Clariant AG (CLN) Earnings Call Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Clariant Second Quarter First Half Year Results 2026 Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Andreas Schwarzwaelder, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Sandra, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's Andreas speaking, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this conference call. Joining me today are Conrad Keijzer, Clariant's CEO; and Oliver Rittgen, Clariant's CFO. Conrad will start today's call by providing a summary of the second quarter and first half year developments and an update on the Middle East situation, followed by Oliver, who will guide us through the business unit results and the first half year financials. Conrad will then conclude with the outlook for the full year 2026. There will be a Q&A session following our presentation. [Operator Instructions] I would like to remind all participants that the presentation includes forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Listeners and readers are therefore encouraged to refer to the disclaimer on Slide 2 of today's presentation. As a reminder, the conference call is being recorded, and a replay and transcript of the call will be available on the Investors section of Clariant's website. Let me now hand over to Conrad to begin the presentation.

Thank you, Andreas. In the second quarter of 2026, Clariant continued to deliver strong results, demonstrating resilience in a volatile and challenging operating environment. On the top line, we delivered sales of CHF 941 million, representing an increase of 0.6% in local currency on a comparable basis. Including the impact of our portfolio pruning measures, sales decreased by 0.3% in local currency. Our EBITDA margin before exceptional items increased by 80 basis points year-on-year to 18.2%. Strong performance in Care Chemicals, supported by pricing and underlying volume growth more than offset the effects from lower volumes in Catalysts due to the Middle East conflict. We increased our free cash flow conversion rate by 15 percentage points on a last 12-month basis to 52% due to effective net working capital management, disciplined capital spending and improved operating cash flow. Our overall expectations for the group for the full year 2026 remain unchanged with continued volatility and uncertainty related to the Middle East conflict. We continue to expect sales in local currency to be around flat with pricing offsetting lower volumes and increased raw material costs. We expect an EBITDA margin before exceptional items of around 18% in 2026, also supported by value-based pricing, together with increased savings from our performance improvement programs and continued active cost management. We welcome the decision by the Amsterdam District Court to dismiss the ethylene damage claim brought by Shell in its entirety against ourselves and 3 other defendants, which related to the 2020 competition law infringement. The court's ruling confirms our position that Shell suffered no harm attributable to Clariant's conduct. The judges particularly found no proof that the information exchange amongst buyers caused market harm or altered pricing metrics like the Monthly Contract Price, MCP. While we recognize that this dismissal does not set a legal precedent for the other cases, we see this as encouraging as we feel -- as we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously in the remaining proceedings in the Netherlands and Germany. In addition, the Amsterdam District Court has also dismissed a claim seeking declaratory judgment of liability of the defendants for the same conduct brought by a claim vehicle, Stichting Ethylene Claims. Now moving to further detail on our sales performance in the second quarter. Pricing increased by 3% and was positive across all 3 business units, driven by strong value-based pricing actions to offset inflationary raw material prices. This is particularly positive given that formula-based pricing operates with a time lag relative to inflation. Volumes decreased by 3.3%, impacted by the Middle East conflict and our portfolio pruning measures. Underlying volumes grew by 0.5% in Care Chemicals and by 2.0% in Adsorbents & Additives. While Catalysts volumes declined by 14.2%. The reported revenue figure was affected by a 2.4% currency headwind. Turning to profitability. EBITDA before exceptional items increased by 1.5% to CHF 171.1 million, corresponding to an 18.2% margin. The 80 basis points increase was the result of strong pricing and higher underlying volumes in Care Chemicals, supported by a favorable valuation effect on inventory. This more than offset the impact of the Middle East conflict on Catalysts volumes, lower operating leverage, and higher raw material cost. Adsorbents & Additives delivered an almost stable margin. Our performance improvement programs and cost productivity actions supported all business units. Looking at the savings programs in more detail. We have increased the savings target of our performance improvement programs by CHF 20 million, now targeting a total run rate savings of CHF 100 million by 2027. We now expect CHF 90 million run rate savings already by the end of 2026. In Q2, we achieved savings of CHF 10 million, which brings the total savings achieved to CHF 69 million. The implementation of the additional programs has resulted in restructuring charges of CHF 24 million in the second quarter. The key measures announced in the second quarter include an additional headcount reduction of around 110 positions, increasing the total announced reduction to around 640 positions. We are implementing new targeted cost management initiatives globally across the business units in production, supply chain, engineering, and technical support, as well as in corporate functions. Turning now to our updated assessment of the impact of the conflict in the Middle East. All of our 150 employees across our Middle East sites are safe. There has been no damage to any of our facilities, and all Clariant sites in Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and Israel, as well as our joint venture in Saudi Arabia, have resumed operations. Globally, access to feedstock remains secured across our production footprint. During the second quarter, we increased our pricing by 3% across all businesses, enabling us to offset the impact of an inflationary raw material environment. We expect raw material inflation to moderate in Q4, with uncertainty against the background of the ongoing developments in the Middle East. On volumes, our Catalysts business remains most affected, with the Middle East accounting for around 2/3 of the 14.2% year-on-year volume decline due to order delays. We saw limited prebuying in Care Chemicals and Adsorbents & Additives. Clariant's Catalysts customers outside the region slowly resume operations, and we expect improvement in the second half of the year. However, ongoing developments in the Middle East could affect the pace of this trend. The situation remains volatile and supply security remains a primary concern for our customers. We continue to leverage our global production footprint to ensure supply to our customers. As I mentioned earlier, we have also identified an additional CHF 20 million of savings through active targeted cost management to help offset the overall negative effects of the conflict. Together, these actions support our profitability guidance for the year. With that, I now hand over to Oliver for further details on our business performance in the second quarter.

