Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 9 of 14

Hassan Ahmed: Good morning Lori. Lori, obviously in the prepared remarks, a lot of commentary around destocking, restocking and the like, I was hoping you could give us some historical context as you look at your portfolio. In terms of destocking, historically, how long you have your destocking cycles lasted? What did the restock look like once the destocking was over and the like? I’m just trying to get some sort of perspective in terms of where inventory levels are right now, what the bounce back could look like and the like?

Lori Ryerkerk: Yes, so I would say, historically, we’ve seen destocking last kind of a quarter, especially in EM, maybe a little bit less in acetyls because they don’t have as much inventory. And I would say – I wouldn’t even say we’re necessarily seeing restocking at this point. I would say we’re seeing a return to normal levels of demand. Typically, when we see restocking is when prices start to go up and people start getting worried that prices in the future are going to be higher than they are today. So they take the opportunity to build inventory in advance of an anticipated price increase. Again, as I said earlier, I think with where we are today, where raws are down, natural gas is low, the anticipation in the market is that prices are going to go lower or stay low. And so, I don’t think we’ll really see restocking until we see a turn up. But we do see a return to normal levels of demand starting now in March.

Hassan Ahmed: Understood, understood. And as a follow-up, on the acetyl chain side, you guys talked about how pricing through the quarter was Chinese pricing at cost curve levels. Yet despite that, you guys, obviously, idled some facilities, yet you generated around 25%, 26% EBITDA margins. So I’m just trying to get a better sense of Celanese’s cost curve positioning as it sits right now?

Lori Ryerkerk: Yes, so I think there’s, a couple of components to that. I think, in China, specifically, while I believe throughout the end of the fourth quarter and into the beginning of the first quarter, we were at the cost curve in China in terms of the industry, our cost position is a bit better than that. And it has to do with the scale of our operations, the technology that we have and therefore, improved cost bases we have versus the vast majority of the producers in China. So, we continued even when the rest of the industry was at the cost curve to make even a small amount of margin in China. And then, of course, we’re benefited by the fact that we have a very large facility in the U.S. Gulf Coast. So when we saw natural gas prices coming off in – towards the second half of the fourth quarter and as we’ve gone into the first quarter with low natural gas prices.

That is a, big margin uplift for us versus people who are producing out of coal or even crude at these kind of prices, and that opens up windows for us to move material to Europe and other parts of the world out of the Gulf Coast. And so, I think it is that global optionality that we have, that global footprint as well as the optionality we have to move things up and down the chain that really allow us to continuously deliver high level of margins from what some might consider commodity business. It certainly does not give commodity returns.

Operator: Thank you. Next question is coming from P.J. Juvekar from Citi. Your line is now live.

P.J. Juvekar: Yes hi, good morning Lori and Scott. Lori, do you have a long-term view on the competitiveness of your European assets? And what I mean by that is European VAM capacity was shutdown. Is that the marginal capacity that goes in and out with the market, like what Singapore plant used to do in acetic acid? Can you just take a step back and explain to us sort of the marginal capacity in Europe and your plans there?

Page 9 of 14