Brenntag Se

On the webinar, you may click the Q&A button on the left side of your screen and then click the raise your hand button. If you're connected by a phone, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. For operator assistance, please press the operator assistance button on the bottom left side of your screen or star zero on your telephone keypad. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Thomas Altman, Senior Vice President, Corporate Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Mara. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the earnings call for the third quarter of 2024. On the call with me today are our CEO, Dr. Christian Kohlpeintner, and our CFO, Dr. Christine Neumann. They will walk you through today's presentation, which is followed by a Q&A session. Our relevant documents have been published this morning on our website and can be found at brentak.com in the investor relations section. In that same area, you will also find the recording of this call later today. Before we begin, allow me to point you to our safe harbor statement, which you will find at the end of the slide deck. With that, I will hand over to our CEO. Christian, over to you.

Well, thank you, Thomas, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I will start with the highlights of the third quarter 2024, followed by a strategy update, and, Christine, the details of our financial performance. In the third quarter of 2024, our results were again impacted by the highly competitive environment in which industrial chemical selling prices remained under pressure. Multiple geopolitical challenges, general uncertainties, and the lack of consumer confidence keep impacting the economic development. The chemical markets we are serving experience an extended bottoming out of the industry cycle. Despite declining chemical selling prices, sales for Brandtac in the third quarter amounted to 4.1 billion euros, which is 1% above the prior year period. Brandtac grew its operating gross profit by 3% to finish the quarter at 1.02 billion euros. and our operating EBITDA amounted to 281 million euros, which is a decline of around 5% year over year. The combination of our weaker operating performance compared to last year and the stable working capital led to a free cash flow of 247 million euros. This is below the strong free cash flow in the prior year period, which was still characterized by a substantial release of workplaces Earnings per share stood at 82 cents compared to 1 euro 18 cents in the third quarter 2023. EPS has been mainly impacted by the sale of Rajpetro specialties in India to improve our business portfolio and on which I will comment later. On group level, volumes are continuing to show the sequential recovery as predicted. However, due to the ongoing pressure on average selling prices and the highly competitive environment, a moderate decline in gross profit per unit compared to the second quarter of 2024 materialized on group level, but was quite distinct in both divisions. At the same time, our gross profit as percentage of sales continues to expand sequentially to now 25%, which indicates that we are managing our gross profit our advantage, despite the strong pressure from selling prices in the market. On a year-on-year comparison, the higher volumes could again overcompensate the lower gross profit per unit margins, but due to the higher volume-driven costs and inflationary impacts, we achieved an overall lower bottom line result. Christine will explain the moving parts in our cost development in more detail later. Let me say a few words on the outlook for 2024. In August, we updated our EBITDA guidance for the full year and indicated a range of 1.1 to 1.2 billion euros. Despite the ongoing challenges in the business environment and the extended bottoming out of the chemical industry cycle, but also based on our cost takeout measures and the encouraging start into Q4, we confirm our full year guidance. Before we have a more detailed look at the results for the third quarter 2024, I would like to provide an update on our Horizon 2 strategy achievements. Since the beginning of the year, we have been working intensively on the execution of our divisional strategies, which we presented to you at our Capital Market Day in 2023 last November. And we made good progress. We continue to execute the disentanglement of our two divisions in areas with the highest value creation and differentiation potential. At the same time, we are prudently managing our cost base and are executing our cost containment measures while focusing on running our business. We have reiterated frequently that BrandTag Specialties is focusing step-by-step on closing the performance gap to our pure play specialty competitors by a combination of short-term and long-term needs. Through short-term margin management initiatives, we were already able to optimize our pricing and purchasing structures, which is visible in a sequentially improving gross profit as percentage of sales, as well as our achieved gross profit per unit. We continue our efforts in this area through longer-term measures, like significantly upgrading our commercial excellence organization, having launched our brand tax specialties academy, As further long-term levers, we continue to optimize our business portfolio and specialties in multiple dimensions at the same time. These dimensions include, firstly, our portfolio of businesses residing in specialties, secondly, our geographical presence, thirdly, leveraging our industry segment approach, and last but not least, strategically developing our supplier base and thus our product portfolio. Let me describe some of the concrete actions that we already took in these dimensions. We have already refined our business mix with the move of water treatment, finished lubricants, and certain semi-commodities to Brandeis Ascensions. At the same time, we reviewed our geographical setup and have already carried out nine small country exits in BSP to focus on geographies, where we have enough critical mass to make a difference and have highest growth potential. We continue to scrutinize our footprint to create efficiency and positive impact on our specialty's results. We are also realizing first successes of our global industry segment setup by expanding existing supplier relationships into other regions, like, for instance, in our business unit nutrition from EMEA now to North America, Furthermore, we have upgraded our strategic supplier management and were able to score important additions to our supplier portfolio both from competitors as well as turnover businesses previously handled by suppliers in-house. In total, we have gained more than 25 new authorizations globally since the beginning of the year. As a tangible result of all these measures, we were able to improve our cross-profit in digit percentage sequentially. Also, the sales margin of BSP adjusted for seasonal effects continues to improve year over year. The year-to-date EBITDA conversion rate of BSP stands now at 38.4%. But let me at the same time also be very clear. Although we are making progress in improving the performance of BSP, we cannot be satisfied with the outcomes yet. Neither the speed of progress meets our own ambition level, nor do we start to close the performance gap to our peers. We have to accelerate and step up our efforts. Full focus on improving the performance of brand tag specialties is key. Ladies and gentlemen, in brand tag essentials, we are executing our so-called triple strategy, focusing particularly on our last mile service operations, LMSO, the performance cells to drive our business. We have designed now around 100 LMSOs globally, which will be steered under a harmonized performance framework through standard KPIs. We will increase efficiencies and reduce our network costs by consequently addressing underperforming LMSOs. We continue to optimize our global