March 14, 2023

Univar Solutions Going Private

Univar Solutions to be Acquired by Apollo Funds for
$8.1 Billion

3/14/2023

Shareholders to Receive $36.15 Per Share in Cash

DOWNERS GROVE, Ill. and NEW YORK, March 14, 2023 /CNW/ — Univar Solutions Inc. (NYSE: UNVR) (“Univar
Solutions” or the “Company”) and Apollo (NYSE: APO) announced today that funds managed by affiliates of Apollo
(the “Apollo Funds”) have entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire the Company in an all-cash
transaction that values the Company at an enterprise value of approximately $8.1 billion. The transaction includes a
minority investment from a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (“ADIA”).

The agreement provides that Univar Solutions shareholders will receive
$36.15 per share in cash, which represents a 20.6% premium to the Company’s
undisturbed closing stock price on November 22, 2022. The transaction
consideration also represents a premium of 33.6% to the volume-weighted average price of Univar Solutions for the
30 trading days ending on November 22, 2022.

“We are pleased to have reached this agreement with Apollo, which will provide immediate and certain cash value
for Univar Solutions shareholders,” said Chris Pappas, chairman of the Univar Solutions Board of Directors (the
“Board”). “The Board’s decision follows a comprehensive review of value creation opportunities for Univar
Solutions. We are conêdent this transaction is the right path forward and achieves our goal of maximizing value for
Univar Solutions shareholders.”

David Jukes, president and chief executive officer of Univar Solutions, said, “Over the last three years, we have
transformed the Company, putting the customer at the center of all we do, which has solidified our position as a
leading value-added service and solution provider. This transaction reflects the success of our strategy and delivers
substantial value to our shareholders. It is a testament to the tireless efforts of my colleagues, whose commitment
to our purpose of helping keep our communities healthy, fed, clean, and safe has enabled our success.

In Apollo, we are pleased to gain a partner to support continued investment in our portfolio and I look forward to working
closely with their team as we grow Univar Solutions and serve our key suppliers and customers globally.”
Apollo Private Equity Partner Sam Feinstein said, “Univar is a global leader in specialty chemicals and ingredients
distribution, fueling a vast array of industries with innovative, safe and sustainable solutions. In recent years, David
and his team have made tremendous progress enhancing the customer experience, and we believe Univar can
accelerate its long-term strategy as an Apollo Fund portfolio company. We look forward to leveraging our extensive
experience in the sector to support management in this exciting next phase.”

Transaction Details

The merger agreement, which has been unanimously approved by the Univar Solutions Board of Directors,
provides that Univar Solutions shareholders will receive $36.15 in cash for each share of common stock they own.
The transaction will be enhanced with equity provided by the Apollo Funds, a minority equity investment from a
wholly owned subsidiary of ADIA and a committed debt ênancing package.

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2023, subject to customary closing conditions, including
approval by Univar Solutions shareholders and receipt of regulatory approvals. The transaction is not subject to a
ênancing condition.

Upon completion of the transaction, shares of Univar Solutions common stock will no longer trade on the New York
Stock Exchange, and Univar Solutions will become a privately held company. Univar Solutions will continue to
operate under the Univar Solutions name and brand and maintain a global presence.

The foregoing description of the merger agreement and the transactions contemplated thereby is subject to, and is
qualified in its entirety by reference to, the full terms of the merger agreement, which Univar Solutions will file with
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as an exhibit to a Current Report on Form 8-K.

https://investors.univarsolutions.com/news/default.aspx?utm_id=a9ff85b1-77b5-43f6-836a-1961c8ce7478&sfmc_activityid=622444bc-2204-4971-9feb-e4c8fca45b17

March 3, 2023

Urethane Highlights from Covestro Investors Call

Covestro AG (CVVTF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Mar. 02, 2023 3:47 PM ETCovestro AG (CVVTF), COVTY

Covestro AG (OTCPK:CVVTF) Q4 2022 Results Conference Call March 2, 2023 10:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Ronald Koehler – Head, IR

Markus Steilemann – CEO

Thomas Toepfer – CFO

Markus Steilemann

Thank you, Ronald, and good afternoon, a warm welcome also from my side. Looking back to the year 2022, we must clearly admit that the last year was challenging. The effects of the coronavirus lockdown in China during the second quarter caused severe disruptions of logistic chains within China and the rest of the world. Then the war in Ukraine also with a tremendous humanitarian impact. We have and continue to support the Ukrainian people with our donations through the United Nations Refugee Agency and our local country organizations in Poland and Slovakia.

