Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the LANXESS AG Full Year 2024 Results Webcast and Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, André Simon, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah, thank you very much, Sharon, and a warm welcome to everybody to our Q4 Full Year 2024 Conference Call from my side as well. As always, we begin by asking you to take notice of our safe harbor statements. With me today is our CEO, Matthias Zachert, and our CFO, Oliver Stratmann. Matthias will start with a short presentation, and then we will open the floor for your questions. With that, I'm happy to hand over to Matthias. Please go ahead.
Thank you so much, and welcome to all of you to our fourth quarter conference call. I'll start the presentation on page four and give a summary on how we look at 2024. All in all, it was a challenging year. Markets have not been benign, but due to our successful cost savings program called FORWARD! and due to the acceleration in the implementation process, we were able to get more savings implemented in the course of the last 12 months, and this definitely supported the increase in profitability. Different to 2023, when we massively reduced working capital, despite having consequently negative impacts on the utilization, we were able in 2024 to again put more emphasis on cash flow, but profitability increased, so the higher utilization contributed to profitability improvement as well.
Oliver and I stated very clearly at the outset of 2024 that we will again deliver on cash flow and focus on further debt reduction, and I think we clearly can state we walked the talk. Solid free cash flow, despite still modest profitability. By the way, we also secured long-term financing with a new sustainability-linked revolving credit facility maturing in five years from now. What I am delighted to confirm today is that our portfolio transformation, as far as focusing on chemicals and letting go of polymers, is accelerating as well. We have now received all clearance from all global institutions and therefore can close the transaction in course of April this year. Here, we are also faster than originally communicated. The cash proceeds that we will get in April will be used to immediate deleveraging.
Noteworthy, however, also that we had to fund our restructuring program forward, so we had cash outs in course of 2024. All in all, we have to state that macroeconomic weak demand is clearly visible in 2024, and we only see a very modest improvement in course of 2025. Noteworthy also, we were faced or confronted with a massive destocking in the agro industry in 2024. Our assumption is that destocking is no longer a theme for our industries, including agro in 2025. Thus, some modest volume improvement should become visible. Let's turn our attention to page number five. Here, the headline numbers. EBITDA is up 20%. We guided at the outset of 2024 for an improvement of 10%-20%.
Twelve months ago, this guidance was perceived as somewhat ambitious, and I think we can now clearly say that our guidance at that point in time was the right one. Free cash flow, I mean, we had through the entire year 2024 ups and downs on a quarterly basis on free cash flow, which is pretty normal, but we clearly stated our focus will be on either improving cash flow or keeping the cash flow at the same level or improved level than 2023, based on improvements on operational performance. If we can achieve a positive free cash flow, we will do our utmost to get there. As far as safety performance is concerned, we can clearly state that we are here top-notch in the European industry with 0.6 as far as MAQ is concerned.
We achieve here a clear top ranking, and this is, by the way, the third time in a row. As far as financial debt is concerned, another decrease of roughly EUR 100 million, so - 5 percentage points. You clearly see we walk the talk. If you look at 2025, with the cash proceeds coming in from the urethane transaction, we enter back into good territories as far as financial leverage is concerned. Now I move to page number six. We know very clearly that 2021, 2022, we are not satisfactory at all as far as cash flow generation is concerned. We clearly stress here the reasons behind it. We would clearly, however, like to stress this company has over the years been a free cash flow delivery company. In the last two years, 2023 and 2024, we generated roughly EUR 700 million. 2023, the P&L was impacted by that.
2024, we were by and large net-nets on the same level as far as working capital is concerned. Therefore, despite weak macroeconomic environments, I think we finished the year on a strong cash flow basis. Now, ladies and gentlemen, let's move to slide number seven. We clearly give here the indication that we are fully on track after the levering up in the acquisition phase. We are levering down. We have done that many times before in our company history. Here, we are executing as we speak. Once the urethane proceeds come in, I think you see that we are then entering again into territories which should be considered as more normalized. 3x net debt to EBITDA is not our target. We will go back to levels that we had before.
I think you all know that we have a 40% participation in one of the global polyamide leaders in the world, Envalior. I'm looking to your models. I'm quite frankly sometimes very surprised to see what I'm reading there. In majority cases, the valuation on the Envalior stake is taken from our balance sheets, the accounting methodology where the book value of Envalior resides. Some even take further discounts in this regard. We always stressed that Envalior is being priced or is being evaluated at a multiple and EBITDA. If you look into the Standard & Poor's publicized report of the 13th of December 2024, you can take the EBITDA and the net debts and everything out of that and come to a better calculation than if you look at technical accounting valuation, which is not reflecting the guidance of our company.
