PPG Industries - Q1 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning. My name is Elliot, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the First Quarter PPG Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key. To allow everyone an opportunity to ask a question, the company requests that each analyst ask only one question. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Bruno, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

John Bruno (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Elliot, and good morning, everyone. Once again, this is John Bruno. We appreciate your continued interest in PPG and welcome you to our First Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. Joining me on the call from PPG are Tim Knavish, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Vince Morales, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our comments relate to the financial information released after U.S. equity markets closed on Thursday, April 20th, 2023. We have posted detailed commentary and accompanying presentation slides on the Investor Center of our website, ppg.com. The slides are also available on the webcast site for this call and provide additional support for the brief opening comments Tim will make shortly. Following management's perspective on the company's results for the quarter, we will move to a Q&A session.

Both the prepared commentary and discussion during this call may contain forward-looking statements reflecting the company's current view of future events and their potential effect on PPG's operating and financial performance. These statements involve uncertainties or risks which may cause actual results to differ. The company is under no obligation to provide subsequent updates to these forward-looking statements. This presentation also contains certain non-GAAP financial measures. The company has provided in the appendix of the presentation materials, which are available on our website, reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. For additional information, please refer to PPG's filings with the SEC. Let me introduce PPG President and CEO, Tim Knavish.

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to our first quarter 2023 earnings call. I will keep my comments brief, providing a few highlights on our first quarter financial performance and on our outlook. Our first quarter sales were a record $4.4 billion and were achieved despite the backdrop of macro challenges, including soft global industrial activity, elevated cost inflation, continued geopolitical issues, and weakening demand in U.S. construction-related end-use markets. We delivered adjusted earnings per diluted share from continuing operations of $1.82, which is 33% higher than the first quarter of 2022. Our operating segment margin recovery accelerated, improving 380 basis points compared to the first quarter of 2022 as we work back toward our historical profile.

The first quarter was aided by incremental 2023 selling price increases in the Performance Coatings reporting segment and in total company-wide. We have now fully offset all cumulative cost inflation incurred since early 2021. As I highlight some of the key drivers that drove the strong first quarter performance, an overriding theme is around the benefits we are deriving from our diverse portfolio. For example, PPG has the largest and most diversified aerospace business in the coatings industry. We are well positioned to serve our customers in the aerospace aftermarket. Our backlogs expanded once again this quarter following the reopening in China as customers need to replenish their stock of PPG's technologically advantaged products, including sealants and transparencies. We expect this business to continue to grow for the remainder of 2023 and beyond.

PPG has the largest Architectural Coatings business in Mexico, where current economic conditions remain robust and among the best in the world. The PPG Comex business continued their strong execution and delivered an eleventh consecutive quarter of record sales. We are laser-focused on driving organic growth. During the quarter, we benefited from several customer wins that included becoming the primary paint supplier at Walmart's 3,800 locations that carry paint products. The expansion of our well-recognized Glidden DIY brand at Walmart and in our independent dealer channel will support further growth opportunities. The automotive refinish business has now installed 1,400 global MoonWalk machines, recently gaining traction in the U.S. with additional rollouts planned globally. About a third of these installations are new body shop wins.

While overall demand conditions in Europe remain difficult, our leading position in automotive OEM in the region allowed us to support our customers during a sharp rise in automotive builds in the region, albeit off a historically low base. Our OEM sales volumes in the region were up mid-teen percentage for the quarter, and we expect additional growth throughout 2023. The first quarter is typically a negative cash generation quarter due to our business seasonality. Our strong earnings contributed to us generating positive operating cash flow in the first quarter for the first time in seven years, as our operating cash generated was about $400 million higher than the first quarter of 2022. Our financial results were better than our preliminary first quarter update on April 3rd.

This was mostly attributable to stronger sales at the end of the month, a richer sales mix, and lower costs than we predicted. A quick update to our very important ESG initiatives. We are prioritizing and delivering sustainably advantaged products and services to our customers and view this as a key lever for organic growth. Last year, we increased our sales from sustainably advantaged products to 39% of our total sales and continued to better define our product sustainability priorities to enable the sustainability ambitions of our customers. We look forward to sharing our new 2030 targets once our emissions reduction goals are validated by the Science Based Targets initiative.

