Ecovyst Inc. Q1 FY2021 Earnings Call

Good morning. My name is Catherine and I'll be your conference operator today. Welcome to the PQ Group Holdings First Quarter 2021 Earnings Call and Webcast. Please note today's call is being recorded and should run approximately one hour. All participants' lines have been placed in a listen-only mode to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nahla Azmy, Vice President of Investor Relations and Financial Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2021 earnings call. We will start today with formal remarks from Belgacem Chariag, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mike Crews, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Then we will follow with the Q&A session. Please note that some of the information shared today is forward-looking information about the company's results and plans including with respect to the anticipated sale of our Performance Chemicals business, our anticipated end-use demand trends including the impact of COVID-19 and our 2021 financial outlook. This information is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results and the implementation of the company's plans to vary materially. These risks are discussed in the company's filings with the SEC including in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures mentioned on today's call with their corresponding GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and presentation materials posted on the Investors section of our website. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call to Belgacem.

Thanks, Nahla, and good morning, everyone. This is a very exciting time for PQ. Since our previous earnings call in early March, we've had the opportunity to communicate with many of our investors on two very important occasions and milestones for the company. First, we had an investor conference in early April, at which we detailed our strategy, sustainability goals and growth outlooks through 2025. We unveiled ecovyst, the future brand for our pure-play catalyst and services company. More recently, we took the opportunity through a secondary offering to improve the trading liquidity for PQ shares by approximately 35%, addressing an important challenge that dates back to the company's IPO. During the first quarter, we remained highly focused on our execution and achieved several accomplishments that I'd like to summarize. Beginning on Slide 3 with safety, we continue to make positive strides. Our year-on-year key metrics improved 28% for recordable incidents and 16% for Perfect Days, continuing a trend of significant improvement over the last two years. From top management to frontline and support functions, a leading safety and environmental performance is embedded in our culture. We expect 2021 to be an even better year on this front. On the operational side, I'm happy to report that our production facilities in Texas have returned to full capacity safely and in time to meet the demand run by our customers, who in some cases were even more severely impacted by Winter Storm Uri. Commercially, we have mounting momentum as we expand our positions into new and growing end-markets. We continue to grow our Catalyst portfolio offering and we're now increasing sales into the renewable fuel space. With our refining services, which have its permits and location advantages, we are seeing higher demand for waste treatment services largely driven by the construction recovery. And in only two months since the acquisition closed, we're already seeing some initial commercial synergies within the Chem32 Catalyst Activation business. On strategy, we're nearing the completion of our portfolio transformation and our plan to close the sale of Performance Chemicals in the second half of this year. We now expect net proceeds to be approximately $995 million, up from our original estimate of $950 million. Finally, our financial performance was solid despite a significant impact on our refining services business from Winter Storm Uri. Excluding this impact, sales, adjusted EBITDA, and margins would have been higher than the first quarter of last year, before demand levels were impacted by the pandemic. This outcome demonstrates the recovery trends we're experiencing and reinforces our confidence in our 2021 outlook. Turning now to Slide 4, I'll discuss the drivers of these recovery trends in more detail. Firstly, the economic recovery, which is being led by the larger economies in China, the U.S. and Europe. GDP growth rates in these regions are projected to be in the range of mid-to-high single-digit in 2021. Secondly is increasing consumer confidence, which is estimated to be approximately 15% higher in the second quarter, both year-on-year and sequentially, with optimism that this continues for the balance of the year. Third is growing energy consumption, which is expected to be up 4% year-on-year. The largest beneficiary areas of this recovery are the transportation and commercial sectors. Lastly, sustainability regulations are on the rise, particularly mandates for cleaner and more efficient fuels. For example, Tier 3 standards implemented in the U.S. in 2020 require a two-thirds reduction in sulfur content for gasoline. In addition, fuel economy standards continue to increase gasoline demand for high-octane fuels. Let's go over what we're seeing in terms of the impact of these trends on demand for our key products and services. I'll address them in the order of magnitude, starting with fuels and emissions control, which crosses both our businesses. With the reopening of cities around the U.S., vehicle miles traveled have increased year-to-date. Last month, this metric was tracking at 95% of 2019's level. At the end of last month, mobility data in the U.S. shows more than 150% improvements year-on-year. Recall that this time last year in April, our refinery customers and our regeneration services experienced significant demand reductions due to the implementation of stay-at-home mandates. To support this rebounding activity, refining utilization has been on the rise, with the exception of the temporary storm impact in the Gulf Coast. Higher refinery utilization of greater than 90%, expected in the second quarter of this year, will benefit regeneration of sulfuric acid recycling services. Additionally, hydrocracking catalysts products will also see improved demand with more refinery turnarounds in the second half of the year. Finally, as production of heavy-duty diesel vehicles continues to exhibit double-digit growth in 2021, demand for new light-based emission control catalysts is recovering steadily. Furthermore, government incentives are creating additional growth opportunities as refineries increase production of renewable fuels, leading to higher sales of our catalyst materials in this space. As refineries and renewable fuels producers seek to reduce the downtime and safety risks associated with traditional on-site catalyst activation, this is benefiting our newest business, Chem32. Next, for the specialty grade high-purity virgin sulfuric acid market, as we mentioned last quarter, we had already seen volumes recover to 2019 levels with improving demand for industrial and automotive applications. Mining is another key industry for us, and here high single-digit demand growth for copper and gold is being driven by the rebound in construction, coating, and demand for electronics. Green infrastructure initiatives are also expected to propel further copper and gold demand driven by electrification and renewable energy. Finally, demand for polyethylene grew steadily throughout the pandemic, and we expect the overall polyethylene market to grow by mid-single-digit again in 2021. In the first quarter, we saw more than a 10% year-on-year increase in catalyst demand for high-density polyethylene. Polyethylene film demand is expected to increase about 7% year-on-year on the increased packaging demand for food and hygiene applications. To summarize, over the course of the year, we see demand improvement for nearly all our products and services. This will be driven by the economic recovery as well as a secular trend favoring more environmentally friendly, sustainable products and solutions. Both of our businesses are well positioned to capitalize on these growth trends, working closely with our customers. And now I'll turn the call over to Mike to discuss our first quarter financial results and outlook.

