Chemtrade Logistics Income Fund Q2 2026 Earnings Report

Chemtrade Logistics Income Fund EPS Results

• Actual EPS: C$0.31
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Chemtrade Logistics Income Fund Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $578.70 million
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Chemtrade Logistics Income Fund Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q2 2026
• Date: 8/12/2026
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, August 13, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 10:00AM ET

Chemtrade operates a diversified business providing industrial chemicals and services to customers in North America and around the world. Chemtrade is one of North America's largest suppliers of sulphuric acid, spent acid processing services, inorganic coagulants for water treatment, sodium chlorate, sodium nitrite and sodium hydrosulphite. Chemtrade is also one of the largest producers of high purity sulphuric acid for the semiconductor industry in North America. Chemtrade is a leading regional supplier of sulphur, chlor-alkali products, and zinc oxide. Additionally, Chemtrade provides value-added water solutions, as well as industrial services such as processing by-products and waste streams.

Chemtrade Logistics Income Fund Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Second-half EBITDA recovery expected: Management reaffirmed its outlook for roughly flat full-year EBITDA versus 2025, with improvement expected primarily in the Electrochemicals segment as chlor-alkali comparisons ease and turnaround activity declines.
• Positive Sentiment: Water Solutions contracts are repricing at elevated sulfur levels, which management believes should support a stronger margin profile as contracts renew; the segment is expected to be a favorable contributor in 2027.
• Positive Sentiment: Cairo is ramping sales to two advanced-node semiconductor producers in North America during the second half of 2026, and management expects the facility to fill quickly through 2027 and 2028 as additional customer qualifications progress.
• Negative Sentiment: The North Vancouver facility remains subject to a judicial review and injunction proceedings, creating uncertainty around the timing of approximately CAD 75 million–CAD 105 million of safety-related capital spending, particularly the planned 2028 expenditures.
• Negative Sentiment: Share buybacks have been moderated after the Polytec acquisition increased leverage to approximately 2.5 times from 1.7 times, with management saying the current repurchase pace is consistent with its leverage targets and other capital-allocation priorities.

Presentation

[Rohit Bhardwaj, CFO at Chemtrade]

Chemtrade second quarter 2026 results. Our news release, financial statements, presentation, and prepared remarks have been posted on our investor relations website at chemtradelogistics.com. Before we proceed, I would like to remind everyone that today's call will contain certain forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. Additional information regarding these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, as well as information on certain non-IFRS and other financial measures referred to today, can be found in our disclosure documents filed with the securities regulators and available on sedarplus.com. One of the non-IFRS measures we refer to today is adjusted EBITDA, which is EBITDA modified to exclude non-cash items such as unrealized foreign exchange gains and losses.

[Rohit Bhardwaj, CFO at Chemtrade]

While our slide deck and disclosure documents refer to adjusted EBITDA, we may refer to it as EBITDA during the call. With that, we'd now like to open up the line for your questions. Vincent, you may open up the line for Q&A.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, for questions, you have to press star one on your telephone keypad to queue up. Again, that'll be star, then the number one on your telephone keypad to queue up. Your first question comes from Steve Hansen from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

[Robert James, Analyst at Raymond James]

Oh, yeah. Hi, team. Thanks for the time. It's Robert on here for Steve. Just wanted to start off on the water solutions side. You noted that sulfur has risen further in Q3, although you're assuming some softening through the balance of the year. Just given the lag in repricing the water solutions book, when do you now expect the maximum margin pressure from sulfur to occur? And then, as contracts roll over, when should we expect the margin profile to begin showing a meaningful sequential recovery?

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Hey there. Good morning, Robert. Appreciate that. This is Scott. Sulfur, as we know, has risen. It jumped up considerably close to all-time highs. The outlook is that it's at its peak, and then at some point here before long, it's going to come down. We obviously don't know that. We'll see. Our expectations are that sulfur is not going to go higher. That's our expectation, and that it will fall. As you know, and others know, as we sell to city municipalities across North America, we sell on annual fixed prices, and we sell to over 1,000 customers. Our contracts are being renewed all the time, every month. The contracts that are being renewed right now are built and based off of our outlook for sulfur, which is that it's close to an all-time high.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Those contracts are rolling on, and they'll be good for a year. Our team, as you know, we work very aggressively to raise price as we can based on raw materials. In our water business especially, we tend to hold on to those price increases over time as raw materials fall. We're not expecting future increases, but every contract that's coming on is based off of the latest high raw material profile.

