Solvay Sa Act

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Solvay's second quarter and first half 2026 earnings conference call. I'm Geoffroy Loutremont, head of investor relations and I'm joined today by our CEO Philippe Kehren and our CFO Alexandre Blum. This call is being recorded and will be accessible for replay on the investor relations section of Solvay's website later today. I would like to remind you that the presentation includes forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. The slides presented in today's call are also available on our website. Let's get started. Philippe, over to you.

Thank you, Geoffroy, and hello everyone. Let me start with safety, which is at the heart of everything we do. A transformation delivers tangible results with the reportable injury rate further improving in the second quarter, as you can see here. This positive development reflects the commitment of our teams. We continue to strengthen our safety culture through targeted initiatives. For example, we now have a focus on injuries, slips, trips and falls, and contractors' safety management. So let's move to our performance. Our performance in the second quarter reflects different realities in an operating environment that is constantly evolving. On the one hand, bicarbonate and electronic grade peroxides are at record sales levels. On the other hand, soda ash remains under competitive pressure in the export markets, indirectly weighing on the US market. On the conflict in the Middle East, we estimate that it had a negative impact of around 20 million euros on the EBITDA in Q2. The main element is the shutdown of the peroxides plant in Saudi Arabia. Outside of this, the impact is slightly negative with the improvement of the dynamics at Coatis not fully covering higher energy, raw materials and logistics costs. Looking ahead, we currently anticipate that the peroxides plant in Saudi will restart in the second part of Q3. Our teams on site are working in this direction and we will be ready as soon as the platform restarts. I will come back to this when we talk about the outlook. Now two weeks ago the European Union released its draft proposal for the reform of the emissions trading system. Although it is too early still to fully assess the impact, we believe that this proposal moves in the right direction. Most importantly, it confirms the 2050 carbon neutrality objective while maintaining the allocation of free allowances. Their proposal appears significantly more focused on supporting industrial competitiveness and decarbonization rather than simply increasing costs for the European industry. We will continue to assess the proposal in the coming weeks. As said, we believe it goes in the right direction, but there is still a lot of work to do before it is final. We will obviously update you on this topic in our next communications. Now, Alex, over to you for the details of the Q2 results.

