Ingevity Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 5, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Ingevity delivered a consolidated 30.1% EBITDA margin in Q2 and generated strong free cash flow, reducing net leverage to 3× and targeting below 2.8× by year-end.
  • Negative Sentiment: The APT segment recorded a noncash $184 million goodwill impairment due to tariff uncertainty and weak industrial markets, with Q2 sales down 10% and EBITDA of just $1 million.
  • Positive Sentiment: Performance Chemicals (Roadtec) achieved near-20% EBITDA margin—the highest in almost two years—after consuming high-cost CTO inventory and now expects full-year margin in the high single to low double digits.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Second-quarter sales fell 7% to $365 million driven by portfolio repositioning, wet weather and indirect tariff impacts, but adjusted gross margin rose 600 bps, lifting adjusted EBITDA by 9%.
  • Positive Sentiment: The sale processes for the Industrial Specialties business and CTO Refinery are in advanced stages, and an investor update on the strategic portfolio review is expected later this year or early next year.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Ingevity Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Speaker 5

Good morning, all. Good afternoon, all, and welcome to the Ingevity G2 2025 planning call and webcast. My name is Adam, and I'll be your operator today. If you'd like to ask a question during the Q&A portion of today's call, you can do so at the requesting staff, one by one, on their telephone keypad. I'll now hand the floor to John Nypaver to begin. John, please go ahead and be ready.

Operator

Thank you, Adam. Good morning, and welcome to Ingevity's second quarter 2025 earnings call. Earlier this morning, we posted a presentation on our investor site that you can use to follow today's discussion. It can be found on ir.ingevity.com under Events and Presentations. Also, throughout this call, we may refer to non-GAAP financial measures, which are intended to supplement, not substitute for, comparable GAAP measures. Definitions of these non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings release and are also in our most recent Form 10-K. We may also make forward-looking statements regarding future events and future financial performance of the company during this call. We caution you that these statements are just projections and actual results or events may differ materially from those projections, as further described in our earnings release. Our agenda is on slide three.

Operator

Our speakers today are David Li, our CEO, and Mary Hall, our CFO. Dave will provide introductory comments. Mary will follow with a review of our consolidated financial performance and the business framework results for the quarter. Dave will then provide closing comments and discuss 2025 guidance. With that, over to you, Dave.

Speaker 2

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. This week marks my fourth month with Ingevity. As I've traveled to our sites and met with our teams globally, I've been energized by the passion and pride our people bring to work every day. The Ingeva way, our shared values and mission to purify, protect, and enhance the world around us is deeply embedded across the company. What I consistently hear from our organization is that they feel we have reached an inflection point and are ready to start winning again. This quarter was another clear demonstration of our strong execution, ability to deliver results, and disciplined focus on profitability, which drove significant free cash flow and leverage improvement. Our leverage has improved to 3 times, which reflects a full-term improvement in less than a year.

Speaker 2

Our strong profitability was driven by Performance Materials, which delivered another quarter of EBITDA margins above 50%, and our successful repositioning actions in Performance Chemicals, resulting in a consolidated EBITDA margin of 30%. We are making meaningful progress on our strategic portfolio assessment. The sales process for our Industrial Specialties business and CTO refinery has reached an advanced stage, and we expect to share an update soon. We are also advancing our review of the entire portfolio with a focus on strategic fit and value creation. I'll share more about where we're heading in my closing comments. For now, I'll hand it over to Mary to walk through the quarter in more details.

Speaker 6

Thanks, David, and good morning, all. Please turn to slide five. Second quarter sales of $365 million were down 7% versus Q2 last year, due primarily to repositioning actions in Industrial Specialties, combined with wet weather impacting paving activity in Road Technologies and indirect tariff impacts on APT volumes, particularly in Europe. Despite the sales decline, adjusted gross margin improved 600 basis points, driving a 9% increase in adjusted gross profit. Most of this improvement flowed through to adjusted earnings and adjusted EBITDA, with adjusted earnings up 39% and adjusted EBITDA up 9%. Our adjusted EBITDA margin improved over 400 basis points to 30.1%, even as spend increased to support investments in innovation and Performance Materials to drive future growth and in equipment for APT to improve operational efficiency and cost control. During the quarter, we recorded a non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $184 million for our APT segment.

