Good morning, and welcome to Orbia's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. As we turn to slide 1, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, press star then two. Please note that this event is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Gerardo Lozoya, Orbia's Investor Relations Director. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to Orbia's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. We appreciate your time and participation today. Joining me today are Sameer Bharadwaj, CEO, and Jim Kelly, CFO. Before we continue, a friendly reminder that some of our comments today will contain forward-looking statements based on our current view of our business, and actual future results may differ materially. Today's call should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements contained in our earnings release and in our most recent Bolsa Mexicana de Valores report. The company disclaims any obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Sameer. Sameer?
Thank you, Gerardo, and good morning, everyone. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our 23,000 dedicated employees. Though our teams are spread across the globe, they are unified by our common values and driven by a purpose to address the world's toughest challenges. Now turning to slide three, I would like to share a high-level overview of our third quarter 2022 performance. Orbia had a challenging third quarter due to ongoing macroeconomic turbulence, including effects from the war in Ukraine, increased input costs, inflation, the energy crisis in Europe, COVID lockdowns in China, and unfavorable currency translation. This resulted in lower profitability for the quarter, with decreases in Polymer Solutions, Building and Infrastructure, and Precision Agriculture, partially offset by strength in Fluorinated Solutions and Connectivity Solutions, which was previously referred to as data communication.
Orbia continues to demonstrate resilience in its businesses and maintains a very strong balance sheet with robust long-term fundamentals for its businesses. Revenues for the quarter totaled $2.3 billion, which were roughly flat compared to the prior year, and EBITDA totaled $381 million, decreasing 28% compared to the prior year. Our EBITDA margin of 16.6% declined by roughly 660 basis points. Finally, we generated $101 million of free cash flow, which improved by $11 million from the prior year, reflecting effective working capital management, which more than offset lower EBITDA, an increase in capital expenditures, and higher taxes paid.
Despite the near-term headwinds, Orbia continued to execute on its long-term strategy for value creation as outlined at our Investor Day in May with three key focus areas, investing in profitable growth and innovation, maximizing the value of integration, and creating shareholder value by being thoughtful stewards of capital and disciplined operators. To that end, I would like to highlight a few key steps we took during the quarter as we continue to invest through the cycle for long-term growth. Our Connectivity Solutions business, Dura-Line, acquired Biarri Networks, a leading technology-enabled service provider specializing in fiber optic network design solutions. This strategic acquisition facilitates expansion into customized network solutions that offer improved scalability, reliability, and efficiency as the business broadens to a full suite solution service provider.
Our Building and Infrastructure business, Wavin, acquired Bow Plumbing Group, a leading North American manufacturer of plastic pipes and fittings for the residential and commercial construction industry. This acquisition strengthens and extends Wavin's presence in North America through Bow's commercial reach and deep understanding of this important market, as well as its reputation for excellence in plastic pipes and fittings. Building and Infrastructure also broke ground on a greenfield site in Indonesia with the President of Indonesia, His Excellency Joko Widodo, himself leading the ceremony, underscoring the importance of our investment to the Indonesian economy. Our Fluorinated Solutions business, Koura, received a $100 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the first set of projects funded by the President's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to expand domestic manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles and materials and components currently imported from other countries.
The $100 million award will be combined with an additional investment by Koura to construct and start up a dedicated LiPF6 process line. In addition, our Orbia Ventures investment, Ascend Elements, also received two grants from the Department of Energy totaling $480 million for the production of sustainable lithium-ion battery cathode materials made from recycled batteries. Orbia is also partnering with Ascend Elements on further innovation in the recycling of battery materials. Orbia has also backed the company through several investment rounds. We remain committed to creating value and remaining resilient through economic cycles as we implement our long-term strategy. At this time, I will turn the call over to Jim to go over our financial performance in further detail.
Thank you, Sameer. Good morning, everyone. Turning to slide 4, on a consolidated basis, net revenues were $2.3 billion, roughly flat year-over-year, with higher sales in Connectivity Solutions than Fluorinated Solutions, offset by lower sales in Polymer Solutions, Building and Infrastructure, and Precision Agriculture. The foreign exchange impact on revenue during the quarter was $163 million. Excluding this impact, revenue increased by approximately 7% year-over-year. EBITDA of $381 million was down 28% year-over-year, driven by higher input costs, lower volumes in certain segments, and currency headwinds, partially offset by higher profitability in Connectivity Solutions and Fluorinated Solutions. EBITDA margin was 16.6%, reflecting a decrease of approximately 660 basis points. The foreign exchange impact on EBITDA during the quarter was $18 million.
