Good afternoon, everybody. We welcome you all to Indorama Ventures Third Quarter Financial Results. Today joining us, Mr. Aloke Lohia, Group CEO of IVL, Mr. D.K. Agarwal, CEO of IVL, Mr. Sanjay Ahuja, CFO of IVL, Mr. Chris Kenneally is Chief Operating Officer of Fibers Business, Mr. Yash Lohia, he's our Chief Sustainability Officer, Ms. Aradhana Lohia is in the IR and Fibers and also joining our colleagues. Thank you very much. We hope you are all safe and fine. Can we move to next slide, please? Quick disclaimer that this meeting is being recorded and there are a few forward-looking statements, and they are based on our estimates and the market trends at this point in time.
We have prepared a quick video, an overview on the third quarter results. We are going to play now. After that, Mr. DK Agarwal will take us through the third quarter results. Can we have the video, please?
Good day to all of our viewers. IVL or Indorama Ventures has reported another strong quarterly result for the third quarter. Today I'm joined by IVL's CEO, Mr. D.K. Agarwal. Good day to you, sir.
Very good day, Stuart.
Just to kick off with the obvious question, we've had yet another strong quarterly performance. What are the key drivers of this result in the third quarter?
Thank you, Stuart. The portfolio resiliency of IVL has again proven it. This is the third consecutive quarter we have delivered the results. High capacity utilization of the assets, the oil prices giving a shale gas advantage to us in IOD business, and PET coming as a very preferred polymer. Interestingly, as you know, the logistics has been disrupted, which results in high freight costs. We have regional footprint which benefits from import parity. The margins have been strong, volumes have been strong, and particularly I'm very excited about the IOD downstream, which has perfectly given better results. As we go into Oxiteno, which we expect to close in the first quarter of 2022, this will add to the downstream portfolio. We have really achieved very good results.
Mr. Agarwal, we're nine months into the year 2021. The last three quarters have been pretty good. In fact, they've led to a year-to-date record, up 50% year-on-year. Is this the time to start making predictions about the quarter ahead and of course the year 2022?
That's a very good question. When the pandemic started, we never thought that the business resiliency of our portfolio. We have three consecutive quarters of very good performance. Normally, fourth quarter remains a weak quarter. You might have heard about China's dual policy. This has actually improved our margins in China, which is normally seasonally weak. As we speak, a lot of operating rates of Chinese plants have come down. Recently built plant by one of our competitor has not been able to start due to non-availability of power. We have seen increased integrated PET spreads. We have seen filament margins improving. We are very excited about the fourth quarter. As you know, in nine months, we have delivered $1.5 billion of reported EBITDA. Similarly, I'm very excited about next year's results.
Mr. Agarwal, for the longer term, IVL is building towards a future-ready organization, and that includes a number of very large transformational projects. What can you tell us about these projects or these activities, particularly in the last quarter?
Very good. You know, one of the biggest initiative was the Project Olympus, and I'm very happy that it has percolated right down the organization. We are on track for $610 million of savings by 2023. The bottom line is that this is a transformation which has happened across the organization. A lot of new initiatives are coming up, and we are very confident that this makes the organization long-term sustainable. On the other front, if we look at SAP S/4HANA, which is the biggest initiative which we are launching, our first release of SAP S/4HANA is getting launched very soon in the U.S. for our IOD business. This platform will give us lot of digital analytics and will improve the performance of the business.
We are also keeping our future-ready organization, as you know, in terms of various enabling functions which we have added in terms of digitalization, EHS, business continuity risk, all this and communication. We are actually preparing IVL for the future growth. As you know, IVL is a very high growth company.
In the last quarter, we added the word sustainable to our corporate vision statement. How does this translate in real terms on the ground, especially in the last quarter?
Very good question. I think sustainability is the future of the organization. Today, you talk about net zero. We are also committed. We are reducing our GHG emission aggressively. as you know, we have committed to Ellen MacArthur Foundation for 750,000 tons of recycling PET capacity. We have acquired a few plants, 1 in the U.S. and a greenfield plant in Indonesia. We are on a journey. We are on that journey. We are also involved in the chemical recycling so that we are the front runners in the new technologies. We have formed a decarbonization committee where we are going deeper into all the projects where we can reduce our GHG footprint. Our customers are excited. There is a partnership with our customers to roll these programs.
As sustainability is in the heart of IVL, and you will see more and more initiatives as we roll out different quarters.
Mr. Agarwal, just before we close, do you have anything, in terms of final thoughts or perhaps an overarching statement about where the company is today and, of course, where we're going in the future?
Beginning of 2020 when the pandemic came in, everybody was worried what will happen, how the growth will shape up in the world. The macro policies and the consumer spending and our product portfolio resiliency has proven, and we have given 9 months results of $1.5 billion at reported EBITDA. As I mentioned, the fourth quarter, which normally remains seasonally weak, we are actually excited about the fourth quarter as we are in the end of October. Next year also we are very excited. As you know, we set up the new contracts. The supply chain disruptions continues. The crude remain high, which continues to give shale gas advantage. Having said that, it is important that IVL is poised for next phase of growth as they deleverage the future cash flows coming in. We are developing our organization.
We have the talent bank. We have put new processes in terms of SAP S/4HANA, enabling functions to make ready for the next phase of the growth, which is very important for IVL.
Mr. Agarwal, thank you, for your time today. Of course, I wish you a very good fourth quarter ahead and, of course, for 2022. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Stuart.
Okay, we can start now? Yeah, good morning, good afternoon. I hope all of you are keeping safe. You have the third quarter results through a video snapshot. Let me walk you through this presentation. As mentioned in the video, the third quarter, we reported EBITDA of $478 million and a core EBITDA of $437 million. Reported net profit of $6.5 billion and core net profit of $5.9 billion. Remember, most of our earnings are in dollar or foreign currency. A weaker baht helps in the net profit. Thirty-three will leave, we love the weaker baht. If you look at the earning per share, the reported annualized earning per share is about THB 4.53.
Core annualized EPS without the inventory gain and the other exceptional gain is 4.09, which shows the earning potential of the company. As we complete nine months, we have a reported EBITDA of $1.5 billion, year-on-year growth of 123%, and core EBITDA of $1.28 billion, a year-on-year growth of 50%. In baht terms, the reported net profit is THB 20.9 billion and a core net profit of THB 16.4 billion. The key drivers in this year has been, of course, the robust demand across our portfolio. PET has turned out to be a very preferred polymer. As we talk today, the market is very tight, particularly everywhere, whether we talk, you know, United States or even Asia.
We are going with new year with a very low inventory in the pipeline. As I just talked in the video, there is a further market tightness in China dual control policy. We talked about one of the competitor who just completed the plant couldn't start because there is a lower power allocation. The operating rates in the Combined PET is going down. There is a high crude oil price which basically benefits because import parity goes up, and that puts IVL in a very favorable position. Well, we did have a headwind. We had the spike in energy prices. As you might have heard, in Europe, the energy prices went up skyrocketing. We had acetic acid prices shooting up. You will be surprised that the total impact for this year is about $129 million versus 2020.
Which got upset more than by our spread improvement. This is not likely to remain because this disruption in the power, oil prices, as you saw, has started coming down. In Europe, there is a backwardation. As the spreads normalizes, we'll also see the cost getting normalized. To mitigate this additional cost, we have announced some surcharges in the fourth quarter 2021, which includes basically in PTA and PET. As I mentioned, the fourth quarter, which is normally a weak period, we are very excited about the results of fourth quarter as we stand by end of October, and we have a good visibility of next 2 months. The Project Olympus, which was announced in the Capital Markets Day, 2 years back, has been making very good progress.
In nine months, we have realized efficiency gain of nearly $201 million. We are on track to deliver for 2021, $287 million and $600 million+, as we mentioned, by 2023. The key thing is that it has gone throughout the organization, and I'm very happy to report that the entire organization, right up to the shop floor, this has gone, and which is actually translating into the savings. With the strong cash flows, as you can see, although our operating cash flow was lower than the core EBITDA because of the inventory increases, you know, in terms of value, as the price went up, your working capital goes up.
We are still deleveraging aggressively which gives a good headroom for our growth strategy and M&A activities in our core business. We'll talk about 2022 in the coming slides. This gives you 3rd quarter key takeaways. You can go to the next slide. This is an interesting slide. I think what is important is that when pandemic came in, how the world will shape. Probably 1 year back, if we were sitting, we won't be saying that crude oil will be $80 a barrel. I mean, you can look at the Brent, how it moved up and actually our revenue increased significantly because of the crude oil prices going up. The Brent went up and the people are speculating it to even go higher. We saw the PMI global activity indicators.