Speaker 6

Fits in this segment's customer order patterns due to tariff uncertainty and ongoing weakness in global industrial markets led us to conduct an interim goodwill impairment test. Updated forecasts and market assumptions, including a higher discount rate, resulted in the conclusion that APT's goodwill was fully impaired. My comments going forward exclude the impact of this charge, and a full reconciliation to GAAP results is provided in the appendix. Please turn to slide six for financial highlights of our consolidated results. The consistent EBITDA growth we've delivered, combined with improved free cash flow, has allowed us to accelerate our reduction in net leverage. The chart in the upper left of the slide shows how quickly we are driving net leverage toward our goal of two to two and a half times. Also, note the CapEx chart in the top right of the slide.

Speaker 6

While CapEx spending year to date appears low, this reflects our normal spend pattern, and we continue to expect CapEx to be in the $50 to $70 million range for the full year. I point out that our work to optimize our manufacturing footprint has structurally lowered our maintenance CapEx requirements, and our guide for this year reflects those benefits. As a result of improved adjusted earnings, disciplined working capital management, and lower CapEx, we are raising the midpoint of our free cash flow guide, and we are confident we will be below 2.8 times by year-end. Turning to slide seven, Performance Materials sales declined about $3 million or 2%, as higher revenue in North America was offset by declines in Europe and Asia, excluding China, where sales were flat year over year.

Speaker 6

Europe's decline was attributed to tariff-related uncertainty, and the decline in Asia ex-China was due to timing of customer orders, which benefited Q2 last year. Auto-production forecasts are being revised frequently as the current landscape continues to shift and have improved since April of this year, particularly for North America. However, expectations still call for lower auto-production year over year in all major markets except China. We have reflected the most recent information we have in our updated guidance. EBITDA margin ended the quarter just over 50%. The decline in margin year over year was due to the slightly lower revenue I mentioned, investments we made in innovation to drive future growth, and certain one-time employee compensation costs. We continue to expect full-year segment EBITDA margin to be above 50%. Please turn to slide eight for Advanced Polymer Technologies results.

Speaker 6

Weaker customer demand partly attributed to tariff uncertainty and price concessions to address competitive pressures contributed to a 10% drop in sales in our Advanced Polymer Technologies segment. Last quarter, we commented that direct impact from tariffs were expected to be minimal for our segment, and that continues to hold true. However, during the quarter, we began to see customer demand weaken further in our Advanced Polymer Technologies segment due to indirect tariff impacts. As we've noted before, Advanced Polymer Technologies is our most globally diversified business, and the indirect impact of tariffs has been meaningful to Advanced Polymer Technologies' results. We have seen this most clearly in footwear and apparel and automotive markets, particularly in Europe, where our customers slowed their order patterns as a result of tariff uncertainty and concern over increased costs.

Speaker 6

We expect this uncertainty to continue and to impact customer demand in the second half of the year. In addition, our Advanced Polymer Technologies plant in the UK was down for an extended period of time to install new boilers, as we discussed last quarter. The outage cost about $5.5 million, in combination with the top line pressures I just discussed, resulted in EBITDA of about $1 million for the quarter. I'm happy to report that the boilers are up and running and are expected to give us better control over energy costs and improve operational efficiency going forward. Also, as markets and businesses adjust to the new tariff environment, our team is moving aggressively to reorganize and refocus our commercial efforts to align with our customers as they pivot between regions and markets.

Speaker 6

Due to the shifting landscape and current market conditions, we expect full-year revenue in APT to be down mid to high single digits as a result of lower industrial demand, with EBITDA margin between 15% and 20%. Please turn to slide nine for Performance Chemicals results. Sales were down about 10% as last year's results included the final remnants of revenue generated from the lower margin markets we exited as a result of repositioning actions. Lower sales in Road Technologies also contributed to the drop in sales as we saw slow starts of the paving season due to wet weather. That may sound like a repeat of last year, which was also affected by wet weather, but last year was more concentrated in terms of geography. This year, a wider swath of the country was impacted, particularly in the Mid-Atlantic and the South.

Speaker 6

The good news is that we saw a strong boom and the positive momentum continued into July. We are cautiously optimistic that the crews will be able to complete enough road construction projects in the second half, such that on a full-year basis, Road Technologies revenue should be up low single digits. The segment continued to show improved profits and stability as a result of our successful execution of repositioning actions. Segment EBITDA was more than three times last year's number, and EBITDA margin approached 20%, the highest in nearly two years. I'm also pleased to report that we completely consumed the high-cost TPO inventory before the end of the quarter and are now recording TPO purchases at market rates, which today are around $550 to $600 per ton.

