Earnings Call Transcript - EMN Q1 2026

Operator, Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the First Quarter 2026 Eastman Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. This call is being broadcast live on the Eastman website, at www.eastman.com. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Greg Riddle, Eastman Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Greg Riddle, Senior Manager, Corporate Analysis and Investor Relations

Thank you, Becky, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. On the call with me today are Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO; Willie McLain, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Jake LaRoe, Senior Manager, Corporate Analysis and Investor Relations. Yesterday after market closed, we posted our first quarter 2026 financial results news release and SEC 8-K filing. Our slides and the related prepared remarks are in the Investors section of our website, eastman.com. Before we begin, I'll cover two items. First, during this presentation, you will hear certain forward-looking statements concerning our plans and expectations. Actual events or results could differ materially. Certain factors related to future expectations are or will be detailed in our first quarter 2026 financial results news release. During this call, in the preceding slides and prepared remarks and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Form 10-Q to be filed for first quarter 2026 and the Form 10-K filed for full year 2025. Second, earnings referenced in this presentation exclude certain noncore and unusual items. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and other associated disclosures including a description of the excluded and adjusted items, are available in the first quarter 2026 financial results news release. As we posted the slides and the accompanying prepared remarks on our website last night, we will now go straight into questions. Becky, please let's start with our first question.

Operator, Operator

We will now take our first question from Vincent Andrews from Morgan Stanley.

Vincent Andrews, Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Mark, I'm wondering in methanolysis, given what's going on, the run-up in crude oil prices and virgin plastic prices running beyond that, if in methanolysis this is providing an opportunity for more customer trial or adoption, whether it's in the U.S., potentially some export opportunities because I seem to remember over the last year or so, we've been talking about customers not wanting to spend or try things that are different, but it would seem to me now your product probably offers some significant relative value beyond just its recycled nature. So if you could comment on that, that would be really interesting.

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

So we certainly are very excited about the strength of revenue growth associated with the renewed platform around methanolysis, both on the specialty side as well as the rPET side. We need to keep in mind that the end markets here, even though there's a lot of stress in the marketplace right now with the Middle East conflict, the end market demand situation hasn't really changed dramatically. Consumer discretionary on durables is still relatively challenged, as are cosmetics, et cetera. So we're not seeing an uptick in any market demand in this context. And the customers are still fortunately very focused on the value of renewed content and interested in buying it. On the specialty side, I don't think anything has really changed. We are getting a bunch of wins. We're seeing a great build in specialty customers. You saw some of that volume growth happen in Q1. It will continue into Q2 and into the back end of the year. It's happening with Tritan sales and cosmetic packaging, where we're seeing the most adoption. On the rPET side, I think there is more of a question around just relative value of our rPET relative to where virgin PET prices are going with the increase in oil. And certainly, that improves the price position of our material relative to those materials that are going up in a considerable way. And so we see strong demand there. But obviously, the demand was strong before oil went up, and we're running our capacity to serve that. And so that 4% to 5% revenue growth that we've talked about in January, we still think that's probably accurate. There may be some upside. The real upside, I think, sits relative to the underlying market and sits more in the Middle East-related issue than it is just on the new value proposition across the portfolio, but in particular specialty plastics since we're talking about Advanced Materials right now, has some upside there. As our competitors in Asia, principally, are facing much higher oil costs and much higher natural gas cost they're having to raise prices like we are aggressively in this context. But they're also facing security supply issues. There are shortages out there that's driving all this price increase. So people are going to start running into the inability to actually make product polymers, whether it's direct polymer competition or indirect competition. So we're just seeing signs of it, but we expect to see more potential volume upside driven by that operational constraint that's going to be occurring in Asia in particular. So there's a combination of renewed growth for sure. What's impressive in this entire environment is even with the challenges that our customers are facing economically, we're still building; they're still paying premiums for these products, which is a really impressive test of the value proposition.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Patrick Cunningham from Citigroup.

Patrick Cunningham, Analyst, Citigroup

Sort of a related question just on the volume upside as being a reliable supplier here. Have you seen tangible market share gains, particularly in Chemical Intermediates at this point? I know you kind of touched on this, but how would you sort of handicap the potential for share upside in other parts of the specialty business as a result of the conflict?

