Trinseo Q4 2024 Earnings Report

Trinseo EPS Results

• Actual EPS: -$2.67
• Consensus EPS: -$2.30
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.37
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Trinseo Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $975.20 million
• Expected Revenue: $803.09 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$172.11 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Trinseo Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2024
• Date: 2/12/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, February 13, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 10:00AM ET

Trinseo (NYSE:TSE) is a global materials company that develops, manufactures and sells specialty and commodity chemical products. Its portfolio includes plastics, latex binders, synthetic rubber, polystyrene and other performance materials used by manufacturers in a range of end markets.

The company’s products are used in applications such as automotive components, appliances, consumer goods, packaging, building and construction materials, electronics, medical products, paper and carpet. Trinseo also provides materials designed to support product performance, durability, appearance and processing efficiency.

Trinseo was established in 2010 after Bain Capital acquired Dow Chemical’s styrenics business, formerly known as Styron, and the company became publicly traded in 2014. It serves customers across North America, Europe and Asia through manufacturing, research and development, and commercial operations in multiple regions. Its businesses have historically been led by President and Chief Executive Officer Frank Bozich.

Trinseo Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Through self-help initiatives, Trinseo delivered a $50 million increase in adjusted EBITDA for FY 2024 despite macroeconomic challenges.
• The company optimized its portfolio by exiting unprofitable operations, consolidating PMMA production, reducing headcount by 20%, cutting energy intensity by 45%, and extending debt maturities to 2028 to improve liquidity.
• Trinseo agreed to license its polycarbonate technology and equipment to Deepak Nitrite for $52 million, marking the start of a strategic partnership in India’s growing market.
• Recycled-content products grew 47% in sales to represent 4% of total variable margin, with new pilot plants commissioned for PC, ABS, and PMMA circular technologies to meet rising demand.
• Q1 2025 guidance expects $60–80 million in adjusted EBITDA (including a one-time $26 million license gain), with volumes down year-over-year amid ongoing auto, building & construction, and paper market weakness.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Trinseo Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. We welcome the Trinseo Management Team, Frank Bozich, President and CEO; David Stasse, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Bee Van Kessel, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. Today's conference call will include brief remarks by the Management Team, followed by a question-and-answer session. The company distributed its press release, along with its presentation slides, at close of market Wednesday, February 12th. These documents are posted on the company's Investor Relations website and furnished on a Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If anybody should require operator assistance during the call, please press star, then zero on your telephone. I'll now hand the call over to Bee Van Kessel.

[Bee Van Kessel, SVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations at Trinseo]

Thank you, JL, and good morning, everyone. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After our brief remarks, instructions will follow to participate in the question-and-answer session. Our disclosure rules and cautionary notes on forward-looking statements are noted on slide two. During this presentation, we may make certain forward-looking statements, including issuing guidance and describing our future expectations. We must caution you that actual results could differ materially from what is discussed, described, or implied in these statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to, the risk factors set forth in Item 1A of our Annual Report on Form 10-K, or in our other filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements. Today's presentation includes certain non-GAAP financial measurements.

[Bee Van Kessel, SVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations at Trinseo]

A reconciliation of these measurements to corresponding GAAP measures is provided in our earnings release and in the appendix of our investor presentation. The replay of today's conference call and transcript will be archived on the company's Investor Relations website shortly following the conference call. The replay will be available until February 13, 2026. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Frank Bozich.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Thanks, Bee, and welcome to our year-end 2024 earnings call. Before we get into our financial results, I'd like to highlight some of our outstanding safety achievements, as we've had one of the safest summers in the history of the company this past year. I'm proud to announce that 19 production and recycling facilities, all of our global R&D teams, and two site service teams received a Triple Zero Award, which represents zero recordable injuries, zero spills, and zero process safety events for the entire year. With an injury rate of just 0.3%, we continue to operate in the top quartile of companies in the American Chemistry Council and outperformed many of our peers. These results are a testament to the priority that we place on safety in everything that we do and are a reflection on the dedication that our people have to creating a safe work environment.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Moving on to our operational results, this past year saw a continuation and, in some cases, a worsening of many of the market challenges that the chemical industry faced in 2023. Geopolitical uncertainty, elevated inflation, and relatively high interest rates eroded consumer confidence across the globe, which adversely affected our largest end markets of auto, building and construction, and most significantly, Europe and China. Despite these macroeconomic challenges, we were able to improve our full-year adjusted EBITDA by $50 million because of the self-help actions that we've taken over the past couple of years. Amid these challenging times, our focus has been on executing actions within our control and aligned to our transformation strategy as we wait for the macroeconomic environment to inevitably recover.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

