The Urethane Blog
February 24, 2022
Brad Beldon leads his roofing company through ‘double whammy’ of labor shortage, broken supply chain
Richard Webner, ContributorFeb. 23, 2022Updated: Feb. 23, 2022 8:28 a.m. Comments
Brad Beldon, CEO of Beldon Roofing, describes the challenges facing the construction industry as a “perfect storm.”
For decades, the industry has struggled to find workers. The COVID-19 pandemic only made it harder. Now, with the global supply chain broken, companies can’t get the materials they need, or can get them only at inflated prices.
Beldon is not without ideas about the problems. He’s sent letters to President Joe Biden and members of Congress suggesting measures to alleviate the crisis, such as expanding the H-2B temporary worker program.
“You have the supply chain crisis hitting at the exact same time that labor became a crisis,” he said. “COVID took more labor out of the equation and then it shut down factories. When they shut down factories, they can’t get capacity back up. So there’s no inventory and if there’s no inventory it’s just-in-time, and just-in-time is, ‘Everybody needs it today.’”
And Beldon and another executive at his company, Jodie McCue, recently launched a software business, Ozbee Team Software, aiming to provide a one-stop shop for construction companies to do their scheduling, accounting, inspections and communicate with employees and customers, among other things.
The software was developed to help Beldon Roofing operate smoothly, but Beldon and McCue said they came to realize they had a product other companies might be interested in.
Ozbee, which operates on the Salesforce cloud platform, was launched earlier this month at the International Roofing Expo in New Orleans. Since then, Beldon and McCue have received more than 100 inquiries, he said. It is undergoing a security review from Salesforce before it can be released on the platform.
Beldon previously launched a tech startup called Roof Monitor, offering sensors that would help property owners protect their roofs from the effects of bad weather. The concept didn’t work because the technology was too pricey, he said.
“What we learned from that business was we built a product that would only work the way we wanted it, because we thought we were right,” he said. “We built Ozbee to work the other way — we give you the engine, and you tell us what you want to do with it. That was a very valuable lesson learned — a very expensive lesson learned.”
Beldon recently sat for an interview to discuss Ozbee, the supply chain breakdown, and why young Americans aren’t entering the construction industry. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: Could you describe what you’re dealing with now with the supply chain?
A: It’s unprecedented. We have zero transparency. The inflation is just outpacing everything. I think there was an article that I read today — construction costs this year are up 23.6 percent or something like that, year over year, which is just mind boggling. I’ve been doing this for 35 years and to see it even climb 2 percent or 3 percent in a year is really odd.
I don’t know how it ends. There’s four main components to commercial roofing: You got your insulation, you got cover board, membrane and a method of attachment. The method of attachment, generally speaking, is one of two things: It’s a mechanical fastener or an adhesive. That adhesive comes in a steel container, so with the worldwide shortage of steel both aspects of attaching a roof you can’t find. Even though you can get the adhesive — maybe you can get the adhesive, but it’s made with MDI (or, methylene diphenyl diisocyanate), and MDI is the other shortage.
So you have a double whammy. That product that we used to see for $300 is now $1,400 and it was historically $300 since the day that product came out. A lot of the MDI is still stuck out in the Pacific, can’t get into here. There’s five truckers per every 100 truckloads of demand.
Q: What do you mean when you say zero transparency?
A: There’s zero transparency on deliverability, zero transparency on pricing. The customer is the one that’s suffering, right? They think we’re being elusive and yet we don’t have the answers. I wish we could! If we told him what we knew they’d be laughing like, “Yeah, right. That’s how you’re operating your business?” Like no, really, that is how we operate. We have no idea.
Q: How have you coped with that?
A: We had to make some difficult decisions. We laid off some employees, we reduced benefits.
Q: When did that happen? How many did you have to lay off?
A: The last quarter of 2021. Eleven. It’s hard. We’ve tried hiring them back, some of them, as business has picked up and some of the chokehold has a gotten a little bit better, but we still can’t fill every position. I mean, our backlog is the largest backlog we’ve had in the history of our company, and we can’t do the work.
Q: What other materials are you having trouble with?
