The Chemours Company - Q4 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning. My name is Carmen, and I'll be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the Chemours Company Fourth Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the conclusion of the prepared remarks. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Brandon Ontjes, Vice President, Head of Strategy and Investor Relations for Chemours. You may begin your conference.

Brandon Ontjes (VP, Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Chemours Company's Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. I'm joined today by Denise Dignam, Chemours' President and Chief Executive Officer, and our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Shane Hostetter. Before we start, I would like to remind you that comments made on this call, as well as in the supplemental information provided on our website, contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties as described in Chemours' SEC filings. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are based on certain assumptions and expectations of future events that may not be realized. Actual results may differ, and Chemours undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements as a result of future developments or new information. During the course of this call, we'll refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are useful to investors evaluating the company's performance.

A reconciliation of non-GAAP terms and adjustments is included in our press release issued yesterday evening. Additionally, we posted our earnings presentation on our website yesterday evening as well. With that, I will turn the call over to Denise Dignam.

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Thank you, Brandon, and thank you everyone for joining us. During today's call, I will begin by discussing a few recent developments across Chemours in addition to highlights from our recent performance. I will then turn it over to Shane, who will provide details around our outlook for the first quarter of 2026 and key drivers for the full year ahead. Finally, I will provide updates on our meaningful progress against our Pathway to Thrive strategy before taking your questions. First, as we shared in January, we have reached an agreement to sell our Kuan Yin site. Since the shutdown of our titanium dioxide operations at this facility in 2023, we've been actively decommissioning the site and preparing to sell the remaining property.

I'm happy to report that the estimated net proceeds of $300 million we expect to receive from the land sale will make a significant impact in reducing our outstanding debt and support our continued progress towards lowering our target net leverage below 3x. I'm proud of our team's effort to get us to this point. Additionally, I want to welcome Mike Foley as the new business president of TT. In joining Chemours, Mike brings extensive leadership experience in the chemicals industry, running multiple business units with experience centered on operational excellence. As an established leader, I'm confident that Mike will continue to drive improvements in our titanium dioxide business, staying true to our value-based commercial strategy, strengthening reliability across our asset base, and advancing our long-term cost position initiatives.

Turning to our fourth quarter results, we are pleased with the robust cash flow generated and the ability to drive sales performance within our expectations. Net sales met expectations largely due to TSS achieving record sales, driven by continued strong Opteon adoption and consistent commercial performance across all divisions. We posted solid earnings overall. However, for the APM business, due to near-term end market weakness, we shifted our focus to promote cash flow as the quarter progressed, resulting in certain non-cash charges and the sale of certain products to reduce inventory levels. These decisions enabled us to make meaningful steps towards driving cash flow while setting a foundation for improved earnings as we get deeper into 2026.

While these incremental costs resulted in us just missing the low end of our earnings range, we are pleased with our ability to generate strong quarterly free cash flow of $92 million, which we believe is more reflective of Chemours' longer-term cash generation potential to drive value for our shareholders. With this background, I'd like to provide some additional context on our business level performance. Our TSS business reported a fourth quarter record for Opteon sales, with double-digit growth of 37% compared to the prior year quarter, in line with our expectations. Overall, TSS's top-line increase was primarily due to higher pricing and moderate volume increases, supported by a favorable mix for Opteon refrigerant blends, driven by the U.S. AIM Act Residential HVAC equipment transition and opportunistic sales for certain Freon refrigerants.

This could not have been achieved without the TSS team's excellent commercial execution, which resulted in new sales opportunities and efficient use of our quota allowances. TSS had record annual sales in 2025, despite a year with subdued shipped HVAC units in the residential stationary OEM market. Additionally, these efforts led to overall annual Opteon refrigerant growth of 56%, making up 75% of total refrigerant sales in 2025, up from 56% the year before. TSS's top-line success helped to drive annual Adjusted EBITDA margins of 32%, up from 31% in the prior year... despite additional costs of approximately $22 million in liquid cooling and next generation refrigerants R&D investment over the same period. Moving to TT.

In the fourth quarter, the TT team had strong execution, with our top-line performance results coming in line with our expectations and our Adjusted EBITDA remaining ahead due to stabilized pricing and cost performance. While we continued to operate in a more tepid global market, experiencing volume seasonality in certain key markets, we have maintained a strong resolve in implementing our pricing efforts across all key end markets. To these efforts and our pricing announcement in December, we experienced pricing stability between the third and fourth quarter, laying the groundwork for continued pricing strength in 2026. We are confident in our conviction of our value-based commercial strategy and remain resolute in this approach. Our overall objective to drive improved operational and longer-term cost performance remains unchanged.

