Trinseo PLC
Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 8 Nov 2021

[Operator:]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Trinseo Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. We welcome the Trinseo management team, Frank Bozich, President and CEO; David Stasse, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Andy Myers, Director of Investor Relations. Today's conference call will include brief remarks by the management team, followed by a question-and-answer session. The company distributed it's press release along with it's presentation slides at close of market yesterday. These documents are posted on the company's Investor Relations website and furnished on a Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I will now hand the call over to Andy Myers.

[Andrew Myers:]

Thank you, Tammy and good morning, everyone. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After our brief remarks, instructions will follow to participate in the question-and-answer session. Our disclosure rules and cautionary note on forward-looking statements are noted on Slide 2. During this presentation, we may make certain forward-looking statements, including issuing guidance and describing our future expectations. We must caution you that actual results could differ materially from what is discussed, described or implied in these statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include but are not limited to, risk factors set forth in Item 1A of our annual report on Form 10-K or in our other filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise it's forward-looking statements. Today's presentation includes certain non-GAAP measurements. A reconciliation of these measurements to corresponding GAAP measures is provided in our earnings release and in the appendix of our investor presentation. A replay of the conference call and transcript will be archived on the company's Investor Relations website shortly following the conference call. The replay will be available until November 8, 2022. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Frank Bozich.

[Frank Bozich:]

Thanks, Andy, and welcome to Trinseo's third quarter earnings call. This morning, we'd like to cover three topics before turning to Q&A. First, I will outline our progress in the journey to transform our portfolio. And then I'll provide a deeper insight into our Engineered Materials segment, including some expectations for this business going forward. Dave will then cover the Q3 earnings and outlook for the remainder of the year. As you're aware, the goal of our portfolio transformation is for Trinseo to become a specialty materials and sustainable solutions provider, with a focus on four end-markets

[David Stasse:]

Thanks, Frank. During the third quarter, we delivered solid financial performance despite the energy and supply chain issues that by now you are all familiar with. Demand for our products has been very strong. And we've seen very good margins due to tight supply and commercial excellence initiatives we've been implementing over the last two years. These results were made possible by our employees whose dedication and problem-solving allowed us to mitigate the negative impact from a challenging industry environment. Frank and I are grateful for their hard work and they continue to be one of our greatest strengths as a company. During the third quarter, we generated cash from operations of $208 million which, combined with $36 million of capital spending, led to free cash flow of $173 million. The strong quarter of cash generation can be attributed to solid earnings as well as a small working capital release of about $30 million. Looking to the fourth quarter, we expect sequentially similar earnings, higher styrene margins, a full quarter of AmSty production and commercial actions are expected to offset increasing headwinds from chip shortages, China energy rationing and higher utility costs. It's important to note that we view these headwinds as transitory and not reflective of underlying market demand which we view as robust in all segments and geographies. We expect to end the year with record earnings, with full year net income from continuing operations of $336 million to $376 million. And we are reaffirming our prior full year adjusted EBITDA guidance of $750 million to $800 million. We expect full year cash from operations between $420 million and $445 million and free cash flow of $300 million to $325 million. The anticipated strong cash generation is particularly notable given an assumed $200 million use of working capital caused by feedstock price increases over the course of the year. Putting together our earnings and cash guidance, we expect to finish the year with a net leverage ratio in the low 2s, pro forma for the acquired PMMA and Aristech Surfaces businesses which puts us more than one year ahead of the deleveraging schedule that we laid out in December of last year when we announced the PMMA acquisition. The takeaway is that we close out 2021 in excellent financial position to continue funding our transformation strategy and returning capital to shareholders. I'll now turn the call back over to Frank.

[Frank Bozich:]

Thanks, Dave. In closing, I'd like to leave you with a few summary points on our recent performance and portfolio transformation. With the planned separation of our Styrenics assets which we expect will begin in 2022, we will have transformed our portfolio to what should result in a much less cyclical, higher margin and a higher free cash flow business. The portfolio should also have an even more advantaged carbon and energy footprint and be better positioned to continue growing and returning value to shareholders through the anticipated energy transition in the chemical industry. We believe Trinseo represents an excellent value to investors with a robust pipeline of profit improvement opportunities, free cash flow conversion of approximately 80% and a net debt in the low 2x range. Thanks. And we're happy to open the line for questions.

[Operator:]

Your first question comes from the line of Frank Mitsch with Fermium Research.

[Frank Mitsch:]

Hey, good morning -- good morning, everyone. Frank, the news on the potential sale of Styrenics, I just wanted to dig into that a little bit. I assume you've had some conversations with the investment bankers on this. And what's -- what are you hearing with respect to the M&A environment for commodities and the interest that this may -- this property may be able to generate from either strategics or private equity? Any more color on the market would be great.

