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spk10: Following today's brief opening comments, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Steve Keenan, Olin's Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Steve.
spk20: Thank you, Tom. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, let me remind you that this discussion, along with the associated slides and the question and answer session that follows, will include statements regarding estimates or expectations of future performance. Please note that these are forward-looking statements and that actual results could differ materially from those projected. Some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ from our projections are described, without limitations, in the Risk Factors section of our most recent Form 10-K, and in the third quarter Earnings Press Release. A copy of today's transcript and slides will be available on our website in the Investors section under Past Events. Our Earnings Press Release and other financial data and information are available under Press Releases. With me this morning are Scott Sutton, Olin CEO, Pat Dawson, President, Epoxy, Damien Gumpel, President Chloralkali Products and Vinyls, Brett Foyer, President Winchester, Jim Varlick, Olin COO, and Todd Slater, Olin CFO. Scott will begin with some brief remarks, after which we'll be happy to take your questions. I'll now turn the call over to Scott Sutton.
spk24: Yeah, thanks, Steve, and hello to everybody. I'm pleased to report the Olin team has once again proved to be the most unique and agile in the industry in meeting the clear expectation of our shareholders. Again, I just have to say that this solid performance by the complete team sets me up to be able to focus on the items that drive our future, which are enhancing our contrarian value model, turning our ratchet on undervalued products, parlaying to grow, accretive capital allocation, building out our interlink matrix of activation knobs, growing shooting sports participation, and lifting all Olin people. This is a company that is focused on continuing to grow adjusted EBITDA and coupling that with balanced capital management to deliver more than $10 of earnings per share in the near future. So I'll make some brief commentary on a few slides and get to the Q&A quickly. 2021 is expected to be a solid result for Olin for the reasons shown on slide number three. While the longer term fundamental of demand that grows faster than supply is starting to be exposed here in 2021, our leading actions to get a higher value for our scarce resources is proving to be successful. Current highlights of that success are that we continue to exit business that was based on non-negotiated pricing, align our product chain mix with the intended impact from purposeful settings of our interlinked matrix of activation nodes, start accelerating the value capture of epiclorohydrin, and drive an expansion in shooting sports participation with our Shoot United movement. While there may be some end of year holiday slowdowns, which are really supply driven, not demand driven, and some seasonality that result in a sequentially flattish fourth quarter result, we still expect 2022 to exceed 2021. The reason thematic for better results in 2022 is shown on slide number four. The minor reason in our thematic is that the previously mentioned demand growth versus supply growth dynamic just gets better and better across all our businesses. More people are enjoying shooting sports, demanding clean wind energy, and expanding their homesteads. The major reason in our thematic is that all of Olin's activities are designed around a foundational cultural principle of only selling into value. We know who we are. In October, we took the decision to close some more undervalued assets and simultaneously used other existing global asset and product liquidity to grow Olin's value. As our own ECU assets are getting right-sized, We are a global buyer of ECUs to satisfy our higher valued products demand. Even though we have grown earnings for five consecutive quarters and delivered a levered free cash flow that is approaching 20%, we still must show that our performance will continue to improve. But maybe more importantly, we must demonstrate our ability to manage uncertainty and volatility. Slide number five is an illustration. Olin has three substantial businesses, each with a meaningful contribution to segment earnings. For reasons that we previously discussed, the Winchester, which is shown in red on the slide, consumer and defense business offers solid and sustainable growth. For reasons we will discuss in just a moment, the epoxy, which is shown in green on the slide, engineered materials, offer differentiated growth as we expand margins in that business. The chloralkali products and vinyls industrial essentials are our largest organic and inorganic growth opportunity. We expect the chloralkali segment results to be slightly volatile across a brief transitional window when we have a model profile shift between the relative strengths on the two sides of the ECU. We think of the net company volatility as ripples on a deep ocean, not waves on a shallow lagoon. We should control our destiny here. Continuing with the theme of good fundamentals on slide number six, our perceived old world chemistry has new world application and value. I won't read all these megatrend multipliers, as I'm sure they're familiar to you, but instead jump to slide number seven. and hit on the differentiated growth profile of epoxy. Epoxy sets itself apart from other engineered materials by offering nearly non-substitutable performance. Almost every end-use category is growing faster than global GDP. Consider the outlook for more and larger wind turbines for clean energy. Consider the outlook for electrical laminates for the new mobility trends and broad electrification trends. Consider the outlook for infrastructure expansion and replacement and so on. Even though we recognize the value of this business in epoxy resin sales and in epoxy systems sales, the value driver is really epiclorohydrin. and we will be expounding on our globally leading epiclorohydrin position in future earnings calls. We expect it won't be long before our epoxy business delivers greater than $1 billion of EBITDA and carries the same enterprise value that all of Olin carries today, more representative of a highly engineered materials company. Finally, I will close on slide number eight. We're going to start talking more about EPS in conjunction with EBITDA and segment earnings. We are advancing in our evolution and expect our activities in debt reduction, refinancing, share repurchases, and M&A to be big contributors of forward value, and that value shows in EPS. No doubt that a majority of our forward discussion will center on leadership, our linchpin products, great supply-demand fundamentals, parlaying and lifting Olin people. However, new ways to create shareholder returns are evolving for Olin and help us earn above $10 of earnings per share. So that concludes my opening comments, and Tom, We're now ready to take questions.