Thank you, Conrad, and good afternoon, everyone. Let us now look at the second quarter development by business unit. In Care Chemicals, we recorded strong underlying growth, driven by consumer-facing segments. Sales increased by 4.2% in local currency when excluding our portfolio pruning measures, and by 2.5% when including them. Pricing was up 3.7% as value-driven pricing offset inflationary trends related to the Middle East, despite the time lag associated with formula-based pricing. Volumes declined by 1.2%, including the impact of portfolio pruning, while underlying volumes grew by 0.5%. Sales in Swiss francs increased by 1.4%, reflecting a 1.1% currency headwind. Growth was strongest in industrial applications, followed by Personal and Home Care and Mining Solutions, driven by positive pricing and higher volumes. Sales in Crop Solutions declined against the high comparison base, driven by restocking in the prior year. Base Chemicals declined as increased pricing was more than offset by lower volumes, partly due to pruning. Sales in Oil Services declined due to portfolio pruning and the impact of the Middle East conflict. Although the business grew at a low single-digit rate on an underlying basis. We recorded EBITDA before exceptional items of CHF 104 million, representing a 19.1% increase compared to the prior year. This translated into an EBITDA margin before exceptional items of 20.7%, a 310 basis point improvement, reflecting strong pricing and underlying volume growth, further supported by a favorable valuation effect on inventory and contributions from our performance improvement programs. In Catalysts, sales declined by 13.3% in local currency and by 19.1% in Swiss francs. While pricing was up 0.9%, volumes declined by 14.2% versus the prior year period due to the significant impact from the conflict in the Middle East, with high margin orders delayed and continued disruption to regional and global supply chains. Sales in Specialties increased at a mid-double-digit percentage rate, supported by strong growth in hydrogenation and oxidation catalysts. Sales in ethylene decreased at a double-digit percentage rate, while syngas and fuels and propylene each decreased at a high 20s percentage rate. EBITDA before exceptional items decreased by 32.5% to CHF 32.8 million, representing a corresponding margin of 18.6% compared to an elevated 22.3% in the prior year, which included positive one-offs. This was driven by the significant volume impact from the conflict in the Middle East, resulting in lower operating leverage along with higher raw material costs. While continued delays to refill orders in the Middle East and Asia remain a factor, we expect an improved top line trajectory in the second half as customers, particularly outside the Middle East, resume operations. Moving to Adsorbents & Additives. We recorded strong top line growth driven by Additives. Sales increased by 5.3% in local currency and by 3.4% in Swiss francs, with pricing up by 3.3% and volumes increasing by 2%. In the Adsorbents segments, sales were flat as growth in renewable fuel applications in the United States offset declines in edible oil purification in other regions. In Additives, sales increased at a double-digit percentage rate, driven by strong growth in polymer solutions, particularly in flame retardants and in coatings and adhesives, especially in intumescent coatings. EBITDA before exceptional items increased by 1.4% to CHF 51.2 million, while the corresponding margin was slightly lower at 19.6% versus 20% in the prior year. The 40 basis points decline reflected mix effects, which were offset by active margin management and contributions from our performance improvement programs. Let's now move on to cover the half year 2026 financials. In the first half of 2026, sales of CHF 1.859 billion were flat in local currency when excluding portfolio pruning actions and decreased by 1.2% when including these. Pricing contributed positively by 0.7% while volumes declined by 1.9%. Currency translation impacted sales by negative 4.9% in the first half of the year. Looking at our business units, underlying volume growth in Care Chemicals and broadly flat volumes in Adsorbents & Additives partly offset the Middle East impact in Catalysts. In local currency, Care Chemicals sales increased by 2.3% excluding portfolio pruning and by 0.1% including it. Catalysts sales decreased by 8.3% and Adsorbents & Additives sales increased by 1.3%. Group EBITDA before exceptional items decreased by 7.7% to CHF 331 million against the prior year, while the corresponding margin decreased by 30 basis points to 17.8% from 18.1% a year ago. The improvement in Care Chemicals offset most of the Middle East impact in Catalysts. Group reported EBITDA increased by 3.1% to CHF 300 million due to lower restructuring charges compared to the prior year. This resulted in EBITDA margin of 16.1%, an improvement of 140 basis points from the 14.7% reported for the same period in 2025. Net cash generated from operating activities increased by CHF 52.8 million reflecting effective net working capital management, improved profitability, and disciplined capital expenditure. This resulted in an increase of our free cash flow conversion by 15 percentage points to 52% for the last 12 months, from 37% at the end of half year 1, 2025. Group net debt increased by CHF 79.2 million versus the end of 2025. The resulting net debt to last 12 months EBITDA before exceptional items ratio increased to 2.2x at the end of the second quarter, compared to 2.0x at the end of 2025. And with this, I close my remarks and hand it back to Conrad.