With this, I move into our segments, and here I reference page number eight. Full year 2024 has shown weakness in consumer protection, solely driven by agro chemicals and here Saltigo. Saltigo reported a record year in 2023 when the agro industry was at its peak, facing, however, in 2024, severe destocking. We were hard hit in Saltigo as well. The other three business units, despite difficult macroeconomic environment, all improved. Our assumption is that Saltigo will improve in 2025 versus 2024, and therefore the segment will be better off in 2025 compared to 2024. As far as additives are concerned, an improvement to 2023. We are still definitely not satisfied where we are. Construction industry was still a drag in 2024, and therefore the biggest business unit, polymer additives, was hit hard, but could, through cost savings, make first steps in the right direction.
Advanced and medium intermediates, I would not stress that this is back to normal profitability levels. We have seen clearly higher profitabilities by the segments in previous years, but compared to 2023, which was toxic, in 2024, Intermediates business recovered, but still needs to improve further. Ladies and gentlemen, with this, I move to page number nine, outlook for the three segments. A more pronounced improvement is expected from consumer protection. As far as additives are concerned, modest improvement, like we convey for the intermediate space. Let's come to the guidance of the entire company. Here, I start off with reported 2024 numbers, EUR 614 million. Please take out the profitability per rata of urethanes. All in all, Urethane Solutions achieved an EBITDA of roughly EUR 50 million in 2024. If you take it out for three quarters, you have to deduct EUR 40 million.
We communicated that in Q4, that was one of the reasons for the positive profit warning on 20th of January, that we did better in fourth quarter. We delivered more profitability than you had in your models, and we had expected. Because we saw that in December, which normally is the weakest month in the fourth quarter, we saw a clear uptick in many of our business units. We consider this as a kind of pre-buying. Therefore, if you adjust for roundabout EUR 20 million, you come to like-for-like improvements, 2024 to 2025, of roughly 10 percentage points. That is the guidance operationally. The headline numbers are EUR 600 million-EUR 650 million, with one quarter of urethane being included. Page number 11 summarizes everything. We do not consider macroeconomic wise a significant pickup in demand, only modest improvements.
I think I don't need to stress that we are living in quite turbulent political and thus economic times. Making predictions today where from one week to the other, fundamental changes can or could occur is always quite challenging. Nevertheless, on what we see today, we give a guidance of EUR 600 million-EUR 650 million reported EBITDA numbers. As far as Q1 is concerned, we would like to be more specific here. We consider an improvement of 25%-35% vis-à-vis our first quarter last year. Ladies and gentlemen, this is it for the presentation, and I'm delighted to open the floor now for all your questions, which Oliver and I will take.
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.
To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We will now go to your first question. One moment, please. Your first question comes from the line of Thomas Wrigglesworth from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Matthias, thank you very much for your presentation. Two questions, if I may. The first is on consumer protection. You have given this a darker green arrow than the other divisions in your slide nine. Should we therefore expect faster growth in consumer protection here than in the other divisions? Could you help me understand the drivers of that growth, given there is quite a mix of businesses? I am wondering in particular if Virkon is doing well in the light of avian flu outbreak in the U.S. My second question is about free cash flow generation.
You obviously deliberately have not given us a guide for 2025, but clearly the free cash flow conversion in 2024 has normalized to a better level, as you point. Can we assume that free cash flow conversion from EBITDA, that is now the kind of base case, and we can assume that going forward for 2025? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Tom. As cash flow is one of the top priorities, I pass on the word immediately to Oliver to get first things first, Oliver.
Fantastic, Matthias. Thank you. Tom, on free cash flow, you will remember last year that I said we will put full focus on generating cash, and then I was reluctant to speculate on working capital developments.
Now, looking back, high insight, I think we've proven that in the year 2023 and 2024, amidst very difficult conditions, we have proven to put cash flow first, and we've been able to generate a nice free cash flow here. You should assume that that is our topic going forward as well. I would just like to point out and stress what Matthias has said before. Please look at the full year and not so much at the individual quarters, and be aware that there are seasonalities also reflected in our cash flow. Typically, in the beginning of every year, you can assume that working capital is being ramped up in order, for example, to cater maintenance turnarounds in the latter part of the year. We will have volatilities there, but we are targeting cash as we did in previous years.