Thank you, Philippe, and good morning, good afternoon, everyone. So let's move to the detail of the financial performance, which is mainly impacted by the continued weakness of the soda ash prices in export market, the conflict in the Middle East, and the more general geopolitical environment. Moving to slide 9, and as usual, I will comment on the organic evolution leaning at constant scope and currency, unless otherwise stated. Underlying net sales in Q2 reached slightly over a billion euros, down 7% compared to the second quarter of 2025, but up sequentially in all business units. The decline was mainly volume-driven, reflecting the temporary shutdown of our peroxide plant in Jubal and the 20 million one-off gain recorded in Q2 last year for the contract termination in the fluorine business line. Pricing was slightly lower overall, broadly stable across all of our businesses, except for some pressure largely concentrated in the soda ash seaborn market. Forex provided a small tailwind this quarter thanks to the strengthening of the Brazilian Real against the Euro. Now moving to EBITDA. We delivered an underlying EBITDA of €187 million in the second quarter, down 20%, representing an EBITDA margin of 18.1%. There are two main factors behind the year-on-year EBITDA decline, both explaining the significant volume drop of this quarter. Around half relates to the consequence of the conflict in the Middle East, mainly due to the temporary shutdown of our peroxide plant in Saudi. The other half reflects the one-off in Special Can in Q2 2025. Net pricing was broadly stable. The improvement in Coatis was offset by higher cost in other businesses and continued pricing pressure in the Sodaash export market. Fixed costs contributed positively as our structural cost saving initiatives more than offset inflation. We delivered a third of 26 million euros of cost saving in the quarter, mainly through operational excellence initiative in our manufacturing sites. Moving now to the segment review, starting with basic chemical on slide 10. Sales in sodash and derivatives declined by 8% organically. Sodash volume was slightly lower year on year, partly because of some delayed shipment into July. Pricing was marginally lower in domestic market and declined more significantly in the civil market. On the other hand, our bicarbonate business remains steady with both volumes and pricing broadly stable year on year. Peroxide sales were down 5%. This mainly reflects the temporary shutdown of our HPPO plant in Saudi, which was partly offset by the continuous strong growth in electronic grade supported by semiconductor demand. Performance in other application was broadly stable. The segment ABDA decreased by 6%, lower peroxide volumes, and continued sodash pricing pressure were partly mitigated by improved operational performance and cost discipline. Moving to performance chemicals on slide 12. Overall, performance chemical ABDA declined by 26%, mainly due to the absence of the 20 million one-off benefit in Q2 2025, and a lag in price indexation in silica. This was partly offset by a stronger performance in Coatis. Looking at each business now, silica sales were slightly down, overall performance remained solid after the quarter was affected by an unfavorable regional mix and a lag in price indexation. In our Coatis business, sales increased by 1% with improved pricing in both phenol and solvent product lines. The difference between the year-on-year and organic performance mainly reflects the impact from the stronger Brazilian reais against the Euro and the US dollar. This marks a clear sequential improvement for the gratis business, following the significant pressure experienced since the middle of the second quarter of last year. In special camps, sales declined by 18%. The overall performance was stable in most business lines, with a pickup of volume in electronic rare earth application at quarter rare. As highlighted before, the year-on-year comparison is primarily impacted by the contract termination benefit recorded in the second quarter of last year in our fluorine business line. Finally, a quick word on the corporate segment EBDA, which was minus 25 million euros in Q2. As expected, stranded costs were still high during this quarter, reflecting the full impact of the exit of the TSE with ScienceCo. Based on this, I can confirm that our full year expectation remains between 70 and 80 million euros. Turning to slide 13, free cash flow to Solvay shareholders, reached 15 million euros in the first half of the year. The second quarter was negative at minus 11 million euros due to the seasonality combined with some concentration of cash out which I can explain as follows. CAPEX for the first half of the year represented approximately 140 million euros. Spending remained disciplined and focused primarily on essential HSE and maintenance investment as well as ongoing energy transition projects. Working capital represented a cash outflow of minus 79 million euros in the first half, reflecting the usual seasonality during the first six months of the year, including variable remuneration payment in Q2. Cash outflow from provision amounted to 106 million euros in the first half of the year. As already explained, they are still above the normalized level, and many relate to the transformation and restructuring initiatives. This includes the exit from the TSA, the optimization of the fluorine business footprint and the remaining spending on the Dombal Energy Transition Project. The free cash flow in the third quarter will remain under pressure from the above elements, but we are firmly focused on delivering our full-year free cash flow guidance. On slide 14, let me remind you that our pre-cash flow in 2025, 6 and 7 is and will be impacted by temporary transformation expenses, which include the stranded cost linked to the exit of the TSA, the restructuring of the fluorine business line and the development and implementation of a new ERP. So looking at 2026, these expenses represent approximately 90 million euros of cash outflow. We could improve cash generation by slowing or postponing our transformation, but as already explained, we are convinced that continuing is the right direction, especially in this market condition. Moving on to net debt on slide 15. Underlying net debt stood at 1.8 billion euros at the end of June, temporarily higher than at the end. reflecting the full dividend payment the first part of the year for 254 million euros. Similarly, the leverage ratio temporarily increased above two times at the end of the quarter and should be back around two times at the end of the year. This is consistent with the confirmation in June by S&P of our BBB minus investment grade rating. So overall, our Q2 results reflect the challenges brought by the conflict in the Middle East, which we need to manage while continuing the transformation of the group and maintaining a solid balance sheet. Philippe, back to you for an update on the latest Rare Earths development and the 2026 outbreak.