These included exiting our unprofitable and energy-intensive styrene inversion polycarbonate production operations, consolidating several of our PMMA sheet operations, and right-sizing the company and its support functions based on the new operating footprint. We also implemented new supply chain systems and processes that enabled a greater than 20% reduction in days of inventory to a level that can be sustained through the cycle. Finally, we took actions to extend our near-term debt maturity to 2028 and greatly improved our liquidity. All of these actions have resulted in a more efficient and focused company. Compared to the first half of 2022, when we began these actions, our energy intensity has decreased by approximately 45%. Our maintenance CapEx has decreased by more than 35%. Due to work process improvements and footprint reductions, we have reduced our total headcount by approximately 20%.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

These actions have allowed us to continue to make progress in our strategic initiatives and circular technologies. We continue to grow our recycled content-containing product offerings, with sales increasing 47% versus prior year and representing now 4% of the total company variable margin in 2024. Sales volumes were higher to higher margin case applications continued to make up an increasing percentage of volumes in our Latex Binder Segment, accounting for 11% of our total segment sales volumes and 18% of our total segment variable margin in 2024. In our Engineered Material Segment, PMMA resin sales and margins continue to show resilience as volumes increase 3% year-over-year, despite a very weak end-market demand environment. We have also made significant advancements in our circular technologies. These include commissioning our polycarbonate dissolution pilot facility and opening our ABS dissolution pilot plant and our PMMA depolymerization demo facility in 2024.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

We anticipate scaling up the PC and PMMA technologies at our Rho, Italy site and the PC dissolution technology at our Zhangjiagang, China site to support the growing demand from our auto clients. Next, I want to spend a few moments discussing our recently announced agreement with Deepak Nitrite Limited. In November, we agreed to supply a polycarbonate license, as well as all proprietary virgin polycarbonate production equipment from our Stade, Germany facility, to Deepak for a combined total of $52 million. While the economics of producing virgin polycarbonate at our Stade facility have become unprofitable and led to our decision to exit that site, our polycarbonate technology remains highly valued, and the assets can still be utilized. We view this agreement as mutually beneficial to both companies and see this as the initial steps of a strategic and collaborative partnership with Deepak.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

We also see India as a significant growth market, where Trinseo currently has minimal exposure. We believe in a base case scenario of at least 7% compound annual demand growth through the end of the decade in our target end markets. Before I hand the call over to Dave, I'd like to make a few comments regarding our fourth quarter results. Core business results were in line with our expectations, as seasonally lower volumes and extended year-end shutdowns led to sequentially lower profitability. Falling raw material prices resulted in significant negative timing impacts in our polymer solutions segment and at Americas Styrenics. While this led to lower adjusted EBITDA than originally anticipated, the lower raw material prices led to lower working capital balances, which contributed to the highest quarter of cash flow generation in over two years. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Dave.

[David Stasse, EVP and CFO at Trinseo]

Thanks, Frank. Before I get into fourth quarter results, I'd like to spend a few minutes discussing our new reporting segments. At the end of the third quarter, we announced restructuring measures that included combining the management of our engineered materials, plastic solutions, and polystyrene businesses. As a result, we made two substantive changes to our reportable segments to be more representative of this new structure and how we intend to operate the businesses going forward. First, the automotive compounding business that was previously part of plastic solutions has been moved into engineered materials. This was a natural move since we already have a smaller compounding business and significant automotive exposure within engineered materials. The second change is that we are combining polystyrene with the two remaining businesses in plastic solutions, ABS and SAN, and are renaming the segment polymer solutions.

