Huntsman Corporation (HUN) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

May 03, 2024 2:50 PM ETHuntsman Corporation (HUN) Stock

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Q1: 2024-05-02 Earnings Summary

EPS of -$0.06 beats by $0.00 | Revenue of $1.47B (-8.47% Y/Y) misses by $1.15M

Huntsman Corporation (NYSE:HUN) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call May 3, 2024 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Ivan Marcuse – VP, IR & Corporate Development
Peter Huntsman – Chairman, CEO & President
Phil Lister – EVP & CFO

Peter Huntsman

Ivan, thank you very much, and thank you all for taking the time to join us this morning.

Reviewing the results of the first quarter, a few things of note are emerging. I said in our fourth quarter conference call on the 22 of February that our number one priority this year was to recover lost volumes. During the first quarter, we were able to make some modest gains and we’ll be doing more throughout 2024. The gains that we saw in volume were attributed to a combination of new business, demand growth and pockets of inventory restocking. We question how much of this was the end of inventory destocking and the beginning of inventory rebuilding versus demand growth. While it will vary customer by customer, I believe it to be about 50-50. I should also say that eventually the two conditions merge into one gray area; demand improvement begets inventory restocking.

However, the bigger issue is when do markets recover sufficient to achieve pricing recovery? Today’s levels of profitability, particularly in Europe, are below reinvestment levels, in some cases, are still below positive cash generation. While I’m happy to see 25% growth in our North American MDI demand in Q1, we should remember that this is compared to Q1 of 2023, where demand had dropped 35% from 2022. All this noise means that we are moving back to where we were nearly a year ago. To have a real return to normalized market conditions, we’re going to need consistent demand improvement and equally important, higher prices to expand margins.

During the last call, we also outlined the need to improve our cash flow. While we’re seeing improvements in this area as well, we may face headwinds in working capital later in the year as sales volumes and prices move up.

Our third priority in 2024 is our continued focus on our costs in the face of global inflationary and regulatory pressures. We continue on track to meet all the objectives we announced to offset projected 3% to 4% global inflation.

Our fourth priority is to continuously assess our portfolio, make sure we’re maximizing the value of the assets we own and how we deploy capital for growth.

Finally, we continue to focus on our environmental and safety performance. This is our license to operate and regardless of business conditions, we will not compromise on the safety of our operations. This focus on risk also applies to our balance sheet. We will not jeopardize our investment-grade rating for short-term gains.

All in all, I’m not surprised by the results and conditions that we are seeing. Our quick action on cost, capacity rationalization and discipline with pricing will serve us well as the industry continues to recover. Our objective is to take quick and decisive actions, advantage of these improving conditions and get us back to normalized earnings as quickly as possible.

Patrick Cunningham

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Some of your comments in the prepared remarks reflect a slightly more positive view on China, and I think sentiment there is pretty mixed at this point. Can you highlight where you’re seeing some strength, what end markets and what you expect to be growth drivers throughout the year?

Peter Huntsman

Yeah. We continue to see a lot of demand growth in auto. I think that much of that has to do with the fast-growing domestic markets in China, particularly around EVs. As we think about EVs, we essentially supply everything that goes into an ICE vehicle goes into an EV vehicle in our polyurethanes division, which is our largest division with automobile applications. But we also have a number of applications that we’re developing right now that are in the pipeline, some of them that are merging into EVs that are coming from the other divisions as well, around structure, strength, light-weighting, adhesion, insulation, and so forth.

So, Chinese automotive continues to be what I think is one of the stronger areas of growth in China. How long that continues? I think it’s probably going to continue for some time in China. I think there’s a broader question as to how long and how well that goes with the Chinese export markets, how successful China be exporting those EVs into the US, which has been extremely limited, obviously, and obviously going into Europe, which is — there’s a lot of talk about putting limitations on Chinese vehicles being built in China, yet you see a number of Chinese auto companies that have joint ventured with European auto companies. So, it’s going to be — that’s going to be a much grayer area.

But certainly that, and of course, anything that has to deal with energy conservation in China, insulation, building materials, where there’s energy conservation, central heating, piping, insulation, and so forth, infrastructure projects continue to do quite well. Obviously, if it’s related to residential construction, it’s pretty sluggish in China. But by and large, as we said probably three quarters ago, we expect China to have a slow but steady recovery both in volume and in pricing, and I think that’s what we’re seeing.

Frank Mitsch

Hi, good morning. Obviously, very impressive volume growth in North America in polyurethanes, as you mentioned. But you said you were only getting back really where you were for ’23. How do you think about the pace of business in polyurethanes, not just in North America, but as we play out through the year?