Operating cash flow and free cash flow were $225 million and $101 million during the quarter, respectively, reflecting effective management of working capital, which more than offset an increase in capital expenditures and higher taxes paid. Capital expenditures of $118 million were up 63% in the quarter compared to the prior year, including ongoing maintenance spending and investments in support of the company's growth initiatives. We closed the third quarter with net debt of $3.3 billion, and our net debt to EBITDA ratio was 1.57x.
The increase from the level of 1.39 x at the end of the second quarter reflects approximately $150 million in short-term borrowings that we executed in the quarter, as well as the impact of lower EBITDA in the quarter as compared to the comparable period in the prior year. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 18.9%, which is a decrease of approximately 1,010 basis points compared to the prior year period. This was largely driven by a tax benefit related to foreign exchange losses and the release of valuation allowances, partly offset by the tax effect of an adjustment for inflation in Mexico. We continued to return cash to our shareholders during the third quarter in the form of dividends and share buybacks. Dividend payouts totaled $75 million, while share buybacks totaled $16 million.
Turning to slide number 5, I'll go through our quarterly performance in more detail by business. In Polymer Solutions, revenue was $837 million, a decrease of 8% year-over-year, largely driven by lower volumes reflecting softening demand and lower prices in general resins due to increased availability of low-cost supply in key markets. COVID lockdowns in China resulted in a slowdown in domestic consumption and large exports to other parts of the world, depressing prices. In addition, high prices for caustic soda have encouraged U.S. operators with integration into both caustic and PVC to operate at high rates. This results in increased supply of PVC, and we are seeing higher U.S. exports at lower prices while domestic prices remain stable. This was partially offset by higher prices in specialty resins and derivatives.
EBITDA of $117 million was down 62% year-over-year due to lower volumes as well as higher feedstock costs, particularly in Europe. EBITDA margin decreased approximately 1,940 basis points to 13.9%. In Building and Infrastructure, revenues of $700 million were down 7% compared to a strong prior year quarter, driven by lower volumes, particularly in Europe, due to destocking of inventories in the customer value chain as well as the impact of currency devaluation. EBITDA was $70 million, a decrease of 34%, with a margin of 9.9%, down approximately 415 basis points year-over-year. This was primarily driven by the decrease in volumes, continued input cost increases, and currency depreciation, partly offset by solid pricing.
Turning to Precision Agriculture, revenue was $224 million, a decrease of 17% year-over-year, primarily due to a slowdown in demand in most markets except for Latin America, Turkey, and China. The slowdown in Europe was directly related to economic weakness related to the war in Ukraine and high energy costs affecting key market segments. In the United States, the slowdown was partly related to destocking in the customer value chain after inventory buildup in the first half of the year. EBITDA of $12 million was down 64% year-over-year, driven by lower demand, higher raw material and transportation costs, as well as currency devaluation. In addition, the adoption of accounting standard IAS 29 related to hyperinflation in Turkey had a cumulative year-to-date negative impact of approximately $9 million or 400 basis points for the quarter.
EBITDA margin, including the impact of IAS 29, was 5.4%, a decrease of approximately 690 basis points compared to the prior year period. Excluding the hyperinflation impact, the margin was 9.4%. Connectivity Solutions achieved strong performance this quarter, with revenue of $368 million, a 35% increase year-over-year. Revenues increased primarily in North America, supported by our investments to increase production capacity, along with the growing need for fiber infrastructure combined with favorable pricing. EBITDA of $104 million increased 214% year-over-year with a margin of 28.3%, an increase of approximately 1,615 basis points year-over-year. This significant EBITDA growth was due to higher revenues combined with a stabilization of material costs.
In Fluorinated Solutions, revenue was up 30% year-over-year at $223 million, primarily due to strong pricing across our product portfolio, including upstream minerals, chemical intermediates, and downstream products such as refrigerants and propellants. EBITDA was $78 million, an increase of 49% year-over-year with a 35% EBITDA margin, an increase of approximately 445 basis points year-over-year. Increased EBITDA was driven by revenue growth, improved pricing, and a better product mix, which helped offset higher input and logistics costs. In summary, our team continues to navigate the ongoing macroeconomic turbulence by remaining focused on commercial and operational excellence as well as diligent cost management. I'll now turn the call back to Sameer.
Thank you, Jim. I'm on slide 6. Given the challenging macroeconomic environment, we are continuing to exercise strong financial discipline. We always take an owner's mindset in managing costs, but we have been even more diligent during this period to conserve cash and to maintain a strong balance sheet to support our future growth. At our Investor Day in May, we elaborated on our strategy for value creation, and I want to take some time to provide an update on how each business has been executing from a position of strength to attain our long-term goals. We continue to believe in the resilience of our businesses over time and are balancing the short-term needs to closely manage costs with our long-term commitment to grow the businesses and create value for both customers and shareholders.