A: Single plies are a large component in the roofing industry. They’re manufactured with resins, and most of the resins come from overseas. The MDI issues that you read about are from the freeze from February in South Texas. That was one of the largest MDI suppliers in the world, and I’m not sure that any of them are back up and running. We’re all trying to find that 1 percent of the MDI that’s left in the world and grab it.
We’ve seen labor increase over 20 percent in this market in a year. So we’ve seen materials go up, labor go up by over 20 percent. Inflation, at some point, is going to stop this, in my opinion. At some point, people are going to start saying “I can’t afford that anymore.”
Q: Tell me more about the labor issues.
A: The labor force is on the higher end — they’re closer to my age, in the late 50s. You don’t see the 20 year olds wanting to enter the construction industry. It’s not a “wow” industry, right?
It pays very well. I mean, we have roofers making six figures. Now, it’s dangerous. It’s hot, it’s dirty, it’s difficult, but it’s a really good income with no debt. These kids go to college for whatever job, where someone comes out and makes $40,000 a year with $200,000 in debt. How do they ever get get caught up?
Q: What could we do, as a society, to avoid these problems?
A: You want to write a book together?
On the labor side of things it’s an easy solution. They have a program, the H-2B (guest worker) program, that’s already on the books. It works, it’s effective. They contribute to Social Security and they don’t take anything out. That’s an easy fix to solve the labor problem in the United States because you can take the 66,000 workers that you allow to come in every year from around the world and make it 2 million, 3 million, 5 million, whatever that number is — the system’s already built. If you fix that problem then I think you might be able to fix the trucking problem. And then if you can get more people in the plant, then you can work three shifts instead of two, and produce more product.
Q: Why aren’t younger Americans going into the roofing industry?
A: I think it’s twofold. When I grew up, we had technical schools inside the high schools. You had the opportunity to go learn the trade. They don’t exist anymore, because what they want are these high-paying computer jobs, working for Facebook and Google.
And I think the construction industry is frowned upon as, it’s dirty. We’re a little bit above used car salesmen in the construction industry. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t run professionally operated businesses, and that we don’t care for our employees, and that we don’t offer them benefits that aren’t found at USAA and Valero — they just don’t know it! Because we don’t have the money that we can go out there and advertise, “Hey, we pay for your health care. We have a 401k.” Most of construction are family businesses — it’s just the nature of construction.
Q: What are your strategies for finding people?
A: We have a full-time HR director, he’s out there looking every single day. We do job fairs, we’re on all the ZipRecruiter, everything. We have a sign that’s been out front for 20 years about hiring. And then when they see the E-verify, or they see we drug test, you actually watch them walk up to the building, and they read the sign and turn around and leave — they don’t even walk in! You have to ask yourself why.
Q: Moving on to Ozbee, is there any product like that on the market right now?
A: Not that we’re aware of. (Before developing Ozbee) we were using five (customer relationship management platforms). And entering the data in manually, in multiple systems that couldn’t talk to each other. The Salesforce platform is so unique in that everything is right there on your screen and available to you instantaneously.
What we’ve learned, also, through COVID: Analytics drive construction more and more today, even than they did even two years ago. Just the amount of time it takes to nail a board or to paint a wall. I mean, there’s data out there will tell you, to the second, how long that should take — that data didn’t exist two years ago, or three years ago, and they’re perfecting it. We built Ozbee in a manner in which, if you create a field, we can measure off of that field. We don’t care what you want to measure. If you want to measure how many black jackets were worn that day, and how many yellow jackets were worn that day, I can tell you every day as long as the data is in there and I can give you trends. Everybody operates their business differently, so we want to give them the flexibility that they didn’t have to just buy a box and operate within that box — they can buy a box where they can tear down the walls, do whatever they want with the walls, and the box will work.
https://www.expressnews.com/sa-inc/article/Brad-Beldon-roofing-company-16939194.php
February 24, 2022
Brad Beldon leads his roofing company through ‘double whammy’ of labor shortage, broken supply chain
Richard Webner, ContributorFeb. 23, 2022Updated: Feb. 23, 2022 8:28 a.m. Comments
Brad Beldon, CEO of Beldon Roofing, describes the challenges facing the construction industry as a “perfect storm.”