We will also be launching our 2022 ESG report in late May, which will include our progress against current environmental goals as well as our previously communicated diversity, equity, and inclusion targets. Moving to our outlook, it is evident that challenges remain to the demand environment, and in some cases, such as U.S. housing and construction, they are weakening. Despite these anticipated headwinds, we remain confident that our margin recovery momentum will continue. We are executing against a shopping list of opportunities which we expect to contribute to strong year-over-year earnings growth in the second quarter and for the rest of 2023. This includes supporting our aerospace customers as they fulfill their strong order books, and we expect a second straight quarter of more than 10% sales volume growth year-over-year in this business.

As availability of raw materials returns to pre-pandemic levels, we expect our earnings to start benefiting from moderate deflation from recent historic inflation highs. As a reminder, aggregate raw material inflation since early 2021 remains at historically high levels. Our manufacturing is beginning to improve from multiyear production disruptions, and we expect this will generate efficiencies that will provide another earnings growth lever in the coming quarters. With respect to Europe, we are seeing coatings demand stabilize, albeit at lower levels, which will enable further year-over-year earnings growth, aided by the actioning against our restructuring program. PPG has leading Architectural Coatings positions in several countries in Europe. Once the economy begins to improve, this will provide an additional earnings growth lever. I'm also pleased with the growth prospects for our auto refinish, protective coatings, and Traffic Solutions businesses.

These end-use markets have proven to be more demand resilient than in prior economic downturns, and a couple of these are positioned for further growth to support infrastructure investment in the United States. In China, we expect moderate and continuous sequential quarterly improvement in domestic demand as the year progresses. This will be more evident on a year-over-year basis given the pandemic-related restrictions in China last year during the second and fourth quarters. In summary, for the past few quarters, we have been conveying our strong conviction that various earnings growth catalysts would be activated. I am pleased that we have reached this inflection point and continue to have strong conviction as reflected in our full year earnings guidance that year-over-year earnings growth will continue in 2023.

In addition, in this challenging macroeconomic period, you can also count on PPG's legacy of being highly focused on controlling the controllables, including managing our entire cost structure and optimizing our working capital. As I've begun my new role as CEO, I've challenged our team to focus on our advantages, prioritizing the investments that will differentiate us and move the needle for our customers and our business. This includes advancing our digital capabilities throughout our businesses to improve our customers' productivity and further enhance our internal efficiencies. Our team is committed to accelerating earnings growth while preserving the strengths of PPG's legacy. Thank you for your continued confidence in PPG. This concludes our prepared remarks. Elliot, would you please open the line for questions?

Operator (participant)

At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question today comes from Duffy Fischer from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Duffy Fischer (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah. Good morning, guys, and congrats on a nice quarter. My question is mostly around the sequential EPS and how that relates to history. If you stripped out 2020 and 2021 and looked at the 6 years before that and last year, Q1 to Q2 has averaged up about $0.48, with all of those years being above $0.40. At the midpoint of your guide, you're only up $0.28 this year. How do you match those two? Then similar question for first half versus second half. If you just use the midpoint to your guide, your second half is down $0.80 versus the first half. In those same 7 years, if you look historically, it's averaged down about $0.30.

You know, could be conservatism, could be something different in the seasonality, maybe something around the loading of Walmart. Can you just kind of walk through why we should expect a lower, or why we shouldn't expect kind of the higher number of history to prevail?

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Hey, sure, Duffy. Good to hear from you. First of all, let me give a few high-level comments, and I'll let Vince fill in the gaps. On the Q1 to Q2 step up, we definitely had some one-timers in Q1, notably, the Walmart load-in. We had some insurance settlements related to past storms. We have a promotion for Comex Easter sales every year. More of those sales were pulled into Q1 than normal, and that's a big piece of the Q1 to Q2, and I'm sure Vince can give you more details. As for the rest of the year, we, you know, we are cautious on volume for a number of reasons. You know, slower China opening of manufacturing.

We're cautious on U.S. housing, for the second half of the year. We're cautious on global industrial. Those are some of the few high levels. Vince, you wanna add a few details?

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

No, I think we quantified the Walmart business. The load-in for us in Q1 was about $40 million. Again, just a little more color. The Comex business has a very large Easter campaign. The Easter campaign was split last year between Q1 and Q2. This year, most of the load occurred in Q1, so we're not gonna have that traditional step up. We did see really good activity in Europe auto. Again, our prediction is, while that's still gonna be a very strong business, Q1 was very strong, European auto.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Ghansham Panjabi from Baird. Your line is open.

