Welcome to the Wacker Chemie AG conference call on our Q2 2023 results. Dr. Christian Hartel, our CEO, and Dr. Tobias Ohler, our CFO, will take you through our prepared slides in a moment. The half year report, Q2 presentation, and detailed financial tables are available on our webpage under the caption investor relations. Please note that management comments during this call include forward-looking statements involving risks and uncertainties. We encourage you to review the safe harbor statement in today's press release, the presentation, and our recent annual report regarding risk factors. All documents mentioned are available on our website. Chris?
Welcome, everyone. You saw us pre-releasing our Q2 results and updating our full year guidance a week ago. We see the same challenges as our peers. Weak markets are holding back the chemical industry as the pandemic-driven supply to a shortages turn, the global economy softens, rising interest rates mute growth in interest-sensitive sectors such as construction, and international political risks increase. The OECD sees global economic growth lower than the average growth rate in the decade before the pandemic. As a result, the chemical industry sees overcapacities and production curtailments in some areas. While Wacker has consistently improved its resilience, we are not immune to these general trends. In Germany, the chemical industry continues to be held back by very high energy costs.
Given that energy prices declined from their peak values last year, energy costs in Germany are still significantly higher than in other regions like the U.S. or China. The government is clearly aware of this and is actively discussing possible solutions to ensure that Germany remains attractive for future investments. While the solutions being discussed may be complex, they are not impossible, and we believe they provide an attractive business case for Germany and Europe. Despite these headwinds, Wacker reported a good overall second quarter performance. Our diversified setup provides us with a resilient and solid foundation. Group sales reached EUR 1.75 billion, essentially at the preceding quarter's level. EBITDA was EUR 256 million, somewhat lower sequentially and clearly lower than last year.
While we expected softer results following the exceptional performance last year, the gradual recovery we expected when we spoke last time did not materialize during the second quarter. The absence of an economic recovery particularly hit Silicones. On the other hand, Polymers and Polysilicon showed a better performance sequentially. In Silicones, we faced weak demand for specialties, resulting in adverse mix effects as we kept the utilization at economic levels. These factors held the segment's results back noticeably. In Polymers, we benefited from some seasonal recovery in volumes, but saw lower prices against the backdrop of declining raw materials. Overall, we expanded the EBITDA compared to the first quarter as we worked to defend our margins. In Biosolutions, we are investing in our foundation to support growth in biopharma and bio ingredients. As expected, costs for the upcoming mRNA facility in Halle and digitalization held back earnings.
In polysilicon, we saw higher solar grade volumes, but lower average selling prices than in the preceding quarter. Semi remained resilient. The strong operating performance of Poly, higher volumes, and lower energy costs in the second quarter helped us drive a substantial quarter-on-quarter increase in earnings. Wacker's long-term success depends on providing our customers with innovative solutions and best-in-class chemical processes. This year, for the Wacker Innovation Award, we awarded a new smart reactor process in polysilicon for advanced process control. Real-time large data processing allows us to further optimize the polysilicon deposition. It increases efficiency, reduces costs, and overall improves process stability. Furthermore, it makes an important contribution towards our CO2 reduction targets. With this really super intelligent technology, we have strengthened our leading position in the production of hyper-pure polysilicon for semi and high-efficiency solar systems. Looking to the next page, our updated guidance.
As you will recall, the first quarter of this year showed some improvements versus the fourth quarter of last year. When we last spoke, we expected this growth trend to continue. As the second quarter progressed, more and more customers started to question the expected recovery. Still today, our customers remain cautious. Order intake is not showing improvements, and patterns remain short. This order pattern provides limited visibility into the year's third and fourth quarters. To reflect this ongoing demand uncertainty, we have updated our guidance. We now expect full year sales of EUR 6.5 billion-EUR 6.8 billion. We see EBITDA coming in between EUR 800 million and EUR 1 billion. Besides ROIC, the other main KPIs are unchanged. Cutting the guidance is unfortunate, but we cannot change the economic environment.
In light of this, we focus on what is within our control, primarily efficiency and cost discipline. We do everything in our power here to leverage our potential systematically. Even though we currently face considerable headwinds, I'm confident that we will successfully tackle the challenges ahead. We have an excellent team at Wacker that sets itself apart due to each individual's commitment, dedication, and resourcefulness. What's more, we are well-placed strategically. Our Strategy 2030 provides us with goals, faster growth, high profitability, and better resilience in light of constant change. Investment in our future growth is vital to achieving these objectives. Despite the cost discipline that the current situation requires, we continue to drive our business sustainable development forward. We further increased our investment spending in the first half of 2023. We allocated most of our capital expenditures to our Silicones and Polymers division.