For decades, the industry has struggled to find workers. The COVID-19 pandemic only made it harder. Now, with the global supply chain broken, companies can’t get the materials they need, or can get them only at inflated prices.
Beldon is not without ideas about the problems. He’s sent letters to President Joe Biden and members of Congress suggesting measures to alleviate the crisis, such as expanding the H-2B temporary worker program.
“You have the supply chain crisis hitting at the exact same time that labor became a crisis,” he said. “COVID took more labor out of the equation and then it shut down factories. When they shut down factories, they can’t get capacity back up. So there’s no inventory and if there’s no inventory it’s just-in-time, and just-in-time is, ‘Everybody needs it today.’”
And Beldon and another executive at his company, Jodie McCue, recently launched a software business, Ozbee Team Software, aiming to provide a one-stop shop for construction companies to do their scheduling, accounting, inspections and communicate with employees and customers, among other things.
The software was developed to help Beldon Roofing operate smoothly, but Beldon and McCue said they came to realize they had a product other companies might be interested in.
Ozbee, which operates on the Salesforce cloud platform, was launched earlier this month at the International Roofing Expo in New Orleans. Since then, Beldon and McCue have received more than 100 inquiries, he said. It is undergoing a security review from Salesforce before it can be released on the platform.
Beldon previously launched a tech startup called Roof Monitor, offering sensors that would help property owners protect their roofs from the effects of bad weather. The concept didn’t work because the technology was too pricey, he said.
“What we learned from that business was we built a product that would only work the way we wanted it, because we thought we were right,” he said. “We built Ozbee to work the other way — we give you the engine, and you tell us what you want to do with it. That was a very valuable lesson learned — a very expensive lesson learned.”
Beldon recently sat for an interview to discuss Ozbee, the supply chain breakdown, and why young Americans aren’t entering the construction industry. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: Could you describe what you’re dealing with now with the supply chain?
A: It’s unprecedented. We have zero transparency. The inflation is just outpacing everything. I think there was an article that I read today — construction costs this year are up 23.6 percent or something like that, year over year, which is just mind boggling. I’ve been doing this for 35 years and to see it even climb 2 percent or 3 percent in a year is really odd.
I don’t know how it ends. There’s four main components to commercial roofing: You got your insulation, you got cover board, membrane and a method of attachment. The method of attachment, generally speaking, is one of two things: It’s a mechanical fastener or an adhesive. That adhesive comes in a steel container, so with the worldwide shortage of steel both aspects of attaching a roof you can’t find. Even though you can get the adhesive — maybe you can get the adhesive, but it’s made with MDI (or, methylene diphenyl diisocyanate), and MDI is the other shortage.
So you have a double whammy. That product that we used to see for $300 is now $1,400 and it was historically $300 since the day that product came out. A lot of the MDI is still stuck out in the Pacific, can’t get into here. There’s five truckers per every 100 truckloads of demand.
Q: What do you mean when you say zero transparency?
A: There’s zero transparency on deliverability, zero transparency on pricing. The customer is the one that’s suffering, right? They think we’re being elusive and yet we don’t have the answers. I wish we could! If we told him what we knew they’d be laughing like, “Yeah, right. That’s how you’re operating your business?” Like no, really, that is how we operate. We have no idea.
Q: How have you coped with that?
A: We had to make some difficult decisions. We laid off some employees, we reduced benefits.
Q: When did that happen? How many did you have to lay off?
A: The last quarter of 2021. Eleven. It’s hard. We’ve tried hiring them back, some of them, as business has picked up and some of the chokehold has a gotten a little bit better, but we still can’t fill every position. I mean, our backlog is the largest backlog we’ve had in the history of our company, and we can’t do the work.
Q: What other materials are you having trouble with?
A: Single plies are a large component in the roofing industry. They’re manufactured with resins, and most of the resins come from overseas. The MDI issues that you read about are from the freeze from February in South Texas. That was one of the largest MDI suppliers in the world, and I’m not sure that any of them are back up and running. We’re all trying to find that 1 percent of the MDI that’s left in the world and grab it.