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

Yes. So it's a great question, and we're certainly paying a lot of attention to this issue, as I just mentioned. So on the Chemical Intermediates side, certainly, we can sell everything that we can make. And the good news about this year because we had such large cracker turnarounds last year is we have a lot more volume to sell this year than last year. So we have more volume to sell. Remember, we sell a good amount of that in North America, where we have good margins always. And then we had the export market that we would send material into from Chemical Intermediates to run the assets well. But those margins were significantly compressed last year. So those margins now with the shortage out of the Middle East have gone up significantly. And so we're going to see the benefit of that. So we see the benefit of both more volume than we expected in North America with the tightness in the overall markets from the imports that would have come from Asia that are not coming as well — as well as the spreads expanding and a lot more volume to sell. So we're definitely seeing share benefits as well as being exposed to higher-value markets like Europe than Asia where markets are being shorted by material that's not coming from Asia as readily. So lots of different benefits going on there. When it comes to the specialty side, I already hit the point, I think. But we definitely see the potential for volume and market share upside in AFP and Advanced Materials. But we haven't seen any significant amount of improvement yet. So we think that's still to come. A lot of people are very focused on the price of oil or the price of global natural gas which is certainly raising the cost structure of our competitors around the world much higher than us. But the quantity shortage, I think, is an impact to the world that we haven't actually seen yet. People are living off of a certain amount of inventory, whether it's customers or competitors in serving the market, but that's going to start running out and they're going to start seeing more shortages impacting the markets in addition to just the sort of direct oil or natural gas dynamic.

Patrick Cunningham, Analyst, Citigroup

Understood. Very helpful. And then just on fibers, you specifically called out reduced customer shipments, some forward-looking volume risks. Can you elaborate what you're seeing there and why the implied second half earnings run rate should still show some improvement year-on-year?

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

Sure. So just to sort of go back just a moment to sort of what we're dealing with in fibers. When the earnings came off last year relative to '24, it was really multiple components. Tow volume is part of the story, but it's important to remember that about $30 million of the decline was textiles, $20 million was sort of stream utilization due to weak demand across the company and about $15 million in energy. So when you move to this year, what we told you in January was we thought that tow volume would be moderately up relative to last year, which was a combination of locking in our contract business with everyone. So we had a modest price decline to lock in our contracts. But our Middle East customers were expected to grow a bit because they were the ones that were missing their contract commitments last year due to the issues we explained about not realizing market share growth in their markets. And so we were expecting some modest growth from that. Obviously, with the Middle East war happening, those customers have been impacted. We actually have tow there to serve their demand in some warehouses. So it's not an issue of us getting material to them. It's an issue of their ability to operate in this environment and be able to export their products to other markets because a good portion of their production isn't just for the Middle East; it's for exports to other markets. And so how they get that material out is a bit of a constraint. So Q1 was fine. We see a little bit of risk in Q2 where they're not going to buy quite as much in that quarter as we expected. And the real question is how do they come back in the back half of the year to meet their contract commitments. When it comes to your back half question — and the other thing that's going a little bit slower and why we lowered earnings about $20 million in our guide here is the yarn business is not growing as fast in this market context. So we don't see that volume pick up — and as a result, we're not getting as much of an asset utilization tailwind as we expected. So when you think about that, we still feel really good about how the business is doing. And then when you look at it from a second half point of view, there are several drivers that will make the second half much better than the first half. First is these contract commitments. So even with our large customers who have signed annual contracts that hold relatively constant to last year. The contracts allow flexibility in how and when they buy it. And a number of them have chosen to buy less in the first half and buy more in the second half. So you have a pretty significant ramp-up in volume with our core customers around the world, just meeting their contract minimums, which is sort of what we have in this outlook. So that's happening. The second is you've got some continued build in the Naia yarn and film side of things. You will have a little bit of energy tailwind as the energy gets cheaper from a flow-through basis from the winter storm in Q1 to lower natural gas prices going forward. So a number of these factors come together to enable this. And of course, our cost reductions are sort of back-end loaded as well across the company, and some of that flows in here.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from David Begleiter from Deutsche Bank.