Speaker 6

In addition to lower raw material costs, repositioning allowed us to right-size our footprint, so we are seeing significantly lower costs in our supply chains for logistics, storage, and warehousing, for example, which also contributed to the EBITDA improvement. Because we are realizing next-in-class improvements more quickly than originally anticipated, we are increasing our guidance for full-year Performance Chemicals EBITDA margin to be in the high single digit to low double digits, as we expect second half margins to be similar to first half. In summary, the company's focus on execution excellence is evident in our results through continued improvement in profitability and strong free cash flow, which we are using to accelerate deleveraging. We are pleased with the progress we are making in a very challenging global business environment. I will now turn the floor back to Dave for an update on guidance and closing comments.

Operator

Thanks, Mary. Please turn to slide 10. Given the continued strong performance in Performance Chemicals and sustained 50+% EBITDA margins in Performance Materials, coupled with an improved outlook for North American auto production, we are raising the low end of our full-year EBITDA guidance to a range of $390 million to $415 million. In addition, with the strong free cash flow we're generating, we're revising our full-year free cash flow guidance upward to $230 million to $260 million, and we remain highly confident we will achieve our year-end net leverage target of below 2.8 times. We are maintaining our sales guidance as we continue to navigate macroeconomic uncertainty and weakness in industrial and consumer demands, as well as potential shifts in interest rates and tariffs during the second half.

Operator

As I close, let me once again highlight the significant progress the company has made over the last two years as a result of the successful execution of our repositioning strategy. We've posted three straight quarters of year-over-year improvement in EBITDA and free cash flow, five straight quarters of year-over-year EBITDA margin improvement, and four consecutive quarters of reduced leverage. We believe our results demonstrate that we are building momentum as we transition beyond this repositioning phase. Strategically, we are pleased with the progress of the sale of our Industrial Specialties business and CTO refinery and expect to provide an update soon. I'm also excited to share that we expect to host an investor update later this year or early next year, where I'll communicate the results of our comprehensive portfolio review, share our long-term growth strategy, and articulate our vision for Ingevity's future.

Operator

In closing, our strong results over multiple quarters underscore the strength of our execution and the momentum we are building across the company. With more stable and profitable businesses, a strengthened financial profile, and a clear strategic direction, we believe Ingevity has passed an inflection point and is well-positioned for sustained growth and long-term value creation. With that, I'll turn it over for questions.

Speaker 5

Okay, reminder if you'd like to ask a question on stage four, please press star, followed by one, on your telephone keypad now. If you want to prepare to ask your question, please ensure you upload it locally. Our first question comes from Jon Tanwanteng from CJS Securities. Jon, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions, and congrats on a nice earnings quarter and the higher outlook for the year. Maybe first of all, could you give us an update on the possibility of this, especially the standalone excavation where CTO prices are relative to a year ago and also relative to, you know, alternative OEOs and crude gum alternatives?

Speaker 6

Yeah. As you know, we don't break out the possibility of that, John. I think where we've tried to guide people on that is if you look at, keep in mind the seasonality of Hangman, which is a Q2, Q3 story, and compare that to Q4, Q1, you get an idea of the profitability, relative profitability of Inspect. That's really the best we can do.

Speaker 4

John, I'd say overall we're pleased to be through the higher cost inventory of CTO. We're pleased to be through the repositioning efforts, and as I mentioned, I think we feel like we've reached an inflection point for the company.

Speaker 5

Got it. Thank you. I was wondering if you could talk about the investments that you mentioned in these prepared remarks, maybe some of the opportunities there, if those are mostly in the carbon segment or others, and if you can update on the already ongoing projects that you have.

Operator

Yeah, thanks, John. As you know, we've made investments and have a strong partnership with a company called Nexion. Part of that investment is continued investment into that partnership, which we're very encouraged about. It'll allow us to use our highly engineered activated carbon in the EV segment of the business. Also, we've been participating in other applications for activated carbon, which we call process purification. I think in the past, although we've participated, we haven't been really intentional or haven't developed those channels in an intentional way. We're putting some more energy and focus behind that, and I think we'll see some really good results in the future from those investments as well.

Speaker 5

Okay. Thank you. Just a single more input. I don't know if Ed is with us, but congratulations on a really exceptional run for the segment. Any thoughts on what you're looking for in leadership there, and if there's any tweaks you may be doing to the segment?