Great. Thank you, Oliver.
Now let's come to consumer protection. 2024 in consumer protection was down basically because of Saltigo, and I stressed that before. Saltigo was coming from a peak year, falling substantially in the course of 2024 to levels that Saltigo had not seen in the last five, six, seven years. That was really a massive hit driven by the massive destocking happening in agro. When we now look at the agro industry, we think that destocking is over. If you look at the four out of the five companies that are driving the agro industry, you see still a muted tonality, but you see that all of them are definitely seeing improvements versus 2024. 2025 will not be a great year for agro. I give you the feedback. Please look into what the listed agro companies have communicated.
The tonality is still muted, but it should be a better year than 2024. If Saltigo is improving and assuming that the other three business units improve like they have done last year, the segment's consumer protection should report a better momentum than the other two divisions in our portfolio. I hope that clarifies everything, Tom.
Everything is clear. Thank you very much, Matthias.
Thank you, Tom. Next question, please.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Martin Roediger from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you for taking my three questions. Regarding your guidance for Q1 2025, do you see that volumes in Q1 are really missing after the pre-buying in Q4? In other words, do you see in your data, Q1 is almost over, that volumes are soft in Q1, keeping in mind that the comparison base is still rather low?
Second is on politics. With almost 100% likelihood, we will get a debt orgy by the upcoming German government. Do you think you can benefit from the EUR 500 billion special fund for infrastructure? In other words, how much of your 15% exposure to the construction industry is related to building of streets, schools, railway tracks, etc.? Finally, just one clarification question on Saltigo. You had in the past, especially with one key customer, problems with demand. So volumes were particularly, in some cases, zero. Do you see that this customer is now coming back, and that is the reason why you are more confident, or is that more related to the, let's say, the statements you have heard from the listed companies? Thank you.
Thank you, Martin. I would be very crisp on the three questions.
Q1, I think we've been very transparent in where we see profitability, 25%-35% up. We will not dive down into giving you percentage terms on volume, pricing, FX, etc. That will be all done with Q1 reporting. The transparent guidance, what we do is to flag out where we will be in Q1 from a profitability standpoint, and I hope this is information and comfort enough for your models. To the second question, politics. The EUR 500 billion, I mean, first of all, they need to be decided. This is not put in place yet. It's being announced, and the first step on the approval process has been taken. Now, it still needs to pass the Bundesrat, and we need to have a new government in place to decide on how they are going to spend.
My assumption is EUR 500 billion for the German economy is a big booster, for sure. Is it going to ignite growth in Germany and with positive spillover on Europe? Yes, I think this is definitely likely. Of course, it will, from the time the government is formed until it's being seen in order books and then volume momentum, I assume that this will rather be an element of 2026 and not an element of 2025. The good thing, however, is now we have most likely a government, no longer three parties, but two parties, and apparently two parties that are able within two weeks to decide on something fundamentally positive. We need this kind of approach now in Europe, and we need the big countries who join.
If there is Germany coming back to growth for the Eurozone, that will always be a kickstart for the entire Eurozone economic development. I hope that finally, after two, three years, we are coming back on track. If the German economy is going up, if construction is going up, LANXESS will definitely benefit. Now, on Saltigo, my comments on more improvement in Saltigo are based on the fact that destocking is simply over. We will not comment on granular customer contracts or orders. Our belief in 2025 is that despite still soft agro overall market dynamics, we will see an improvement in 2025 versus 2024. If it comes better, we rejoice, but it is beginning of the year, and I think at the beginning of the year, one should always be modest.
Thank you.
You are most welcome, Martin. Next question, please.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Yates from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey, [audio distortion]. Thank you for taking the questions. A couple, if I can. Matthias, I wanted to revisit something you said at the round table just before Christmas, and you were saying that in order to LANXESS to achieve a sort of specialty type margin, the company would somewhat need to shift its product offering and its customer service capabilities. Can you talk a little bit about what the incremental cost and timeline for achieving something like that would be? The second question, as you brought it up in the introductory remarks, I'll give you the chance to just elaborate a little bit on the value or discussion. If I look at that latest S&P report, their forecast for EBITDA in 2025 is around EUR 400 million.
They're saying the business has gross debt of EUR 4 billion, so it's 10 times levered. I assume net debt is a bit lower. Can you help me understand better why there is equity value in this business, or is that premised on the idea that profitability can be much higher than the estimates that they're putting out there for just 2025? Thank you.