site network. In 2023, we successfully closed 29 sites. In 2024, we already closed additional 18 sites and intend to close also 29 sites in total by year end. Further shutdown measures are in progress or in the preparation phase. Also, in our essentials business, we optimize our business portfolio. In October, we sold Rajpetro Specialties in India, a non-core asset of Brandtac, to the company Shell. Raj is a manufacturer of finished lubricants and a blender of a comprehensive range of base oils, derivatives, products with two manufacturing facilities. After entering a joint venture with Raj by acquiring 65% of the company in 2018, we decided in 2023 to simplify the ownership structure through the acquisition of the remaining stake to provide the strategic flexibility for a clean and straightforward transaction structure, which we are now realizing. On a last 12 months basis, large federal specialties generated sales of around 250 million euros with an EBITDA margin below 1%. On top of it, the highly volatile earnings profile and the muted growth prospects led us to the conclusion to find a structurally better positioned owner. We decided to sell the business since we do not intend to run a highly volatile business with fluctuating margins and substantial manufacturing assets, which require a different focus compared to a distribution business. We are convinced that Raj can better scale his business by being part of a global and backward integrated manufacturer like Shell. The sale leads to an overall loss of around 63 million euros, which has already been incurred in Q3 for the most part, and which is recognized in special items below operating EBIT A and in amortization. We also made good progress in terms of M&A, on the one hand, strengthening our industry segments and specialties, and on the other hand, setting up the toll gates, which are strategic locations with deep-sea port access, in which are required to bring the triple strategy of essentials to life. In total, we have signed six acquisitions with an enterprise value of around 360 million euros year-to-date. Brentax Specialties, for example, signed in Q3 and closed on October 31st the acquisition of PIC and Pharma Special in Brazil. The transaction expands Brentax Life Science business in one of the largest global markets for personal care and pharma products. We already closed two acquisitions in Q1 and signed the purchase of Kimica Delta in Mexico, which we also recently closed on October 31st. On top, we closed also in Q3 the acquisitions of Industrial Chemicals Corporation in North America and Monarch Chemicals in the UK. Ladies and gentlemen, let me also briefly talk about our sustainability achievements. Our unique and innovative carbon emissions calculation tool called CO2 Explorer has reached the next important commercial step. We recently announced the launch of an online version for our customers in Europe. While the CO2 Explorer already has been used at Brandeis internally to provide customers with comprehensive product carbon footprint data, the now introduced CO2 Explorer on demand to be used directly by customers themselves. It allows companies to assess and manage their carbon footprint more effectively and calculate CO2 emissions across the entire supply chain, including transportation, warehouse, and packaging. The CO2 Explorer was recently awarded the prestigious ISIS Best Digital Innovation Award 2024. In addition, we recently announced the pioneering step in our ambition to make our product portfolio more sustainable. We now offer 100% sustainably produced caustic soda in the Netherlands and Belgium as the first distributor in the region. These two countries in EMEA are the first ones with more regions likely to follow. Both achievements clearly demonstrate our leadership in sustainability in our industry. We also made good progress with our digital data and excellence program called Dydex, and Christine will elaborate on our achievements and our investments in these areas later. After this update on the ongoing execution of our Horizon 2 strategy, let us now look at the future strategic path of Granter. We have communicated our strategic way forward to move to Horizon 3 at our last capital market day in November. including our ambition for a step-wise disentanglement of certain parts of our company to create the full and future optionality beyond 2026. While executing our strategy and further performing various design phases, we concluded that it serves the interest of our shareholders best to focus fully on our Horizon 2 strategy and on our performance improvement path. We will be leveraging our existing setup as one BrandTag with two differentiated divisions, serving the distinct needs of our customers and suppliers, supported by a lean joint services backbone. Our decision is based on the following rationale. Firstly, BrandTag Specialties is not likely to close the performance gap to our PUPIP years before 2027. Its supply partner and product portfolio stems from Brandtac's full-line distributor legacy and has been less strategically developed towards the higher value end of the portfolio in our life science and material science segments. Although we are consequently addressing this in our Horizon 2 strategy execution as described, it is currently significantly inferior to the portfolio of our pure-play peers, which is visible in terms of gross profit growth, conversion ratios, and EBITDA margins. A valuation re-rating is not going to materialize short-term. Secondly, a full legal and operational disentanglement will lead to a very high one-off cost on which we guided you already during our CMD last year. Thirdly, running dis-synergies identified would add approximately an additional 90 to 120 million euros of costs to our cost base. And lastly, we need to focus on performance improvement in both of our divisions, in light of the currently challenging market environment, driving our operating gross profit growth, lowering our underlying cost base, and thus improving conversion ratios and EBITDA margins. As a consequence, we are convinced that a premature split into two companies and a potential separation of Brand X specialties does not provide the desired value creation to our shareholders before our extensive homework is not done. Based on these priorities, we amend our disentanglement part as presented at the CMT last year and pursue a targeted disentanglement while minimizing dis-synergies and one-off costs. This means we continue to disentangle the customer and supplier facing front end in our divisions, creating fully separated sales teams, including now also separated global key accounts and a fully dedicated divisional supplier and sourcing management, as well as separated supply chain capabilities, including service level agreements between both divisions at arm's length. We will also continue to optimize the legal entity structure in areas where a disentanglement can be easily achieved, creates more transparency, allows for better steering, and does not create further or only minimal dis-synergies. As an example, we intend to continue with the legal entity simplification and harmonization in the United States, in China, and potentially in Germany. we continue to execute our small country exits where we lack critical mass. At the same time, we maintain our strong joint backbone of last mile service operations and back-end support functions to harvest the maximum amount of synergies. Consequently, our initial one-off cost assumptions for the disentanglement and the achievement of our cost-out measures will be significantly lower moving from 450 to 650 million euros to around 300 million euros. With more than two-thirds assigned to accomplish our ambitious cost-out target, which Christine will allude to now in the following section. She will provide insights into our strategic cost-out initiatives before a review of our financial performance in the third.

