on that, what that might be doing to the market as well, like if it's either exacerbating things or it's actually helping things? Can you help us to frame that with a little bit of color?
spk07: Yeah, thanks, John. This is Rich, and thanks for your write-up yesterday evening. We are seeing this gum rosin market continue to be tightened, and the lockdowns in China are not helping. The folks can't get out in the field to do the harvesting, and we all know that the harvesting is due to start later this month. So we expect that the market will continue to be tight there throughout this season, primarily because of the lockdown, not because they're not trying to harvest the product, but everything associated with the lockdown.
spk13: Got it. Thanks very much for the call. I appreciate it.
spk04: Thank you. We now have a question from Vincent Anderson of Stiefel. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
spk09: Good morning, and I'll echo the congratulations on the quarter for sure. I couldn't help but notice, you know, your commentary around adhesives growth has seemed to pick up more and more since Crayton was acquired. You know, given a lot of their historical strength in that market was driven at least in part by their CST derivative portfolio, can you maybe discuss the how and the why now of your push into adhesives and what incremental investments you may be willing to make to support that growth?
spk03: Yeah, I'll start it, and then I'll let Rich kind of add comments. But I would not correlate that to the sale of Crayton. It is an opportunity that, frankly, we'd be pursuing whether they were still operating as an independent company or in their current configuration. The reality is they have historically been a much larger player in the ACEs market than we have. But that's changing. We see it as a high-growth market, an opportunity for us to be aggressive and provide value to customers. So you're going to see us to continue growing there, but I wouldn't relate it to the situation with Crayton.
spk07: And thanks, Vincent. Thanks for that question. I'll just follow up a little bit. If you've been listening to us, which I know you have over the last couple of years, our Our participation in this market has continued to increase. We have active innovation in this space, and we continue to promote our products in this space. So it's just an area that there's plenty of room and there's plenty of demand, and we're looking to participate in that.
spk09: Okay. All right. Perfect. You know, just really quickly, you know, these comments that you've now started to make on the purification process market, you know, I guess is any of that enabled by – maybe higher prices on traditional activated carbon grades that have helped kind of lift the margin difference between automotive and process purification? Or is this emphasis really just focused on being able to maintain stable asset utilization rates in a volatile auto market?
spk02: Yeah, Vincent, good for both. You know, we obviously have a more premium powdered activated carbon than I would say what a bituminous carbon or a lignite carbon would be able to do. While they do have lower margin profiles in our automotive product, it allows us, as you suggested, where we can flex in and flex out as auto volumes fluctuate. And as you said, it does help us keep our plants running at full capacity.
spk09: Okay, excellent. If I could sneak in just one quick one. You mentioned pine chemicals going into lithium mining, I believe. Is this kind of a surfactant capacity? Okay. Is this just kind of like in a surfactant capacity, maybe related to some of the more unique ore bodies that are being developed? Or maybe more simply, I guess, would you describe the demand as a rising tide of or is there something differentiated about your product into those applications?
spk07: Yeah, great question, Vincent, and thank you for that. Our products are used in flotation technologies, primarily in Australia but all over the world, and we see that trend continuing to increase with the increase that you are seeing with regard to the demand for lithium batteries.
spk09: All right, excellent. Thank you.
spk04: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Ian Zafino of Ozden here. So please go ahead, Ian.
spk05: Thank you very much. I just wanted to touch on China one more time. Are you able to determine how much maybe lost sales you had in the quarter and then maybe what your expectations are going forward for the Chinese lockdowns on the material side?
spk02: Yeah, Ian, it's Ed. You know, we did see a decline in the back half of March as lockdowns began to kind of propagate. Obviously, you're aware that lockdowns propagated as well into April and May, most likely, and will likely have some impact to our revenue in China due to those issues. That being said, there are a lot of incentives that the government is putting in place. Their expectation and my team's expectation in China is that they will make up the lost production in the back half of the year.
spk05: Okay, good. Thank you. Can you guys give us maybe some of your updated thoughts on the infrastructure bill kind of winding through the system right now? you know, what you expect, what areas in a paving should do well, but, you know, anywhere else that you would kind of point out and what kind of your updated expectations are.