spk10: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on a touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. And the first question comes from Hassan Ahmed with Alembic Global. Please go ahead.
spk00: Morning, Scott. Hi, Hassan. Scott wanted to touch on some of these natural gas price escalations that we've seen, not just in the U.S., but globally as well. So on the U.S. side of things, if you could sort of talk through how you guys have dealt in what was a pretty tricky quarter and continues to be a tricky 4Q quarter, in terms of the hikes we've seen in natural gas prices. And if you could also talk about what you guys are seeing in terms of the cost curve impact with natural gas price escalation in Europe and the power curtailments we're seeing in China as well.
spk24: Yeah, I mean, sure. For us, we have a couple strategies to manage the local issue. I mean, one is we have a pretty strong hedging program where we have some amount of it hedged out into the future, which helps protect us. The rest of it is absolutely 100% covered in product pricing, and every day we get more ability to recover that on an instantaneous basis as we get out of some of these contracts that keep us in handcuffs. I think the more important one is maybe your second one. I mean, rising global energy costs is actually a plus for Olin, and that's because trade flows get more expensive and trade movements get more volatile And that just fits right into our model of, you know, lifting the value of these old and scarce resources.
spk00: Very helpful. And as a follow-up, Scott, you know, obviously now, you know, you're guiding to net debt to EBITDA being around one time by the end of the year. And, you know, it was very helpful talking about, you know, 10 plus dollars in EPS and you touched on sort of share buybacks and M&A and the like as being meaningful contributors. You know, as we look at 2022 with the balance sheet now as clean as it is, how should we be thinking about capital allocation, particularly, you know, if you could dig a bit deeper into the thought process with regards to sort of meaningful share buybacks as well as M&A?
spk24: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, sure. Look, I'll cover one element of it and then Todd will cover most of it. But, you know, a good bit of that is going to go toward, you know, our growth. And I suspect maybe there'll be some other questions through the call, and we're happy to talk about how we go out and grow the company. So that's certainly, you know, a part of it, Hasan. I mean, Todd, do you want to cover the rest?
spk02: You're right, Hasan. As we've delivered the balance sheet, that does provide a lot of financial flexibility to accomplish the structuring and parlaying that we've been talking about. Scott just referenced. Going forward, we would expect to target in that 40% range of our levered free cash flow as shareholder rewards. That includes the dividends and opportunistic share buyback as we go forward.
spk00: Very helpful. Thank you so much, guys.
spk03: The next question comes from Mike Sisson with Wells Fargo.
spk10: Please go ahead.
spk01: Hey, good morning, guys. Nice, another great quarter. Scott, I'm just curious. It sort of feels like, given how well your results are coming in this year, you're sort of in the ninth inning of your transformation, but you sort of talked about a lot of things that can continue to improve. So just curious where you think you are. You've only been here a year. It's been a good year. What else do you think could be done to continue to improve the company?
