Avient Corp Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Avient Corporation's webcast to discuss the company's first quarter 2026 results. My name is Michelle, and I'll be your operator for today. Operator Instructions: As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the call over to Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone, for joining us on the call today. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that statements made during this webcast may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements will give current expectations or forecasts of future events and are not guarantees of future performance. They're based on management's expectations and involve a number of business risks and uncertainties, any of which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by the forward-looking statements. We encourage you to review our most recent reports, including our 10-K or any applicable amendments, for a complete discussion of these factors and other risks that may affect our future results. During the discussion today, the company will use both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the presentation posted on the Investor Relations section of the Avient website, where the company describes the non-GAAP measures and provides a reconciliation for historical non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. A replay of this call will be available on our website. Information to access the replay is listed in today's press release, which is available at avient.com in the Investor Relations section of the website. Joining me today is our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Ashish Khandpur; and Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Jamie Beggs. I will now hand the call over to Ashish to begin.

Thank you, Joe, and good morning, everyone. Before I get into my business-related comments, I want to highlight the recent CFO leadership change we announced last week. Jamie Beggs has decided to leave Avient effective June 1 to pursue an opportunity outside of the company. I would like to extend my thanks to Jamie for her 6 years of contributions and service to Avient and wish her the best in her new role. I am also very pleased to have Joe Di Salvo take on the CFO role, who many of you know very well. I have had the chance to work closely with Joe for about 2.5 years now and have established a strong and trusting relationship with him. Joe brings with him 25 years of financial experience, including nearly 15 years at Avient. He has established strong relationships within the company and with the investment community. His deep financial experience and consistent delivery of results make him well suited to lead our financial organization. I look forward to continuing to work closely with Joe to deliver value to all our stakeholders. Coming to the quarterly results now. In the first quarter, our teams delivered $0.83 of adjusted EPS, modestly ahead of our expectations, demonstrating disciplined execution in a complex operating environment. Our focus on cash and debt reduction in 2025 also contributed favorably to our first quarter EPS growth. Sales were generally in line with expectations and market demand was a continuation of Q4, especially in Color, Additives and Inks, the larger of our 2 business segments. Demand remained subdued in January and February with a notable pickup in March as customers accelerated purchasing to mitigate potential supply disruptions and inflation pressures related to the conflict in the Middle East. Importantly, our continued focus on productivity and cost control more than offset wage inflation and incentive resets, expanding adjusted EBITDA margins by 20 basis points. One of the highlights of Q1 was that we started seeing some strength in our biggest end market of packaging, which contributes about 23% of our company revenues. Packaging finished up low single digits against strong comparisons of around 7% growth that we experienced in Q1 2025. We will talk more about packaging later in this presentation when we discuss our end markets in further detail. Geopolitical events in the Middle East have increased volatility in market conditions and customer purchasing behavior as customers work to secure supply and manage inflation. I have personally visited many of our customers in Asia and EMEA, where the immediate supply chain disruptions are most pronounced. I can confidently say that our teams are doing an outstanding job to manage the situation proactively and are staying focused on and close to our customers. We are leveraging our global supply chain and material science capabilities to secure raw materials, qualify alternatives where we can and have been implementing price actions where needed, to offset inflation. This approach is consistent with our proven playbook, which enabled us to remain net price positive during the post-pandemic disruptions of 2021 and 2022 and again during the tariff-driven volatility in 2025. In fact, we remain net price positive in each and every quarter during these volatile and uncertain periods and expect the same to be the case this year as we confront another extended period of elevated uncertainty. For the second quarter, we have secured supply for the vast majority of our raw materials. While availability remains constrained for select items, our teams are actively working with suppliers and seeking alternatives to minimize any impact, which we expect to be immaterial for Q2. We also expect organic sales growth in both business segments and margin expansion for the total company in second quarter, while we continue to invest in the growth vectors in alignment with our strategy. Overall, our teams are well prepared to handle the changing business conditions with agility and staying focused