spk07: Thanks. Yeah, thanks, Dan. This is Rich. Certainly we know that that infrastructure bill is rather large, $1.2 trillion. We do know that $110 billion have been directed towards highway bridges and roads and expect that the second half of this year we'll see some positive impact across our pavement business. It's still a bit too early to tell, but as you know, this bill will be in effect between now and 2026, but primarily within payment, not so much in the other segments that we participate in.
spk08: All right. Thank you very much.
spk04: Thank you, Ian. The next question comes from the line of John Tamawane of CJS Securities. Your line is open.
spk10: Good morning, and thank you, Jake. Again, congrats on an excellent. My first question is just looking at the Q1 results, I know you can't just annualize them and expect to get a full year number, but that would get you to the high end. I know you have your pavement quarters ahead of you. Just tell me what you're seeing directionally as you enter Q2. If there's any incremental headwinds to be thinking about that gives that caution. I know there's lockdowns in China, but maybe break it down by what you're seeing in auto, if there's anything else that's happening out there in input costs that we should be aware of that keeps you from doing better than you did in Q1 and what should be a season-strong report.
spk03: Yeah, no, look, I'll address this, John. We do the same math you do. And it is true that typically Q1 for this company is about 20% plus or minus, a little bit north of 20, of our overall year EBITDA contribution. And look, if the current environment remains, I think we are going to have an incredible year. The issue is we're one quarter in into a year and it's kind of been this way the last couple of years where there's just a lot of volatility and a lot of unpredictability. Right. I mean, I don't think anyone December 31st thought that there would be a war in Ukraine. Right. No one really knows exactly how that's going to play out. Right. It feels like it's a little bit of a stalemate, but it's hard to know. Right. And the same is kind of true with COVID in China. For the last two and a half years, COVID has not really been an issue in China because they haven't been locked down, but they've locked the country into it. They sort of encircled themselves in a moat, right? And so we're just being, we're a quarter in. It's going to be, if things continue, it's going to be an incredible year. But as Ed alluded to, I mean, there's a little softness right now in China this month. I think if things shake themselves out, then it'll snap back and we'll get there. But, you know, we've also never seen COVID in China like this, right? And it does seem that they're trying to have sort of a zero COVID policy. They're very aggressive about locking this stuff down. So we'll just have to see how it plays out. But, you know, you can tell, hopefully, sitting here today, we feel pretty good. But we just got, you know, we're early in the year.
spk10: Okay, fair enough. I understand that. My second question is, The marine biodegradability certification interests me. Can that be a standalone raw material for CPG products, or how would it be used and sold, and what is the market potential there?
spk03: It's not standalone, but it is an important certification because as people work on plastics that are biodegradable, particularly in an ocean environment, our product offers them an additive that provides efficacy in all the things that CAPA provides to someone. but they know that it will degrade in the ocean. It potentially can be huge for us because this is a big challenge for the plastics industry writ large. You can talk about recyclability on land, but once something goes in the ocean, you're not going to catch it all. So this is a huge opportunity and opens up a pretty broad range of technologies that are working to solve this problem and puts CAPA to the fore of that.
spk10: Great. Thank you for that.
spk04: Thank you. Your next question comes from Daniel Rizzo of Jefferies. Your line is open.
spk11: Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my call. With the new standard in Brazil, that's going to be implemented over the next three years, is that going to be more like a Tier 2 standard or something different?
spk02: Yeah, Dan, you're spot on. There's four years of the Precon VL7 changes. So the first year is 2022 when it is effectively a diurnal requirement. It's a rather strict diurnal requirement. It's more strict than what China has and probably equal to what the U.S. EPA CO2 was, you know, 0.5 gram emissions. So that basically has to be on all vehicles going forward from this point. In 2023, ORVR systems will begin phasing in. It's a 20% phase in in 2023, a 60% phase in in 2024, and then 100% by 2025. And similar to what we talked about with Europe, you know, Brazil going from a small diurnal canister with granular carbon with potentially 50 to 100% increase in capacity by going to an additional size canister, but also a shift from granular carbon to pellets. And we do think because of the diurnal requirements, there may be some opportunities for honeycombs in the in the Brazilian market as well.
spk11: Okay. And then I guess along the same lines with the, I mean, I know it's a few years away, but the new, I think it's called the China 7 that's potentially on schedule for 2027, that would be, I assume, full Tier 3 and would require a honeycomb scrubber or something else. I was just wondering if you could provide color on that.