spk24: Yeah, hi, Mike, and thanks. Yeah, I mean, look, I would say the team here at Olin has a long runway in front of it. I mean, all we've done so far is put a bit of a disruptive model in place, which is highly complementary to the fact that for the foreseeable future that demand growth actually grows faster than supply grows. There's a lot more to come beyond that. I would say if you think about business by business a little bit, here we are in Winchester about to embark on a Shoot United program to go out and grow the number of people doing sports shooting immensely. And Brett will get an opportunity to talk about that hopefully later in the call. In epoxy, some of the systems and some of the high growth areas like mobility that we provide are starting to take off. Maybe more importantly, we've set ourselves to the point where we're a buyer of ECUs out there and there is global product and asset liquidity available and we're just getting started on that program of accessing that to go out and grow our business. And then, of course, we'll complement that with inorganic acquisitions. So, that's sort of how the runway shakes out.
spk01: Got it. And then, as a follow-up, you know, the first half, you're a little bit above $500 million in EBITDA. Second half, you're in the $700 million range. When you think about the volatility or maybe just the, you know, kind of the the delta between the quarters, is that 500 to 700 million sort of a range that you can keep your EBITDA within? And is that sort of the potential for next year as we think about doing better?
spk24: Well, I think the reason, Mike, that you see those differences is because we're just getting good at practicing our model and And every day we continue to get more knobs that are under our control. You know, reference some of the remarks we made about, you know, getting some of our materials more open and freely negotiated as opposed to being tied to trade indices. So, you know, the reason that that early volatility has been there, it's kind of been a one-way up volatility there. is just because we're getting better and expanding our model. I think when you look out in the future, of course we're saying that 2022 will be better than 2021, and there may be some time periods where we have to shift which side of the ECU sets our market participation, because today the weak side is still costing.
spk18: Got it. Thank you.
spk10: The next question comes from Alex Yefternov with KeyBank. Please go ahead.
spk21: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Scott, you mentioned epi renegotiations in the slides. Can you provide any details of what percent of your merchant business is up for renegotiation, but also maybe... size up the merchant epi business as a percent of revenue or percent of your capacity?
spk24: Yeah, so I think I heard your question. I mean, at least on the chlorine side, we continue to make progress, you know, getting that opened up. And, you know, we expect at least by 2023 that that's essentially opened up. But, you know, we'll have to see how discussions go over the next quarter for us. We haven't really shared, you know, just how big our epi business is in relation to the rest of it because it's not that important, the size of the epi business. What is important is that it is the linchpin that sets value across our whole epoxy chain And, you know, Olin is focused every day on lifting the value of that scarce resource. Pat, would you have anything else to add about epichlorohydrin?
spk12: Yeah, I think, you know, the other thing to keep in mind about epi is we have a lot of flexibility between the merchant market and our captive production. We have multiple knobs on epi that we can activate to bring more value through that whole epoxy value chain.
spk21: Okay, I understood. Thank you for that. Could you discuss parlaying activity for EDC as well? What is involved here and how would you describe this opportunity?
spk24: Yeah, I mean, Damian will make some comments on parlaying of EDC. Just on the broader topic, I would just say we're continuing to be successful developing that program and You know, if you think about many of our products, chlorine, caustic, bleach, EDC, epoxy, and epiclorohydrin, in the third quarter, we had success at parlaying activities around all those. Damian, do you want to talk about EDC? Sure thing, Scott.
spk16: You know, from an EDC standpoint, you know, we have a large presence in merchant EDC. Of course, we can touch, you know, reach customers all over the world with our positions in the U.S. Gulf. And we have expanded our parlay network there as well because we have customer demand now in Europe, Africa, obviously India, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, Latin America. And our ability to complement our own supply with supply that happens to be available at certain opportunistic times in the world just allows us to you know, bring that product closer to the customer, you know, and realize some value there from the ability to help them turn that material into their PVC and used products that's serving, you know, their growing market. So our ability to get closer to customers with our Car Lane Web Network, that translates into value for all here that we've realized, you know, going forward.
spk05: Thanks a lot.
spk10: The next question comes from Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners. Please go ahead.
spk07: Good morning. Scott, you've talked about an epoxy segment margin goal of 30% in the past, and this morning I think you threw out a billion dollars as an EBITDA goal for the segment. What do you need to do in that business to get there from here? What are the two or three sources of incremental improvement, you know, recognizing that the business has already come a long way, you know, what additional runway do you see in 22 and beyond for upside and epoxy?