[Frank Bozich:]

Yes. Thanks, Frank. We think that we'll have a very good process. We think that there's really three categories of buyers who will have interest. Obviously, there is strategics and those who are in the same value chain that we anticipate will be interested. We also think there's regional players who will want exposure to North America and European styrenics markets. And then lastly, we believe that there is a good number of financial sponsors who are looking for to -- do a roll up, if you will and aggregate assets that offer a high cash-on-cash return. So we expect to have a good process, a robust number of participants in those categories.

[Frank Mitsch:]

Got you, got you. And then just a quick question on the guide for the fourth quarter. You called out higher styrene margins here in the fourth quarter. And we just saw a very significant increase in Europe for the month of November. I think it was up €232 per ton. What's the scope here for potential upside in terms of the margins on styrene and polystyrene impacting your fourth quarter? How do you think about it? What's baked in? Yes.

[Frank Bozich:]

Yes. So yes, it's a great question. And I would say, look, we're -- there's a mixed bag of factors that are impacting the business going forward. If you think about it, energy price quarter-over-quarter is going to be up $30 million approximately. And there -- the chip shortage should give us about $10 million to $15 million of headwind across the portfolio. Now offsetting that, we're going to see the traction in the pricing actions we've taken in Engineered Materials as well as Base Plastics and then, as you point out, the uplift in some of the styrene margins. So that's -- those are the pluses and -- the gives and goes that are going to lead to how we've guided for the Q4 and the full year.

[Frank Mitsch:]

Got you. Very helpful. Thanks.

[Frank Bozich:]

Sure.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Laurence Alexander with Jefferies.

[Laurence Alexander:]

Good morning. Can you give us a sense of your thoughts about what the new Trinseo balance sheet should look like, or how you'll be thinking about cap allocation or future bolt-on M&A or willingness to do further large M&A? Just to give a sense for what happens once the divestiture is out of the way.

[Frank Bozich:]

Yes. Thanks, Laurence. The -- look, I think our priority clearly in the near term is to get through the integration and realize the synergies and execute against the growth programs that we've identified from what we've already bought, then -- and also complete the separation of Styrenics. Now going forward, frankly, we'd see a balanced approach to looking at future M&A but -- and frankly, we want to continue the portfolio transformation. But as long as we trade at a 15%-plus free cash flow yield, we believe that our own shares represent a compelling investment opportunity that will have to be part of our calculus in how we think about capital allocation. So that's how we would think about it at this point. And so again, balanced looking at additional investments in sustainability and growth opportunities, both organic and inorganic, along with our own shares as long as we trade where we do before rerating upward.

[Laurence Alexander:]

And given the discussion, both in the sort of prepared remarks but also kind of you have it sort of in your appendix slides around sort of the environmental footprint of the portfolio, what is the kind of degree of demand pull that you're seeing or signaling that you're seeing from your customers that is either translating into better returns or more order stability? Or like what's the kind of real-world kind of flow-through of these metrics? Or is this that -- or are you seeing this more as a kind of regulatory or disclosure issue rather than a customer issue?

[Frank Bozich:]

Thanks. No, it's a great question. And actually, it's a change that we've seen during the course of '21 that's marked. And what's happening is the discussions that we've had prior to this year with our customers, I would say, it is broad based but in particular, in consumer products as well as automotive, has been really driven by -- it's been a value-based discussion and something -- a more technical discussion. The two topics that have really emerged during the course of 2021 and are now really significant factors with those clients are supply -- security of supply and supply chain integrity as well as the sustainability of your offering, because they're under -- and what we're being told is they're being pressured significantly to reduce the carbon footprint of their product. And they're translating this into their vendor selection and material selection criteria. So it's a very important customer-related factor and it's growing in importance I would argue.

[Laurence Alexander:]

Okay, great. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Hassan Ahmed with Alembic Global Advisors.

[Hassan Ahmed:]

Good morning, Frank and Dave. A bit of a philosophical question about the portfolio transformation strategy and the like. I mean, obviously, I understand the transformation and the philosophy behind that. I mean you're obviously creating a less volatile sort of earnings profile. You're improving the margin profile while obviously enhancing the free cash flow conversion. But obviously, inherent in all of that is that you get a multiple re-rating, right? And I mean, if one looks at the last couple of years, the multiple compression within the chemical space has been quite extreme. And I understand the fact that everyone seems to be sort of painting the entire sector with one broad brush and not delineating between, call it, the margin stability side of it, commodities from specialties and even the carbon footprint that you talked about. So a long-winded way of asking you -- you carry out this sort of portfolio transformation. You're a year out; you're two years out. And you are still not getting the multiples that you desire. How would you think about things in that environment? I mean, would you sort of, a couple of years out, consider a sale? Would you just buy back the company and say, look, maybe there's no place in the public domain for a company despite all of these efforts?