To meet customer needs locally and continue to grow the coming years, we are expanding our capacities worldwide, as you see, with new dispersion, dispersions and powder capacities in China. We are also investing in our polysilicon business. We are building a whole new production line at our Burghausen site for world-best and highest purity electronic-grade polysilicon. Here we are increasing our downstream etching capacities by 50% till 2025. As the only European producer of hyper-pure polysilicon, we are proud to be making an important contribution to strengthening Europe's microelectronics value chain through this project. In May, we acquired ADL BioPharma, a contract manufacturing organization for the food, pharmaceuticals, and consumer goods industries based in León, northern Spain. Moving on to the next slide, let me show you more details on this milestone deal for us.
Development at ADL has been quite good in recent years, and their sales have grown considerably. The tripling of our fermentation capacities provides us a foundation for growth and sustainably produce dietary and food ingredients. This acquisition will take us one decisive step closer to meeting the growth objective of our life science businesses, which we expect to generate EUR 1 billion in sales in 2030. Before I hand over to Tobias, let me say in closing, 2023 will be a challenging year for Wacker. 2024 will likely to be one, too. Nonetheless, we have the right team and strategy to tackle these challenges, embodying spirit, speed, and confidence, and that's how we will do it. Now to Tobias for further details on the Q2 results.
Thank you, Chris. Welcome, everybody. For the second quarter, we reported sales of EUR 1.75 billion, down by 19% over last year. We continue to see weak end market conditions, low demand, and customer destocking weigh on utilization rates, particularly in chemicals. Polysilicon still faces high energy prices and sees lower average selling prices. These effects work their way through the P&L from top to bottom. The gross profit margin was 19%, down from almost 30% last year. EBITDA contracted to EUR 256 million. Earnings per share came in at EUR 2.38. Our efforts to improve resilience support us today in these challenging market conditions. Constant process innovation drives efficiency in chemical production, so we are not looking at discrete and limited efforts. We do self-help activities daily.
Back in 2019, we initiated our restructuring program, Shape the Future, targeting overhead costs and indirect spend. The program is on track, provides savings of EUR 250 million, and enables us with a more responsive organizational setup. We stay focused on controlling costs and completing maintenance. I'm convinced that these ongoing improvement activities will allow us to be better prepared to service our customers once demand recovers. In a slow business environment, we must consider options to adapt our capacity flexibly. To reflect the limited visibility, we updated our group guidance and the outlook for each segment. I will address these shortly after looking at the balance sheet. Our balance sheet shows strong financials with about EUR 1.3 billion in liquidity and about EUR 4.6 billion in shareholder equity.
Since we last reported, the most significant change occurred from the nearly EUR 600 million dividend payment following our AGM in May. Our net working capital position has been unchanged since the year start. Reductions in inventory are largely offset by lower accounts payable. We invested a lot in working capital over the last two years. We expect this to unbind going forward, supporting future cash flows. Moving on to Silicones. Sales decreased to EUR 700 million, down 8% sequentially, mainly due to lower specialty volumes and significantly lower prices in standards. The expected demand recovery did not materialize in the second quarter. Silicones EBITDA decreased from around EUR 96 million in the first quarter to EUR 52 million in the second quarter. Low output and high silicon metal costs held back earnings.
With low demand in specialties, our product mix adversely moved towards a higher share of standards. We have updated our Silicones outlook. We now expect sales between EUR 2.7 billion and EUR 2.9 billion, with an EBITDA margin of about 10%. While destocking appears to be slowing, order entry doesn't show a stronger demand yet. From today's perspective, we do not see signs of a demand recovery in the second half. Polymers reported a sequential improvement in the second quarter. Sales came in at EUR 417 million, benefiting from seasonally higher volumes, but held back by lower prices. Despite demand remaining particularly weak in Europe, the EBITDA improved since the end of last year. In the second quarter, EBITDA was EUR 76 million, with an 18% margin. For the full year, we have updated our Polymers outlook.
