Celanese (NYSE:CE) Corporation reported its Q1 2025 earnings, revealing an earnings per share (EPS) of $1.45, surpassing the forecasted $1.25. However, revenue fell short of expectations at $2.37 billion against a $2.39 billion forecast. Despite the earnings beat, Celanese’s stock tumbled by 20.11% in after-hours trading, closing at $55.85, significantly below its 52-week high of $172.16. According to InvestingPro data, the company has not been profitable over the last twelve months, with a negative return on equity of -25%. The stock’s current price represents a 45.8% decline over the past six months.
Key Takeaways
- Celanese’s EPS exceeded expectations by 16%.
- Revenue missed projections by $20 million.
- Stock price dropped sharply by over 20%.
- Focus on cash generation and reducing leverage.
- Positive developments in engineered materials for EVs.
Company Performance
Celanese demonstrated resilience in its Q1 2025 earnings, with EPS exceeding expectations, indicating solid operational performance despite revenue shortfalls. The company continues to navigate a challenging global manufacturing environment, particularly in the acetyl industry, which is operating below the cost curve. InvestingPro analysis shows the company maintains a GOOD Financial Health score of 2.73, with particularly strong marks in profitability potential and relative value metrics. Subscribers to InvestingPro can access 8 additional key insights about Celanese’s financial position and future prospects. Celanese’s strategic focus on high-margin segments like engineered materials for electric vehicles and elastomeric products is a key driver of performance.
Financial Highlights
- Revenue: $2.37 billion, slightly below the forecast.
- Earnings per share: $1.45, surpassing the forecast by 16%.
- Executed $75 million in cost-saving actions.
- Capital expenditure plan reduced by approximately $100 million.
Earnings vs. Forecast
Celanese’s actual EPS of $1.45 beat the forecasted $1.25, marking a 16% positive surprise. This beat is significant compared to previous quarters, where EPS closely aligned with forecasts. However, the $2.37 billion in revenue fell short of the $2.39 billion forecast, a minor miss that highlights ongoing market challenges.
Market Reaction
Despite the EPS beat, Celanese’s stock plummeted by 20.11% in after-hours trading, closing at $55.85. This decline reflects investor concerns over revenue shortfalls and broader market pressures. The stock’s performance is notably below its 52-week high of $172.16, indicating significant market volatility and investor caution. Based on InvestingPro Fair Value analysis, Celanese appears undervalued at current levels, with a strong free cash flow yield of 11%. The company’s comprehensive Pro Research Report, available to subscribers, provides detailed valuation analysis and peer comparisons.
Outlook & Guidance
Celanese projects Q2 2025 EPS to range between $1.25 and $1.50, reflecting cautious optimism amid challenging market conditions. InvestingPro data reveals analysts expect the company to return to profitability this year, with an EPS forecast of $8.16 for FY2025, despite 6 analysts recently revising their earnings expectations downward. The company is prioritizing cash generation and plans to improve free cash flow in 2025 compared to 2024. Strategic initiatives include potential divestitures to reduce leverage and a focus on high-growth segments like medical devices and electric vehicles.
Executive Commentary
CEO Scott Richardson emphasized the company’s focus on cash generation, stating, "Cash is the priority." He also highlighted efforts to accelerate shareholder value creation, noting, "We are taking the right steps to accelerate shareholder value creation." These statements underscore Celanese’s strategic focus on financial stability and growth.
Risks and Challenges
- Global manufacturing slowdown impacting revenue.
- Margin compression in standard grade applications.
- Geopolitical tensions affecting supply chains.
- Competitive pressures in the acetyl industry.
- Economic uncertainties in key markets like Europe.
Q&A
During the earnings call, analysts inquired about potential divestitures and strategies to address margin compression. The company dismissed the idea of an equity raise due to potential dilution, instead focusing on debt market strategies to optimize its financial structure.
Full transcript - Celanese (CE) Q4 2024:
Daryl, Conference Operator: Greetings, and welcome to the Celanese Q4 twenty twenty four Earnings Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations.