The natural gas prices have skyrocketed, which actually hurt us in third quarter and will also hurt in fourth quarter, but our spreads are pretty good there. If you see on the mobility, on the right-hand side, mobility index, which shows as you can see, the U curve coming back, so mobility is improving as the COVID situation hopefully goes into epidemic rather than pandemic. Even Thailand has opened now. We will see more mobility, means more consumer spending, and we'll have a better manufacturing activity. The biggest disruption today in the world, which has happened is in the freights. You can see the Shanghai Freight Index, how it has gone up. What is exactly driving this high freight? The major factor is, of course, there was a shipping capacity constraint.
Even if the shipping capacity gets built up, the cycle time of the ships have increased significantly. You might have read that in Los Angeles port, there is a 42 days waiting period. The third important is last mile delivery. There is not enough infrastructure to deliver the last mile. Means the shortage of containers, a shortage of drivers, so infrastructure. How does it benefit IVL? You know, we have a regional footprint in Europe, America, Brazil, Mexico, India. We price our products based on import parity, where we source raw material locally in most of the continents. The margins remains better and stronger. We don't think this is going to normalize very soon.
As I said, the China dual control policy, which is came as a big surprise after September end, has actually reduced the limited operation of the polyester chain and has actually improved the integrated PET spreads. We'll talk about this in the following slide. I think another negative factor which has come into our business is in the mobility sector. You must have heard a lot about the shortage of semiconductors because the car production is getting limited due to semiconductors, and actually the old cars prices have gone up. That affected our mobility business in terms of OEM demand in airbag side. This is an important developments which has happened in these nine months, and particularly this quarter. Let's move to the next slide. Let us deliberate a little bit on China dual control policy and how it impacts.
As you know, China is the largest producer of many commodities in the world, and that holds good for polyester. China has basically, as a part of their 14th Five-Year Plan, aimed to control the energy consumption to reduce the carbon intensity by 18%. They suddenly realized in September 2021 that they are not going to achieve it. They asked all the provinces that, "Okay, you meet your targets." Actually some provinces were hit very badly, which were manufacturing. Now, how does it impact the polyester value chain? Just side beside this, you see 65% of the world's PTA capacity is located in China. 71% of the polyester capacity is in China. MEG capacity is 39%. You must have read that coal prices skyrocketed. What happened? MEG based, you know, the coal-based MEG operating rate went down.
MEG had a spike actually to $900 in September. It corrected as, you know, the Chinese coal prices came down. On the PET value chain, 37% of the PET is operated by China. Right-hand side gives you the integrated PET spreads. Now you can look at week by week here to show you the impact that as it happened, the integrated spreads went to $292. This is what we are confident in the fourth quarter that how it will get benefited. Similarly, as you know, the filament yarn, the fiber spreads also marginally improved, and integrated MEG spreads have also improved in nature. These commodities where there's a manufacturing presence impacts the Chinese dual control policy. The question remains, is that going to remain from going forward? China is committed for their reduction of GHG intensity.
You might have read aluminum reached 15-year high. Why aluminum reached 15-year high? Because aluminum is the most energy in-intensive. Every aluminum smelter has a power plant by itself. It reached 15-year high, and that's what we are seeing in the metal. This is a very important message which I wanted to give, the impact of the China dual control policy on the value chain. Next slide. This is just to show you the EBITDA. If you see the left-hand side, a journey from 11 last 10 years, our diversity in different verticals. As you can see, Combined PET used to be 88% of our the EBITDA, and 13% was the fibers.
As we went into IOD business, and we'll talk about that when we go to the IOD, now we have diversified three verticals, three segments, and 65% and 20% in IOD and 15% is in the Fibers. Bottom slide gives you the geographical footprint, which is very important. In Americas still contributes 42% of our EBITDA. Why I'm trying to emphasize here, these are disciplined markets. These are deficit markets. 25% is Europe, while Asia becomes fragmented, which is 33% of the capacity of the 2021 capacity. This gives you an idea that how much EBITDA is generated by what capacity in the lower slide and Western countries where we benefit in terms of import parity. The right-hand side gives you average quarterly core EBITDA, 11 to 16 and 2021, nine months 2021.
Of course, nine months we have given strong results. When you will see this graph in 12 months, you will see a further improvement in this. It's a 12% CAGR. That has been achieved through an upgraded portfolio, Olympus program, the geographical diversity, product diversity which we have, in spite of in 2021 we had a big hit of the energy cost, which I just mentioned to you. This shows that we have improved performance through the diversified and resilient portfolio. Next slide. I think we talked about this building the future ready IVL organization. You might have. We've just put on SET announcement. We've added two new members in IMC. Chris is here. We have strengthened IMC by adding Chris and Alastair as the two COOs. Similarly, at IMC also we are rotating the positions.
In addition to CEO, I will take over as interim CFO. Sanjay is moving from CFO to interim CPET CEO, which gives him exposure on the business side. It's just a leadership development, which is very important. This we are doing not only at high level, but also at lower level, at the middle level, to create a organization which builds the pipeline. We have been very successful in acquiring many assets around the world. We have integrated them very well. The key strength behind this is retaining the people. That development which we have done of the people, they lead our businesses and which is very important part of it. That was on the management. In Olympus, we talked that 9 months we have created $201 million.
As we stay in 2021, we should have a good visibility of 2023. I think we are on track for the $600 million+. You will see in the following slides that how the downstream IOD business is doing fantastic. Oxiteno actually acquisition is very timely, and particularly with their access to the bioethylene in Brazil. As you know, they make bioethylene. It gives a sustainable solution which will be the need of the hour, an industry leader. We launch the deja brand with the carbon neutrality. As we prepared for the succession planning, we empowered those 15 business unit under three segments, and which has actually resulted into very good because there's a lot of decision-making percolated down. GBS also rolled down.
SAP S/4HANA, as you saw in the video, this is the largest SAP S/4HANA rollout by a chemical company. We are launching the first phase, the release 1 in IOD business from U.S., and this will give lot of analytical scale. All these initiatives are on track to build a future IVL organization, which is important as we grow our business further. Sustainability is very important. I think this is the key word today. We talk in the video. Today customers are looking for sustainability solutions, and IVL is committed. I'm very happy to announce that SET has awarded us the prize for sustainability leadership, and that credit goes to our team of sustainability and the entire team, which is a recognition of the efforts being made by IVL.
As you know, we committed $750,000. We are on journey of $1.5 billion. We'll talk about this in future slides. We are seeing lot of attraction, and this actually differentiates us as a supplier. We are reducing our energy intensity, GHG intensity by 10%. We're committed by 2025. We have making lot of new projects, which is a good payback, and we'll give solutions to our customers like Deja™ Neutral. We are working on circular economy. Actually, we are partnering with one of the large brand owners to find a holistic solution, how do we improve the collection and have a greater circular economy. Water intensity is getting reduced in 10%.
The renewable electricity approach is not only having our own renewable electricity, but entering into a purchase agreement for those U.S. producers who make solar or renewable energy. It's a sort of a barter trade where we buy them at the fixed price. The recycling, as I said, 750,000 tons of post-consumer waste. On the product category-wise, we are working on. On the right-hand side, you can see the Anchor tire cord made from the bio-based raw materials. That's what we are working on it. CiCLO® is another additive which is added to polyester fiber to make it biodegradable. There are a lot of initiatives which are happening on the product side to give sustainable solutions to our customer. That is what IVL is embarking on and is getting recognized by its efforts.
Let me tell you that this will be a big differentiator of IVL in the future as whether by tire cord customers, whether by the beverage customers, everybody is looking for solutions of sustainability. Coming to recycling, I know this many times these questions come. You know, we committed 750,000 tons, which is actually 50 billion bottles recycling. $1.5 billion investment. You can see that 330,000 tons of capacity is acquired, built. What are we doing here? We are actually creating solutions for our customers, buying the assets, making them to the scale, making them cost efficient. There are pipelines worth 150 KT which are in pipeline. So 480 and 270 will be further to identify to make it 750 KT.
Your question is always, are people willing to pay the price for this recycled PET? On the right-hand side, you can see that how the rPET prices command a premium over virgin. Today in Europe it is EUR 1,850. In Americas, it is $2,300. You can see the gap between the two graphs. In Asia. We don't take actually. All these prices are linked to bale prices. As the bale prices, so we have a sort of a granted margin, and which margin is improving. To make you explain this, that this is a very complementary business, a must business for us, and which we are targeting 10%-15% ROCE, as we mentioned about it.
We are also pleased to announce that a new recycling technology in collaboration with the French EPR system, Valorplast and Klöckner Pentaplast. You know the trays which goes for the food packing? After many years of test and trial, we have developed a commercially feasible recycling solution for trays, this actually adds to the bottom line. We are giving tray to tray solution for the food products. As a packaging, food packaging into high quality products suitable for new pro-tray production. This new recycling innovation will see over 50 million post-consumer PET diverted away from landfill and incineration. You know, all these trays, they are multi-layered trays, some of them are the mono-layered trays. They go into the incineration. This is a very exciting development which we are doing, it's highly profitable because the raw material cost becomes sort of a negative.