[Frank Bozich:]

Yes. No. Thanks for the question. And I think the answer is really simple and it's twofold. One, we asked ourselves several years ago, where is a company like Trinseo best able to compete and grow in the future? Is it in a specialty business or is it in more of a cyclical commodity business? And it's very clear to us that we are much -- a company of Trinseo's size, a mid-cap or small-cap company, is much better able to grow and return value to shareholders as a specialty company than we are at -- is a -- in a global commodity market when you don't have access to the cracker or advantaged feedstocks; so that's number one. So okay, as we go forward with that transformation, one of the key outcomes is we're going to generate significant free cash flow. So the part -- this is one of the things we're most excited about this portfolio. So the growth opportunities that we'll have relative to organic and inorganic opportunities are going to be significant. And then, the other thing is, if we're in an environment where that free cash flow is not -- or that free cash flow yield isn't rerated up, Trinseo's own shares represent a compelling investment opportunity that we'll have to figure in the mix of our capital allocation we'll have to consider. So again, we think that our strategic options are vastly improved with the transformation we've made going forward.

[Hassan Ahmed:]

All makes a lot of sense. And as a follow-up, again, in light of my question, the answer that you gave and the like, again, wanted to revisit the whole sort of capital allocation side of it. In the near to medium term, right, one, two, three years out, what is the right way of thinking about buybacks? And I know that probably is a moving target. But how do you sort of book end that moving target with regards to buybacks?

[Frank Bozich:]

Yes. Look, I think it's exactly what I said before. As long as we look at external opportunities and organic investments, we'll have to weigh that against the opportunity to buy our own shares. And when we do that calculus, if on a synergy-adjusted basis and strategically, our own shares represents a compelling opportunity, we'll have to consider that. So I can't give you a definitive answer other than we're -- we think Trinseo represents a really compelling investment opportunity, not only for the market but for ourselves with the free cash flow we'll be generating.

[Hassan Ahmed:]

Very helpful, Frank. Thanks so much.

[Frank Bozich:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from the line of David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank.

[David Begleiter:]

Good morning, Frank and Dave. Frank, was there any thoughts to keeping Polystyrene as it does have some performance attributes similar to Engineered Materials?

[Frank Bozich:]

David, I think the simple answer is we did evaluate a number of options and what we would retain. And frankly, we see that, that activity -- or polystyrene fits with the styrene monomers and gives that -- the opportunity to divest at some critical mass. And then I would say that the market overlap with the rest of the portfolio is less -- provides less market traction and market synergy than the portfolio that we're building in Engineered Materials, Base Plastics and then also with Latex. So at the end of the day, we looked at various options and we came out in favor of -- it had to be included. The other thing I would point out is we would expect that the recycled polystyrene should be included also and are -- in what would be divested with polystyrene because at the end of the day, the biggest source of feed for that recycling activity is going to be single-use plastics or plastic packaging that contains polystyrene. So we see those as being included in that scope.

[David Begleiter:]

Understood. And just on the M&A question, there are at least two large assets to sell right now in this Engineered Materials space. And given the scarcity of these assets -- I know the timing may not match up perfectly with what you're trying to accomplish. But given the scarcity of these assets and the premium investors are paying for growth versus share buybacks, why not be a little more aggressive perhaps right now given again the uniqueness of these assets for sale?

[Frank Bozich:]

Yes. David, like I said before, we've done a lot this year. We have a lot to do with the separation of the Styrenics assets as well as completing the integration of what we've already acquired and that's going to be our near-term priority.

[David Begleiter:]

Got it. Thank you very much.

[Frank Bozich:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Duffy Fischer with Barclays.

[Duffy Fischer:]

Yes, good morning. Just on the upcoming separation; styrene, polystyrene. I guess first question is how clean is that going to be for you guys plant site-wise, intercompany supply-wise, stranded cost, that type of stuff?

[David Stasse:]

Yes. Duffy, it's Dave. Well, I think there's two -- I mean, the Americas Styrenics piece, obviously, is quite clean. That's a joint -- a separate company. It's a joint venture. Now within Trinseo, I mean, look, there will be a carve-out. I mean, we will have -- I would expect our downstream businesses to have supply agreements with the carve-out business as it relates to styrene. And some of the sites, not all of the sites are kind of co-located with other businesses -- with other Trinseo businesses. So there is a fair amount of separation work to do. We've already started that. I think that's the good news. That's why we're kicking off a process in the first quarter. We started working on the -- not only carving out financials but also the carving out of the operation, supply agreements and all those sorts of things. So it is a fair amount of work. That does have some lead time but I think it's a manageable process that will allow us to kick things off in the first quarter.