Consistent with that, we shared in the third quarter, we have calibrated our production expectations to be more closely aligned with anticipated market conditions, and we continue to challenge what we can control, including improvements on all our costs while continuing to prioritize cash flow generation in the business. As part of our recent strategic portfolio management initiatives for TT, we commenced a restructuring of our mining operations in early January, including the temporary idling of one of our mines in North Florida and transitioning to a third-party earthmoving contractor. This revised approach will support our overall cost efforts and promote improved cash generation. Shifting over to APM.

While our cash flow-driven changes weighed on our earnings results this quarter, the decisions we made strengthened our cash generation, even as we navigated headwinds in certain cyclically sensitive end markets, notably in auto and industrial construction, which we believe will stabilize as we get into early next year. Entering the first quarter of 2026, the APM business and Performance Solutions observed a strengthening order book, particularly within the semiconductor sector, which shows preliminary signs of recovery. Additionally, growth was noted in data center materials and other key end markets. In January, Washington Works, a key manufacturing facility, experienced a disruption that necessitated a temporary shutdown, limiting our capacity. This event was traced to equipment affected by a local utility service outage in August, which is integral to our fluoropolymer supply chain and involves complex chemical processing technology.

Although operations have now resumed, the unplanned outage coincided with challenging winter weather, resulting in delays to the restart. Our strategy has always included additional work on these assets planned for Q1 of 2027. Despite less than ideal earlier timing, these efforts are critical to ensuring long-term reliability and establishing operational stability to meet improving demand for APM's Performance Solutions products. Lastly, I would like to briefly address corporate-level performance, which demonstrated a significant decrease in expenses compared to the same quarter last year. This cost reduction reflects ongoing effort in expense management and underscores the progress achieved through our operational excellence pillar as part of the Pathway to Thrive strategy. With that, I'll turn it over to Shane to walk through our first quarter outlook and key drivers for the full year of 2026.

Shane W. Hostetter (SVP and CFO)

Thank you, Denise, and good morning, everyone. As was shared in the earnings materials available on our investor website, I now would like to discuss our expectations for the first quarter and factors that will drive our business as we look ahead. Beginning with TSS. For the first quarter, we project net sales to rise sequentially in the mid-20s-30% range, primarily attributable to favorable seasonal trends and continued growth in Opteon refrigerants, where we are also forecasting a sequential increase of 30%-40% in the first quarter. This sustained double-digit Opteon refrigerant expansion is expected to be driven by the continued regulatory adoption associated with government mandates under the U.S. AIM Act.

Adjusted EBITDA for TSS is also anticipated to grow sequentially, ranging from $170 million-$185 million, also driven by seasonality and the continued transition to our Opteon stationary refrigerants. As we look beyond the first quarter, we expect year-over-year double-digit growth for Opteon Refrigerants to continue into the second quarter of 2026, but will then begin to normalize to more typical seasonal patterns in the second half of the year, as year-over-year comparison points will reflect the regulatory-driven market demand we saw in late 2025. Additionally, we believe that pricing strength stemming from favorable pricing mix for Opteon blends and opportunistic pricing in Freon Refrigerants will continue into 2026.

Also, we expect benefits from cost out efforts throughout 2026, including our recent Corpus Christi capacity expansion, which will be partially offset by increased raw material costs, primarily due to R-32, a key component of our stationary refrigerants. Overall, we anticipate that the confluence of these factors will underpin strong sales and earnings growth for TSS in 2026, with consistent overall margins compared to that of 2025. For our TT business, we expect sequential net sales to decrease in the low- to mid-single digits percentage range in the first quarter. In our recent reporting, we split out our mineral sales from our TiO2 pigment sales to provide greater visibility in line with recent strategic decisions. In the first quarter, we anticipate that our mineral sales will be down 60% sequentially, driven by sales timing and the impacts from the recent changes in mining efforts.

While our TiO2 pigment sales are expected to be down in the low single digits. The slight anticipated decline in TiO2 pigment sales during the first quarter is due to weaker seasonal volumes in non-Western markets, which will offset the volume increases we expect in Western markets, supported by our global pricing efforts as highlighted in the previous quarter across all of our regions. Our global pricing improvement is driven by our pricing announcement in December of last year, which we have seen signs of strong adoption globally as we continue to demonstrate our value-based commercial strategy within our TT segment. It is our expectation that overall, average global pricing for TiO2 pigment should be generally in line with the prior year quarter. For the first quarter, we expect TT's Adjusted EBITDA to be between breakeven and $5 million.

This low level of EBITDA is due to the timing of mineral sales, paired with an additional approximately $17 million of net costs we expect in the quarter, tied to inventory and ore mix, as well as overall impacts from low plant utilization. The combined force of these near-term impacts is expected to result in higher net costs for the quarter. However, TT is positioned to grow earnings and cash flow during the year. Beyond the first quarter, we see a year where our top line will be driven by positive TiO2 pricing trends across regions and stabilized volumes in Western markets, followed by non-Western markets as the year progresses. For pricing, we've already seen expected increases start to take form through stabilized Q4 pricing, which has reflected growth into 2026.