Ghansham Panjabi (Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah, thanks. Good morning, guys, and congrats on all the progress to start the year. I guess first off, on auto refinish and your outlook for directional improvement in 2Q, you know, is that just a function of comparability from the year ago period and the China reopening? Also going back to some of the volume weakness in Europe and North America for auto refinish in the first quarter, can you just give us some more color on the customer order pattern timing, that you called out? Thanks.

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Yeah, sure. Thanks. Thanks for the question, Ghansham. Let me start off by saying I have full confidence, high confidence in our auto refinish business globally, going forward as well as over the last several quarters 'cause our key-to-key value proposition is best in class. What you see in refinish, if you look at, you know, Q4, then to Q1, then to what we're saying for Q2, this business, because of the two-step distribution, you really need to look at it over a multi-quarter basis just because it's hard sometimes to project the order pattern of our independent distribution. I would look at Q1 in that light, and rather look at, instead of an individual quarter, look at it over multiple quarters.

We have strong backlogs across the body shops and it's really driven by two things other than paint. It's driven by part shortages, and it's driven by labor shortages. Those backlogs remain. This actual sell out to the collision industry remains strong. There's just some fluctuation in independent distribution ordering patterns.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Stephen Byrne from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open.

Stephen Byrne (Senior Chemicals Analyst)

Yes, thank you. I'd like to drill in a little bit on your commercial strategy in U.S. architectural. It seems like you have a similar offering now at the independent hardware stores and Walmart with this Glidden platform. And between those and The Home Depot arrangement and your own stores, it seems like it could be nearly 10,000 locations. My question for you is: How would you split your sales in architectural paint in the U.S. between those various buckets, and where do you think that could go in the next few years, and could this cannibalize sales in your own stores?

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Thanks, Steve. A great question. We don't expect cannibalization. Let me explain a little bit about what we're doing. Glidden is by far our strongest and best known DIY brand in the U.S. You know, historically, despite that strong brand strength, we've lacked distribution. Obviously, we partner with The Home Depot with Glidden. We're now partnering with Walmart with Glidden, and we've always partnered with our independent dealers with Glidden. One of your points, typically, we don't carry Glidden at our own company stores. Think about it as big box, big box home improvement plus Walmart plus private dealers. The type of customer that buys paint at Walmart is very different than the type of customer that buys paint at The Home Depot.

What we're really doing with these recent moves is expanding distribution and providing access to a strong DIY brand across multiple different types of consumers, multiple different price points of consumers, and expanded geography. That's really what we're doing here, and there's very little conflict between those three pieces and certainly very little cannibalism.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from John McNulty from BMO. Your line is open.

John McNulty (Managing Director and Chemicals Analyst)

Thanks for taking my question. Excuse me. Tim, your first quarter margins, you know, I don't think we've seen them this high other than maybe twice in the last 15 years, and that's even with adding Traffic Solutions, which I think should be dragging it down in 1Q. I guess, one, where can we see margins go this year for PPG? What are some of the big factors? Is it all price versus raws? How should we think about mix, some of the efficiency measures you were speaking to, I guess? Can you help us to frame that a bit?

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Well, you know, as you've heard me say, John, we are on a margin recovery journey. As happy as we are with the 380 basis point improvement, we're pleased with that progress, but we are not satisfied with where we are. We are not back to historical levels. We've still got more work to do, and we're confident that we will continue to see improvement. This, frankly, is our second straight quarter of year-over-year margin improvement. We expect Q2 to be the third straight quarter of year-over-year margin improvement. We've got more work to do here, and it's both on the value capture side of getting paid for the products and services that we deliver.

It's mix driven, and certainly we've begun to see some moderation on the cost side.

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

Yeah. John, this is Vince. Just to, you know, give some more numeric guidance here. You know, we're down still 150-200 basis points versus our prior high water marks, which we hit several times in the past 10 years in the first quarter. We have other levers. Tim mentioned one in the opening comments. We're still not back to where we want to be on manufacturing. Our volumes on a multi-year basis are still down. Again, cost control, which is a legacy here, we feel we could do better. We still have multiple levers to get back to prior high water marks and then, eventually hoping to exceed those.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Christopher Parkinson from Mizuho. Your line is open.

Christopher Parkinson (Managing Director and Senior Industrials Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you so much. Can you just offer a little bit more color about what's embedded in both your aerospace and refinish guidance levels? Just how you're thinking about for the year. Does aerospace, you know, include Boeing's further build rates, 737 MAX in China, wide body, some color on that. On the refinish side, just any color about how you think the body shop world, specifically in the U.S., is still dealing with, you know, labor constraints and so on and so forth. You have some pretty optimistic, or I'd say bullish, comments for the second quarter. It'd just be great to know what's underscoring that in particular versus 2019 levels. Thank you so much.