on customers. Execution over the last 9 quarters has been exceptional, and I believe our people are our competitive advantage in these turbulent times. While first half performance is tracking modestly ahead of our expectations, uncertainty around the second half remains elevated. As a result, we are currently not changing our full year guidance. We are prepared for a range of outcomes and are making decisions to proactively manage the business with what we can influence. Accordingly, we will continue to execute our productivity initiatives as well as control spending and headcount, adjusting on an ongoing basis as the business conditions warrant. Turning to our end market trends. Packaging, our largest end market, continues to demonstrate resilience, supported by new share gains, especially in food and beverage applications and also by new product innovations. This includes brand-new growth driven by non-PFAS Polymer Processing Aids used in personal health and beauty applications, and low-outgassing and anti-static materials used in films and tapes for electronics packaging applications. As a result, we expect mid- to high single-digit growth in packaging in the second quarter, led by EMEA, our largest packaging market, where we also have favorable comparisons versus the second quarter of 2025. Consumer sales declined in the first quarter. In the second quarter, we expect a return to low single-digit growth, primarily driven by favorable comparisons following the demand slowdown that began in the second quarter of 2025. Healthcare growth was low single digit in the first quarter, reflecting tough double-digit growth comparisons from Q1 2025 and also some customer inventory rebalancing in the drug delivery space. Importantly, this market has delivered consistent growth over the past 9 quarters with double-digit growth in each of the 2 years, 2024 and 2025. As we lap strong growth in the first half of 2025, we expect second quarter growth to be similar to the first quarter. Defense sales were flat in the first quarter caused by lumpiness and timing of orders delivery in this business. For Q2, we expect defense sales to grow sequentially over Q1 and also year-over-year versus a very strong Q2 2025, where defense had grown almost 20%. We see continued demand momentum in this business with healthy project pipelines and deep customer engagements in the United States and Europe. Building and Construction was another bright spot, where sales grew each of the 3 months of the first quarter and finished up mid-single digits. The growth in the quarter was primarily driven by share gains in the commercial and data center infrastructure build applications. We expect the trend to continue in the second quarter. Demand in industrial, transportation and energy markets continues to be slow, with sales declining mid-single digits or so in each of these end markets in Q1. This trend is expected to continue into Q2, but with magnitude of decline being more modest. We have been highlighting our innovations in these calls on a fairly regular basis now to provide a flavor of how our strategic pillar of innovation is taking shape in the company and building momentum for sales growth and margin expansion. Even as we manage market volatility and deliver on our business performance each quarter, our strategy of prioritizing growth vectors tied to secular trends continues to create opportunities for innovation and new business creation at scale. Today, I will highlight how our teams are solving problems in the electronics and high-performance computing space, which is one of our prioritized growth vectors. As AI and high-performance computing applications grow and pervade several industries, the demand for advanced semiconductors and efficient data centers continues to increase. We are supporting the AI and high-performance computing infrastructure build-out across 3 critical areas, bringing our technologies to industry leaders in this space. First, Avient's unique material solutions offer excellent microenvironment control in semiconductor fabs and are used in wafer handling applications such as front opening universal pods and carrier tapes for transporting bare die and package chips. Our materials are designed to specifications of our customers while meeting stringent requirements of outgassing, electrostatic dissipation and ultra-clean processing. Second, in data center servers, increased demand in processing power requires connectors and other components to operate at higher temperatures and be packed into a smaller footprint, a challenge that is hard to address with traditional polymers. Our custom design solutions for advanced connectors and optical fiber components offer very high signal fidelity in order to maximize data throughput in AI server interconnects. Third, every data center needs thousands of miles of cabling, both for managing signal and power. With increasing power and density requirements, operators require cable solutions to be compact, quickly dissipate heat in high-density racks for safe operation and meet stringent fire codes. Our materials offer thin wall insulation that meet and exceed these needs as well as enable high-speed manufacturing of cables. Our electronics and high-performance computing solutions have been growing rapidly over the last couple of years, and we expect this momentum to continue in 2026 and beyond. This growth vector is expected to finish greater than $40 million in sales this year, adding about $10 million in sales just in 2026 itself and doubling in sales in the last 3 years. Our teams continue to build and work on expanding the pipeline of projects and customers in this space. I will now hand the call over to Jamie to add some additional color on our first quarter results and 2026 financial guidance.