David Begleiter, Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Mark, on Chemical Intermediates, if you were to hold spreads steady at today's rates, and layer in that $50 million of maintenance tailwind for Q3, what will that mean for Q3 EBIT? Could we see EBIT $100 million in Chemical Intermediates in Q3? Or is that too ambitious?

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

Well, I think, Dave, we sort of guided you that Q2 would be around $50 million in EBIT with a pretty tight market situation that's going on, obviously, right now. As we look at and what the trends could be, I would think it's going to be more similar than to be substantially up. I mean, without a doubt, the margins are tight right now and there will be a tailwind from Q2 to Q3 on the shutdown side. But it then comes to your assumptions around when the Strait is going to get open. If the Strait gets open in the next months, obviously, some pressure is going to come off in the marketplace, and you'll have spreads moderate a bit. So that makes it a little more complicated to sort of say it's going to be up. I think it being similar is a reasonable expectation. But it really comes down to how this whole strait situation plays out and how long the market tightness goes. When you think about it, the price of oil and price of global natural gas are obviously incredibly high right now, and that gives us a very significant advantage in how we make a lot of products, not just olefins, but everything because a lot of our competitors are based on natural gas, not just for energy, but for feedstock. But if you think about just the cracker side of things on olefins, which is the vast majority of the improvement for us, you've got maps that are offline, and you've got methanol offline, that's 15% to 20% of that, not just the oil, but these derived products; a lot of time for these refineries to restart. Then you got to get the derivatives restarted, then you got to fix the logistics question. And then you've got damage in places that have to be repaired. All of this says the moderation isn't going to go all the way back to pre-conflict levels in our minds on oil or for the derivatives. But certainly, when the Strait opens, some of that pressure will come off and factor into how the margins trend in the back half of the year. But we feel great about how the business has improved. We're happy to have the cash flow that comes from this business. And we certainly think that it lets us reset better.

David Begleiter, Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Very good. And just on the potential volume upside and specialties from these disruptions in Asia, how do you go about making these permanent rather than just temporary?

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

That's a great question. I mean, unfortunately, it's a somewhat patient answer on where we pick up the volume. In some places where it's a like competitor the shares may normalize back a bit. But customers are learning painful lessons about exposure and reliable suppliers. One thing to keep in mind is this is an excellent proof point about the advantages of being a North American chemical company and in particular being a very vertically integrated chemical company with 80% of our assets in the U.S. That gives us a huge cost advantage but it also gives us a huge security-of-supply advantage to our customers, and there's value to that. And certainly, one we intend to take full advantage of in supplying our existing customers but also picking up new ones that we will intend to hold on to. When we pick up customers from other materials, then the chances are we can hold on to them because the value proposition of our product is better once they start using it. Typically, they're using some cheaper polymer like polycarbonate or SAN that doesn't perform as well, but it's cheap. When they switch over to our polymer they're going to see it perform far better with their consumers and then that should provide some stickiness in how we hold on to that share once they've realized it. So we're going to be doing everything we can. And of course, we're going to be trying to lock business in on contracts for a longer-term commitment where we can as well in this environment to sort of give us resilience on the volume and the price side.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Josh Spector from UBS.

Joshua Spector, Analyst, UBS

Just curious around your visibility around any pull forward or not. I mean I think in your prepared remarks, you said it's not pulled forward, but how are you validating that? I guess, all the conversation around potential supply risks from some of your competitors probably makes your customers a bit more nervous and probably build a little bit of inventory. So curious there. And then related with that, just how does this impact your production plans? I think you kept your asset utilization tailwind kind of the same. I would think if you're anticipating their demand, maybe there could be some upside there. So curious if you could talk about that as well.