Thank you, Christian, and also from my side, a warm welcome to everyone on this call. Before talking about our strategic cost containment measures, I would like to quickly look at our historic cost development to provide some context. We are fully aware that our operating expenses increased significantly since 2020. Looking at the development in more detail, however, one can see that the main contributors have been additional costs for required companies and our investments in and other strategic relevant areas. Here, we also added necessary skills and capabilities which usually also come at higher average salary levels. Furthermore, as a single cost category, our personnel expenses are a relevant factor. Personal expenses make up around 60% of our total cost base and are a function of overall headcount and wages plus variable compensation. Looking at the right-hand side of the slide, you can see that our headcount measures, which we initiated in the context of Project VENTAC, are clearly visible in organic headcount development since 2019. Since 2020, you can see that the total increase is purely M&A driven, and we actually further reduced headcount by 690 FTEs organically from 2020 to 2023, despite the fact that we invested in core group functions like compliance, audit, and IT. Therefore, the development of our personnel expenses is mainly driven by weight inflation. Other operating expenses increase due to general inflation across various items like transportation, logistics, and energy. With the cost containment program, which we announced at our Capital Markets Day, we therefore address the increases in net expenses and other operating expenses. Let us take a closer look at the progress of our cost containment program. The program is in execution since the start of the year and is already contributing positively to our underlying cost development, as we have shown to you during our Q1 and Q2 results presentations. For 2024, we target savings of around 50 to 60 million euros. Looking at 2025, the targeted cost out impact is roughly double the amount of 2024, and we have a clear plan to achieve the communicated 300 million annual cost out effect by 2027 compared to our base year 2023. The planned measures will be further detailed and implemented across various areas of our company, like supply chain and service operations, finance, HR, and IT. This requires our full focus and dedication. Delta keeps driving its way to become a stronger data and technology-driven company, and for this purpose also joins forces with well-known strategic partners like Workday, Salesforce, or Node. Our direct initiatives are well on track, and we are confident to deliver the intended impact within our planned timeframe until 2027. The one-time costs to implement our initiatives are generally more front-end loaded and will gradually reduce over time. For 2024, we plan to spend around 100 million euros for DILEX. This includes one-time spend as well as running costs. The benefits are gradually increasing over time with a stronger impact towards the end of the project phase as soon as all measures are implemented. The planned efficiency gains and cost savings are included in the 300 million euros number related to our cost-out program, which I just presented. Naturally, in the starting years, the cost to implement our DILEX initiatives outweigh the benefits. Our achievements so far include, among others, the further successful rollout of our digital sales channel, Brenta Connect, the further rollout of our customer growth engine, as well as first use cases for our digital demand forecasting, and the further expansion of our partnership with Salesforce, where we are, besides the further rollout, also testing a suite of autonomous AI agents to support and simplify tasks in customer services. With this, I would like to switch to our financial performance in the third quarter. I will start with the development of our operating EBIT A on group level. As a reminder, when talking about growth rates, we generally talk about ethics-adjusted rates. In addition, please be aware that MQ3 carries out further product allocation and portfolio measures, as well as small country exits in our specialties division. Q3 figures contain certain one-time two-ups and on a sequential basis, our divisional Q3 results are difficult to compare to our reported two numbers. We adjusted our prior year figures for those effects to create comparability. In the third quarter of 2023, we reported an operating EBIT A of 303 million euros. The translation of foreign exchange effect in the third quarter of 2024 had a negative impact of 7 million euros. Our acquisitions contributed 6 million euros to the operating EBIT-A development. The acquisition of Chimica Delta was closed on October 31st and thus the M&A contribution is not included in our Q3 results. The third quarter of 2024, We reported an operating EBIT A of 281 million euros for the whole group, which is 5% below the prior year figure. Organically, operating EBIT A declined by 21 million euros compared to the third quarter last year. EBIT A conversion ratio for the group came in at 28% compared to a conversion ratio of 30% in the prior year period. Our results were overall characterized by a continuously challenging market environment and intense competition, which put pressure on industrial chemical selling prices. As expected, volumes were higher compared to Q3 2023. These higher volumes were again able to overcompensate the lower gross profit per unit. However, in combination with higher costs, this led to a lower overall bottom line result year over year. On a sequential basis, volumes further improved in Q3 as indicated in our last results call. At the same time, both profit per unit came down moderately due to the ongoing challenges in the industrial chemical markets. Let us now have a look at our two divisions, starting with Brentax Specialties. Land Act specialties reported an operating gross profit of 301 million euros, which is an increase of around 3% compared to last year. Gross profit margin in relation to sales stood at 24%, which is slightly higher compared to the prior year period. The results were affected by slightly higher volumes in combination with an also slightly higher gross profit per unit compared to the prior year period. Operating expenses for Brantac specialties increased year over year, partly driven by M&A. On an organic basis, the increase was mainly driven by higher transportation costs and personnel expenses, as well as the internal allocation of further costs in connection with our direct initiative. These are costs from prior years, which had previously remained in group and regional services, or formerly known as all other segments. and were charged on this year when various digital products went into operation. As a result, operating EBIT A declined by 4% and reached 120 million euros. The segment life science reported a year-on-year EBIT A decline of 3%, whereas the operating EBIT A in material science increased by 21%. The EBIT A conversion ratio for Brenta specialties was 40%, and below the prior year level of 43%. Let us have a look at the gross profit performance of the segments and business units. All business units in the lifetime segment except pharma saw a positive operating gross profit development year over year, which is mainly driven by higher gross profit per unit generation. In nutrition, we saw a positive operating gross profit development in EMEA and APEC, but also ongoing price pressure, particularly for base ingredients. UDN Care was again the strongest business unit with operating gross profit growth mainly coming from APEC and driven by both organic and MOA contribution. Pharma showed its solid operating gross profit performance, but was not fully able to repeat the strong prior year results. The operating gross profit in material science was higher compared to the relatively weak Q3 2023, partly impacted by M&A. We also saw a continuation of the positive developments in case and construction, where EMEA remained strong, APEC improved, and North America remained stable. When looking at the performance of Brent Act specialties on a sequential basis, so compared to the second quarter 2024, we saw slightly decreasing volumes and an increase in gross profit per unit in light of our various margin initiatives, which Christian highlighted in the strategy section. Coming to the performance of Brentac Essentials. Brentac Essentials reported an operating gross profit of €780 million, which is also 3% above the prior year result. The gross profit margin in relation to sales stood at 26%, which is slightly higher compared to the prior year period. All our segments in Brentac Essentials achieved a positive volume development. North America, EMEA, and APEC even achieved double-digit volume growth compared to last year. This volume development was able to offset lower gross profit per unit in EMEA and North America, leading to an increase in absolute gross profit in these segments and for the division. Operating expenses for Brentac Essentials increased year over year, partly driven by M&A. On an organic basis, the increase was mainly driven by volume-related increases in transportation costs, higher personnel expenses, and the internal allocation of further costs in connection with our DIDEX initiatives. These are costs from prior years which had previously remained in group and regional services or formerly known as all other segments and were charged on this year when various digital products went into operation. Operating EBIT A of Brentac Essentials stood at €186 million. This is 10% below Q3 last year. The EBITDA conversion ratio for the division came in at around 26% compared to 30% in the third quarter 2023. Let me briefly comment on the performance of Brandhag Essentials on a sequential basis compared to the second quarter 2024. On the one hand, we saw an increase in volumes in all our segments. On the other hand, the sustained pressure on industrial chemical selling prices led to lower gross profit per unit in most regions compared to Q2 2024. Moving to slide 13, where we look at the income statement in more detail. We generated sales of 4.1 billion euros, an increase of 1%. Our operating gross profit stood at 1 billion euros and increased by 3% compared to last year. Sequentially, we were also able to expand our gross profit over sales margin which indicates that we are managing our gross profit per unit to our advantage, despite the heavy pressure from selling prices in the market. Operating expenses, excluding special items, increased moderately and stood at 648 million euros in Q3. I will talk about our cost development in more detail in a minute, but let us first continue with the income statement. We reported an operating EBIT A of 281 million euros in the third quarter 2024. Special items below operating EBIT A had a negative impact of 58 million euros. This includes a negative effect of 42 million euros from the initiated sale of Rajpetro specialties in India, which is related to valuation allowances on property, plants and equipment and net working capital. It also includes costs for our strategic projects in the amount of 40 million euros, which is mainly related to restructuring costs, and further provisions for legal risks mainly arising from the sale of talc and similar products in North America in the amount of 10 million euros. Depreciation and amortization amounted to 160 million euros and were higher compared to last year. The increase in depreciation is partly driven by our Sorventis acquisition, which we closed in June this year, and the increase in amortization is mainly driven by the sale of Rajpetro specialties and an associated impairment of intangible assets of around 10 million euros. Net finance costs stood at 48 million euros, the increase compared to the third quarter 2023 mainly driven by higher net financial liabilities. You can see that our tax rate in Q3 is considerably lower compared to last year. This is due to internal legal entity optimization measures where we merged certain companies to make better use of German trade tax losses and interest carry forwards, which reduces our expected tax rate for the year. This adjustment of the expected tax rate for the full year 2024 has been booked in Q3, and is now also reflected in our tax rate guidance for 2024, which now stands at 26% to 28%. Our performance translated into a profit after tax of 120 million euros and earnings per share of 82 cents. This compares to the prior year profit after tax of 178 million euros and earnings per share of one euro and 18 cents last year. To provide more clarity on the development of our operating expenses, we show an OPEX bridge on slide 14. The third quarter 2023, we reported operating expenses of 620 million euros. The translational foreign exchange effect in Q3 2024 had a positive impact of around 5 million euros. Operating expenses increased by around 50 million euros, mainly driven by additional costs from acquired companies. Our underlying cost increased by around 20 million euros. This is mainly related to higher personnel expenses driven by wage inflation. Furthermore, both personnel expenses and other operating expenses increased due to higher volumes compared to the prior year period. In addition, the prior year cost base is impacted by the release of bonus accruals, which followed a different seasonal pattern. This year, the adjustments of bonus accruals were more upfront loaded, reflecting the performance of the business. At the same time, our cost containment measures are well on track, counterbalancing the underlying increases with positive impact on our P&L in the amount of around 15 million euros. As a result, operating expenses for the group stood at 648 million euros at the end of Q3 2024. On a sequential basis, we were able to keep our organic costs more or less stable, despite volume-driven cost increases in Q3 and despite lower variable bonus provisions in Q2. As a result of our cost containment measures, we were able to reduce underlying organic expenses by around 10 million euros. We will continue to focus on our cost development with strict discipline. Switching to page 15, in Q3 2024, we generated a free cash flow of 247 million euros. This is below the high number of 442 million euros last year. The decline in free cash flow generation is partly driven by lower operating performance and more or less stable working capital, whereas we reported a strong inflow from working capital release last year. Our working capital turnover was higher compared to last year and stood at 7.7 times. The increase reflects our initiatives to manage our working capital more effectively compared to the prior year period. Looking at our balance sheet, our net financial liabilities amounted to 2.7 billion euros at the end of the third quarter. The increase compared to end of December 2023 is primarily driven by our annual dividend payment in Q2, as well as the cash outflow for acquisitions, in particular, Sorventus. In addition, these liabilities were higher compared to the end of last year, also partly driven by Sorventus. Our leverage ratio, net debt to operating FTA, stood at 1.8 times. And with this, I would like to hand back to Christiane to talk about the outlook for 2024.