Thank you. You may begin.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation: Thanks, Daryl. Welcome to the Celanese Corporation fourth quarter twenty twenty four earnings conference call. My name is Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations. With me today on the call are Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer and Chuck Irish, Chief Financial Officer. Celenese distributed its fourth quarter earnings release via Business Wire and posted prepared comments and a summary presentation of key 2025 actions on our Investor Relations website yesterday afternoon.
As a reminder, we’ll discuss non GAAP financial measures today. You can find definitions of these measures as well as reconciliations to the comparable GAAP measures on our website. Today’s presentation will also include forward looking statements. Please review the cautionary language regarding forward looking statements, which can be found at the end of both the press release and the prepared comments. Form eight K reports containing all of these materials have also been submitted to the SEC.
Before we open it up for questions, I’d like to turn the call over to Scott Richardson for some opening remarks.
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Thanks, Bill, and good morning, everyone. I strongly believe Celanese is a company that has cash generation, productivity and cost reduction in its DNA. These core competencies have driven shareholder value over our twenty years as a public company. We are keenly focused on invigorating and capitalizing on these foundational capabilities and how we lead and drive business every day to improve performance and drive value creation. My first two months as CEO have been about prioritizing and driving action.
Decisive steps we have taken to date include the following. We have executed on over $75,000,000 worth of cost actions that we outlined in our Q3 earnings call. We have reduced our 2025 capital plan to $300,000,000 to $350,000,000 which is about $100,000,000 reduction versus our spend last year. We have added a new leader to the Engineered Materials business in Todd Elliott to bring a fresh perspective and new energy to reducing complexity and driving improved results. We have added Chris Kuehn and Scott Sutton to our Board of Directors to bring additional finance and operational expertise to our boardroom given the prioritization of cash generation, margin expansion, productivity and deleveraging.
And we have added a finance and business review committee to the Board of Directors, which Scott Sutton and I will jointly chair. This committee will help evaluate all options to improve the company’s operating model performance, drive cash generation and review our portfolio. We are taking the right steps to accelerate shareholder value creation and restore our performance at top decile levels in the industry. We are moving forward with intensity and aggressiveness and are not hesitating to make bold changes to generate cash and deleverage the balance sheet. We know the journey in front of us is not an easy one, but we are energized by the opportunity ahead.
We will share wins no matter the size as we progress in the coming months, and I look forward to reporting on our progress as we advance our plans to improve performance and drive value creation. Thank you. And now, Darryl, let’s open the line for questions.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. Our first question is coming from the line of David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank (ETR:DBKGn). Please proceed with your question. Thank you and good morning.
David Begleiter, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Scott, you mentioned some divestitures in the prepared comments. Could you get some sense of potentially the size of these divestitures and when they might occur?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Yes. Thanks, David. We’ve been working aggressively on divestitures for some time now. And we did a transaction a few years ago with the food ingredients business. And I would look at most of what we’re looking at is kind of around that size, some smaller, some maybe slightly a little bit bigger than that.
But that’s kind of the right range to look at kind of the opportunities that we have.
David Begleiter, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: And one more thing, I know equity raise is not your first choice, but given this where the balance sheet is today, what are your thoughts of potentially raising equity at some point to help delever the balance sheet?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Our capital structure is to fund our acquisitions with debt. In addition, we’re unlocking cash from actions we’ve taken on the dividend, reduction in CapEx, reducing working capital and we’re aggressively working divestitures as I just talked about. Look, equity is extremely dilutive and we don’t believe that’s a step that’s necessary given the strength of the debt market.
Chuck Irish, Chief Financial Officer, Celanese Corporation: Yes, David. Hey, I can add to that. Look, as Scott mentioned, we’re taking numerous actions to reduce leverage. But what you’re also going to see us continue to do in the meantime is be proactive in reducing the risk in our debt maturities. We have a plan and we’ve prepared to access the debt markets quickly and opportunistically and credit markets are very strong right now.
The principles around that are going to be to extend a portion of our more near term maturities, aligning what remains with our cash generation and we’ll make sure and do that at a prudent and reasonable cost.
David Begleiter, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Thank you very much.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Frank Mitsch with Fermium Research. Please proceed with your questions.