Let me give you an overview of the key financials. Covestro achieved a record sales of €18 billion, driven by significant price increases in order to cope with the tremendous energy and raw material cost inflation. The EBITDA decreased to €1.6 billion, unfortunately, with strong downward traction in the second half of 2022. Nevertheless, — we were able to secure a positive free operating cash flow supported by significant working capital savings in the fourth quarter. Despite all these challenges, we returned more than €800 million to our shareholders in form of dividends and share buybacks. The nonfinancials are getting more and more important for Covestro and also for our shareholders.

Let’s turn to Page #4. Another highlight of the quarter was the successful start-up of our new world scale facility to produce chlorine in Tarragona, Spain. The new plant is based on one of the highly innovative and energy-efficient oxygen depolarized cathode technology invented by Covestro and its partners. This new plant ensures an efficient and independent supplier of chlorine and caustic soda to our MDI production in Tarragona. The €200 million investment will strengthen the European production network for MDI and has created 50 new jobs on site. In 2022, our MDI plant in Spain was already the low-cost plant in Covestro’s European network. Please note that Spain has its gas supply coming from North Africa. The expected EBITDA contribution of the reduced cost of chlorine purchases and additional sales of caustic soda and hydrochloric acid is estimated to be a mid-double-digit million euro amount compared to the predominantly used conventional [chloralkali] electrolysis.

Now turning to Page #5. Let us now have a closer look at the past year, starting with the volume development. Year-on-year, the global sales volume decreased by 5%, mainly driven by weaker demand in the region EMLA and destocking mainly in Europe and to a smaller extent in North America. The region EMLA has seen significant decreases in all industries important to Covestro and was clearly the weakest region. Despite the lockdown situation in the first half 2022, Asia Pacific is showing just a slightly negative volume development. Electro declined significantly and furniture, slightly. However, the stimulus program for auto and transport as well as construction reduced the overall loss with both industries showing growth. Sales volumes in North America were flat with slight decline in furniture wood being offset by construction and auto and transport.

Looking closer into the different industries, the clear and lasting negative trend in furniture wood is continuing in all regions. Electrode shows especially in the 2 regions, Asia Pacific and EMLA, a continued negative trend. Both industries are affected by a post-COVID decline and a reluctance in private spending due to rising inflation. The picture is, however, mixed for the construction industry. Whilst volumes in Asia Pacific and North America are increasing, the situation in EMEA was negatively affected by the raw material energy price situation. The globally positive trend is the volume increase in the automotive industry, at least in 2 regions, Asia Pacific and North America namely. Also in Europe, the trend was positive in the fourth quarter, quarter-over-quarter, but not strong enough to compensate for the losses quarter 1 to quarter 3.

Thomas Toepfer

So with that, let us go into the 2 segments, and let’s start with Performance Materials. Clearly, the segment suffered from the significant negative pricing delta. And while in the first half of the year 2022, we were still able to pass through the majority of higher feedstock and energy prices on solid demand. In the second half, this pricing delta turned largely negative because the demand significantly weakened first in Europe, but then also globally across all the industries, as Markus has outlined earlier. And because of the stronger commodity character of the PM products, and the result is that we’re much more exposed to variations in the supply and demand structure. So overall, the PM segment EBITDA declined year-over-year by 63% to €951 million because the supply was outperforming demand, and we had low pricing power and consequently, also the EBITDA margin declined significantly to 10.5%.

Now if we look forward into the year 2023, we are expecting that our sales volumes should stay flat versus 2022 with Q1 and Q2 being still weak, and we’re expecting the second half to show a recovery. And I would also say that the first half of this year will still be burdened by idle costs, especially in Europe, for almost all core products, but we’re expecting that this situation should then ease in the second half of the year.