Yes, thank you, Christine. Ladies and gentlemen, for the remainder of 2024, we continue to expect a challenging business environment. The ongoing intense geopolitical situation and the slowly softening inflation will continue to create uncertainty about growth expectations of the global economy. The overall market trends and chemical industry expectations observed indicate that markets will remain highly competitive with sustained pressure on industrial chemical selling prices driven by oversupply in certain end markets and subdued demand. Despite the ongoing challenges and the extended bottling out of the chemical cycle, but based on our cost takeout measures and an encouraging start into Q4, We confirm our guidance operating EVTA for the full year 2024 to be in the range of 1.1 to 1.2 billion euros. Ladies and gentlemen, let us once again look at our strategic path forward and quickly recap what we have presented to you today. We cannot be satisfied where we are and we need to step up our efforts further. performance improvement is key. Focus needs to be on price and margin management, on our portfolio optimization, on the cost takeout, and focus on executing our Horizon 2 strategy. We minimize cut-out costs and dis-synergies by targeted disentanglement. We will update you on our progress in the various dimensions with our regular earnings updates. With this, I would like to close the presentation now and thank all of you for participating in today's call and we look forward to your questions. Thank you.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question from the webinar may click the Q&A button on the left side of the screen and then click the raise your hand button. If you're connected via phone, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone to confirm that you've entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press the lower your hand button from the webinar or press star and two on your telephone. Anyone who has a question, make you up now. The first question is from Suazini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please. You've confirmed the guidance for the year, which is 1.1 to 1.2 billion. But given where we are in the year, in terms of year-to-date profits, do you think it's more reasonable for the market to be looking at the lower end of the range rather than the upper end? And my second question is on the legal separation of essentials and specialties. You discussed this, obviously, in the Capital Markets Day last year, and now it's more focused on the front end with a joint back end. Can you give more color on what has changed in the recent months to – drive the decision that you've talked about today. Specifically, what is preventing you from bridging the performance gap to the pure pay peers? Is it because you're not able to get the supplier relationships for key specialty ingredients? Thank you.

