Element Solutions Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Element Solutions EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.34
• Consensus EPS: $0.33
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.01
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.34

Element Solutions Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $593.70 million
• Expected Revenue: $576.73 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$16.97 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +3.30%

Element Solutions Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 4/23/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, April 24, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 8:30AM ET

Element Solutions (NYSE:ESI) operates as a specialty chemicals company in the United States, China, and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Electronics, and Industrial & Specialty. The Electronics segment researches, formulates, and sells specialty chemicals and materials for various types of electronics hardware products. This segment also supplies surface mount technologies, fluxes, thermal management material, coatings, and other attachment materials; chemical formulations to the electronics industry; and advanced copper interconnects, die attachment, sintered silver material, adhesives, wafer bump processes, and photomask technologies for semiconductor industry. It primarily serves mobile communications, computers, automobiles, and aerospace equipment industries. The Industrial & Specialty segment provides industrial solutions, which include chemical systems that protect and decorate metal and plastic surfaces; consumable chemicals that enable printing image transfer on flexible packaging materials; and chemistries used in water-based hydraulic control fluids for offshore energy production applications. It serves aerospace, automotive, construction, consumer electronics, consumer packaged goods, and oil and gas production end markets. The company was formerly known as Platform Specialty Products Corporation and changed its name to Element Solutions Inc in January 2019. Element Solutions Inc was founded in 1785 and is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Element Solutions Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

I would now like to turn the call over to Varun Karn, Vice President of Strategy and Integration. Please go ahead.

[Varun Gokarn, Vice President - Strategy and Integration at Element Solutions]

Good morning, and thank you for participating in our first quarter twenty twenty five earnings conference call. Joining me today are our Executive Chairman, Sir Martin Franklin President and CEO, Ben Glicklitch and CFO, Carrie Dorman. In accordance with Regulation FD, we are webcasting this conference call. A replay will be made available in the Investors section of the company's website. During today's call, we will make certain forward looking statements that reflect our current views about the company's future performance and financial results.

[Varun Gokarn, Vice President - Strategy and Integration at Element Solutions]

These statements are based on assumptions and expectations of future events, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the earnings release, supplemental slides and most recent SEC filings on our website for a discussion of material risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from our expectations and predictions. Today's materials also include financial information that has not been prepared in accordance with U. S. GAAP.

[Varun Gokarn, Vice President - Strategy and Integration at Element Solutions]

Please refer to the earnings release and supplemental slides for definitions and reconciliations of these non GAAP measures to comparable GAAP financial measures. It is now my pleasure to introduce our CEO, Ben Glicklage.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Thank you, Varun, and good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining. Element Solutions started 2025 strong. We grew profits and continue to see contributions from progress executing on our breakthrough growth strategies. The trends that drove our performance in 2024 continue to propel us forward.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

There's been no pause in demand from fast growing AI, advanced packaging and data center markets and we also benefited from an improvement in consumer electronics markets in Asia. We grew mid single digits organically despite ongoing softness in Western automotive and general industrial supply chains and a mediocre market backdrop for Western smartphones. Our overall Electronics business grew 10% organically on the back of our ongoing strong execution and consistent investment to improve our value proposition in leading edge semiconductor and power electronics technologies. Sales from our wafer level packaging products grew more than 20% as programs on leading edge nodes continue to ramp including a significant pickup from high bandwidth memory applications. Order patterns from these customers remain strong.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Similarly, despite well documented weakness from a major domestic electric vehicle OEM, our power electronics business grew nicely in the quarter from new wins that have broadened our customer base. Several years ago, we had a collection of electronics businesses with good capabilities in select niches. Today, we have a single unified electronics business that is leading in important emerging categories, collaborating across its different product areas to provide system level solutions to OEMs and building a pipeline of breakthrough innovation that should support future growth. This has been a deliberate transformation and we're only just beginning to see the results. Electronics is also supporting our business at a time of cyclical weakness in our Industrial and Specialty segment.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

In addition to a weak overall backdrop in industrial markets, the segment suffered from timing related delays in certain offshore projects. The offshore market remains healthy and we expect to recover those volumes in the second half of twenty twenty five. Despite these dynamics, profitability in the I and S segment was relatively steady year on year due to modest raw material deflation and the proven price and cost discipline that we've demonstrated for the past several quarters. Our results in the first quarter are not reflective of the level of macroeconomic volatility of the current moment. On the other hand, we have a demonstrated ability to be nimble in periods of uncertainty and a clear track record of navigating through these periods by focusing on our customers while also managing cost as necessary to preserve profits.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