We now expect sales between EUR 1.6 billion and EUR 1.7 billion, with an EBITDA margin of around 17%. This guidance implies that our absolute full-year EBITDA will be comparable to last year's record result, despite considerably lower volumes. In a difficult environment, this is a solid achievement. As with Silicones, there are no signs today which would point to a demand recovery in the second half of 2023. In Biosolutions, sales increased to EUR 91 million, reflecting strong biopharma growth and ADL's first consolidation. While biopharma grew nicely, we see weaker demand for some of the established products. As in our chemical businesses, there is ongoing inventory management of our customers. EBITDA in the quarter was slightly negative. The result continues to be burdened by upfront costs related to the German Pandemic Preparedness Plan and digitalization.
We have hired some 100 additional employees for our new mRNA facility in Halle. We carry substantial costs already today, and we will not see any revenue until mid-next year, when we are good for order at the new site in Halle. Given the weakness in some established products and the ongoing upfront costs, we reduced the outlook for the full year in Biosolutions. We now expect a high single-digit % sales growth, driven by continued growth in biopharma and the ADL acquisition. We see full-year EBITDA below the prior year. In polysilicon, we reported second quarter sales of EUR 530 million, up sequentially 16% on higher volumes. EBITDA in the second quarter was EUR 156 million. The polysilicon performance was markedly higher sequentially from higher volumes and lower factor costs, despite the lower average selling prices.
The solar market is increasingly differentiating product by region and quality. This trend supports our pricing strategy and improves the resilience of the business. We have updated our polysilicon outlook. We see a slightly lower sales range of EUR 1.6 billion-EUR 1.7 billion and an EBITDA between EUR 300 million and EUR 400 million, reflecting lower solar prices in the second half. Our assumptions for the second half is that we will achieve lower average selling prices for solar-grade polysilicon than in the first half. We expect to achieve prices higher than the China domestic prices. Looking at our net financial debt. Through the first six months of 2023, we generated EUR 352 million from cash flow from operations. Our cash conversion improved markedly compared to last year, where inflationary pressures resulted in significant investments in working capital.
We are just beginning to see these unwind with raw material prices declining. As I just mentioned, this should support future cash flow. After cash flow from investing activities of in total EUR 400 million, including the ADL acquisition and the dividend payment of EUR 596 million in May, we ended the first half with a net debt of EUR 270 million. Although the second quarter was another complicated quarter, we still delivered over EUR 537 million in EBITDA during the first half of 2023. To wrap it up, before we start the Q&A, we continue to see challenging markets. The anticipated H2 recovery has been delayed and our visibility remains low.
While we have done a lot to improve our resilience, we are not immune to the larger economy. With our diversified portfolio, we have a strong foundation. We have the right strategy in place to capitalize on strategic opportunities in all our operating segments. Operator, we're ready to take questions now. Begin the Q&A.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to two questions only. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. Our first question today is from Matthew Yates from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking the time. I, I wanted to ask a question around sort of your midterm CapEx strategy. When you look at the current environment and the collapse in demand that we're seeing, does that make you revisit any aspects of the sort of midterm CapEx plan and the amount of capacity you're looking to bring online across the portfolio? I know it's not really a question around affordability, given the state of the balance sheet, but just curious if there's any specific projects that potentially are getting de-emphasized now. Thank you.
Okay, Matthew, I will take your question as Chris. Well, first of all, let me reiterate that we absolutely believe that our Strategy 2030, with the targets in there on profitability and sales, absolutely valid. We see a lot of opportunities in the market. That's the reason why we have the underlying CapEx strategy, which you also pointed out at our capital market day two years ago. Obviously, we always evaluate how the markets develop, and you are absolutely right that especially the outlook on Europe today is lower than it was two years ago. That will be taken into account into our investment strategies, and that might lead, I would say, well, maybe more to a regional shift on the investments.
It could lead that, you know, investments in Europe will come a little slower than maybe originally anticipated. On the other hand, there might be more opportunities in other regions. You asked for, is there a specific project which might be, you know, prolonged or, you know, changed in timing? As we have quite substantial amount of projects, to diversify also the risk, I mean, we talk about 40 specific projects. We do have flexibility on how we time them and how we delay maybe a few of them. The answer is there's no specific project which is which we could talk about, which is affected by the situation. Again, I would say it's more a regional shift in capacities, which we might see from today's perspective.