Thank you, Ashish, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with the first quarter performance of our Color, Additives and Inks segment. Continued strength in health care and stable packaging demand was more than offset by subdued demand in consumer, transportation and industrial end markets, which led to a 3% decline in organic sales during the quarter. EBITDA margins improved 40 basis points as pricing and productivity initiatives more than offset the impact of wage inflation and lower organic sales. Specialty Engineered Materials organic sales were flat as share gains in commercial building and construction applications primarily offset lower sales in consumer, transportation and industrial end markets. Healthcare was impacted by inventory rebalancing related to supply chain movements as well as lapping strong double-digit growth in Q1 of the prior year. Defense sales were flat due to timing of customer orders and following several quarters of high single-digit to low double-digit growth. EBITDA margins declined 40 basis points, primarily due to unfavorable mix in the quarter, while productivity initiatives offset the impact of wage inflation. Both businesses demonstrated strong execution to deliver the first quarter results while proactively addressing anticipated changes in raw material cost, supply availability and pricing. Moving to the regions. Overall demand trends were generally consistent with the year-over-year fourth quarter comparisons with a few distinct call-outs. U.S./Canada sales benefited from positive growth in building and construction share gains as well as stable demand in consumer and packaging end markets. This was more than offset by timing of defense orders, primarily associated with the delay of spending from recent government shutdowns and slow transportation demand related to domestic automotive production. Overall sales declined 3% for the region during the quarter. EMEA organic sales were down 2% year-over-year, primarily due to consumer, industrial and transportation sales. Transportation was impacted by lower light vehicle production and demand for high-performance fibers used in marine applications. These declines more than offset strong growth in defense sales and momentum in health care for the region. Asia grew 2%, driven by strength in packaging and telecommunications. In addition, secular growth in electronics and high-performance computing as well as functional additives continues to unlock new opportunities for our materials portfolio. This has helped offset weak consumer demand, particularly in textile applications. Latin America sales declined 6%, lapping 17% growth in the first quarter last year. Business in the region primarily serves consumer and packaging end markets where consumers remain cautious amid macro uncertainty. As Ashish mentioned, our current performance expectations for the first half of the year are trending slightly better than expected. With that said, the outlook for the second half is less certain. Therefore, we are maintaining our full year guidance of adjusted EBITDA of $555 million to $585 million, which reflects 2% to 7% growth over the prior year. Adjusted EPS of $2.93 to $3.17, which reflects 4% to 12% growth over the prior year. This range includes our second quarter adjusted EPS outlook of $0.89. Despite expected supply chain constraints and inflationary pressures in the second quarter, our teams have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to navigate volatility through disciplined execution. By staying closely aligned with customers, actively managing raw material sourcing and pricing and maintaining a strong focus on productivity, we remain well positioned to offset inflation and grow earnings in 2026. We also expect to generate more than $200 million of free cash flow this year, strengthening an already solid balance sheet and increasing our financial flexibility. I'll now turn it back over to Ashish for some concluding comments.

Thank you, Jamie. Before opening it up for questions, I would like to acknowledge the hard work done by the Avient team during the quarter and thank our people for their disciplined execution and strong focus on serving our customers with passion and agility. I'm extremely proud and fortunate to be part of such a great team. With that, we will now open the line for Q&A.

Operator Instructions: Our first question comes from Frank Mitsch with Fermium Research LLC.

Let me offer a double congrats to both Jamie and Joe. Ashish and I obviously wish you the best, and obviously, we'll be staying in close touch. Ashish, I wanted to delve into the raws versus price a little bit more. And I appreciate your comments with respect to net positive price in each quarter as we progress through the year. What are you actually seeing in terms of raw material inflation? I understand that 2Q is somewhat muted because you've already got it in stock. But if you could give us some more color as to what you're seeing on the raw side and what your expectations are on the price side?

Yes. So Frank, basically, if you look at our raw materials and put them in two different buckets, one is hydrocarbons, that's where we are seeing most of our price increases. Overall ranges vary from 20% to 60% with TPE more in the 20% to 30% range and polyethylene and polypropylene in the 20% to 60% range depending on the region you are in. So that's on the hydrocarbon side. And the second bucket is basically our specialty materials and minerals like Performance Additives and things like TiO2, for example. And there, the increase is more in the high single digit kind of a range. Basically, that's where we are seeing the year-over-year increases. Then on energy, we are hedged for 2026 more or less. So it's a small component anyway — less than 2% of our company sales. So not much impact in 2026. But even in 2027, since it's a small number, it will not matter a whole lot. We can take care of that through our price increases if needed. And then the other part is freight, where we are seeing almost close to 20% kind of increases. So that's what we are seeing from an inflation perspective. And then obviously, as I said, our teams have moved pretty aggressively in Q1 itself. Giving price increases is not our preferred way of doing things. We first try to see if we can work with our customers and secure raw materials from other places or qualify new materials. But if that doesn't work, then we have to move with the price increases. And the teams have moved fast. And as I mentioned in my commentary, we expect every quarter to be net price benefit based on how we have moved. So we try to stay ahead of inflation. So overall, I think for total, at a company level, if you think about for raw materials, we expect price to be in the mid-single digits averaged over our entire raw material basket. So that gives you some flavor of what we are looking at.