We’ve seen labor increase over 20 percent in this market in a year. So we’ve seen materials go up, labor go up by over 20 percent. Inflation, at some point, is going to stop this, in my opinion. At some point, people are going to start saying “I can’t afford that anymore.”
Q: Tell me more about the labor issues.
A: The labor force is on the higher end — they’re closer to my age, in the late 50s. You don’t see the 20 year olds wanting to enter the construction industry. It’s not a “wow” industry, right?
It pays very well. I mean, we have roofers making six figures. Now, it’s dangerous. It’s hot, it’s dirty, it’s difficult, but it’s a really good income with no debt. These kids go to college for whatever job, where someone comes out and makes $40,000 a year with $200,000 in debt. How do they ever get get caught up?
Q: What could we do, as a society, to avoid these problems?
A: You want to write a book together?
On the labor side of things it’s an easy solution. They have a program, the H-2B (guest worker) program, that’s already on the books. It works, it’s effective. They contribute to Social Security and they don’t take anything out. That’s an easy fix to solve the labor problem in the United States because you can take the 66,000 workers that you allow to come in every year from around the world and make it 2 million, 3 million, 5 million, whatever that number is — the system’s already built. If you fix that problem then I think you might be able to fix the trucking problem. And then if you can get more people in the plant, then you can work three shifts instead of two, and produce more product.
Q: Why aren’t younger Americans going into the roofing industry?
A: I think it’s twofold. When I grew up, we had technical schools inside the high schools. You had the opportunity to go learn the trade. They don’t exist anymore, because what they want are these high-paying computer jobs, working for Facebook and Google.
And I think the construction industry is frowned upon as, it’s dirty. We’re a little bit above used car salesmen in the construction industry. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t run professionally operated businesses, and that we don’t care for our employees, and that we don’t offer them benefits that aren’t found at USAA and Valero — they just don’t know it! Because we don’t have the money that we can go out there and advertise, “Hey, we pay for your health care. We have a 401k.” Most of construction are family businesses — it’s just the nature of construction.
Q: What are your strategies for finding people?
A: We have a full-time HR director, he’s out there looking every single day. We do job fairs, we’re on all the ZipRecruiter, everything. We have a sign that’s been out front for 20 years about hiring. And then when they see the E-verify, or they see we drug test, you actually watch them walk up to the building, and they read the sign and turn around and leave — they don’t even walk in! You have to ask yourself why.
Q: Moving on to Ozbee, is there any product like that on the market right now?
A: Not that we’re aware of. (Before developing Ozbee) we were using five (customer relationship management platforms). And entering the data in manually, in multiple systems that couldn’t talk to each other. The Salesforce platform is so unique in that everything is right there on your screen and available to you instantaneously.
What we’ve learned, also, through COVID: Analytics drive construction more and more today, even than they did even two years ago. Just the amount of time it takes to nail a board or to paint a wall. I mean, there’s data out there will tell you, to the second, how long that should take — that data didn’t exist two years ago, or three years ago, and they’re perfecting it. We built Ozbee in a manner in which, if you create a field, we can measure off of that field. We don’t care what you want to measure. If you want to measure how many black jackets were worn that day, and how many yellow jackets were worn that day, I can tell you every day as long as the data is in there and I can give you trends. Everybody operates their business differently, so we want to give them the flexibility that they didn’t have to just buy a box and operate within that box — they can buy a box where they can tear down the walls, do whatever they want with the walls, and the box will work.
https://www.expressnews.com/sa-inc/article/Brad-Beldon-roofing-company-16939194.php
February 21, 2022
Celanese sees big opportunity in global autos, EVs with DuPont M&M deal
Joseph Chang
18-Feb-2022
NEW YORK (ICIS)–Celanese is making a bigger bet on automotive and electric vehicles (EVs) with its planned $11bn acquisition of most of DuPont’s Mobility & Materials (M&M) business, essentially doubling its Engineered Materials (EM) business.
- Celanese to acquire most of DuPont’s M&M business for $11bn.
- Celanese sees deal as way to further expand into autos and EVs.