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Sure. Thanks. Thanks, Chris. So on the aero side, you mentioned a number of things there, the answer would be yes to all of them. We have a number of positive catalysts there. The China reopening, you know, even though, you know, China international, China wide body is still well below 2019 levels, domestic travel alone drives a lot of MRO activity for us, that we expect to continue to grow. You mentioned one of our big OEM customers. You know, you've seen their 2023 output so far is much better. That certainly helps. We've got the backlog continues to grow on both OEM and aftermarket, particularly on the MRO side. Or I'm sorry, on the transparency side.

We've got some catch-up of that backlog built into our planning. You know, the military segment remains very strong. A lot of what we've got built in is the underlying demand strength, but also our ability to continue to increase our output, because right now in many parts of our business in aerospace, we can sell whatever we can produce. On the refinish side, again, you have to take out these quarter-to-quarter fluctuations. Fundamentally, the collision business is still very strong. If the body shops are able to get more cars through because they're able to improve supply on parts, improve labor, we're in a much better supply situation because most of our supply dynamics are behind us.

We're really poised to capture whatever throughput increase they're able to achieve, which they're highly motivated to do because their backlogs are so strong.

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

Just to put some numbers to the.

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Uh-huh.

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

This is Vince. Just to put some numbers to the China aerospace opportunity. You know, international flights to and from China are down about 70% versus pre-pandemic still. Domestic travel in China is down about 20% versus pre-pandemic. Obviously a big market for all the aerospace players. Again, for us, that's all opportunity in both OEM and our aftermarket business.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from David Begleiter from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

David Begleiter (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you. Good morning. Tim, just some raw materials. What's embedded in your second half guidance in terms of declines year-over-year? Just on pricing, where are you still implementing price increases?

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Sure. Thanks, David. On raw materials, well, let's start with the high level statement is we expect to continue to see moderation as we move through the year. You know, what we actually realized in Q1 was essentially flat on a year-over-year basis. We expect Q2 to be about low single digits down on a year-over-year basis. Beyond that, we expect continued further moderation, but hard to quantify the scale of that at this point because there's still so many moving parts. That's what I would say on the raw material side. On the pricing side, we did achieve more pricing in Q1. We were up 8% in total. About 70% of that is carryover.

We were able to achieve some additional pricing in the quarter on an incremental basis, the vast majority of that being in the Performance Coatings segment. I think as we move forward on price, you know, we'll start to comp higher increases as we move through the year from last year. The increments will be smaller, but we are highly confident that for Q2, Q3, Q4, we will print positive price numbers.

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

Just a reminder, we're still at a 40-year high inflation rates in our sector, even with this moderation.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Jeff Zekauskas from J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.

Jeff Zekauskas (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks very much. Two-part question. The first, when you look at your auto OEM prices in the quarter, were they comparable to the industrial segment in general? That is, industrial was up, I don't know, maybe 8%. Is that what auto OEM prices did? Or were they higher, or were they lower? Can you calibrate that? Second is-

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, Jeff, they were certainly in line. Sorry, go ahead.

Jeff Zekauskas (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Yeah.

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

Go ahead, Jeff.

Jeff Zekauskas (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah. I'm puzzled that your raw materials were flat year-over-year, in that oil was $100 a barrel in the first quarter of 2022, and propylene was $0.60 a pound. You know, and I believe that maybe your raw materials probably peaked in the second quarter of 2022, and then came down. Like, where is, where is the inflation coming from? There must be something, it seems to me unusual about your raw material basket in that it should be lower than where it was in the first quarter of last year, at least from an outside perspective.

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Hey, Jeff, I'm gonna take the auto question. Yes, auto OEM was consistent with segment pricing, which was about that 8%. Again, I wanna remind you, the vast majority of that is carryover, especially in that business. The new pricing there, much of that was actually negotiated last year, and part of the process in negotiations with auto OEMs is magnitude and timing of implementation. That's the answers to your first question. Vince, you wanna take raws?