spk02: Yeah, with a U.S. Tier 3 requirement, it would require honeycombs on all internal combustion engine vehicles.
spk11: And that's what they're proposing?
spk02: Yeah, it's going to be basically mirroring the U.S. Tier 3 requirements.
spk11: All right. Thank you very much.
spk04: Thank you, Daniel. Your next question is a follow-up question from Chris of Leap Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Okay.
spk12: Yeah, good morning. My question focused on the performance chemical segment. Obviously, it seems like there's strong demand there, partly because of this gum rosin situation and tightness there. And so I was curious if therein lies an opportunity to increase your refining network throughput. What I've noticed following you guys and Craton for years is that the governor of the optimal rate is you know, how much demand there is for TOR so as not to overproduce TOFA given the fixed, you know, fractions in the CTO feedstocks. But it seems like with your commentary about strong TOR demand that there's maybe some headway for higher rates, and it seems like there's ample demand for both TOFA and TOFA derivatives. So I'm wondering how you're thinking about this dynamic and what's sort of baked into your guidance around that situation. Thanks.
spk03: Yeah, that's a good question, Chris. Yeah, no, it's a good question. So look, I thought Rich said it best in his commentary. We sold everything we could make, right? And we sold them at very attractive prices. As you know, because of the sort of continuous production nature of these refineries, you're in a game of what I would call sort of value profit maximization on an ongoing basis, right? So you're looking at how much you run through the refinery, you're looking at what the end markets are and how you sort of optimize that mix. It is true that historically, you know, we run to RASA and that's the term we use, right? But that dynamic is even somewhat flexible depending on the relative pricing relationship between TOFA and TOR, right? So all of this kind of goes into our mix. To answer your question, we will continue to be aggressive in sourcing our raw materials and running the refinery as hard as we can. I do think Chinese Gum Rosin is obviously helping, vis-a-vis where we've been in years past, but I would not overemphasize that relative to the aggregate demand in the marketplace. It definitely helps that they're, had a tough couple of years, but I think the bigger opportunity for us is really the core strength of the demand in our end markets, right? And as we shift to things like adhesives and, you know, in our minds, kind of up-tier our end markets, you're going to see that performance hopefully continue to improve.
spk12: Got it. And sort of a follow-on on the PC segment, but a higher-level one, and one that you could certainly put back on, you know, the security analysts judgment, but curious your thoughts on the improvement in the, you know, just the business cadence, the outlook for the PC segment. If your view is that, you know, this is truly structural improvement in the industry driven by things like ESG and, you know, end market demand for certain applications or, you know, some of it's more cyclical, cyclically oriented given, you know, maybe even the gum rising situation. Obviously, the former would underwrite a stronger valuation for these pine chemical assets than what we've seen in the past. And the latter might say, well, we should discount what could be a peak earning cycle in the business. So I'm curious about your view of structural versus cyclical improvement.
spk03: I believe in the former. I believe that what is different about this industry, and I think it has permanently changed, is that because of the advent of biofuels, you know, you have formed or there now exists a step function change in the level of demand that will exist for our end products, right? And what's going to happen is that our traditional products that are more sort of chemistry oriented, if you will, are going to have to compete for TOFA and TOR, right? if they want to use that, right? So we do see this as, I mean, look, there are obviously elements of cyclicality in all businesses. Oil field is really doing great, and that's because oil is back up in the, you know, north of 100 bucks, right? So there are elements of that, but I think what's different at the macro level that's probably missed by some people is this sort of step function and demand that's occurring across our products. Yeah, gum rosin, if it has a gangbuster year, could impact us, but ultimately we've got a lot of new places where we can put our products, and I just think we're in early innings of what's going to be a multi-year sort of transition that we intend to benefit from.
spk12: That's very helpful. Thank you, John.
spk04: Thank you. We now have Peritos Misra of Derenberg. So Peritos, your line is open.
spk08: Thanks. Good morning. In the performance chemicals business, your EBITDA margins were almost flat, but prices were up probably a lot. So just curious how your results look on an EBITDA per ton or EBITDA per pound metric. Were they up on a year-over-year basis?
spk07: They were pretty flat, so to speak, or stable, we would like to say. Certainly, the price benefited our overall performance in the business, and we expect that to continue throughout the remainder of the year.