[David Stasse, EVP and CFO at Trinseo]

I also want to highlight that in January, we closed on a transaction that increased our available liquidity by approximately $150 million and extended the maturity date of the $115 million of debt that was due in 2025 to 2028. For a forum for this transaction, we ended 2024 with almost $500 million of available liquidity and no maturities until 2028. Moving on to financial results, fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA of $26 million was $6 million higher than prior year and included a $9 million unfavorable net timing impact, primarily in plastic solutions, as styrene prices fell throughout the quarter. Fourth quarter results were also negatively impacted by an additional $15 million of unfavorable net timing at Americas Styrenics due to falling raw material costs. Absent these headwinds, core business results were in line with expectation and improved versus prior year for each of our operating segments.

[David Stasse, EVP and CFO at Trinseo]

Engineered materials saw the highest year-over-year improvement due to moderating input costs, improved PMMA pricing, and a 61% increase in volume sold into consumer electronics applications. Cash provided by operations during the quarter was $85 million, which resulted in free cash flow of $64 million. Now, I'll turn the call back over to Frank.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Thanks, Dave. Looking ahead to 2025, we do not currently anticipate meaningful demand recovery in our major end markets. Geopolitics have negatively impacted our business over the past three years, and we look forward to the resolution of some of the worldwide conflicts that have disrupted global trade flows and decreased European competitiveness. With this in mind, I'd like to give a brief update on the sale process of our joint venture, Americas Styrenics. We, along with our partner, remain committed to selling AmSty with a focus on maximizing value. To this end, we expect an improved valuation environment later this year, which would result in signing later than originally anticipated. We remain very confident that the sale process will be successful and will update the market once we have more clarity on timing.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

We expect the first quarter of 2025 to be sequentially better than Q4, following the pronounced seasonality and negative timing impacts that we experienced at year-end. We are seeing seasonally higher volumes to begin Q1, but still expect first quarter volumes to be lower year-over-year due to continued weakness in automotive and building and construction end markets and in paper applications in Asia. As a result, we expect Q1 adjusted EBITDA of $60-$80 million, which includes a one-time $26 million contribution from the polycarbonate technology license agreement to Deepak. I believe the actions we've taken over the past two years have positioned us well for an eventual market-end recovery, and the refinancing transaction, which we recently closed in January, gives us ample runway to continue pursuing our strategy. We are happy to take your questions.

[Operator]

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. If you are called upon to ask a question and are listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. Your first question comes from the line of Frank Mitsch of Fermium Research. Your line is open.

[Frank Mitsch, President at Fermium Research]

Hey, good morning, folks. I want to follow up on slide 14 in terms of the cash spend that you're expecting for 2025, standing at $390 million. Frank, I believe, or perhaps it was David last quarter, was mentioning a number in the low $300s in terms of the spending. I'm just curious as to where you're seeing the net cash expenditures pick up from what it was a few months ago.

[David Stasse, EVP and CFO at Trinseo]

Good morning, Frank. The only changes I would say, the only changes based on the last time we talked about this figure, which is admittedly higher than it was last year, is in working capital. I mean, predicting working capital, the $40 million outflow of working capital is a function of really two things: volume over the course of the year, which, as Frank said, we're not baking into our forecast anything of significance there, but also raw material prices. Our working capital balance is, at the end, the working capital inflow or outflow is really a function of our forecast of raw material prices at the end of the year, which, look, admittedly, Frank, standing here on February 13th is a little hard to predict. That line item, particularly, is quite likely to change going forward.

[David Stasse, EVP and CFO at Trinseo]

Cash taxes is a little bit higher than what they were last year. Also, Frank, last year, I think, was more like $20 million, and that's just a function of higher profitability. Those are the only changes.