Yes, Rosy, thanks a lot for your questions. Again, we have given in August the bandwidth of our earnings, 1.1, 1.2 billion. We also take into account our cost take out measures. We are confident that we are moving in the same direction as consensus is right now in the market. So on that perspective, we confirm that guidance bandwidth we have given you a couple of months ago. On the legal separation on BSP and dissenters, yes, I mean, we have been discussing around the full separation of BS and BS specialties. and you ask about the reasons why we believe, for instance, specialties is not able to fully close the performance gap. On the legal entity separation, I think it is important that we do the legal entity simplification and separation on those jurisdictions. This is very important also for the future. This is particularly the United States, where we have a very heterogeneous legal entity set up, and we need to simplify this no matter what, so independent from actually the disentanglement of those two divisions.

Same is true in China.

In China we are now looking into the disentanglement and have taken the decisions to have that disentanglement between specialties and essentials. And currently we are evaluating what that means also for Germany. And the legal entity separation also means sometimes that you avoid a necessary separation because let's say one country is exited by one of the divisions, then you are left from one or the other division. Now what's hindering us for closing the performance gap is, as I have described it in my call and also many interactions with our investor base, it is we need to recognize that our specialties business and how it has been developed under a full-time distributor model is inferior to the supplier measure which we need to take and which we cannot fix overnight. We make very good progress now, but we also have to recognize that the portfolio quality and the difference it has to our viewplay competitors is of a dimension and of a, I would focus on and also focusing on the performance improvement, which is key as we have said, plus the cost take out. So it's a multiple reason why we come to that conclusion and why we have taken

Thank you. Just as a quick follow-up, you said you were comfortable with where consensus is. I think VARA consensus is at 1140 of EBIT for the year. Is that the number that you're referencing when you said you were comfortable with where consensus is?

I think our consensus number is similar to that, so yes. Thank you.

The next question is from Isha Sharma from Stifo. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for the presentation and especially the slide on OPEX. Could we spend a little bit of time there? If we think of the bridge from 2020 to 23, what I missed there is the benefits from Project RENTAG, which should be around 180 million that you have highlighted in the past. And then if you think about the bridge going forward, is it fair to say that in 2025 the net impact is still quite minimal, and then you will see a bigger impact going forward, because then you introduce the program. We knew that the one-off cost was $350 million. We've already spent $160 million, another $100 million, $24 million, and then the benefits were supposed to be $200 million. And then related to that cost that you incur on the separation, is the benefit only the remaining $100 million from the $300 million? Sorry, it's probably a very detailed question, but I'm just trying to understand how we should think of the bridge from 2024 to, let's say, the next two years.