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, Jeff, I think when you look at our raw materials, one of the things we've talked about the last several quarters was pulling that through our inventory. If you look, we talked about this in the back half of last year. We ended Q3 and Q4 with abnormally high inventory balances. We were buying raw materials when we could get them. We have to work that inventory down. If you look at our inventory balance actually in Q1, it's still elevated relative to what our expectations are. It's really a matter of how we're pulling those prior purchases through our inventory and into our cost of sales. We still have some again, inventory to work down as we get into the peak season here in Q2.

We'll see some more realized benefit once we are able to work through that inventory.

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Yeah, Jeff, to your basket question, you know, our raw material basket is largely what it's always been. There are parts of that raw material basket that we're still seeing year-over-year inflation in. Pigments, additives, extenders, inorganics, a number of items where we're still seeing year-over-year increase.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Vincent Andrews from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Vincent Andrews (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm wondering if you could just help us better understand how March went. It sounds like obviously, it was stronger than you expected, particularly the back half of the quarter, in which particular areas of your business that strength came in, and if there was any particular, you know, driving force for it, and whether it's continued into April so far to the extent you have data you can share.

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Sure, Vincent. The parts of our business that were very strong as we moved through March, I would say our aerospace business, our auto business, particularly Europe auto, and as Vince alluded to earlier, our Comex business was stronger than we had expected as we saw more pull forward of the Easter campaign.

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

just a reminder, and we said this in January, you know, March is typically 40%, 50% of the quarter in terms of the size of the quarter financially. again, when we have a strong March, it's very helpful.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Josh Spector from UBS. Your line is open.

Josh Spector (Director of Equity Research)

Yeah. Hey, thanks for taking my question. I just wanna poke on the guidance again for the year. You know, if I think about some of the one-timers in 1Q, if I say they're maybe $0.20 in EPS, seasonally adjust first half, implies the year is kind of at the midpoint of your guidance for the year, about $7.10. No incremental benefit from raw materials. With the areas where you talk about volume weakness, you know, China, housing, industrial, you know, maybe we're talking about 20%-25% of your sales, but you're optimistic on auto OEM, refinish, aero, which more than offsets that.

I mean, is it a fair take to look at this and say there's really minimal benefit of raw materials in the second half, minimal benefit of pricing, and you're just, like, pushing on where volumes are today? Or is that an entirely wrong way to look at it?

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Well, on our second half guide, first thing I'll say is it's still 10% EPS growth YoY in an extremely challenging environment. I just wanna lead with that. Most of the concern for second half is more volume focused. We're continued slowdown U.S. housing. We've got uncertainty on the general industrial side, and really uncertainty on the pace of recovery of industrial/manufacturing in China. Those are really the key drivers to the second half.

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, this is Vince. I'll just add, again, it's still cloudy when we look at the economy. We do know that most countries are raising interest rates. There's typically a delay between interest rate increases and consumer effect. We're seeing that in different parts of our portfolio around the world. We just remain somewhat cautious on the delayed effect on that interest rate increase environment. As Tim mentioned, I'll echo, you know, we're not sure about the pace of recovery in China. We do feel Our guide includes a moderate recovery, a continuing, elongated recovery. That's beneficial from our perspective because we don't see that creating more commodity inflation.

That, the pace of that recovery is still uncertain at this time.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Aleksey Yefremov from KeyCorp. Your line is open.

Aleksey Yefremov (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks, good morning, everyone. In architectural in the U.S., can you share any, you know, data or sentiment from pro paint, contractors? How is the backlog changing here?

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Backlogs have remained surprisingly robust despite everything you see in the news and despite what's happening in construction, driven by labor shortages primarily. The backlogs remain strong. you know, for our pro business, the omni-channel of our pro business was up almost 10% for the quarter. you know, we are seeing continued good activity in the pro space in architectural United States.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Michael Sison from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Michael Sison (Managing Director)

Hey, guys. Nice start to the year. Tim, just curious. In terms of the second half with the 10% EPS growth, I apologize if I missed this, but what do you expect for volumes? What's sort of the range of outcomes for the company? Is it down, flat, maybe even up on easy comps? Just curious. Thank you.

John Bruno (VP of Investor Relations)

Hey, Mike, this is John. I'll take that one. You know, as Tim pointed, there's a few factors that we're considering in the volumes forecast that's in the guide. I would say that it's down slightly in our 2nd half guidance, Mike, overall, based on all the feedback that Tim provided.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Peter Clark from Société Générale. Your line is open.