There's a gate fee which we get it. Our recycling journey is continuing. It is very important that are IVL only doing or the industry itself is doing. You can see the PET is a very preferred polymer. When aluminum becomes so expensive, PET is the most recyclable polymer, lowest carbon CO2 footprint, and is a material of choice for our customers. All the industry is working. We worked on the marine plastics. As you know, we launched with Coca-Cola. Our competitor, Alpek, is working with Coke on a 100% plant-based PET. Japanese company, Suntory, which you might have heard, they also have Pepsi franchise in Thailand. They are also working on a 100% plant-based resources. Industry as a whole, through innovation, is working very hard to make sustainable PET solutions.
I have no doubt, as we went through this pandemic, that PET is much more preferred polymer than any other polymer and stands out and is a very exciting business which we are in and which we have a very strong position. That covers. Let us go into the financial results. This is the 9 months, $1.28 billion EBITDA. $854 million, 9 month 2020. You can see the volume is 11.1 versus 10.4. EBITDA per ton increased from 84 to 116. If you see quarter-by-quarter, this quarter we had $437 million, which is 70% year-on-year growth of third quarter 2021, and -8% quarter-on-quarter versus third quarter.
As you know, seasonally, second quarter is always stronger in terms of PET margins, because there was disruption in Europe because of the some of the FMs being announced. Now again, we are seeing in the fourth quarter there is some FM. Margins are improving further. We also had a strong hit of the energy, which also reduced our EBITDA per ton in the third quarter, as I mentioned to you in the previous slides. Project Olympus has delivered $201 million efficiency gain during nine months of 2021. As we talk, there is a very positive market scenario today, very strong demand, and you just saw the integrated PET margins moving up because of the China dual control policy. Supply chain inventory is tight. High ocean freight remains and strong crude oil price.
Strong crude oil price means better import parity because the duties are charged on the absolute. We are very excited about the fourth quarter as a combined IVL. We'll talk about the remaining part in the different segments as we go into the next slides. Can you go 1 slide back? There was a reported EBITDA, right? Go back. Sorry. We also added a new slide here to just to reflect you the reported EBITDA. The 9 months 2021 is $1.5 billion versus $678 million. As you know, in 9 months 2020, there was a collapse, so there was inventory losses we recovered and the better margins. You can see Combined PET is $1.082 billion and the IOD is $215 million and $214 million.
Reported EBITDA is $478 for third quarter. As we just talked about it, the demand is good, the supply chain inventory. Fourth quarter also, because as the crude went up further, we will have some inventory gains coming in the fourth quarter also. We feel confident that second half 2021 will be similar to first half 2021, and this confidence comes from robust demand in, on the entire value chain, good economic recovery, in spite of high freight, high energy cost. As I mentioned to you, the energy is very expensive right now, but this will ease out in the coming 2022. As we see the forward curve, the second quarter of 2022 onwards, this gets normalized. Any additional energy which we are incurring cost, this will also get mitigated by surcharges which we have.
Fourth quarter, and you can see in the third quarter, we already had that energy in the first nine months, already the high energy cost which we had. This is just to add you the reported EBITDA versus the core EBITDA. Next slide. Let's go to different businesses. In nine months, Combined PET gave $837 million. You can see sequentially, second quarter was $319, third quarter is $258 million, which is 19% drop quarter-by-quarter. As I said, second quarter is normally seasonally strong. We also had a very good IPA margins, which went down in third quarter a little bit. Again, we are seeing fourth quarter coming back of the IPA margin. We had the impact of high energy and acetic acid cost in the entire Combined PET business.
The outlook, as I mentioned, because of China Dual Control Policy, we are already seeing high integrated PET spread. 2022 will have the advantage. As you know, when contracts were negotiated at the end of 2020 for 2021, we did not get that advantage of, on the contract customers, which is a significant quantity, which is now getting renegotiated in the Western markets. These are significant volumes to mind. This is about 2 million, in excess of 2.1 million tons on PET. As we go into the new year, we have low pipe inventory and margin is strong in the fourth quarter. They may correct a little bit, energy cost will also get normalized, you will have protected EBITDA per ton basis.
Combined PET is at a very good inflection point with the interesting fourth quarter and 2022 being a stronger year as we foresee. What is the strategy of PET? We acquired so many plants around the world. We created a 6 million tons global footprint. We have 24% market share today. We have integration. We follow three model here: integration, cost efficiency, and regional presence. Today, we have 80% PET integration and 100% MEG integration into North America. We are geographically good footprint. We have a first quartile cost position. You cannot afford to have a lower, and we keep debottlenecking the plants, so we have created very strong leadership position. Recycling capacity of 750.
In the middle, you can see this actually doesn't reflect the existing aluminum price. PET becomes much preferred polymer for beverage producer because of the lower costs, lower GHG emission, and 100% recyclability. This is getting reflected here that aluminum can, how much expensive it is. Glass bottle, how many, 1.7 x. GHG, which is the future, I mean, which everybody's concentrating on GHG footprint today. Aluminum can has much higher, 1.5 x. What will be our strategy in this business? We'll continue to invest in recycled, as you saw in the previous slide, in the developed world. In developing world, we still have opportunity to expand into the businesses. We are also enlarging our footprint in the packaging business, as you know, which is a further downstream integration, and keep our cost to Project Olympus.
This PET, naturally, we can't grow in a very rapid manner because we have heard we hit the antitrust issues. We are very excited about this vertical, which includes IPA and NDC and the specialty polymer also. This is the IOD business, which we, you know, we talk in three verticals. Let me recollect it for you so that you have a good understanding. When we say upstream, we talk this as a cracker, okay? Cracker, naturally, Lake Charles did not run. We have hot commissioned the Lake Charles, and as I speak, we are running presently 50% capacity. We are ramping up, but the real benefit will start flowing into 2022. That's on the Lake Charles. The crack margins were good. You can see the, even based on existing spot margins, we made $30 million.
The headwind was low MTBE margins because the butane prices remained high, and we will talk in the next slide. MEG margin till 3rd quarter was bad, but 4th quarter MEG went up because of coal-based MEG production went down. However, our MEG performance improved with the catalyst change in one of our MEG sites, which is the Clear Lake. I think the most interesting, which you see is the downstream, and how much profitability in downstream has increased. What does the downstream means here? Just for all our members here to understand, Downstream includes surfactants, linear alkyl benzene, ethanolamines, and all these businesses, and propylene oxide, propylene glycol and purified EO. Oxiteno plays in majority of those products, particularly in surfactants in the Latin American market, and also they have oleochemicals and solvents and ethanolamines.
This will be a fantastic, complementary business, will enhance our portfolio in the downstream. As per our letters, they are doing very good. They are running at a run rate of $200 million as per their published information for this year. We expect this deal to close in the first quarter. You can see that how the downstream business is continuously improving, at $77 million and $101 million. Which is, I mean, percentage terms is 831% year-on-year and 21% quarter-on-quarter. What is going to be different in fourth quarter or 2022? We talked about the cracker. Fourth quarter, we may not have a significant contribution as we are still just started it, but full benefit will come in 2022.
Of course, the insurance claim benefit will come on the receipt basis of the previous claim which we have. We have seen the improved margin in MEG due to Chinese coal-based MEG production reduction, which we talked about linked to the Chinese coal prices. Downstream remains very strong. The demand of LAB, ethanolamines and surfactants remained quite strong. This is also reflected in our some of our competitors' take. Downstream will be a very attractive business, and you can see the core EBITDA margin stands out at 17%, which will continue to improve. I'm very excited to present the IOD results for this third quarter. Next slide. This is an important slide to explain you a little bit about the MEG spreads and MTBE spread.
Left-hand side talks about the U.S. integrated MEG spread, where you can see Northeast Asia integrated MEG spreads and the shale gas advantage in the lighter blue. The dark blue gives you the MEG spread in the Northeast Asia. As the crude goes up, the shale gas advantage comes up. As you saw in third quarter, this was still at $500 per ton. In October 2021, we are at $617. Because also coal-based MEG operations went down because of high coal prices. That is making the MEG margin stronger. We think that MEG margins will be volatile but still remain strong. MTBE, which is a, you know, the octane booster. This graph shows you that per ton, what is the U.S. Gulf Coast MTBE spreads. That shaded line gives you the range in which it moves.
You will see in third quarter, we really got hit. It went out of the shaded area, it was very low. That is because of high butane price. Why high butane price? Because LPG in Europe was very high, LPG prices. Butane exports were happening, and that's what hit in the third quarter, and the spreads were compressed. As I told you, I talked to you about fourth quarter. Trend-wise, it should go down, but actually the way it is going that from third quarter, it is moving up, and it should hopefully goes into the shaded area back, which you are seeing in the fourth quarter, which normally remains weak because of blending into U.S. gasoline. These two MEG spreads and MTBE spreads were issues for us in the third quarter, which we seeing an improving trend coming in the fourth quarter.