Frank Mitsch, Analyst, Fermium Research: Hey, good morning. I want to dive into your outlook for the first half of the year. As you talked about the second quarter, you indicated that it wouldn’t have the $100,000,000 of non repeating items that are impacting the first quarter. And yet if I look at the dollar increase expected versus the first quarter, that only implies like $20,000,000 or so of improvement from volumes and SG and A, etcetera, which frankly looking at 2Q versus 1Q, that really doesn’t seem like that much. Can you help explain some of the thinking there?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Yes. Thanks, Frank. Look, we’re getting some of that here at the end of the first quarter in that number, not a lot, but a little bit. And so that incremental in the second quarter is about that rate range you talked about. There’s most of we’ll be on the run rate in the second quarter certainly to get to the full kind of $80,000,000 that we called out and we’re continuing to work additional action.
So look, it’s really important that we look at what we see right in front of us and be transparent with that. We’re working a number of other actions to list not just the back half of the year, but also work. We can get more in Q1, we’re going to do it and we’re going to do everything we can to make that Q2 number bigger than that dollar you called out.
Frank Mitsch, Analyst, Fermium Research: Got you. Thank you. And then the other thing in the prepared remarks was a comment that free cash flow for 2025 is expected to be higher than 2024. And I’m curious if you can kind of go through kind of order of magnitude that the Street should be thinking about and how do you get there?
Chuck Irish, Chief Financial Officer, Celanese Corporation: Well, Frank, we haven’t given the guide for earnings at this point in time for the year. But what I wanted to lay out are components in free cash flow below the EBITDA line that we do expect to improve significantly year over year, right. So working capital was a use of cash last year, expect to be a source of cash. Cash tax will be significantly lower. We’ve lowered CapEx roughly $100,000,000 right.
So those before giving a guide for earnings as we’re kind of working through several things, I just wanted to lay out areas in free cash flow that will improve year over year below EBITDA.
Speaker 6: Thank you. Thank
Daryl, Conference Operator: you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Zekauskas with JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM). Please proceed with your questions.
Jeff Zekauskas, Analyst, JPMorgan: Thanks very much. Scott Sutton has been brought into the Board of Celanese. I was wondering, Scott, if you played a role in bringing him in or what role you played in Scott coming to the Board?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Look, Scott and I have known each other for a long time, and I’m thrilled that Scott has agreed to join the Board. I think we have been on a path as a Board that’s been very deliberate in how we refresh the board with capabilities that are going to help us navigate the landscape that we’re in. And Scott’s the latest add in that. And he brings unique capabilities and has a track record of accelerating cash generation, deleveraging, value creation, and I’m really excited that he’s going to help us in this journey.
Jeff Zekauskas, Analyst, JPMorgan: Second question is, in your prepared remarks, what you said was that over time, you reduced costs associated with the M and M acquisition by about $250,000,000 And then later in the script, what you say is that there’s been competitive dynamics in your largest product lines like nylon, which offset year over year improvements made to the cost position, as well as lower raw materials and manufacturing footprint cost reduction. So when you look at the M and M business from the time that you acquired it, like where do we stand now? Is the EBITDA really no different because price degradation has offset all of the cost improvements? Or can you give us like where did we start and where are we now with the M and M acquisition?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Yes. We have increased the EBITDA from M and M M when you look at the synergies versus where it was when we closed the transaction, Jeff. And we have seen margin degradation in some product lines within the M and M portfolio. We’ve also seen some margin degradation in some of the product lines in the historical selling portfolio. We’ve also seen several product lines that have expanded margins.
This is a critical area of focus for us this year. Reversing this margin compression that we’ve seen broadly across the standard part of the EM portfolio is a critical action for us that we need to deliver on to kind of lift the second half of the year.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation: Thanks so much.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Michael Sison with Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC). Please proceed with your questions.
Michael Sison, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Hey, guys. Good morning. Maybe a follow-up on M and M. Could you maybe just give us your thoughts on is this a good business for Sony (NYSE:SONY)’s longer term? I mean, what do you think the potential is here?