Thank you, Alex. Indeed, let me give you an update on our strategy regarding Rare Earths. and the progress we're making in La Rochelle. With more than 75 years of experience in rare earth separation, Solvay holds a unique position globally. We are the only company outside of China with the technical know-how and industrial capabilities to separate all 17 rare earth elements. And that makes us a central player in the discussions around the setting up of rare earth value chains outside of China. Operationally, we continue to accelerate our developments. To secure future feedstock supply, we recently signed a letter of intent with Viridis to source mixed light and heavy rare earth concentrates from Brazil, with deliveries expected to start in 2028. This agreement strengthens our long-term access to strategic raw materials and it supports our growth ambitions. The feedstock includes key rare earths for permanent magnets, notably Neodymium, Praseodymium which are called the light rare earth NDPR and Dysprosium and Terbium called DYTB which are the heavy rare earth and this agreement supports the increasing global demand. It also contains an important Distribution of additional heavy rare earth that I just mentioned used in critical advanced technology sectors such as automotive, electronics, medical and aerospace applications. You remember we reached an important milestone in April 2025 with the start of production of magnet-grade light rare earth, so namely NDPR. This represented a first significant step in building a more integrated and diversified rare earth ecosystem in Europe. Today, we are taking the next step by investing an additional 15 to 20 million euros in heavy rare earth separation capabilities, creating additional opportunities in high value applications. This includes the start of industrial scale production of DYTB in the fall of 2026. Overall, these investments reinforce Solvay's leadership in rare earths. They strengthen European supply chain sovereignty and they position us to capture attractive growth opportunities in the energy transition and advanced technologies. So now moving to the outlook. So today we confirm our guidance for the year 2026. This guidance anticipates the restart of our peroxides plant in Saudi Arabia before the end of the third quarter. More specifically, we confirm that we expect an underlying EBITDA between 770 and 850 million euros, a free cash flow to Solvay shareholders from continuing operations to exceed 200 million euros, with capex around 300 million euros. So, in conclusion, we remain fully committed to our essential chemistry strategy and to our transformation. This is obviously challenging given the difficult environment we've been facing over the past few quarters, but however, we know it is essential to prepare Solday for the future. In our transformation, we do not forget growth. We remain highly selective and disciplined, investing in areas where we have differentiated capabilities and where we see compelling long-term demand growth. This includes electronic grade of peroxides for which demand is booming due to AI and rare earth where there is a clear need to develop independent value chains in particular for permanent magnets. Finally, we continuously evaluate the best possible way to create long-term value. One way to do it is to review our portfolio of assets and businesses and assess whether there are opportunities to improve its efficiency or reinforce it. This combination of transformation, discipline growth and active footprint management is how we are building a stronger and more competitive Solvay for the future. Thank you and I think we're now happy to take your questions.

Yes, thank you, Philippe and Alexandre. So Gaia, you can now open the line for questions, please.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six. The first question is coming from Katie Richards from Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Two questions, please. Firstly, could I ask your conviction on the Sodara peroxides restart and whether your decision today to hold the guidance is just simply a binary call on this restart mid Q3 taking place or not, or there are other factors taking place I mean, listening to Dow's conference call, they were saying the plant's still offline and it had suffered some damage. So I'm just wondering whether the communication you'd heard was any different here. And secondly, you noted that some soda ash shipments were delayed from Q2 into July. Could you quantify the impact for us here?

Hello Katie and thank you very much. What I can say very clearly regarding Sadara, so just remember we are producing hydrogen peroxide that we supply by pipe on the platform where we are one of 23 units. We are currently actively preparing this restart for before the end of the quarter. And this is what basically we're getting prepared for. I think, you know, We're ready to restart, that's what I can say, and this is what we assumed. Regarding Sodash, it's true that there has been a little bit of delay in some of the shipments From Q2 to Q3, I don't know, Alex, you want to?

We cannot comment precisely. It's really logistic equation. As you know, SUDASH is exported, as you may know, it's exported by boat. So you quickly get big quantities if you have delayed a few shipments. In terms of top line, it's a single digit number of millions of APDN. Great, thank you. What we mean is that on the annual basis, don't expect decrease or increase in volume, but one quarter to the other, you may have some phasing.