Peter Huntsman

I’m feeling better and better about it, Frank. Again, I don’t think that we’re going to see a compounded 25% growth, obviously, throughout the year. I think a lot of what we saw in the first quarter was the cessation of inventory drawdowns and so forth. And what we’re seeing right now is going to just be a slow and steady recovery as we kind of get back in-housing. I think inventory levels, I can’t say this unequivocally with all applications, but by and large, inventory levels feel like they’re pretty thin in most applications in MDI. And I think as we look throughout the next couple of quarters, we’re expecting to see — continue to see a recovering and modest growth in that area, particularly around construction.

Frank Mitsch

Okay, so slow and steady is the — is kind of the volume forecast. So then on the margin side, you did highlight some modest price increases in — on MDI in a couple of regions, but we have stubborn benzene right now. How do we think about the margin profile for polyurethanes?

Peter Huntsman

I think that our improvements, Frank, over the next quarter or two, again early in the quarter, so I’m very good at projecting market conditions for anywhere from 20 to 24 hours. But I think over the improvements that I would be expecting in the next quarter or so, you’re probably going to be looking at two-thirds to three-quarters, that’s going to be around volume, and the rest of that around price. And I don’t have to be pessimistic about price.

Right now, you’re right. We do have some headwinds in benzene prices. We’re looking at crude prices today pushing $80 to $90, depending on WTI versus Brent. And that’s going to filter down into the gasoline pool. Typically this time of year, in the springtime, you’re starting your blending season and so forth, you’re going to see benzene prices will have a little bit of pressure on the upward side. So, we’re going to have to recover those higher raw material prices, and we need to get above and beyond those. So, that’s — in my opinion, that’s going to be the number one challenge that we’ve got as a company is to get these prices up.

David Begleiter

Thank you. Good morning. Peter, looking at longer-term EBITDA, what will it take and how long will it take to get back to that $1 billion threshold you exceeded in the past?

Peter Huntsman

Well, I think that it’s going to take two or three things. Very good question, something that we ask ourselves all the time. If we’re merely waiting for market conditions to recover, that’s not the answer that we ought to be. It’s not the objective we ought to be looking for. So, we do need to see demand in US housing come back to where it was around that million sort of a threshold in housing starts and so forth. And as we look around that, where we’ve been over the last couple of years and really looking more for stability there is the volatility, I think, that probably concerns us more than anything else in North America.

[Technical Difficulty] get an economy that’s kind of growing once again. China, I think China has a nice recovery, a slow and steady recovery. I think people are kind of expecting some major stimulus or something to come through. It’s also going to put it through the roof. I mean, I’d love to see it, but I just don’t expect it. I think you’re just going to see a gradual recovery taking place in China.

But a lot of it also has to be — do with what we are doing ourselves. As I look at our MDI splitter in Geismar, Louisiana, that we started up just as COVID was coming on full force. There’s another $40 million, $45 million of additional EBITDA that we ought to be getting out of that splitter. Once we’re able to sell that out, we’ve got a number of expansions that are coming on in the coming months and quarters around amines expansion, urethane catalyst expansions, e-grader, which is our ultra-pure amines. They’re going to be — going to chip cleaning, chip solvent. These are projects that are going to be $10 million to $20 million, $25 million of benefit to the company once these lines are up and moving and we’re able to sell them out.

We still have another $30 million-plus of EBITDA in the aerospace segment as we come back, as we see the full recovery. I mean, we’re still not at the same wide body demand as we were pre-COVID. I look at our Miralon technology. We’re in the process right now starting up a 30-ton reactor that will be selling product in the commercial arena for the first time at these sort of values and volumes that we’ve ever had. And we’re starting the construction of a 5,000-ton unit that will be coming on in the early part — latter part of ’25, early part of ’26.

If I look at the R&D pipeline, I look at the cost reductions of $280 million, I know I sound like there’s a lot of issues, but when you add all these up, David, you kind of get the idea that there’s another $150 million to $200 million of additional EBITDA that we really control, that we ought to be aggressively moving forward with. And so I feel that we do need markets to recover, but we’ve also got to be able to successfully execute on all the projects that we’ve started and will be coming up this year.

David Begleiter

Very, very helpful. And just much nearer term, back half of the year, polyurethanes EBITDA, should that improve versus Q2 levels based on current expectations?