Markus Steilemann

Thank you, Thomas. Let’s turn to Page #14 and take a look at the growth demand outlook for our key customer industries. Our outlook into 2023 expects a further contraction of the global GDP to only 1.5% underlying in the weakness in demand we are currently observing in many industries. Despite exhibiting the most optimistic growth number with 4.6%, automotive is expected to remain below 2019 levels. However, the electric vehicle outlook remains strong with almost 43% growth. The outlook on construction for 2023 is with 0.8%, again, less optimistic and is strongly influenced by the European raw material and energy price situation. The resulting high inflation and increased interest rates are especially hitting the residential sector where the outlook is even negative. After a year of contraction, we foresee a stable trend in the furniture industry. Electro is also expected to further slowdown and demand is only expected to grow at a rate of 2.0%.

However, for the appliance industry, after the negative demand development in 2022, a recovery with a slight growth of 3.7% is expected. This industry is an important consumer of MDI for the insulation part of the appliances.

Christian Faitz

You incurred some [indiscernible] impairment losses in Q4 in Solutions and Specialties. I know that, Thomas, you just elucidated those a bit just now. Are there also impairments from the DSM Resins acquisition? And the second question I have is, how is demand out of China at present? Is the post-COVID recovery as strong as hoped for a few weeks ago?

Thomas Toepfer

Yes, Christian, let me start with the impairment. So again, the vast majority of the impairments, as I said, comes from the polyols and from TDI, and a very, very limited amount refers to, as you said, to a specific business segment in the RFM business that we acquired. Remember, the business that we acquired had various segments, and there’s one smaller one, which was also hit by an impairment, but the vast majority of RFM was absolutely unaffected.

Charlie Webb

Maybe just following up on the demand picture. Could you help us understand a little bit if you didn’t have the force majeures in the fourth quarter, where volumes would have been across PM would be helpful. And how do you see volumes in Q1 — within that Q1 guidance given the force majeures are still in place?

And then just second question just around, I guess, the health of the supply and demand for your key commodities. Obviously, the question around demand and I understand that’s very difficult to answer. But when you look at the supply, I mean, we’re expecting additional supply additions in TDI and MDI in China this year. I suspect polycarbonate is largely done, but certainly, the utilization rate is not quite low. So just trying to understand how do you see the current balance across those commodities looking through this year? Because it does still seem like we’re still in a wave of supply additions regardless of where the demand comes spectrum or not. That might dampen any sort of recovery for ’23. Just on to gauge your view on that.

Markus Steilemann

Charlie, this is Markus speaking. So first and foremost, thanks for the question, and it is one of the questions that is really on top of our heads. Also, when we try to look into this year and also when we looked into the guidance for this year. So you’re absolutely right. We were dealing in the fourth quarter of last year with quite a number of force majeure, and those are continuing into the first quarter. And that is, for example, our TDI unit in [Dormagen], which is only running maximum at half capacity, our [Uerdingen] polycarbonate as well as MDI facility in Uerdingen impacted basically by the chlorine supply chain that supplies all of the 3 mentioned assets. So it is not only but strongly, let’s say, focusing on Europe when we talk about respective supply topics with regard to force majeure that we have. They’re definitely has led also to the inability to supply more, and that also has partially contributed to the volume development.

But let me also be clear, the volume development on the one hand is limited by our supply situation, but it is also limited and that also continues into the first quarter by still a challenging demand environment. And here, and I alluded, based on Christian’s question a little bit to that, the demand situation is particularly, let’s say, challenged in Europe and challenging — and continues to be challenging in Europe. And we still have not yet seen major positive signs from an improvement in demand in China. Whereas the U.S., that was, I would say, slightly — flat to slightly negative. So that is how we have started. So baseline after a little bit more detailed explanation. The majority of decline in demand is really coming from weaker demand or sales from our side is coming from weaker demand and not, let’s say, from our force majeure situation.