Peter Clark (Head of Global Chemicals Equity Research)

Yes. Good morning, everyone. It's just looking at your number one priority of getting your margin back, and particularly on the Industrial Coatings, because obviously you were peaking at over 18%. I know, there's been mix changes. You've bought in lower margin acquisitions that you're working on. If I play with your full year guidance, you're sort of inferring this margin recovering to about 14% ex amortization. You're still 400 basis points adrift. I understand it's challenging. Volumes are still not great. Is there anything structurally that stops you getting back to that sort of level in the next few years that you were achieving back in 2016 and 2017 level? Thank you.

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Thanks for the question. There's nothing structurally preventing us from getting back to those levels. The big driver for us, I would say two things. Number one, volume. Volume is still down significantly from the time periods that you referenced, just the leverage from that. The other one is operating efficiencies. All of the supply chain disruptions that we've had over the last couple years, our manufacturing costs have not been at benchmark, you heard that we did see some improvement in that in Q1, we're expecting further improvement as we move forward. There's nothing structurally preventing us from getting back to peaking margins in that segment.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Arun Viswanathan from RBC. Your line is open.

Arun Viswanathan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Just a couple questions around, you know, margins. Looks like your margins were up at around 13% level for EBIT in the first quarter. Do you see continued growth there? What kind of volume growth would you expect to get that back into the mid-teens to high-teens levels next?

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

We absolutely expect to see continued margin growth. Arun, as I mentioned earlier, we're confident that the next couple quarters will show continued year-over-year margin improvement. The volume question, you know, As John mentioned, we're gonna have volume challenges likely, potentials for upside, but our base case is that it'll be a tough, tougher volume second half.

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

Yeah. Yeah, Arun, this is Vince. If you look at some of the nearer term levers we have, the rich mix we benefited from in Q1, we expect to continue against some of our key technology businesses, aerospace, automotive. Tim mentioned about the strength of the Mexican economy. We have leading positions in Mexico in several of our businesses, including Comex. As Tim mentioned, we're starting to see early signs of manufacturing optimization. We still have a long way to go there, but that's something internally we're managing. As I mentioned earlier, we have laser focus on our costs, especially with the volume outlook and the concern around consumer spending that I talked about earlier.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Kevin McCarthy from VRP. Your line is open.

Kevin McCarthy (Partner and Senior Equity Analyst)

Yes. Good morning. A few questions on your auto OEM coatings business. What are you baking in for global builds in terms of your annual EPS guide? Would you also comment on any meaningful share shifts by region and how the EV penetration is playing out for PPG?

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Sure. Thanks, Kevin. Our base case on auto OEM for the year on builds is low single digits, with potential for upside, depending what happens with a whole number of things around affordability in China. But our base case is low single digits. We have not seen a huge amount of share shift. We did see some in China. As we were executing our margin recovery strategy, we did lose some of the lower margin business. But what's historically happened there, Kevin, is they ultimately come back for a number of reasons. The third part of your question was around EVs. What I can say on EVs is we're extremely pleased with our progress there. We're winning on EVs, where EVs are winning, which is China.

We're doing well with the number one China EV player, and they're doing well. If you look at builds now of EVs, we're up over 10% of global builds now are EVs. In China, which is where we're having most of our success, over 20% now of all vehicles sold in China are EVs. We like what we're seeing from a penetration standpoint, and we're pleased with our progress, but still a lot more to do there.

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

To add, again, we came into the year with a low to mid-single digit projection on global builds for the year. Q1 was, for the industry, was 5%, Q1 outperformed the initial projections for the industry.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Michael Leithead with Barclays. Your line is open.

Michael Leithead (Director in Equity Research)

Great. Thanks. Good morning, guys. Real briefly, just on North American Architectural, there's obviously a few moving pieces with all the wins you flagged. I guess high level, what do you assume or you think the industry's growing at this year versus what do you think PPG is going to be able to grow at?

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

I think it's. The reality is the industry in totality is gonna be soft, driven by what's happening on 2 fronts: number 1, housing, and number 2, you still have some post-COVID hangover from the DIY side due to, you know, what everybody did painting their houses during that period. Industry-wide, that's what we're seeing. For PPG, you know, we've got a number of programs as you say, with obviously our Walmart win, the launch of The Home Depot Pro program. Our mix, we're not as big on new build as we are on construction and maintenance. We're thinking about it a little bit better than the rest of the industry.

Driven by housing and driven by DIY, we expect this overall to be a challenging year in Architectural U.S.