Terrific. That's very helpful. And Jamie, one last one for old time sakes. Obviously, you indicated positive free cash flow for 2026. Working capital was a significant use here in the first quarter. How do you think about working capital as we progress through the year?

Yes. From an overall perspective, we typically range between 13% and 14% of working capital as a percentage of sales. And so as you do your modeling, that's what I would assume from an organic perspective. Q1 typically is a pretty big draw. That's just normal seasonality based on sales increases from a sequential basis Q4 to Q1. So no significant changes in our normal full year run rate on that. Just Q1 is more seasonal.

Our next question comes from Michael Sison with Wells Fargo.

Good start to the year and congrats to Jamie and Joe as well. I guess the first question, in terms of the positive organic sales growth you see in 2Q, how much of that is coming from volume? And it feels like volumes were down in the first quarter. You talked about a lot of end markets doing pretty well here in terms of share gains and stuff. So just kind of want to get a feel for that as we head into 2Q and the second half?

Yes, Mike, volumes were down about 2% in Q1, and I think we expect a similar kind of range for Q2 as well. Most of the organic growth will be driven by price in Q2. So overall for the quarter, we will see basically a positive organic local currency growth for the first half, and obviously for second quarter as we mentioned in our commentary. Second half, of course, we are expecting much higher volume growth as well. And that's largely because of the comp effect — last year second half was down 2% versus first half, which was up 1% or so. So we have some comp tailwinds in the second half, but also we are seeing some markets getting real positive demand, as I highlighted, packaging specifically and parts of consumer also coming back in certain areas of the world. So there is some uncertainty in the second half. But overall, we feel like some of our markets are getting back in traction. And our teams are winning share and also some of our new product innovation is kicking in, which is going to help us in the second half of the year as well.

Got it. And then in the prior set of inflation, maybe a little bit prior before your time, during Winter Storm Uri, Avient was able to sort of stay ahead of raw material inflation as well. Why do you think that's the case then? Maybe Jamie has a bit more perspective on that. But then going forward, most folks feel it's difficult to do that. So what is it within the organization of the business that allows you to be able to do that, particularly in this time of pretty steep inflation?

Maybe I can take a quick stab at it and then Jamie can add based on the history. I think the point is that what we try to do is differentiate ourselves from commodity resin manufacturers and chemical players. And that is where we differentiate with respect to taking pricing and staying ahead. The customers are willing to pay for the service we provide, the speed with which we work with them to qualify new materials and solve their problems as well as our business model of serving them across the globe, but with a very local service and local touch model. I think all those things work in our benefit. And so we see that pricing for us is more value-driven because we create value for the customer and not just commodity pricing driven. I think that's my answer, but Jamie can add it.

I think that's excellent. And the other piece of it is less than 5% of our agreements are indexed. So we have the ability on a PO-by-PO basis to actually manage pricing as needed. And so that also allows us to be ahead of the game, and that's what we've seen back in '21 and '22. We're always able to stay ahead of that raw material inflation despite that also being a very volatile increase, pretty fast. So the team has been doing a great job executing that very familiar playbook. I think in Q2, like Ashish mentioned, you'll see some positive price there, hopefully to stay ahead of where we're at with the inflation.

Our next question comes from Ghansham Panjabi with Baird.

First off, congrats to Jamie and Joe as well. I wish you both the very best in your new roles from our team. I guess going back to the volume assumptions for 2026, you give us a view on the first half. There's a lot of distortions as it relates to prebuying, et cetera, and comparisons from a year ago, et cetera. So how are you thinking about the full year from a volumetric standpoint? I know you seem very confident on pricing, but is there any element of macroeconomic deterioration that you're factoring in as it relates to your guidance?

Yes, Ghansham. So from a total year perspective, when we started the year, of course, we had price/mix as close to neutral and maybe slightly positive and then mostly growth driven by volume. And I think that story has flipped now based on what has happened recently. And so we are expecting slightly positive volume for the total year and more low single-digit kind of increase driven by price and mix. So I think that's our midpoint assumption in our guidance on the sales. So overall, still positive volume for the year, but maybe less than 1% and price/mix low single digits for total organic sales to be in that low single digit to mid-single digit range.