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

So when you think about the demand pull forward, we're operating with the underlying assumption that end-market demand this year is going to be similar to last year, which is the same assumption we gave you at the beginning of the year. And it's the same thing we're using for how we think about planning and assessing what's going on. In that context, what we're seeing in volume growth in the second quarter sequentially is strengthened growth in the Advanced Materials business, really in specialty plastics which is associated with all the methanolysis wins, which is associated with clear wins of new applications and market share we're getting in our core and Tritan business, our cosmetic business that doesn't have anything to do with pull forward. We don't see a big spike in demand like last year where people were just trying to buy stuff ahead of tariff risk. I think part of what's going on is customers see the risk and want to get ahead of price increases or want to have security of supply, but they're also being cautious about what they do when it comes to building too much inventory with market uncertainty that we all can recognize in the back half of the year in this context. The other factor is inventories are really low at the end of last year. So you also have to keep that in mind. That's part of the strength of recovery you saw from Q4 to Q1 as people just started to rebuild some inventories or, if you will, end the destocking that was going on in Q4. But we don't see a lot of inventory out there in the supply chains at this stage. It's always difficult to see it. To be clear, we certainly, along with the entire industry, are not experts in understanding the supply chain inventory. But we don't see a lot of build of that, certainly not in March. As we go through this quarter, our order books are really strong. So we had a good March, a strong March and we see that continuing in April and May. But June is a wildcard in this market context. We don't see any problems, but we just don't have that much visibility all the way out to June. But overall, there's a sign of given market pull-through in the specialties. As I said, in Chemical Intermediates, we can sell what we want to make and probably can do that through the end of the year.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Frank Mitsch from Fermium Research.

Frank Mitsch, Analyst, Fermium Research

I was struck by the $500 million of price increases that you have started to implement. I'm wondering if you could talk about how you see that phasing in. What has been the initial reactions from your customer base? And how does that match up in terms of your expected inflation in raw materials?

William McLain, Executive Vice President and CFO

Frank, what I would say is, as Mark has already highlighted, in Chemical Intermediates, we were reacting in the moment and driving price increases and volume growth as we think about what's required to supply. In the specialties, obviously, our pricing philosophy has been around the value of our products and pacing that with our partners over time. What we expect sequentially is in our specialties, mid-single-digit price increases from Q1 to Q2. When you think about our Chemical Intermediates, those are phasing in. I would say they're in the high teens or approaching 20% as we see that sequential momentum. So our teams across the world reacted in the moment in Q1 when March occurred, and we have good progress out of the gate.

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

Yes. So just to answer the question around the sort of market competitive dynamics around this. Clearly, everyone is raising prices, whether it's polymers or chemicals across the entire industry. So you have that momentum to leverage. Being cautious on price increases will accomplish nothing when you're trying to worry about consumer demand, except missing out on margin. I think everyone understands that. That's point one. Number two is the competitors we have, especially in the specialties, especially in Advanced Materials are Asian-based. They've got significant increase in oil, and they have significant increase in natural gas prices. So their cost structure has gone up more than us and they're feeling a lot of pressure to manage their prices, and we're seeing the price increases from our competitors similar to us across the markets. In this context, we feel pretty good that we can get the price up and hold our volumes. We've got great commercial teams. We've shown the value of innovation by holding on to price incredibly well in '24 and '25 in very weak market conditions. And now we're in a hyper-inflated market condition, and we're showing we can increase our price in our specialties and keep track with our raw material and distribution costs, which is further proof that we have a specialty business that has differentiated value propositions. We'll always be close to our customers. We'll keep an eye on competitive activity and make adjustments if we have to, but we're not seeing the need to do that at this stage.

Frank Mitsch, Analyst, Fermium Research

That's very helpful. And if I could come back and get a clarification, when talking about fiber getting better in the second half of the year, part of that is you have contract commitments from Middle East customers that you're anticipating they're going to meet their contract minimums, et cetera. But wouldn't this qualify as force majeure? I mean wouldn't they be able to say, 'Hey, look, this — to me, it seems like the very definition of force majeure.' How should we think about that?