Starting with Polymer Solutions, the team has been actively working to optimize our production volumes to reflect the temporary market softening in the case of general resins, while maximizing derivatives production to take advantage of the positive market environment for those products. We continue to believe that the supply-demand environment will be tight over the long term, and we are pacing the activities associated with our intended capacity expansion to balance near-term and long-term priorities. The business case for capacity expansion remains attractive given our conservative assumptions. Currently, the teams are working on engineering and capital cost optimization, and the key decision point for beginning significant capital commitments for the 2024 - 2026 timeline will be towards the end of 2023. We retain the ability to time our investments with a close eye on evolving market conditions.
In Building an Infrastructure, the integrations of Vectus in India and the newly acquired Bow Plumbing in North America are ongoing. We have continued to see momentum for our fully integrated indoor climate systems as well as our urban climate resilience program, and are seeing increased interest in our value-added services, such as our innovative Building Information Modeling package. Wavin also accomplished the acquisition of MetroPolder, a Dutch startup that will add specific expertise and solutions for urban flood control, taking the business closer to its goal of closing the water cycle in cities and making cities future-proof. Lastly, Wavin announced the construction of a new production plant in Indonesia to provide the Asia-Pacific region with sustainable sanitation and water management solutions. In Precision Agriculture, the team is focused on implementing growth projects in target geographies to support market demand in the coming years. As long-term market fundamentals remain strong globally.
We continue to expand our growth and penetration in extensive crops such as corn, rice, and cotton. In Connectivity Solutions, we focused on deepening our customer relationships by providing specialized product and service offerings supported by the recent Biarri acquisition, which will bolster the long-term growth of the business. Additionally, during the quarter, Dura-Line announced the construction of three new production facilities across the U.S. and Canada in order to meet growing demand for fiber optic network infrastructure. Finally, in Fluorinated Solutions, our team's innovation was recognized at the 2022 Cooling Industry Awards, where our refrigerant, Koura Klea 473A, won the Refrigeration Innovation of the Year Award. Klea 473A is a high-performance refrigerant with a significantly lower global warming potential than existing refrigerants in ultra-low temperature cooling applications, such as vaccine storage.
We continue to advance our efforts in the energy storage market as we have continued discussions with potential partners to address this high-growth market. Now on slide 7. We remain fully committed to supporting a sustainable future by progressing our science-based commitments to net zero and beyond by helping our customers achieve their own sustainability goals through our products and solutions. As part of the sustainability strategy detailed at Investor Day, we have stayed focused on developing detailed roadmaps to meet our long-term commitments while making progress across our three key sustainability pillars: low impact operations, sustainable solutions, and impactful ventures. As part of our efforts to achieve low impact operations, our Polymer Solutions business, Vestolit, started a partnership to divert calcium carbonate from landfill, reducing Orbia's total waste sent to landfill by approximately 25%.
Our Wavin site in Sweden started the installation of 4,000 meter square of solar panels that will contribute to reducing Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions. As part of our sustainable solutions efforts, Vestolit began to see its PVC recycling projects gain traction with customers and has just unveiled its future-fit PVC range, while Wavin continued to expand its use of recycled materials and water solutions for buildings and cities, and began to offer verified Life Cycle Assessments for customers in EMEA. Also, Netafim just opened Mexico's largest agricultural plastic recycling facility in Culiacán, Mexico.
In addition to offering customers in one of its top five markets the option to give drip lines a second life, the plant will incorporate a water recirculation system in all processes, a photovoltaic set up for 100% clean energy source, and a state-of-the-art laboratory to ensure the strictest standards in the manufacturing of drip irrigation lines. Supporting a sustainable future also guides the way we invest. Orbia participated in the most recent funding round of Ascend Elements, in line with our strategy of investing in impactful ventures. At the Investor Day meeting in May, Orbia committed to supporting an initiative related to our corporate social responsibility strategy by making a gift donation of $50,000 on behalf of the investors. We are pleased to share that 160 young Mexican girls will attend UNICEF's STEM Bootcamp in the following months.
I will now turn the call back to Jim to discuss our full year 2022 outlook and business assumptions.
Thank you, Sameer. Turning to slide 8 and our 2022 outlook. Based on our year-to-date performance and ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, we are reaffirming our previously established guidance. Our assumptions remain largely unchanged from the information communicated in our last earnings call. We anticipate full-year EBITDA in the range of $1.8 billion-$1.9 billion, trending toward the high end of the range, with a tax rate between 29% and 32%, and capital expenditures in the range of $400 million-$450 million. For the remainder of the year, we expect to see additional impacts to our results from the challenging macroeconomic environment. We are being proactive in managing costs and cash under the current circumstances.