Our portfolio and operational initiatives will continue to drive improved earnings as the year progresses, with a clearer realization of important cost savings efforts becoming more visible, further underpinned by improved cash generation. Now, for our APM business. In the first quarter, we expect net sales to decrease in the high teens percentage range sequentially, due to sustained market weakness, combined with customer timing and constraints from the Washington Works outage. Adjusted EBITDA is projected to range from breakeven to $5 million, primarily due to the previously referenced outage at the Washington Works facility. This outage is expected to result in a negative impact of $20 million-$25 million for the quarter, with most of this effect attributable to restricted sales associated with the facility's interruption.

As Denise noted earlier, the plant has returned to normal operations and will be a key contributor to the improved earnings we anticipate in APM throughout the rest of 2026. Specifically, we see a return to more profitable quarters for APM after the first quarter of 2026, with progressively improved sales and earnings as we move further into the year. While the overall top line will include lower net sales due to closure of the Advanced Materials SPS Capstone line in 2025, we plan to replace those lost sales with an increase of specialty-focused Performance Solutions products with higher bottom-line contributions. Although we are facing constraints from our outage, demand remains strong in the semiconductor and data center end markets, which are driving current and anticipated sales growth of our Performance Solutions products.

These are sectors where we see tremendous inroads for APM's chemistry to help enable the growth and adoption of artificial intelligence across global economies. While we expect some negative cost effects to carry over slightly into our second quarter, we plan to counter these through increased operations at our Washington Works site and the increased realization of existing and continued cost reduction efforts as production improves. While the year did not begin as we had planned, we are confident that APM will finish strong in 2026 as we work to recover lost volume, run our plant circuit at elevated levels, and continue to drive commercial and operational excellence. Through these initiatives, we anticipate Adjusted EBITDA to be slightly higher than 2025 levels, while cash generation will see meaningful improvement.

On a consolidated basis, we anticipate our first quarter net sales to increase in the range of 3%-5% sequentially, with consolidated Adjusted EBITDA expected to range between $120 million-$150 million. Also, we anticipate corporate expenses to range between $45 million-$50 million. Our capital expenditures for the first quarter are expected to be in the range of $50 million, with free cash flow reflecting a use of cash not to exceed $100 million.

For the full year 2026, at a consolidated level, we anticipate overall net sales growth to be between 3% and 5%, and Adjusted EBITDA to range from $800 million-$900 million, primarily driven by increased TSS and APM Performance Solutions demand, expected pricing strength in TT, and further benefits of more pronounced cost realizations in TT and APM throughout the year. Additionally, we expect capital expenditures to be between $275 million and $325 million, with free cash flow conversion to be above 25%, supported by improved earnings and working capital improvements that we expect to realize as the year progresses. As we advance into 2026, we remain committed to executing our Pathway to Thrive strategy....

And are focused on prioritizing a platform of robust cash flow generation annually going forward, via various initiatives across all areas of the company. We view these cash flow efforts to be based in driving clear performance goals across our cash conversion cycle, which we are already seeing take form. These initiatives will take time to fully implement, but we believe improved cash generation in 2026 serves as a starting point where we anticipate further free cash flow expansion in the future. Through these efforts, coupled with approximately $300 million in net proceeds from the sale of our Kuan Yin facility, which will be used to reduce our debt, we anticipate our net leverage ratio to be below 4x Adjusted EBITDA by the end of 2026.

This is a key milestone that further positions us to achieve our long-term objective of a net leverage ratio below three times Adjusted EBITDA across economic cycles. Given these perspectives on the first quarter and full year 2026, I'd like to now hand the call back over to Denise to share her thoughts and perspectives on our strategic execution under Pathway to Thrive.

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Thank you, Shane. As we look ahead to 2026, it is important to build upon the substantial strategic progress achieved in 2025. Our Pathway to Thrive strategy remains central to how we make decisions, allocate capital, and conduct our business operations, and I believe our team has demonstrated notable success in delivering results across every pillar of the strategy. Starting with operational excellence, we continue to advance the disciplined work in driving cost out and making meaningful step-change improvements in how we operate. We fulfilled our commitments for 2025, delivering at least $125 million of gross controllable cost savings. While these efforts have been more visible at the corporate level and through SG&A, we believe that this work will become more clear as operational levels improve, primarily across our TT and APM businesses this year.