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

First, to frame it, the Middle East customers are about 10% of our revenue in this segment. So the other 90% is predominantly tow as well as some yarn customers. And in that 90%, the real dynamic here is they all have contracts — they all have volume commitments. Our forecast is based on them buying at the bottom end of the volume range in those contract commitments. And so that's global; it has nothing to do with the Middle East. They bought less in the first half of the year and will buy more in the back half of the year. And that is the principal driver of the increase in earnings in the second half relative to the first half. When it comes to the Middle East portion, these customers have made a lot of investments in new capacity, and we're winning in the marketplace, but not quite as fast as they wanted. That's where their volume draw last year sort of came up short. They had taken a bunch of actions and started gaining market share this year and are very focused on doing it. They just have a logistics issue of getting it out. We've adjusted our expectations for the risk of that challenge by lowering the earnings expectations in the segment to this $210 million to $240 million range, which is about a $20 million drop. Part of it is just a bit less volume from them, a bit less yarn growth, a bit less asset utilization benefit and you put those three together, and that's how you get to that $20 million versus where we were originally. So it's about customers meeting their contracts. Historically those customers have always met their contracts under any situation, and they don't have a force majeure excuse on that 90%.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Matthew DeYoe from Bank of America.

Matthew DeYoe, Analyst, Bank of America

I can't remember now if it was the slides or the release, but you talked a little bit about the IEEPA tariff refunds. Wondering if that was a tailwind to Q1 or if it's more Q2, if it was, how much are you expecting to get back there?

William McLain, Executive Vice President and CFO

Matt, on the IEEPA tariffs, with the Supreme Court ruling and the Court of International Trade, we recognized about $20 million within Q1. That recognition of the refund was basically in line with the winter storm impact. So you can think about those two as being neutralized in Q1. Also, that is the recognition. There's no further IEEPA refunds to recognize and we would expect to get the cash related to that sometime in the second half of the year.

Matthew DeYoe, Analyst, Bank of America

Just to clarify, that's been included in the Q1 results then?

William McLain, Executive Vice President and CFO

Yes, both the winter storm and IEEPA in Q1.

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

So if you think about it, they neutralize each other out. When we gave you our guide in January, we said this is our outlook excluding the winter storm impact that we were in the middle of. By the time we got to the end of the quarter, IEEPA tariffs neutralized the winter storm; it turned out to be about the same. So it was just a clean quarter relative to how we guided in January.

Matthew DeYoe, Analyst, Bank of America

All right. That's helpful. I'm jumping back in. So context is helpful for me. And then on methanolysis, right, I just wanted to kind of square some of the commentary because you talk a bit about new wins. And at the other side, you're saying demand hasn't really changed much. So can you just kind of refresh where we are on kind of the upscaling here?

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

Sure. When it comes to the revenue of circular, there are two components to it. There's the core business we have where we're adding recycled content to our Tritan products and our cosmetic products in our specialty businesses and growing those businesses. Obviously, those end market businesses have been very challenged economically from 2022 through 2025 as discretionary spend where consumers have pulled back. So the rate of growth we've seen on the specialty side has not been as good as we would have expected in the last couple of years in '24 and '25 in particular as we were ramping up this plant. The good news is we've been winning some more applications through the back half of last year that are showing up as additional revenue that you saw some of the benefit in Q1, you'll see it build in Q2 and even more so in the back half on that specialty side with those wins. So to be clear, we're not saying that end market is improving. We're just picking up more market share in durables or in cosmetic packaging with our value proposition. Then on top of that, we swung a line that can make Tritan back to making PET that we've explained to you guys a year ago so that we could make PET and serve the PET market because Pepsi and some others wanted to start buying sooner than their original contract obligations because they saw the value proposition we have with our renewed products. Our superior clarity, superior quality, superior performance and how the product actually performs was recognized and they wanted to start building and use that material this year. So when you put those two together of selling more rPET with Pepsi and with some other packaging companies and brands, you get that 4% to 5% revenue growth that we talked about in January. As I was answering Vincent's call, I was just confirming, we still see that 4% to 5% growth. But the Middle East conflict hasn't yet significantly increased that to be more than 4% to 5% growth. We're going to pick up volume for other reasons, as I described, due to impact on competitors. But in this case, we're going to sell what we can make and we're ramping up our PET capability to sell even more, but it takes a bit of time on the capacity side to continue supporting that growth, not just this year, but additional growth next year on the rPET side.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Jeff Zekauskas from JPMorgan.