spk08: Got it. And just to follow up, I don't know if you commented on that earlier, but how does your maintenance outage schedule look like for the rest of the year for the two segments?
spk03: Yeah, we have it. You're right part talks we have and we will. We can put that out for you guys, but maybe you can let each of the segment heads go through their different businesses.
spk07: So yeah, we have some small plant shutdowns in both Crossett, Derrida and Charleston between during the second half of the year and those are just scheduled maintenance outages that we're going to be having.
spk02: Yeah, and then for the material segment are in our biggest facility is Covington, VA and we've got an outage scheduled in May for that one.
spk00: In Warrington, just a quick note on that one. In Warrington, we have scheduled outages for both May and October.
spk08: Appreciate that.
spk03: Anything else, Paratash?
spk08: No, that's all I had. Thank you very much.
spk03: Thank you.
spk04: We now have a follow-up from Vincent Anderson of Stiefel. Your line is open.
spk09: Yeah, thanks. I just wanted to ask, since you alluded to larger strategic M&A not being off the table, I'm curious if maybe a larger oleochemical portfolio would fit that strategic bill, just given the early success in your alternative fatty acids? or would something larger really have to meet a higher hurdle in terms of specialization or business modes like what CAPA provided you?
spk03: Well, we're not going to comment about individual targets, but obviously it should be clear to everyone that we're very focused on oleobased chemistries, and we will look at both organic and inorganic opportunities as they present themselves.
spk10: All right, that's helpful. Thank you.
spk04: Thank you. We have another follow-up question from John McNulty of BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.
spk13: Yeah, thanks for taking a follow-up. I got one or two just left. So first would just be on the pavement side. So it's off to a really strong start. Would you say that's a function of, hey, weather was great, and so we made hay while the sun was shining, or is it more a function of, of the stimulus dollars finally kind of getting to the finish line and actually, you know, states and municipalities kind of putting that to work?
spk07: Hey, John, thanks for the follow-up question. No, the stimulus dollars haven't made their way into any of our demand as of yet. As I mentioned earlier, we expected in the second half. So this was just strong demand driven by both America and Europe. It wasn't pre-buy. It was just earlier demand because of the weather, as you alluded to. They're off to a great start. But as you know, the majority of that business or that season comes in the second and third quarter. Got it.
spk13: No, that makes sense. And then the only other question I had was when I look at the performance material segment, you know, I look at the price mix. And that was, whatever, 2.1 in terms of a contributor to EBITDA. And then the COGS was actually bigger than that. It was a 2.3 hit. So it kind of implies that the pricing didn't necessarily keep up with inflation, I guess. First, is that a proper read on it? And second... how should we be thinking about how that may, you know, that may change as you push through the year? Do you have more pricing to kind of keep up with inflation or, or, you know, how should we think about that?
spk02: Yeah. So we, we do have prices coming into the market for, for the year. Um, We also are heavily focused on the mixed shift that we're seeing through Brazil, but also obviously closely monitoring what's going to happen with China because that will ultimately be hopefully a good swing in the back half of the year. With the logistics issues that we have, we've just got to make sure that we're able to supply in China so that they can meet that surge in the back half.
spk13: Got it. Thanks for the call. I appreciate it.
spk03: The thing is, you know, you have to be careful in a quarter-on-quarter look in this company, right? So just be mindful of that because every individual quarter and every given year, particularly the last couple of years, has just been very unique, right? So there's a lot of noise in these. When I look at these charts, it's hard.
spk13: Yeah, no, that's fair. Maybe putting it just a different way, Do you feel like you've got enough pricing in the business to offset some of the inflationary pressures yet, or is there more work to be done?
spk03: Sure, and time and performance materials, for sure, right? And, you know, like as you know, I mean, the mix, changing mixes and geographies can be quite impactful in that business, right, because you've got very different – you know, very different requirements in each regime, right? So, yeah, I mean, we're in a good spot.
spk13: Got it. Thanks very much for the call. I appreciate it.
spk04: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. So, Mary Hall, I'll turn the call back over to you.
spk01: Yes, thank you, Briga. That concludes our call. Thank you for the great discussion and for your interest in longevity, and we will talk with you again next quarter. Thank you.
spk04: Thank you. That does conclude today's call. You may now disconnect your line.
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