Okay. And then in terms of the comments on packaging, and it sounds like you're a little bit more optimistic as it relates to the trend line, especially 2Q onwards, as you highlighted, do you actually sense any sort of underlying improvement in that end market? Or is it just a function of your net wins and so on and so forth that's driving that optimism?

As I tried to highlight in the end market dynamics, packaging is — part of it is we are seeing some demand coming back. Europe, especially, we know we are getting some demand back, which is our biggest market. Also, U.S. has been pretty resilient in Q4 and then now again in Q1. So packaging was up for us in Asia, plus 8% and U.S. plus 1% or so this quarter. So I think overall, packaging is looking quite good. But apart from the demand part, we are also seeing our teams really going and getting share. And we highlighted some of that. Especially in Asia, we are winning share with local beverage makers. There's a big trend around sugar-free tea and other beverages that is taking place in China with respect to healthy eating habits. And our teams are beginning to grab a lot of share in that market, both from color perspective, but also cap liners and things from the supply chain model. So we are gaining share in those kinds of things. And then new product innovation. We talked about non-PFAS Polymer Processing Aids used in health and beauty applications. And that is also something that is creating brand-new growth. So apart from the market demand, we are gaining share. There's a share gain perspective. There is a perspective from new products. And then on top of that, pricing is going in. So most of the sources of growth vectors are kicking in in packaging at the same time. And obviously, we haven't done much M&A. So that's not a growth vector for us right now. But you get my point that we are addressing packaging on all those different fronts.

Our next question comes from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies.

It's Dan Rizzo on for Laurence. Just to get back for the pricing thing for a second. Two things. One, when you raise prices and because of the value add and because of your differentiated products, do you generally keep the prices? Or is there sometimes concessions when things like this end?

So generally, we have shown that we can — if you go back to 2021 and 2022 time, we were able to stay ahead of the inflation curve by giving prices much faster and then keeping the price higher when the raw material inflation comes down. And I think our teams have proven on both sides of that, that they can manage that part pretty well. Obviously, there are things case by case and with customers and regions which are very specific. So if you look at what happened in March when the war started, especially in Europe, for example, the price disruption was very high and things were changing daily, on a daily basis. And in those cases, we had to pass on certain surcharges to our customers, and then we reconcile with some of those customers as things become more clear and things stabilize. So most of the times, it's price increases. But in things when it was moving so fast, we didn't want to be behind the inflation curve. So we agreed with our customers to pass on the surcharges and come back to it later in case the prices didn't stick. And that's, again, a very specific case of when the volatility is very high. We have to — we don't have enough time to collect data on the price impact and you have to move. So overall, I would say our teams do a pretty good job of staying competitive longer.

That's helpful. And then just one follow-up on that. Back in 2021, '22 and just other surges in pricing, did you lose any volumes because you rose prices? Did people, I don't know, just trade down to less differentiated products? Is that a phenomenon that happens from time to time?

I don't have the detailed history there. But obviously, part of the things that the team has been doing is to improve profitability and portfolio management as part of our strategy. And so we are not afraid to price more aggressively in cases where the portfolio is very commoditized and doesn't make sense for us to serve. So it's part of our portfolio decisions and those volumes we can forego without any — it's a no-regrets decision for us. But typically, because of the value that we create for our customers, it is not an issue for us and the customers are happy to work with us. This is not a one-time thing. Our customers know that this is another one of those cases where times are tough. And if you stick with them, you work with them, solve their problems, they trust you. And then even if they have to pay you a little bit extra price — because they know that next time there is a crisis, we will still be there to help them out. And this is a trust that we have built with our customers over the years, and that's an important part. That is not just a mathematical equation.

Our next question comes from David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank.

This is Emily Fusco on for Dave Begleiter and congrats to both Jamie and Joe. Just curious back on to raising prices kind of at what point does this inflation flow through to the consumer and maybe start to impact demand? Are you seeing anything there or anything towards the back half?