Jeffrey Zekauskas, Analyst, JPMorgan

You talked about earnings $50 million, perhaps in the second quarter and in the third quarter in Chemical Intermediates, but propane prices have really been pretty volatile. Sometimes they're $0.75 a gallon and sometimes they're $0.90 a gallon. How are you handling your propane values? And can you reach these numbers that you're talking about if propane is at $0.90 a gallon?

William McLain, Executive Vice President and CFO

Jeff, obviously, we're buying propane at the market prices that you're referencing. We do believe here in Q2 that we have appropriately taken that into consideration as we look at the supply-demand balances and how we've priced into the market with our price increases. So yes, there's some range or, as we say, approaching $50 million for the quarter, but we think we've taken that into the appropriate context for the $0.75 to $0.90 range.

Jeffrey Zekauskas, Analyst, JPMorgan

Okay. And you talked about for the year, perhaps approaching the cash flow that you generated last year. What are the parts of working capital that are sort of holding your operating cash flow back? Are they payables or receivables or something else?

William McLain, Executive Vice President and CFO

Yes, Jeff. As always, the Eastman team does a great job of generating and managing our cash flows, and that was demonstrated again here as we think about the level of consumption of cash actually being lower than the prior year. For Q1 out of the gate, I believe we've got things well managed and under control. As we think about sequentially, we know that we built some inventory in Q1 for our large turnarounds, and we expect to deplete that. That's going to be offset with some of the inflation that we've described throughout the call. At the end of the day, the pressure will come on inventory and on the receivables account, but we also think that will be mitigated by higher accounts payable later in the year. We're just trying to see what's the second-half scenario when we get to midyear as we then think about managing all of the various levers. So under control, the range is narrowed because of the level and magnitude of inflation overall. As you think about net working capital, you've got two-thirds in your assets and one-third in payables. So net tension on that front. That's all we're highlighting at this point.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Kevin McCarthy from VRP.

Kevin McCarthy, Analyst, VRP

Mark, can you speak to the expected quarterly earnings cadence in Advanced Materials? It seems like we have a fair number of moving parts there. I'm curious about how you're dealing with paraxylene inflation here and whether you think you can recover or possibly over recover those sorts of input costs, whether there are any lag effects we should be keeping in mind and I think you called out some auto production variances there. So maybe you can walk us through those moving parts and whether you would expect earnings to do better in the back half versus the second quarter and that sort of thing.

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

Sure, Kevin. So when you think about Advanced Materials, there's a cadence as you said. First of all, it was a great recovery out of Q4 into Q1. Obviously, we had some mass utilization headwinds with some choices we made there. Going into Q2, you've got the benefit of seasonal increase in volumes, these application wins we've talked about, starting with rPET and renewed specialty product selling, but other products growing, that's going to give us a lift into Q2. The automotive market, on a year-over-year basis for the year, we're expecting to be down low single digits. So that's on a year-over-year basis it's a bit of a headwind. On a sequential basis, it's a tailwind because the performance film business always has a big ramp-up in volume from Q1 to Q2 that we'll also see helping us on that front. So you have all those factors coming together on the volume side. Then you've got the actions we're taking on price, as you mentioned. Teams have moved quickly to start implementing prices on either April 1 or May 1 to cover the expected increase in raw material costs — paraxylene, VAM, the key raw materials that go into this segment. And we believe we're very much on track to keep pace with those as we go through the quarter. Then you've got utilization benefits coming in underneath that also start to help. So a number of reasons why we'll have a better sequential quarter in Q2. Looking into the back half of the year, you'd expect to see continued volume growth because a lot of the build in the circular side is back-half loaded. You'll see continued improvement and wins in general. The back half we won't have a normal seasonal decline in volume because of all those wins that will offset what is still a normal seasonal decline. So you get volumes that could be flat to a bit better in the back half, which would be not normal, but it makes sense with all the innovation we have. You've got prices having fully caught up, so you've got a first-half-to-second-half sequential tailwind in price-cost. Energy coming off a bit, and cost savings and utilization benefits that are back-end loaded. A number of reasons where Advanced Materials will be stronger than normal in the back half of the year, which is also true of the fibers business being stronger than normal. AFP would be normal seasonality in the back half. Chemical Intermediates' margins are going to be better in the back half of the year relative to the first half. So when you put that together, that drives earnings to be attractive across segments and means our earnings per share should be above $6 a share.

