Ingevity - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Executive Summary

• Q4 2024 revenue fell 20% YoY to $298.8M as planned exits of lower‑margin markets in Performance Chemicals weighed on sales, but adjusted EBITDA more than doubled YoY to $80.6M with margins expanding to 27.0% on cost actions and mix improvement; GAAP EPS was $0.46 and adjusted EPS was $0.95.
• Sequentially, revenue declined vs Q3 (seasonality/PC exits) while adjusted EBITDA pulled back to $80.6M from $106.4M, with margin down ~120 bps QoQ to 27.0% from 28.2%.
• 2025 guidance: sales $1.3B–$1.4B, adjusted EBITDA $400M–$415M, free cash flow $220M–$260M; target net leverage below 2.8x by Q4 2025; guidance excludes any impact from strategic alternatives for Industrial Specialties/CTO refinery.
• Strategic and cash catalysts: PC repositioning delivered a $20.4M YoY improvement in PC segment EBITDA in Q4; working capital discipline drove Q4 FCF of $39.6M and net leverage improvement to 3.5x; the strategic alternatives review for Industrial Specialties could further streamline and re-rate the portfolio.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Performance Materials delivered another strong quarter: Q4 sales +2% YoY to $156.2M; EBITDA $78.3M; margin 50.1%, supported by operational efficiency and lower energy spend; FY margins reached 52.3% (+340 bps).
  • PC repositioning showing traction: Q4 Performance Chemicals EBITDA improved by $20.4M YoY to $(3.8)M as plant closures and cost savings reduced costs despite a 44% sales decline tied to exits of lower‑margin markets.
  • Cash generation and deleveraging: Q4 operating cash flow $64.5M and FCF $39.6M despite paying the second $50M CTO termination installment; net leverage improved to 3.5x from 4.0x in Q3.
  • Management tone: “We remain focused on…execution excellence, reducing leverage, and portfolio optimization,” highlighting momentum and execution confidence (Interim CEO).

• What Went Wrong

  • Topline contraction: Q4 revenue down 20% YoY to $298.8M driven by Performance Chemicals exits; Road Technologies also declined 9% due to weather, and APT margin compressed on adverse price/mix.
  • Sequential normalization: Adjusted EBITDA decreased sequentially to $80.6M from $106.4M in Q3; PM margin dipped ~100 bps YoY to 50.1% on lower plant utilization versus last year.
  • Continued PC headwinds near term: High-cost CTO inventory consumption now expected by Q2 2025 (slipped from prior expectation of end Q1), while competitive pricing offsets part of the raw material tailwind.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning or good afternoon, all. Welcome to the Ingevity fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call and webcast. My name is Adam, and I'll be your operator today. If you'd like to ask a question during the Q&A portion of today's call, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand the floor to John Nypaver to begin.

John Nypaver (VP, Treasurer and Investor Relations)

Thank you, Adam. Good morning and welcome to Ingevity's fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. Earlier this morning we posted a presentation on our investor site that you can use to follow today's discussion. It can be found on ir.ingevity.com under events and presentations. Also throughout this call we may refer to non-GAAP financial measures which are intended to supplement, not substitute for comparable GAAP measures. Definitions of these non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings release and are also in our most recent Form 10-K.

We may also make forward-looking statements regarding future events and future financial performance of the company during this call and we caution you that these statements are just projections and actual results or events may differ materially from those projections as further described in our earnings release. Our agenda is on slide three. Our speakers today are Luis Fernandez-Moreno, our Interim CEO, and Mary Dean Hall, our CFO. Our business leads, Rich White, President of Performance Chemicals, and Steve Hulme, President of Advanced Polymer Technologies, are available for questions and comments.

Ed Woodcock, President of Performance Materials, is traveling, in his place to answer questions is Jonathan MacIver, our VP of Global Commercial for Performance Materials. Luis will start us off with some highlights for the year. Mary will follow with a review of our consolidated financial performance and the business segment results for the fourth quarter and full year. Luis will then provide closing comments and discuss 2025 guidance. Our prepared comments will focus on full year results, but we are happy to take questions on the quarter during the Q&A portion of the call. With that, over to you Luis.