Thank you. Hi, Isha. I'm not sure if I have... 100% understood all your questions in one. So, first of all, I understood that you wanted to see the project Brentag impact separately in the bridge. So, we have not disclosed that separately because we started already in 2019 and decided that we will put that into the development of our single cost buckets. But the impact of Project Brandluck is clearly there and is visible in personnel expenses and also other operating expenses. I think we also disclosed that separately always with our quarterly updates during that time. So then I understood that the separation cost, and here I'm not very sure if that is the right, what I understood here, but I understood that he wanted to understand the 300 million cost out benefit. if that includes the separation benefit. So the separation benefit was never included in any of the numbers because we have not come up with a separate set of numbers for the two companies. But again, I'm not sure if I understood your question correctly. And then on top, And maybe you also refer to the number to achieve the cost out, which is also by coincidence 300 million. And there we have 300 million to achieve the cost out majorly, and there are some other project costs behind, which then add up to the 300 million. There are two different 300 million buckets, maybe to clarify that. And then the last question was the DIDEX program. You said that the benefit in 2025 will be maybe not that big, and that is correct if you assume that in that way. I hope that I have covered everything in the right way.

Yes, you did get it right. The 300 million, there are two buckets of the same number. You are spending $300 million on separation, but we don't have any related benefits so far outlined by you. So we don't have any numbers that we can think of as benefits. But the $350 million that you are spending on DIDEX should eventually get us to $300 million, or if I remember correctly, it was $200 million that you highlighted in 2023 CNDs.

So I think we have two different 300 million numbers. The first one is the update on our cost out and cost to achieve the separation number. That used to be overall 450 to 650 million. That has been reduced to 300 million. And the majority of the costs here behind is the money to achieve the restructuring, the cost out of 300 million. The DIDEX spend, the DIDEX one-off cost and investments are split across several years. There is no change, and they are also included in our normal operating EBIT A, which is different from the cost out to achieve the restructuring and the project of the separation, which is now the 300 million number. I hope that clarifies.

Okay, so net-net you are spending 650 million one-off costs and the benefits that we know of so far are 300 million that should be achieved by 2027 with no meaningful improvement in 2025.

No. So in the capital markets, we guided you that in order to achieve our cost-out program of 300 million and in order to achieve the legal and operation disentanglement, which was also impacted by a lot of tax expenses and tax leakage. This number used to be 450 to 650 million. This is now reduced to a number of 300 million, very small amount in there for the cost to separate the two divisions. And the majority, the vast majority, more than two-thirds are related to the cost out in order to achieve the share net mean. I hope that clarifies now.

Right. Thank you so much.

The next question is from Annalise Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. I have three questions, please. So firstly, just on the EPS in Q3, you know, you have some additional cost items in Q2, and now again, losses on disposals. Are there any other items or potential disposals that may incur further losses that might impact your EPS in 2025 beyond the restructuring costs you've already announced. I'm just wondering where we might see downside surprise on EPS again next year. And then secondly, just on pharma, which you've called out as still seeing scenarios of still seeing weakness, similar to your peer group. Are you seeing any initial signs of improvement? And do you think that that's an area that will pick up in 2025? And then just lastly, on the essentials sites, I think you said you're closing 29 in total this year. Are you planning to close further sites in 2025?

Thank you. Thanks for the three questions. The EPS question will be answered by Christine. On the pharma topic here, we know the pharma weakness. We have observed this relative to previous year where we had a pretty good We actually expect an uptick here in the performance of pharma for 2025 in line with our expectations. On the BES, yes, it was 29 sites in 2023. It is coincidentally expected 29 sites in 2024, so this is a pure coincidence. And there will be more shutdowns evaluated and developed. So it's a multi-year program which we're currently assessing and that you can also coming also from the implementation of our last-month service organizations. The EPS question, I refer now to Christine to shed some light on this one.

Hi, Annelies. Yes, you're right. The major impact on the EPS in Q3 is the loss out of the sale of RACH. Next year, we will continue with our portfolio optimization, and we will look into it if all our legal entities and all our subsidiaries really create value here. However, for the time being, we are not aware of any further impact on our EPS. And, of course, that is everything we want to avoid going forward in the future. and also looking through our portfolio that will continue. Okay.

Thank you very much.

The next question is from from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to start with the development. I see that today you've changed the strategy now looking of a partial disentanglement. Can you please help us understand what is the benefit of this partial disentanglement? Why not just maintain the status quo? And also, given you are doing this separation of the two divisions, making them independent completely off the table, or you might pursue it after 2027? Continuing with that, on the one-off cost of 300 million, which you have now reduced from 450 to 650 million earlier, if I remember right, you mentioned majority of the 450 to 650 million was related to tax leakage, but now that tax leakage is not there anymore, so I thought this 300 million number probably is a bit higher, and I would have expected a lower one-off cost. And then another question I have is on the Exit rates into Q4, you have talked about encouraging a start to Q4. Can you help us with how the gross profit per unit is trending in the essentials division at the beginning of Q4? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks so much for your question. The runoff costs on the 300 million, Christine will answer. On the disentanglement, again, I think it is very important to understand that this does not mean that we are not interested in or not continuing our path to make both divisions more and more independent from each other. As I've said, on the supply chain side, for instance, we are developing the service level agreements and building the capabilities in both divisions, particularly in specialties, going forward. in the market. Again, the whole story around essentials and specialties was created just to reflect exactly what has happened around us in the chemical industry. The separation into industrial chemicals and specialties players which we are serving and reflecting that. So we are clearly focused and determined to have the disentanglement pushed forward as we have done so in the past. So that is not not a change from the course. And it's also not a change from the course that we still believe that there is at a certain point of time a value creation path for specialties, but we need to fix first the homework and need to do our homework. And this is improving the portfolio quality of specialties and being ready to compete with our few specialties players on the relevant So it's not at all off the chart. It is just focusing on what is now important at this moment, and this is performance management, price management, and cost takeout. On this third question on the exit rates Q4, as I said, we had an encouraging start into Q4 with our businesses, actually both divisions. And what we currently see is that the gross profit per unit is not really under pressure, so it's continuing on the level we have seen in Q4. Now let's see how November and December plays out, but at this moment, despite the still chemical prices are falling, we are able to maintain the gross profit per unit reasonably well. Again, slightly distinct in both divisions, but the strongest pressure we see at this moment still in essentials, no surprise because again, you know, chemical prices are still under pressure. And that is also reflected of how well we can manage actually our margins going forward. Percentage-wise of sales, you saw that we have good progression. That means that we actually overcompensate the falling chemical prices and can create sales margin also in both divisions. I hand over for the third question only one of costs to Christine.