Okay, thank you. If I can ask a sort of second question, just on the Biosolutions division, it's a fairly sizable downgrade to the profit guidance this year, at least in percentage terms, if not absolute. Are you able to disaggregate how much of the issues are what I would call your legacy business, and whether any of the downgrade comes from new business wins, new orders that you were expecting to come through that and ultimately haven't? Thank you.
Well, Matthew, first of all, I mean, I think the current, you know, the current performance of biosolutions doesn't really show the potential what is behind the division. We mentioned it also in the last call, that there are some, you know, specific, upfront costs, which is the investment in Halle, and also, Tobias pointed out we are hiring people there. A lot of upfront costs there and also on the IT systems, which we do need to interact with the large pharmaceutical companies. Our biopharma business is progressing quite well, and we have a good and strong pipeline of projects. Yes, we have to say that, you know, some customers also face funding issues, that might delay also a little bit the developments here.
Furthermore, as we said on the existing business, which is both chemical products, but also on the bio ingredient side, we see a similar pattern like we see in Silicones and Polymers, which is just a weak demand. This overall leads to a cut in guidance, which we did.
Thanks very much.
The next question comes from Thomas Swoboda from Société Générale. Please go ahead with your question.
Yes, good afternoon, everybody. I have two questions, please. Firstly, on Silicones, if I understand you correctly, you had to take a maintenance shutdown in the second quarter. I'm just wondering, how should we think about Q3? Should Q3 benefit sequentially from the absence of the maintenance shutdown, or do you expect further deterioration in the underlying business into Q3? My second question is a follow-up on Biosolutions. I mean, you have been putting comparably big amounts of money into this business, and I understand that the legacy business has been the main driver for the reduction of your guidance.
Still, could you help us understand how well are you progressing on your plans in the midterm? If you could give us an indication on how profitability should develop beyond 2023, as the segment hasn't been showing the results we were all hoping for so far. Thank you.
Thomas, Tobias, yeah, I start with your first question on the maintenance. Actually, the maintenance effect into the code, if you put together the numbers, maintenance spend and, and lack in volume, it was not that material. What really defined the quarter, the second quarter, was both a reduction in specialty volumes, where we ran in low utilization and the decline in standard prices. From the maintenance, you should not expect a further deterioration of the business towards the third quarter. I mean, in general, we would see if the third quarter, no big impact from the demand side, unfortunately, similar to the second quarter, on the Silicones.
Okay.
Can I follow up? Can I follow up quickly?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, such a maintenance is usually some EUR 20 million, EUR 30 million, maybe even EUR 40 million. Should we be thinking about a sequential improvement in EBITDA in this dimension in Q3?
No, no, you should not. That is not the magnitude of that maintenance. We see performance in the third quarter, similar to the second quarter.
Okay, thank you.
It the maintenance is much smaller than you just assumed.
Okay.
Thomas, for the second part of your question, you asked about the Biosolutions outlook or targets. I mean, we definitely see Biosolutions as a big growth opportunity for us, and we do believe in the potential of the business. As I said before, clearly, the numbers we see today are not reflecting the big potential we see in this division. The target is still there. It is the EUR 1 billion from bio by 2030. We believe in that. There is a significant pipeline, especially on the biopharma side, but also on the bio ingredients. Now, including the really important milestone of the acquisition in ADL BioPharma, which triples our capacity.
you know, holding back is now really the, the upfront payments, the upfront costs, which we have in investing into that business. Therefore, we believe that the midterm, long-term perspective is absolutely intact.
Can we expect a more meaningful contribution already next year? No offense, but the investment in this business started already a few years ago, so the upfront payments, I mean, they are accumulating. Where are we going to see a more meaningful return on those investments?
Thomas, Tobias, yes, we expect an improvement in next year because those upfront investments do then turn into sales and profit. We have a large contract starting once we have completed our Halle facility, and we are good for order in the second quarter of next year.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Jaideep Pandya, from Onfield Research. Please go ahead.
Thanks a lot. Sorry for a few questions. Firstly, on polysilicon, could you give us some idea of how is the progress on the renegotiation of contracts away from the Chinese local prices towards international prices? You know, how much progress have you made? You know, just sort of as a wig indication, how much volume are you today selling, you know, outside China, and how much are you selling sort of in China for China? That's my first question. The second question is really around the outlook for polysilicon. You know, the midpoint suggests a EUR 50 million per quarter EBITDA, which, if I'm not wrong, would suggest that the solar business is gonna really break even.