And how do you sort of get it there? And I suspect there’s some macro help that you’ll need there, but just what is the potential for M and M now going forward?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Yes. Thanks, Mike. I mean, we’ve seen some challenges, but we’ve also seen some strength in several of the businesses. I mean, our high temp nylon portfolio that we acquired with the business has been a nice source of growth for us in electric vehicle applications with things like superior thermal shock characteristics in certain application areas. We have also seen kind of the elactameric products that we acquired have been have given us kind of a new growth platform in athletic apparel and footwear that we didn’t have before.
So there are really nice pockets of opportunity for us and we’ve got to go really aggressively work that from a project pipeline standpoint. And then there are good parts of the Nylon portfolio as well. And so we’ve got to keep kind of keeping this machine moving from a pipeline standpoint and we’ve also got to make sure that we aggressively work the cost side of the equation, just given where the fundamental macro is at.
Michael Sison, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Got it. And then most folks haven’t given an outlook for the full year 2025, I understand that. But should EBITDA be better in the second half versus the first half? And maybe if you don’t have specifics, what should be better or could be better than the second half in terms of the walk for a better EBITDA? And then can you just give us your general thoughts on what the economic backdrop we should think about in 2025 for Celanese?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Our focus is on moving with urgency, Mike, to take decisive actions, to be able to drive wins. The actions that we’re taking, we believe will be unique for us to drive value in the out quarters here. We talked about the complexity reduction, $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 of opportunity in EM. We need to make sure that we’re fully leveraging the asset yields optionality model, which was challenging in the second half of last year. Historically, we’ve been able to drive good value by flexing up and down the value chain there.
And the third is getting back to this point I just talked about on reversing margin compression in both the standard parts of the Engineered Materials portfolio, but also in the Asset Tools business.
Michael Sison, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Thank you.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Ghansham Panjabi with Baird. Please proceed with your
Ghansham Panjabi, Analyst, Baird: question. Thank
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation0: you. Good morning, guys. Scott, first off, congrats on your new role and best wishes with everything. I guess going back to the EM segment and the new leadership there, just curious as to how we should expect strategy to sort of evolve versus what you have been doing? And then relatedly, can you just comment on your view in terms of channel inventory levels downstream to that segment, the customer level, etcetera?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Yes. Look, Todd Elliott already is bringing intensity and focus around everything that we do, looking at cost and opportunities, whether it be footprint, warehousing, distribution costs, SG and A, etcetera, but also on the customer side side as you talked about. And it really is about looking at the pockets of opportunity that are out there and accelerating in some of those higher growth segments like medical, like electric vehicles in China, future connectivity. Really getting to that customer segment level, defending the base is going to be important, but then also accelerating growth and driving project wins no matter the size.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation0: Got it. And then obviously, Scott, we’ve been in a two year global manufacturing slump. You’ve been pulling levers on the cost side and working capital as best you can. But what are some of the other contingencies you have at your disposal in the scenario that the current paradigm continues for another year or longer in context of your debt load? Thanks.
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: I believe there’s always more that can be done, Ghansham. And I think we’ve shown that with cost given where the demand landscape is at. We are looking at really all elements of the business. And I just kind of highlighted on the Engineered Materials side of things with those action steps that we’re taking to reduce complexity. We have some of the similar things on the acetyl side of the house as well.
And so it’s really about kind of taking a no stone unturned approach to everything that we’re doing. And also then looking at really almost every single customer interaction on how we can drive incremental opportunities and then also make sure we’re really extracting full value on the margin side.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Josh Spector with UBS. Please proceed with your questions.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation1: Hey, guys. This is James Cannon on for Josh. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to ask on earnings power of the Acetal business. I think previously you said 2024 was a typical run rate for the near term.
I think if I think about the contract resets that would be an incremental call in $40,000,000 to $50,000,000 headwind this year. Is that the right ballpark or is there something to offset that gets us back to the 1.1?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Look, I’ll echo what I just said, James. There’s always opportunity for us to drive margins. And we had some contract resets. The team is working really hard to offset those. That’s been hard in Asia where the supply demand landscape is at.