Kevin McCarthy, Analyst, VRP

Very helpful. And then secondly, with regards to your Chemical Intermediates segment. How much harder can you run your assets in the second quarter and moving forward relative to the first quarter. Is there a meaningful uplift from utilization? Or is it really all about the more favorable spreads there?

William McLain, Executive Vice President and CFO

I would highlight, obviously, we were impacted by some of the winter storm on operations as well. So as we think about going from Q1 to Q2, we'll definitely have that as a tailwind. Also as we look at our olefins and the oxo's from that perspective, we did build some inventory in Q1 for our planned asset turnarounds. So our upside in Q2 is limited. But for us, we see most of that margin growth coming in our olefins at this stage.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from John Roberts from Mizuho.

John Ezekiel Roberts, Analyst, Mizuho

Within the automotive weakness, are you seeing better performance in your coatings ingredients than you're seeing in the films area?

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

No, we're not really seeing a difference. A lot of our demand on the coatings side is driven by the refinish market as opposed to the OEM market. That market has been a bit challenged just like the performance films; the aftermarket in general is more discretionary in consumers' behavior. That has been true in '24 and '25, and we expect that to continue here. I'd say our demand will be in line with the market on the coating side. In Advanced Materials, we expect to do a little bit better than the market with our innovation like HUD and EV applications; EVs still take roughly three times as much material per car versus ICE, so growth in EVs helps our materials intensity. Some growth in EVs will come back especially in places like Europe and China with high gasoline prices, and maybe even in the U.S. But focus more in Europe and China for that. So we'll do a little bit better on the interlayer side; performance film will be more in line with coatings.

John Ezekiel Roberts, Analyst, Mizuho

And then was the winter storm impact and the tariff refund benefit largely booked in the same segments?

William McLain, Executive Vice President and CFO

I would highlight that those aren't uniform across segments, but there is not a material difference that I would highlight for you.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Mike Sison from Wells Fargo.

Michael Sison, Analyst, Wells Fargo

For Chemical Intermediates, can you give us a thought on what pricing needs to be year-over-year in Q2 to get to the $50 million? And just curious on the delta there in terms of the improvement year-over-year.

William McLain, Executive Vice President and CFO

As I highlighted earlier, you can think about the sequential price increases approaching 20% for Chemical Intermediates overall.

Michael Sison, Analyst, Wells Fargo

Got it. And then it seems like Advanced Materials margins are going to continue to improve sequentially in Q2. This is a segment that I recall used to be at 20%. Is that still the potential for that segment longer term?

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

Absolutely. The business is a great business. The main issue affecting margins in Advanced Materials is volume relative to fixed costs. It's not a variable cost issue. Variable costs have been good and held up and been incredibly stable from 2022 to now. Even now with significant inflation across the company, we're implementing prices to keep up with it. So Advanced Materials is more of a utilization-based issue. We added roughly $100 million of cost structure for the methanolysis plant and we've been in a weak economic environment since 2022 where volumes in housing and consumer durables are still well below 2019 levels, and even auto is now dropping below 2019 levels with the trend this year. We sort of got back to 2019 levels last year. There's a lot of opportunity and pent-up demand of appliances reaching end of life in the future. We feel very good about demand coming back when we get past crisis after crisis and driving utilization benefits. We're creating our own growth and filling out the methanolysis plant in a weak environment, proving innovation is a critical success factor for our company. We're holding our price-cost stable through all that. That starts translating into materially improving margins as well as utilization better than last year, coupled with cost reduction activities that have been significant in '25 and '26. So yes, we feel we can get margins back; we just need a stable economy.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Arun Viswanathan from RBC Capital Markets.

Arun Viswanathan, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

I guess a few questions. First off, on the spreads environment in Chemical Intermediates, you noted some strength, and that should continue into Q2. Are you seeing any supply issues for your competitors or anything out there that could lead to maybe some permanent rationalization of capacity and what are you seeing on the supply-demand side for some of the markets in Chemical Intermediates?