spk24: Yeah, I mean, we just need to keep the activities going that we've already started, but, you know, Pat can expand on those a little bit.
spk12: Yeah, you know, Kevin, epoxy, I would say, is really an Epoxy is at the right time at the right place. And what I mean by that is if you look at the megatrends and you look at the demand, you know, for epoxy in these different segments, you know, right place, right time, right? So you look at composites and light weighting. Epoxy enables that. You look at wind, wind systems, decarbonization, right place, right time. Electrical laminates, e-mobility, you know, adhesives that are used in e-batteries, epoxy, right place, right time. So I think what you're seeing is we've got the infrastructure in place, we've got the commercial organization in place, and really we can go across the whole globe around these applications, extracting value where we see value can best be extracted. But Kevin, I think we're in a great position, you know, to be able to complement what we have already been doing and to keep building value around a lot of these megatrends that play right in the wheelhouse of how epoxy brings value to the market.
spk07: Okay, so it sounds like it's less strategic and more just riding the sources of demand improvement that you outlined, Pat.
spk12: Well, I'd say strategically, make no mistake, that epichlorohydrin and the scarcity of epichlorohydrin And the multiple knobs we have there is much more strategic going forward than it has been in the past. And I would say that we even have opportunities in aromatics and what we do in phenol and acetone and cumine to bring this contrarian model into play. So that could be very strategic to our future as well.
spk07: Understood. And then secondly, if I may, Scott, I just want to ask about slide eight. This is something you've talked about in the past, breaking the cycle pattern. Just was wondering if you could put a finer point on it. I appreciate the analogy you used, the waves on a lagoon, ripples on an ocean, and so forth. But even specialty chemical companies sometimes suffer a down year. If you were to look out over the medium term, three to five years, what would it take to cause a down year in your mind for Olin? Is it a shift from weaker side to stronger side of the ECU or an economic recession or something else that would precipitate a cyclical change for the company?
spk24: I mean, even just going back to your first question where you had kind of said, are you just riding the wheel? wave. I would make no mistake about it. We're heavily focused on value over volume and if there's any wave, it's a wave that Olin is creating. You're exactly right on slide number eight there. We're trying to represent that this is no longer a cyclic business. It was a cyclic business because Olin made it a cyclic business and we've completely changed how we're doing business now. This is structural work that is going on. And not only that, there are structural dynamics that have changed in the marketplace. You know, we have a reasonable view out five years, right? And every single place we look, demand growth exceeds supply growth. So could there be downs quarters. That is not impossible, but I do want to reiterate that if we have to shift which side of the ECU is setting our market participation, that's a relatively short-term item that you may or may not see. That is not a year-long type of shift. We've taken the business from being a little bit slower to being very nimble to go out and make sure that we do what we need to do to make sure that we get significant value from Olin's scarce resources.
spk07: Thanks so much. That's helpful.
spk24: Sure.
spk10: The next question comes from Frank Mitch with Fermium Research. Please go ahead.
spk05: Thank you, and congratulations on another solid quarter. You made an announcement yesterday about shuttering some capacity in Alabama. Could you talk about the decisions behind that and where you think this leaves the chloraclite market in its supply and demand balance?
spk24: Yeah, thank you, Frank. And we won't comment on the market. The decision was strictly driven by the fact that we're still undervalued And we're just not going to sell into low-value markets. I mean, I can tell you where it leaves Olin's supply-demand balance. And that is in a place where we're positioned to go out and buy ECUs at the right time to support growth in our downstream derivatives. and will likely be a smaller participant in the merchant market going forward, particularly in those places where we're gonna be compelled to continue to supply through next year on trade indices that actually don't reflect the market value of the product.
spk05: Okay, gotcha, gotcha. And as I look at slide 12, the ECU profitability contribution index, That is an investment banker's dream. I mean, just an absolute hockey stick. Where do you see that going in 4Q and in 2022?
spk24: Well, you know, every day we're focused on lifting value, and that is the one measurement that ties everybody in the company together. So, you know, we're focused on continuing to move it up. Again, you know, I want to reiterate that there may be a quarter or two where we have to draw a flat spot in it to make sure we're positioned right to continue to lift Olin's value. But, yeah, we'll continue to move it up. I mean, Damian, in your businesses, what do you think about fourth quarter here? Yeah, sure.