That's to give you a background about these two products. Next slide. When the crude is high, this is to give you an advantage that how North America stands out, although the gas prices went up versus the other ethylene cost at $68 a barrel. It has the inherent advantage of $470. We could not enjoy that advantage completely because we were buying ethylene in the market because of the pending Lake Charles startup. Now with the Lake Charles startup, we'll be able to capture the complete value chain, and we will be one of the few integrated players in America where the entire EO, you know, we go up to surfactants, which gives a benefit. As we look at the capacity built up in America with the ethylene operating rate, the new plants are not...
very few crackers are coming next year, then it takes five years to build the crackers. I think our this presence of Lake Charles and Dayton, sorry, the Port Neches facility with full integration of the downstream will give us a very inherent strength. The right below graph shows you the MEG margins with respect to crude oil, which is directly related. Basically, once we are able to resume our Lake Charles facility, where as I said, is operating at 50%, and once it gets normalized, it will contribute to the 2022 earnings, capturing the whole value chain. It is important IVL being a growth company. What's the playbook for IVL in this segment? Let me take you back in 2012 when we decided to acquire a glycol plant when the shale gas was just coming up.
This was a glycol upstream integration, the largest merchant player in purified EO. We thought of upstream integrating with a cracker. I must admit here that Lake Charles cracker didn't start the way it should have started, and it took considerable time. I think we are at the end of the tunnel, and I think now with the start of this plant, we'll be able to capture value chain. We saw a lot of opportunity in this segment and made a bold acquisition of Huntsman asset, which gave us a downstream portfolio into EO derivatives, which we call as surfactants, and very strategically located in U.S. Gulf. To strengthen our leadership, now we are going into Oxiteno, where expansion downstream portfolio and adding scale and new geography.
This segment has grown nearly into $3.5 billion capital employed today. What do we have for future in this segment? I think there are a lot of opportunities for adjacency growth. Having created this platform in the U.S., we can talk of polypropylene. As you know, in our fiber business, we buy a lot of polypropylene. We can talk of alcohols. We can talk of polyols, which goes into polyurethane, which is a very growth business. We can talk about methanol as we buy. Many opportunities of future. We will continue to look into those opportunities organically and also acquisitions. This Oxiteno, as you saw the downstream results, gives us a clear leadership in the American market. Today, as we are going for Oxiteno, we already actually working on a 100-day plan as this deal gets closed.
The message of this slide is that there are growth opportunities. You know, IVL is a very growth company, and it's very important to know what we are doing in this segment. This is the fiber. As you can see in 9 months of 2021 is $186 million EBITDA. The third quarter is $49 million. This is a 25% year-on-year, but 25% down quarter-on-quarter. I think one of the major things which have hit us is, as you know, the polypropylene prices went up. We nearly suffered, and the polyester prices went up. We had $34 million-$35 million lag loss because of polypropylene and polyester. This $186 million would have been higher.
As we speak, fourth quarter, the polypropylene prices started coming down by $200 per ton only in October, we will start this recovery of the lag impact as we go into the fourth quarter. The lifestyle demand wasn't very strong because of the COVID and also got hit because of high ocean freight. This is a negative impact here because we export a lot of products out from Indonesia and Thailand, which hit us in the our realization. Of course, in India, the COVID situation was going on, but now the Indian market is rebounding strongly. There are industry consolidation happening in India, we think there will be an exciting time in India.
The mobility demand, as I talked to you, because of the chip shortage, will remain under weak. We don't see the semiconductor issue getting sorted very soon. The OEM demand for airbag yarn will remain weak. Unfortunately, we also had some disruption in the production in our German plant in PHP due to fire, which are also covered under insurance, but that also impacted the third quarter profitability and will continue for next three to four quarters. That insurance income will be accounted as loss, including the loss of profit. The demand for medical remains robust, but the hygiene is getting normalizing as you can see that the COVID eases out.
But our Olympus program is absolutely on track and we have a very strong playbook in these three business segments of fibers where we have strong leadership and Tess is working on how to further grow the business in the fiber segment. Next slide. I think that covers business side. I will hand over to Sanjay, and then I'll come back with our 2021 key takeaways. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Agarwal. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll cover the Q3 financial highlights in the coming slides. Our production and sales volume have grown quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. If you remember, I had mentioned in the second quarter meeting that our volume forecast for third quarter was higher. Despite the blips which we had for PET Brazil as well as PHP Germany, we have reported higher volumes. Q4, sitting here, I can tell that our volumes would be higher than Q4, but most of the capacity is operating. Rising absolute prices, which is attributable to the crude price going up, have resulted in the revenue increase of 9% quarter-on-quarter and 50% year-on-year. Core EBITDA was $437 million, which is 70% increase over the $256 million achieved in last quarter.
Quarter, I mean, quarter 3 2020. Reported EBITDA of $478 million in Q3 2021 compares to $240 million of last year, which is a 100% increase. Reported EBITDA of $478 million is, however, lower by 13% of the previous quarter, number of $552 million, as you may remember that we had recorded one-time gain of around $40 million tax credits in Brazil in Q2. Around half of the 13% differential came through those tax credits. Increase in absolute prices does imply higher investment in working capital. Selling prices going up by $60 per ton in this quarter as compared to last quarter, as well as $300 per ton year-on-year, which has resulted in a lower operating cash flow.
Our operating cash flow for this quarter is $290 million and YTD it is around $833 million. We have invested around $375 million in additional working capital due to increase in overall prices. There is also some increase due to higher inventories as we consciously have built up some inventory in this year. However, the cash cycle continues to be at 227 days as was for last quarter and has been maintained over the year. We reported an EP-EPS of 1.13 THB compared to 1.45 THB in 2Q 2021 and 0.03 THB in 3Q 2021. If you move to the next slide, which is our YTD numbers. Our sales volume has grown 6% year-on-year to 11.1 million tons.
11.1 million tons. Revenue has increased to $10.7 billion, which is 36% year-on-year as selling prices over this period has increased by $210 per ton. Core and reported EBITDA increased significantly compared to corresponding period last year for reasons explained earlier by Mr. Agarwal. Our core EBITDA for YTD Q3 2021 was $1.281 billion as against $854 million YTD Q3 2020. Reported EBITDA for this year to date Q3 2021 was $1.52 billion as against $679 million achieved in YTD Q3 2020, which is registering a growth of 100.3% year on year. Reported EPS of THB 3.62, which compares to THB 0.07 achieved in the last year, same period.
Operating cash flow of $833 million for YTD Q3 2021 is lower by 16% due to significant investment in working capital with the increase in prices. If I go to the next slide. This is the slide which I presented in the last quarter also. With the acquisition of Spindletop in early 2020, and the challenges which we faced due to COVID-19 and of one-off events like hurricane, lightning strike, et cetera, we saw some moderate results in 2020. A strong rebound in our operational and financial performance, along with the moderate CapEx, has resulted in significant reduction in the net debt to equity. This is despite the investment we made in working capital, which kept the net debt level higher than what we had expected.
Our rating agency has recently reaffirmed our AA- rating, with the outlook changed from negative to stable. This rating affirmation was post the announcement of our Oxiteno acquisition, which is seen as positive by TRIS. Interest cost is at around 2.92% in Q3 2021, with an overall cost of debt at 3.08%, which is an improvement of approximately 5-10 basis points over the last year. We will continue to maintain strong liquidity in the form of cash and unutilized lines. Presently, our unutilized lines are at least 2 x current portion of our long-term loan. Our free cash flow generation for year 2021 is well on track to meet the $400 million which we had mentioned earlier.
I would think that it would beat the what we had mentioned earlier. Net debt has been reduced by $324 million, which includes prepayment of certain long-term loans. We remain committed to ESG and our sustainability-linked financing is about 20% of our net debt with the recent issuance of the THB 10 billion sustainability-linked debentures, which we did last month. It is our commitment to the financial markets on achieving our ESG targets and at the same time reducing our cost of debt. The response to this issuance was very encouraging with the book built at around 3 x of the proposed issuance, and we did use the green shoe option. Now with the Oxiteno acquisition, we should go up on our net debt to equity at around 1.35 level.
With the strong earnings outlook for 2022, we expect to wind down to same levels as at the end of 2021 or even lower than that. The strong cash flow visibility helps us to work on our growth strategy. If you go to the next slide which is on Project Olympus. The 15 business verticals are under the 3 business segments are demonstrating commitment and determination in their contribution to Project Olympus, achieving 63 million in efficiency gains this quarter and a run rate of $201 billion in the 9 months of 2021.
Project Olympus will recalibrate our cost structure and we look forward to this total of $610 million of efficiency unlocked by 2023. As I have mentioned earlier, this program touches all segments across regions. It delivers across business levers like strategic footprint, operational excellence, commercial excellence, procurement, and organize for performance. Alongside transformative projects execution, Project Olympus has institutionalized and harmonized our approach towards identifying, screening, resourcing, and subsequently tracking the milestones for each large or small initiative at each site. In addition to the fibers which have been contributing to this program so far, which have been contributing the maximum to this program so far, our IOD business has implemented several projects during this quarter and have given an incremental $35 million in Q3.