Thank you, Oliver. Let me conclude with our guidance for 2026. For the full year 2026, we continue to expect a challenging and volatile market environment with continued geopolitical conflicts, uncertainties, and risks. The Oxford Economics forecast now assumes global GDP growth of 2.5%, broadly in line with their 2.4% in April. While expected global chemical industry growth has increased to 1.0% from 0.4% in April, driven by improved, but still declining markets for the U.S., minus 0.3%, and Europe, minus 0.6%. The conflict in the Middle East continues to negatively impact orders in Catalysts and Middle East Oil Services. It has also increased inflation for raw materials, energy, and logistics costs. To mitigate these effects, we continue to deliver our proven value-based pricing, supported by active cost initiatives. We are leveraging our global production network to provide a reliable supply of products to our customers. Our guidance for 2026 remains unchanged, with sales expected to be around 2025 levels in local currency, and an EBITDA margin of around 18% before exceptional items. We expect growth in Adsorbents & Additives, slight underlying growth in Care Chemicals, and lower sales in Catalysts due to Middle East order delays. With that, I turn the call back over to you, Andreas.

Thank you, Conrad and Oliver. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now opening the floor for questions. To ensure everyone has a chance to participate, please ask no more than 2 questions per person. Thank you for your cooperation. Sandra, please go ahead.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Katie Richards from Barclays.

