Sensient Technologies Corporation (NYSE:SXT) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So that’s a very good sign. Colors obviously took the brunt of their destocking impact there in Q2, and Q3 will be another tough destocking quarter for them. And that was expected, like flavors is a shorter shelf life in general, and a more expensive ingredient. So you can understand a company’s desire to destock, that type of product before they get to color. So that was not unexpected color lagging flavors, but colors will have a significant destocking impact in Q3. But we see that moderating substantially in Q4. And then Asia Pacific was very much an anomaly in Q2. So we think that will be very short lived. And we expect to have a pretty good quarter here in Q3 for Asia. So complicated answer, I’m sorry to say, but the best explanation I could give for that one.

Ghansham Panjabi: No, no. That totally makes sense. And so, just as a follow up to that, so that $0.30 or so EPS reduction for this year for 2023, relative to your previous guidance, just based on high single digits and declines and so on versus what you said before, how does that break up in terms of what are the major constituents? I mean, obviously, volume is a big piece of that. But is it mostly destocking that underlies that $0.30 reduction or is there something else?

Paul Manning: I would tell you that volume is the single biggest factor, we have the destocking is a big factor that you could take is a depending on the business unit, that’s kind of running high single digit headwind for us. You can look at the actual organic declines in the market that’s running mid-single overall, high-single to double-digit for flavors, but mid-single digit overall. So those are two of the biggest factors that are driving the volume piece. And then of course, you have the — but we already knew what our volume was last year. But what makes that more pronounced and these reports on EBITDA is the comparison to last year is rather pronounced. So now where that plays out is, I don’t want to get too much into the accounting gobbledygook here.

But when the revenue is down and the volume is down that flows through the P&L over the next several months, in essence. And so that’s a bit of why, given the more significant volume declines we experienced in Q2. That’s why we see that impact will continue into Q3 and forward just as the accounting works on the — when we produce less to meet these customer, the reduction in customer demand.

Operator: The next question comes from [indiscernible] of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

UnidentifiedAnalyst: Just a couple of questions for me. Just on the EPS guidance sorry to ask a similar question, but so your revenue guidance remain unchanged. But you still expect EBIT and EPS to be worse. Can you just sort of help me understand how this dynamic workout? That’s my first question, then I will ask my second one after.

Paul Manning: Yes. So the simple answer is, we got more in price than we saw it in lesser volume which is the easiest answer. The harder answer is, what I was just kind of discussing with Ghansham, how the reduction in volume in this quarter, we experienced that even in the out quarters. So it has kind of a lagging effect. I think on the range of mid-single digit anywhere between four and six, we could be at the lower end of that. And we were previously probably at the higher end of that, so there is somewhat of a downgrade, even within the definition of mid-single digits. Again, we thought we might be six or seven. But now we’re saying maybe we’re four that’s still mid-single digits. So there’s a little bit of that as well. But I would say that the real easy answer here is, we got more price than we thought and less volume than we thought.