Luis Fernandez-Moreno (Interim President and CEO)

Thanks John and good morning everyone. Please turn to slide four. In 2024 we took proactive steps to improve performance and enhance shareholder value. These actions, which are already delivering results, have significantly altered the way we perform as a company. First, we continue to reposition Performance Chemicals. This segment is now focused on higher-margin markets with improved raw material cost structure which will be more visible once we consume the remaining high-cost CTO inventory. Second, we accelerated execution of our strategy.

Performance Materials had a record year in both sales and EBITDA surpassing margins of 50%. And there is momentum behind this business as we see ICE vehicles continue to become more fuel-efficient and consumer preferences trending towards hybrids which require more advanced carbon technology. We're also making progress in developing new outlets for our carbon, in silicon anode batteries through our investment in Nexeon. Performance Chemicals margins improved in the second half of 2024 and we protected share and volume growth in APT in a difficult industrial environment.

As a result, we generated over $50 million of free cash flow in a year where we had $200 million of repositioning cash costs. As we committed, we paid down debt and ended the year at 3.5x net leverage. Third, we recently announced plans to explore strategic alternatives for our Industrial Specialties product line and North Charleston CTO Refinery. Industrial Specialties has a great team and we are extremely proud of the work they are doing. Nevertheless, we are assessing if Ingevity is the best owner of this cyclical business. We expect to have this assessment completed before the end of the year.

All these accomplishments would be hollow without a good safety record that directly impacts the men and women of our team at facilities around the world. I am very pleased to share we achieved our goal to reach top quartile in personal safety performance in the American Chemistry Council's Responsible Care benchmarking. Even with all the changes we saw during 2024, the teams made safety a priority. And I couldn't be more proud of everyone's hard work. We were also recently named as one of America's Most Responsible Companies of 2025 by Newsweek Magazine for the third consecutive year.

We are committed to advancing our mission to purify, protect and enhance the world and are proud to be recognized by our efforts. Lastly, the search for a permanent CEO is progressing well. While the search is in progress, I continue to be focused on executing our business strategy which is showing results now. I will turn it over to Mary who will go through the 2024 numbers. After that I'll be back to discuss 2025 guidance.

Mary Dean Hall (Executive VP and CFO)

Thanks, Luis, and good morning, all. Please turn to slide five. Full year sales of $1.4 billion were down 17% from last year's sales of almost $1.7 billion. Performance Materials reported record sales, but that increase was more than offset by the almost $300 million drop in sales in Performance Chemicals, which was primarily due to the exit of lower margin end markets in Industrial Specialties.

Also contributing to the sales decline were lower sales in Road Technology due primarily to adverse weather conditions and in Advanced Polymer Technologies where increased volumes were more than offset by unfavorable mix and price concessions in certain markets, reflecting continued weakness in industrial demand and competitive pressures. We ended the year with a GAAP net loss of $430 million, which reflected several non-recurring charges that are primarily related to our repositioning action.

These charges totaled $688 million and included a goodwill impairment of $349 million, restructuring charges of $186 million. A $100 million termination fee for a long-term CTO supply agreement and $53 million of losses on the resale of excess CTO. We have excluded the impact of these charges in our non-GAAP disclosure and our discussion for the remainder of this presentation. A reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures to GAAP is in the appendix to this deck and also in our earnings release and Form 10-K which will be filed this evening.

Our adjusted gross profit of $521 million was down 4% to last year, but gross margin was higher by 510 basis points reflecting Performance Materials, improved profitability and our strategic repositioning of Performance Chemicals. Adjusted SG&A dollar spend was lower as a result of the cost savings initiatives we implemented during the year, but the percent of sales increased year-over-year due to the steep drop in sales I mentioned earlier.

Adjusted EBITDA dollars were down on lower sales while adjusted EBITDA margin improved 350 basis points to 25.8% as our repositioning actions had their desired effect, driving a higher mix of revenue from our more profitable businesses and the savings we realized from cost reductions. Please turn now to slide six in the upper left chart. You can see how our repositioning actions are changing the business composition of the company. Industrial Specialties, our most cyclical product line, is now less than 20% of overall sales when historically it represented roughly 1/3 to almost 40% of total company revenue.