Thank you for your two questions. I will take them one by one. Your reference made on product upgrades, customer service relates to a statement I've made at the Analyst Roundtable in London in December. I basically stressed here, not only what you have referenced, I stressed here that in the next chapter of LANXESS, our company will now extract the best and the most operationally from our leadership positions that we have.
We have fortunately left all commodity and polymer-linked products at the time when you could well divest. This job has been done in an incredible speed. Now we have focused on chemicals and leadership position, and now we will get the maximum out, and that there's a potential for us to grow in terms of profitability in cash is obvious. We will do that with our investments that we have. There will be no extraordinary investments needed. We will just operationally max out. Now we come to simple mathematics when we talk about Envalior. You gave the hint to the Standard & Poor's report again. I have it in front of me. You made reference to the Standard & Poor's report issued to the market on the 13th of December 2024.
If you look at the prognosis of Standard & Poor's, and by the way, they are normally always more conservative than management is guiding, their reference on EBITDA to 2025 is EUR 380 million-EUR 420 million, and 2026 reference is made at an EBITDA EUR 475 million with EUR 525 million, debt being at either three, seven net debt and value as cash or 3.9. If you now multiply roughly EUR 500 million by 12, for instance, and subtract 3.9, and then you take very simply 40% out of that, you come to a value which reflects something that we have considered as a base case assumption. I hope with this we clarify everything. Next question, please.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Andrés Castaños- Mollor from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hello.
I would like to discuss energy cost in 2024, the impact it has had in your P&L, and also wondering if in Q1 you have had energy impacts year to date, negative, I assume, and if they are turning already from Q2 onwards you expect an improvement here. Thank you.
You saw in energy that costs moved up in January, February, stabilized, and now in March are going down. We started off with an increase in energy, and now we have to see where energy will go for the entire year. It will definitely be one that we will track very closely. Is that clarifying everything?
It is helpful. Can you comment on hedging or if the changes you did to pass through pricing or energy cost are being effective, mitigating your sensitivity so far?
I would say this has definitely changed compared to a year of 2023 where we were unhedged and still were adjusting our contracts. If you now look at our energy position, I would roughly give the guidance, it's a rough guidance, 1/3 is hedged, 1/3 is contractually protected, 1/3 is open, and that should give you the indication that energy up and down will no longer be a fundamental driver for volatility going forward.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Chetan Udeshi from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my questions and thanks for giving that breakdown of what you think is the pre-buying in Q4. I was just curious, your Q1 guidance is 130, and if I look at your full year guidance, it implies a step up, a nice step up from that run rate.
We did see that in 2024, by the way, but I guess the context was quite different where you were improving utilization, etc., through 2024. I'm just curious, based on your order book, based on your visibility that you have today, can you already see that step up, nice step up in Q2, or at the moment, the visibility is still fairly limited to talk about Q2? Thank you very much.
Udeshi, you would like to have the breakdown by quarters, and most likely next question will be on month. We would like to give you clear color on Q1 and clear color on full year guidance. With this, I pass on the ball to Oliver. Keep on rolling.
Yeah.
Chetan, the way I think you should look at Q1 is that we've provided a pretty granular guidance here saying that we're expecting a 25%-35% growth that you quoted with the midpoint, which means to me that from a percentage perspective, the growth in the remaining quarters needs to be way lower than that. We have, at this early point in time of the year, already provided a pretty precise bandwidth here for the full year that, again, as Matthias outlined, includes a growth rate in the midpoint apples to apples of 10%. That should suffice to go ahead and model what should come out of the year.
Thank you.
Next question, please.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone keypad. That is star one and one for a question.
Your next question comes from the line of Martin Evans from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks. Going back to Matt's question that I do not think was answered on specialty chemicals, apologies, this might just be semantics, but at the round table, you sort of introduced this idea of you're aiming to become a specialty chemical company because obviously you like the idea of the high multiple. Today you said the transformation into specialty chemicals company is completed. Big picture, if we stand back, and I think I know what you're saying, you're not saying that you're there, obviously, because the margins, the returns on invested capital for the group, particularly outside consumer, are quite weak. I'm looking at specialty additives in Advanced Intermediates.
I think what you're saying is there's not going to be much more M&A or reasonably happy with the portfolio, and you're just waiting for the good times to roll, which based upon your sort of relatively cautious comments on the macro could be several years away. Is that correct? It's that on M&A at least, there's not going to be any more major disposals or acquisitions because looking at those returns on your so-called specialty businesses, it raises the question of how much more capital you're going to put into them if these returns are sort of sub 10%. Perhaps you could help me understand this specialty chemicals theme.