In the case of TSS, our focus on operational excellence and controllable cost improvements has been concentrated around the completion of capacity expansion efforts at Corpus Christi. This expansion represented a sizable capital investment made in late 2024 and has established a foundation for TSS to further vertically integrate and reduce reliance on third-party YF purchases. While this has provided benefits in 2025, over time, this will provide a substantial cost upside for TSS in support for increased customer demand in connection with the global low GWP transition. More recently, we formally rolled out the Chemours Business System, which we have established to embed lean principles to reduce waste and drive increased productivity across the organization. Our team is energized by this effort, which we are already actioning across our manufacturing circuit.

Our enabling growth pillar is where we continue to demonstrate the strength of our market positions and the value of our innovation. As we've shared, TSS delivered another great year, breaking quarterly records as adoption of our Opteon refrigerants accelerates. We also made meaningful progress towards commercializing our two-phase liquid cooling solution, including the qualification of our fluid by Samsung Electronics and the start of a manufacturing agreement with Navin Fluorine, where we are targeting initial commercial production in the third quarter of 2026. Our liquid cooling and next-generation refrigerant growth opportunities reflect important ventures serving as long-term growth opportunities, where we look to continue to invest at a rate of roughly $5 million per quarter.

These ongoing investments also contribute to expanding our overall presence in high-value data center and semiconductor end markets, where we are experiencing sustained growth and continued order book strength in APM's Performance Solutions products, particularly in high-purity PFA sales. Furthermore, we anticipate that TSS's double-digit data center growth achieved in 2025 will persist and serve as a catalyst for increased refrigerant sales. Across our businesses, we are sharpening commercial effectiveness and investing selectively where our differentiators position us to win and support long-term growth. Turning to portfolio management, we made decisive progress across the portfolio to drive significant economic value to Chemours. Outside of the Kuan Yin site sale and the restructuring of mining efforts in our TT business, we've continued to advance our European asset review, which will extend into 2027.

After completing the APM SPS Capstone business exit in 2025, we are now announcing the closure of our Villers-Saint-Paul site in France, originally intended for additional hydrogen development. This decision aligns our industrial operations with current market demands. Moving now to the significant progress made under our strengthening the long-term pillar, which includes reaching a proposed judicial consent order with the state of New Jersey. This milestone provides greater clarity for our stakeholders and reflects our continued commitment to advancing measurable progress in resolving legacy liabilities in close partnership with our MOU partners. With responsible manufacturing at the center of how we deliver essential chemistry, we also reported strong progress against our 2030 corporate responsibility commitment goals.

At the same time, independent government-level assessments, including from the E.U. Industry, Research and Energy Committee and the U.S. Department of War, reinforce the essential role fluoropolymers and F-gases play across critical industries.

Building on Shane's remarks, our recent efforts have positioned us to generate more cash with our previous working capital headwinds clearly behind us. Going forward, we aim to grow earnings, improve free cash flow conversion, and continue deleveraging. As we close out 2025 and look ahead to our opportunities in front of us, I want to emphasize that Chemours is focused on executing with discipline across every pillar of Pathway to Thrive, and we believe by remaining dedicated to doing the hard work now, it will provide strong returns to our shareholders through long-term, stable value creation. The progress we've made gives me great confidence in our trajectory. I want to thank our employees for the focus, resilience, and commitment they have demonstrated throughout 2025.

With the talent, technology, and portfolio we have today, and the clarity of strategy guiding us, I'm confident in our ability to deliver for customers, communities, and shareholders in 2026 and beyond. Thank you for your continued support. With that, I'd like to open the line for your questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you so much. As a reminder, to ask a question, press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To remove yourself, press star one one again. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Pete Osterland with Truist Securities. Please proceed.

Pete Osterland (VP of Equity Research)

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I just wanted to start on the TT segment. Could you share some more detail on the assumptions for TiO2 volume growth that are embedded in your 2026 guidance? What do you expect the global industry to grow volumes at this year, and how would you expect your volume growth to compare to the industry average?

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Sure. Hi, Peter. Thanks for the question. You know, I would say our outlook is that demand is stable, and there's not major demand triggers. Our outlook is really based on, you know, we announced a price increase in December. We've seen, you know, I'll say, strong yield of that price increase. We talk about flat pricing from Q3 to Q4, flat year-over-year pricing as we head into Q1. We feel, we feel really good about that. So that's kind of how we see it progressing, stabilized demand with our pricing power.

Pete Osterland (VP of Equity Research)

Great, thanks. And then just, switching gears, I just wanted to follow up on your comments on your legacy liabilities. Do you have line of sight for meaningful progress towards resolving what you have left during 2026? Any key items or dates to be watching out for this year that you could share?

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Sure. Yeah, we've made, you know, significant progress in the fourth, our fourth pillar, strengthening the long term. We're really proud of the work that was done in with New Jersey, really kind of laid a framework for how... hopefully, you can see how we're gonna progress going forward. You know, the two other areas where we're focused and, you know, continuing to make progress is in our West Virginia facility as well as in North Carolina. So, you know, I would expect, you know, to hear additional information relative to those facilities as we progress through the year.