Peter Huntsman

Yes, I would certainly hope so. I’ve challenged the team as we saw from our earnings from where we were in the fourth quarter to the first quarter of this year. We’re up 300%. If Tony can do that every quarter, 300% improvement for the rest of the year, we’ll be — I’ll be quite pleased with them.

Vincent Andrews

Thank you. Peter, just curious, as you talk to your customers in building and construction in United States, we’re ultimately going to get some rate cuts. It obviously seems like more a question of when. How fast do they seem to indicate they think markets will start to move once we move into a less restrictive monetary policy?

Peter Huntsman

I think there’s quite a bit of bullishness right now in the building in trades. I think there’s kind of two paths that are being pursued right now, that of what happens if rates kind of stay where they are. Obviously that means that you’re going to be getting less house for the same amount of money. So, maybe houses are a little bit smaller, maybe they’re a little bit cheaper to build, and the cost of that house is going to be down. And as we look across the board, though, we continue to see very low housing inventory of new homes, new home availability. And so, I think builders are doing really two things. They’re preparing and looking at a scenario where interest rates stay where they are and let’s adapt and equip to that. And also, should rates be coming down, I think that’s really going to open up the demand to be quite a bit higher than it’s been the last couple of years. The point is there’s a big gap there that needs to be filled.

Vincent Andrews

Okay, yeah. And then just we have seen housing starts improve over the last six, nine months kind of been a little lumpier recently, but are you starting to see the benefit of that flowing through in your businesses? Or is it just beginning and then maybe we’ll see it more over the next quarter or two?

Peter Huntsman

I think we’re seeing the beginnings of — well, I don’t think we are seeing the beginnings of that, I think right now, the biggest benefit that we saw in the first quarter was the lack of de-inventorying. And I get a sense that, that has really ended across the board in many of the products, but particularly in the construction and housing market. And as we look at the hopeful expansion of demand and housing starts over the next couple of quarters, I’m hopeful that will certainly be additive to what we’ve been able to accomplish thus far.

Aleksey Yefremov

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Pretty impressive volumes in polyurethanes in North America and Europe. Can you just tell us where are your volumes today in these two regions versus what you would consider a normal volume level?

Peter Huntsman

Well, I think, again, I’m very happy to see the volumes growing where they are, but they are where we were basically a year ago. And so, we really need to — we needed to see continued growth and continued movement on pricing. Again, I don’t expect volume improvements to be a 25% sort of improvement, but certainly the housing and the construction markets are one that we’re starting to feel is loosening up, and we ought to see some improvements there. Now, if mortgage rates go down, I think that’s going to have a near instantaneous impact on the business, and I think that would be the single biggest variable in our North American markets.

Phil Lister

And Aleksey, I mean, you can do the math, 35% down year-on-year, this time last year, as we said, and then 25% up. So, we’re still about 10%, 15% below where we were. And so, we still need to see that trend continue to get back to where we started.

Aleksey Yefremov

Okay, thanks for that. And then I wanted to ask you about your spray foam business. How is it doing in Q1 and heading into Q2?

Peter Huntsman

Well, spray foam continues to be a competitive market. The single biggest application for spray foam is our new housing builds. And as we look at that, that for us continues to be an area that’s a competitive market. If you look at the mineral fiber with a low cost of energy and so forth, yeah, we’re going head to head. But we still grew our volumes there versus the prior year, just under 10%, 8% growth in that business. And so, we continue to see growth. But again, growth is great to see, but we’ve got to see pricing, we’ve got to see margin expansion take place as well.

Jeff Zekauskas

Thanks very much. Can you talk about the relative prices for MDI in both crude and I guess more specialized in Europe, China and the US? And can you say something about your relative margins in each of those areas?

Peter Huntsman

Yeah. As we look at our polymeric MDI, they’re all basically selling it I’d say within $100, $200 of each other per ton, and it’s around $2,000 per ton. It’s a pretty flat market right now. There’s not a kind of an incentive at this point to be moving a lot of volume from one region to the other. And I think that when you see demand, which has been kind of sluggish this past year, that would tell you that you’re going to see pretty flat pricing.

I will say, though, that as I look for some optimism in those areas, as I looked at capacity utilization, I believe the industry today is running at about somewhere in the mid-80%s on capacity utilization, and where we’re seeing growth in demand and so forth, we’re seeing quarter-on-quarter growth for the first time in — excuse me, year-on-year growth on a quarterly basis for the first time in two years. There have been a number of operating outages that have recently been reported in the media and so forth.

So, I don’t want to paint a picture that we’re expecting to see prices go up to the roof. We’re kind of getting into those dynamics of where demand and capacity utilization moving into the mid-80%s, you’re starting to get into some areas where I think you’re probably going to start seeing some regional divergences and higher prices in some of these areas. Again, hopefully.