- Acquisition doubles Celanese’s Engineered Materials segment.
More than half of the $3.8bn in estimated 2022 sales for the DuPont businesses being acquired go into automotive, and on a geographic basis, more than half of sales are in Asia, including almost a quarter in China.
Celanese’s new combined EM segment will have an estimated $7.4bn in sales and $1.8bn (around $900m from DuPont M&M) in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA).
“It is a continuation of [Celanese’s] strategy to bolster its EM business while making the more commodity Acetyls business a smaller amount of the total pie,” said Fermium Research analyst Frank Mitsch in a research note.
The deal “establishes Celanese as offering the broadest and most differentiated EM portfolio globally” and also enhances the segment’s geographic footprint, especially in Asia which had been diminished by the $1.6bn divestiture of its 45% interest in the PolyPlastics joint venture to Japan’s Daicel in October 2020, he noted.
“Within autos, this acquisition will increase Celanese’s exposure to EVs, and auto will remain the largest EM end market,” said Michael Sison, analyst at Wells Fargo, in a research note.
“The shift towards EVs is expected to drive annual growth of 4% for the acquired polymer families (or 450,000 tonnes/year of incremental global demand for these polymers from 2022 to 2027), though this could be as much as 6% if Celanese is able to increase penetration in line with its project pipeline model,” he added.
The deal brings complementary chemistries to Celanese’s Engineered Materials segment as well with DuPont M&M’s expertise in nylon, specialty nylons, polyesters and elastomers. Celanese is big in polyacetal (POM), elastomers from the Santoprene acquisition from ExxonMobil, and ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMW-PE), along with nylon and polyesters.
Celanese estimates EVs use about the same amount of DuPont M&M’s polymers per vehicle – 26kg – as traditional internal combustion engines (ICEs), while hybrid EVs use about 28kg per vehicle.
As the number of global EV sales are expected to grow by a compounded annual rate of 32% from 2022 to 2027 and hybrid EVs by 17%, more than making up for the estimated 3%/year decline in ICE vehicle sales (leading to overall auto unit sales growth of 4%/year), the acquired business should benefit from the EV transition.
“A portion of DuPont’s portfolio is in more traditional under-the-hood applications [but] we feel really confident that with our commercial model and our reach into the OEMs and the tiers, we’ll make that transition very successfully,” said Tom Kelly, senior vice president, Engineered Materials at Celanese, on the deal conference call.
The acquired DuPont M&M assets also brings Celanese much greater exposure to Asia.
“The Asia presence of this business is really strong. As we overlay our base business, we think that’s a real opportunity to further optimise in that region of the world,” said Celanese CFO Richardson.
“This acquisition really accelerates our presence into Asia. The M&M business has really great customer relationships we think we can leverage,” he added.
Wells Fargo’s Sison notes the acquired business’ strong relationships in Japan and South Korea, which is positive, especially for automotive.
BRAND EQUITY VALUE
Much like ExxonMobil’s highly recognisable brand name Santoprene elastomers franchise acquired by Celanese for $1.15bn in December 2021 brought benefits, DuPont brands such as Zytel (nylons), Crastin (polybutylene terephthalate), Rynite (polyethylene terephthalate) and Hytrel (elastomers) should also raise the profile of its offerings.
“Customers ask for the brand. They don’t ask for the chemical name – they ask for the DuPont brand,” said Scott Richardson, chief financial officer of Celanese.
“When you take that brand equity and put that onto the way that we drive projects and the deep customer relationships that we have, we think bringing that together with the legacy Celanese polymers and Santoprene brand we acquired really gives us good revenue synergy optimisation opportunities,” he added.
Along with projected cost synergies of $275m-350m by year three from manufacturing utilisation and scale and back integration into polymerisation among others, Celanese also projects revenue synergies of $125m-150m by year four of the completed deal – much of it from leveraging Celanese’s project pipeline model where it works to improve win rates with customers.
The $11bn purchase price for most of DuPont’s M&M business represents a multiple of around 14x 2021 EBITDA of about $800m, and 12x estimated 2022 EBITDA of about $900m.