[Robert James, Analyst at Raymond James]

Okay, got it. Thanks. That's great color there. Just shifting to North Van quickly. Of that CAD 75 million to CAD 105 million capital requirement that you guys disclosed, can you help us just frame the expected phasing of that spend over the next several years? How much should we think of that balance as truly incremental capital versus maintenance or growth spending that would otherwise have been incurred there in North Van over those years?

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Yeah. Understand. Our plan had been to deploy that capital over roughly a four-year period, and that would be done primarily in conjunction with our turnarounds, which would be every other year. Our plan had been to deploy that capital primarily in 2028 and in 2030. As we deploy that capital, we would also be spending a little bit less on our maintenance capital there. There is some overlap between the capital that we have here for the safety upgrades as well as, let's say, our normal turnaround costs. That's what we had planned. With the injunction that's been filed, what we're expecting is that there's going to be a hearing based on that injunction, we believe next year in 2027, and then a decision would come four to six months after that.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

If the decision is favorable for that would still work out for us with the plan that we had to deploy capital in 2028 and 2030. If that timing did not work out, then that could have an impact on the 2028 spend.

[Rohit Bhardwaj, CFO at Chemtrade]

I think the one thing I will add to that is part of our capital that we have put in place is to put in liquefaction capabilities on our own land. That will be brand-new equipment, and we will stop using the older equipment on the port side. That just tells you in the future that will require less maintenance for the first several years because it is brand-new equipment.

[Robert James, Analyst at Raymond James]

Okay, great. Thanks for the color. I will pass the line. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Joel Jackson from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Joel Jackson, Analyst at BMO Capital Markets]

Hi. If we do that CapEx plan at North Van CAD 28 million, CAD 230 million kind of lumpy, would we expect CapEx for the next four years to look like something like CAD 185 million next year, CAD 235 million in 2028, CAD 185 million in 2029. What did I say? CAD 235 million in 2030? Something like that?

[Rohit Bhardwaj, CFO at Chemtrade]

Joel, one of the things is there could be one disconnect between us recording CapEx and cash flow because we may be ordering some long lead time items, et cetera. It is hard to tell you exactly how the cash flow will line up. As we get further into the engineering in the next few months, we can definitely provide a little bit more granular timing for you too so you can model it out.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Yeah, that is right. I think we can be clear with that, but I do want to emphasize that the spin, particularly in 2028, will be impacted, based on the outcome of the injunction or the hearing that would be next year.

[Joel Jackson, Analyst at BMO Capital Markets]

Okay. Your guidance is that EBITDA would be about flat with last year. You are trailing down, I think CAD 15 million-CAD 20 million EBITDA year-over-year for the first half of the year. You have to make that up in the second half of the year. Can you talk about which the businesses of segment, sorry, are you going to see that EBITDA growth the most, and maybe you can talk about Q3 versus Q4 cadence, further growth?

[Rohit Bhardwaj, CFO at Chemtrade]

I think one thing to keep in mind is in the EC segment, prices for chlor-alkali were trending down all through last year, so all through 2025, which means that the first half comparisons in 2026 were up against tougher comparables in 2025. But as those prices were declining during the back half of 2025 and now they are kind of stable, we will be picking up some of that gap just because those lower prices were reflected in the second half of 2025. Most of what we are talking about, that normalization will happen within the EC segment. And we expect right now that the acid segment will continue to outperform last year. So, there will be some of that coming from there. But a big chunk of that will come from EC.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

And just to add on to that, we had a relatively heavy turnaround schedule in the first half of this year. And so that will be lighter and that is in our news release as well as we look at the second half of this year.

[Joel Jackson, Analyst at BMO Capital Markets]

Just sneak one more in. If we think about 2027, just building blocks for our bridge. We do not know what cost of price will be, things like that. But can you think of things that are clear for bridge items like, of course, the CAD 7 million for the North Van bannual turnaround will be there next year. Maybe getting up from UltraPure. Can you just give some building blocks for what 2027 puts and takes, ignoring commodity price moves?

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Yeah, sure. That is right. So I will start with water and I think that based on the movement of raw materials and the fact that where our contracts are and what is happening with contracts that are rolling on right now, I think it is fair to say that the outlook for water will be strong. So I think as you build your model, I would start with that. I would also build in and say that, as we have highlighted, UltraPure is we are ramping up supply to two fabs, two chip producers in the second half of this year. So I think that goes in there. I think that acid will continue to be strong. The regen should continue to be strong. That is good. We are obviously not going to have a turnaround in North Vancouver. So that is that.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

I think it's fair to say no one, we don't know and no one knows what's going to happen with chlor-alkali, in particular caustic pricing. But what we can share is what the industry experts look at, the market experts for chlor-alkali show. What we know is that caustic pricing over time, it has a very high correlation with oil, naphtha, and natural gas prices coming out of the Middle East. I think if you go look at it, there's very high correlation there. So that would lead to some general, let's say the outlook is that there will be some modest pickup with caustic and I think that's a reasonable assumption.