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

It's a great question. Under this economic stress, there were a lot of assets in Europe in the Chemical Intermediates world that were on the edge of being rationalized or shut down for economic reasons. The situation has gotten worse for them and I think that's also true of some assets in Japan and South Korea where there's a lot of discussion around rationalizations. I think it's reasonable to expect that some people are going to look at the current situation and decide to shut assets earlier than planned. I don't have a lot of evidence of that because we're only about 60 days into this crisis. Everyone is just managing their way through this dynamic, and we don't even know how long the Strait will stay closed. So a lot will factor into that. But I do think global natural gas prices will likely stay higher for some period because even when the Strait opens, Qatar has to repair damage to their fields and processing capability. There are oil fields that could get permanently shut in Iran if this goes on much longer. It's hard to imagine oil and natural gas production globally suddenly coming back to pre-conflict levels. Not to mention turning oil and natural gas into methanol and naphtha and ammonia and everything else — it would be surprising for a snapback to low levels. So I think all of that creates more economic pressure on people on the far right side of the cost curve. Those locations will have to consider rationalization. For sure, we're a low-cost winner in this kind of context. China has its own dynamics where we'll probably be fine. I wouldn't expect a lot of rationalization there except for some older assets that aren't competitive anymore. So yes, we expect to see rationalization over time, but I can't point to a bunch of plants that have announced shutdowns in the last 60 days.

Arun Viswanathan, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Okay, I appreciate that. And then just as a quick follow-up. Historically, your spreads have expanded after inflationary cycles like this. Maybe you can contextualize the magnitude that we should expect on Advanced Materials and AFP spread expansion in Q3 and the durability of that. Do you think these feedstock levels will allow for some more durable pricing power as you move through the year?

William McLain, Executive Vice President and CFO

We've discussed previously that high oil environments are positive for Eastman. As Mark highlighted, cost curves over time matter. In our specialty businesses, we price off the value and the relative value, and Mark has highlighted the tension in price increases and lower-value products within the polyester business and how that can lead to share and other opportunities as we continue to grow. As we think about momentum, we're making the price increases to ensure that our margins are stable. We'll look to continue to do that into Q3.

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

One thing to watch out for: we run our business on a dollar per kilogram basis and on a percent basis. When you get significant increases like in '21, you also have a denominator math problem. Prices go up and that affects margins calculations. We'll be very clear about trends around how dollars per kilogram are moving and how margins translate.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Laurence Alexander from Jefferies.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies

A short-term and a long-term question. In the near term, how are you thinking about the rough magnitude of working capital as an impact on your free cash flow conversion this year? And secondly, you mentioned the possibility of outright shortages. Do you have a sense from your customers where they expect this to actually crack in terms of which end markets feel outright shortages first? And which ones, if shortages do develop, take the longest to fix?

William McLain, Executive Vice President and CFO

On the working capital front, as we think about full-year impacts, we built some in Q1 largely around planned turnarounds. As a proxy, use the $500 million increase in revenue, and you can take one-third of that as a rough idea for how things could balance out; that could be a full-year headwind. That puts it roughly in the $150 million to $200 million range, and obviously that could go up or down depending on timing of the Strait opening and other factors.

Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO

Those are great questions. On competitors and customers, we're not seeing customer-level disruption where they can't get something to finish making the product. It's not like the semiconductor auto situation where you could foresee it. It will be sporadic and customer-specific. We're keeping a very close eye on it, but we haven't had customers come to us with that problem yet. There's a lot of volatility which is why we're not giving full-year guidance. There's potential upside as we've discussed, and there's obviously end-market risk with inflation that we have to weigh. Overall, we feel good about our team and how they perform across these dynamics — COVID, inflationary environment, discretionary demand collapse in '22, and now the Middle East crisis. The innovation strategy has proven to be a strong choice over the past decade to defend value and grow in markets that are flat or challenged. The circular platform is delivering growth. Translating this into cash flow and maintaining a strong balance sheet means we feel good about navigating and delivering for shareholders.

Greg Riddle, Senior Manager, Corporate Analysis and Investor Relations

As that was the last question, I'll say thanks again for joining us. We appreciate you spending time with Eastman. I hope everybody has a great day.

Operator, Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.