So for Q1, therefore, we expect, in total, a mid-teens volume decline, and yes, that’s what we currently expect. If we talk about the balance or let’s say, supply-demand balance, TDI was very strongly down in a year talking market. Market for TDI in 2022 by minus 7%. But let’s not forget, in which position Covestro is in those markets. We are normally first ones to be in when a crisis comes, but we’re also the first ones to be out. That means a very fast rebound and very quick recovery is possible. So that is how I see it. If you want to have, let’s say, a guess on MDI, construction is still, let’s say, as we said, expect it to be slightly positive for the full year. However, we have not yet seen that there’s a pickup, as I said, with regard to China. We expect the pickup to happen now in March because that’s normally when construction season starts. And yes, that’s the current situation.

I hope it’s helpful. It’s a very mixed bag, honestly speaking, and we try to provide you with as much insight as we have, but we’re also trying to figure out what is currently going on.

Charlie Webb

Got it. That’s helpful. If I could just follow up quickly in terms of the supply and demand. I mean are you surprised to sort of see Chinese peers and competitors adding capacity into the MDI at these current levels because we still have some pretty big additions this year.

Markus Steilemann

Well, first and foremost, there is – and we have always been very clear – for all the, let’s say, more commoditized parts in our portfolio and particularly for MDI, a clear mid- to long-term demand growth. And take MDI, we are convinced that growth rates structurally are still in the area of 4%, 5% to 6%. Next to the fact that we have seen, let’s say, the challenges, but do not – or please do take into consideration that we’re talking about energy-efficient buildings. We talk a lot about retrofitting needs. Yes, we have seen now due to somewhat, I would say, pre-consumption patterns during the corona pandemic in – with regard to furniture also a stronger decline in TDI. But that is not a structural challenge, it’s more a cyclical challenge that we are facing. And with regard to destocking, we will think that we will see the end of destocking latest by Q2, and therefore, Q3 rebound is possible. So having said – and you referred to additions in supply, I mean, let’s also be clear, and we have been clear in different context in the last couple of years.

Once you decide to invest, you invest and then the best way to build as effective and efficient as possible is just to push through and build as quick as possible. Stopping and accelerating makes investments extremely costly, and that’s why exactly what you see right now is just a consequence of decisions that have been taken a year or years ago. And the respective companies also see, as we do, obviously, the structural growth opportunities in those markets. The major additions you are talking about are coming solidly from one who are in China. And as we have always stated from our observation, that is a player who is very price disciplined because they have the largest market share. That means they have the most to lose if they’re not very disciplined on that. Also here, I hope that gives you some flavor.

Georgina Fraser

I’ve got two questions. The first one is on your volume outlook, and it’s kind of in 2 parts. You’re using the IHS GDP forecast of 1.5%. Our in-house at Goldman is 2.4%. I was just wondering why you would expect your volumes to undergrow GDP this year when they already did last year? And then another kind of similar question. Markus, you’ve been at Covestro for more than 20 years. Have you ever seen volumes down mid-single digits and then the subsequent year was only flat? And then my second question is, any comments that you can make around how the competitive landscape in European TDI is evolving on the back of BASF’s announcement?

Thomas Toepfer

Georgina, this is Thomas. So let me start with the volume question. And first of all, of course, we don’t have a crystal ball, so we took the 1.5%. Let’s hope that Goldman Sachs is right and the 2.4% materialize. But your question was more regarding our volumes. So the factors that we have baked in is that we are still seeing some destocking in the first quarter of this year, and we’re also still struggling with some force majeures that will also not only burden Q1, but also at the beginning of Q2, and only then should we see some improvements. And then, of course, you will see some growth because the comps are getting easier in the second half of the year. But the reason why we’re not significantly outgrowing that, but rather being flat is that we’re still struggling with, as I said, destocking and some internal problems that we have to resolve, specifically in our [North-Rhine Westphalia] assets.

Markus Steilemann

Yes, Georgina, this is Markus speaking. Very good to hear you, and thanks for your questions. And as you directly addressed the question to me, and I have to say, I’m not 20 years with Covestro, even though I might look that old already, I’m actually 24 years with the company and only joined Covestro then back in 2004. So there’s still one year to go just to be very precise on the data. But your question was targeting did I ever see in that, let’s say, 19 beautiful years, let’s say, 2 sequential years with negative or, let’s say, at least one negative and then flattish volume. I would say, yes, kind of, but is it very lightly. No, not necessarily. But I think Thomas has made it very, very clear why we have actually have given that you could call it conservative guidance. So yes, so that is exactly how I would interpret and answer to your question, yes.