I mean, is it because you're expecting prices to pretty much go to the Chinese reference price and electricity costs to remain very high? Are you just being conservative on volumes, or what is driving this? because obviously, your semi business should be profitable. The last question really is on silicon metal inventory. I'm sorry if I missed it, but, you know, in the current context of demand in Silicones, when do you expect to clear out your silicon metal inventory and sort of refresh your material basket for 2024? Is it gonna be end of 2023, or is it gonna go into 2024? Thanks a lot.
Okay, Jaideep, this is Chris. I take your the first questions on the polysilicon side. Your first question was on the kind of, let's call it decoupling, right, of the pricing. As we said, we had some significant achievements in the first half of the years of negotiating contracts, renegotiating contracts with customers. As you know, I mean, the contract structure we have is quite diverse. We have contracts which go over several years. We have contracts which are shorter term. There are different pricing models. This is a continuous process. This is nothing which is done, you know, just within a few weeks.
For the second half of the year, it's fair to say that there is still a significant exposure, also to the Chinese market, but to the Chinese index. You, you use the phrase, "In China, for China," which I would not be so happy with, because, you know, we sell our high-quality product to customers in the world. It is not, we cannot, we don't sell Chinese material to Chinese customers. We sell high-quality material to all customers in the world, and Chinese customers do play an important role. And our aim is more and more to go to the outside China price as our material is just made outside of China. You asked a little bit on the pricing expectation and how the guidance is taking that into account.
I mean, you can see from the guidance, obviously, if you make the calculation, that the Chinese domestic pricing still plays a role in that pricing. If you would take the pricing, which we see currently in the market for the Chinese material in China and for the non-Chinese material outside of China, if you would take that into as an assumption for the remainder of the year, you would end up in the midpoint of our guidance. That's the way how we calculated or guided the segment. Jaideep, to be here on the silicon inventory question, as you remember, the silicon metal market was super tight last year. In that situation, we also built some safety stocks just for security of supply.
Since then, the market price for silicon metal has declined, as we all know. We are working through that extra inventory now. It takes some time, to be honest, as the overall volumes are down in the segment. From today's perspective, in Q3, we will still be working through our high-cost inventory. That means that we do not expect a material cost relief yet. In Q4, however, the effect from the high-cost inventory will gradually decline. For the quarter, that could calculate into a decline in raw material costs, which should then also drive sequential improvement in earnings of Silicones. When prices go up, you benefit from low-cost inventory. When prices go down, you still carry longer with the burden.
I think we had the flip side of that, in the first half of last year. In 2022, you might remember, meaningful effects that benefited us, I think, in the first half of this year. As I said, just now, even in the third quarter, we still have the burden from high-cost inventory. We are part of the same game as our customers, so we are working through two high inventories, and we are slowing down our new order intake. That's how supply chains are run today.
Can I just ask a follow-up to Chris, the politician, not Chris, the CEO? I mean, what are your discussions around local content, in Germany and preferential power price, and also around the U.S., with regards to investments? Because obviously, a lot of your customers are, you know, putting elaborate plans for U.S. investments. You know, Chris, the CEO, sorry, Chris, the politician, what is he saying to German government? You know, when does he go to the U.S. to invest?
No, I mean, we are Jaideep, we are essentially, I mean, our narrative remains the same, especially on the side, on the German government. Saying, you know, we have capacity already in Europe. We have significant capacity already in Europe, which could be used in later years for building up a solar supply chain. We do have ideas in the drawer to expand capacities, but it is always a combination. It needs to have an attractive power pricing in Europe. Second, it needs to have customer contracts, which makes, you know, which buy the material. Thirdly, it needs to be a support on the investment side. If all these come together and make a good business case for us, then we would be willing, we would be willing to invest.
That story is essentially the same also in the U.S., given that we don't focus so much on the power price in the U.S., but more on the investment side. Yeah, I think the message is understood. I think everybody knows our position. Luckily, I'm not a politician because I think I would get crazy with the time of decision, the decision time they need for getting it implemented. That's really now on their side of the game to take decisions. I hope that we do see something in the second half of this year, in the fall or in the winter, hopefully. It's not, you know.
Great.
It's not depending on us, so to speak.
Great. No, okay.
Okay.