This is a slide, which is reflecting our business outlook, business outlook versus the IVL Capital Markets Day in January 2021. As you can see, our current estimate for 2021 is turning out to be around 25% better than what we had reflected in the numbers for our Capital Markets Day. This is on the back of higher margins in CPET, higher inventory gains, higher shale gas advantage, and a better downstream performance. There were headwinds, as explained earlier, which came due to lower MTBE margins, which is due to higher feedstock costs, the lag losses in fiber segments, and some capacity being offline for some time. 2022 upsides on this. We will get Oxiteno earnings for 9 months. We will have the IVOL cracker performance for full year.
We'll have volume loss normalization, which is the Brazil volume loss, the MEG catalyst turnaround which we had taken, the polar vortex loss which we had. We also had reversal of negative lag. We should have a reversal of negative lag impact on the Fibers, which we faced this year, as well as the strong Combined PET spread outlook. With this, I hand over back to Mr. Agarwal.
Thank you. Yeah. Next slide. Let's move to the next slide. I think the important is to understand what is in store for 2022. As you saw, 2021, good results. As Sanjay mentioned, we also lost a lot of volume due to COVID impact due to Brazil fire. As we speak, the Brazilian plant has started back, which impacted, and next stage is going to run full. We'll have a good volume gain coming in the Combined PET. Demand is expected to remain robust. As you saw, the pipeline inventory is tight. Margins are holding on. Although we will have impact of the energy, which is actually will get normalized from second quarter, as the backwardation of natural gas and coal is showing.
We talked about the 2022 contracts because nearly a significant portion of the Western contracts, particularly in U.S. and Europe, we did not get the benefit in 2021 because they were negotiated in 2020. Now as we speak, we are negotiating those contract, and will certainly give a good upside. All these factors makes us exciting about the Combined PET results for 2022, with the only headwind of the energy. The demand is pretty strong, we have seen. The recycled PET demand is also strong as we complete many projects of the recycled PET by end of the year. If we come to IOD, we talked that as we hot commissioned the Lake Charles, which was really significantly delayed, the full benefit will come in the next year. Downstream margins will remain healthy.
MEG margins are improving with result of Chinese dual policy, as well as you saw the margins. The COVID, this impact of polar vortex, which disrupted the production of IOD in the first quarter, will get normalized. We talked about the catalyst change in Lake Charles, so that will be, sorry, in the Clear Lake, which will get normalized. We have volume gain as well as margin improvement. MTBE, as we just saw, is not reflective presently of the market condition should improve. In the fiber, got significantly impacted because of the lifestyle demand, which is now getting normalized as the pipeline is again empty here, and you saw the impact of Chinese dual policy. Mobility should remain under pressure because still we don't see a visibility on semiconductor shortage and the OEM demand will remain weak.
This fire situation has impacted our production for about 10,000 tons of capacity in Germany. The negative lag which happened due to polypropylene will get reversed as the polypropylene prices, which became skyrocketed in 2021. We were selling based on the previous because of the lag, which will get recovered. All the three segments show a very positive trend for 2022 as we speak. As I talked about the organization, we continue to build the organization for future ready and to prepare for the next phase of the growth in these verticals. I think that I will. Now we can take your questions. Kindly mute. I think Vikash, I hand over to Vikash to organize that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Agarwal. Thanks, Sanjay. I can see [inaudible] here, have your hand raised, please unmute yourself and ask your questions.
Hi, Vikash, can you hear me?
Yeah, we can hear you, [inaudible] . Go ahead.
Okay. First off, thank you for the insightful presentation. I have two questions for DK. Number one that you have mentioned several times about high energy costs. High energy costs. Is lower EBITDA, PET EBITDA, how much is that, you know, coming from energy and how much is that from the fire in Brazil and the surcharge? Would it be able to offset all of those? Second one is the on the IOD EBITDA margin, has it been impacted by the high energy costs or is it not energy intensive like PET and PTA? The last question is on MEG. What could derail your thesis about MEG margin recovery, which is seemed to be based on sales guide advantage and high oil price? Thank you.
Very good. So [inaudible] , 1st question was on the high energy. Vikash , you want to take that? You had calculated how much is the high energy cost per ton, which has impacted, our business per ton basis.
Mr. Agarwal, for this third quarter, the energy cost high is about $20 million, which impacted our performance, which is about $5 per ton. That's the impact for this quarter. For the annual, the 2021, the full year impact is expected to about $120 million. That's the impact due to higher energy prices.
[inaudible] , the total impact this year is $128 million, $129 million, but there is a surcharge which has been announced, which will recover more or most of these prices of high prices. We are seeing these prices high in Europe. The highest price of energy is in Europe, and that is two reason. One is the gas supply from Russia and also the overall demand being stronger. In the PTA and PET, both margins our competitors have also announced, so it will recover more than that. This will get normalized. I did mention a few times about this. I wanted to emphasize that this is in spite of high energy costs which we suffered in 2021, which will get normalized in 2022. Brazil fire did impact our production.
It's a loss of profit is nearly about $32 million, which is also insured, which we'll get, after deductible, about $25 million. We're still negotiating as on the cash basis. Of course, the full benefit will start coming from November onwards, as now the plant has restarted. IOD EBITDA margin was very marginally impacted. MTBE is energy intensive, but the gas price in U.S. was not that significantly increased. Again, it is backward dated, but MTBE did have impact because of high energy consumption. When you talked about the MEG margins theory, can we go to the MEG slide? Today, the olefin margins, per ton of ethylene are also high. You're right, the MEG is driven by oil price and because of the shale gas advantage, but also due to the coal.
This is the graph which shows you that as the coal prices went up, how the coal-based MEG operating rate has come down. This is actually in October. Now I'm hearing it's $35-$36. It's a combination of the two, that coal-based MEG operations have gone down, and because of high crude oil price, naphtha is high and the shale gas advantage went. It will be total cost, total integrated margin. Can you go to the [inaudible], the other integrated margin slide where we are showing the Asia and shale gas advantage, which we covered. Here you can see on the right-hand side that what is the spread at $626, which is the average U.S. integrated MEG spread or the ethylene, and which is a combination of the two.
The previous slide, there's another slide, [inaudible], if you can go, where we are showing the MEG margin. Yeah, here you can see that. Here gives you 2019-2020 quarter by quarter. The dark blue gives you the MEG spread, which has also improved, you know. Not just Asia integrated MEG spread from 287 because of lower production of MEG. 211 is the shale gas advantage, which will continue to improve. Although the gas price, as you know, in the fourth quarter was high, so ethane was also high. You don't see that shale gas advantage building up that much, but it was more the MEG margin which went up, you know. It's a combination of the two.
Of course, it will depend on the absolute oil price, which is expected to remain high as per all the fore pundits who are talking about mobility increase, as well as the number of rigs as they increase. Today, still in U.S., only 520 rigs are operating against the pre-COVID situation of 730. As the rigs come up, there will be more NGLs coming up. You will have ethane price also coming down. That is our theory on the MEG spreads. I hope it answered you.
Yes, I have a follow-up questions on that, on what you just told us. Number one is the when we look at the TTF forward curve, it will come off quite significant after Q1 next year. If that happen, are you going to retrieve your surcharge? The second one is Are you expecting dual control policy of China to go on even after the winter end in January next year? Thank you.
Very good. [inaudible], you have that. You are right, very right that the backwardated TTF curve is there. I think we have got a slide for you. You're absolutely right. We will remove those surcharges naturally, because there won't be energy cost. Our margins, as you just saw, the margins will still remain high because China, the inventory is very tight in the system, whether you talk U.S., you talk Europe, you talk Asia, entire system is very tight. Yes, we'll remove the surcharge, your first question. The second question, sorry, I missed that. You talked about. I forgot to write that. You asked about?
Yes. Are you expecting the China-
Yes.
cut policy to continue?
You know, I had many consultant calls on this and I asked them, whether Bain or BCG or people, there are two theories. Some people are saying that because of Olympics they are doing it. I think China is committed to their dual policy. They want to bring the GHG emission down. It's a trade-off between GDP growth, but they will focus on the products which are less energy-intensive. I don't have a right answer for you, whether it will continue or it will not continue. I myself think. It can give you here this chart, which is very interesting chart. The left-hand side shows the PET utilization rate and the inventory for number of days which PET has. You can see the graph. It's coming down. You know, the operating rate has come down, where many plants cannot run.
You see the number of days the inventory of PET is held. That's why the margins are improving. On the right-hand side is the dark blue shows over limit. That these provinces which are very heavy on the polyester, they have been asked to reduce. Actually, even my tire cord plant were asked to reduce the operating rate in China. That's where the polyester operating rate is there. Your question is, whether it will continue 22. There are a number of theories. It will be in the future, but I think China is serious about their GHG footprint.