Pete Osterland (VP of Equity Research)

Great. Thanks very much.

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Roberts with Mizuho. Please proceed.

John Roberts (Managing Director)

Thank you. It seems like there are a lot of mixed effects running through the APM segment. Maybe you could peel apart some of the different end markets there to let us know how much some are down and where some of the strength is.

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Yeah, thanks. Thanks, John. I mean, as we said, I said in my prepared comments, you know, things like, you know, auto, industrial, production, those things are down and flat. But there's a real opportunity in our Performance Solutions portfolio of products. If you think about PFA and the expansion that we did in our Teflon product line, there's a lot of demand related to the AI surge and the build-out of data centers, which is also, you know, building out the semicon, and all of the demand for additional memory that those chips will need. So it's really, I would say, in those, in that area, really a pull from the AI side.

John Roberts (Managing Director)

It's my understanding is there's still some more maintenance to be done in 2027 on Washington Works. Why not pull all of the 2027 maintenance into whatever downtime you've got here in the March quarter of 2026?

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Yeah, actually, thanks for the question. All of the... We have regular turnaround, so that's something that is, that happens, you know, every three years at our site. So we had already had that planned for the beginning of next year. We actually pulled all the maintenance related to, you know, the situation, the disruption in January forward. So we've actually taken scope out of that turnaround. There's still more work to do. It's just a regular turnaround, but yeah, we have pulled that forward. And really, you know, our decision was, we wanted to have really reliable operations and to make sure, you know, we did not-- that particular issue that hit us last summer did not continue to pull us down. We really wanted to make sure we had stable operations.

I would call it more of a the turnaround, more of a tune-up versus significant maintenance work that would drive stability.

John Roberts (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. It comes from Arun Viswanathan with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Arun Viswanathan (Senior Equity Analyst)

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Hope you guys are well. I guess my first question is just on the Q1 and the full year guide. So, the midpoint for Q1 is $135. Looks like the full year midpoint is $850. Maybe you can just talk a little bit about, you know, how, what, what are some of the bridge items, as you move into Q2? I imagine obviously, there's seasonality for both TSS and TiO2, that's pretty pronounced in Q2 and Q3. But, you know, I guess I'm just curious what else we should think about. There were some disruptions that you had, last year in the middle of the year as well. Obviously, is it your assumption that those don't repeat?

Maybe you can just understand how you plan to see that uplift from, say, the $135 to maybe a $200 or number or so for the middle of the year. Thanks.

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Thanks, Arun. Yeah, we have full confidence in our full year guide. As I said in the prepared comments, we expect earnings growth in all three of our businesses. I'm gonna turn it over to Shane to give you a bit of the walk.

Shane W. Hostetter (SVP and CFO)

Hey, Arun. So specific to kind of, you, you got the midpoints right in Q1 and year-end guides, and then you really, as we looked at Q2, right, just thinking through what happened in Q1, we are looking at, you know, lower ranges of 0-5 in TT and APM. That is inclusive of, you know, some, what I'll call unusual items. You know, specific to APM, we had the Washington Works outage of roughly $20 million-$25 million of an impact. And then for TT, we had roughly $17 million of, you know, inventory and, and really mix areas around the ore. So you know, as you think about that, with the midpoint of the guide in the first quarter, the $40 million in addition to that one-time items going into next year, or going into second quarter, it's a good start off.

Then, as you pointed out, it's really seasonality, it's really strength in our refrigerants and Opteon business. It's getting the price, and the fact that Denise had earlier talked about in TT and continuing that momentum, as well as pricing over TSS. And, you know, we're gonna continue to control what we can control across each one of our businesses and getting costs out across on that side, which is gonna progress as the year goes on as well.

Arun Viswanathan (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay, great. Thanks for that. And then, as a follow-up, just on the free cash flow, you noted that, obviously, your teams did a lot of good work in Q4 to harvest some of that, especially in APM. Could you just maybe walk us through, I guess, Denise, you may have mentioned that $92 million is more reflective of the quarterly run rate of cash flow generation. So, is it also the implication is that, you know, you feel comfortable that free cash flow could eclipse $300 million or $350 million as you go through the year? Thanks.

Shane W. Hostetter (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, Arun, why don't I take that one? Yeah, first of all, very proud of, you know, the team and what we've done, you know, at the end of Q4, ending the year, driving free cash flow over our high end of our range. You know, as we look ahead, you know, Denise talked about the normalization, you know, thinking through what the cash generation capabilities of this business are. We're really thinking that as reflective of a full year. As you would probably know, right, we are seasonal as it relates to working capital, and I mentioned in my script that in Q1, we don't anticipate, you know, over $100 million of outflow, but we do anticipate an outflow in Q1, given working capital, seasonality.