We remain steadfast in pursuing thoughtful long term investment to develop strategic capabilities that support the technologies that we expect to drive our markets. Through recent periods of electronics contraction and recovery, we've maintained and selectively grown sales and technical resources needed to support those markets. You should not expect that investment posture to change with renewed market volatility. With our graphic sale completed in Q1, we're fortunate to have the strongest balance sheet in our history as ESI. We have substantial capacity to deploy capital to drive long term shareholder value and expect the current market to create attractive opportunities.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Will now take you through our first quarter business results in more detail. Carey? Thanks, Ben. Good morning, everyone. On Slide three, you can see a summary of our first quarter financial results.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Organic sales and constant currency adjusted EBITDA both grew 5% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA of $128,000,000 was above our guidance target for the quarter. Electronics organic growth of 10% was broad based across historically higher margin, higher value categories in circuitry and semiconductor as well as relatively lower margin assembly materials for consumer electronics. This translated into constant currency adjusted EBITDA growth of 9% in electronics. ESI's adjusted EBITDA margin declined roughly 30 basis points year over year in constant currency terms.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

These margins were negatively impacted by higher pass through metal prices, which drove a 70 basis point headwind relative to the same quarter last year. Excluding the impact of roughly $100,000,000 of pass through metal sales in Assembly Solutions, our adjusted EBITDA margin would have been 26% corresponding to a 50 basis point improvement versus last year. While FX rates have improved for us recently, currency negatively impacted total company net sales in the first quarter by roughly 3% and with a roughly $5,000,000 year over year headwind to adjusted EBITDA. We expect this to reverse in Q2 and become a tailwind based on current exchange rates. On Slide four, we share additional detail on the drivers of organic net sales growth in our two segments.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

In electronics, we saw double digit growth with strong performance across all three business units. In Assembly, stronger consumer electronics demand in Asia and The Americas more than offset continued industrial weakness, primarily in Western Europe. Advanced specialty solder paste volumes for various computing applications grew meaningfully, and we saw strong growth of technically challenging engineered assembly solutions used in server and data center applications. Circuitry Solutions sales improved 8% organically with growth continuing to come from data center applications, memory disk markets and specialty finishes for circuit boards in the Asian EV market. Our business mix continues to shift towards B2B end markets as applications for servers, data centers and high performance computing grow rapidly.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

This transition should dampen both quarterly seasonality and general cyclicality over time. Semiconductor Solutions organic net sales grew 17% from continued robust demand in wafer level packaging for semi fab and OSAT customers in Asia. Our VIAform copper damascene product line grew north of 20% this quarter. The customer proximity we gained in 2023 by terminating our distribution agreement and going direct to our customers continues to yield great results. We expect to commercialize two new leading edge products that further support advanced packaging applications later this year.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Our power electronics products also continue to grow well in the first quarter. We've made substantial progress broadening the Argamax sintered silver technology customer base to electric vehicle manufacturers in Asia and in Europe. These new customer wins signal growing commercial traction and validates our leading technology position in a rapidly growing end market. Industrial and Specialty organic net sales declined 2% year over year. The 1% decline in the core industrial business was largely volume driven and concentrated in Europe.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

While we have not yet seen a pickup, recent policy changes in Europe towards infrastructure and defense investment may drive an increase in industrial activity that should benefit our business. Offshore's year over year sales decline in the quarter was a result of timing for a few large orders that fell into the latter part of the year. We continue to expect healthy growth for that business this year on the back of pricing and new wins. Slide five addresses cash flow and the balance sheet. We generated $30,000,000 of adjusted free cash flow in Q1.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