However, our business has proven to be resilient through economic cycles, and we're staying diligent and focused on balancing short-term needs with executing our strategy and delivering long-term value to our shareholders and customers. Beginning with Polymer Solutions, lower PVC prices driven by short-term excess supply may continue until recovery in China and cooling of the caustic markets. This may cause continued pressure on general resins margins in the near term, while specialty resins markets are expected to be stable and the derivatives business is expected to remain strong. In Building and Infrastructure, softening demand is expected to continue as a result of geopolitical uncertainty, particularly in our European markets, and unfavorable currency translation is expected to continue to impact results.
These impacts may be partly offset by a benefit from sales of lower cost inventories and continued success in higher value-added applications. In Precision Agriculture, the macroeconomic environment and high energy costs are expected to continue to impact demand. In Connectivity Solutions, we expect growth in North America will continue to be driven by demand for additional bandwidth, fiber connectivity, and the adoption of or conversion to advanced products, continuing the tight supply demand environment for our products. Finally, in Fluorinated Solutions, demand is expected to remain strong in our downstream sectors, with continued strong pricing from refrigerants and medical products offsetting increased input costs. Operator, we are now ready to begin the question-and-answer session.
Thank you. At this time, we will begin our Q&A session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question will come from Nik Lippmann with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I have three questions, if I may. First, a bit on Netafim and what's going on in that market. Clearly breaking, I think, the trends that we've seen of some growth. It appears, you know, maybe early stage, but it appears that they are losing share in irrigation versus peers. Can you provide a bit of color on what's happening or, you know, to what degree this is maybe higher cost of capital for farmers? Is this affecting decisions if it is, in fact, potentially market share loss? So that's question number one, just more color on what's going on with Netafim. The second question, and congratulations on that, DOE award.
As far as we understand from the DOE announcement, you guys are committing about $300 million to that, and thanks for providing more color. Could you provide a little bit more information about how should we, how should we think about this business model? What is it, you know, what is it that you have in terms of IP or patents and, you know, what is the timing of the rollout of this business model? Finally, you know, thanks for providing more color on that FID on the PVC expansion. If I could ask, is it related to the choice of partner? Is it permitting or something else that is causing this small delay in that decision? Thank you very much.
Nik, good morning, and thanks for your questions. You know, let me start with Netafim. What I can clearly say is that we are not losing market share. You know, this is an economic weakness particularly in Europe, right? And it's driven by the war in Ukraine and the resulting softening in demand. And specifically with the high energy costs, it's impacting our significant traditional business sales to greenhouses, you know, drip irrigation lines to greenhouses. And when many of these have slowed down or shut down because of the high energy costs, and that has impacted our business in Europe. We've had some other specific country-specific issues in some countries or some delays in start-up business in India.
In the U.S., you know, we had a very strong quarters in the first half of the year, and what we are now seeing is, you know, dealers are pausing and waiting to see in which direction the world goes. You know, it's essentially a pause in buying behavior, you know, waiting to see what happens. Having said that, you know, we are seeing good adoption in commodity crops in the U.S. We hope to see that trend continue. We've had strength in our Latin American markets in Netafim, and we have very good strength in Turkey and China in Netafim. We've had some challenges in Australia due to floods. It's a number of factors, you know, that have come together to affect Netafim's performance in this quarter.
What I would like to emphasize is our long-term fundamentals are intact. We remain committed to our growth platforms, which are basically enabling the penetration of drip irrigation in extensive crops, expanding our services business model, expanding our digital offering, and then, you know, when the markets are better, you know, the pent-up demand for greenhouse solutions. Hopefully that addresses your concerns on Netafim. Let me talk a little bit about our efforts in battery materials. You know, the announcement you saw is a very landmark announcement.
You know, the United States has created the American Battery Materials Initiative, and they are investing $2.8 billion in 20 companies that will help localize the North American, you know, battery supply chain. 200 companies applied for these grants, and only 20 companies were selected, with Orbia's Koura business being one of them. Now the reasons for this are manifold. You know, we have an existing footprint in North America, you know, with our mine in Mexico, our HF plant in Matamoros, and a supply line of HF to St. Gabriel, where we produce refrigerants. That is where we plan to, you know, do the LiPF6 investment.
In terms of technology, you know, we've been working on acquiring access to technology for the last couple of years now, and, you know, I will not be able to share more details about that at this time for competitive reasons. You know, look to hear more about that in the coming months. In terms of the investment required, you know, the numbers that you see in the DOE announcement, you know, reflect both our contribution in cash and kind. Now, note that this is a brownfield investment in St. Gabriel, so there's a lot we already bring to the table, you know, that counts towards our investment. We'll share more details about that as we go forward. I would like to remind everyone, you know, the critical importance of fluorinated materials in lithium-ion batteries.