Easily, Martin. Martin, very easily. When we say the portfolio transformation to specialty chemical companies over, we mean that big M&A activities you should not expect for us to get up in our margins.
What we wanted to stress clearly, and we stated that in line with the URE divestiture, once this is completed, we have no longer polymers in our portfolio. Thus, we have now found our chemical home. That is our reference to the transformation on chemicals is now completed. We have found our portfolio, but now, of course, the next step is to get the maximum out of it and to get the troops fully in the direction on getting profitability and the further cash flow conversion up. That is the direction. You should not assume that we are satisfied with the 2024 profitability or margin level. No, no, the journey is starting now. That is the job now of the next few years.
You did say on this that on specialty chemicals, you are going to, it is all to do with leadership, I think was the phrase. What does that mean?
We have, if you look at all our business units, and we have gone from 14 business units a few years ago. Now, with the urethane sales or divestiture, we are going down to nine business units. All of these business units are market leaders or belong to the top three market leaders worldwide. This relates to our Intermediates division. It relates to additives. It relates to consumer protection. They are all in a leadership position. Of course, they need to get their act together in terms of cost conversion or cost competitiveness, cash conversion, the go-to-market approach, the proximity to customers. Eventually, this should then up and be benchmarked versus peer margins, which are substantially higher than what we have today. Please take note of the fact we used to be at 14%, 15%. We definitely want to get back there.
As a specialty chemicals company for the next years to come, we would not like to stay there but improve further.
Okay. Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Thank you all for your question, and please go ahead.
Thank you. We will now take our final question for today. Your final question comes from the line of Georgina Fraser from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, Matthias. Good afternoon, Oliver. I've got two questions left. Just following up on your latest comments, Matthias, about wanting to improve the margin over time, could you give us an update on how you're seeing asset utilization rates today and how long you think it would get back to that normalized margin corridor?
If there are any comments that you could make about how a lower natural gas price in Europe, for example, would impact your view, that would be very helpful. My second question is, could you give us a little bit of color on the demand environment that you are seeing in the United States? It seems to be a little bit more positive for LANXESS than what we have been hearing from peers recently. We would love to hear what you are seeing there. If you could remind us which of your segments are most exposed to the region. Thank you.
Thank you, Georgina, on all three questions. Utilization, I mean, we have been in the around 60s in 2023. We have now moved up to close to 70 in 2024.
If you listen to the German Chemical Association, the report is that all in all, the pharmaceutical and chemical industry is between 70 percentage points and 74 percentage points. Blend out pharma, then you basically see that we are somewhat where the industry is. Confirmation you have seen by the German Chemical Association that 70 is trophy. Normal utilization rates are reported in the industry at 80 percentage points, 85 percentage points. We are far from normalized level. Therefore, if we return to normal utilization being at 80 percentage points, 85 percentage points, I think you would see another significant visible improvement in the chemical sector, of course, also for us. Now, on your second question, gas, we are not a big direct gas consumer. At the end of the day, gas determines electricity pricing. I mean, it's one of the drivers, at least.
Here, energy pricing in total is one which is important for the process industry, the chemical industry, and therefore that is something that we have on our radar. I made an earlier comment on energy that this is something where we've taken a different approach like in the past. We go for hedging, we go for contracts, and we only have 30% remaining in the spot market. That is the area that can lead to volatility, but definitely modest compared to 2022 or 2023. As far as the United States is concerned, we made positive comments in 2024 on the United States. For 2025, I remain humble because there is so much daily or weekly announcements being made that can change the picture completely. We currently see that the United States, at least the industry, is in a wait-and-see modus.
I think we have to look into the next one to two months how eventually all the announcements will either be implemented in trades or not. I think then it's a little bit easier to make a clear guidance as far as the United States region is concerned. The businesses that are more pronounced in the United States is definitely the additive space and the consumer protection business if you exclude Saltigo. They definitely have stronger footprints asset-wise in the United States. Intermediates is more European and German-based.
Thank you very much for the insights.
Most welcome. With this, I see that all questions have been answered. Oliver, the IR team and I will be on roadshow in the coming days. We look forward to seeing you all and take good care until then. Best regards from Cologne. Best regards from LANXESS. Bye-bye.
Bye.
Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.