Our next question is from Chetan Udeshi from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks. The first question was on Silicones. If I heard you correctly, you said Q3 broadly same as Q1, sorry, Q2 in terms of earnings, which leaves Q4 at something like EUR 85 million in terms of EBITDA versus EUR 50-55 million in Q3. I mean, typically, your Silicones business is actually down in Q4. Can you talk about what will drive that sharp rebound in Q4 earnings in Silicones in Q4? That was the first question. The second question, again, on Silicones, is if I look at the history of Wacker since the IPO, I don't think you've ever done 10% EBITDA margin in Silicones. Even in 2009, you did low double-digit EBITDA margin.
I think the crux of the question is: Is there a structural disadvantage that Wacker now faces more and more in Silicones business because of the because of the high exposure to Europe in terms of upstream production? Is there a way you can optimize your upstream production network to maybe source more from other parts of the world, especially given especially given the overcapacity that you have in siloxane? Last question is on polysilicon. If I hear you correctly, I think you laid out your conditions now for a few quarters on building capacity. Those conditions haven't changed, but I'm just curious, has the market dynamics changed at all in the last nine months?
Are we still talking about conditions, but, you know, those are still the conditions, and you don't see any evidence that those conditions will materialize into any, you know, any investment decision from your side? Or at least you see some activity which is moving in the right direction. It feels like those conditions have existed. We've heard you talk about those conditions for a few quarters, but it just feels like nothing else happens, beyond those conditions. Thank you.
Chetan, on your two Silicones questions, to be as here, you have picked it correctly that Q3 is similar to Q2, and then Q4 up. I mean, would possibly imply a pickup in demand, that's not the case. As I mentioned it, this is just about the payment from the lower silicon metal price that then comes to the P&L, which is not yet visible in the third quarter. It's that trailing effect from lower silicon prices finally hitting our EBITDA. On the second question, if you compare this environment to other very low demand environment, I think it is similar to what experienced our competitors. I think the unique situation today is that we really don't see a volume in demand in specialty products.
I think broadly that, that hugely diversified customer base, everyone seems to be winding down inventories and sees low demand. This is as a situation, this is unique. Our utilization in Silicones is in silicone specialties, is much lower, we are still as I mentioned, we are still working with high raw material costs, on the standard side, we have low pricing. The true difference is that really unnaturally low demand, especially in Silicones. I'm absolutely sure this will not last forever. Once those inventories have been worked through, we will see a true pickup in end product demand again, that would also support utilization.
Okay.
Chetan, on the question on the polysilicon, if I understand you correctly, your question was on the market conditions or did something change in the last quarters? Well, I think it definitely did. There is a change especially in the political discussion, and you can see the politicians like Abe, yesterday on Tagesthemen, that was more on the green steel side, but very active on promoting transformational technologies and being supported by the government. I can also tell you that, of course, we get a lot of questions from potential customers in the solar value chain trying to talk about new contracts with us.
Yes, there is definitely a, the dynamic in the market, but it is not yet something to really report on as it's not written in stone, finalized, and it's still an ongoing process. We remain optimistic on that.
Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Our next question is from Geoff Hare from UBS. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi, this is Geoff Hare from UBS. I just had one question. Chris, in your introductory remarks, you made a comment that you saw 2024 being a challenging year for Wacker, as well as 2023. I just wonder, are there specific challenges that you see that we're not seeing at the moment, or is this just you being cautious about the next 18 months?
Absolutely. I mean, Geoff, absolutely with you. It's not that we know something specifically more than the rest of the market. It is just being cautious. I mean, we talked in the beginning of the year a lot about a recovery seen from many, many customers, which just didn't materialize for the whole industry. From that perspective, I'm just cautious, that I think we won't see much change, this year, and that could well be part of the first half of 2024. That was kind how I meant that statement.
That's fine. I just wanted to check. Thank you.
Yeah. Okay.
The next question is from Rikin Patel from BNPP. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, just on Silicones. You've mentioned the deterioration in specialty volumes and also the standard pricing. I'm just curious, with that weaker volume environment, should we be expecting headwinds to pricing in specialties in H2? How have you catered for that in the new guidance? Secondly, on polysilicon, you've mentioned the resilient pricing in semi in Q2. I'm just curious if you could give some comments around the outlook there for pricing in H2 as well. Thanks.
Rikin, on the Silicones specialty pricing question, I would say largely, specialty pricing has held up well, there are always different shades of specialties. It's not black and white. We see some erosion in some segments of the market. For sure, the longer the slow demand continues and inventories at customers are worked down, I think there's also pressure. It's a completely different game to the standard pricing development. Okay, Rikin, on your second question on the semi poly pricing in the second half. Well, I mean, typically the semi poly pricing is more longer-term oriented, and it's typically more on an annual basis. From that perspective, I wouldn't expect significant changes for the second half of the year.