spk16: I mean, we certainly can see a continuation of the trend where, you know, the chlorine size remains relatively stronger. And, of course, as Scott mentioned, it's Contracts have converted away and we highlighted on our first slide that we shifted more contracts away from index to really negotiate it. There's a step up in value there that we're achieving as well. We continue to see that momentum play through as chlorine remains strong. The rest of the chlorine portfolio in my division, to complement Pat's point on the epoxy side, we continue to achieve value. And of course, yes, the caustic side has improved. There's certainly some increasing areas of tightness, and we spoke about the energy issues that are disrupting those trade flows. And so we're seeing caustic move up as well. But net-net, the ECU continues to move up as reflected in the PCI, and we expect that to continue.
spk03: But chlorine certainly continues to drive the stronger side of the model. Terrific. Thank you so much.
spk10: The next question comes from Jeff with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
spk04: Thanks very much. I was looking at your cost of goods sold, which I think was $1.68 billion. And in the second quarter, it was $1.71 billion. Why did cost of goods sold go down sequentially? I would have thought your raw materials would have been higher. Did you simply ship lower volume? Is that the effect? Can you explain that?
spk24: Yeah. Hey, Jeff. Yeah, sure. I mean, look, at least in one of our businesses, we had some amount of lower volumes. If you remember, at the end of the third quarter, hurricanes, other logistics issues, and so forth, you know, slowed down volumes a bit there. So that's probably the main driver. Todd, is that about right? Yeah, no, that's absolutely the case.
spk02: I mean, we commented in the deck, you didn't see chloralkali products in vinyls. Volume was down sequentially. Really, that was a result of, you know, the big result was Elida. So that's why you saw lower cost of goods sold. Great.
spk04: And then, you know, in your... Yes, in your third slide, you said shifted another 10% of merchant chlorine to freely negotiated, and now less than one-third of volume remains under index. So if all of that remaining volume that was under index is now, you know, at some market contract, what's the annual economic effect of that?
spk24: Jeff, I would just say without trying to itemize product by product that the impact of getting more of our merchant chlorine out from index is important, the more important part is that it lifts our whole portfolio of pouring derivatives. Now, if we were to get the remaining third out from under index, it would have a fair economic impact to Olin, but I'll just say we don't expect to hold on to that complete one-third of volume that remains under index because some of those customer segments aren't going to be receiving chlorine from Olin because we're stuck with having to supply for one more year at some value that isn't representative of the market. So we'll lose some of that volume.
spk04: Okay, thank you very much.
spk10: The next question comes from Josh Silverstein with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.
spk13: Thanks. Good morning, guys. Just wanted to go back to the capital allocation discussion from before. Obviously, this year was a big year for debt reduction. Can you just talk about maybe the capacity for buybacks next year, what you're thinking about for a minimum amount of cash on hand versus debt reduction, and then what could be left over for potential M&A versus buybacks?
spk24: Yeah, I mean, Todd will expand on this a little bit. I mean, what I would say to set the stage for his explanation is that right now, buying back stock represents an immediate return of about 20%. So you can expect this to be a significant part of our forward program. Todd?
spk02: That's right. Really, if you think about 2021, Our first priority has really been to pay down debt, and we're targeting $1.1 billion of debt reduction this year. So far, it's about $850 million through the first three quarters. We've taken a lot of that high-cost debt out of our system now, and we will plan to reduce debt further here in the fourth quarter. That will get us down to about one times range. Ultimately, we're probably targeting gross debt in the $2.5 billion range. To answer part of your question, Josh, where we're really targeting gross debt is in that $2.5 billion range. As we said earlier, we're going to focus on our financial flexibility to enable us to do structuring activities, which would include M&A as well as parlaying. And, you know, we're targeting 40%, right, in that 40% range of our leveraged free cash flow towards shareholder rewards, including the dividend and buybacks.
spk13: That's helpful. And then just on the $2.5 billion EBITDA level, I mean, this was previously suggested it could be done in a few years from now. Is that the new floor to think of? And where do you think, given the portfolio and asset base right now, what could that new number be to the upside?