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

Yeah. Mike, just another reminder here. You know, Paint's typically the last part of the cycle. As housing starts have come down the past several quarters, we're still working off those backlogs from a paint perspective. If you look at the mixture of housing starts, roughly 60% are single family. Those have come down already. I'm not sure if they bought them yet or not. There's some positive signs that they at least flattened. If you look at multifamily is at a still a very high record. Those will be delivered late this year, maybe early next year. We do think there's an air pocket after that due to credit liquidity, et cetera. Again, 60% single family, 40% multifamily.

We haven't seen the negative effects yet in multifamily.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Laurence Alexander (Equity Analyst)

Good morning. Could you just briefly flesh out how your outlook for U.S. infrastructure, and particularly kind of, you know, sort of, you know, your assumptions for the back half of the year and the landscape for or the pipeline for potential bolt-on M&A, and particularly like how you're thinking about opportunities in the emerging markets?

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Yeah. Yeah. Sure, Laurence. On the outlook for infrastructure, we're quite positive on that as, you know, as the infrastructure spending is starting and there's a lot more projects in the queue. We have a number of portfolio positions that should help us there. Our Protective Coatings business, some of our Industrial Coatings business, and certainly our Traffic Solutions business. We're positive on that ramping up as we move through not only this year, but into the future.

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, Laurence, on the M&A environment, I'd still say it's somewhat active, not consistent. You know, historically, it's been more active. There's certainly some deals or some files that are percolating of the small kind of vintage. So there's still an issue if you're a buyer or seller, coming up with a price based on based on the past 12 months financials. Again, we said many times we would expect a few deals to get done in our space each year, and that's our same expectation this year.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Laurent Favre from Exane BNP Paribas. Your line is open.

Laurent Favre (Senior Analyst)

Yes. Hi, good morning. Two very quick questions, please. The first one is on manufacturing. Can you size that opportunity for us? Is it just about China, where you still have COVID issues in the early part of Q1, or do you also see an opportunity in Europe and U.S.? The second question was just on Marine and Protective. Sounds like that was a big surprise for you in Q1. You thought it would be down, was up. I'm just wondering if you can share a few thoughts there. Thank you.

John Bruno (VP of Investor Relations)

Hi, Laurent. This is John. I'll start with the manufacturing one, and Tim will take the second part. If you go back to January of 2022, we talked about significant manufacturing challenges we had due to supply disruptions in the fourth quarter of 2021. We quoted about a $0.20 EPS impact. That was the height of the impacts. Every quarter since, we've had some type of negativity. This quarter, the first quarter of 2023, we were close to being break even on a year-over-year basis, and we expect that to get better as we go forward. The objective is for us to claw back all of the inefficiencies that we've had in the last five quarters.

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Yeah. I'll take the Protective and Marine side. You know, the way I think about this business right now is it's well-positioned for infrastructure, nearshoring, energy, a lot of the investments that are happening around those areas. Also in Marine, where we have really pivoted our focus to a Marine aftermarket, which is doing well. When you add those all together, we were up high single digits in Q1, and we expect to be up mid-single digits again in Q2. That's one of the businesses that we're pretty bullish on.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Frank Mitsch from Fermium Research. Your line is open.

Frank Mitsch (President)

Good morning, gentlemen. Congrats on the start to the year. Vince, you took a $144 million charge due to the pension benefit obligation. I'm curious as to what sort of future cost benefit might we expect from that action? Tim, obviously, very impressive progress on price, and your expectation is that you're gonna have positive price for the balance of the year. As we see deflation from record raw, any concerns on potential price give backs in any of your businesses? Thank you.

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

Thanks, Frank. This is Vince. Yeah, just a reminder, we do have a step-up in 2023, a non-cash step-up as it relates to pension expense. Fairly significant, $10 million-$15 million a quarter. We did annuitize a portion of our pension plan. The benefit from that from an expense perspective is fairly minimal. It's about $1 million or $2 million a quarter, so nothing sizable relative to the step-up we've had coming into the year.

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Yeah. Frank, on price, so on Protective, we expect very little, if any price give backs as we... I'm sorry, I said Protective, I meant Performance. On Performance in total, we expect very little give back as we move through the year. On Industrial, about 30% of our Industrial segment business, the pricing is based on index arrangements. If there is raw material deflation, those indexes will kick in. There's a delay of multiple quarters depending on the contract, so that's more of a 2024 issue for us. Beyond that, more generally, I'd say obviously, we watch this very closely every day, and churn would be our primary indicator if there's something we need to act upon.

you know, our competitors are facing the same basic cost structure and cost inputs that we are. We watch our churn, and to date, we've seen very little churn, as I mentioned earlier, other than a little bit, a little bit in Asia.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from John Roberts from Credit Suisse. Your line is open.