Thank you. The next question is coming from Martin Rodiger from Kepler-Chevreux. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Yes. Hello Philippe, Alexandre, Jovois and team. I have one question with let's say three sub-questions. So you said that basically half of the 40 million year-over-year EBITDA decrease in Q2 is due to lower peroxides volumes on the back of the Middle East conflict. I understand that roughly 20 million earnings decline year-over-year is caused by the production stop of your HPPO plant in Zadara. So when I know that This plant accounts for 2-2.5% of group sales and has the highest margin. And do the math. Then my questions are the following. A. Is it fair to assume that this plant generated around 40% EBITDA margin one year ago? B. This plant is now heavily loss making as you have costs, i.e. salaries, but you do not sell any products. And C. If there are losses right now, Can you stop these losses of that plant in case the Middle East conflict lasts many years?

Okay, thank you. So basically, yeah, I mean, we confirm that there is more or less a 20 million euro impact of the Middle East crisis for us in Q2, and that the plant in Saudi Arabia represents a big part of it. So it's not It's not the whole amount, but it's a big portion of it. As you say, the plant has been idle since mid-March and we lose the sales and we also have some costs to incur. Clearly, again, and I repeat, we are today preparing for a restart, right? And this restart is supposed to take place before the end of this quarter. Now, as you say, if the conflict continues, if there continues to have problems and so on, of course, there are a lot of different possible scenarios. We will explore all of them. and get back to you with the outcome of those discussions.

Okay, thank you.

The next question is coming from Chitan Udeshi from JP Morgan. Your line is now open, please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. My first question was I'm just looking at the Surash prices, the future prices for Surash in China. It's completely collapsed. It's now at lowest ever levels. I think the contract price in Europe is $300. Surash prices in China are now $130, $140. And I'm just curious, are you getting pressure from your customers in Europe who are using maybe imports from China as a reason to bring your prices down because I understand historically it's not been as economical to ship Surash from China to Europe, but given where the price differential sits today, I don't know if it starts to become actually economical. It just feels like this is one of the very few commodity products in chemicals where the Chinese exports into Europe really hasn't gone up that dramatically, and can that be a risk given the price delta now? The second question was on this announcement or this capacity expansion that you're doing for rare earth separation. It still seems pretty tiny to me. It's like 15, 20 million in the context of large expansions happening elsewhere in that space. Firstly, can you confirm how much of that capex has been funded through by customer prepayments or Subsidies or both, or is this a net capex after some of these prepayments? And second, what do you still need to invest? I mean, it feels like things are still progressing rather slowly with Red Earths on Solvay's side. And the last question is, You typically have this 50-20 million license income for HPPO. You didn't have it last year. Did you have any in Q2? And if not, do you expect that to come through in H2? And specifically when? Either is it in Q3 or Q4? Thank you.

Thank you, Chetan. So, Sudhash. I must confess that we're not looking too much at prices in China because we're not selling in China and for us what is more important is the prices in the export market so in Southeast Asia, Middle East Africa and Latin America and they're higher obviously than the domestic Chinese price but still you're right they are at a very low level, historical low levels This is not new and this of course has been taken into account in our outlook. Does it put additional pressure in Europe? At this point, no. I mean because it's still very difficult to ship Chinese sodash to Europe. We don't see any Chinese sodash. Right now in Europe because the transport cost is extremely high and so our sites in Europe are still the best with the Turkish ones obviously. in terms of cost to deliver in their domestic market. And that's really what matters. However, it puts pressure on the volumes that are exported out of Europe and out of the US. This is why our seaborne business is currently not performing as well as it used to perform in the past years. And it puts, by the way, also pressure on the U.S. producers, because the U.S. producers, including us, are exporting 50% of their capacity. And this is why you might have seen also that SVM has shut down its plant in California. That's a direct consequence of what's happening on the seaborne market due to Chinese overcapacity. So it has consequences but not directly I would say at this point on our European or US markets. Capacity expansion in rare earths, it might look small but in reality it's not. I mean remember that we are revamping an existing plant. We are repurposing units that already exist. If you would have to do this type of investments outside of La Rochelle, in any location in the world outside of China, it would cost four or five times more, right? So we really need to keep that in mind. And this is why those investments are very interesting, because they are built on an existing plant. And we are gradually building, step by step, a new value chain in this region. You might have seen, and I said that we've signed an agreement with Veridis to expand our options in terms of sourcing. and we are indeed signing new contracts with customers for these new NDPR, DYTB and so on type of rare earth elements. These investments are done because we have the commitment of the customers. This is why it's gradual and we will move further with an objective to reach 50 to 100 million euro of capex in the end. And they are also supported to some extent by the French government. And they are also, in some cases, pre-financed by our customers. So all these make those investments possible and very promising. PEROX license, no, we don't have any revenue in Q2. We might have, I mean we're pursuing a certain number of opportunities, but today nothing is secured, but this is taken into account in our outlook, whatever happens.

