Element Solutions Inc (NYSE:ESI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jon Tanwanteng: Okay. Got it. And then just a question on inventories versus demand. Are you shipping to end demand levels now in Electronics? Or is there some element of restocking going on industry after inventories are troughed. How should we think of that dynamic and where you’re actually at versus what is being sold through?

Ben Gliklich: Yes. So sell-in was lower than sell-through through the first half. Units of smartphones are down year-on-year still in the third quarter and our volumes are down still in the third quarter. There is as our customers begin to ramp for production, there is a restock but it is not what’s driving the performance in the business. It’s units. If you look at smartphone units in the third quarter, they were still down mid-single digits year-over-year but they were up sequentially the forecast is mid-single digits. Our Circuitry business was also up mid-single digits. So this bump in performance, the ramp in performance is not an inventory restock. It’s driven by underlying demand.

Operator: Your next question is from the line of Chris Kapsch with Loop Capital Markets.

Chris Kapsch: Yes. Good morning. Good morning, Ben. So it sounds like a key part of the story in the third quarter is a subtle inflection more about the cyclical recovery than the secular story and drivers. So I guess my first question is that a fair characterization? And then more importantly, if I revisit to your early 2022 Investor Day event, a key theme there was of course the secular drivers. So I’m just curious how you see these opportunities developing against the backdrop of a world that’s changed since then. Are those still valid drivers for a multiyear progression for ESI? I know in your formal remarks you highlighted advanced packaging. So maybe that’s where visibility is greatest. But maybe you could touch upon 5G and the automotive electrification back to those growth vectors and just your competitive positioning generally addressing those secular drivers. Thank you.

Ben Gliklich: Thanks for the question, Chris. It’s a compound question. So first with regard to the cyclicality versus secular growth, we’ve always said that secular growth isn’t linear, there’s volatility around the upward trend. And that’s clearly what we’ve been living through for the past 18 months or so. The recovery we saw in the third quarter was a recovery in high-end electronics. Volumes are still down. We are way off of peak. So we’re still in a recovery. And that recovery will take us to a higher-value end market because of the secular growth we’re seeing from trends around artificial intelligence and vehicle electrification and all the things we called out earlier. So I do think the third quarter is more of a cyclical recovery but the longer legs in this end market are from secular growth from new market and new technologies, right?

And advanced packaging is a great example of an emerging application where Element Solutions brings a really differentiated breadth of capabilities. Those capabilities come from the legacy businesses that Element is owned and has been investing in innovation around and also from new things like what we’re bringing to market in Kuprion. Most of the engagement that we’ve been talking about with Kuprion is for next-generation artificial intelligence applications and customers are spending a lot of time on it. And the order quantities today are small from a volume perspective but growing incredibly quickly and that shapes our perspective on the contribution from Kuprion both the speed at which it will contribute and the potential sort of medium-term substantial earnings that that technology will bring in addition to the existing high-quality offerings that we’re already providing in advanced packaging applications.

Chris Kapsch: That’s helpful. And maybe just if you could touch on how the competitive positioning is evolved, if anything has really changed there in addressing some of the secular drivers? Thanks.