So it's a really interesting question. Pretty much all economists are probably working on that part. I'm going to be candid, we are somewhat speculative here, but prices are probably flowing through to the consumer. Yesterday, Whirlpool announced their earnings, and you saw that the consumer is hurting right now and staying away from big ticket items like appliances. So inflation is really hitting on bigger ticket items. We hear a lot about gas prices as well, similar story. At some point, if this doesn't get resolved, of course it's going to flow through. It's already flowing through in my mind. So I think second half is where — if you ask us from our business perspective, the two biggest question marks in my mind are the consumer business and the industrial business. And both of them are dependent on oil prices, but also the general inflation that is happening. And that's the variability really in our range. If we hit the low end of the range or our midpoint of the range or the high end, depends on those two businesses, consumer and industrial. Your question is an excellent one, Emily. Only time will tell how much consumer hurts over time because of this inflationary environment.

Our next question comes from Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners.

Let me add my congratulations to Joe and Jamie. Ashish, we appreciate the slide that you provided that shows a little more color on your exposure in electronics and high-performance computing. It seems like you're kind of in the early stages of tapping into that. And just hoping that you could give us some more detail on how you see your competitive advantage and how you win in that space? And as you look out over the next 2 to 3 years, what are the biggest product lines or applications going to be just based on where they are today and where the growth rates are trending?

Yes. So Mike, you're right. It's a newer focus area for us. As we've said, the teams were playing and dabbling in that area a couple of years ago, but it was not a concentrated focus with respect to secular trends and going after that. It's an area that has been moving very fast and digital in general is continuing to become more and more part of our life. So we focused really on that area. We put a specific team around that and want to tap into this whole digital value chain, all the way from semiconductor manufacturing to packaging of chips to making servers to getting into the data center and in between electrification, which is part of our advanced composites program for electrification. We have thought it through, and we are playing across the value chain through our different growth vectors, and they all kind of come together and address this whole thing. With respect to competitive advantage, I would say that in the electronics world, speed and solving the customer problem are your fastest advantage versus technology necessarily. We brought in experienced leadership because we wanted to go deeper in this area and build this business faster. We are not married to any particular materials in that space, but we can choose from any material that is available and design an appropriate solution for our customers with high speed, and that is our competitive advantage. We have been filing more and more patents as we develop more expertise and depth in that area, and that will make us more differentiated. Part of it is just finding out, getting deeper into the area, intersecting the road maps of our customers' products and understanding what is required to win there. In this initial phase, that's where we have spent our time. The business growth has come pretty well. If you think about it, wafer packaging — wafer transportation, carrier tapes for chip packaging, high-speed connectors for interconnect on board, backplane in servers, electromagnetic shielding materials, power housing, flame retardants — all those parts of the portfolio can go in there. Also our wire and cable business, which is a core business, has an opportunity to grow here because data center capacity is expected to triple in the next five years or so. There's a lot of opportunity. What we wanted to highlight today was that we've started thinking about these markets at scale. We're not thinking from a product perspective only; we're seeing where the markets are going and how can we become a bigger part of the market as a full Avient and create $30 million, $40 million, $50 million opportunities in this space. This is not the only example — in defense we've added $60 million over the last two years, and in health care we've added $40 million over the last two years. So this is a pattern, and it's beginning to come together.

No, that's very helpful. And then just in terms of the productivity improvements and the cost discipline, it was good to see margin up even though your volumes were down a little bit, and you mentioned that incentive comp is also higher. Can you just talk a little bit about where you see costs and productivity going from here, specifically on SG&A, maybe give us a sense of how much higher SG&A costs could end up this year? I understand you're trying to manage it, but how much flexibility do you feel like you have in terms of the cost front?

So as a reminder, we do have around $20 million of productivity that's carried over from the prior year, which definitely helped within the quarter. But we're always looking at productivity. It's a muscle that Avient has. And as we look forward and depending on how the macro environment grows, we do have some additional levers to potentially look at further cost reductions. We think about cost reductions in four primary buckets. One, we always are looking at our sourcing capabilities and ability to combine raw materials. Another area is footprint optimization — how do we best serve our customers and what footprint we need. We also have strong manufacturing programs with productivity and Lean Six Sigma type programs. And lastly, SG&A — we have done a lot of streamlining over the past two years with Ashish onboarding and taking structure out, primarily to serve our customers more seamlessly across the board. We always have the ability to look harder at that as we progress through 2026. So I would expect that productivity will still become a major factor in how we manage our profitability going forward, one, because it's a muscle, and two, because I do think there are some other opportunities.