[Frank Mitsch, President at Fermium Research]

Okay. All right. That's totally understand. David, when you were talking about the negative timing impacts in 4Q, restraining profitability or restraining the EBITDA that was reported due to lower styrene monomer, of course, that cuts two ways because you guys are now merchant styrene monomer purchasers. I'm curious as to how we should think about the benefits that I guess you're seeing in 1Q from the lower styrene pricing. How would you factor that into the overall profitability?

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Yeah. Yeah, Frank, you can imagine that a lot of our pricing on our styrene-containing products are indexed on the styrene index pricing, so it's generally a pass-through.

[Frank Mitsch, President at Fermium Research]

Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. All right. Understood. I assume in terms of the delay on the AmSty sale from the first half of this year to the second half of this year, obviously, you guys are operating hand in glove with CP Chem, correct?

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Yeah. Obviously, we're in close cooperation with our joint venture partner. As I said, we anticipate an improved result from AmSty and a better valuation environment later this year.

[Frank Mitsch, President at Fermium Research]

Gotcha. Thanks so much.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Blair of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Your line is open.

[Matthew Blair, Managing Director at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.]

Thank you and good morning. Hopefully, you can hear me okay. I had two questions on the Q1 guidance. First, how much of an impact, if any, is embedded from rising European natural gas prices in the Q1 guide? Could you provide an update on any sort of hedges you might have for 2025? Two, is there any assumption on net timing benefits in that Q1 guide? Thank you.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Yeah, that's a great question. There will be in Q1 a timing, a pricing lag due to natural gas price increases and those inputs into mainly EM that are based on natural gas prices. We would expect that, or the current expectation is that the quarterly pricing that we provided at the end of last year for Q1 to our customers, we wouldn't fully recover the input in cost increase from the natural gas prices. That's mainly an EM-related issue.

[David Stasse, EVP and CFO at Trinseo]

Matthew, as it relates to hedging, look, we've obviously been monitoring this very closely. We have been putting in hedges generally for the short-term in the first quarter. Obviously, I'm sure you've seen the news, or there's a lot of positive kind of speculation coming out of some resolution to the Ukraine situation. A follow-on to that would be a potential reopening of supply from Russia to Europe with natural gas, which obviously, I think, would have a very deflationary effect on natural gas prices in Europe. We do have some hedges in place for the first quarter of this year. It's low. It's less than 50%. Obviously, the near-term prices are really impacted more by the weather than anything else. Also, looking longer term, we're watching the Ukraine situation closely.

[David Stasse, EVP and CFO at Trinseo]

A little bit reticent probably right now, given that, to put on any kind of long-term hedges on natural gas for Europe. I do also just, Matthew, just want to point out, I mean, due to we've exited our energy-intensive businesses in Europe, the two styrene plants as well as polycarbonate. The only real energy-intensive operation that we still have is MMA production in Italy. Our energy intensity has gone down considerably since the last time we went through. It is about half of what it used to be. The last time we went through this, or the last time we had an energy crisis in Europe, our exposure was 2x of what it is today.

[Matthew Blair, Managing Director at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.]

That's helpful. Thank you. My follow-up, it seems like one of the bright spots in the quarter was in engineered materials. You mentioned the 61% increase in volumes into consumer electronics. Do you have any more details here? Was this the result of a new product launch and maybe a one-time benefit, or do you think this is something more sustainable? Thank you.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Yeah. Maybe just to, I think one of the big things year-over-year was that you had a very low base in 2023 by comparison. 2023 was a low year in consumer electronics for many reasons and consumer demand. One, you're starting at a low point. I'm really excited about the work that the team has done during the course of late 2023 and into 2024 to diversify our customer base. I would generally say that our, well, this has been a really strong growth part of our business. One of the biggest areas for recycled-containing products where we're selling into the consumer electronics area, it was a fairly concentrated customer base. These would be the larger brand names in consumer electronics. We've done a very good job diversifying our sales into new customers last year.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

These are really bespoke products. It's not, we're custom formulating a product with up to 60-70% recycled content for specific applications. For that reason, we think these are really resilient sales. Again, the two big drivers are the year-over-year comparison as well as diversification of our customer base.