The adjustment takes into consideration the sale of our Graphics business and certain non recurring expenses and tax items. The first quarter is always our slowest from a cash flow standpoint, given the semi annual interest payment on our bonds and annual incentive payments. We invested $12,000,000 into working capital, which primarily reflects a seasonal inventory build and higher accounts receivable due to increased SIFs. Capacity in the quarter was $11,000,000 somewhat below our guided run rate. We still plan to invest roughly $65,000,000 over the course of the year to support strategic growth initiatives.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Now turning to the balance sheet. Our net leverage ratio at the end of the quarter was 2.1 times, which is the lowest level in our history at ESI. Our capital structure remains fully fixed at an effective rate of 4% and we have no debt maturities until 2028. And with that, I will turn the call back to Ben. Ben?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Thank you, Carrie. Our business fared well through the first quarter despite the specter of trade actions impacting business and consumer sentiment. But we're a short cycle business and any economic assumption for the balance of the year comes with macro uncertainties. Given our global footprint, the recently announced trade actions have added complexity to our business ecosystem. In this uncertain moment, there are immutable aspects of our business that merit reiterating.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

We operate locally in most of our markets with sourcing, manufacturing and technical support resources close to our customers. Our diversified and regionalized manufacturing footprint allows us to be nimble to accommodate dynamic trade flows. Our products represent a tiny fraction of the cost of high value goods, but are integral to their performance. Thanks to those attributes, we believe we can mitigate most of the direct impact from ongoing and potential future tariffs on our cost structure. Additionally, we're in the midst of initiatives to further localize sourcing and remain in regular communication with suppliers and customers around ways to mitigate cost issues that arise as a result of the ongoing tariff situation.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

There may also prove to be opportunities where competition may not have the same luxuries of flexibility and geographic breadth that we enjoy. In the absence of additional clarity around tariff implementation and its impact on demand, without any emergent signs of a slowdown in our core markets and with some cushion provided by the weaker U. S. Dollar and outperformance in Q1, we're maintaining our initial full year guidance of adjusted EBITDA between $520,000,000 and $540,000,000 as our current best estimate of earnings potential this year. For the second quarter of twenty twenty five, we expect a similar demand picture to Q1 and therefore expect adjusted EBITDA in the range of 120,000,000 to $125,000,000 which is roughly flat sequentially when removing the $4,000,000 contribution from our Graphics business in Q1.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

This assumes that tariffs do not have a sequential demand impact, which is the best assumption that we can make today, especially based on April trading, which has been solid thus far. As we've demonstrated repeatedly in recent periods of uncertainty, whether during prior tariff escalations in 2019, COVID in 2020 or the inflationary impacts that followed, we're prepared to react quickly to shifts in demand and cost. We have a highly variable OpEx structure and local teams that can rapidly respond to customer needs. We are prepared to navigate the dynamic environment that has emerged. It was a good start to 2025.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Commercially, we've built a high quality, high probability pipeline of large leading edge electronics opportunities and margin enhancing industrial projects. We think these are unlikely to be derailed by current circumstances. Operationally, we're increasing manufacturing capacity for future growth areas such as nano copper and power electronics, streamlining our legacy manufacturing footprint and we're building research and applications development in high leverage geographies. We continue to execute other functional process improvement programs to add efficiency across the organization. Our company is executing well with long term growth prospects as good if not better than in the past.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

That is a tribute to our teams who are responsible for another good quarter of both results and progress. So let me close by thanking all of our stakeholders for their continued support of Element Solutions and in particular our talented and dedicated people around the world working productively and collaboratively and quite creatively, I would add, to support our customers and drive long term value for our shareholders. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

[Operator]

Thank you. And our first question comes from the line of Josh Spector with UBS. Your line is open.

[James Cannon, Equity Research Analyst at UBS Group]

Hey guys, this is James Cannon on for Josh. Congrats on a solid quarter. Just wanted to on the guidance range and particularly since you're not including any significant impact from tariffs. As we think about the low end of the range, can you just remind us what some of the macro indicators that are underlying that assumption are?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Sure. Maybe just the big picture thoughts on the guidance range as just articulated in our prepared remarks. We finished Q1 ahead of plan. We see a modest impact from tariffs from a cost perspective. We're largely able to mitigate most of the impact from tariffs to cost.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

We've got an FX tailwind and our April trading, right, demand remains strong. So we haven't seen any signal of demand destruction year to date from tariffs. And so it's on that basis that we're maintaining our full year guide. There's nothing that's indicated demand destruction. And so the demand assumptions we had entering the year are the best we have.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

There's a bit of, I'd call it more uncertainty around that range, but we haven't seen anything. If anything, April is ahead of plan. So how do you get to the high end and the low end? It's really electronic strength and industrial weakness. Those are the two key variables.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

The electronics business is outperforming our baseline expectations entering the year. The industrial market is modestly weaker, I would say. And if that persists, depends which one sort of overtakes the other to get to the various bookends of that range and obviously doesn't include any demand disruption from tariffs given the uncertainty around what tariffs will be implemented and when and what that will do, to the consumer.