Thank you, Belgacem and good morning. We're pleased to report first-quarter results at the high end of the initial ranges we provided last week, which also compare favorably to the prior-year quarter when excluding the impact of Winter Storm Uri. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone our results are based on continuing operations, with both Performance Materials and Performance Chemicals now reported as discontinued operations. Starting with Slide 5, demand in the first quarter continued to improve as the overall economy recovers. Sales were in line with the prior year, while adjusted EBITDA was lower due to the impact of the storm. This lowered sales by 5% and adjusted EBITDA by 18%, and reduced margin by 460 basis points. Shifting to the segment discussion that begins on Slide 6, refining services sales for the quarter of $100 million were in line with the prior year as storm effects were mitigated by the pass-through of higher sulfur costs and recoveries under our take-or-pay contracts. Adjusted EBITDA of $33 million was reduced by $9 million due to the storm, our lower sales volume, and additional one-time expenses related to outages and facility repairs. Turning to Slide 7, sales for silica catalysts improved by 6% to $26 million, with polyethylene catalyst volumes leading the way. Zeolyst joint venture sales of $29 million were down $3 million as hydrocracking and specialty catalyst customers continued to defer changeouts as anticipated. Offsetting the decline was a rapid increase in demand for low-sulfur renewable fuel catalysts. Adjusted EBITDA of $19 million and margin of 33% both declined from the prior year on lower sales volumes in the joint venture as well as unfavorable fixed cost absorption on lower inventories versus an inventory build in the prior-year quarter. These trends are expected to reverse in the second half of the year. Moving to the outlook on Slide 8, we're reaffirming the guidance shared on our last earnings call, which reflected the effect of Winter Storm Uri. Sales are projected to be in the range of $555 million to $565 million, with Zeolyst joint venture sales in the range of $140 million to $150 million. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $215 million and $225 million with adjusted free cash flow between $75 million and $85 million. We're making good progress with regulatory approvals and expect the sale of Performance Chemicals to occur sometime in the third quarter. We're planning to use the net proceeds at closing to pay a special dividend of $2.50 to $3.25 per share and reduce debt by $450 million to $550 million. This is expected to result in pro forma leverage at the end of this year in the mid to high threes. I'd note that our adjusted free cash flow guidance for the year assumes a sale date of September 30. We have also assumed approximately $3 million of corporate cost savings this year and project to achieve our run rate savings of $10 million to $15 million by the second quarter of next year. With respect to the second quarter, we expect GAAP sales to be up approximately 15% from the first quarter as refiners are back online and working to make up for lost production. Sales for the Zeolyst joint venture should increase from the first quarter by approximately 10% as we see hydrocracking catalyst changeouts rebound. We're projecting second quarter adjusted EBITDA to be largely in line with the prior-year as hydrocracking catalyst orders are weighted toward the second half, and we incur $5 million of higher costs from increased turnaround activities. You may recall the second quarter last year was very strong for catalysts as customers accelerated orders ahead of the pandemic shutdown. For the year, we expect second half adjusted EBITDA to be approximately 40% higher than the first half, with higher Zeolyst joint venture sales and a continued rebound in sales volumes for refining services. To summarize, first quarter results showed solid improvement absent the effects of the storm. We see demand building through the year that should drive significant second half improvement and double-digit sales and adjusted EBITDA increases for the year, and we're on track with the sale of Performance Chemicals and are in a position to drive outstanding growth and margins as ecovyst moving forward. With that overview of the financials, I'll now turn the call back to Belgacem.