Thank you.
Suwat, you're next. Can you please ask your question?
Okay, thank you. I have three question. Let's start with the ethane cracker. When will you, actually, start operation again? Because, after a long delay, I'm a bit confused that, what actually will be the time that you will start the operation. Also, you talk about, the benefit of the, ethylene price that's really high today. What would you expect, EBITDA contribution under the current situation, for the ethane cracker next year? That's the first question. Let me go on to the second and third. Okay? The second question I would like to ask, the, about the acquisition of the Oxiteno. Would that be on track? If you complete by the first quarter, how the financial impact Oxiteno will be, to the IOD group, considering the t his year that's been the top and your existing, previous, IOD have been, quite, doing very well in the third quarter.
The third one, I want to ask about the sustainability of the margins of, downstream IOD that have been doing very well in the third quarter, like a surfactant, ethanolamines, PO, PG, things like that. What exactly the driver that boost the margin of these products and would that be sustained into the fourth quarter into 2022? Thank you.
Well, Suwat, very good questions, all. Let me first address on ethane cracker. We actually started October shutdown for addressing some heat exchanger issue. Now we have restarted back after addressing all those issues. It is presently operating at 50% capacity. We expect this to operate at full capacity barring any other incidents next year. The contribution of the margin, this will replace the purchased ethylene from market which we have. This will depend on the ethylene crack margins. Today, first nine months, the ethylene crack margins were very high. It depending on the ethylene crack margins, this can contribute an EBITDA. It's very difficult to say depending on the ethylene from $100 million-$130 million. Depends on the crack margin. This is our very big focus right now, as you know about the ethylene.
It will depend on the crack margin. You know what, as I mentioned, in 22, there's 1 or 2 crackers coming. Demand is strong. 23 onwards, the number of crackers are less, so the utilization rate of crackers will increase. Even if 22 the crack margins remain low, 23 it will come back. Of course it will depend on the shale gas advantage. The second question was acquisition of Oxiteno. This is subject to competition authority approval. We are expecting the Brazilian tax authority, February, March, now it is. There's a period under which they have to give the approval. We are only considering 9 months. This graph shows you what is the quarterly performance of this one. You can see the last third quarter, it is $63 million.
If you ask me next year how much it will contribute, even if I say three quarters, I will give a range of, based on this, 115, 118. Let me tell you, the downstream is strong and your next question is very good. That is the Oxiteno questions, about that what it will contribute in 9 months. They are in the surfactants. You know, Brazil has 14% duty protection. They are in oleochemicals, they are in ethanolamines. The next question was sustainability of downstream profitability of IOD. Can we go to the IOD slide, please? You have a very good question. Today, it is not only the margin, but volume also. We are today operating our surfactant plant at a very high capacity. Demand for surfactant is very good.
As the oil prices are moving up, you know, we produce products for oil, we produce products for personal and home care, and agriculture. All these demands are strong, which is also reflected in the Oxiteno's performance. LAB today, industry utilization rate is 91%. To make sure that LAB is used for solid detergents, you know. Thai Oil also has a plant here in Thailand. LAB demand is very strong as we are renegotiating the contract and no new plants are coming in next two years except for small debottlenecking. Ethanolamines have DEA, MEA, TEA. There also, again, the industry utilization rate is high, so demand is good. You talked about propylene oxide and propylene glycol. Propylene oxide goes into polyols. Polyols goes into polyurethane. If you look at Covestro's results. Covestro, you can go on a listed company, the demand for polyurethane is also very strong.
As we are acquiring our, this Oxiteno, they have a plant in Pasadena where we'll use also propylene oxide for our captive consumption. PO is very tight in the market. Today, actually, I'm on FM. I've not lifted the FM because I'm just able to give what quantity customers are looking for. Downstream sustainability for 2022, 2023 looks pretty good as there has been less investment. You might have seen Stepan just announced an investment, Stepan is our competitor, for a smaller capacity at $250 million, if I'm not wrong. They also in the surfactant field. It will give you an idea. This downstream is, we believe is sustainable with our integration, what we have.
I think the black is what happens to MTBE margin, to be fair with you. MTBE margins, we are surprised that they remain low and it should come back as butane price comes down. I hope that answered you, Sumedh.
Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you.
Very good. Mayank, can you ask a question?
Vikash, can you hear me?
Yeah, we can hear you. Yeah.
Okay. Sir, firstly, thank you for this detailed presentation. Pretty useful. A few questions from my end. One was, if I can just ask, firstly to Mr. Lohia. I think you have had some very good utilization rates in certain plants as Mr. DK was talking about on surfactants, but you're still struggling on, like, these one-time shutdowns in Brazil, Germany, and then even the cracker not coming yet on stream. Is there anything on the operational side that you can talk about considering you have been focusing on this for some quarters now? Also with this new change in management, is the KPIs on the management linking to this at all now going forward or anything that you can share light on?
Hi, Mayank. Hi, everyone. Let me answer the second question first. That will probably, hopefully give you a glimpse on what I'm thinking. The strengthening of the management team at IMC basically brings all the skills, including engineering skills as Alastair Port brings to the table, and innovation skills that Chris Kenneally brings to the table. I think we have a much more comprehensive C-suite now at IMC. I welcome them. I'm glad they are there, and we'll get much better and deeper deliberations at IMC. IMC's role is not day-to-day operations, but we have the people in IMC, all the COOs of the three segments who can keep us in touch with ground reality. IMC basically is setting the company for its journey going forward.
Obviously, there are challenges, there is change, and therefore, there is a change in management approach that we are evolving at the moment. We've been on this journey for 3 years, and I hope you recognize that over the 3 years we have strengthened our platform. We just spoke about IOD at great length. We have strengthened our systems and standardization through S/4HANA. I believe it's the largest implementation of S/4HANA in the chemical industry ever. We have put enabling functions in place, and as we scale up, that brings us competitive advantages. Then coming to the people side. I mean, we all know people are the backbone of the company, and in our case, we are very fortunate to have this strong backbone. On the KPI side, you know, I think my team takes the ownership of the results.
Takes the ownership of the delivery. There are KPIs, of course. We have introduced LTI, also long-term incentives recently. We just announced them. We're not making it public, but as far as KPIs are concerned, it's a balance, but I don't think my management team is that much, you know, driven by financial incentives. They're more driven by the opportunity and by the ownership that they take. As you would notice, today's entire presentation is done by DK and his team. I'm now listening in. I'm actually learning from what I'm hearing from my management team. On the reliability side, yes. This is something that I'm going to bring to the IMC soon. What I'm going to do is I'm going to put a PM. I'm going to put a project management team. We don't have that. We have IVEX.
We have Indorama Ventures Excellence team. That is more like Lean Six Sigma. I need now a project management team. We have our global CTOs. I think there is a different role for the project management team. We are very proud of our Brazil restart. It went through a cadence. From day one, there was a roadmap on how many days it will take for what activity to bring it back on stream. I'm very proud that that cadence has worked. There was a daily reporting around it, what was happening. There was a full determination that we had to bring back this facility on time and safely. That has given me some, not some.
It's given me a lot of confidence that if we had a PM in place, then going forward, we are going to have continued turnarounds. We are going to have brownfield investments. We are going to have greenfield investments. We are going to have recovery from incidents. This project management team, if I can strengthen and prepare a project management team and differentiate that from my CTO, I think that will make a difference. This is just something very new. It's not announced, it is not formed in IVL, but that's the way I'm looking forward. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The second question was more related to, in terms of the overall, I think, this quarter's numbers. I think DK can answer this. If you can just give us a sense of how much was the impact of lower IPA margins on the earnings this quarter, and how are you kind of thinking about IPA spread? Obviously, they have improved in fourth quarter, but more for 2022, how you're thinking about it. The second question, DK, was for in terms of now that you are closer to year-end, what is the range of increases in ASPs you are kind of thinking for your contracted volumes for next year now? If you can just give us a range or some idea around that.
While DK ponders on the question and answers, I'd like to make a brief observation on what I heard from DK. I want to distinguish between spreads and margin. In my mind, I want to think of margin as EBITDA margin per ton, which quarter-on-quarter is lower this quarter, and spreads as spreads between the selling ASP and the feedstock price. Just to give you a helicopter view on that of mine personal, I think the spreads have been strong in 2021. As DK was saying, due to in the PET, integrated PET segment, we do see that the current tailwinds will allow us to improve our spreads going into 2022. Overall, I think the spreads have some protection, but the spot side of the spreads, which have been high in 2021, should normalize.
I mean, that's, that is normal to be expected. On the margin, which is my EBITDA per ton, I think this team will be able to deliver similar or better results. I won't say better, let's say similar results, because the contracted margins... The contracted spreads will go up, the spot spreads may come down, but both the variable cost in chemicals and in utilities should also come off. That may offset the spot spreads coming down. Net net on EBITDA per ton, I would think I should be able to hold the management accountable if they can deliver same EBITDA per ton. There we will gain is on absolute EBITDA because of the volume increases in 2022. I think during the presentation, DK has explained where are all the volume gains that are expected.