[James Cannon, Equity Research Analyst at UBS Group]

Got it. Thanks. And just on a separate note, I just wanted to poke on, you called out data center strength in both assembly and circuitry. I was wondering if you could frame, like, just size the exposure there.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Yeah. So so, as we think about our data center exposure in the circuitry business, we're selling circuit board process chemistries that go into the large server boards. And that's a business that wasn't that big for us just a couple of years ago, but it's been growing really rapidly double digits year on year now for several years. And on the assembly business, we talked about high performance specialty alloys, solder paste and then engineered products that are used in server board assembly as well. Altogether, this is north of $100,000,000 in both of those businesses.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

If you add in our memory disk business and circuitry, you're bumping up against $200,000,000, of exposure in that market.

[James Cannon, Equity Research Analyst at UBS Group]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Pravesh Lodaya with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

[Bhavesh Lodaya, US Chemicals Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets]

Hi. Good morning, Ben. Ben, one more follow-up on the guidance. Assuming we do see a slower end market demand in the second half, and given how important the third quarter is for ESI, can you talk about some of the potential actions that you envision you can take to defend your annual guide here?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Yeah. So so, you know, Element has, the benefit of a highly variable cost structure. It's something we've highlighted in the past and been able to demonstrate in the past. We can almost automatically take dramatic cost out of the business from incentive compensation, quickly tighten our belt around travel and other discretionary expense line items without damaging the long term growth trajectory of the business. And we flex that down if you go back to Q2 of twenty twenty where we took SG and A down 1520% in a quarter.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

And so if we need to do that, we know how to do that, we can do that without difficulty. That's not contemplated in our guide right now. We're running with, let's call it, full OpEx out of Q1 and into Q2. And so those levers remain at our disposal.

[Bhavesh Lodaya, US Chemicals Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets]

Got it. And so my follow-up, maybe a question for Martin. Martin, you have been a large shareholder and obviously a big part of Element Solutions growth story so far. As we look ahead from here, where do you see yourself as part of the Element Solutions story? And in terms of ownership and involvement in study study directions going ahead from here?

[Sir Martin Franklin, Executive Chairman at Element Solutions]

I didn't hear the question clearly. Dispension. Where do you see

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

your involvement and put that in the context of recent?

[Sir Martin Franklin, Executive Chairman at Element Solutions]

So

[Sir Martin Franklin, Executive Chairman at Element Solutions]

think you're probably asking me why for the first time in twelve years I sold some shares, and that's simply for liquidity reasons. And as a matter of principle, I wouldn't want to sell shares at a time when the business was obviously not inhibited in any way from my transacting or in a very healthy state. And of course, as you can see, the business is in a very healthy state. It really doesn't change anything to do with my long term vision for the company, my long term involvement with the company. That was simply for liquidity purposes.

[Sir Martin Franklin, Executive Chairman at Element Solutions]

We've it's taken it's a long journey for me, as you know, from founding platform to today. And I feel that if you like persevering and working to put this business in the right position has been a journey that's appropriately being rewarded in the equity markets, not obviously with all this current disruption, but overall. So I don't think anything changing. And taking a long time to really understand this business. And by the time I'm getting to the point where you really understand it, no point in stopping now for Lerio.

[Bhavesh Lodaya, US Chemicals Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets]

Appreciate the thoughts. Thank you.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners. Your line is open.

[Michael Harrison, Managing Director and Senior Chemicals Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

Hi, good morning.

[Sir Martin Franklin, Executive Chairman at Element Solutions]

Good morning. Has noted

[Michael Harrison, Managing Director and Senior Chemicals Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

within the semiconductor business strong growth in wafer level packaging and you mentioned high bandwidth memory as a driver there. Can you give us a little more color on the key applications that you're serving in high bandwidth memory? And maybe comment on how you see the opportunity unfolding there?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Yes. Our wafer level packaging business continues to grow really nicely. The primary product in there is damascene copper. And you'll recall in 2023, we terminated a long term distribution agreement there, gave us more customer proximity, better access to technology roadmaps. We talked about having a couple of new product launches coming in the back part of this year associated with wafer level packaging business and really directly attributable to that.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

So there's been very strong growth. Within high bandwidth memory, are Korean customers that are ramping their production significantly. Again this is data center and high performance computing driven and we see a lot of growth opportunity there and our product has incumbency or is established I would say, incumbency in that market, going forward.