I can add that this whole area of digital opens up a lot of capability for us to take out more cost and more structure out of the company. That's something we have been doing in the last two years and we'll continue to do, as Jamie mentioned. Last year, we drove $40 million of productivity. This year, there was some carryover from that. In addition, we'll drive enough to offset wage inflation, which is close to $30 million. And we also have a plan B in case we need to pull the trigger and things get a little worse on the market side; then we will move to plan B and drive even more productivity.

Our next question comes from Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley.

Congrats to Joe and Jamie. This is Turner on for Vincent. It would be great to get more color on the packaging end market. Can you break down the drivers of the mid-single-digit to high single-digit growth expectations you mentioned for the second quarter between volume and price and perhaps speak to some of the underlying growth of the market or what you're seeing from share gains?

I will not break it down precisely for volume on this thing, but I can tell you it's both volume and price driven, as I mentioned earlier. We are seeing market demand creating volume. Packaging has been a robust market for us. Even last year, it grew 1%, and in Q1 it had a very strong comparison of around 7% versus Q1 2025. We're seeing demand pick up in Europe, which is our biggest market, and U.S. has been resilient. In the U.S., we've won share, especially in caps and closures. In Europe the beverage season returning is helping. In Asia, our teams are winning share with local beverage makers tied to trends like sugar-free tea and other beverages. There is also post-consumer recycling momentum in Asia, especially in health and beauty, where we've been winning share. Additionally, promotional activity related to events like the FIFA World Cup has created tailwinds in certain regions. So you're seeing volume from demand and share gains plus pricing. The comps in Q2 are more benign versus Q1, which also helps us. That's why we have confidence in mid- to high-single-digit growth for packaging in Q2.

I appreciate the thoughts there. Do you mind providing also more color around the low single-digit price/mix assumption that you mentioned for the year? Any thoughts about the cadence — does it ramp up as we go through the year and likewise, how it trends relative to what you expect from raw materials?

Turner, this is Joe. I think that's going to ramp with how the underlying input costs ramp up. So we started raising prices with the underlying cost going up in raw materials in April, and we'll see how the year plays out, but you'll see it ramp up over the next few months and depending how the back half plays with underlying cost, our price/mix would follow. So that's probably how you should think about it.

And our last question comes from Kristen Owen with Oppenheimer & Company.

Let me be the last to express my congratulations then to Jamie and Joe, Jamie, in particular, I appreciate the last 6 years, the help you've provided. So then I just wanted to ask here about some of the comments about maybe some pull-through that you started to see in March. It sounds like you actually have some pretty good visibility here into Q2. How much of that down to organic volume assumption? Are you baking in anything for pull forward on demand or any sort of stocking just to ensure that customers have that availability?

Kristen, in March we saw less than $5 million of pull-in because customers were trying to secure their supply chains. We mentioned defense orders moved out, and that was about the same amount for us more or less. So that kind of was a wash from an in-and-out perspective. Overall, I think Q2 we will see probably more impact of price increases and some pre-buying. That will be more pronounced in Q2. We are monitoring very closely our customer order patterns to make sure we can distinguish true demand versus buying just to procure and keep materials. It's hard to call out exactly how much of this will impact Q3, but there will be some amount at least, and that's why if you look at our guidance, we are not raising our range, although we are slightly better in the first half because of that reason. We don't know how much of that is permanent versus pulled forward, so we have modeled Q3 and Q4 with a haircut to reflect that some demand may have been pulled into Q2.

Okay. Great. And Ashish, even in the last question, you responded to some of the share gains that you're seeing in packaging. But just if we broaden that out, can you build on where you're seeing share gains? How much of that is some of the innovation coming through in terms of new business wins? And how much of that is just you guys have proven that you're a reliable, scaled global supplier and maybe that's helping you gain some share over maybe some of the mom-and-pops or more local suppliers?

Consumer — the market demand is questionable. I think Q2 will be much better because of the comps; consumer was down 8% last year. So consumer improvements will be a combination of comps and some share gains. Packaging I already detailed. Defense is another big market for us where a lot of innovation is driving share gains; our third-generation fiber is, as we understand, best-in-class, and that is creating wins. Health care has been a strong area — we've created $40 million of net new growth in health care over the last two years, driven by customer innovation and taking share. Building and construction is another area where we've taken share, especially in Q1 in the United States, notably in our wire and cable business, where we've demonstrated the ability to win because of our right price-value proposition and pipeline innovation.

Thank you. This concludes the question-and-answer session, and you may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.