Thank you.

The next question is coming from Sebastian Afwey from Bernstein. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions, too, please, for my side. So on coitus, the Brazilian expected tariff rate was recently increased to the US and Chinese exports in other chemical value chains are up in recent months. Does this make you less bullish on the prospect of recovery? and on the ETS rule changes, does that change your need to make decarbonization investments on your European soda ash capacity through the end of the decade to compete with lower carbon Turkish soda ash? And could more funding be available from Europe to help you make the investments? Thank you.

Thank you, Sébastien. So first question on Coatis, a big part of the recovery is due to the current geopolitical context and the fact that, and the consequences I would say of the conflict in the Middle East, the fact that the whole complex is going up and that pushes margin you know higher and so on and so forth and that the logistic routes are being disrupted so that being said a part of the recovery was also boosted by the end of the tariffs that's true it was not the main part but it was a part was coming from that the previous tariffs was 50% plus 10% I think of baseline Now we move to 25 plus 10. I think it's too early to say if it's going to have what type of impact it will have on our customers. We monitor this very carefully. So far, we don't see any change in the order book. But of course, we monitor this extremely, extremely carefully. But the new tariff is 50% of the previous one. So that we need to keep in mind. The new ETS, I mean, First, it doesn't change anything on our ambition. Let's be clear. Our ambition is to be carbon neutral by 2050. And we have a very clear trajectory in order to go there in the next 15 years. So the new proposal is in fact in line with our ambition. This is where we're, I would say, comforted in our strategy is that The previous versions were too aggressive and putting us under pressure. The new version is in line. So it doesn't mean that we will go slower. It means that we will go as planned. That's what matters. Now, will it create more opportunities? I think that's the purpose. Because what we're asking for is indeed more support for the energy transition to redirect the revenues from the ETS more towards energy transition projects than in the past. And I think this is what is also planned in the new draft that has been proposed by the European Commission.

Okay, thank you so much.

The next question is coming from Sebastian Bray from Berenberg. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hello, hello, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. My first one is on the outlook as we move into 27, because I'm struggling to think about how earnings growth can materialize under certain circumstances. So on the one hand, we've got peroxides coming back. On the other, as I think Chetan alluded to, it's difficult to imagine scenarios where solar ash pricing is supportive in the year. I imagine co-artists might be down a little bit as well. My point here is how exactly are you thinking about the prospects of achieving earnings growth in 27 and reconciling that with the fact that the dividend won't be covered in 26? And my second question is just on seasonality into Q3. Is anything getting sequentially better or worse as we move from Q2 into Q3? Thank you.