[Michael Harrison, Managing Director and Senior Chemicals Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

All right. And then also was just wondering, within the Electronics business, you've been targeting 2% to 4% outperformance of the underlying market over time. In the current environment where there is some additional uncertainty or we might expect some potential slowing of the underlying market, how confident are you that you can still deliver on that outperformance of 2% to 4%?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Appreciate that question, Mike. It's not as though we're coming off a period of really robust growth in the broader electronic supply chain. You go back to 2024, you had soft MSI. You did have a strong PCB market, which we nicely outperformed. And if you look at this quarter, our semi business growing in the teens is, I would say vastly outperforming the underlying semi market and our assembly and circuitry business is both growing in double digits organically.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

I think it's also healthy outperformance relative to those markets. The reason for that is our penetration of fast growing emerging growth vectors. We refer to them also as these B2B sales, talking about data centers and lower the orbit satellites that are dislocated from the consumer electronics cycles that used to be primary drivers of our electronics business. We see those B2B markets as continuing to grow and have seen no slowdown in demand if anything acceleration in demand there. And so we are confident in our ability to continue to outperform.

[Michael Harrison, Managing Director and Senior Chemicals Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

All right. Thanks very much.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Steve with Bank of America. Your line is open.

[Rock Hoffman, Equity Research Associate at Bank of America]

Hi, this is Rock Hall from the line for Steve Byrne. Just given the recent focus on rejiggering manufacturing locations besides the tariffs as well as preparing for the potential, of a consumer or industrial demand pullback. Is there any risk to the timelines of rollouts for blockbuster products such as ArgoMax, Cuprion, and ShadowPlus as well as any other medium term, projects getting pushed out further?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Yeah. It's a it's a fair question, Rock. So there there are two dynamics here. Right? The first is to protect ourselves and our customers from the impact of tariff price increases.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

We're localizing certain parts of our supply chain, moving production from one site to another. That's a discrete tactical activity. We'd like to believe that we have fungibility across our sites from a production perspective. And so that's something that's ongoing by our local teams. On the other side, as you mentioned, we do have some big products coming down the pipeline that require discrete manufacturing.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

And the people working on those are different people, right? So we are nearly finished with doubling our ArgoMax capacity at our site that produces that and we've made real strides forward on active copper manufacturing, and trying to scale that up and we're expecting to have a new plant ready, mid scale plant ready to produce that in the second half of this year. So there's a lot of activity in the supply chain, but we're adequately staffed and resourced to support it.

[Rock Hoffman, Equity Research Associate at Bank of America]

Understood. And just as a follow-up, could you go a bit more into, how the industrial, business is performing geographically and key market drivers that enabled, only 1% organic sales drop, this quarter?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Yeah. It's a it's a good observation. The the industrial surface treatment business, which sits within our industrial and specialty segment, had revenue and volume down about 1%. That was weakness in Europe, relatively stable, slightly down market in The Americas and some strong growth coming out of Asia. And so our Asian industrial business is winning share, is participating in the growth in the automotive sector in China and benefiting from that.

[Rock Hoffman, Equity Research Associate at Bank of America]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Parkinson with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

[Christopher Parkinson, Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC]

Great. Thank you so much for taking my question.

[Christopher Parkinson, Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC]

Ben, it's very clear that premiumization of the portfolios, obviously, already been paying off and perhaps paying off even more despite some uncertainty. Can you just get on some of the things, getting away from tariffs for just a second, but just what makes you the most enthusiastic, across both assembly and circuitry and how you see your product product offerings, you know, kind of evolving throughout '25, '20 '6, what you're hearing from the marketplace, and perhaps if you could sneak in a comment on some green in there as well, it'd be greatly appreciated.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Yeah. Absolutely. So you asked about circuitry and assembly specifically, and so I'll address those two. I think the general observation that we're seeing a shift towards high value B2B sales, in both of those businesses, is very exciting, and will change some of the cyclicality that you might have seen in our assembly business and our circuitry business in the past. So, you know, our technologies for these very high performing server boards are different than the GPUs themselves, but the boards that the GPUs sit on inside of those data centers are very thick, very difficult to metalize.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