Our most profitable segment, Performance Materials, now represents over 40% of total company revenue, improving the company's overall margin profile. This is a direct result of our strategic actions in Performance Chemicals. In the upper right, you see we generated free cash flow at $51 million for the year, much stronger than we guided in October. A key contributor to this performance was our disciplined working capital management in the fourth quarter, which resulted in a benefit of more than $50 million.

Strategic inventory management was a major driver of the working capital improvement, and the reduction in inventory was in finished goods and not related to the high-cost CTO inventory we have on hand. As a reminder, our free cash flow included the impact of roughly $200 million of cash outflows related to repositioning actions, of which approximately $180 million won't recur in 2025. However, we also do not expect to have a benefit from working capital reduction in 2025 and have taken all these moving parts into account in our free cash flow guidance for this year of between $220 million and $260 million.

In the chart at the bottom right, you'll see that we were disciplined with CapEx spend as well and 71% of our spend was on maintenance and safety, health and environmental. We expect CapEx to be lower this year in the $50 million-$70 million range due to our smaller footprint and also the fact that our remaining facilities have benefited the last couple of years from debottlenecking and related incremental maintenance spend. We used free cash flow and cash on hand to reduce debt by $66 million, which brings me to the chart on the lower left showing our net leverage ratio. I'm happy to say we ended the year at 3.5x net debt to adjusted EBITDA, also better than expected.

We continue to focus on free cash flow generation and debt reduction and now expect to be below 2.8x net leverage by the end of 2025. We also expect our full year 2025 tax rate will be between 22% and 24%. Turning to slide seven, you'll see results for Performance Materials which delivered record sales, EBITDA and EBITDA margins. Sales growth of 4% outpaced global auto production which was up about 2%. The increase in sales was driven by a higher volume and improved price and mix. There are two components to mix that are key to understanding this segment.

Auto mix is important as larger vehicles such as trucks and SUVs have more of our content and the more hybrids and ICE vehicles in the mix versus all-electric vehicles, the better for us. The regional mix is also important. North America, which is nearly 50% of Performance Materials sales, is our most profitable region due to the typically larger size of vehicles and this region also has the highest emissions control standards in the world, so vehicles typically require more of our product. Asia Pacific is also an important region representing about 40% of total Performance Materials sales within Asia Pacific.

About 50% is China and the remaining 50% is primarily South Korea and Japan. These countries have strict emissions control standards or strong export markets where our carbon plays an important role in meeting regulations. Europe is our least impactful region due to the regulatory environment favoring electric vehicles and also because Europe emission standards lag behind North America and Asia. As an aside in our 10-K which we released tonight, we show a more detailed breakdown of revenues by geography for all of our segments. EBITDA for Performance Materials increased 11% to $319 million with EBITDA margins for the year of 52.3%.

This record result was primarily driven by operational improvement that enabled the plants to run more efficiently, which reduced our input costs by using less natural gas and also improved yields. Our team is laser focused on continuous improvement and this is a great success story. Given natural gas prices in 2024 were by some reports the lowest in more than a decade. Input costs this year are expected to be higher, but based on our normal price increases and expected volumes and mix as well as some increased spend on R&D,. We believe segment margins will be around 50% for 2025.

Please turn now to slide eight. APT generated higher volumes year-over-year as the team made progress in end markets such as elastomers, adhesives and coatings, but unfavorable overall product mix and selective price concessions contributed to a revenue decline of 8%. The segment benefited from lower energy costs and an improvement in utilization rates as a result of the higher volumes, but these cost savings were more than offset by the revenue decline resulting in EBITDA of $35.2 million and an EBITDA margin of 18.7%. We believe the actions we've taken with respect to pricing strategy and mix upgrade will produce margins of around 20% in 2025.

Also, when global demand improves, we believe that tailwind will support not only existing markets but also spur innovation in more profitable high growth potential markets such as bioplastics used in food packaging and apparel that could improve margins further. Please turn to slide nine for Performance Chemicals results. As a result primarily of our repositioning actions, revenue in the segment of $608 million was almost $300 million lower than prior year, a 33% decline. Approximately $210 million of the decline in revenue reflects the exit of lower margin end markets in Industrial Specialties as we continue to focus on maximizing profitability.