DK, go ahead to Mayank's questions, please.
Thank you, Mr. Lohia. coming to the, as Mr. Lohia mentioned, I don't think we have a doubt that core EBITDA per ton this year, next year will be lower than this year. Why this confidence comes in? Let me tell you, Mayank, a few things. As Mr. Lohia mentioned, spot may come down. There is a 4 cents per pound increase in the PTA margin in U.S. from first January next year. you know, INEOS and we are the producers.
I think the question is on IPA. Yep.
Mayank, I'm coming to the IPA question secondly. I'm coming addressing the second question. The contracted volume, you asked what we are negotiating. It's very difficult right now to tell you what exactly increase, but there will be a good increase. That's why it gives us a confidence that core EBITDA per ton will be better than this year, and volumes will be stronger. On the IPA side, Vikash, do you have the exact numbers because IPA third quarter, how much was the impact?
It's a part of our specialty chemicals, which was $46 million in second quarter, is about $25 this quarter. There's some impact also coming from the high energy prices in this year and some IPA.
That is improving by $100. Give and take, there will be improvement of $7 million-$8 million. That's what we are thinking in the fourth quarter. As the margin is further improving, you know, because Yizheng went and dumped the product. As we had a good benefit in the second quarter because of the improvement to the margin. I think the second question which I told you, which Mr. Lohia explained, that why we feel that EBITDA per ton confidence in the volume loss was quite significant due to supply chain disruption of PTA and COVID and the Brazil impact also. That volume gain will also give us the upside.
That visibility we can give you right now with some improvement, which I told you about the PTA margin in U.S. by $0.04 and also in Europe, which are getting renegotiated.
Got it. Very clear, sir. Thank you for that explanation, Mr. Lohia. I think the last question that I had was to Sanjay on the balance sheet side. Sanjay, I think, you have been holding your cash conversion days at 27 days, pretty steady for the past couple of quarters now. Do you think there is not much more that you can do now on this one, or this is like the new normal of 27 days and it cannot fall further? I think the second question related to debt was like, when you look at now Oxiteno's acquisition, are you thinking about any deleveraging next year, or it will be a flattish debt levels for you next year?
Yeah. On, sorry, Mayank, on the first question, the 27 days is what we have maintained. Actually, we had come to 26 days at the end of last year, and it went to 27 at the beginning of this year. We maintained, I believe we are, based on our numbers, I have expect 1 day to optimize at the end of this year, but it's going to be in that range only between 26-28 days. There is a little bit of inventory increase, as I mentioned, but at the end of 2020, we were running at very lean inventories. I would continue to focus on it, but I would commit to something between 26-28 days only. In terms of your second question, the
You can see from here, we go up on the net debt to equity from 1.2 to 1.35 at the time of our Oxiteno acquisition, which is expected to close in Q1 2022. We should be able to deleverage to back to around 1.1 level. There is a free cash flow expected by the end of 2022, once this acquisition is completed. The expected EBITDA from Oxiteno of 9 months, plus our strong results should give us a free cash flow overall by the end of 2022. There is a free cash flow expected. Maybe I can give you the numbers offline, exact numbers, what is expectation.
Sure. Got it. Thank you, Sanjay.
Let me add to that as well.
Yeah. Sure.
Just on my [inaudible]. The free cash flow is quite dependent on the price of oil. As currently this year, we have deployed more capital into the working capital because of the rise of oil. The oil has risen, what, 50% this year compared to last year. Though we have very good operating cash flows pre-working capital deployment, therefore next year, what the capital deployment would be, a major impact, as we have explained, our earnings we believe would be better.
Based on all the factors that DK has explained. How much of the cash flow gets deployed or released from working capital would also impact our, the equity. Thank you.
Fair enough, sir. Thank you.
Thank you, Mayank. Komsun, thanks for your patience. Can you please ask your question?
Hi. I actually have two questions. First is on the contract renegotiation in the West. I believe I've seen somewhere, I've seen in the news that some buyers are asking for spot exposure instead of the contract pricing, which is linked to the formula, which they don't think that it's reflecting the actual cost currently. Maybe you can share with us, you know, like what you hear and whether this will benefit you in some way. Second question, it's in the MD&A, there's a section that you mentioned about PTA margin increase of around like $88 a ton in 2022 in America. Can you give us a little bit of color there on like on some background about it? Thank you.
Kom, thank you very much. You are a very keen reader of our MD&A and even the news. Congrats for that. You are right. In Europe, you know, the between spot and the contract there is a gap of EUR 250 per ton, Okay. People are negotiating whether they should sign EUR 250 today or they should keep on the spot basis. The spot is determined by import parity, and the spot is determined by what you call it, the market tightness. Today spot is much, much higher. That is the deliberation because remember, this preform makers, they want to pass on this, you know, the cost to their customers.
Nutshell, I can tell you that, whether it goes into raws linked or contracts, if they even they go to the spot linked or the ICIS linked, some are going for 50/50 blend. Still, the negotiations are going on. In Europe it will, and U.S.A., it will significantly benefit. I hope we can surprise you with our first quarter results. We'll keep you updated as the things go. You know, we are still negotiating that thing. PTA margin of $88 per ton. INEOS, who took over the BP's assets in U.S., is announced with effect from first January. That is a formula price. That will just get passed on.
There is no if and but about it, because our contracts are linked to it and we make about 1.5 million tons, 1.4 million tons PTA in America. That is because our contracts are linked, and similarly, that PET also gets transferred. Hopefully that gives you a picture. We are the only two producer, merchant producer in USA. Alpek does produce, but he's not in a merchant in USA. This is the formula price announcement. The PET prices are linked to the PTA price formula, you know. Hopefully it answered you, Komsun.
Yes. Thank you.
Very good.
Thank you, Komsun. Yup apan, you're next. Can you ask your question?
Hello.
Yeah, we can hear you. You can go ahead.
Okay. Thank you for the presentation. I just have, like, a follow-up question on the third quarter result. I believe that actually integrated PET EBITDA should have been much better. I would like to know what is the impact from the fire incident in Brazil and what is the higher impact from the higher energy cost? Because I think, like, the drop shouldn't be this much given we see improvement in the West PET margin. Secondly, it is regarding your West PET spread for next year. Have you locked in the new contract already, and how much that increased compared to this year?
The last question is that, regarding, MTBE, I see that the third quarter MTBE spread is similar to last year level, but the loss in the MTBE EBITDA is much lower. Why is that? That's all my question.
Very good. On the per ton basis, on the EBITDA margin, you know, the drop is from 119 to 96. That's $23. As we just talked about, IP itself is $10 into it. The variable cost, Vikash, can you give the number? What was the variable cost impact per ton? You have given that $20 million impact on the chemicals, which is roughly $10, right? Like $10.
Can I just take a crack at it? I think the specific question on Brazil is around how much did we lose because of Brazil. I believe it is over $20 million. On the energy costs, again, in CPET specifically is around $15 million.
Sanjay, you're talking about the Brazil volume loss, right?
Yeah, because question was specifically to Brazil as well as the energy cost in CPET. Vikash, you want to add something?
No, this is correct. Most of the energy impact is in CPET and Brazil also. Yeah. Around $30-plus million impact. Yeah. There are three components: Brazil fire, variable cost and the European margin slightly lower. They were the three major components. Yeah. IPA margin. $20 million, as you just saw the impact of the IP also, you know.
So-
The second question.
Yupapan, this is Aloke here. Let me add to that. Quarter three is typically lower than quarter two. When we compare quarter-over-quarter, it is understandable that quarter three would be slightly lower than quarter two. This year has been atypical. That means this year has been different. This year we have seen quarter two was amazing. I mean, no one denies that quarter two was such an amazing quarter. It was an exceptional quarter. When we look year-over-year on quarter three, we do have significant improvements. Over quarter two, it's natural that quarter three would be weaker and quarter four would be even further weaker. This year, again, like I said, it's turning out to be an exceptional year or different year, where we expect quarter four to be on par or better than quarter three. That's one.
I'm talking about not only CPET, but across IVL. That's one point. That quarter-on-quarter there would be some impact on our Combined PET business, especially. How much is the impact? Half the impact is because of the spread coming down, and half of the impact is because of energy cost going up. The impact is 20-
3.
$23, of which approximately $10 is because of variable cost increase and $10 is because of decrease of the spread. Just to give you in summary. For us, I would want to argue, but I don't agree that the quarter three results are worse than expected. Quarter three is typically a weaker quarter than second quarter. I would think that quarter three results for us this year are above our expectation. They are but better than our budgets.
Right. I think, thanks, Mr. Aloke. That is very clear. 23, 10 because of the margin and 10 because of the variable cost. Your second question was about the negotiation of the contract.
Yes.