And we've got the flagship products and process technology for that application. And so we've been winning significant share there. We've made real strides penetrating the IC substrate market, which has been a softer market within the circuit board or within the circuitry industry, but has long term very high performance or has very high growth opportunities associated with it. We've won real business with final step metallization or what's called solder preparation for electric vehicles where there's an immersion 10 product that's been growing really nicely in the Asian electric vehicle market. So all across the circuitry business, we're seeing new demand vectors where our technologies are preferred processes.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

In the assembly business, we've been skewing that business towards higher tech applications through innovation and alloys, some engineered products that have really interesting applications in data centers. And then Active Copper isn't contributing yet, and that's Cuprion. Indeed, the number of applications and the pull from the customer base is incredibly robust. The engagement with OEMs, OSATs, specifiers and applicators remains really, really high. And so our conviction in the earnings potential of that technology is rock solid and just an added level layer of growth from here forward.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

It's great color.

[Christopher Parkinson, Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC]

And just as a quick follow-up, I think the balance sheet is in a pretty good spot, especially after the graphic sale. Can you just hit on can you just give us some insights on how you're thinking about some of the tuck in M and A you've discussed before, buybacks, and just your comfort level going forward for the balance of '25? Thank you so much.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Yes, absolutely. Thanks for the question, Chris. Leverage is as low as it's ever been in our history, six year history as Element Solutions. Balance sheet is in really good shape. We paid down some debt and still have $500,000,000 of cash to deploy.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

And there's a lot of volatility right now and the volatility should create interesting opportunities to deploy that capital and we're very well positioned to take advantage of them. With regard to M and A versus buybacks, think the simple observation I'd make is that the hurdle for M and A is higher with our equity where it is. And that doesn't mean that there can't be any very compelling M and A created by this opportunity, but the buyback option looks pretty interesting too.

[Christopher Parkinson, Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC]

Thank you so much.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Pete Ottterland with Truist Securities. Your line is open.

[Peter Osterland, Equity Research Analyst at Truist Securities]

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to start by following up on the impact that tariff uncertainty might be having on customer conversations and order patterns. I guess specifically, have you seen any signs of tariff related pre buying across your core end markets either in first quarter or in April?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Yes, it's a good question, Pete. And that's something we've been looking for evidence of. We see the sort of headlines of folks buying new phones in anticipation of tariffs. But from where we sit in our supply chain, we're not seeing that as a direct pull on consumption of our chemistries. And so we really don't see any clear evidence of this being a pre build.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

That's not to say that some of the demand isn't. But again, if you think about where the growth is coming from, these are B2B sales and you can see the CapEx that's driving it, whether that's in data centers or in the electric vehicle market or in the low earth orbit satellite markets. And so, we don't think that this is driven by prebuild or prebuying, but some of it could be in fairness.

[Peter Osterland, Equity Research Analyst at Truist Securities]

That's very helpful color. As a follow-up, just wanted to ask about the margin performance within IMS. You had a nice expansion there in the first quarter despite organic growth being down. So I guess just looking to the rest of the year, as the Energy business comes back, would you expect to drive segment margins higher from here? Or were there any benefits to call out from mix or costs that were limited to the first quarter?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Yes, it's a good observation, right? That offshore business is a high margin business for us and it was down year over year. We talked about that in the prepared remarks what the drivers of that are and we do expect it to get better in the second half which will drive margin expansion all else equal. The reason that margins improved is the standard cost price discipline we've exercised and we've seen some ongoing raw material deflation which we expected entering the year. And there is reason to see that Industrial and Specialty segment margin improve going forward.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Don't care if there's anything you'd I think the other point to make is that volumes in the core Industrial business are still

[Carey Dorman, EVP and CFO at Element Solutions]

down meaningfully from their peak. And while we are highly variable cost model, getting more volumes at those plants does have some operating leverage. So we're not anticipating a lot of that in 2025, but that's still upside to margin as you think about the long term opportunity there.

[Peter Osterland, Equity Research Analyst at Truist Securities]

All right. Very helpful. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of John Roberts with Mizuho. Your line is open.

[John Roberts, Managing Director at Mizuho Financial Group]

Thank you and nice quarter and guidance. I assume your March results and your June guidance has a bonus accrual consistent with your full year previous earnings targets or if not could you tell us what you're assuming there?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Yeah. Look, as we answered a question earlier, we're running with full OpEx right now. So we haven't been reducing bonus accruals on the basis of demand destruction that we haven't seen any of yet. So we have that full lever at our disposal.