The remaining sales decline was due primarily to lost sales as customers sought alternative suppliers in light of our repositioning actions and lower Road Tech sales attributed primarily to adverse weather in key U.S. states. PC generated EBITDA of $14.7 million for the year, significantly better than our guide in October of break even for the segment. This better than expected outcome was primarily due to an acceleration of the savings from repositioning actions. We'd originally expected to realize $65 million-$75 million of savings in 2024, but I'm happy to say that we realized $84 million of savings during the year.

The remaining savings of roughly $10 million-$25 million are expected to be realized in 2025. We also previously indicated that we expected to consume the remaining high cost CTO inventory by the end of Q1 2025, but given the continued weakness in industrial demand, we now expect to fully consume that CTO in Q2 2025. In 2025 we expect Performance Chemicals to generate EBITDA margins in the mid to high single-digits, primarily reflecting the cyclicality of Industrial Specialties which continues to be challenged by weak industrial demand and competitive price pressures.

We have reduced our prices to align with market prices and this will mostly offset the benefit of lower average CTO costs in the latter part of the year. We expect the higher margin more stable Road Tech business to return to normal growth in 2025, helping to improve segment margin. In summary, we're very pleased to see the benefits of our repositioning actions translating to improved earnings, margins and cash flow.

We expect strong free cash flow generation in 2025 which we will use to drive leverage to below 2.8x from the current 3.5x. Many thanks to our dedicated team as the company is well positioned for near term and future value creation. And now I'll turn the call back to Luis for an update on guidance and closing comments.

Luis Fernandez-Moreno (Interim President and CEO)

Thanks Mary. Please turn to slide 10. As I have said, while I'm in the CEO position, the team and I are keenly focused on execution and for 2025 that includes generating sales between $1.3 billion-$1.4 billion, EBITDA between $400 million-$415 million. I have also said I'm committed to reducing our debt and I expect we will generate between $220 million-$260 million free cash flow which combined with our improved EBITDA should enable us to reduce net leverage to below 2.8x by the end of the year. As a reminder, this guidance does not include any potential impact from the exploration of strategic alternatives for Industrial Specialties and the North Charleston CTO Refinery.

In summary, I am excited about the progress we have made and believe Ingevity will continue to improve with EBITDA margins in the high 20s and businesses that generate very strong cash flow which will provide the flexibility to allocate capital across a variety of avenues. I look forward to leading these efforts until my replacement is named. In the meantime, the company and the board remain focused on maximizing value to our shareholders through their priorities. I have previously communicated that. I'll turn it over for questions.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question on today's call, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. And our first question comes from Jon Tanwanteng from CJS Securities. Jon, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Jon Tanwanteng (Managing Director)

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Really nice quarter and pulling in the costs. Question on the pricing in the Performance Chemicals business. Are you already at the pricing that you expect to be at when the high priced CTO inventory runs out or is there still a further leg down that you can take when that does come out and you can use low input costs?

Luis Fernandez-Moreno (Interim President and CEO)

Hi, Jon. Good morning. We have stayed competitive with the market since the prices of CTO for most people have come down. We just have to be competitive. The way I would describe it is that our current prices reflect the current market price of CTO. And as such, if CTO stays at these levels, we're pretty much at the right price level to be competitive in the marketplace.

Jon Tanwanteng (Managing Director)

Okay. So when you do run out of that inventory, you will see some improved profitability. But that should be. You mentioned an offset to that. I was just wondering what the disconnect is.

Luis Fernandez-Moreno (Interim President and CEO)

That is correct. So we will see that as we consume the CTO. I don't think there is a disconnect. The issue that we wanted to make sure that everybody understood is that those prices are already at a level that it's lower than last year. So making a comparison year on year on this is the CTO reduction. That CTO cost reduction is impacted by the fact that we're also have reduced our prices to be competitive in the marketplace. But we will see an improvement as the high inventory CTO is consumed.