So – and then on the competitive situation, particularly in TDI, how do I look at the picture? I do not comment on what our colleagues up the Rhine River and Ludwigshafen have said, but the overall numbers is that with that capacity at one point in time not being there in Europe anymore, it would mean that we have 36% lower European capacity on TDI and 9% lower global capacities. We were and therefore, also remain the low-cost producer in Europe, especially given that the gas phase technology that we are using has 60% less energy consumption than the other processes that are used in the industry. And with that, also Europe is coming from a net exporter position into a net importer position. And we also believe that the TDI market, next to all the short-term turbulences, structurally would still grow with a low single-digit rate. So that’s how I currently look at the TDI situation. I hope that is a comprehensive answer to your 2, 2.5 questions.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4584051-covestro-ag-cvvtf-q4-2022-earnings-call-transcript?mailingid=30711845&messageid=2800&serial=30711845.74

March 3, 2023

Epoxy Highlights from Westlake Investors Call

Westlake Corporation (WLK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Feb. 21, 2023 2:46 PM ETWestlake Corporation (WLK)

Q4: 2023-02-21 Earnings Summary

EPS of $1.86 misses by $0.43 | Revenue of $3.30B (-5.93% Y/Y) misses by $111.98M

Westlake Corporation (NYSE:WLK) Q4 2022 Results Conference Call February 21, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Jeff Holy – Vice President & Treasurer

Albert Chao – President and Chief Executive Officer

Steven Bender – Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Roger Kearns – Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President, Performance and Essential Materials

Albert Chao

Thank you, Jeff. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2022 results. For the full year of 2022, we reported record net income of over $2.2 billion or $17.34 per share and record EBITDA of $4.2 billion on record sales of $15.8 billion.

While 2022 was a record year, it was also a challenging year as we experienced energy volatility, rapidly rising interest rates, evolving COVID policies impacting Asian demand and market dislocations due to the war in Ukraine. As these obstacles evolved and drove more difficult economic conditions in the second half of the year, Westlake took proactive actions to navigate a slower GDP growth with cost savings initiatives.

These broad-based 2022 initiatives included reductions in overhead and energy costs, synergies from acquisitions and investments in digital and automation that lowered our cost by approximately $50 million and also drove operational efficiencies. Thanks in part to these actions and despite the challenging external environment. For a second consecutive year, we achieved records for sales, EBITDA and net income, with EBITDA almost doubling from the previous cycle high in 2018.

I want to take a few minutes to review several of our major accomplishments in 2022. We generated record cash from operations of $3.4 billion. This significant level of cash flow allowed us to return $270 million to investors in the form of dividends and share repurchases, retire $250 million in debt, deploy $1 billion to improve the reliability of our plants and grow our production capacity to meet customers’ needs, close $1.4 billion in acquisitions and grow our ending cash balance by $300 million.

The evolution and integration of our business continued in 2022 as we closed the Epoxy acquisition and increase our ethylene integration with the additional investment into our LACC Ethylene joint venture. Integrating these businesses into Westlake, as we have with Boral, DASCO and Dimex acquisitions which closed in 2021, drove synergies in 2022.

This evolution of our business spurred the changing of our name from Westlake Chemical to Westlake Corporation, which better represents the significant breadth of the products we produce and industries we serve. Decarbonizing our assets and drive sustainability remain important initiatives and growth opportunities for Westlake. As part of our sustainability efforts, we established a carbon reduction goal to reduce our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emission intensity by 20% by 2030.

Albert Chao

Thank you, Steve. During the fourth quarter, we saw deteriorating economic conditions that led to inventory destocking, resulting in lower demand for our products in well-supplied markets. Since year-end, we have seen modest improvements early in the first quarter in demand for polyethylene and PVC with improving feedstock and energy costs providing some margin tailwinds.

The large market for epoxy in Asia and Europe reflect sluggish demand as China begins its economic recovery and Europe continues to address its own economic and energy challenges. Looking ahead, while uncertainties remain in the macroeconomic outlook, we believe there are some positive trends appearing.