[John Roberts, Managing Director at Mizuho Financial Group]

Any seasonal differences you're expecting here in the next second, third and fourth quarter versus what you had in 2024?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Yes, that's a great question, John. And it speaks to the Q2 guide. It's hard to say what a normal year is, but if you go back several years, typically the second half was 5253% of EBITDA and the first half was the balance. The past several years have had a lot of different lumps associated with supply chain disruptions and all the things we've lived through. Last year, interestingly enough, the second quarter was quite strong in electronics benefiting from the prebuilds of smartphones that typically fall into Q3 and other consumer electronics device launches.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

So we had a stronger Q2 than typical and we didn't have the same level of Q3 uplift that we normally would have. So when we look at Q2 this year, we're assuming a more, I'll call it normal seasonal pattern on the basis of consistent demand from Q1 into Q2.

[John Roberts, Managing Director at Mizuho Financial Group]

Thank you.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of John Tanwanteng with CJS Securities. Your line is open.

[Jonathan Tanwanteng, Managing Director at CJS Securities]

Hi, thanks for taking my questions and nice quarter. The first one just expanding a little bit more on the stronger demand in April, I guess the stable demand. Are you seeing any pockets of weakness or strength in there? Or is a straight line continuation of what you saw in Q1 by end market, number one? And I'll follow on after that.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Yes. It's really consistent with Q1. In some areas, a modest acceleration around semi is what I would say.

[Jonathan Tanwanteng, Managing Director at CJS Securities]

Okay. Great. And then for the year, I just wanted to be clear. Are you assuming zero demand destruction from the current tariff environment, say, a base level of 10% and, you know, with the potential for more depending on the countries and where negotiations go. Is that is that what I'm hearing, in in terms of what what the underlying assumption is at this point?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Yeah. We're assuming the same on in aggregate, the same demand environment that we, you know, expected entering the year.

[Jonathan Tanwanteng, Managing Director at CJS Securities]

Okay. Great. And and that's you know, if you see, for example, the the continuation of a of a 45% for, say, China through the rest of the year, that's not gonna meaningfully impact what your what your expectations are for demand.

[Sir Martin Franklin, Executive Chairman at Element Solutions]

It's hard to say to to put parameters around that because, you know, take, for example, the latest tariffs in the in the tariff argument exempting a whole series of products that we are a part

[Sir Martin Franklin, Executive Chairman at Element Solutions]

of the

[Sir Martin Franklin, Executive Chairman at Element Solutions]

manufacturing process. So the devil's going to be in the details. So I wouldn't I think trying to micro pick at that doesn't really work because you're dealing with an environment that's so volatile.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

So this is on the assumption that the world is continuing as normal. And importantly, it's taking into consideration the cost impacts of that, right? And so what we're saying with this is we can mitigate the impact of tariffs on our cost structure and maintain our guidance range on that basis. We can go through those those levers of what we're doing to offset cost in the different buckets if that's a follow-up that folks want to go into.

[Jonathan Tanwanteng, Managing Director at CJS Securities]

Great. No. That makes sense. Thank you, guys.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Alexey Yefremov with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

[Ryan Weis, Equity Research Associate at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Thanks and good morning. This is Ryan on for Alexei. Ben, I guess I'll take the low hanging fruit here and just ask you what exactly are you guys doing to kind of mitigate the costs that are coming in the supply chain from tariffs at this point?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

I set myself up for that one. So there are really three buckets of cost increases that we're seeing from client tariffs. The first is raw materials that are imported from China into The United States and we don't do much of that ourselves. We do have suppliers that are sourcing from China. And so we've spent a bunch of time trying to find alternative sources and understanding what those cost impacts would be to us.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

And that's a pricing lever that we've had to throw and we've been very clear. And we've done this in the past when we've seen inflation of specific commodities where we pass that on to customers directly. The second bucket are finished goods or rather other things that we're importing into The U. S. From places other than China.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

So one example is Mexico. We've got quite a bit of cross border trade with Mexico. Unfortunately, we qualify for the USMCA exemptions there. And so figuring out what products are going back and forth and making sure that they do qualify for those exemptions has been a big piece of work and we've got confidence that 10% tariff on imports in The United States isn't going to be meaningful for us. The third bucket are things that we're shipping from The United States to China.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

And we do have some finished goods and raws that we're shipping into China. And what we've done to mitigate that impact is localization, right? And so moving our sourcing and moving our manufacturing from The United States to jurisdictions in Asia, maybe not directly into China, and shipping through and shipping to China from there. And that should be able to offset most of that impact. And net net, we don't view it as a headwind to our guidance.