But we’re looking for ways at which kind of leverage our optionality model there and flex up and down the value chain to be able to offset that and get back to those levels that we were at in the first half of last year.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). Please proceed with your question.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation2: Thank you. Has anything changed, Scott, about the scope of assets that you might consider divesting? And I just ask that because you mentioned in the prior answer that the size would probably be similar to the divestiture that was done, the food ingredients. And my recollection was that in the past, more recently, we’ve been talking about maybe multiple smaller divestitures rather than the opportunity to sell a few things or one thing at a larger cost? So are you looking wider or deeper or anything changed in terms of what you’re willing to divest?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Yes. We’re looking at everything that has that’s not critical to kind of our core operating model, Vincent. And that’s really this engineered thermoplastic, thermoplastic elastomers portfolio in the Engineered Materials business and our optionality model that starts with methanol and acetic acid and goes all the way through re dispersable powders. And if it’s not in those operating models, we’re taking a look at it. But it needs to facilitate deleveraging.
And so that size I talked about was kind of in that range, but I also said plusminus. So there is a series of smaller ones that we get you that when added up are in that range and then there’s some opportunities that are a little larger.
David Begleiter, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Okay.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation2: And then in the prepared remarks, you talked about the dissolution of the JV with Tayshaun on the Mylar. Is there anything else about your asset footprint that you’re looking at, maybe areas where you’re not as advantaged or places where it might make sense to take capacity out of the market?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: We believe in having an efficient footprint, Vincent, and ensuring that we fully leverage the strong technical capabilities that we have in house here at Celanese. And I think we have a long term history of reducing our footprint, but yet adding capacity at our advantage sites. And that principle, that core principle of manufacturing is what we’re leveraging to these M and M assets as well. By doing that, you get much greater leverage on fixed costs. And so we’re consistently looking at opportunities to do that.
We’ve taken action. We reduced our footprint by eight sites since we did the acquisition and we’re continuing to look for opportunities to be as efficient as possible.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Arun Viswanathan with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation3: Thanks for taking my question. Hope you guys are well. And congrats on the new roles there. So I guess two questions. So first off, I know that you’ve taken actions on eight sites there and evaluating some more options as well and divesting of other assets.
But is it also the case that there has been some structural weakness in the auto market and you guys are potentially overexposed to underperforming regions such as Europe. Do you think because we’ve seen this inventory overhang now for two or three quarters and then I think you guys have taken decisive action in Q3 and Q4 as well, but it doesn’t seem like that’s been enough to really clear out the inventory. So do you think the actions in Q1 will result in that inventory reduction or would they linger beyond into Q2 and Q3?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: The value chain has too much inventory. We talked about that on our last earnings call. And we’re working to match our inventory levels with where the fundamental demand is at. At. Demand has held pretty stable here in the first quarter, but the value chain is rebalancing the inventory footprint.
And that’s our channel partners, it’s the tiers, the molders and the end customers. And so the line of sight that we have today based upon our outlook is that we would see that come to a close here in the first quarter.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation3: Okay, great. And then if I can follow-up just on the guidance, it looks like the Q1 guidance again is in the $400,000,000 or so EBITDA range, maybe slightly below that. Do you expect that to kind of lift up through the year, maybe into the $1,500,000,000 to $2,000,000,000 range on an annualized basis. And again, that would be more of second half weighted. Is it mostly those cost and productivity actions that would get you there or is it require some recovery and volume growth as well?
Thanks.
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Look, our focus is on the decisive actions that we’re taking right now. We can’t control what happens in the macro, but we can focus on where we spend money, how we drive a level of efficiency, how we interact and access our customers to drive opportunities. And one of the things we called out is a focus on smaller projects in Engineered Materials. One of the great things about smaller projects is they tend to be able to be commercialized in six to twelve months. And so it is it’s very important that we continue to work that with a level of aggressiveness to be able to improve kind of that outlook in the second half.
Thanks.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Patrick Cunningham with Citi. Please proceed with your question.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation4: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. So some estimates we see on capacity upwards of 3,000,000 tons in 2025, maybe a little less on the BAM side, but still meaningful capacity in the next few years. What gives you confidence that there will not be significant incremental impact from near term capacity? And
Ghansham Panjabi, Analyst, Baird: what
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation4: does this capacity mean for the utilization rates of your own networks?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: We don’t see a big change coming in the supply demand landscape, Patrick. And where things are today is the SBL industry is operating below the cost curve. And that’s not sustainable. It’s not been historically sustainable. And we haven’t seen things degrade further even though we’ve seen new capacity come into the marketplace from a margin perspective.