That's what we meant also with a pretty resilient and good market for us.
Okay, thank you very much.
Yeah.
The next question is from Sebastian Satz from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. A couple of follow-ups from me. First, on the Germany situation, the industry power price, probably quite unclear whether or not it's gonna come, Ministry of Finance opposing it. Should it not come, are there any potential other support mechanisms or schemes that are currently being discussed for Wacker to get OpEx support? If I'm not mistaken, the expression of interest for the rebuild of the solar chain is predominantly on CapEx. Just trying to gauge what the likelihood is that Wacker would get some, some cheaper electricity costs in Germany. Then on the US, do you already know for certain if you will be eligible for the $3 per kilogram production credit in poly, even if you were to produce semi material in that plant?
If so, when do you think you would get that, and if that's already factored into your second half guidance? Quick follow-up on Silicones. If you look at the EUR 200 million or so year-on-year EBITDA decline, how much of that roughly is coming from lower volumes, lower commodity prices, and mix, respectively? Thank you very much.
Okay, Sebastian. On your first question on the support schemes and support mechanisms, you, well, you're absolutely right. I mean, the current focus, both in Germany and in Europe, is primarily on CapEx, and also with this new initiative from the BMWK for this interest in the solar supply chain, it is primarily driven by CapEx. Typically, the answer you get from German politicians is that the OpEx thing is getting complicated with Europe. Nevertheless, you know, we keep arguing on that, that OpEx for us is the more important part.
We do appreciate CapEx support, without having a somehow competitive landscape on the power pricing, you know, we won't be investing into new capacities. The industrial power price is one of these options, which is probably the most prominent. I think what's also discussed now is, you know, are there other options? I don't see them from the European perspective. Therefore, for me, it would be more like, who's being part of the industrial power price? That might be a big a political issue. Our argument always was, it should be there for the leading transformational industries. Industries which produce products which are important for transformation of the industrial sites in Germany.
I truly believe it would be a good business case for the country, and that's our main argument also with the Ministry of Finance, who, as you mentioned, has a very distinct meaning on that or distinct opinion, which I don't think is correct. Obviously it needs some more time for convincing him.
On the IRA and the possible or potential eligibility for the free dollars per kg, unfortunately, U.S. wording is still not clear, and for that reason, we have not factored it into our guidance, and we could not account for it so far. On the or the third question on the Silicones, I hope for your understanding, we don't disclose that level of detail, I can't distinguish the performance drivers in the EBITDA. I can tell you the biggest effect on earnings is definitely the reduction in our profitability in specialties, and that has an effect of much lower volumes and also somewhat lower prices.
Understood. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Sebastian Bray from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hello, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please, both on Biopharma. If I look at the statutory accounts of the company that was bought, ADL, it looks like it was making about EUR 40 million of sales with a statutory loss of around EUR 7 million at a net income level in 2021. Why was it loss-making? My second question is, who was the company bought from? Thank you.
Sebastian. Your question was on the performance of ADL, and I think a good number to talk about is sales of about EUR 50 million. I think that was something which they published for last year, for 2022, being profitable. And why is it not, I mean, why is it not profitable in the past? I mean, obviously, maybe they didn't do the best job. I think they improved. And we do see much more potential for improvement. The major driver was probably the underutilization of these assets. They did some improvements in the last years.
We see more opportunities for us because of our own innovation pipeline, but also expanding the CDMO business at the site with our global reach and our customer contacts.
The seller, Sebastian, was Kartesia, in a private equity fund that was owning it there for some years.
Thank you. Sorry, what was her name? I didn't quite catch that.
Kartesia, with a K.
That's helpful. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
The next question is from Andreas Heine from Stifel. Please go ahead.
I actually have two, one on Polymers and one on Silicones. In Polymers, the margin guidance was increased due to lower raw materials. Is that only temporary, or is that something which you can keep going into 2024? That's the first question. The second one, in Silicones, actually, I put it in two. You mentioned that sequentially, Q3 to Q4 will be EUR 30 million better because of the lower silicon metal input costs. If you transfer this in 2024, with not having three quarters of high silicon metal, does that mean like for like, it would be already EUR 90 million higher? That's the first part of the question. The second is really about the capacity utilization you have in the upstream business.