[Ryan Weis, Equity Research Associate at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Understood. That's helpful. I guess just sticking on this topic, I mean, talked about kind of China to The U. S. And U.

[Ryan Weis, Equity Research Associate at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

S. To China. Can you maybe just size on a dollar basis or a percentage basis of goods just kind of like what your actual exposure there is? Thanks.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

US to China is, you know, in and around $10,000,000. China to US direct is negligible. Again, that's through our suppliers. And then the finished goods into The U. S.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

From other countries is sizable. But again, we've been able to offset that through exemptions and also some level of localization.

[Ryan Weis, Equity Research Associate at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of David Silver with C. L. King. Your line is open.

[David Silver, Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at C.L. King & Associates]

Okay. Thank you. I had a question, I guess, about maybe some of your the behavior of some of your major customers. And I'd like to maybe focus on your R and D activities and your product development activities, in particular, where you're collaborating closely with customers. But has the current uncertain environment that everyone's asking about, has that had a notable impact on the company in terms of the pace or the resourcing behavior of your customers?

[David Silver, Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at C.L. King & Associates]

In other words, for longer term projects where you're collaborating, what has been the behavior? Has there been any change, from your major customers given the current uncertain environment?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

The short answer, David, is no. We're working on long term projects with breakthrough associated with breakthrough technologies. And industry, the market, the consumer is pulling those technologies. And so we continue to see very active level of engagement, you know, between our r and d functions, our direct customers, specifiers, OEMs. The business is very local.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

And so our innovation is not just on the breakthroughs, but it's on new applications technologies, it's on sustainable applications, and we've seen no pause in momentum whatsoever. You heard us talk about two new product introductions we're expecting in our most advanced front end area at the end of this year and those are continuing at pace.

[David Silver, Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at C.L. King & Associates]

Okay. Thank you. And then just one last one. But if I caught your comments correctly, I think regarding consumer electronics, you've indicated maybe a slowdown or softness in the Western, I think smartphone market. But then you also talked about a pickup in that category in Asia.

[David Silver, Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at C.L. King & Associates]

And I'm just wondering if you could maybe just flush that out a little bit. Is that company specific? Is there a big shift going on that you see? And why wouldn't the softness in the Western why wouldn't the Western consumer electronics market start to look a little bit more like the growth year performance in Asia going forward?

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Yes. You call out an interesting note, which is we talked about strength in consumer electronics in The Americas, but softness in smartphones in the West. That consumer electronics strength in The Americas is PCs and other consumer electronics ex smartphones. There was strength in the local Chinese smartphone market in the quarter, right? We've seen some government subsidy to drive consumer activity in China.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

And so we did see a strength in that local market. That's not for export. And also strength in non smartphone consumer electronics in The Americas. That's the distinction that I would call that you've picked up and that we saw in the first quarter.

[David Silver, Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at C.L. King & Associates]

Great. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Since there are no more questions from the queue, I will now turn the call back over to Ben Gliklich for closing remarks.

[Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO at Element Solutions]

Thank you, Cass. Thank you, everybody, for joining. We look forward to seeing many of you in the weeks and months to come. Have a great day. Take care.

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Varun Gokarn, Vice President - Strategy and Integration
• Benjamin Gliklich, President and CEO
• Sir Martin Franklin, Executive Chairman
• Carey Dorman, EVP and CFO

Analysts

• James Cannon, Equity Research Analyst at UBS Group
• Bhavesh Lodaya, US Chemicals Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets
• Michael Harrison, Managing Director and Senior Chemicals Analyst at Seaport Research Partners
• Rock Hoffman, Equity Research Associate at Bank of America
• Christopher Parkinson, Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC
• Peter Osterland, Equity Research Analyst at Truist Securities
• John Roberts, Managing Director at Mizuho Financial Group
• Jonathan Tanwanteng, Managing Director at CJS Securities
• Ryan Weis, Equity Research Associate at KeyBanc Capital Markets
• David Silver, Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at C.L. King & Associates