But for the full year, we wholeheartedly stand by the above 25% free cash flow guide, and we feel comfortable in attaining that. So really excited, you know, for the capabilities of the team and really driving through cash conversion through unlocking further working capital and really hitting the mark on earnings to generate that cash flow in 2026.

Arun Viswanathan (Senior Equity Analyst)

Thanks a lot.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Duffy Fischer with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Duffy Fischer (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, good morning, guys. First question is just on TT. Can you walk through the three geographies that have some anti-dumping activities going on, India, Brazil, and Europe? And just what have you seen in those areas already from those anti-dumping actions, and what do you think is still left on the come for the Western players?

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Hey, Duffy, thanks for the question. I mean, we've we see that there is, we're seeing benefits from the anti-dumping duties. If you look at Brazil, we see, you know, really high duties, really good market for us out of our Mexico facility. So you know, really feel very good about that. India, you, I'm sure you know, there's been a little bit of back and forth. We're confident that those duties are gonna come back, but it's just a process that has to come through. We've seen in Europe that obviously we've had some uplift in Europe. There have been some currency changes since this dumping went in, which gives some benefit to Chinese producers, but it's not anything that is gonna dramatically change our view of Europe.

Duffy Fischer (Equity Research Analyst)

Fair enough. Then, jumping to TSS, can you walk us through what impact has, you know, kind of the bringing online of Corpus Christi been, you know, either, you know, increased costs as it's ramping, and then what's left as far as benefit as that plant fully fills out?

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Yeah, so what we talked about in our before with TSS is that it was gonna be a two-year ramp. So you know, you could see last year we talked about improvement in margin that comes from cost out as well as price. So we saw starting some improvement last year. The second half of that facility will be ramping up this year. So we continue, we'll continue to see improvement there. You know, the technology we have is the lowest cost technology in the world, so we feel really good about the tailwinds that we're gonna get from that facility.

Duffy Fischer (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you so much. Our next question comes from the line of Josh Spector with UBS. Please proceed.

James Cannon (Associate Director of Chemicals Equity Research)

Hey, guys, you have James Cannon on for Josh. I wanted to touch back on the ore mix impact that's flowing through in TT this quarter. I know there's some noise around some legacy purchase contracts, and I was wondering, I think the last one of those continues to run through, I think, this year or next year. Is any of that something that we should be modeling continuing, or is it something that should be contained in the first quarter?

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Yeah, I would say that from the for the first quarter, the change in ore mix was really related to the winter interruption and the need to consume higher grade ore. You'll definitely, as you've said, you know, we had two contracts, long-standing contracts that were unfavorable. One is completed, one is finished, and we're working through the second contract right now. We have, you know, laser focus on our input costs in the TT business, so you will continue to see that improving over the year. We also talked about our restructuring that we've done in our mines in by taking down one mine.

It's all aimed towards lowering our input costs, one of the primary costs that go into our plants and actually, you know, a competitive advantage for us.

James Cannon (Associate Director of Chemicals Equity Research)

Okay, got it. And then on the just to follow up on the Freon side, it seemed like you called out some opportunistic sales that drove a pretty solid sequential in the quarter. My math gets me to a first quarter guide that has continued growth there. Can you just talk through what you expect on that side of the business without the the transition happening this year and no step downs as far as I'm aware?

Shane W. Hostetter (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, thanks for the question. You know, pretty happy with, you know, some of the tailwinds we saw in the fourth quarter related to the Freon business. You know, as we look ahead, you know, in my script, I mentioned, you know, really thinking through the tailwinds of pricing around both Opteon and Freon, and, you know, we can look at 2026 and see that continuing. So we're really proud of both you know, the execution on the Opteon side and Freon side in 2025, and we'll continue to execute and grow in both next year.

James Cannon (Associate Director of Chemicals Equity Research)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Hassan Ahmed with Alembic Global Advisors. Please proceed.

Hassan Ahmed (Co-Founder and Head of Research)

Morning, Denise and Shane. You know, just wanted to revisit some of the questions asked earlier on TT. You know, particularly as it pertains to you guys' volumes. You know, you obviously reported volume declines in Q4, and the volumes aren't looking that great for Q1 as well. And I'm just trying to sort of think through the anti-dumping duty side of things, you know, the four countries/regions in particular, where those anti-dumping measures have been announced. I mean, if I sit there and think through, you know, for lack of a better way of putting it, you know, the volume that is up for grab, it's around 800,000 tons, right?

So, I mean, what is baked into that $800 million-$900 million EBITDA guidance that you guys have given in terms of any potential anti-dumping related market share gains for you?