And so we continue to look at where are those pockets of opportunity up and down the value chain and asset yield where we can pit it. And the team was successful last year growing, for example, our Redispersable Powders business, largely outside of China and other parts of Asia like India and Southeast Asia, where there was a strong pull and growth for some unique applications, such as composite insulation systems, large style adhesives. And so it seems like that, that are going to be critical, where we’re partnering with our customers to get the full pull through of that value chain where we have unique technology.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation4: Got it. Understood. And how should we think about incremental benefits from Clear Lake into 2025? I mean, are volumes any sort of offset to contract resets here? Is there any reason why run rate utilization should get worse than where you exited the year, whether it’s raw material availability or depressed demand levels?
Just trying to understand The U. S. Operating footprint here.
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Look, we’re seeing the full run rate of the expansion as we exit 2024. And we’ve seen some obviously some slight offset from some of those contract resets, which is why we’re working other opportunities to offset that. We’ve got some natural gas headwind in The U. S. To start the year that has seen higher costs, but we do expect that that will wane and come off as the weather improves and we move into the second quarter.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation4: Thank you.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alexey Yefremov with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed with your questions.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation4: Thanks. Good morning, everyone. So it sounds like you’re deliberately reducing inventory in EM in Q1. Is it possible to size it in terms of EBITDA so that we can understand how much could potentially come back in the second quarter from this deliberate action?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: It’s really not that substantial, Alexei. I wouldn’t say it’s kind of material like we saw in the fourth quarter.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation4: Okay. And a follow-up on EM as well. It looks like pricing came down maybe low single digit for the segment in Q4. What do you expect from price in Q1 and potentially Q2, another step down or stabilization?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: What we are seeing right now is stabilization for the most part. We’re having to be competitive in certain standard grade applications, but the team is also working tenaciously on offsets. I mean, this has been a headwind. But again, in the standard grade application, where margins are at for the industry are really at unsustainable levels. And so we are working on opportunities to be able to turn that high.
The best way to do that is improving mix. And that’s where the criticality of working the pipeline and continuing to be successful in some of these more unique higher growth, higher margin segments. Thanks, Scott.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners. Please proceed with your question.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation5: Yes. Thank you and good morning. Scott, are you essentially running Celanese today to maximize cash flow as opposed to maximizing earnings? Or is that not the case and you’re really trying to strike a balance between the two?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Look, cash is the priority, Kevin. Given where our debt is at, we are looking to do everything that we can to unlock cash. And I think some of the actions that we have taken, whether it’d be the dividend, the reduction of capital, the reduction in working capital and a tenacious focus there, as well as aggressively working on the divestiture side. It is a focus on
Ghansham Panjabi, Analyst, Baird: first.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation5: Okay. And then if I may, I want to follow-up on asset yields. I think you idled some capacity temporarily in Singapore and Frankfurt as you discussed in the prepared remarks last night. Do you do that because they go temporarily cash negative or perhaps for a different reason? And wondering if you could talk about your specific operating rate at Clear Lake in the fourth quarter and how you expect that to trend in the first quarter?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: The Acetyl team wakes up every day, Kevin, and looks at the landscape that it’s in and it pivots. And it pivots up and down the chain. It pivots geographically where it sells. And then we match operating rates to the needs to maximize margin and EBITDA across the landscape and to meet our customers’ needs. And that is a model that that team will continue to operate on and will continue to focus on striking that right balance between volume and margin.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation5: Thank you.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Hassan Ahmed with Alembic Global. Please proceed with your question.