[Matthew Blair, Managing Director at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Hassan Ahmed of Alembic Global Advisors. Your line is open.

[Hassan Ahmed, Senior Equity Analyst at Alembic Global Advisors]

Morning, Frank. A question around guidance. You guys are guiding to, call it midpoint of guidance, $70 million for Q1. I understand there are some moving parts associated with that. If I annualize that, that's, call it $280 million. I mean, I know there are all these sort of macro uncertainties and the like, but how should we be thinking about 2025?

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Yeah. Look, I mean, great question. For the reasons that you stated, we're reluctant to try and predict the full-year guide at this point. Look, we're very confident in continued positive earnings development in 2025. The drivers give you the buckets. What we announced with Deepak, so $26 million of EBITDA contribution from the licensing agreement, the SG&A reductions that we announced last year in restructuring will give a full-year benefit of $25 million. The PC asset closure and then the subsequent sourcing agreements with that, as well as the new business awards that we've received in qualifying new customers, are similar in magnitude to those previous two areas. Lastly, I would point out that we would expect a much more normalized earnings contribution or EBITDA contribution from AmSty this year.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

You could do the math, but over the past four years, EBITDA contribution for Trinseo from our participation in AmSty was $68 million. We would expect a contribution closer to that than the result we had last year. Those are the big buckets of contribution excluding the market, whatever happens in the market. I would, that's how I would think about it once you land your market assumptions on the underlying demand.

[Hassan Ahmed, Senior Equity Analyst at Alembic Global Advisors]

Very helpful, Frank. As a follow-up, we've seen a nice sort of rebound in the engineered materials sort of segment, EBITDA margin-wise. I mean, last quarter, it was 12% EBITDA margins. Now it's 10%, which obviously year on year is a healthy sort of expansion. I mean, how are you now with all the moving parts and the changes we've seen in the macro, thinking about normalized earnings and normalized EBITDA margins in that segment?

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Yeah. I mean, Hassan, we've been, it's impossible for.

[Hassan Ahmed, Senior Equity Analyst at Alembic Global Advisors]

It's a new world, isn't it?

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

I couldn't tell you what normal is. What I can tell you is we're confident in our ability to show positive earnings momentum in the EM. I think we have a great portfolio. I mean, just as we talked about, look at in last year's environment where we saw, I would say generally in many of our end markets, some weakening in demand, we were able to grow PMMA resin 3% in volume. Fantastic story in the growth that we've seen in our engineered compounds that go into consumer electronics. It's over 60% growth. The other thing that I would point to is these same customers are demanding. There's significant pull from the market for recycled and circular solutions. We believe we have a unique and leadership position in recycling technology for ABS, PC, and PMMA that go into those end segments.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Those investments that we will continue to drive will give us continued momentum there. I feel good about the work the team has done in EM, and I think there's more to come.

[Hassan Ahmed, Senior Equity Analyst at Alembic Global Advisors]

Very helpful. Thanks so much, Frank.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Laurence Alexander of Jefferies. Your line is open.

[Laurence Alexander, Analyst at Jefferies]

Good morning. Three questions. Just one is on the circularity and recycling. Can you just give a sense for what your total size of your platform is in those products and how the margins compare with the balance of your business? Can you touch on what you think the CapEx needs might be down the road, say, over four or five years if the recycling platforms are going to start to scale up?

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

The volume of the recycled-containing products for all of 2024, and I'm looking at Bee and Dave to keep me, I think it was 4% for the full year, but it was growing as the year progressed. I think that toward in Q4, it actually got to 5% of our total volume. The sales of recycled-containing products grew, as I said, over 40% last year. We're seeing relative to our ability to supply and source the material, we see relatively unlimited demand from our end customers. Going to the CapEx, it's a really interesting and dynamic question on this. These investments are not significant. They're either high single-digit or low double-digit million modules. These are modular investments that we would make where we could install those at our various downstream plants.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

The investments, depending, again, it's early days, but it's high single-digit to low double-digit million per module. Okay. Oh, and then you asked about margin premium. We're seeing in each of the areas the sustainable offering or circular offering in PC, ABS, and PMMA, as well as polystyrene in the multiple hundred dollar range, are significant premiums over the virgin premiums or virgin margins.