Thanks, Mike. Now I'd like to summarize our financial growth targets both for the near and long term as shown on Slide 9. Turning first to the near term. Earlier, I discussed the positive underlying demand dynamics enabled by the healthy economic recovery and the continuing favorable secular trends. And Mike just reviewed the 2021 financial outlook for double-digit year-on-year growth in sales and adjusted EBITDA with margins in the low-30% level. As a reminder, this is inclusive of the corporate transition contract of nearly 200 basis points as we transition Performance Chemicals to a new owner post-deal closure. As we move into 2022, there are a number of fundamental drivers that we expect will further enhance our growth over 2021 and in the following years. To cite a few of these, in the area of fuels and emissions control, regeneration services volumes are anticipated to rise by high single digits on continuing alkylation demand growth, additional volumes from new long-term customer contracts, and growing gasoline exports. Growth for our catalysts is also projected to accelerate on the recovery of hydrocracking refinery changeouts and heavy-duty diesel production. Increasingly, renewable fuel production will drive higher demand for our catalyst materials, as well as Chem32's upside in catalyst activation services. Virgin sulfuric acid will continue its robust growth into the mining sector driven by the proliferation of green infrastructure and increased needs for automotive and electronics, resulting in strong demand growth for copper. And polyethylene catalyst growth will continue to outpace the market as our silica-based catalysts are preferentially specified in the production of materials with above-market demand growth, such as high-density polyethylene, which has a high strength-to-weight ratio. With a meaningful and expandable size of the total addressable markets for our businesses, we have a clear focus and commercial mission to capture further market share. Our growth journey is also setting up well to build on clear momentum and future tailwinds for energy transition and more durable, lighter-weight plastics. So as we continue our collaboration with leading global industry players, we anticipate a growing pipeline of new opportunities for ecovyst's growing and greening strategy through 2025 and beyond. We view our 2025 targets as very achievable. Just to reiterate, this is simply pivoting off the current strengths of our competitive customer positions having long served them with critical proprietary and sustainability-focused custom products and services. This competitive position affords us opportunities for commercially favorable multi-year contracts that provide stability and visibility. As a result, we expect to continue our industry-leading track record of high growth and margins with strong cash conversion rates. In closing, the entire team remains focused on execution on multiple fronts. We expect to complete our portfolio transformation this year on or ahead of plan. We have laid out our near and long-term strategy and pathways for accelerating growth, and at the forefront of our strategies, we're committed to expanding our current base of sustainability-focused products and services. We look forward to continuing to update you on our progress and hope to see many of you this year, preferably in-person. With that, I hope that you and your families remain safe and well. This concludes our formal remarks. And we're now ready to take your questions.