Speaker 6: Morning, Scott. First of all, congratulations on the new role and also congratulations on bringing Scott Sutton on board, big fan. First question on the guidance, You guys talked about $0.25 to $0.5 in Q1 EPS and $1.25 to $1.5 as demand recovers in Q2. Now, I mean, if there is no change in the macro in the back half of the year, should we consider $1.25 to $1.5 as the run rate?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: We’re doing everything that we can to drive our run rate much higher than that, Hassan. And it’s the actions that we talked about. And our focus on not giving you guidance in the second half is because we have multiple actions that are underway. I mean, I talked about the complexity reduction in Engineered Materials, driving our asset seal optionality model to a level that was that performed better than we saw at the end of last year. And then this margin compression component.
In addition to everything else that we’re doing broadly across the cost side in SG and A and the manufacturing footprint. So we believe that there are decisive opportunities and actions that we can take here at Celanese to lift the run rate performance even if we don’t see a change in the macro.
Speaker 6: Understood. And in the presentation, one of the things that you guys talked about was, well, I guess you gave six reasons to own Celanese shares today. And one of them was the strong earnings leverage as obviously demand recovers. So, my question to you is, as you take a look at the geographic footprint you guys have as well as the end markets you guys are exposed to, is the leverage the same today as it was in prior years, particularly as you look at the sort of changing sort of dynamics globally with tariffs out there, with your exposure to EVs and you guys yourself flagged the higher exposure to EVs that China today has and how that today is a lower margin business than it was historically.
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: We have a core principle that we believe in having a very efficient manufacturing footprint. When we acquired the M and M business, their footprint was not as efficient as what we had historically here at Celanee. As a combined organization, we are looking at what is the right efficiency profile that we need and we’re overlaying what we believe and where things are at from a demand perspective geographically. And it’s that matching that’s really critically important. And as a corporation, we are pretty evenly split between Americas, Europe and Asia in terms of where our revenue comes from.
But Asia is growing and Europe is declining. And so it’s going to be very critical that we continue to drive that intersection point to a level that allows us to enjoy kind of that operating leverage that we historically have.
Speaker 6: Very helpful.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of John McNulty with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Frank Mitsch, Analyst, Fermium Research: Yes. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So Scott, when you think about the asset fuel capacity that’s coming on in Asia, have you seen any offsets where you’re seeing closures, assets coming down permanently? It looks like there’s a significant amount of more capacity still to come.
So just wondering how that gets placed and where if it’s just going to have to be where we wait for demand to absorb it all?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: We haven’t seen, I’d say permanent capacity reductions. We definitely have seen the industry operating at lower rates. And I think what’s a little bit different about this cycle on capacity adds versus what we saw fifteen years ago, fifteen years ago it was almost all new players to the marketplace. This is about fiftyfifty, existing players adding capacity and some new players. And so obviously for those with existing capacity, they’re kind of flexing their networks up and down based upon what they need.
So we have probably a little bit more kind of down to match where demand is at. Okay, fair enough.
Ghansham Panjabi, Analyst, Baird: And then
Frank Mitsch, Analyst, Fermium Research: I guess, do you see there being any risk that that capacity makes its way more meaningfully into other markets? Or does it really kind of stay in the markets that it’s been over the last whatever the last few years?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: That arbitrage window is not open and it’s kind of stayed right at or below what it cost to move product. And look, shipping is expensive and complex, and storage is complex as well right now in other markets. And so just given transit times, etcetera, we have not seen a lot of that material move out of the region.
Frank Mitsch, Analyst, Fermium Research: Got it. Thanks very much for the color.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Lawrence Alexander with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation: Good morning. So first, on the divestitures, are these assets that you’ve decided you just don’t fit in the portfolio and you will exit even if things get better? Or as things get better, would you keep them and focus on deleveraging through other means? And secondly, with acetyls, can you elaborate a little bit on kind of the execution issues in the back half of last year? And to the extent that they’ve been changed or fixed, should we see the improvement this summer regardless of the environment?
Or do you need a better level of aggregate demand in order to also fix the execution issues that you’ve identified?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Yes. Let me hit your second question first. I wouldn’t call them the necessary execution issues. I think it was just of length in supply demand, really driven by kind of where demand declined at the end of the year. And look, the team is doing everything we can to really flex that model up and down the value chain and look for pockets of opportunity.
On your first question around divestitures, look, I think we have identified pieces that are not critical to kind of those core operating models. And we’re looking at and having a lot of conversations. I mean, it has been a tough M and A market for the last several years. And we are very principled and I’ve heard from a lot of investors that are concerned about us fire selling assets. We’re not in the business of fire selling assets.