spk24: Well, I mean, we'll keep working to move EBITDA. I mean, this year, we'll get pretty close to that, pretty obvious, I think. Next year, we've absolutely said that we'll lift EBITDA over this year. We're evolving to also setting targets based around EPS, and so we have a fairly short-term goal of $10 a share. And we'll look at, you know, where we go from there.
spk11: All right. Thanks, guys.
spk17: Thanks.
spk10: The next question comes from John Roberts with UBS. Please go ahead.
spk06: Thank you. It seems like the DOW contract is still one of the largest opportunities going forward. Does that contract all open up at once, or does it open up in phases over time? And if it's the latter, could you talk about how far out the longest part of that contract goes?
spk24: Well, you know, I won't give too many specifics on arrangements, you know, with a particular supplier, customer, But what I will say, because it's in the public domain already and it is a material item, is that our major ECU supply that we're doing at cost ends in 2025. And so there'll be options. And each and every option will be cash-accretive to Olin.
spk19: OK.
spk08: And then Hassan earlier, production and, again, a lot of the Chinese caustic. Do they have any export constraints on epi or caustic like they do with some of the other?
spk24: Yeah, I'm sorry. I missed the question. It just went quiet. I don't know if it's on your end or our end.
spk03: Is anybody still there? Hey, Tom, can you hear us?
spk10: Yes, I can hear you. Would you like to go to the next question?
spk24: Yeah, for some reason we just lost it.
spk10: Yeah, it sounds like his phone line disconnected. All right. The next question comes from Arun Viswanathan with RBC. Please go ahead.
spk09: Great, thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the continued strong results here. So just wanted to ask, you know, on your comments that 22 will be better than 21. You know, your slide 13 has positive price momentum across all of your businesses pretty much. So assuming that, you know, continues, just given your comments, that you continue to focus on value, do you expect – each of the segments to show higher EBITDA, or how should we think about that comment in the context of the segments? Thanks.
spk24: Yeah, no, I think that's fair. Each and every segment should show better results in 2022 relative to 2021. Great, thanks.
spk09: And then just another question on the cost curve. You know, you obviously moved up um, the values here on the ECU, um, how much of your capacity would you, would you say is still kind of, uh, not up to your standards on, on value? Um, and is there anything that you could do to change that? I mean, is there any de-bottlenecking or I know you have the hundred million in productivity, but, um, you know, anything that you'd, you'd, you'd focus on to think about, you And again, how much of your capacity would you say still maybe could be ready for shutdown? Thanks.
spk24: Yeah, I mean, when you think about it from a capacity standpoint, you know, I would just start out in 2025, right? Clearly 30% of our capacity, you know, gets zero return today. So that's certainly a big chunk. If you take... If you take that out, we still have some work to do. It's not necessarily a cost issue, though. I think our manufacturing and supply chain teams have done just a great job driving productivity and flexibility in our assets. It's more still a market value issue. And while a lot of our derivatives are starting to get to the point of reinvestment economics, if you look at what we sell into the merchant market, so take the ECU, elemental chlorine and caustic that go into the merchant market, there's still some work to do there to lift those up to a point that we get somewhere close to reinvestment economics. Thanks. Sure.
spk10: The next question comes from Eric Petrie with Citi. Please go ahead.
spk14: Thank you, and good morning, Scott. We've closed roughly 850,000 tons of ECU capacity this year. Just a question on strategy. Do you expect to parlay in the close one amount, or how do you see that going forward?
spk24: Yeah, you know, I think, you know, let maybe Damian answer this question. Sure, I mean, you know, from a parlay standpoint, we still see that, you know, it's about, you know, pulling that volume that's out there, you know, the liquidity that's out in the market, and we believe there's still, you know, pools of that available globally that we can leverage.
spk16: Of course, as these trade flows do become disrupted, you know, as costs, you know, impact other areas, we're going to capitalize on that with our cost position. But we also see, as we look at these megatrends and the demand that is clearly growing across, that's pulling our ECUs and derivatives, parlay ECUs are going to play a bigger and bigger role in our ability to bring those ECUs into our system, allow us to be more flexible with how we derivatize our chlorine across areas like epoxy, across our vinyl space, across our intermediate and even back to the elemental chlorine. So we have opportunities here to flex our own merchant chlorine and derivatize that and pull other ECUs into the system as well, all for the purpose of lifting and enhancing the value of the ECUs into the customers that we serve.