[Duffy Fischer:]

Okay. And then, roughly how many employees would you expect to go with that carve-out? And then do you have an early view of how much stranded cost will be left that you'll have to work down over time?

[Frank Bozich:]

Yes. We're working through those. In terms of the specific FTEs or the employees, I can't give you a number right now. And also, the stranded costs, that's something we'll have -- we're working on to understand what that would be.

[Duffy Fischer:]

Okay. All right. Thank you, guys.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from the line of Eric Petrie with Citi.

[Eric Petrie:]

Hey, good morning, Frank.

[Frank Bozich:]

Good morning, Eric.

[Eric Petrie:]

The PMMA footprint investment in Asia, how much would a plant cost? And is margins in line with that 25% target that you put out for 2025?

[Frank Bozich:]

So we're in the process of doing some preliminary engineering and site selection work. We have seen an estimate -- preliminary estimates that would put the greenfield investment at somewhere around $40 million. Now if we're able to put the investment on a site that -- where we have some infrastructure, it could affect that. But that's order of magnitude what we're thinking. And yes, for us, the investment in Asia Pacific for the scale that we're thinking and let me remind you, it's focus will be on formulated PMMA resin that goes into more of the specialty applications that serves our global customers. So think global OEMs and being able to supply them in all regions with the same specification materials, we think that we'll achieve that margin.

[Eric Petrie:]

Helpful. And then secondly, just on the Engineered Materials business, from a recyclability point of view, of that 30% sales volume, is most of that in PMMA? Or could you take a step back for us in terms of how you see that going forward, in terms of the buckets between PMMA, rigid, compounds and TPE?

[Frank Bozich:]

Yes. So the 30% that I referenced is specific mainly to PC/ABS compounds that goes into consumer electronics. And that's where our group has had some traction over the last several years building that offering. Now, I would expect that we would see similar growth traction on the circular PMMA offering as we have more time under our belt as the owner of the asset going forward. And we're seeing a similar interest from the customer base in those end-markets too.

[Eric Petrie:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley.

[Angel Castillo:]

Hi, thanks for taking my question and good morning. Just wanted to get a little bit more color on the Engineered Materials business. If you could give us a little bit more color as to what -- I guess, what pressured that in the third quarter and the implied guidance of -- for the fourth quarter based on the kind of $210 million EBITDA that you gave. Could you kind of bridge -- similar to what you gave in terms of the puts and takes for the full company, what are kind of the puts and takes that get you from kind of the third quarter EBITDA to that implied kind of low 50s million of EBITDA for the fourth quarter?

[David Stasse:]

Angel, this is Dave. I can address that. I think probably for starters, given the automotive exposure that we do have in the PMMA business, I'd expect the third quarter to always be the lowest level of EBITDA. And that's just due to automotive production seasonality. So not only for this year but going forward, I would always expect that, seasonally speaking. Now auto demand was incrementally lower than what we would expect just due to seasonality due to the supply challenges that I think everybody is aware of about the OEMs. Now compounding this in the third quarter, we had an extremely rapid pace of feedstock increases, specifically MMA increases in the third quarter. And our price increases just weren't able to keep up with that. So transitioning to Q4, you're right, we do expect EBITDA to be about $20 million higher for Engineered Materials. And that's really attributable to three things. The first is pricing actions that we've taken that have gone into place on October 1. The second is we have higher -- we're seeing higher MMA margins on the merchant volume that we do have on our MMA production in Europe. And then the third thing is we do have an incremental two months results of Aristech that will be -- so we're reporting a full quarter of Aristech results in the fourth quarter, whereas we only had one quarter in Q3.

[Frank Bozich:]

One month.

[David Stasse:]

One month, excuse me, in the third quarter.

[Angel Castillo:]

Okay, got it. That's helpful. And then, in terms of the CapEx that was reduced for the year, what was, I guess, the driver for that? And how should we think about it for 2022 and beyond? It sounds like some of that may be investment in a plant in Asia might be a part of that. But how should we think about timing of that?

[David Stasse:]

Yes. I think, look, most of the CapEx -- so we lowered our CapEx from $150 million to $120 million. I would say $20 million to $25 million of that is purely going to be rollover. So our other vendors are having supply chain issues as well. So getting things that we've ordered is taking longer really across the board. So I would expect that spend to still occur but it will just roll over into next year, into 2022. Angel, the other thing, I think I mentioned this in the last call, 2022 will be the peak year of spending as it relates to our SAP implementation. So I think, clearly, we do see '22 as being a higher year for capital than 2021.

[Operator:]

There are no further questions at this time. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

[Frank Bozich:]

Thank you.