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Yeah, Hassan, thanks for the, thanks for the question. When you think about us in TT for the year, we're really focused on executing on our price increase. You know, I know you're smart and you can figure it out, kind of put the pieces of the puzzle together. We are really focused on our pricing. Our pricing was a global price increase, all regions. There's no mix impact. So, you know, while, you know, we talk about the, the duties, and they clearly have been helpful, we are really focused on, on delivering value and creating value for this business through, through our pricing efforts.

Hassan Ahmed (Co-Founder and Head of Research)

But, I mean, just any sort of guidance in terms of, you know, the market may, you know, typically grows at 2%-3%. I mean, will you be in line with the market? Will you be better than the market in terms of volume growth?

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Yeah, we are projecting a stable market. I don't think anyone, you know, sees any big, you know, reason to expect significant growth. Again, we're focused on value and our pricing and with stable volumes. Maybe I'll kind of take it up a level or two. You know, we have both—I've talked about, you know, seeing growth in our businesses throughout the year. And we're super proud of what we've accomplished with our TSS business. You know, we are coming off a record quarter, a record year, strong foundation. If you look at, you know, what we've been able to do, we have a leading market position with OEMs in the aftermarket, and, you know, we're really close to our customers.

We are, you know, in very, very well positioned for growth this year in TSS. Additionally, as we talked about with APM, as we look at the AI trend, we also, you know, see great opportunity for growth there as well.

Hassan Ahmed (Co-Founder and Head of Research)

Understood. As a follow-up, Denise, if you, if you don't mind, just sticking to the TT side of things. I mean, you know, a lot of folks, you guys included, had talked about, you know, 1.1 million tons of capacity rationalizations since 2023. Are you guys still comfortable with that figure? What are you guys seeing in terms of potential rationalizations in China on the back of anti-involution?

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Yeah, I mean, we're still confident in that. I mean, those announcements were made. They're all public. We feel confident in that. As far as additional with anti-involution, really can't speak to that at this point. We don't know that we've seen much more than that.

Hassan Ahmed (Co-Founder and Head of Research)

Thank you so much, Denise.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Comes from the line of John McNulty with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Speaker 12

Hey, good morning. This is Caleb on for John. I was just hoping you could provide a little bit more color on what would get you to the high end of your range and the low end of your range for the full year.

Shane W. Hostetter (SVP and CFO)

Sure. Thanks, Caleb. You know, as I think about the range of possibilities here, I think it really depends upon a couple things. You know, the high end, depending upon, you know, market evolution and how the actual economic returns comes. You know, if there's further rate cuts, for instance, and that really has impacts on, you know, the overall market. I would say the other parts on the high end is really, you know, just overall cost out and thinking through, you know, where the net inflation and cost improvements go on that side. I would say then finally would be really continued execution on the pricing side and broader adoption across the businesses.

I would say on the low end of the range, you know, continued to thinking through the cost inputs, you know, and thinking through if there's additional costs that we're not seeing right now, you know, as we kind of evolve throughout the year. I would say on the opposite side of what I just said, if there's less price receptivity going through there. And then I would say on the other areas, if there's, you know, any thoughts around volume depression on adoption on that side.

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Yeah, maybe I'll just add on to that. You know, I think, you know, we've been—we're focused on things we can control. So I would say, you know, the market would be the, you know, really, a key variable in that.

Speaker 12

Okay, that's helpful. And then for TSS, over the past couple of years, you've seen the benefit of the AIM Act and then the A2L transition. Going forward, how do you see the growth algorithm for that business kind of playing out, and especially relative to your previous commentary for, like, mid to high single digit sales growth, over the longer term?

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Yeah, thanks for that question. You know, so I would say coming into the first part of this year, you know, we still see significant growth from the HFO transition, whether it's, you know, additional units, the mix of HFC versus HFO units that get sold, as well as, replenishing inventory that was drawn down in the fourth quarter. So we see that, you know, through the first half of the year. One thing to keep in mind is this is a pretty depressed market when it comes to the residential segment. So, you know, we see as new units are put on and as the housing market picks up, you know, we see substantial growth there.

So we will continue to grow in line with the residential segment, but the other areas to focus on are, you know, growth in data centers and chillers and some of the other spaces where we participate.

Speaker 12

Okay, thanks for the color.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.

Vincent Andrews (Managing Director)

Thank you and good morning. I just kind of want to follow up on that a little bit. Could you talk about what your residential HVAC customers are doing? It seems like they're reducing production for various reasons. Is that leading to a destock from you? And can you help us understand how much of that mix, how much of your mix that is now versus other parts of the TSS business, whether it's data centers or aftermarket, and how much those are gonna contribute this year volumetrically?