Thank you, Sebastian. So I will give the question on Q3 maybe to Alex. In the meantime, just some elements regarding 2027. Clearly, I think it's very early to say anything about 2027 at this point. I mean, we're of course focused on, you know, delivering the 2026 and we just confirmed our guidance and we are focused on you know what we control and what we control is our transformation and we are moving in the right direction we are delivering the savings that we expect in our transformation both on our sides and at the group level and We are doing what we have to do also in terms of growth. We're not investing a lot of money, but we invest where we have to invest. We mentioned electronic grade H202, Rare Earth. Those are examples that will help us prepare the future and 27 in particular. Now on Q3, maybe Alex, I give you the floor.

Yeah, and maybe also to make the transition. and this is why we thought useful to show you the slide again with all our transformation expenses that we've decided to maintain even if the economic context is challenging. We said this year it should be around 90 million euros and next year should be in the tune of 50 million euros. So just this decision will improve the cash almost mechanically whatever the context by 40 million euros. and in terms of dividend affordability, I think it's an important piece of the equation. Now on the seasonality, I think you're alluding to the seasonality probably of the cash. If it's the cash, I mean, we expect really the cash to be back-ended in Q4 because we will continue to spend quite a lot of money on this transformation cost, restructuring, ERP in Q3. So the cash will tend to be quite back-ended. What I want to make clear is that you see in H1, because the level of activity at the end of June was quite decent compared to a very low level at the end of December. So we've invested in working cap close to 80 million euros and that will progressively reduce in the second part of the year but obviously it's really when activity gets very low at the end of around November, December that we should see significant working capital decrease.

That's helpful. Thank you for taking my questions.

Next question is coming from Julia Winkleman from Bank of America. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon and thanks for taking my question. First on your full year EBITDA guidance, it's still a relatively broad range. Could you explain a bit more about what needs to happen to reach the upper end, midpoint and the lower end of the range? And then same for the free cash flow guidance. What are the moving parts to get to above 200 million? Is it really mainly the working capital unwind or is there anything else? And then my other question is on the rare earth business. I just wanted to understand the business a bit better. So maybe it would be helpful if you could quantify how large the rare earth business is today as percentage of group sales or percentage of specialty chemical sales. And then I also wanted to ask on the customer of takes, What kind of customers are these? Are they from automotive industry, defense industry, or what industry are they from? And also, how are the agreements structured in terms of duration, committed volumes, pricing, and also the flexibility to any of those elements? Thank you.

Thank you, Julia. So maybe I will I'll give you some elements on Rare Earth, and then I will give the floor to Alex on the range of the guidance on the BDA for 2026. So the size of the business at Rare Earth is more or less half of Special Chem. It's 8% of the group sales, just to give you the order of magnitude of the size of the Rare Earth business. Historically we've been delivering, serving the markets of the auto catalysis and electronics and medical applications. Now these new investments are related to permanent magnets and indeed permanent magnets are for electrification. So you have all these type of customers that you've mentioned, auto manufacturers, wind turbines, aerospace and so on and so forth that are looking for this type of material. And indeed, to invest, we need commitments from the customers because today this market is mainly delivered from China. and there are enough capacities in China. So the type of commitments that we ask for and that we get in order to invest are volumes and prices through multi-year contracts, to be simple. Alex, you want to take the question and then the PDF?

Yes, I will be quite simple. Obviously, the volatility is the name of the game. I mean, the same way The situation changed dramatically in one direction with the Middle East crisis. Can it move back in the other direction? Maybe. I think today what we've said is that the main impact is the HPPO plant being stopped. The race between quantities, the cost of transport, the cost of energy is slightly negative, but manageable. Can it turn positive? You have effects. I mean, there is not one specific element that needs to happen, apart from the fact that, okay, we need to restart this HPPO unit, and we are actively working on it to restart in the coming months. And we're confident. Yeah, we are.

There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing remarks.

Yes, okay, so thank you everyone for your participation today. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to the IR team, might be a little bit less reactive in the coming weeks given the summer break. but feel free to send them to the generic investor relation email address and there is always someone taking care of it so there are a few events planned in September as usually you can find them on the financial calendar page on our website and we will announce our Q3 earnings on November the 4th thank you very much have a good afternoon thank you thank you very much thank you thank you bye bye

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.