You know, we've talked about this on Investor Day, and we intend to participate in LiPF6, the electrolyte salt. There are fluoropolymers that go into the cathode that we are interested in, and there are a host of other additives that, you know, that we are working on as well, and you'll hear more about these as we go along. I would also like to share that our investment through Orbia Ventures in Ascend Elements, and our Ascend Elements has won $480 million of the Biden administration grant, and they are focused on recycling of battery materials. We are also collaborating with them on innovation with respect to recycling of battery materials. Now, your third question is about the PVC expansion, you know.
Let me first, and I'm sure many of the other investors on the call have a similar question about PVC. It's important to understand what is happening in the market, you know, before I talk about the investment. PVC prices more than doubled in the last 24 months. Before we understand why PVC prices go down, it's very important to understand why they went up. Now, this industry has been historically underinvested in, and capacity additions lagged demand growth for the past decade. You know, right after COVID, we had robust demand recovery and actual operating rates are significantly higher than industry capacity utilization figures indicate. You know, if nameplate utilizations, Nik, as in your reports you have quoted as 82%, if that's the case, then there's no reason prices should double.
The reality is much of that capacity on the far end of the spectrum doesn't exist, and the industry was operating at very high utilizations. Then we had a series of force majeure and shutdowns that took out about 4% of world capacity, about 2 million tons, and that was enough to make prices double. Now, what happened in the third quarter of 2022? We have some slight demand softness on recession fears and the effects of the Ukraine conflict. That's not the big factor here, you know, that's playing out in the reduction of PVC prices. It's the supply shock, particularly from COVID lockdowns in China and the high, you know, pricing in the, in caustic soda in the chlorovinyl chain, you know, in the U.S., which is leading operators to run at very high rates.
The chlorine needs to find a home. It finds its home in PVC, and that PVC is exported at very low prices. You can see that, if you look at external data, China, which typically exports about 200,000 tons a quarter, was exporting 800,000 tons a quarter in the last quarter. Now, thankfully that is now trending downwards. In the U.S., which historically exports about 1 million tons a year and you're seeing significant increases in exports as they operate their caustic capacity at high rates. In terms of the PVC prices, it's a short-term supply shock that has made the prices go down. We expect stabilization once the caustic markets. Now, coming back to the investment.
I would not categorize that as a delay, Nik. You know, this is our original timeline. You know, it's a five-year project and you don't turn these projects on and off on a dime. Our long-term fundamentals are absolutely intact. We have been very conservative on our business case right from the beginning. You know, our price assumptions for PVC in our business case are in the, you know, less than $1,100 a ton. You know, that was completely independent of prices doubling over the last couple of years. If anything, you know, with caustic prices going up, our model looks actually better.
The timeframe that we are looking at, if you look at the fundamental supply and demand, you know, and even your numbers show that, Nik, that it gets even tighter as we go into the 2027, 2028 timeframe. In any case, our decision point right now, we are focused on engineering, value engineering, optimizing the capital cost, you know, working on local state incentives. Once the engineering is done by September of next year, October of next year, that was the original timeline for a final decision. At that point, we'll evaluate what the market conditions are like. We have the ability, you know, if we choose to delay the investment, you know, we could think about a 6-9 month delay at that point of time.
Hopefully, you know, that addresses, you know, your questions and maybe a lot of other analysts and investors on the call.
Very clear. Thank you very much, Ram.
Thank you Nik.
The next question will be from Diego Serrano from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi, Sameer, Jim, and Gerardo. Thank you for taking my questions. First, I wanted to ask about potential strategies to limit cost pressures for PVC production. I mean, we have seen that in Europe, some production capacity has been trimmed or reduced between 10% and 20% in the past month in order to cope with these margin contractions. I know this is something you did during the pandemic. In that sense, is this strategy something you might consider with the current market trends?
Diego, thank you for the question. Let me, you know, explain what's going on in Europe. We have a fully integrated asset in Marl, Germany, where we focus our production on specialty resins. There was a period of time a couple of months ago when the energy, you know, cost went up to as high as $700 a megawatt hour. Of course, you know, when energy prices go to those levels, you do think hard about, you know, shutting down for a few days and managing the costs. Thankfully, you know, I'm pleased to say that the energy costs have come back down to more reasonable levels. You know, the $700 did not last for long. It's now back to $200 per megawatt hour range.
