Celanese Corp - Series A (CE) — Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you, Daryl. Welcome to the Celanese Corporation first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. My name is Brandon Ayache, Vice President of Investor Relations. And with me today on the call are Lori Ryerkerk, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer; and Scott Richardson, Chief Financial Officer. Celanese Corporation distributed its first quarter earnings release via Business Wire and posted prepared comments about the quarter on our Investor Relations website yesterday afternoon. As a reminder, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures today. You can find definitions of these measures, as well as reconciliations to the comparable GAAP measures on our website. Today's presentation will also include forward-looking statements. Please review the cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements, which can be found at the end of the press release, as well as the prepared comments. Form 8-K reports containing all these materials have also been submitted to the SEC. Because we published our prepared comments yesterday, we'll now open the line directly for your questions. Daryl, please go ahead and open the line for questions.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I was just curious about the Engineered Materials' EBIT guidance. I was wondering what's baked in there in terms of volume sequentially. I mean, you're pretty clear about the auto pull-forward, but I wonder if there's any other puts and takes around that, assuming you're getting incremental pricing. I assume you're anticipating some volume moderation for Q2. And then similarly, for the rest of the year, thinking about how you're framing up volume expectations for auto end markets and otherwise. Thanks.

Yes. Thanks, Josh. As we look at the full year, so if we look at 2021 to 2022 we are assuming some volume in there. Some of that is for Santoprene, but there's a couple of percent growth in the base business as well. And that really comes about as we see improvements in 2022 versus 2021 and a lot of the availability of our raw materials. So things like glass, fiber, things like flame retardants, even some resins that we called out last year. Now that we are getting better supplies of those, we're able to increase our volumes and that really accounts for the base volume increase. And as I said, we do have volume increase in there as well for Santoprene. I would say, we called out auto to be flat year-on-year, so we're not assuming a large increase in volume to auto, although we do continue to see margin growth in materials into auto, as we continue to high-grade the materials we sell into auto. But I would say, really, strength across all sectors, all of them growing a little bit in that volume.

And then, I guess, just specifically on Q2 and that sequential volume move, are you thinking that volumes are up or down into Q2, given some of the macro headwinds?

Yes. I think, in Q2, we're expecting a little less volume. Again, we called out that we had about, what we think, was $10 million to $15 million of volume pull forward from Q2 to Q1. Again, I think, we called it out in our notes. Really, that was driven by demand being down in Q1 in terms of auto builds, but people wanted to go ahead and rebuild inventory. You might recall that we had said, in the fourth quarter, we saw a lot of inventory reduction, as people went to the end of the year. And so, we think people were just rebuilding inventory in Q1. And unless we see rapid demand, which we're not forecasting, for auto in Q2, then we would expect to see that $10 million to $15 million not show up in the second quarter, if you will.

Okay, thank you.