Stepan Company (NYSE:SCL) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So this is not going to be a big jump in 1 month or 1 quarter. but we see gradual improvement throughout the next couple of quarters. And let me say that, of course, when you look at oil prices and when you think about all our current raw materials that we see, we see also an stabilization, right? We are still running the high ones, but we are not planning for significant increases or decreases in raw materials in Q3 and Q4 on an spot basis. You saw oil in the , and that’s kind of a consensus for the next few quarters.

Michael Harrison: All right. Understood. And I guess my last question here is you mentioned some cost actions you’re taking and early retirement plan and expected to take a restructuring charge in the third quarter. Just maybe a little bit more color on some of the actions that you’re taking? And do you have any sense of what the savings associated with those actions could look like at this point?

Scott Behrens: Yes, Mike, we just announced that program today internally. So this is really premature to be talking about or estimating what the potential size could be. We’ll be back in Q3 when we have more details about the progression of the plan.

Operator: And our next question comes from Vincent Anderson from Stifel.

Vincent Anderson: Yes. So if I go back a little ways, and I look at implied dollar contribution from volumes and Surfactant since 2020, if you don’t mind, you had about like a $75 million tailwind during 2020. And then since then you’ve had cumulative volume declines of a little over $300 million. And yet until this year, you were maintaining dollar earnings despite that kind of general trend lower. Can you just maybe refresh my memory on how the business has trended over the last few years in that respect? And what specifically about this leg of volume headwinds is really finally weighing on dollar earnings?

Luis Rojo: Vincent, so if you think about the Surfactants in the last 3 years. So remember, 2020, of course, big spike with the pandemic — volumes up. And you know our clear strategy. Our clear strategy is to continue growing in the functional business, higher-margin business, and growing with Tier 2, Tier 3 customers, which also provide a higher margin. So that — what you saw in the last 2 to 3 years, despite volume reduction from the peak of the pandemic in 2020, we were able to materialize our strategy, growing our functional business, growing our construction and industrial business and growing Tier 2, Tier 3. So that’s why we were able to — I think we have talked a lot about this, right away. There is very difference in profitability, I mean GBP 100 million here can mean GBP 10 million in another segment, when you think about the different type of profitability. So that was our strategy, and we executed on our strategy.

Vincent Anderson: Okay. That’s helpful. And then can you talk about maybe in a bit more detail, the import pressures on Latin America and maybe separate that out between your Mexican sulfonation business, which, if I recall, has a pretty significant market position and then maybe the rest of the Latin American exposure broadly? .

Scott Behrens: Yes. So I’d say we started to experience the competitive pressures earlier this year. And that’s really because China reopened a lot of production ramped up in Asia in anticipation of that. And China, as we all know, hasn’t recovered at the pace that we thought, and there’s been a lot of import pressure up and down the South American coast and even into Mexico. And there were still supply chain constraints specific to Mexico’s Surfactant market that also required imports to cover security of supply. So that’s what’s really impacted the Mexico business is imports and competitive pricing pressures taken margins down. To a much lesser extent, but our Columbia — our business throughout the Indian region, including our production site in Colombia has also seen competitive pricing pressures.