Compared to what historical prices were, you know, in the range of, you know, $80-$100 a megawatt hour, the incremental energy costs, you know, we can pass that on to our customers because we are in specialty applications, and we've been successfully able to do so. Hopefully that helps. Now, of course, you know, we manage our utilization levels and optimize those, you know, for a variety of reasons, maintenance, turnarounds, et cetera. But since we are in the specialty business, we do have the ability to pass on certain energy cost increases to customers.
Okay, perfect. Thank you. Just another quick one. You mentioned these investments in production capacity for Dura-Line. Could you give some more color on those? Are these related to these three new facilities you mentioned when you talked about the strategy execution or are these extra?
Absolutely. You know, we talked about this at Investor Day. We see incredibly robust demand fundamentals in Dura-Line in North America, and this is driven by the telecommunications infrastructure rollout plans, you know, related to rural deployment of fiber, 5G telecom, cloud computing, the hyperscalers, data storage. That continues, you know, unabated at this point of time. In that context, you know, we need to increase our capacity as soon as possible. We are looking at three sites, one in Canada and two in the western part of the United States. You know, we've initiated the projects and they are well underway. You know, our risk right now is, you know, can we get those projects done quickly enough to keep up with demand?
Which is a good problem to have right now.
Okay, perfect. Thank you.
The next question will be from Frank McGann from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Okay. Thank you very much. I was just wondering if you could just go into a little bit more detail in Europe in terms of demand. You know, are there particular countries that are more affected? Are there some that have been a little bit more resilient just to see how that business has overall been performing? Also, kind of maybe you could do the same, you know, in the U.S. in terms of what specific parts of the business, you know, might be stronger and weaker. Lastly, if you could just in terms of Turkey's hyperinflation charge, a part of that would be recurring?
Is it? I assume it's fairly small, but I was wondering if you could give us a kind of an estimate of or at least a range of what we could expect if you were gonna adjust that down and say what's recurring, what's not, or what was related to prior periods, how much that would be.
Very good, Frank. You know, good to hear from you. Haven't spoken to you for a while. Let me start with Europe. I mean, it's a bit of a different picture in the different businesses. You know, we are doing fine in Europe when it comes to our Dura-Line and Koura business. But the slowdown that we have seen, you know, and we've seen a slowdown in Netafim. You know, absolutely. You know, this is a lot in the Netherlands because of the greenhouse business. We've seen a slowdown in Spain. We have seen a slowdown in Eastern Europe. So with Netafim, you know, it's more, you know, more broad slowdown across the board. Wavin.
Wavin has seen a slowdown, you know, but the thing is, you know, fundamentally, there's a shortage of housing in Europe. The fundamentals are still intact. If you look at Wavin performance in this quarter, you know, much of the impact was related to the inventory revaluations and foreign exchange, you know. If you look at the $70 million they earned this quarter, when you correct for inventory adjustments and foreign exchange, you know, we get back to $95 million. You add the impact of the Ukraine war, you're at $97 million, $98 million, you know. If we didn't have any volume impact, we would have been at $105 million. Hopefully that gives you a sense for the extent of the volume impact in Europe.
The volume impact is less in Latin America, you know. Like I said, the Netafim business is doing fine. You know, Wavin is also doing okay. In the United States, you know, much of the impact we have seen is a pause in buying in the Netafim business. The company that we acquired, Bow Plastics, which is with Wavin, that's doing incredibly well in the U.S. right now. You know, Dura-Line, as you can see from the numbers, is doing very well. Koura is doing incredibly well in the U.S. as well. Specialty resins, you know, those markets are stable. That's the picture in the United States. Jim, did you want to answer Frank's question on the hyperinflation in Turkey?
Sure. I'd be happy to do that. Thanks, Sameer. Thanks, Frank, for the question. Stepping back, Turkey's been a very good market for us, and particularly in two businesses. Both Netafim and Wavin are active in that market. In particular, they're the ones with the highest volumes at least. It's been a very good year for us in that business. Despite the fact that there's been you know, high inflation and some exchange difficulties, et cetera, our underlying business has remained very strong. In terms of the impact, what you see in the quarter is there's a total of about $10 million. $9 million of that is coming from Netafim, another $1 million or so in Wavin. That is a year-to-date catch up, a nine-month catch up.
It's very hard to predict, honestly, you know, what the future impacts would be. It will depend on what inflation and FX changes are in Turkey. You'll have to, I guess, you know, go with either your own intuitions or, you know, what indices are saying, one would expect for those adjustments in the future. You know, you could start, I guess, by taking the nine-month impact divided by three and start with that and take it from there. It will really depend on where markets go in the future, Frank. I apologize, it's hard to be very specific about that.