Coming back to the 450 to 650. So in the Capital Markets Day, we announced that the majority of that spend is roughly two-thirds is allocated to the separation and the disentanglement efforts. Out of that, we said that the majority is tax leakage and tax expenses. However, the remainder part also at that time was linked to our cost out measures, which we already announced also in the Capital Markets Day. And therefore, we have now a reduced number, and the reduction really comes from the not continued legal disentanglement and also with the linked tax leakage which is not there anymore. However, there are some operational costs, some project costs and the majority is then the cost for the cost to achieve the cost out. So I think I hope that clarifies.

Yeah, thank you. Just a quick follow up on the exit rates. I believe you mentioned that the gross profit per unit is trending more or less stable sequentially Q4 versus Q3. Then the increasing start, is it more related to the volume development?

Thank you. I think it's fair to say that we see at this moment, you know, a stable gross profit per ton environment. And then, you know, it's a volume-driven topic at this moment. And the volume achievements, as we have predicted, have materialized. I think I have been saying clearly that we do expect second half volume-wise stronger than the first half of 2024, which is happening as we speak. And we also said that 2024 volumes will be better than 2023 volumes. So I think the volume part of that equation, we can pretty well steer and drive and foresee, and the only moving what we have seen in October, we are able to manage it quite stable compared to the previous quarter. I hope that answered the question.

The next question is from Alex Stewart from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hello. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions and thank you for the discussion very thorough. First question to follow up on the previous one. You reported your second quarter in mid-August, so approximately the same number of weeks through the quarter. And at the time, you were talking about gross profit per unit stabilizing quarter on quarter and half on half. And it looks like the reality was somewhat worse, particularly in essentials, which is understandable given the chemical market. But you're making the same comment now in mid-November about the fourth quarter. What's the risk here that actually when we come to see the quarter out? the gross profit per unit is down again at a group level driven by essentials. I'm just interested to know how confident you are that that has now stabilized at a group level. The second question is, we came into this year thinking the numbers were going to be a bit better than they were, as did a lot of other chemical companies. Could you tell me to what extent, maybe this is a question for you, Christine, to what extent did you provide bonuses in the first half that may now be released as the year draws to close. Any sort of guide on the impact in the fourth quarter would be very helpful. Thank you so much.

Okay, Alex, thank you so much. Let me start with the statement that the market dynamics is currently quite dynamic. be both manufacturers and distributors. So that market dynamic is quite intense and there's strong, strong competition. The only thing I can say is that while we were moving into October, we saw that actually what we sometimes see in the beginning of a quarter that you have some negative impact This is coming out and ending out at the same level as in Q3. I think that gives us the confidence here that this is on a good trajectory. Nevertheless, as I said, the market dynamic is extremely strong, particularly on the commodity side of the business, which sometimes is We see also encouraging signs that this is also continuing into Q4. So I think we are here on a good track when we talk about cost profit per unit and specialties relative to essentials. But it's clear the uncertainty is in essentials, in particular around the market dynamic, which we see towards the end now. And so let's see how that plays out. On the bonus topic, I think I hand it over to Christine. Hi, Alex.

So, we started already not to accrue to the 100% extent for bonuses at the beginning of the year. So, as you might remember, we always commented already that we have a benefit also from lower variable PECs fitting into our numbers. Of course, it's not the case that all people are linked to the group achievement. There are different bonus schemes also being bound to the performance on country or regional and divisional level. So, therefore, it is always a little bit of a moving number, really, according to the performance and the outlook we see. However, I do not see that there is a big release of accruals during Q4, because we did that already during the year, which was a little bit different last year, where at the beginning of the year, we had already had all the bonus provisions in place, also due to the better forecast for the entire year in 2023. But, of course, there are always movements because we also have several KPIs, for instance, also the working capital. It's not all a bit A group driven. I hope that answers the question.

Thank you.

The next question is from from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I think the first question, just going back to your full year guidance, and sorry if I'm a bit straight here, but it seems, you know, we've seen this trend that there is a bit of optimism, next quarter is better, and we see disappointment, and I think now you're guiding to Q4 even higher than Q3, which is not even the normal seasonality. So I'm just curious when I think about your Q4 implied guide of 300 versus 280 in Q3 on EBITDA. Like what is baked into that? You said gross profit per unit flat, volumes usually are down. So is there a big 20, 30 million cost benefit, M&A benefit included in Q4, which is helping you achieve the guidance? Because I'm still very, very puzzled. how Q4 can be 300 million given you did 280 in Q3. The second question is just a simple one. You know, you've had some provisions on litigations, you know, you had a fire related provisions last year, you have some costs out on separation. Do you have a sense of how much will be total one-off cash out in 2025 associated with all these provisions and also the ongoing separation and restructuring costs because I guess some of them were provisioned this year but have not yet been cashed out. So I'm just curious how much will be the total cash out in 2025 if you have that number.

Thank you. And I think Christine will take over that question on the full year guidance and also on the provisions and what we expect as cash out going forward.

