PPG Industries, Inc. (NYSE:PPG) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Timothy Knavish: John, there’s a lot of theories out there from a lot of different parties. As I mentioned, the interest level that we’ve seen coming in is very high, higher than we expected. And not all of those parties have the same view of what we should do and what this might look like at the end. So my only comment would be, everyone should be confident that we said we were casting a wide net intentionally. Everybody should be confident that we will look at every option that comes in and weigh them and do what’s best for shareholder value period. It’s a little early to go beyond that, again because nothing — no numbers have hit our desk yet.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Patrick Cunningham with Citigroup. Your line is open.

Patrick Cunningham: Hi, Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. On the higher CapEx range for the year, what are the areas you’re contemplating additional growth investment? And should we expect this to be a reasonable CapEx base for the next few years?

Vincent Morales: Yes, Patrick, this is Vince. A couple of things. One, we did have some capital spending spillover from last year into this year, just things we didn’t get to at the tail end of last year. So our Q1 capital a little higher. We’re also looking at additional growth-related capital spending in Mexico and also in India. But if you look, and we said this on our Q1 call or our year-end call as well, we’re going to be somewhere in that 2.5% to 3%. And — over the midterm. We still have some additional capital last year, this year, and we’re catching up from COVID. So again, we’re a little bit higher. We recognize that in our January call. But again, over the midterm, you should expect us to return to our normal range.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Frank Mitsch with Fermium Research LLC. Your line is open.

Frank Mitsch: The LLC portion is very important. So I appreciate that. Listen, I know that some of the growth you’re expecting in the next three quarters for 2024 are tied to higher operating rates, volume improvement, productivity gains. But as you also indicated, you’re also spending more money on growth initiatives and so forth. How do we think about the interplay between those two in terms of millions of dollars or EPS, et cetera? Any way that you can kind of frame the interplay between those two?

Timothy Knavish: Yes. Well, Mr. Mitsch, this is Tim. The net-net of the growth that we’re expecting versus the investments in growth that we’re making, net-net, we’re expecting that to deliver the at midpoint, 10% EPS growth for the year. Those investments that we didn’t just start making those in Q1, we started making those last year and a number of those will start to actually hit the P&L now coming here in Q2, Q3 and Q4. Beyond that, Vince, I don’t know if you want to add any details?

Vincent Morales: No. These are — these investments are things such as digital, as Tim alluded to, with respect to our consumer-facing businesses. Also with respect to Refinish, we’re building out digital tools that increase our customer liaisons. We have other investments in COMEX where we’re delivering — we’ve had multiple quarters of record earnings. Our Protective business, we’re adding some capacity, strong protective business. We still have some infrastructure spending that has not yet hit the books, but we’re building in anticipation of that. And even in Aerospace, where we have a backlog that we — that continues to grow, we’re adding some capacity there to try to work at that backlog and get to it in a much more expedient manner. So those are examples. If you look at our overheads up, that’s something where some of the growth spending is a result of that — overhead a result of that growth spending.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Vincent Andrews: Thanks and good morning, everyone. Can we talk a bit about Refinish? And it would be helpful if you just could level set us in terms of where volumes are now versus pre-COVID levels. And I’m just — what I’m trying to understand on a go-forward basis you’re talking about volume declines for 1Q and 2Q against very difficult comps in the year ago period. So is the assessment that we’ve normalized volumetrically post COVID? And if that’s the case, what should the algorithm for Refinish be in terms of volume and price on a go-forward basis from here?

Timothy Knavish: Yes. Vincent, Tim here. Thanks for the question. Let me kill the second part of, first, the easy part. Price, you should expect us to continue to execute on price the way we always have in Refinish, because the value proposition of the pain inside the can plus all the tools and service outside the can continues to improve. And it’s such an important part of the repair, but a fairly low-cost part of the repair. So we’ll continue to execute on price. In volume, Q1 was lower than we expected and if you saw the claims data for March that just came out for the U.S., in particular, were quite a bit lower than really the industry expected. The whole refinish industry loves an ice storm down in the Southeast U.S. or Southwest U.S., where they’re not quite ready to handle with an ice storm, and it was a pretty mild winter, particularly down south.