You said you have a more adverse mix, that you produce more of standard products, to keep the assets utilized. I can't believe that the market is better absorbing the standard products than the specialties and the standard prices are so low, that I, that you might not earn anything on the EBITDA level. Could you outline a little bit more how you manage this upstream utilization, please?
Andreas, to the Polymers question and the margin up in our guide. First of all, we do have our target margin, which is 20%, and we always said that we are working towards that, also improving our product mix. And we had years when we were closer to the 20%, and we had years where we still had some way to go. I think what we see in this year is that keeping absolute EBITDA is a very solid performance in that low volume environment. You do the math, it equates with a calculation, EBITDA divided by sales into a higher margin. Going forward, I'm not in the position today to give you guidance for 2024. We definitely focus on-...
on absolute EBITDA, and if that also leads to higher margin, I'm absolutely fine with that. It's just too early to think beyond this year. The next question was on Silicones for fourth quarter, EUR 30 million higher. No, I think you should not annualize that. I think it's I think also too early to see what other. I mean, you can always take one effect and annualize it, but there are so many moving parts and they are not visible to us, especially the demand outlook in into 2024 and further developments in pricing. I would be cautious on that.
For sure, we see that finally, also lower raw materials support our profitability, and we will revisit that once we have more visibility going forward. Your next question on the upstream utilization and how to manage our product mix. Our focus of the strategy is to sell specialty products. If there's no demand, we can still juggle volumes between specialties and standard markets. We don't like that too much, but we can do it, and there's access to that market, and that allows you to earn some contribution margin. As I said also to Sebastian before, I think the biggest impact on profitability is that we have unnaturally low utilization for our specialty products.
You should keep in mind that we were running at at the limit for more than two years, where customers were put on allocation. I think this sentiment also describes that customers were buying as much as they could get, this apparently led to far too high inventory levels, these need to be worked down again, then we would see fundamental demand again in a lot of promising markets that we serve, then utilization and contribution margin from specialty assets would go up again.
Yeah. May I squeeze in one more? Do you have any visibility whether what you see in low demand is really run down inventories or just soft underlying trends?
It is really very little visibility. I mean, we see sometimes daily order entry fluctuate, which might be the sign that you could have customers that are really very low at inventory and suddenly ordering again. If you look at order pattern overall, it remains very slow. I mean, there's no positive development from Q2 into Q3.
Thanks a lot.
We have a follow-up from Jaideep Pandya. Please go ahead.
Thanks a lot. The question really is on semi-grade. The question is on semi-grade poly, actually. You know, one of your key competitors in Korea is in the middle of a very big investment that is coming in 2025. What do you think about, you know, polysilicon investments? I mean, appreciate all the solar talk that you're having, but, you know, don't you want to invest in semi for the next sort of 5+ years? If you do so, then, you know, what will really happen to your solar capacity? Do you sort of want to keep the 80 KT base and just go more, and more, and more into semi, if you get no policy support from the governments?
Do you actually think the current environment warrants for, brownfield expansion in semi, which will increase your nameplate from 80 to, you know, maybe 100? Thanks.
Okay, Jaideep, this is Chris. I will take your question. Well, I mean, in essence, our strategy for polysilicon, which we presented two years ago, is exactly that, what you mentioned. It is going for the semiconductor market, where we today have a strong position in that market, and of course, we want to keep and grow this position. Therefore, we are actually investing. We just recently published that there is a big investment going on here in our site in Burghausen for hyper-pure, best quality, etched material. That's a significant investment that will also absolutely strengthen our position in that market.
Yes, we hear that competitors are also announcing something, but we are absolutely not fearful about these investments from competition because we have the leading position in the semiconductor market. You talked about what it would mean for solar and... Well, part of our strategy today, if there is no attractive business case for solar, we would use capacities for solar and convert it into semiconductor. I think we mentioned that on a few calls ago already. I think we are really in a unique position that we can use our capacities both for solar and for semi. Therefore, this gives us a lot of flexibility. With the investment in Burghausen, we are able to produce more and more of the best quality semiconductor material, which is in high demand in the market.
All right. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
Sure.
There are no further questions, and I hand back to Jörg Hoffmann for closing comments.
Thank you very much for your interest. We will be back on for Q3 on October twenty-sixth. If you have additional questions, please feel free to contact the investor relations. Thank you.