We'll take our first question today from David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Belgacem, just looking at second half guidance, obviously that's quite strong. Discuss almost two segments of various drivers of that strong year-over-year second half performance?

Hi, David. The second half is going to be marked by the strong recovery. The alkylation business, particularly in the summertime, is when driving becomes much more interesting. Also, as refineries' capacity is building up and increasing, we're going to see an additional level of change-outs happening, which will drive the hydrocracking recovery to be sooner than later. We started seeing the order books in the second half for our hydrocracking and other catalyst products. We feel pretty confident that the recovery will be much stronger than what we're seeing in Q1 and Q2, which drives the shift. As we increase volume, David, the margins are going to be highly accretive because our cost is at a certain level today where we can achieve good margins and good adjusted EBITDA. Therefore, the growth will be quarter-over-quarter.

Great. And just on the Performance Chemicals sale. What drove the increase in the net proceeds? And what's the expected after-tax portion of those new proceeds?

Hey David, it's Mike. The number that we've given of $995 million is after-tax. The increase is really just due to our very preliminary estimate of what we thought our taxes were going to be when we provided the initial guidance. There are a lot of commingled assets and entities between chemicals and catalysts, so as we got deeper into it and formulated our plan to separate the entities, we've come up with more refined estimates.

Thank you very much.

We'll take our next question from Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

The increase is really just due to our very preliminary estimate of what we thought our taxes were going to be when we provided the initial guidance. There are a lot of commingled assets and entities between chemicals and catalysts, so as we got deeper into it and formulated our plan to separate the entities, we've come up with more refined estimates. Thank you very much. We'll take our next question from Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

I'm sorry, I think I didn't hear the question at all because there's background sound, and you completely cut off. I hope I'm not the only one. Sorry, Angel.

I'm sorry, I think I didn't hear the question at all because there's background sound, and you completely cut off. I hope I'm not the only one. Sorry, Angel.

Yes, Angel, you're breaking up. There's a phone ringing in the background, I don't know if that's on your line or somewhere else.

It does look like we have lost Angel's line. In that case, we will continue on to Alex Yefremov with KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Refining services price in the first quarter was up 5.8%. But was this entirely due to higher sulfur pass-through? Or was there an underlying price increase in addition to costs pass-through?

It's a combination; most of it is. Mike, you can complement it. Most of it is high pass-through.

Yes, Belgacem, that's correct. There's about $3 million of pass-through. The rest of the price is related to the take-or-pay contracts that kicked in as a result of the storm, which helped mitigate part of the volume impact.

Understood. So underlying contract levels are about flat year-over-year. Is that expected to remain so for this full-year?

You mean volumes are…

Yes, sorry.

Pricing, yes. I think it's the underlying pricing before any cost pass-throughs. Is that factor sort of flat, a small positive, or maybe low single-digit positive percent?

Go ahead, Mike.

Yes, thank you. I would say that the pricing itself has been strong. There's a lot of noise in this quarter between mix and the storm impact and everything else. But generally speaking, I would say there's low single-digit pricing improvement areas just masked by some of the other movements due to volume changes and what actually got sold in the quarter, which was truncated by the storm.

Understood. And maybe another question on Catalysts. You mentioned some destocking. Could you talk about that and sort of destocking and restocking dynamics that you see in this segment overall in the first half and the second half?

Well, I wouldn't refer to them as destocking more than that in the first half there was improved activity, particularly on an element of renewable diesel catalysts, which showed up much stronger in the first quarter. We're going to see real improvements in the second half for catalysts, as the refineries continue to increase operations, and there's going to be more rhythm in terms of the operating of refineries, which will drive more change-outs than anticipated over the previous than the first half, which will drive increased demand for our catalyst products. That's on the catalyst. But another element that is reflected on the catalyst activation on the refining services, which is similar to what is being driven by refineries is the activation. Demand for activation is going to be probably much stronger since there's going to be demand for renewable catalysts, which we have in our Chem32 business. The ability to deliver some specific technology benefits us. We think as we see renewable activation and catalyst activation grow, we can have a nice advantage with that. So you put those two together. Then you add the synergy that we're creating with the customer network; remember we operate in the Gulf Coast, and this location is in Texas. They talk to refiners, as we do every day, and we have deeper relationships with some other refiners. This just expands the commercial and customer network with the reliability of our Eco Services business, that brings more confidence. With the strength of the technology that Chem32 has, we believe the growth vector could be very interesting in the coming years.