[Laurence Alexander, Analyst at Jefferies]

Is it fair to say that the payback on any of the modular investments will probably be like one and a half, two years?

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Yeah. It's premature for us to, for me to lean into that one and give you a real view on that. We're seeing very preliminarily, we see that these would be very positive IRRs on these types of investments. Again, it's early stages, and we're in the process of preliminary engineering, and we'll know more by the second half of the year.

[Laurence Alexander, Analyst at Jefferies]

Could you just calibrate what you're hearing from your customers about further destocking or working capital efficiency initiatives and how much of that is baked into your outlook in terms of being sort of a fairly steady demand environment?

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Yeah. I would generally say that we think our value chains have gotten pretty tight. We think that we've done a great job in partnership with our customers to take any slack out of the supply chains. We haven't heard of any significant additional initiatives where people would be looking to take inventory levels down. We haven't seen that. I guess maybe this is the one data point that we are looking at from a longer-term or midterm demand standpoint is what is, let's talk about building and construction in automotive. Since 2008, there's been a deficit in North America and Europe in terms of new construction versus household formation. There is massive pent-up demand there. We think the value chains have largely, they've become balanced. In automotive, while demand is weaker, it's a consumer confidence issue. It's not an inventory.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

We don't see it as an inventory issue. In the medium term, we see the age of the, we watch the age of the car park. The data that we just looked at this morning would tell us that in Europe, the car park, the auto fleet is over 12 years old, which is historically the highest level of age of the car park. In North America, it's over 12 years, which is one of the oldest fleets that I remember in my career. Yeah, we don't see a big drive to destock.

[Laurence Alexander, Analyst at Jefferies]

Yeah. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Roger Spitz of Bank of America. Your line is open.

[Roger Spitz, Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Thank you very much. First, can you speak about the impact of tariffs? For instance, how much do you sell to Canada, Mexico, and/or China directly from the U.S.?

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Yeah. On tariffs, we're thinking about tariffs in three dimensions. Okay. Dimension number one is, okay, what are we importing? What are our purchases from countries that could be subject to import tariffs? We believe that impact will be negligible to us because the purchases are relatively small, and the commodities that we're buying from those countries are in oversupply. We have the ability to switch to avoid the tariff, to switch our suppliers. The second dimension is where do we sell our products from the U.S. production into countries where there could be retaliatory tariffs? I would just say, in general, by far, most of the U.S. production is consumed in the U.S.. Our exports from the U.S. to Canada and Mexico represent low single-digit percentage of our overall sales.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Eighty percent of those are in the auto value chain, and we're highly specified into the tiers. We don't necessarily believe that we will see an impact in terms of demand sitting here today if tariffs were imposed on those sales. The third bucket or the third dimension, which is unknowable at this point, is what would be the end market demand impact on imposition of significant tariffs. There's a lot of uncertainty, and we just don't know at this juncture.

[Roger Spitz, Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Thank you for that. My other question, I'm looking at slide 12 of the deck. For the AR securitization, you have $50 million leftover of availability. Excuse me. Does that mean that, I guess it'll come out with the queue, but are you drawing $100 million under the AR securitization, or is there borrowing-based limitations here?

[David Stasse, EVP and CFO at Trinseo]

Yeah. Hi, Roger. Good morning. It's Dave. There's a borrowing base. The amount we have to borrow against is obviously a function of the receivables balance in the legal entities that participate in the program. The receivables balance was quite low, understandably, at the end of Q4 just because of the kind of seasonality of sales in the quarter. Our borrowing, we were able to, it's a $150 million facility, almost always going back in time, we've had full availability based on the borrowing base. It happened to be particularly low at the end of the year because of lower seasonal volumes, but also lower prices. I talked about earlier the big drop in styrene prices. We had $125 million at the end of the quarter able to be borrowed, and there was $75 million drawn.