John Roberts (Managing Director of U.S. Equity Research)

Thank you. Where within the Performance segment were you able to get additional price, or was that mixed with the Aerospace business, just improving in the mix?

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Well, they were both factors. The mix element, part of it was our aerospace business, no doubt. As to the first part on where were we able to get price, we got incremental price in almost all parts of our Performance Segment, you know, Architectural refinish. And I just remind that while we are seeing moderation in some raw material inflation, we're still seeing inflation in wages and indirects in some raw material categories. I'd say that incremental price was largely in response to, you know, incremental inflation.

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, John, this is Vince. Just for clarity, you know, we, as we break out these numbers for you guys externally, we have priced separate. We put in a business mix, regional mix, product mix, and we combine that with volume. If you look at both our original guide and our updated guide or updated final numbers, again, we benefited from incremental pricing, standalone pricing, so invoice pricing. Secondarily and separately, we benefited from regional mix. Tim mentioned, some of our business, including Latin America, were higher than our expectations. We benefited from business mix. Some of our higher technology businesses, were higher than our expectation, as we called out in both of our releases. We benefited within business from product mix. We hit, I think, three big categories for us.

Operator (participant)

Our final question today comes from Jaideep Pandya from On Field Investment Research. Your line is open.

Jaideep Pandya (Partner)

Thanks. First want to go back to the EV point. Could you just give us some color on what is the content per vehicle for ICE versus EV? In your top EV customers, are they all sort of the top five Chinese companies? That's my first question. The second question is on the Industrial Coatings, where you alluded to weakness in the U.S. Have you seen sort of the destocking coming to an end in Q1, or are you expecting further destocking or weaker volumes from the coil exclusion categories in the U.S., especially in Q2 and Q3? Thank you.

Tim Knavish (President and CEO)

Thanks, Jaideep. I'm gonna go backwards with how you asked them. You know, destocking the Industrial segment businesses, there's not a tremendous amount of inventory held at our customers. Any significant destocking, whether it's frankly Industrial or Performance is largely behind us. The softening that we mentioned in general Industrial and in particular here in the U.S. is across a couple of key segments. One of them you already mentioned, and that's coil because that's largely tied to construction. But we've also seen softness in some consumer-facing areas, Electronic Materials, kitchen and bakeware, appliance. Now fortunately, there's some positives offsetting some of that as well on HD, heavy-duty equipment, transportation, powder.

In general, those were the segments that were a bit soft. On your EV question, the content per vehicle, unfortunately, there's not a simple one number answer to do that because it depends upon the different technologies that are adopted by each of the OEMs. What I will tell you is that the potential content per vehicle for functional and specialty protective coatings is significant and in the same scale as the content per vehicle of conventional layering systems, which can... You know, that can range between $90-$125 a vehicle. You had a question embedded in there about, you know, who are we working with, who are we successful with in China.

Generally speaking, we're working with all of the OEMs, whether it's Chinese or non-Chinese, but we have had most of our commercial success thus far with the number one player in EVs in China.

Vince Morales (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, Jaideep, this is Vince. I wanna go back to your industrial question and maybe broaden it a little bit. If you think about PPG, you know, 2022 was a difficult year. We had a significant ex-exposure in Europe, where we saw the geopolitical items really affect our volumes. As everybody's fully aware, China had multiple months of shutdowns in 2022, and the U.S. was one of our most stable businesses, and Mexico and Latin America continued to grow. If we flash forward into 2023, you know, we feel Europe stabilized, and we're able to then put our costs to ship on that. We feel China and Asia's gonna grow. Two big pieces of our portfolio pointing in the right direction as it compare to last year.

We still feel very strong about Latin America and growth. We're seeing some softness in the U.S. in industrial, certainly in the construction markets, but we're offsetting the majority of that with aerospace and automotive, protective, as Tim mentioned. Again, I think, for us, we had a difficult 2022, and we're lapping some of that in 2023. The only thing we see softening is really those pockets in the U.S.

Operator (participant)

There are no further questions at this time, and I'll turn the call back over to John Bruno.

John Bruno (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Elliot. We appreciate everyone's continued interest and confidence in PPG. This concludes our first quarter earnings call.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.