spk14: Helpful. And then on the one-third of volume in chlorine that remains under index, how much of that is related to TiO2 on the market? How does that change at the end of next year?
spk24: Well, I mean, look, I would just say part of it goes into TI-002, and that's some part of the market. We're not going to be serving out in 2023, and so part of the volume's that go down are related to this shutdown that we just announced in McIntosh, Alabama.
spk14: Thank you.
spk10: The next question comes from Steve Byrne with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.
spk19: Yes, thank you. You have this slide that illustrates the relative value between chlorine and caustic, and I appreciate the concept, but your business is so complex, it's clear that that chlorine value is not a data point on here, but likely a very wide range. Epi, for example, perhaps a year ago might have been at the bottom end of that range in value to you. of chlorine, is it fair to say that it is now among the highest value in markets for chlorine for you? The reason I ask is, is it getting to the point where you think there's risk of capacity expansions of epi in the market, either competitors or customers back integrating?
spk24: Yeah, thanks. I mean, a lot of chlorine and chlorine derivatives have moved up. I would say we have a long way to move because it's certainly not at the high end of that range today. Could it move up to a point where it supports reinvestment economics? It's certainly not impossible. Do we expect to see expansions out in the future, whether it's in EPI or even on the ECU side of the business? Yes, we expect to see some things get announced because otherwise the world's not going to have enough of those scarce products. Once those expansions are announced, I think keep in mind that there's still likely a four-year gap where demand continues to grow faster than supply. So the only way that changes is if there are just multiple announcements of multiple expansions that continue over the next 10 years.
spk19: And then when we look at... you know, pricing on some of these chlorine derivatives like PVC versus EDC, both of them have ripped, but you got about maybe a 60 cent a pound difference between them. Is that fair to you that downstream PVC garners that much of a margin versus EDC, or is that compelling to you to want to move in that direction?
spk24: Well, You know, I mean, we're, of course, the largest merchant supplier of EDC, and, you know, that's a material that we've moved up in value. I think that the recent movements of PVC, so I'm going back maybe across a six- to nine-month window, it went up, looked like there was some risk of it coming down, where, by the way, we had a number of activations around EDC to, you know, make sure that at least Olin's portfolio did not go down. then you saw PVC move back up. I would just say that I think we have some room there. Clearly, the fundamentals for PVC look good longer term, and there's a margin lift that PVC gets over EDC, and I think we're positioned to take advantage of that.
spk19: Thank you.
spk24: Sure.
spk10: The next question comes from Matthew Blair with Tudor Pickering Holt. Please go ahead.
spk11: Hey, good morning. Congrats on the great results. I want to circle back to capital allocation. So based on your 2022 EBITDA guidance, it seems like you should be able to generate at least $1.6 billion of free cash flow next year. And you mentioned 40% to shareholders, so that would be about $600 million. So that remaining $1 billion, Should we think of that as dry powder for M&A, either like transformational M&A or bolt-on M&A? Because it seems like a pretty significant amount.
spk24: Yeah, I mean, look, your numbers certainly aren't that far off. So, I mean, you're exactly right. I mean, we'll have options for that. Part of it is in acquisitions. Part of it is also to support our parlaying activities where we go out and use global product and asset liquidity because we will have some needs for various logistics capabilities as we do that. That's really low capital. It's very light touch in terms of capital, but I just wanted to complete the picture.
spk11: Sounds good. And then previously, I think it's hard to either sell or spin Winchester just due to either like valuation or taxes or maybe a mixable. You know, in today's environment, it seems like ESG is just a bigger part of the picture. So has anything changed? And I guess, could you just provide an update of how you see Winchester fitting in the portfolio over the long term?
spk24: Well, I mean, this is a great business for us. still has a lot of legs. I'm going to ask Brett to speak here in just a moment about our Shoot United movement. If you were to break the business down just a little bit, you've got 55 to 60 million people doing sport shooting now, and it's the fastest growing youth sport really in the country now. And now we've got this program that we're about to roll out to go out and increase the pie. Brett, do you want to talk about Shoot United? Yeah, and just to add a little bit to what Scott said, you know, the 60 million people that participate now really participate for the main reason to be with family and friends. You know, the addressable market is over 200 million people of all demographic and ages.