[David Stasse, EVP and CFO at Trinseo]

I would expect that borrowing base will be higher in Q1.

[Roger Spitz, Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Got it. Perfect. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Your last question comes from the line of Alex Kelsey of Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

[Alex Kelsey, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. A couple of follow-ups from, I think, what's been asked already. With regard to the EM segment, just now that there's some automotive components in there as well, the $27 million reported in Q4, how much of that was pure EM versus auto of the $27 million?

[David Stasse, EVP and CFO at Trinseo]

Alex, there was always a pretty significant automotive exposure in engineered materials. In fact, auto and building and construction are the largest end markets for what I would call legacy engineered materials. So a lot of PMMA resin applications. I do not have a number for it. We will have to get it of the percentage, the automotive compounding business that moved into engineering. We will have to get that and give it to you offline. I just want to be clear.

[Alex Kelsey, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Yeah. I mean, the automotive compounding segment, not automotive in general. Okay, that's fine. We can follow up. Another one on the license sale with your Indian partner. Can you just remind us the duration of that agreement? I guess the bigger question is, if there is an expiration on that agreement, to the extent that the license and technology is still valuable, can you enter into a similar agreement again? On the other question on that partnership is, Frank, I think you mentioned the start of a strategic relationship with that partner. Can you just talk about what that means or anything else we should expect with them?

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Yeah. No, thanks. That's a great question. Maybe let me give you a little color or a little more background on who Deepak Nitrite is. Deepak is one of the largest Indian public companies in the chemical industry. They are the largest phenol acetone producer in India. This is an attempt, this is a move on their part to move downstream to forward integrate in these value chains because India is a net importer of polycarbonate. There is no domestic production as well. That's sort of their strategy. Their sales are over, they're a multi-billion dollar revenue company, market cap of $4.5 billion. They are a substantial company and have a great presence and cost position in the value chains we participate. In my career, I've had a lot of operations in India. It's hard to get critical mass in India.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Partnerships are important. Having a substantial company that you're partnered with that gives you access to the market is important. Like we said earlier, in our downstream formulated products, we would see a high single-digit compounded annual growth rate in our end markets for our solutions. It is a big opportunity for us going forward. On the license, it is a perpetual license. We believe, as I said in the script, our polycarbonate technology is unique and one of the best technologies in the industry. In Germany, it was disadvantaged for a number of reasons. Elsewhere, it is of significant value. We have the option to expand the capacity with Deepak as well as provide other licenses in other geographies.

[Alex Kelsey, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Okay. Okay. That's very helpful. Two more from me, if I may. On 2025, I understand lots of moving pieces, and you're reticent to offer a true guide out there. But if I just take the cleansing docs and the last transaction, 2025 estimate of $300 million-$350 million EBITDA, as we sit here today, knowing what we know and don't know about the market, do you think that those are still reasonable goal posts for the year?

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Yeah. We're not going to give guidance for the full-year or even bracket it. What I would tell you, because there's so much market uncertainty, there's positives and negatives that are in development, even over last night, development. I don't want to bracket where we would end up. I go back to the comments that I would make that I made, I think, for Hassan. We're very confident in positive earnings momentum. Because a lot of the actions we've taken are well within our control, and those buckets are what we talked about with Deepak, the SG&A restructuring, the make versus buy decision in polycarbonate, and the closure in Stade, as well as business wins. Then again, a much more normalized earning contribution from AmSty.

[Alex Kelsey, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Right. Okay. That makes sense.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

That's a pretty positive, those are positive benefits to this year.