Energy costs have improved, particularly in Europe, albeit still at elevated levels. Forecast for U.S. housing starts ranging from 1.1 million to 1.3 million units over the next two years, which will be a 20% decline from the 2021, 2022 levels.

Even with the strength in housing construction that occurred over the past two years, annual new housing construction largely remained below the 50-year average of 1.5 million units. Therefore, we continue to have a deficit from underbuilding that occurred since 2007.

Duffy Fischer

Good morning. First question is just around the Epoxy acquisition. You’re kind of a year into it now. It’s been at the tough year here. So, can you do an after-action review? I mean, does the industry need to have some structural change? Does your business need to have some structural change? Or is this just really kind of a bad supply-demand setup right now that will fix itself over the next couple of years?

Roger Kearns

Yes. Thanks, Duffy, it’s Roger. Maybe a couple of comments there. I think Epoxy business for our first year, we started extremely strong. The first part of the year was a very strong part of the business. But as we move through the year, it certainly got weaker.

And by the end of the year, I would say the fourth quarter was really quite weak. I think there’s a couple of things as we look forward. We have seen China announced already in ’23 nearly a doubling of the wind energy installations over ’22. So, we’ll have to watch and see how that plays out.

But that should be kind of a nice boost in the markets. As you know, there’s — I mean, there’s a limited number of Western players. We’ll continue to do what we do, which is make our plants run more efficiently, more cost effective.

We’ll copy our Westlake model into those sites. So, I think there’s some self-help work we’ll do, but hopefully as well with aviation, automotive and some wind energy picking up a little bit in ’23, we can get the ’23 looking better than certainly the end of ’22.

Duffy Fischer

Fair enough. And then the stat or the projection you threw in there on remodel and repair at 2.6% for the year, one, is you’re just talking to your customers as you’re looking at your order book, does that feel like kind of the right number? And then maybe like a follow-on to the last question, if that ends up being the right number, how does that look first half versus second half do you think?

Steven Bender

So, Duffy, it’s Steve. And I would say that the tone that we saw at the builder show recently was constructive, and I think it aligns with the tone that we saw from those that visited the builder show. And certainly, there is some expectation that will continue on as we go forward. Typically, when housing starts slow, repair and remodeling show strength.

And so, there is a typical investment cycle that homeowners always undertake. And that is they’re either improving their home either to sell to move forward or improving their home because affordability to move on to a new home is too expensive.

So, we do think that, that aligns with the tone we’re hearing from our customers and consistent with the contributions we think it will make to the business over the course of ’23.

Jeffrey Zekauskas

Okay. My follow-up, there was the vinyl chloride release in Ohio. Do you think that, that has implications for the chlorovinyl industry? Or do you think that, that will lead to some kind of change? Or do you have any general comment?

Albert Chao

Yes. I think people are waiting for the surface transportation safety board come back with the report. I’m sure there’ll be more government regulation on railroads and possibly on the shippers on safety.

These are very important products that ship around the country. So, the demand has to be satisfied. But definitely, we need to increase the safety by the variables primarily. I will think on the equipment, some of them getting old, and we heard new technologies out there to improve the safety aspect of the railroads.

Eric Petrie

Thank you, Albert. And then maybe a question for Roger on your comment of the doubling of installations in China. What does that do to kind of supply-demand balances in the country? And then how much capacity is China adding this year and kind of what needs to be absorbed from last year?

Roger Kearns

Yes. So, I think wind in China is — China is a big driver of the wind market. And so, they’ve got RFQs out there, say, about double this year what they’ve done last year. That’s a good first step, I think, in really starting to absorb the extra capacity that’s come in as well as avoid the exports, right?