[Joel Jackson, Analyst at BMO Capital Markets]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Hamir Patel with CIBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Hamir Patel, Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets]

Hi. Good morning. Scott, the potential hydrochloric acid demand growth that you pointed to as a substitute for sulfuric acid in certain industries, how meaningful could that be?

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

The substitute for hydrochloric, I am not sure. Hydrochloric. Now, I am trying to think what comment I might have made.

[Hamir Patel, Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets]

I can follow up with Rohit after on that.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Okay.

[Hamir Patel, Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets]

The other question I wanted to ask about was, I know Canfor is closing their Northwood mill later this year.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Yes.

[Hamir Patel, Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets]

I am guessing, your freight advantage to have been a supplier there. So what percent of your EC volumes would likely need to be repositioned, and I am guessing perhaps less favorable margins on wherever else you have to position it?

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Well, look, we won't comment on any specific with customers. But what we will say is that, as we've shared in our guidance, our volume outlook for chlorate for this year, is generally flat with the outlook for this year, maybe slightly ahead, and that's unchanged for the rest of this year. As we look out into next year, won't give specific comments other than to say that it's possible that it is in the news that Canfor is closing the Northwood mill. Possible that some of that volume might be moved to one of Canfor's other mills. Again, won't give that or any specifics on that, but it's possible some volume would move there. But we in the industry have seen mills continue to close one to a couple a year for the past many years.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

That has continued to be built in to our model. Over the past several years, the industry with the chlorate industry has been rational, and I would expect that to continue to happen.

[Rohit Bhardwaj, CFO at Chemtrade]

The only thing I'll add is, as you may recall from last year, we actually did discontinue producing sodium chlorate at Prince George, which was on site with Canfor. That was a decision we took actually last year, and so we are supplying chlorate from our one plant that is in Brandon, Manitoba. We do some dissolving, as we have said, in Prince George, but the freight advantage that you referred to is not as significant because we did discontinue producing at Prince George.

[Hamir Patel, Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets]

Okay. Fair enough. Thanks. That's all I had. I'll turn it over.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Gary Ho from Desjardins. Please go ahead.

[Gary Ho, Analyst at Desjardins]

Thanks. Good morning.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Yes.

[Gary Ho, Analyst at Desjardins]

I just wanted to go back to the North Van injunction and hearing. Just curious if you can elaborate who the other party is. Is it residents of the region or someone else? Just wanted to see how confident you are in getting a favorable decision there.

[Rohit Bhardwaj, CFO at Chemtrade]

What we can do-

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Yeah, so we-

[Rohit Bhardwaj, CFO at Chemtrade]

Sorry. We can point you to the You can actually, the application for judicial review is actually a public document that you can look at. I don't think we want to get into the specifics other than saying that what we said in our news release is that, we intend to become joined to that action and basically defend it and oppose the relief being sought. I don't think we want to get more specific on that. But if you are unable to find the judicial review, after the call, we can send you a link to it, but it is public information.

[Gary Ho, Analyst at Desjardins]

Okay, great. Then, maybe just going back to the CAD 75 million-CAD 125 million CapEx. Just any risk of that CapEx spend moving higher or cost overruns, et cetera? Just wanted to see the work you've done to lock down the scope and our pricing, just as you spend this over the next couple of years.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Yeah. So Gary, I would say that we feel comfortable with that range. That's a fairly broad range, and we do feel comfortable with that. That's an initial number. Right now our team is moving ahead, and we're pretty far along in the design phase of those several capital projects. Then the next step after the design phase is to move into what we call the detailed engineering. From that, we get a cost estimate, and we would start to pinpoint that number with a more narrow range than what we have there. With that, I think we feel comfortable with that range. We are moving ahead with the detailed engineering work. We are also moving ahead to request the building permits from the district.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

We want to go ahead and move quickly, request the building permits, get those approvals, and then make decisions about how we move forward with that spend primarily for 2028.

[Gary Ho, Analyst at Desjardins]

Okay, and then maybe as a related question, as this construction and upgrades are being done, any risk that the facility needs to be kind of paused as you're doing these upgrades, or kind of business as usual?

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Our plan is to be business as usual. The plan that we have would be to do. Our plan has been to do the majority of the work in 2028 and 2030. As I mentioned, and with our plan with that, there would be minimal to no impact on our regular business cycle.