Jon Tanwanteng (Managing Director)

Okay, understood. Then secondly, could you just talk about the auto markets a little bit more? What trends are you seeing in Q1, especially in terms of mix of hybrid versus EVs and how that plays out through the year?

Luis Fernandez-Moreno (Interim President and CEO)

Yeah. Let me ask Jonathan if you can comment on that.

Jonathan MacIver (Director of Evotherm Technologies)

Sure. Thank you, Jon. What we're looking at is in line with what we've seen in the most. Recent S&P Global forecasts. Less of a declining interest in EVs versus hybrids, which we know bodes well for Ingevity content in vehicles.

Jon Tanwanteng (Managing Director)

Okay, great. Thank you. I'll turn back to queue.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Daniel Rizzo from Jefferies. Daniel, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Daniel Rizzo (Vice President, Research Analyst of Packaging and Chemicals)

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. Can you just put tariffs in perspective both in terms of what your customers are saying on near term impacts and how it might affect order patterns?

Luis Fernandez-Moreno (Interim President and CEO)

Could you repeat that last part of the question?

Daniel Rizzo (Vice President, Research Analyst of Packaging and Chemicals)

Well, what your customers are saying about tariffs, about their near-term impacts and how it might affect order patterns?

Luis Fernandez-Moreno (Interim President and CEO)

Okay, got it. So yeah, that's the great unknown, to be honest. There's definitely a lot of uncertainty and unfortunately not a lot of clarity. So far today we have seen no impact when it comes to Ingevity or even when it comes to our customers. So in that regard today, all of the announcements have really had very minimal impact on both our customers and our business.

But there's no question that some changes of what has been proposed could have impact either in automotive production in the U.S. consumer demand in the U.S. related to higher price or higher inflation related to those tariffs. But for the time being, we really haven't seen anything. It's just the uncertainty that it's bringing to not only us, but our customers.

Daniel Rizzo (Vice President, Research Analyst of Packaging and Chemicals)

Okay, thanks for that. And then just in terms of CapEx with, you know, with the changes that are going on and kind of reducing your footprint, stuff like that, I was just wondering of what you're projecting for 2025, how much of that is maintenance CapEx and is there any, I mean will you be spending it all on Performance Materials? Is that necessary or just how we should think about it going forward?

Mary Dean Hall (Executive VP and CFO)

Yeah, most of the expected spend is on maintenance and what we call SHE safety, health, environmental. But there is some growth spend in there. But I would say for 2025 it is primarily maintenance related spend.

Daniel Rizzo (Vice President, Research Analyst of Packaging and Chemicals)

Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from John McNulty from BMO Capital Markets. John, your line is open. Please go ahead.

John McNulty (Chemicals Analyst)

Yeah, good morning. Taking my question. So. So just regarding some of the increased innovation spend in PM, can you help us to think about where that's going? I'm assuming some of it's toward the Nexeon platform, but can you help us to think about some of the investments that you're making there?

Luis Fernandez-Moreno (Interim President and CEO)

Hi John, good morning. Yes, indeed, you're right. The increased spend there is, as you know, as we look at these new applications in batteries and specifically in the silicon anodes, it requires a significant amount of testing. And not only testing, but also the fine tuning of the materials. So I would say the vast majority, if not all of it is related to the development of the new application for. Batteries, both for electric vehicles and other applications.

John McNulty (Chemicals Analyst)

Okay, got it. No, I appreciate the color. And then the other question was just Mary. I think you said on the cash flow side, you're not assuming any improvements in 2025 on a working capital basis? I guess why would that be if the CTO inventory is still kind of sticky and you're going to work through it in the first and second quarter, is there an offset that we should be thinking about or is that just kind of a level of conservatism? I guess how should we be thinking about that?

Mary Dean Hall (Executive VP and CFO)

So I think what I was trying to point to is we saw such a big reduction in working capital benefiting cash in 2024. And I was I'm cautioning people not to expect that again because in a more normal environment, putting the high cost CTO aside, in a more normal environment, we would expect to grow the company and have increasing accounts receivable and inventory off of our now new kind of base business. So that's really what I was trying to address.