Operator

As we announced, after a very long and celebrated career, we had one leader step away from the business, Ed, and really want to acknowledge his contributions to building that business. We have an active search ongoing for his replacement, and we're really pleased with the progress we're making there and excited for that new leader to come aboard. We hope to have that completed search in the next several months, I would say. Internally, we have a lot of momentum, so we don't want to wait for that new leader to come aboard. We're really reorganizing to focus on, of course, the automotive aspect of the business, but also, as I mentioned, that process purification business. We brought on some new leaders to focus in that area and excited about what they'll bring to that part of the business.

Speaker 5

Good. Thanks, Ed.

Operator

Thanks.

Speaker 5

The next question comes from John McNulty from Jefferies. John, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Operator

Yeah.

Speaker 5

John, can you just tell me too?

Operator

Sorry about that. I was stuck on mute. On Performance Chemicals, obviously a really big jump in the margin is maybe bigger than what we were looking for. A lot of kind of things going on in there. I guess, can you help us to think about what the margin would have been if you didn't have the high-cost CTO running through the P&L? The assumption would be it would have been even higher and probably in the 20s. Can you help us to maybe think about that?

Speaker 6

I'll give you some insight. I'll let you stop that. We've got Phil Flat here, our Head of Finance and Accounting here as well. As I mentioned, when we think about the full year, there's a lot of noise in the first half as we were working through the high-cost CTO. I did say we expect the second half margins to be similar to the first half. That reflects the seasonality of pavement, but also the fact that we will have worked through the high-cost CTO and it won't be dragging down the second half of the year. Keep in mind that pavement, as I mentioned, had a relatively tough Q2 because of the weather impact. I mentioned the strong June and the good momentum in July. If you think about maybe, absent hurricanes and the like, pavement does a bit better in Q3 than Q2.

Speaker 6

We don't have the drag from the CTO inventory that gets you to that full-year look that I gave. What else am I missing, John? Does that help?

Operator

Yeah, definitely gives us a little bit of color on it at least. Okay, and then maybe we.

Speaker 6

Second half, second half, John, just to be clear, second half won't include the impact of the high-cost CTO. We're saying that the margin, we expect the margins to be similar to first half.

Operator

Okay, fair enough. That all helps. On the free cash flow side, Q2 is normally kind of just about a break-even type free cash quarter. This time, noticeably better than that. I guess, can you help us to think about some of the levers that you're pulling to drive incremental free cash flow as we look forward? Are there some new kind of initiatives or things that you're focused on to kind of tighten things up or push that, push the profitability and the improvement on the cash flow a little bit more?

Speaker 6

Yeah. I think the main drivers in the second quarter were the improved earnings. We've clearly continued to work on our inventory management initiatives, and with the cost of the inventory also coming down, we see the benefits showing up in working capital. Lots of the CapEx story, as I mentioned, it's pretty typical for us to spend less in the first half of the year on CapEx than we do in the second half, but it's really due primarily to the improved earnings.

Operator

Yeah. I think, John, just to add on to Mary's comment, we're really pleased with our execution. Obviously, we're seeing benefits from the repositioning strategy, clearly through an inflection point there. I think what we would expect, and we guided to this as well, is really much more predictable cash flows for the business. The underlying strength of our business model, whether it's Performance Materials, which had another 50+% EBITDA quarter, we would expect strong cash flows and predictable cash flows going forward.

Speaker 5

Got it. Thanks very much for the call. The next question comes from Daniel Rizzo from Jefferies. Daniel, your line is open. Go ahead.

Speaker 1

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. You mentioned doing a strategic review just for the whole portfolio. Is this going to be like an early process that once you're done with what you're thinking about with Industrial Specialties that you'll then move on to the next, or is it something that could happen all at once? I mean, is there ongoing conversations with others about different parts of your business that haven't been previously mentioned?

Operator

Yeah, thanks, Daniel. What we mentioned is that we're in advanced stages of the sale process of our Industrial Specialties business and CTO refinery, and hopefully have an update soon. We're very encouraged. At the same time, there's a lot of work going on internally in parallel to look at the entire portfolio. Obviously, we want to be measured here. Those are some big decisions for the company. How we're approaching it is just thinking about what are our core competencies, where are we the best owner, and then transposing kind of the financial profile of the different businesses. Where can we really add value? That work is ongoing now. We would expect that to be completed. We mentioned that we'd be providing an investor update, hopefully by the end of the year. It might be early next year, but that work is already ongoing.

Operator

It also includes a look at where we are, where we have opportunities to grow. There may be opportunities. I mentioned one, process purification and within Performance Materials where perhaps we've under-resourced in the past and we see opportunities for growth. We'll be able to talk more about that in the second half or later in the year, but that process is ongoing as we speak.