So, Chetan, first of all, the cash out for next year. So, first of all, the legal provisions are for the time being no cash out. So, it's really the majority is provisions. If we look at the overall spend for next year, so we have not finalized our budget yet. However, out of the coming 300 number, we probably will see a three-digit number, a very low three-digit number coming in next year, or high two-digit, low three-digit number, so around 100 million. That's our current plan. However, we need to finalize our budget, and we will guide you as always at the beginning of next year on that. Then on the three-year guidance, so we have, of course, our cost-out program, which should have a higher impact in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter. I indicated the 15 million impact for Q3. We intend to roughly double that in the fourth quarter. So that should help.

We are receiving a bad audio from the speaker line. Ladies and gentlemen, please hold the line. The conference will continue shortly. The speaker line is now back.

So can you hear us again? We can hear you loud and clear. Thank you. Okay. So then I'm not sure when we got lost in the call, so therefore maybe I just summarize again what it just said. So for next year, we expect to have roughly 100 million additional costs from the 300 million I just mentioned. Also, I added that the legal costs are for the time being no cash out, but more provisions. And then I also explained a little bit more the elements of the guidance. We saw some encouraging weeks in October. That is the first element. Then we have our cost-out program, and I indicated that in the third quarter we saw a positive impact out of the cost-out program of roughly 15 million. I expect that to double in the fourth quarter. And then on top, we have a stronger dollar currently, which always helps us. And the fourth element is also our acquisitions, and you heard us saying that We had a closing at the end of October with a relatively big acquisition we did in Mexico. So those elements brought up to the guidance. And Christian indicated it's also more the lower range of the bandwidth. It's not the midpoint of the 1,100 to 1,200. It's already also indicated, by the way, in August.

Thank you.

As a reminder, for questions from the webinar, please click the Q&A button on the left side of the screen and then click the raise your hand button. If you're connected by a phone, please press star followed by one on your telephone keyboard. The next question is a follow-up question from Suasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you. I just had a few follow-up questions, please. Given the U.S. election outcome, can you discuss how much of your U.S. sourcing of chemicals is local versus shipped from outside? The second one is on the volume-driven costs affecting profits. I just wanted to understand why there is no... why there's no increase in pricing and improvement in gross margin to help offset that. You previously talked about the lack of transparency in pricing at the local level. So just want to understand if the market has suddenly become extra competitive at the local level. And the last one is on the tax rate, please. You've talked about the changes in the tax rate for this year. Is this something that can be sustained into next year as well? Thank you.

Sorry, we have a technical issue here. I don't know what is causing that. I don't know we have an echo here. I'm not sure we have a question. Let me hope I can answer them. And if not, please repeat the questions which are not answered. On the U.S. election outcome, I've been asked a question this morning also by John. I would say it's mutual to a slight positive. We believe that we see benefits in our U.S. business, which is to a vast majority, of course, sourced locally. So that's pretty much about the extent. I mean, we need to dig out the number, but Thomas can provide this to you, I'm sure. Then I understood a question around the tax rate, and then I would like to ask Christine to answer the tax rate. And then we lost one question. You might repeat it.

No, of course, yes. No, of course, yes. The question was on the volume-driven costs, which resulted in margins coming down in this quarter and year-to-date, despite your gross profit rising year-over-year. I just wanted to understand whether there was a lack of pricing control, why you haven't managed to improve pricing. If you go back to the 08-09 crisis, for example, your gross margin increased by 300 basis points. and that helped offset some of the costs increase and therefore you were able to generate stable EBITDA and stable EBIT. Just wanted to get a sense of whether the competition has increased so much that you don't have that much control on pricing and therefore the increase in SG&A is hitting your profits even though your gross profit has returned to growth.

I will take the text question first. So you saw our guidance. The guidance for the three years is now 26% to 28%. The legal entity reorganization in Germany had two impacts, the first one being a one-off impact, and the second one will be a permanent impact. So that means we will not keep the school benefits on a recurring basis. in a recurring way, but only part of that. So what we see right now, and also, again, here we're just working on our budget, we see that the tax rate will be at around 28-ish for next year again, but let us come with the details once we have, we are gone through the whole exercise. However, it will be in the normal rates again. It's not as high. as indicated before in the latest guidance, which we now do. I hope that clarifies.

Yes, thank you.

Yes, thank you.

And let me try to ask the second question on the volume driven cost. I mean, as we have described during the year, the expected volumes are picking up, and they did. And ideally, we added several hundred thousand tons of products, which we shipped this year, which, of course, is driving also our cost base, our OPEX base, our variable costs, which are residing in logistic and in warehouse costs. So we have, as I said, several hundred thousand tons, which translates into tens of thousands of additional trucks, which we are shipping. And that's also explaining a little bit the impact you see on the OPEX side. When we try to solve the equation from the price side standpoint of view, you see our sales and combined with the volumes we are shipping and creating under the environment of declining selling prices, you could see that volumes actually were offsetting that declining average selling prices of our products. At the same time, on our gross profit side, we kept the gross profit stable because of good margin management. And, of course, if you have declining chemical selling prices, your gross profit margin percentage of sales goes up. And, as I said, we have now 25% for the whole group, which is, I would say, quite a decent and good level. Now, when it comes to the margin management of gross profit per unit, this is where the uncertainty in the whole equation is. So we see volumes going up and the gross profit per unit slightly under pressure. And that then is leading to the result which you have seen. And this is, you know, again, something that we are not happy about it. But we also need to recognize that there's currently a fierce market out there with a strong fluctuating prices on key materials which we are selling like caustic soda or like petrochemicals. So that's, you know, a little bit trying to explain the moving parts of the equation between volume, sales margins, gross profit per unit and selling prices.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Thomas Haltmann for closing remarks.

Thank you, Maura. This brings us to the end of the conference call. In case of further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to the IR team. Our full year results will be published on March 12, 2025. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us today. Have a good day and goodbye.

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