Understood. Thank you.

We'll go to Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Hi, can you hear me?

Perfect. Thank you.

Yes, we can. Welcome back.

Sorry about that. Yes, I don't know what happened there. So just a quick question on leverage. You talked about where you'll see there'll be kind of down the year pro forma. As we think about the new portfolio longer-term, what is kind of the right level of leverage that you see as kind of the right normal that it can sustain?

Belgacem, I could take that one. So what we've communicated is mid to high threes in leverage by the end of this year. From a capital allocation perspective, we're going to be focused on debt reduction through the end of 2022. You've seen our cash flow guidance and when you look at the EBITDA growth and the cash flow generation that we believe we can drive from ecovyst, we should be able to continue to delever at half a turn a year. We have not set a longer-term target. But if you look to the end of 2022, we should be able to get to the low threes at that point, and we'll continue to evaluate. From a M&A perspective, we've discussed bolt-on acquisitions, which are a little more bite-sized; you saw Chem32, we paid for that out of cash and did not meaningfully move our leverage. So we do believe we have the ability to bring down leverage over time.

So Angel, just to add more color. The equation has the M&A piece, which we know it's not a list that you go and tap in when you have opportunities. So it's opportunistic. And then you have the drive to reduce the leverage. We have both and the priority to pay that will always be there. As opportunities come up, we would reinvest in the business. Now you could have a period where all we do is pay down debt, or you could have a period where especially what we see in the near-term is we're going to go to the low threes. We have the ability to bring down leverage by half a turn a year, depending on opportunities, but we're going to be chasing opportunities. You could also have opportunities that show up halfway through, and we’ll take them, and then go back to bring leverage down. So where we're probably going to be the sweet spot by 2022 will be low threes, which we think is comfortable enough to juggle both, because we need to grow based on small tuck-in M&A as well. So that's the balance. It's very difficult to predict. We know our ability to achieve half a turn reduction. And we know that in the near-term, we're focused on bringing leverage down to the low threes. Does that make sense?

Yes, absolutely. That's very helpful. And then…

I'm sorry. Yes, one other point that I would make is you may have seen that we expanded our peer set when we did the Investor Day presentation. When you look at these other companies, we really don't have great direct comps in this Specialty Chemicals space, particularly now that Grace is no longer a public reporting entity. So when you look at some of these other electronic chemical companies or the environmental recycling businesses, we're in the middle of the pack on leverage. That doesn’t mean we need to stay there. We've communicated what our plans are for deleveraging. But when you have a high growth, high margin, high cash conversion entity like ours compared to these others, we all feel that we're an outlier, but we’ll continue to focus on bringing that leverage down.

Understood. That's very helpful. And then just I apologize, somebody already asked this, while I dropped off for a second, but to your point on growth, one of the things I noticed is, I guess, with Chem32, it sounds like you're getting some of the benefits of that acquisition already flowing through. And you talked about renewable fuels and what you're seeing in that segment. I was wondering if you could just expand a little bit more on, one, the Chem32 synergy opportunity, and two, what you're seeing from a renewable fuel end-market perspective, if you didn't already discuss it? Sorry.