My first question will be on the positive result in Consumer Care, please. The press release this morning referred to some customer prebuying. Could you explain which end markets were affected by this within Consumer Care? And also, whether you see any risk that the Q3 volumes could be negatively impact as a result of demand being pulled forward? And then naturally, my second question, if I can, would be on the litigation, please. Clearly very good news yesterday. So I would be interested to hear your opinions on whether the dismissal of the Shell claim offers positive read across to the other CHF 9 billion claims, in your opinion. And if I could just break that down into 2 parts, please. Do you think the Shell dismissal largely removes the risk for the other claims in the Dutch Court, say, from Total, OMV, et cetera? I assume they were expecting to use the same methodology to Shell. And secondly, if you could just give us an update on BASF's claim in the courts in Munich, whether they're using the same or different methodology, and how far along the case is there, please? So would just be interested to hear your thoughts, to the extent that you can answer.

Yes, thank you, Katie. So, yes, on the prebuy, what we basically saw is very limited prebuying, where we did see some of it in Care Chemicals was in our cosmetics business, where we are dealing with very unique active ingredients. During the second quarter, there were obviously heightened supply chain, supply security sort of concerns at some point in time. But what you saw in the past when -- that actually large home care customers would do prebuying also in speculation of higher raw material prices. That hasn't happened this time. So a very limited effect in our chemical business. Inventory levels are fairly normal and average across the segments. As to your second question, on the Shell case. Yes, so this is actually, I think, a big step forward for the company. If you look at the remaining cases -- remainder of cases, almost half of them will serve in the Netherlands, the others actually either in Munich or in Dortmund in Germany. Yes, in terms of the methodology across the cases, indeed, the cases filed in the Netherlands are very similar in methodology. If you look at them, the facts are very similar. In fact, the vast majority is actually referencing the same economic reports, the AlixPartners report, that was basically used in the Shell case, and clearly the court found that report failed to demonstrate any causality between the behavior of the defendants and the MCP prices for ethylene. To your second question, yes, we prefer not to comment on individual cases, your question on BASF. But I will say that also the cases that basically will serve in the German courts are actually using a similar methodology, and also here, the facts are the same. So even though the German courts are not bound by any of the decisions that were made in the Dutch court, they will independently come to their own judgment. It's fair to say that the facts and the methodology are very similar. So I think the win in the Netherlands also positions us quite strongly for the cases to come in the Netherlands.

The next question comes from Christian Faitz from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Congrats on the results and also congrats on the Amsterdam court win. Two questions, please. First of all, your agricultural business within Consumer Care was weaker as you published this morning and as Oliver mentioned. How much of that is share wins from generic manufacturers that might not be your typical customers as opposed to the innovators such as Syngenta, Bayer, et cetera? And then my second question would be -- or best actually, at the Q1 reporting, you gave us a very helpful figure of your assessment of plant outages due to the Middle East situation. I believe the figure at the time was 88 or so, of which roughly half were your customers. Would you mind giving us an update on that figure on the outages currently affected by the Middle East per today?

Yes, thank you, Christian. Two very important questions. The one on Ag, I will leave to Oliver to answer. I will take the one on the Middle East. What we see in the Middle East is basically, not only in the Middle East itself, but also outside the Middle East, as a consequence of the conflict, there have been outages in feedstock. We reported after our Q1 results, a total global force majeures number of 88. So 88 companies basically in shutdown modus because of either a lack of feedstock when they are based outside the Middle East, they couldn't bring in propane, they couldn't bring in naphtha. They had to shut down operations. They were previously bringing that in from the Middle East. And the other half based in the Middle East because either a lack of feedstock there or an inability to ship their finished products. What we've seen during the quarter is, the second quarter, not a surprise, this number went up. And at one point in time, in May, June, we were actually at a number well above 100 force majeures globally in the sector. It's actually very positive to look at the recent developments. So if you now look at the July number, we're below 100 force majeures globally. We see an easing outside the Middle East. So companies in China, in Japan, in Korea, in India have been able to source their feedstock from other regions now, are back up and running again. In the Middle East, we still see quite a significant number of customers in shutdown. We expect that will be taking a bit longer to ease. But I think the positive news is that the overall number of force majeures is actually coming down right now, especially outside the Middle East. Within the Middle East, it will take a bit longer. Oliver, if you could comment on agrochemicals?