Speaker 1

Thanks for that. You mentioned that CTO prices now, as you purchased them on the open market, I think it's $550 to $600 a ton. I was just wondering what that is as compared to what your high-cost one was from the beginning of the year and late last year. How would you think about it going forward? Is the market long for CTO now, or just given what you've done, how would you think about these costs versus your other inputs in the back half of the year?

Speaker 6

Yeah, the flat $50 to $600, again, you know, we use that Argus data versus what we were paying before. I think we at one time had talked about levels even in that it was five at current market conditions or at a time when the CTO market prices were in a similar area. You know, the reality is, with the downsizing of our footprint, our CTO purchase requirements, volume requirements also came down. The combination of requiring less CTO as well as for lower prices is really what you're seeing in those improved results in the first half of the year.

Speaker 1

Going forward?

Speaker 6

Going forward, volume of purchases would be similar to what we saw in Q2. For the price, we're comfortable that we have enough CTO to run our operations and certainly are less dependent on the vagaries of the CTO market and how pricing is moving than we have ever been in the past.

Speaker 1

Thank you very much.

Speaker 5

Those are my data that are followed by one on your telephone keypad. The next question is from Mike Smith from Wells Fargo Securities. Mike, please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Hey, good morning. Nice quarter and outlook. I guess first question in terms of Performance Materials, is that pricing again seems like the ability to get pricing has been very good over the years. Can you sort of talk about why, in a year with down volumes, you've been able to get pricing and how that looks for the second half of the year?

Operator

Right. Thanks for the question. I think just first touching base on the business itself, we see pretty resilient. Obviously, we're very North American-centric from a business perspective. We sell globally, but the North American market is very important to us. That's proven to be pretty resilient, whether it's North American auto production or, so far, the consumer buying behavior. With respect to pricing, I think it's just reflective of the value that we're providing to customers. We're providing a highly engineered, activated carbon solution. Customers are delighted with the products and the technology. We continue to work closely with those key customers globally. That pricing and that value that we're getting back is just reflective, I think, of what we're providing to those customers.

Speaker 6

As you know, Mike, we've always been able to get price increases in that business. That has been really unique. We believe unique as an auto supplier in that chain that we were able to get those price increases every year. I think it is a clear sign of that business's resilience that in the face of the tariff uncertainty this year, we've been able to continue just kind of business as usual on the pricing front.

Speaker 3

Got it. Thanks. Shifting gears to Advanced Polymer Technologies, David, this business seems to have underperformed quite a bit over the years. Just curious for your thoughts on the business itself. What needs to happen for this to be considered a core business longer term? What's your assessment of this segment, I guess, is the question?

Operator

Yeah, thanks for the question. As we mentioned in the last call, we have new leadership in place, and that team is doing a really great job taking a look at the entire, whether it's the commercial approach or approach towards innovation. We're encouraged, and I think we'll see benefits from that team and that leadership in the near term. As I mentioned, in the midterm, from a portfolio perspective, we're looking at the entire portfolio and seeing really where we can add value, where we can be the best owner. Advanced Polymer Technologies will be part of that review. As I mentioned, we'll have more to say on it towards the end of the year. Also, as Mary Hall mentioned, we just got through a pretty major CapEx investment. We're pleased with how it's come online, and I think the team is in place. The leadership is in place.

Operator

I think we're set up well in the near term. In the mid to longer term, we're looking at the portfolio and more to come.

Speaker 3

Great. Just one quick last one. Your free cash flow looks pretty good. I think you've raised that, and the goal is to lower debt, get your leverage ratio down. Beyond this year, what do you think is the right way to deploy cash going forward if the leverage looks good beyond this year?

Speaker 6

Sure. Getting the debt to our target area at two to two and a half times is clearly our priority. Beyond that, again, investing organically, as I mentioned, we're continuing to do some of that. We continue to see pathways for growth organically and want to give that the priority that it's due. Share repurchases, in our past, before the leverage got elevated, we were a regular participator in share repurchases. I think that is something that clearly is on our radar as well in terms of returning cash to shareholders. M&A, in terms of our capital allocation priorities, again, not a priority in the near term, clearly, but something that is always on the list to the extent that once we are stable, generating a lot of free cash flow, the other capital allocation priorities are hitting on all cylinders.

Speaker 6

We will have the flexibility to look at M&A opportunities when they arise.

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