John McNulty (Chemicals Analyst)

Okay, but should we be thinking about the CTO inventory working itself through, will that likely be at least somewhat of a tailwind or again, does it get offset by the growth maybe in the core business, I guess, trying to size out how big is that CTO inventory that has to be worked through? Maybe.

Mary Dean Hall (Executive VP and CFO)

Right. Our assumption sitting here today is that the inventory related benefit of working off that high cost CTO is offset by other increases in working capital as we respond to growing parts of the business. That's our assumption today.

John McNulty (Chemicals Analyst)

Got it. Okay, thanks very much for the color.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Abigail Eberts from Wells Fargo. Abigail, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Abigail Eberts (Equity Research Associate)

Hi, thanks for taking my question. So I see you're guiding for 24% EBITDA margins for Performance Materials in 2025. How should we be thinking about Performance Materials margins longer term in a more volume growth oriented environment, given that you're expecting global auto production to be lower this year?

Luis Fernandez-Moreno (Interim President and CEO)

So I guess in the short term we continue to expect the Performance Materials business delivered that 50% EBITDA margins. Obviously that depends on us continue to sell at the level that we're predicting for automotive production. Any significant change in automotive production or a significant shift towards battery electric vehicles would definitely have an impact in either direction. I mean, the more ICE or hybrid vehicles, the better for us, which is the trend that we are seeing today. And in that regard we do expect to keep those margins. We've talked about the fact that there continue to be further regulatory

rules in China that if implemented in 2028, they will have a significant benefit to the utilization of carbon. And as such, we expect that demand to come up, but that would be the time that could be any competitor coming in. So as we think about the longer term EBITDA margin on this business, assuming that there is that extra or that possible competitor in China, then our margins will be in the high 40s. But at least for 2025, our expectation is that those margins are going to remain in the 50% range based not only on the current sales but all of the actions that we've taken regarding productivity in our manufacturing sites.

Abigail Eberts (Equity Research Associate)

Okay, got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, that's star followed by one on your telephone keypad we have a follow-up from Jon from CJS Securities. Jon, please go ahead.

Jon Tanwanteng (Managing Director)

Hi, thanks for the follow up. I might have missed this if you said it earlier, but I was wondering if you could talk about the logistics of exploring alternatives for the Industrials business. One, does that include the alternative fatty acids business and two, how would you physically separate the business from the pavement business in the event you find a buyer or something else? Just explain how something like that would be structured.

Luis Fernandez-Moreno (Interim President and CEO)

Yeah, that's a very good question, Jon, so again we're still assessing the options and this obviously could change but at this time our expectations is that we will continue to remain flexible when it comes to raw material supply, so as such we will keep the flexibility on alternative fatty acids or CTO based TOFA for the pavement business, so we don't expect that to change that capability that we have developed over the past couple of years when it comes to the actual assets, and you're probably very familiar with this in the chemical industries.

People and companies have done this many a times where you have assets in the same location but you are able to separate them and find ways to provide the services. Again, our current thinking is we will keep all of those assets for pavement even though they are co-located in the same site, but they are different assets and be able to do that in sort of a condominium, as many condominiums exist today in the chemical industry.

I always say it's not something that's easy but it has been done many, many times and worked well. So that's where we're thinking. But again it's still the analysis. It's something that we're developing and we'll come up with more information when we're ready. But hopefully that color does provide a little perspective.

Jon Tanwanteng (Managing Director)

It does. I was wondering, have you spoken to outside parties who might be interested yet or is this still an internal first focus just figuring out what you can split or not split.

Luis Fernandez-Moreno (Interim President and CEO)

As you could imagine the moment we announced this, we have had a fair amount or a significant amount of interest on the assets, so we are again continue the assessment and evaluations and we'll come up with more information later, but, yeah, even at the moment we announced, there were a fair amount of inbound requests, as we would have expected.

Jon Tanwanteng (Managing Director)

Understood. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

We have no further questions, so I'll hand the call back to the Ingevity team for some concluding remarks.

John Nypaver (VP, Treasurer and Investor Relations)

Great. That concludes our call. Thank you for your interest in Ingevity, and we'll talk with you again next quarter.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's call. Thank you very much for your attendance. You may now disconnect your lines.