Michael Sison

Hey. Good morning. Nice start to the year. Peter, where are industry operating rates now for polyurethanes, MDI? And just curious where you think those need to get to, to establish a little bit better pricing and margin going forward?

Peter Huntsman

Well, typically, given the fact that this industry, the number of outages that you have to have for your maintenance of your facilities, typically it’s about 90%. I like to think somewhere around 90% is kind of a sold out position. As we said in the past, leverage — pricing leverage typically comes at about 85%, somewhere in the mid to upper 80%s. You start to see that pressure at 85%, as you move through that. So, as I would think about your capacity utilization right now, and I’m talking about today in the second quarter, not necessarily in the first quarter, I believe in Europe, you’re probably in the high-80%s, 87%, 88%. The US, you’re running over 100%. US needs imports to be able to satisfy demand. In China, you’re probably somewhere in the mid to upper 70 percentile. You add all that up and you’re probably about 85% capacity utilization today, which is at the very low end of what I would say is where you start getting into your pricing improvements.

Now, again, as you start having outages or better than outages, you start seeing demand improvements come along, that’s really what we need. So, given where we’ve been in the past, where we’ve been talking about global operating rates around 80% to 81%, 82% being at 85%, 86%, the idea that a plant or two going down or 2% or 3% sort of growth in the industry, all of a sudden puts you up there in that 88%, 89%. Sorry, I’m getting overly technical here with a few percentage points one side or the other. But point is, I think that we’re in much better position than we’ve been any time the last two years.

Hassan Ahmed

Good morning, Peter. Peter, I just wanted to revisit some of the commentary that you made on polyurethane volumes. Obviously North America, on a percentage basis, ridiculously strong, you know, up 25%. But you alluded to the fact that we’re still not really at normal volume levels. Europe up 9%, again, it seems from deflated levels. And Asia, relatively flat. So, could you just help me understand the trajectory from here? I mean, we’re obviously below normal in North America, Europe it seems well below normal, and same thing with Asia. So, I mean, how should we be thinking about near-term as well as medium-term volume growth trajectories by region?

Peter Huntsman

Well, I think that we’re going to continue to see probably stronger than average growth in Europe and in the Americas. I look into the second quarter, it’s early right now at the order books, but we’re going to see — continue to see modest underlying growth. We’re dealing with easy comps from a year ago. So I’d be focused more on quarter on quarter versus where we were a year ago. And we’ve obviously, this last year, we got in a deep hole. And I think we first need to get out of the hole, and I think that we’re just about out of that hole, and we need to start growing from that point on. And I think that’s where we are and that’s where we’re heading.

Phil Lister

And Hassan, as we indicated, sequentially, when you go Q1 to Q2, typically you’ll get about a 5% improvement in volumes. And we highlighted in the prepared remarks that we would expect to get more than that this year. So the trajectory is in the right direction.

Hassan Ahmed

Fair enough. And as a follow-up, continuing with polyurethanes, just on the cost curves, obviously there was margin improvement, call it, 1%, 1.5% EBITDA margins going up to like 4%. But I mean, you guys being on the lower cost of production side of things, I’d like to think that a chunk of the industry is still in the red. And further to that thought, I would imagine that unto itself, as the recovery is happening, would be a big positive in terms of you guys or the industry getting pricing power again?

Phil Lister

I would certainly agree with that, Hassan. As I look in the US, though, I think that the cost curve in the US is pretty flat. And you look at the major players in the US, they all have relatively the same size, we’re all by in growth. None of us are integrated back up into benzene, we’re producing our benzene. It feels like we’re kind of all in the same boat as far as it’s competitiveness. Natural gases, electricity is kind of the same price for everybody. The [chlorine] (ph) racket is the same for everybody.

So, as I think about Europe, I think that’s where you probably see some of the biggest cost disparities between the low-cost and high-cost producers. Europe still operates some relatively small facilities. And to be honest with you, I’m surprised some of those facilities are still operating. But again, I’m not privy to their economics, but as I look at their size — anyways, yes, so Europe, I think you’re going to see that.

In Asia, you’ve got a lot of newer facilities, single line, large volume, single lines that are operating. Wanhua, I believe, probably has a — I don’t think it’s order of magnitude. They certainly have, just by virtue of their size, of their lines and so forth, I think they probably have a bit of an advantage over the other players. But I think that we shouldn’t get lost, though, necessarily on the cost of production, because as you start going downstream and as you start looking at things like our splitter in Geismar, Louisiana, you start looking at our downstream applications, going to elastomers and system houses and so forth, if those downstream businesses are being operated well and you’re focused on adding value to the molecule, I believe you’re going to make more money on your downstream business than you will on your manufacturing economics. Both very important. Agreed.