As I mentioned, the PTA, $0.04, $88 on 1.5 million tons, that's all frozen because that is how it works based on the announcement. The other negotiations are going on with the customers. Some contracts have been locked in. Major contracts are still under negotiation, we are expecting good increase. As Mr. Aloke Lohia mentioned, that spot component will be lower. Summary is that EBITDA per ton, in spite of high energy cost, we expect to be better than this year. That should give you a good idea, and hopefully when we give you first quarter, fourth quarter results, we'll give you much more visibility and the Capital Markets Day when we have much more firm numbers. We are very confident about 2022 results. You talked about MTBE.
One thing, you're right that, third quarter industry margins in 2020 were also lower, and that was because the oil was very, very low, as you know. But the EBITDA has been better. The reason is that, 1, what we have done is that we have started selling the MTBE at a much better premium markets and the, which is not linked to the certain other formulas, so which we have done little bit market mix changes. That has helped and also on the butane buying. It's a combination of the 2 actions which we have taken on the MTBE. Third quarter has not been good margin, because of the high butane prices.
This gives you the forward curve of the butane, which he was trying to show you the forward curve of the butane, you know. Let it come down.
Let me add to what DK mentioned on MTBE. Last year and this year are two different worlds. Last year we got hit because of low crude oil prices. MTBE, as you know, is a additive to the fuel. If fuel, absolute prices are lower, we get impacted. Last year was not because of the raw material. This year is totally different. We have high crude oil prices, so absolute price of MTBE has reflected that. What we have got hit is because of, you can call it the energy crisis. The raw material prices have really shot up. The profitability improvement is only a reflection that the absolute prices, ASP, let's say, has gone up, but the cost has gone up as well, offsetting the gain from the absolute prices.
Yeah, I think, just to add, this like what we call is black swan event, that the energy crisis, LPG prices in the world are very high. That is pushing the butane. That is reflected in the forward butane prices, as you can see, as energy situation normalizes. Good. I think we have answered all the questions.
Yeah. Yupapan, do you have any follow-up question?
No, sir. Thank you so much for your answer.
Thank you, Yupapan. Sumedh, you're next.
Yeah. Thank you, Vikash. First of all, thank you everyone for the presentation, and happy Diwali to everyone as well. My questions are three actually. Firstly, on IOD business, could you please help us understand on a first principle basis, how do the margins work and especially for the downstream business? Are they contracted, or do they roll over annually, or are they on spot basis? Could you please help us understand that? That would be useful to know. Secondly, on PET business, obviously very good quarter coming because of this China issue.
Do you expect that once the issue is behind us, coming into first quarter, second quarter, when it is typically a seasonally better quarter, we should see worse margins simply because of the pent-up supply that will get released in that particular period. So that's the second question. And thirdly, I just wanted to get clarification on the energy cost impact you guys mentioned. Did I hear correctly that it is $120 million for this year, and it was $20 million for third quarter, so which means is it going to be $100 million for fourth quarter? I'm not sure whether I get that correctly, so will be good to know. Thank you so much.
I'll address the last question first. 120 is with reference to 2021 versus 2020. Okay. What 20 million Vikash mentioned is with reference to 3rd quarter versus the 2nd quarter. So this is a little bit 2 different numbers. The 120 is with reference to 2020 energy cost versus 2021 energy cost. So these results are in spite of this high energy cost, which we have passed on and which we'll further pass on in terms of surcharges.
DK, just can I get the clarification here? One $120 million you said that is on a full year basis, right? If it is $20 million for 3Q, what was the impact in first half? Would you be able to tell us? Thank you.
Vikash, you will have of the numbers. I think it is around $40 million or something, right? This is.
Yeah. We'll share with you. The full year is here. Yeah. First time we'll share with you. Yeah.
This is quarter-on-quarter 2022, 15, 3 and 4 in different verticals. Year-on-year is 49. 2021 full year versus 2020 is 128, which hopefully gives you the segment-wise. Is it clear?
Okay, very clear. Yeah, very clear. Thank you so much.
We came ready for all the questions. Okay. The second question was IOD, which you talked about how the margins work in downstream, a very good question. It's not only the margins but also the volumes which we have ramped up. That is number one. There are contracts also, there are spot also. I won't be able to give you an offhand because it depends on the each product category. Like LAB is roughly 40% contract, 60% spot. Ethanolamines. Again, here also, as we are renegotiating the contract for next year, there will be some upside on this. This $101 million is combination of the two, and this is basically in all. Propylene glycol is totally on a price announcement basis, so propylene glycol is very tight.
Like today when the polypropylene price is going down, we're announcing an increase of the price 5 cents a pound. Of course, there is some disruption in the supply of the Dow's plant. That's a combination of both. I won't be able to give you exact percentage because it's a blend of this, but quite a bit is based on spot and then contracts, depending on each product category. This strength is coming due to 2 factors. One is the demand being stronger, and the asset utilization rate worldwide is very high in linear alkyl benzene, ethanolamines, surfactants. This is in other companies. Then we are also doing innovation pipeline, which new products which we are bringing in, which also adds up to the contribution margin per ton.
It's a combination of all this and the strength we continue to look after. The PET business, you talked about pent-up supply coming in. That's an interesting question. actually, look the PET once inside China and another outside China. Outside China plants were all operating except for little bit supply disruptions or the events of FM which happened with LPAC and all that. The system is very tight. Only China is the producer of PET, which exports about 3.2 million tons of China. The operating rates in China you can see here. Even if China is safe, for example, this dual policy is not there, China is able to ramp up, there will be only 200,000-300,000 tons additional they can sell and export.
You get hit with the logistic constraint, where you need more containers to ship it. It's a very delicate balance between the two, so I don't see a pent-up supply coming from, you know, China in a big way because of these issues, and also the operating rate is already very high. Please mind that operating rate, we have to separate between seasonally peak. As you can see, April, May, June, this graph won't give you exactly, but you can see there's 87%, 88% operating rate in China. Because in summer, the demand is much stronger. I don't see a pent-up supply coming in for whatever reason.
Very helpful. Thank you.
DK, let me add, Sumedh, Happy New Year. Happy Diwali.
Happy Diwali, yeah.
Thank you.
Let me add some color to this discussion. On the pent-up supply, once you have lost your capacity, you've lost your capacity, so you cannot think of it as pent-up demand. Demand was something where you had restricted your purchases and you have made up your purchases now as travel opens up and vaccination has taken place. Like, like DK said, on that pent-up supply, we are not concerned, especially since the pipeline is quite bare at the moment. I think the producers would have some time to fill in the pipeline and therefore have some pricing control. The second point on where the future is going on spreads, I think will also be dictated by the reshoring.
Over the last two years in all businesses now, there is a serious discussion about reshoring, and that is where I really believe that we would be advantaged because we have already reshored our production, and not only reshored in PET terms, but it's also integrated regionally. That's the second point for me. On downstream margins in IOD, it is a work that we are doing now, especially now with the announced acquisition of Oxiteno. We are putting up a playbook comparing Oxiteno's downstream business to our Huntsman's, what we bought from Spindletop a year and a half ago. We have got lots of experts involved now today. We have one group of experts working on this comparison of IOD downstream spreads and Oxiteno.
Since in our diligence we had the Oxiteno downstream spreads, we are making our own data on an apple-to-apple basis. That data would be given to a clean team. That clean team can help us to make the 100-day plan based on what we learn from both the apple-to-apple data on where we have opportunities and synergies. A clean team means we will not have access to that data pre-close. Post-close we'll be able to quickly align between Oxiteno and IOD and take our executive decisions going forward. The second expert team is working on the North American assets. Between Oxiteno and IVL, IOD, we have eight assets in downstream. How to fill these eight assets, how to not have, how do you call it? Overlaps of production between the eight assets.
In terms of which markets which asset serves and which customers geographically. We see there is room for us to improve the output from the 8 assets compared to the present 5 assets I think we have in IOD and 3 assets in Oxiteno in North America. There are a lot of opportunities out here. I think a lot of work is going on, and this time the work is going on in different mannerism than in the past. We are taking PMI much more seriously and getting ready that on day one of closure we would have a playbook in hand, what they call a 100-day plan, align quickly between Oxiteno team and IOD team, and then take advantage of that. When we announced the Oxiteno acquisition, we had announced certain synergies. We believe we would be able to improve on those synergies.
Oxiteno results themselves are better than their budget for 2021, which is very gratifying, especially because Oxiteno's raw material is linked to West European ethylene, which is linked to naphtha, which is linked to oil. As the price of ethylene has gone up, Oxiteno has been able to demonstrate good results, both that means they've been able to protect the spread and they've increased the volume. The same thing goes for IVL. There are a lot of positives that I see, and I think the teams are working on a much more cooperative way on how to go forward without taking things for assumption. Without assuming things will happen, we are making sure it will happen this time. Thank you.
Thank you. We don't have more questions, and we are on time. It took about 2 hours. Any last questions? Thank you very much, stay safe. If you have any questions, please do contact us. Thank you.