Celanese sees 2022 EBITDA growth in the assets being acquired from a recovery in auto builds as well as easing of raw material and logistics constraints over the course of the year.
With the DuPont M&M deal, Celanese’s EM segment’s share of entire company EBITDA in 2022 would rise from 35%, to 56% if the $450m in synergies were included. Celanese’s other segments are Acetyl Chain and Acetate Tow.
Insight article by Joseph Chang
February 21, 2022
Celanese sees big opportunity in global autos, EVs with DuPont M&M deal
Joseph Chang
18-Feb-2022
NEW YORK (ICIS)–Celanese is making a bigger bet on automotive and electric vehicles (EVs) with its planned $11bn acquisition of most of DuPont’s Mobility & Materials (M&M) business, essentially doubling its Engineered Materials (EM) business.
- Celanese to acquire most of DuPont’s M&M business for $11bn.
- Celanese sees deal as way to further expand into autos and EVs.
- Acquisition doubles Celanese’s Engineered Materials segment.
More than half of the $3.8bn in estimated 2022 sales for the DuPont businesses being acquired go into automotive, and on a geographic basis, more than half of sales are in Asia, including almost a quarter in China.
Celanese’s new combined EM segment will have an estimated $7.4bn in sales and $1.8bn (around $900m from DuPont M&M) in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA).
“It is a continuation of [Celanese’s] strategy to bolster its EM business while making the more commodity Acetyls business a smaller amount of the total pie,” said Fermium Research analyst Frank Mitsch in a research note.
The deal “establishes Celanese as offering the broadest and most differentiated EM portfolio globally” and also enhances the segment’s geographic footprint, especially in Asia which had been diminished by the $1.6bn divestiture of its 45% interest in the PolyPlastics joint venture to Japan’s Daicel in October 2020, he noted.
“Within autos, this acquisition will increase Celanese’s exposure to EVs, and auto will remain the largest EM end market,” said Michael Sison, analyst at Wells Fargo, in a research note.
“The shift towards EVs is expected to drive annual growth of 4% for the acquired polymer families (or 450,000 tonnes/year of incremental global demand for these polymers from 2022 to 2027), though this could be as much as 6% if Celanese is able to increase penetration in line with its project pipeline model,” he added.
The deal brings complementary chemistries to Celanese’s Engineered Materials segment as well with DuPont M&M’s expertise in nylon, specialty nylons, polyesters and elastomers. Celanese is big in polyacetal (POM), elastomers from the Santoprene acquisition from ExxonMobil, and ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMW-PE), along with nylon and polyesters.
Celanese estimates EVs use about the same amount of DuPont M&M’s polymers per vehicle – 26kg – as traditional internal combustion engines (ICEs), while hybrid EVs use about 28kg per vehicle.
As the number of global EV sales are expected to grow by a compounded annual rate of 32% from 2022 to 2027 and hybrid EVs by 17%, more than making up for the estimated 3%/year decline in ICE vehicle sales (leading to overall auto unit sales growth of 4%/year), the acquired business should benefit from the EV transition.
“A portion of DuPont’s portfolio is in more traditional under-the-hood applications [but] we feel really confident that with our commercial model and our reach into the OEMs and the tiers, we’ll make that transition very successfully,” said Tom Kelly, senior vice president, Engineered Materials at Celanese, on the deal conference call.
The acquired DuPont M&M assets also brings Celanese much greater exposure to Asia.
“The Asia presence of this business is really strong. As we overlay our base business, we think that’s a real opportunity to further optimise in that region of the world,” said Celanese CFO Richardson.
“This acquisition really accelerates our presence into Asia. The M&M business has really great customer relationships we think we can leverage,” he added.
Wells Fargo’s Sison notes the acquired business’ strong relationships in Japan and South Korea, which is positive, especially for automotive.
BRAND EQUITY VALUE
Much like ExxonMobil’s highly recognisable brand name Santoprene elastomers franchise acquired by Celanese for $1.15bn in December 2021 brought benefits, DuPont brands such as Zytel (nylons), Crastin (polybutylene terephthalate), Rynite (polyethylene terephthalate) and Hytrel (elastomers) should also raise the profile of its offerings.