But Europe also, you do have that disparity between producers. But Europe also, in spite of some of the industrial problems and so forth, Europe also rewards innovation and rewards energy conservation, light weighting, adhesion, footwear. There’s a number of applications in Europe that — where we have some of our higher-margin businesses.

Kevin McCarthy

Yes, thank you, and good morning, everyone. I had a question regarding MDI unit margins. So, benzene costs have been elevated a little bit north of $4 a gallon in the US lately, and your prices are rising as well. And so, if I net those two things out, when you craft your guidance of $70 million to $80 million for polyurethanes, are you baking in sequential improvement in the unit margins for MDI in terms of cents per pound? It sounds like maybe the answer is yes, but I just want to make sure I’m understanding that correctly.

Peter Huntsman

Yeah, I think, Kevin, I think that’s a correct assessment. We’re simultaneously trying to offset rising raw material prices and at the same time trying to get ahead of those prices. And I think that’s why I say we expect to see marginal price improvements and most of the improvement that we see, as I look again into the second quarter and perhaps developing the third quarter, it’s going to be — the improvement is going to be more around volume than price at this point.

Phil Lister

And, Kevin, we did see a small unit margin improvement as we moved from Q4 to Q1. And, as Peter says, we do expect a small improvement as we move from Q1 to Q2. And I would also say there’s a good focus on benzene, rightly, because that’s the largest raw material, gas remains relatively low, chlorine in general has been slightly down, and then ammonia onto nitric has been slightly down as well. So, you need to consider all of the raw materials that are flowing through into polyurethanes.

Josh Spector

Hi. Good morning. I wanted to follow up on polyurethanes. I think in the prepared comments, you talk about getting back to normal in that segment. I guess, what do you consider normal at this point? I guess, if you get improvement to the second half, maybe you’re run rating around $400 million, you have obviously some changes in the cost structure you alluded to, you’re doing some cost savings. I guess, what’s the bridge back to normal at this point?

Peter Huntsman

Well, I think that the bridge to get there is going to be higher volumes and it’s going to be higher pricing. But when I think of a normalized MDI market, I’m thinking of margins that are in the mid-teens, this is a business that, when it’s running on all cylinders, and that is your splitters are sold out and you’ve got strong demand, you’re probably looking at market conditions that you saw in 2022 time period of when you’re looking at the very high teens and you’re pushing 20%. But on a normalized basis, our urethane business ought to be somewhere in the mid — something just slightly north of 15%, 16%, sort of EBITDA margins. But again, we’re going to need both, again, demand and pricing to get there.

Matthew Blair

Sounds good. And then, could you talk about your MDI supply expectations for the next few years? There’s been some reports that Wanhua is starting up a new 400 kt expansion this quarter. Is that in line with your expectations? And are there any other big projects on the docket for the rest of this year or into 2025?

Peter Huntsman

Yeah. I think after that expansion from Wanhua comes on, I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of capacity coming behind that. But look, I mean, Wanhua is going to do what they’re going to do. But, I mean, as I look — the Chinese market continues to be a good market for us. Demand is continuing to modestly grow and pricing continues to be pretty sticky. And so I don’t see any new capacity coming on in North America or Europe. If anything, I question if everything ought to be operating in those two market segments, but as you look outside of China, there’s nothing coming on.

Operator

Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners. Please proceed with your questions.

Mike Harrison

Hi. Good morning. Another question for you on the spray foam opportunity. Was wondering if you could talk about progress that you’re making on some commercial inroads in Europe and in Asia. You mentioned that maybe there are some opportunities in building insulation in China, and just curious how you’re positioned there?

Peter Huntsman

Yeah. So, this is going to be an area that we’re going to continue to put a lot of emphasis on. And you look — just beyond Asia, you look at specifically in Japan and some of these other areas, the Middle East, we’re seeing stronger growth there than in other areas of those regions. I see this as a real opportunity. And as you think around the — either the high cost of energy, as in the case of Japan, or in the Middle East, where there’s just a lot of new construction that’s going on, these are both prime areas of opportunity for us. But I should emphasize that as you look at the vast, vast majority of that business is North America, Canada, and the US related. We are going to see growth in Europe and Asia, but the health and the vitality of that business is going to be dependent on North America.

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