Christian, on agro, I mean, as you know, the majority of our customers is in the branded businesses. So in that sense, the current performance is not so much affected by the generic play. I think what's important to consider when looking at the Crop Solutions performance in the second quarter -- the Crop Solutions performance in the second quarter is that, we were trading over a very strong previous year quarter. The second quarter in '25 was in the mid-20s, in terms of growth. And hence, of course, you would see after that restocking that happened last year with that year-over-year trading, you would see a bit of a softer volume quarter, Q2, in this year. But our expectation for now, the remainder of the year is that, we will see growth coming back in Crop Solutions, driven by exactly the branded players that we are operating with, and the volume developments that we're seeing there.

The next question comes from Thea Badaro from BNP Paribas.

Two questions from me, please. And the first one is on the guidance. The midpoint of your guidance currently points to a 5% improvement sequentially in H2. Obviously, this is where we have a prior year split between the 2 halves. And so, the question here is how confident are you that you will be able to achieve this? And maybe what are assumptions by division? And the second one is on the regional growth. It looks like APAC seemed to have grown across all divisions. Can you maybe help us understand where exactly you've seen strength, and maybe what are the drivers of the growth in this market?

Yes. So I'll let Oliver comment with a bit more granularity on the APAC growth that we saw, or the China growth, I think specifically in Q2. As far as the guidance, Thea, so yes, we are actually quite confident about the guidance for the year. So it's obviously a very volatile environment. But if you first look at revenue, we are seeing a pickup in the second half, especially in Catalysts. I mean, there's always a bit of seasonality and a stronger second half in Catalysts. But especially this year, I mean, we obviously in the second quarter had a big hit in Catalysts, minus 13%, largely attributed to the Middle East situation. And what we think in the second half is clearly an easing in terms of the force majeures we just talked about, especially outside the Middle East, we'll see an improvement there. So that is definitely a stronger second half for Catalysts than the first half. In Care Chemicals, we will continue to see the positive performance underpinned by the positive pricing that we see already, well over 3% positive pricing there, with still an additional wave to come from formula-based pricing. So resilient volumes, especially in Personal and Home Care, but also as Oliver alluded to, a bit of pickup in crop protection. A&A is actually having very interesting pockets of growth. Overall, the macro is not strong if you look at automotive build rates or electronic products production. But we have actually very interesting pockets of growth. If you look at our flame retardants, they're now also applied in data centers in fire protection coatings. We see that in our numbers. That's actually a good performance. We see for renewable oils, a good pickup for biodiesel, for sustainable aviation fuel. So there is a number of positive developments in A&A, as well. Oliver, if you could comment on Asia Pacific specifically?

Sure. Thea, on Asia Pacific, we have some of the trends that Conrad was also mentioning now on a global level. If we really go by the business units, in A&A, we actually have seen growth in both areas, in the Additives, particularly in the flame retardants with our customers in the region, but also the Adsorbents business has been growing nicely in the second quarter, both on price and volume, in the region. On Care Chemicals, equally, especially when we look at the Personal, Home Care and Industrial Applications business, we have seen good growth. And that was also across the region. In Catalysts, we had a bit of a sort of a split development across the region. Actually, we saw a decline in China, and that was expected, behind some of the feedstock challenges and also the propane prices that we saw in the region, utilization rates of less than 60% in parts of the production that impacted, clearly, our Catalysts business in China, and then as we talked before, also globally for the second quarter. But outside of China, we actually also saw in the Catalysts business across the countries, good growth, which led at the end of the day to that mid-single-digit growth performance for the Catalysts business.

The next question comes from James Hooper from Bernstein.

First one is, Conrad, I saw you on TV this morning, and you mentioned in the context of the lawsuits that it gives you a bit more strategic flexibility. Can you go into a little bit more detail about what you mean by this? Does this kind of lawsuits change how you think about consolidation and what Clariant's able to do? And then the second question is around the midterm targets. Can you just -- so it looks like, can you give us a bit more detail -- or cash is already there on conversion, but can you give us a little bit more detail on how you see getting the margins and the revenue targets to the 2027 targets, please?