“Customers ask for the brand. They don’t ask for the chemical name – they ask for the DuPont brand,” said Scott Richardson, chief financial officer of Celanese.
“When you take that brand equity and put that onto the way that we drive projects and the deep customer relationships that we have, we think bringing that together with the legacy Celanese polymers and Santoprene brand we acquired really gives us good revenue synergy optimisation opportunities,” he added.
Along with projected cost synergies of $275m-350m by year three from manufacturing utilisation and scale and back integration into polymerisation among others, Celanese also projects revenue synergies of $125m-150m by year four of the completed deal – much of it from leveraging Celanese’s project pipeline model where it works to improve win rates with customers.
The $11bn purchase price for most of DuPont’s M&M business represents a multiple of around 14x 2021 EBITDA of about $800m, and 12x estimated 2022 EBITDA of about $900m.
Celanese sees 2022 EBITDA growth in the assets being acquired from a recovery in auto builds as well as easing of raw material and logistics constraints over the course of the year.
With the DuPont M&M deal, Celanese’s EM segment’s share of entire company EBITDA in 2022 would rise from 35%, to 56% if the $450m in synergies were included. Celanese’s other segments are Acetyl Chain and Acetate Tow.
Insight article by Joseph Chang
February 18, 2022
DOJ expands scrutiny of possible supply-chain profiteers
Trucking, warehousing, 3PLs could be in antitrust division’s crosshairs
John Gallagher, Washington Correspondent Follow on Twitter Thursday, February 17, 2022 2 minutes read
Listen to this article 0:00 / 3:32 BeyondWords
The U.S. Department of Justice is now targeting a wider swath of transportation companies that it deems may be using supply chain disruption to gouge customers
The initiative, which DOJ announced Thursday, broadens the scope of the Biden administration’s heightened scrutiny of anticompetitive behavior in various industry segments, including transportation.
“The lingering challenge of supply chain disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic has created an opportunity for criminals to fix prices and overcharge customers,” said Assistant Director Luis Quesada of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. “The FBI and our law enforcement partners will continue to collaborate and investigate schemes that violate our antitrust laws and stifle our economic recovery.”
As part of the initiative, DOJ’s Antitrust Division is prioritizing existing investigations where competitors may be exploiting supply chain disruptions for profit and is “undertaking measures to proactively investigate collusion in industries particularly affected” by supply chain disruptions, the agency warned.
“For those who seek to exploit supply chain disruptions for their own illicit gain, the Antitrust Division, along with the FBI, will investigate and prosecute criminal violations of the antitrust laws, including agreements between individuals and businesses to fix prices or wages, rig bids or allocate markets.”
Up to now, DOJ’s stepped-up oversight of anticompetitive behavior in the transportation sector has focused on the maritime industry and railroads, where there has been evidence that the relatively few players have wielded their market power to raise rates.
In July, DOJ and the Federal Maritime Commission signed a first-time agreement to sharpen economic oversight of foreign ocean carriers serving in the U.S. international container trades. The agreement came days after President Joe Biden signed an executive order aimed at curbing potential anticompetitive behavior among 72 industries, including among ocean carriers and freight railroads.
But Thursday’s announcement should now put companies involved with trucking, warehousing, 3PLs and last-mile delivery on notice as well, according to one trade expert.
“Certainly the focus here is on other elements of the supply chain that haven’t gotten as much attention as ocean carriers and marine terminals but are needed to get cargo to and from inland destinations,” Gerald Morrissey, a partner with the law firm Holland & Knight, told FreightWaves.
“This is really saying that any company in the supply chain, particularly those that are not subject to some form of antitrust immunity [such as ocean carriers and marine terminals] could be in the crosshairs for potential complaints by customers or competitors with this increased focus from DOJ.”
As part of the initiative, the Antitrust Division has formed a working group with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the Canadian Competition Bureau, the New Zealand Commerce Commission, and the United Kingdom Competition and Markets Authority, focusing on collusion in global supply chains.
“The working group is developing and sharing intelligence, utilizing existing international cooperation tools, to detect and combat collusive schemes,” DOJ stated.
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