Sure. Look, the reason we have Chem32 in our portfolio is that we saw and we still see the opportunities in two growth factors. One growth vector is the drive of the refining industry to outsource some of the units, fighting exercise and activation. Today, the activity, there's probably 80% of refiners still do that onsite, while 20% are moving away from that, using their smaller units to pre-sulfide offsite, which presents huge value for them on several fronts. One is obviously the time-saving, especially if you go to more frequent change-outs. Most of all is hazard and safety. It grew in 2020 simply because of also COVID and health reasons where people wanted to minimize the presence of individuals onsite. We think that many refiners will go that way, which will probably shift towards bigger units, thus increasing the chance for refiners to save time and stay in control of cost and safety. That's one vector of growth. The second vector is on renewable. As I said, renewable requires special catalysts and special activation, and we do have a process in our intellectual property reactor technology that favors us. We have experience in that. We think, as we see renewable activation and catalyst activation grow, we can have a nice advantage. So you put those two together. Then you add the synergy created with the customer network; remember we operate in the Gulf Coast, and this location is in Texas. They talk to refiners, as we do every day, giving us deeper relationships with some other refiners. This just expands the commercial and customer network with the reliability of our Eco Services business, creating more confidence. With the strength of the technology that Chem32 has, we believe the growth vector could be very beneficial in the coming years.

Very helpful. Thank you.

We'll go now to David Silver with C.L. King. Your line is open.

Yes, hi. Thank you. Appreciate that. I guess I had kind of maybe more of a clarification question for Mike. But for the allocation of the proceeds from the sale of Performance Chemicals, you've given a range for a special dividend and a range for debt pay down. I think the gap in both cases is pretty close to $100 million. Can you just remind me what the criteria would be for deciding whether you're going to maximize debt pay down, maximize the special dividend, or something in between? Thank you.

Hi, David. It's still under review. I mean, we gave a range for a reason, because we hadn't finalized our tax position, which is still under review. We haven't finalized the closing date. So all of those factors are still in play. So we'll be happy to communicate where we come out a little closer to the closing or upon closing. But at this point, we're still working within that range and deciding how best to optimize the mix between debt and special dividends.

Okay. Thank you for that. And then I had a question for Belgacem, maybe about his view on the evolving regulatory environment that you'll be operating in for the next few years. The current administration has started with a flurry of executive orders. There's a lot of discussion about some additional regulations or environmental legislation they might institute. And refining, of course, has been driven by continuous regulatory changes for a long time. But can you maybe just help me out, call out maybe one or two changes that have occurred since the new administration took place? And then maybe are there one or two critical developments you're anticipating that may drive demand for your emissions catalysts or the alkylation business? In other words, where would be the key regulatory drivers from your perspective?

Hi, David. There is a lot going on, both from a U.S. perspective and globally, because it also impacts some of the refinery activities concerning catalysts and emission control. So first of all, here we believe that there will be further stringent tightening of the regulations, although I can't cite any specific regulation changes. All I know is the CAFE standards are not going to be eased as they were during the previous administration, and we might revert back to further tightening the CAFE standards. This means further tightening of sulfur, desulfurizing, and emissions, which would be a great opportunity for our alkylation business. Just a note on the Tier 3 Sulfur Regulations that were implemented in 2020 towards the end; that brings additional requirements for reducing sulfur to a level where it probably triples the amount of alkylates needed to achieve that. That's currently being practiced. We see that continuing and probably growing further. Of course, we're going to probably see more than executive orders. We're likely to see more rules and regulations put in place applying further tight control on regulations. It will likely be the case of a further reduction in sulfur. Each time sulfur is removed, you destroy octane, and you need to rebuild it, which will be a positive factor for our business. On a global basis, of course, you recall people started talking about IMO 2020, which is a process by which marine fuels are being desulfurized, that is starting to be implemented around China, particularly with the highest volume of application, and that is recovering and moving forward. You also have the emission control rules, Europe 6 and China 6, and all of those regulations that are going to be pushed forward post-pandemic to recreate that momentum for tighter regulation. If you look at it as a whole, I think we're going to see a nice ramp-up of tighter regulation. That is the only answer to create transition movement into cleaner air and cleaner fuel. It's going to keep tightening. For our business, if I connect it to that, the more tightening there is, the more activity for us, and the more business for us. I think there is still a lot of room, not only for the next couple of years, but we’re going to see cleaner fuels, cleaner air, and cleaner water — all those demands and requirements. That's going to be a good tailwind for our business.

Okay, great. Thank you for that.

You're welcome, David.

We have no further questions in queue at this time. This does conclude the PQ Group Holdings first quarter 2021 earnings call and webcast. Thank you for your participation, and you may disconnect at any time.