Steven Bender
CFO & EVP at Westlake
As of September 30, 2024, cash and cash equivalents were $2,900,000,000 and total debt was $4,600,000,000 after redeeming $300,000,000 of senior notes during the quarter. Our balance sheet continues to be well positioned with a staggered long term fixed rate debt maturity. For the Q3 of 2024, net cash provided by operating activities was $474,000,000 while capital expenditures were $220,000,000 resulting in free cash flow of $254,000,000 We continue to look for opportunities to strategically deploy our balance sheet in order to create long term value for our shareholders. Now let me provide some guidance for your models. Based on our current view of demand and prices, we continue to see upside potential for our full year 2024 Housing and Infrastructure Products EBITDA margin guidance of 22%. The impacts of Hurricane Burrell, Helene and Milton impacted sales in 2024 and we expect HIP revenue to remain in the range of $4,300,000,000 to $4,600,000,000 We continue to expect our total capital expenditures to be approximately $1,000,000,000 which is unchanged from our earlier guidance and similar to our depreciation and amortization run rate. We continue to target $125,000,000 to $150,000,000 of company wide cost savings in 2024 with approximately $120,000,000 already achieved year to date, including the $35,000,000 achieved in the Q3. For the full year of 2024, we now expect our effective tax rate to be approximately 25%, up from our prior guidance of 23%, due to the tax treatment of the $75,000,000 of mothball expense in the 3rd quarter. And we continue to expect cash interest expense to be approximately $160,000,000 Finally, we now expect the turnaround of our Petro-one ethylene cracker in Lake Charles, Louisiana to begin at the end of January 2025 and for it to last approximately 55 days, which will have an impact on our ethylene production and cost during the quarter of 2025.