Our focus is on divestitures to drive deleveraging and it’s going to be important that we continue to stick with that principle and be aggressive about doing deals as they present themselves to us.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation: Thank you.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of John Roberts with Mizuho (NYSE:MFG). Please proceed with your questions.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation: Okay. Well, Dan, it seems like John might be muted. Let’s go ahead and make the next question.
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: We can hear you
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation: now. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Congrats, Scott,
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation1: and welcome back to Todd and Scott Sutton. Did you talk about the new JV rules in China? We have other companies with China JVs, and I don’t recall hearing anything about that. Is it all JVs in China or something specific to the selling of these kind of JVs?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Yes. Look, I think some JVs have gone through some of this and some haven’t. It’s really related to the rules that govern certain JVs. And really what changed here is that there’s a rule that requires an audit to be completed before dividends can be paid. And so that audit gets completed here in the first part of the year.
And so we should see dividends starting in Q2. So that’s a rule change that at least our JVs are now subject to.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation: Okay. Well, Daryl, thanks. Let’s make the next question the last one.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. You got it. Our last questions will come from the line of Salvador Tiana with Bank of America (NYSE:BAC). Please proceed with your questions.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation6: Yes. Thank you. So firstly, I want to ask a little bit about as you’re thinking here about
Daryl, Conference Operator: if you could ask
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation6: a little bit about the package of cost savings, I know you mentioned also the $50,000,000 sorry, the $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 from complexity and $80,000,000 SG and A, but I think last quarter we’re talking about some of the M and M co synergies not being realized in 2024 and thus being pushed in 2025. And Clear Lake, obviously, the $100,000,000 also not fully realized last year in part due to the force majeure. So are these part of these buckets you already gave or is there upside from this especially on the Clear Lake side?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Look, we achieved $250,000,000 of synergies as we exited last year, Sal, and we still have more that are in our plan to be realized here this year. Clearly, like we’re on the run rate as we talked about. There’s been some offsets from margin compression and that’s why I really talked about that as a critical element of focus for us on really reversing that trend as we go forward. So we get the full value of these actions that have already been executed on. We are looking at driving productivity every single day, looking at every dollar that goes outside of the company and where we can save and where we can prioritize.
And this is a focus on cash. And so that tenacity will continue. Everything is on the table.
Ghansham Panjabi, Analyst, Baird: Perfect. And I
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation6: want to go back to your auto exposure to China. You’ve got a number of questions. I’m just wondering, how are things different in China versus Europe and The U. S. When it comes to the OEMs?
And a big tailwind for Celanese and others have been obviously lightweighting and replacing metal hood and other components with plastic. Is there a bigger or a smaller opportunity right now in Chinese altos versus what you had in the Western Hemisphere over the past couple of decades?
Scott Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celanese Corporation: Look, there’s still a huge opportunity for us in China and it’s why we’re continuing to put a heavy focus there. I think one of the things that’s really important is that the technical requirements of electric vehicles, particularly from a powertrain standpoint, are becoming a lot more demanding. And there’s also a lot of other applications where China is moving up this technical requirement curve. This requires materials with higher performance requirements. And we have really, we believe, the best portfolio to match that.
And where our KPBs sit in China, we’re about half of where we are in the Western Hemisphere. And that’s moved up substantially the last several years. But it is critical that we maintain that focus. Just really since the beginning of the year, we’ve had two sizable technical exchanges with two of the top five Chinese OEMs as a way to accelerate and drive business. Great thing about China Auto is that commercialization time tends to be much shorter, kind of more like six to twelve months as opposed to twenty four months in the Western Hemisphere.
Ghansham Panjabi, Analyst, Baird: Perfect. Thank you very much.
Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations, Celanese Corporation: And thank you, everyone. We’d like to thank everyone for listening today. As always, we’re available after the call for any follow-up questions. Daryl, please go ahead and close out the call.
Daryl, Conference Operator: Thank you. This does conclude today’s teleconference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Enjoy the rest of your day.
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