No, that's very helpful. Just if I could do one follow-up. In terms of the JV with caustic soda prices being stronger in the, you know, way that contract works, I'm just wondering how the profitability in Texas, you know, how the profitability of that JV has perhaps benefited from that.
Frank, the way our arrangement works is, you know, we have the joint venture. The JV with Oxy is a cracker JV, right? The cracker is doing, you know, fine. The cracker is doing very well. In terms of the, you know, VCM that we get from Oxy, you know, the caustic, chlorine chlorovinyl assets belong to Oxy. You know, we do get some credit for the, you know, chlorovinyl participation, and that helps us, you know, lower our VCM cost. In addition, we have our assets, our caustic chlorine assets in Coatzacoalcos, which we are now operating at higher utilizations, and because of the attractive, you know, pricing of both caustic and chlorine, which is providing us a hedge in that business.
That's how it works, you know, with the integration.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Great.
The next question will be from Fatima Benitez from Compass Group. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. I have two questions. The first one is, do you expect the same volume trends in Wavin, Vestolit and Dura-Line? Does this affect your mix and consolidated EBITDA margin? The second question is, when do you expect to see normalized EBITDA levels?
Fatima, thank you for your question. Let me take it business by business, right? Now, in terms of volume in Wavin, so, you know, the slowdown that we are seeing, you know, hopefully that normalizes itself over the next, you know, couple of quarters. I mean, it's very hard to predict, you know. It depends a lot on the macroeconomic situation, the geopolitical situation, the war. I would just stay focused on the long-term fundamentals there. In terms of Vestolit, you know, we try to operate our assets at highest utilizations, and so, you know, we'll expect to see normalization of volumes in the fourth quarter and in the first quarter of next year.
The way our assets work, it is in our interest to maximize our volumes because we are on the lower left of the supply curve. Finally, with Dura-Line. You know, with Dura-Line, you know, we are completely maxed out, and we have a very significant, you know, backlog in terms of demand, you know, over six months. We'll be trying to optimize our operations and trying to get the most out of our assets over the next year. Yeah.
Thank you. The next question will come from Vasconcellos with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Two questions here on my side. One probably the opposite from the other. In the challenging scenario ahead we broadly discussed it here. Are there any risks of changing the 2027 plan you guys gave before? I know it's a long-term plan, but maybe there could be a delay on the investments. Anything you could share with us here? That would be very helpful. The second question, as I mentioned, probably in the opposite direction from the first one. We know that during tough environments, some acquisition opportunities come up, mainly for those companies with a more robust balance sheets such as Orbia.
Are you guys seeing any opportunities on this front or is it too early to say there will be any opportunistic M&As possibilities? Those are my questions. Thank you.
Yeah. Very good, Tasso. Let me answer your question on the PVC investment. So, you know, it's a long-term project with very sound fundamentals, very strong business case. You know, supply demand, you know, will be tight long term. Now, having said that, you cannot ignore the near-term economic situation. If we are in the exact same situation a year from now, you know, the sensible thing to do would be to consider, you know, delaying the timeline by six months or nine months. You know, we are not in that situation yet. We don't have any significant capital commitments, because you know, much of the capital commitments for this project are in the 2024-2026 timeline.
As we have indicated, you know, we, you know, our 27 goals, we don't see those being impacted in a significant way because we have a diversified set of projects across the whole company. If the Vestolit project is, you know, maybe delayed by six months or nine months, there are many other projects in the company that, you know, that offset, you know, what's happening in that part of the business. Which is why I come back to Orbia's resilience in its various business groups. We remain, you know, confident in our long-term growth plans.
On M&A, as you can see that, you know, we have continued focusing on opportunistic M&A where, you know, we can enter a new geography or acquire a specific technology. You've seen that with the acquisition of Vectus in India this year, Shakun Polymers last year in India, then Bow in the United States and Canada, and then the premise network for Dura-Line. Now, these are all relatively small acquisitions but, you know, add in a very significant way to the growth of the company. We will continuously look at, you know, potentially small acquisitions that can be additive in a very significant way and add disproportionate value. Yeah.
Thank you. The next question will be from Ben Isaacson with Scotia. Please go ahead.
Hi. This is Victor stepping in for Ben. I have two questions around cost management. One, do you expect more headwinds in terms of input costs? Like, are you hedging any exposure going forward? Could you kindly talk specifics on Polymer Solutions? Then secondly, on Building and Infrastructure, can you walk us through a little bit more on the outlook in terms of European Union demand? And similarly, on the impact of feedstock costs in the European Union and globally, and any kind of things that you're doing to hedge the exposure going forward.