[Gary Ho, Analyst at Desjardins]

Okay. And if I can sneak just one more in. Scott, you mentioned just on the caustic side, very high-level comments, but anything else that you can share in terms of dynamics there, expectations for pricing recovery later this year into next year, et cetera?

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Yeah. Look, the outlook is for gradual and modest increase in caustic soda, which I think that makes sense and is rational, and we'll see as that plays out. The caustic market has been somewhat volatile. I think a lot of the volatility has been coming from increased production of PVC in China, and we do not need to go into too many details there. If you have questions, we could follow up with that. There has been an increase in production from what we have seen in China in PVC, and that has been having an impact. As you and others know, in May of this year, we saw caustic prices jump by CAD 150 a ton. They had been at CAD 350 or a little lower in Q1.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

After the campaign in Iran started, those prices jumped up to CAD 500, and there was a view that that was going to be in place for a while. What we saw is that China got involved in the market, particularly with PVC, and then caustic prices have fallen. I will just leave it with that. The outlook is for gradual increase in caustic soda prices, and we are hopeful that that is the case. If you want to discuss that further, we can certainly follow up with you.

[Gary Ho, Analyst at Desjardins]

Okay, great. Those are my questions. Thank you.

[Operator]

Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from Zachary Evershed with National Bank of Canada. Please go ahead.

[Zachary Evershed, Analyst at National Bank of Canada]

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Understanding that you wouldn't want to speculate on potential outcomes at this point, can you maybe comment on why you weren't named as a respondent in the judicial review?

[Rohit Bhardwaj, CFO at Chemtrade]

The judicial review is-- What the applicant is asking for is that the courts will judicial review into the decision-making of the city council. We are not part of that decision-making, so that's why we were not named. But we are going to be asked to be joined to that, and so we can But in the end, it does pertain to our facility. It's not unexpected that we wouldn't be named because it's really a review of the decision-making of the council.

[Zachary Evershed, Analyst at National Bank of Canada]

Understood. Thanks. With the last of the convertible debentures eliminated, do you plan to accelerate your buybacks under the NCIB?

[Rohit Bhardwaj, CFO at Chemtrade]

When we look at our capital allocation, we look at organic growth opportunities in front of us. We look at our distribution policy, and we look at obviously for buybacks, and we look at leverage. We were buying very aggressively when our leverage was 1.7, but then we also did a very value-added acquisition of Polytec, Inc. Our leverage now is 2.5. When we allocate stuff, we do kind of balance the whole thing. At this point, we feel the current rate of buying is consistent with our leverage targets and all the other uses of capital we have. That's the only reason why we've tempered it a little bit from where we were in the 1.7 times leverage.

[Zachary Evershed, Analyst at National Bank of Canada]

Got you. Thanks. I'll turn it over.

[Rohit Bhardwaj, CFO at Chemtrade]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Steve Hansen from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

[Robert James, Analyst at Raymond James]

Hi, guys. Thanks for the quick follow-up here. Just on Cairo, how should we think about the utilization ramp there over the next and through the back half of this year and into next year? The release mentioned that you were progressing with a couple additional fab manufacturers. How should we think about that as far as, do you need those customers basically to hit your return utilization metrics, or is your existing book of business sufficient to hit that? Thanks.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Yeah. The color that I will add is we are ramping up in the second half of this year sales to two of advanced node chip producers in North America. We are very excited with that. I think this puts us on schedule that we had for the ramp-up of the plant. I think that is exciting news. We are qualified, if you will, to supply acid to the most advanced chips that are being produced in North America. I will not comment on. I am not going to share comments in terms of what is going to be the rate of the facility. But as we go into 2027 and into 2028, our view is that Cairo will be filling up quickly. I will just leave it at that. But very exciting to be selling those to two of the most advanced node producers in North America.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Then we continue to work with others, and we would expect that we will have other qualifications as we move into 2027.

[Robert James, Analyst at Raymond James]

Okay, great. Thanks very much. I will turn the line.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Okay.

[Operator]

If there are no further questions, I will turn the call back over to Scott.

[Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade]

Thank you, Vincent. I would just like to say thanks to everyone for joining the call today. Thanks to the Chemtrade team for the very strong results in Q2, and wish everyone a nice day. Thanks.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Analysts

• Rohit Bhardwaj, CFO at Chemtrade
• Robert James, Analyst at Raymond James
• Scott Rook, President and CEO at Chemtrade
• Joel Jackson, Analyst at BMO Capital Markets
• Hamir Patel, Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets
• Gary Ho, Analyst at Desjardins
• Zachary Evershed, Analyst at National Bank of Canada