So as Albert mentioned, with the China domestic market so slow, the China producers are exporting significant amounts. I think that will turn back inside and be used in China as opposed to hitting the export markets.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4580333-westlake-corporation-wlk-q4-2022-earnings-call-transcript

March 1, 2023

Recticel Results

Recticel Annual Results 2022

Regulated information, Brussels, 28/02/2023 — 06:59 CET, 28.02.2023

• Net sales increase from €449.2 million in 2021 to €561.5 million (+25.0%) in 2022, of which €129.2 million contribution from Trimo and a €48.9 million reduction following the phasing out of sales of chemicals to divested Automotive companies
• Adjusted EBITDA: from €48.4 million to €62.2 million (+28.4%)
• Result of the period (share of the Group): from €53.5 million to €63.2 million
• Closing of the divestment of Engineered Foams expected at the end of 1Q2023
• Proposal to pay an increased gross dividend of €0.31 per share

Olivier Chapelle (CEO Recticel): “The European construction market has become increasingly challenging as the year 2022 unfolded, with growing economic uncertainties and historically high inflation and rising interest rates weighing progressively more and more on construction activities. In that environment, I am proud of all our employees and want to thank them. In 2022, their focus and contributions have allowed to deliver, when compared to 2021, slightly higher volumes in Insulation Boards and flat volumes in Insulated Panels. Reactivity on pricing and margin management have in turn contributed to deliver solid results.

The divestment of Engineered Foams is expected to close at the end of the first quarter of 2023. It follows the decision on 26 January 2023 by the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK, to approve the Final Undertakings, which execution is now entering its final phase.

With the acquisition of Trimo on 1 May 2022, now fully integrated, we have created a broader basis for further internal and external growth.

With regard to ESG and sustainable development, after having announced our commitment to the SBTi, we can report a 11.2% reduction in our Scope 1 & 2 carbon emissions in 2022 versus reference year 2021.”

OUTLOOK

The year 2022 has been very challenging due to the consequences of the geopolitical turmoil. During that year, our business has resisted well and is well positioned at the beginning of 2023, despite the current lack of visibility. Margin management, growth initiatives and further progress on ESG are the priorities in 2023.

At this stage, the Company does not provide guidance related to its full year 2023 expected results.

https://www.recticel.com/recticel-annual-results-2022.html-0

February 28, 2023

No More Corner Office

Evonik is moving its North America headquarters to Piscataway, New Jersey

MOSCOW (MRC) — Evonik, one of the world’s leading specialty chemicals companies, is moving its North America headquarters from Parsippany, N.J., to Piscataway, N.J., said the company.

The official address change took effect on January 1, 2023. The Parsippany location will be closed with the end of its lease later this year.

The relocation is part of Evonik’s larger site rationalization plan to ensure efficient operations and future growth in North America. Evonik has embraced a hybrid work model in the region to consolidate office space, enhance employee engagement, and increase employer attractiveness.

“For Evonik, moving towards a hybrid workplace is a strategic opportunity to attract and retain diverse talent and to enable an efficient real estate footprint,” says Bonnie Tully, president North America region. “We want to foster conditions for growth, creativity, and innovation.”

The new Piscataway headquarters, located approximately 35 miles southwest of New York City, consists of administrative offices, laboratories for Research & Development, and the largest Collaboration Hub in the North America region – designed to support a hybrid and creative work environment for more than 160 employees. Evonik has recently opened similar hubs at its sites in Richmond, Va., and Mobile, Ala., and will eventually feature them at six locations in North America.

The uniquely designed spaces offer open areas and meeting rooms for employees to work onsite without needing individual offices. Employees have access to collaboration technology like digital whiteboards and tools for video conferencing. “The Collaboration Hubs promote interactions across our business lines and functions,” says Tully. “It will shape the future of work at Evonik and contribute to our culture of innovation.”

North America is an essential growth market for Evonik. The region contributed roughly a quarter (23%) to Evonik’s annual sales in 2021, making it the second-largest revenue source after Europe (EMEA). By 2030, Evonik aims to invest more than USD3 billion in Next Generation Solutions — products with superior sustainability benefits. Evonik will invest an additional USD700 million in Next Generation Technologies to optimize production processes and infrastructure and avoid CO2 emissions.

We remind, Evonik is pooling its expertise and integrating its alkoxides business into the Catalysts Business Line. The extensive portfolio of heterogeneous catalysts is thus now complemented by homogeneous catalysts. An international network of production sites and the highly experienced alkoxides team will additionally strengthen the Catalysts Business Line, one of Evonik’s growth areas, from January 2023.

https://www.mrchub.com/news/406437-evonik-is-moving-its-north-america-headquarters-to-piscataway-new-jersey