[Alex Kelsey, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Right. Last one, if I may, just the status of cost cuts, Frank or David, I think you mentioned 25 to be realized in 2025. Again, just looking at the old deck that was posted with the last transaction, it was noted there was $80 million of cost outs to be realized in 2025. Can you just help me sort of bridge those numbers or more simply just kind of remind us where you guys stand in terms of total cost outs from the various closures and the corporate restructuring, how much has been realized to date, and what we should expect in 2025 and maybe into 2026? Thank you.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Yeah. We will have to go back to and try and I'm not sure I could give you an answer to that question. What I'm very certain of is the incremental SG&A benefit from the actions that we announced late last year are $25 million. The impact of polycarbonate, we realize some of that. There is an incremental benefit from some of that. Again, I would have to—we will have to follow up with you to give you a complete analysis of that. What I would tell you is we have taken fixed costs down by well over $100 million over the past two years, and we are on track to deliver everything that we have announced. I do not know. I am looking at Dave who can answer that better than I did.

[David Stasse, EVP and CFO at Trinseo]

Alex, look, the actions that we've taken, we will get the full year realization of savings in 2025, substantially. I mean, for the headcount reductions, the SG&A restructuring, that's $30 million. We got $5 million last year. We're going to incremental $25 million. We'll get the full run rate of that this year. We'll also get the full realization of the polycarbonate savings. Obviously, the styrene stuff was done years earlier. We're already seeing the full effect of that in 2025.

[Operator]

Thank you. We have time for one more question. It comes from the line of David Begleiter of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

[David Begleiter, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Thank you. Just a couple of questions. Back to guidance, and I'm sorry, but one more try. In Q1, the polycarbonate agreement, you're looking at about mid $40s million EBITDA. The last two years, you've seen a progression of roughly $20 million sequentially higher in Q2. Get to about mid-60s for Q2. Is that a good run rate? Is that a good proxy, at least directionally speaking, for Q2 versus Q1, perhaps mid $60s million versus where we are right now?

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

Yeah. David, thanks for the question. Actually, Q1 is somewhat more depressed than normal because it's been a slower start to the year than typical. I would also say that we have pricing lag in Q1 that's not immaterial, mainly in EM, because we've been providing quarterly pricing. We price our products to our end customers at the end of Q4. Again, it's very volatile. A lot of the input costs in the EM in Europe are based on natural gas price. The TTF has gone up, and those related products that are based on TTF have gone up with them. Today, we see some pricing lag that would not be recurring after Q1. I would say, yes, I would agree with you. Q2 and 3 will be an improvement over Q1.

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

I wouldn't compare it to prior years simply because we're seeing a more pronounced slow start to the year, and then we have the pricing lag.

[David Begleiter, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Understood. Just on polystyrene, are these assets core now to Trinseo?

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

No. Our polystyrene assets are great assets. Actually, we've done a great job managing those in the past couple of years to optimize the free cash flow generation of the assets. We believe that other people would be investors, would invest in the growth of those assets. We continue to field inbounds and work with potential buyers for those assets, but on an individual basis around the world. There is nothing to report. Again, there is activity and interest. We would continue to explore the possibility of selling those individual assets and are doing that.

[David Begleiter, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Just one last thing. On AmSty, is it fair to say the sales process has been halted? If it has been halted, when was it halted?

[Frank Bozich, President and CEO at Trinseo]

It's not halted. As I said, we're working in conjunction with our partner. Our goal is to monetize our interest in AmSty, and we will continue to progress that. We want to time our process to optimize value. That just means a later marketing than we had originally anticipated.

[David Begleiter, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Thank you.

[Operator]

With no further questions, that concludes our Q&A session.

Participants

Executives

• Bee Van Kessel, SVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations
• David Stasse, EVP and CFO
• Frank Bozich, President and CEO

Analysts

• David Begleiter, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank
• Laurence Alexander, Analyst at Jefferies
• Roger Spitz, Research Analyst at Bank of America
• Frank Mitsch, President at Fermium Research
• Alex Kelsey, Analyst at Wells Fargo
• Hassan Ahmed, Senior Equity Analyst at Alembic Global Advisors
• Matthew Blair, Managing Director at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.