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Yeah, thanks for the question, Vincent. Yeah, I mean, first of all, I want to say that, you know, we have hopefully we've established a lot of credibility in this business to this point, and what we see going forward. I kind of laid out, you know, what we thought was or and what we believe is gonna happen, you know, as we enter this year. So we do see, you know, our customers. Actually, inventory was drawn down in the fourth quarter, so we do see some of that, you know, coming back in the first half of the year, as well as the HFO, the HFC to HFO transition of the mix of what gets sold to customers.

We also see on that the, you know, the aftermarket that comes with those installations. So, you know, you know, we see solid growth, especially, you know, we, we'll talk about the first half, very, you know, double-digit growth for this space.

Vincent Andrews (Managing Director)

Okay, and Shane, if I could ask you on the, on the cash flow, you know, the target to do at least 25% conversion this year, what are, you know, the, the things that are inhibiting you, in 2026, from doing better than that, from getting up to, say, 40% or 50% conversion? You know, I noticed there were some line items for full year 2025, whether it was, you know, an inventory build or your payables went down $200 million, and also a fair amount of movement in, in accrued liabilities and other liabilities, which, you know, I know is below the working capital line.

Maybe you can just help us reconcile some of the important lines on the cash flow statement this year, and what's gonna help you year-over-year, and what's gonna inhibit you?

Shane W. Hostetter (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, thanks, Jason. You know, first, you know, we put out that's at least 25%, and I really feel comfortable with that, and we will obviously strive to be more than 25%, you know, as we go forward into 2026. You know, specific to the areas that I would keep in mind, you know, the story a lot is around inventory and getting our DIOs improved. We do, you know, earlier, there was a question around contracts and TT that, you know, are gonna wane through the year. Unfortunately, that is, you know, a headwind, you know, coming into the year because that is mandated, you know, high-grade ore that we had to fight against.

But we feel very confident, even though we will have additional ore, you know, put on, that, you know, throughout each one of the businesses, we'll have inventory reductions outside of that. So I think the inventory is a big story. I think navigating, as you just mentioned, you know, other areas around cash conversion and driving up DPO, as well as being efficient on the collections, is certainly areas that we'll focus on. And then, you know, coming forward, I, I really feel that, you know, the, the CapEx, you know, in this company is going to increase year-over-year, but that's really around, we talked about planned maintenance activities or TARs in the year. So that is gonna, you know, kind of impact our free cash flow in the given year compared to last year as well.

In all, you know, I think really the story here is we're controlling what we control. Really feel confident in that 25% number and really will drive ahead to get it even more into the year.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. It comes from Jeff Zekauskas with J.P. Morgan. Please proceed.

Jeff Zekauskas (Analyst)

Thanks very much. In the titanium dioxide segment, you know, actually, your revenues in North America and in Europe were flat to up. The issue was in Asia, where for the year, your revenues went from, you know, roughly $660 to $465, so you're down 30% in Asia. What happened in Asia? And, you know, where is that, where is that business going?

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

Yeah, so I mean, as we've talked about, you know, our strategy is we're focusing on the fair trade markets, and there's been in India, in particular... So I mean, that was a trend that was happening for us as we-

Jeff Zekauskas (Analyst)

Sure.

Denise Dignam (President and CEO)

-moved towards the fair trade markets. And, you know, India, there was a pullback, and, you know, on the tariff. So, as I said, we're confident it's gonna come through, but, you know, I'll say it's temporary.

Jeff Zekauskas (Analyst)

Okay. So secondly, there's a focus on free cash flow generation. And basically, if you look at Chemours from, I don't know, 2019, your inventories used to be $1.1 billion, and now they're $1.6 billion, and even this year, they're up 7%. And your revenues over that from 2019 to 2025 are up about 5%. Inventories are up 50%. What's all that inventory? Is it titanium dioxide? Is it something else? Why do your inventories keep growing, and what can you do about it?

Shane W. Hostetter (SVP and CFO)

Thanks for the question, Jeff. I think certainly it's, it's obviously we are carrying more inventory than we need right now from that side, and we'll own up to that. You know, when you look back to 2019, you mentioned, we're a different business right now, you know, as we think about TSS, you know, with Corpus Christi up and running and other areas. So you can't really look at the past trends, but I own up to, you know, the fact that their inventory is an area that we are committed to reduce.

Certainly, as I mentioned, you know, earlier on the call, you know, we have contracts to take-or-pay contracts with a high, high ore that, you know, it's areas that we don't necessarily need, but we can use, so that some of that, you know, that's put on there. But I would say across each one of the businesses, you know, that we're carrying too much inventory, and we have stretch goals in 2026 and beyond to get it back to more normalized levels on that area.

Jeff Zekauskas (Analyst)

Great. Thanks very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. So we have reached the end of our Q&A session. Thank you for joining the Chemours' Fourth Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call. You may now disconnect.