spk23: communication strategy to introduce all those fun facts and great things about the recreational shooting sports to those 200 plus million people.
spk03: Okay, thank you.
spk10: The next question comes from Roger Spitz with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk18: Thanks very much. Following yesterday's announcement, how much diaphragm capacity do you have left in short-time ECUs?
spk17: Yeah, yeah.
spk24: I mean, we probably won't quote an exact number, but what I will say is, you know, almost half of our capacity, you know, used to be diaphragm-based. And, you know, with that announcement, we've totally taken out about 850. something like that, ECU tons. So we took out a good chunk of it, but we still had a lot.
spk18: Okay. And can you comment on chlorine value and volumes into bleach? Is it starting to fall versus other derivatives as we move out of the pandemic, or is people still bleaching all surfaces they can touch?
spk16: This is Damian. Let me take that question, and thanks for it. Clearly, we have seen bleach values move up in concert with the broader movement across the ECUs. Bleach is also a scarce product. As the largest merchant bleach producer, we clearly have seen the dynamics play out. chlorine and, you know, ECU values have moved up in bleach, but clearly much more room as, you know, bleach is used into disinfectants and wastewater treatment areas, you know, continues to, you know, grow and be more valued and needed. And so we're still poised to, you know, with a long runway in front of us to capture value for this specialty product, you know, and its properties. into greater markets.
spk18: Thank you very much.
spk16: Thanks.
spk10: Again, if you would like to ask a question, press star then one to join the queue. The next question comes from Mike Lighthead with Barclays. Please go ahead.
spk15: Great. Thanks. Good morning, guys. I guess just first, First, you touched on inorganic or acquisition opportunities. Can you maybe just flesh out what you're looking for there? Just help us with either in terms of size or you're looking for geographic or new product expansion. Just give us a sense of kind of what you're going after there.
spk24: Yeah, sure. If I had to sum it up, I would say we're looking for assets that really complement our model. That opens up a lot of possibilities. You could imagine that we're able to acquire ECU capability, although that may not be necessarily North American focus. There's a lot of opportunity for us to expand into other geographies. Another complement that to our model would be derivatives, just like we have a chlorinated organics derivative chain and we have an epoxy chain and we go part of the way down vinyls. There's other chains that certainly feed off elemental chlorine and those would be great compliments to our model whereby we get a lot a lot more knobs to turn across our matrix and get value back to ton one that we have today. The other thing I would say, it's also not impossible that we discover that some of those things that have a direct complement to our model, that actually our commercial attitude might apply to other businesses as well that we might acquire. So we're thinking about all of those possibilities.
spk15: That's great. And then maybe just for follow-up, just digging into the epoxy strategy a bit, if I look at slide seven, there's a lot of talk or discussion around engineered solutions, is it fair to say that you're trying to kind of ultimately sell less of the, I would argue, more commodity liquid epoxy and try to push it more downstream into kind of hardeners, epoxy dispersions, things like that? If you could just flesh out kind of where the strategy is for epoxy, that'd be great.
spk12: Yeah, Mike, this is Pat. And, you know, when you look at the epoxy value chain, um, You know, we make money across that whole chain, and it's very interlinked as to how we make our money there. So, you know, with our epichlorohydrin, like I say, we have multiple knobs on how we monetize that epi, whether it's selling it to the merchant market. If we get value there or we back out of the merchant market and we take that epi and convert it more to liquid epoxy resin to monetize it, Or we can take that liquid epoxy resin and further convert it to a solid epoxy resin or other converted resins. Or we can take that liquid epoxy resin and systematize it into things like wind systems or formulated products or blends. So, you know, Mike, we need that strategically. We need that whole chain to be able to have the maximum value over volume choices. That's really what we've been doing and will continue to do in the future.
spk03: Great, thanks.
spk10: As there are no further questions, this concludes our question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Scott Sutton for any closing remarks.
spk24: No, I would just say thanks a lot, everybody, for joining today. Appreciate it.
spk10: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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