You know, good questions, Victor. We don't engage in hedging, you know, particularly on feedstocks and raw materials. You know, that's a very risky endeavor. What I can tell you is, you know, in terms of the input costs for Polymer Solutions, you know, we are seeing ethane/ethylene spread stabilizing, in fact, you know, improving a little bit. We are seeing energy costs retreat, you know, so that should help over the next couple of quarters. Hopefully we'll see, you know, some softening of caustic and chlorine costs as well, which also helps us.
While it's very hard to predict, you know, those are the trends, and you can also take a look at external publications such as IHS that talk about those trends. Yeah, but we do not engage in hedging on raw materials. In Wavin in terms of demand, you know, we've already talked about this before. You know, much of the impact in Wavin this quarter was a function of the inventory correction and foreign exchange. Yes, there was some volume softening. Look, it's hard to have a crystal ball, you know, given the macroeconomic environment, what's going to happen. You know, I don't want to venture to guess, you know, when it will definitively bounce back.
We are doing everything we can from a, you know, cost control standpoint to restore profitability to all of our businesses. It's in uncertain times like these when one needs to exercise, you know, financial discipline, commercial discipline and operational discipline. We are totally focused on that. Now, the softening of raw material prices, you know, across the board, you know, by all the polymer prices, PVC, polyethylene, you know, that will benefit Wavin, you know, over the next, couple of quarters. We should see some of that flow through as well, you know.
Thank you.
The next question will be from Jean Baptiste Bruny from BBVA. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thank you very much for taking my question. Just a couple from me. The first one, probably, you mentioned it many times in terms of normalization of your performance. If we try to go to 2023, I know it's very early for you to give a concrete guidance. On our side, how shall we read it? You have maybe in the first half of $1.2 billion, second half probably will be between $600 million and $700 million. If we're looking into 2023, what should we be using in terms of, let's say normalized EBITDA? Something in between? Something more on the upside, more on the downside?
You know, just to have an indication. Some questions probably more on a theme now in Mexico, which is quite huge in terms of nearshoring. You mentioned in various occasions what is happening in Europe with those spikes in energy prices. There were some comments in some events in Europe saying that it put at risk a lot of industry such as petrochemical industry. Is this something on the table for you? Nearshoring some activities you have in Europe back to Mexico, to the U.S.? Or it's something that it cannot be done, I don't know, for logistical issue or from some need to be closer to the clients. Thank you very much.
Okay. Jean Baptiste , it's a good question, you know, in terms of, you know, and I'm sure it's on everyone's mind, what would 2023 look like? Now we normally issue guidance for the next year typically at the after the year-end conference call, which is in February, because you know, you still need a couple, three more months to get a better sense for where things will level out next year. Now in terms of long-term performance, if I look at the next, you know, two or three years, you know, we are not worried because you know, Orbia's businesses are resilient. You know, we may go through a few tough quarters.
At the end of the day, you know, the world will normalize and the fundamentals of each of our businesses are still very intact. You know, in Polymer Solutions, you know, demand growth exceeds supply growth. Those fundamentals will play out. In Wavin, you know, there is a fundamental shortage of housing in the world and aging infrastructure and strong demand for our sustainability solutions, you know, for stormwater management, indoor climate resilience. That will play out. In Netafim, you know, if we are to feed a massively growing population, it is going to require more energy efficient food production, and we expect to see those trends play out.
Dura-Line is exceptionally strong and, you know, the feedback we have from all of our customers is this is expected to continue for a significant amount of time. We have fantastic growth opportunities in Koura as we get into energy materials securing the North American value chain, right? In that context, you know, where we will land in 2023, you know, when, you know, we will repeat what we did in 2021 and 2022, it's unlikely. Might moderate a bit, but we'll be able to give you much better guidance after the year-end, after we've seen how things evolve in the fourth quarter and during the next quarter earnings call.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Sameer Bharadwaj for any closing remarks.
Thank you. You know, I want to say a couple things about, you know, Orbia and its resilience. You know, both me and Jim and the investor relations team have been meeting with a number of investors around the world. We've had, you know, positive feedback. You know, people, you know, appreciate the story we told on Investor Day, you know, reintroducing Orbia to the world, you know, truly global company at the forefront of addressing key world challenges and on the supply side of sustainability solutions. They appreciate the strategy a lot better, and they understand the projects that we are, you know, going to undertake and feel good about them.
Above all, you know, the discipline with which we run the company, the, you know, the robust and strong dividends and, you know, the fact that, you know, today we are underappreciated. I feel quite encouraged after my travels around the world and conversations with a number of investors. Once again, I would, you know, point everybody towards focusing on the long-term resilience of Orbia. I want to thank everybody for your continued interest in Orbia and look forward to talking to you at the year-end conference call in February.
Thank you, sir. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.