Good morning, welcome to the Elementis 2022 Full Year Results Call. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. In terms of the agenda, I'll start with highlights and business segment performance. Ralph will review the group financials, and then I will take you through our outlook and priorities. Following this, we will take your questions. Turning to slide five, we're pleased to report a continued profit recovery that was underpinned by strategic progress. This was accomplished despite some quite challenging market conditions. First, at the end of November, we announced the sale of our Chromium business, and the deal was completed at the end of January of this year. This is a key step to reshaping our portfolio to be a focused specialty chemical business.
Our Coatings and Personal Care business delivered an excellent performance with underlying sales growth and operating profit margins that reached 19% and 25%, respectively. These two businesses represent over 80% of our sales today. Talc had a very challenging year. I will cover the actions we are taking to turn around performance later in this presentation. The post-Chromium Elementis is comprised of businesses with leading positions in attractive markets. There are now two segments, Performance Specialties and Personal Care. We have combined our Talc and Coatings businesses to create Performance Specialties, giving us much greater end market focus and a simpler organization. With good cash generation, our balance sheet strengthened in 2022 and further benefited from the Chromium proceeds.
We have made good progress on deleveraging, almost halving our net debt since 2018, and on a pro forma basis, bringing our net debt to EBITDA ratio down to below two. With the balance sheet strengthened and two well-positioned businesses, we are on track to make continued financial progress. We will therefore look to reinstate the dividend later this year. Safety comes first at Elementis, and the health and safety of our employees is our paramount concern. Eliminating injuries and ensuring our operations are safe and reliable is our focus. In terms of performance, in 2022, we saw an improvement in the recordable injury rate, and it is worth highlighting that three-quarters of our sites had no employee recordables in the year. We also had eight sites that have now gone five years without any recordable injuries.
Part of this progress can be attributed to our focused training programs. We've introduced a hazard recognition program to help our employees better identify and mitigate risks. In addition, we continue to invest in training and recognition initiatives to strengthen our safety culture and further improve our safety performance. Turning on slide seven to our headline financial performance for the year, which we are reporting on a continuing operations basis post the sale of Chromium. We are pleased with the performance over the year as well as the strengthening of our balance sheet. Sales rose 4% and 10% underlying. This was despite a challenging demand environment that saw volumes in areas like China Coatings and Talc decline materially. What drove our sales performance was a strong new business momentum, targeted pricing actions, and an improved product mix.
These factors drove an operating profit improvement of 14% or 23% underlying, which translated into an improvement in our operating margins from 12.4% - 13.6%. Earnings per share rose 31% to $0.109, whilst our net debt reduced from $401 million-$ 367 million. Net debt to EBITDA fell to 2.2 x at the end of 2022. On a pro forma basis, the Chromium sale takes the ratio down to 1.9 x. Our financial progress has been driven by execution of our innovation, growth, and efficiency strategy. Let me touch on a few highlights. On innovation, 18 new products were launched in the year.
New products are a key engine of growth, sales from new products have increased by 37% since 2019. We now have 17 joint development projects with our largest global key account customers, where we are working in collaboration to make their products perform better. That's a great example of what is behind our refreshed corporate purpose: unique chemistry, sustainable solutions. Innovation is fueling growth. We delivered a record of $59 million of sales for new business in 2022. We did extremely well with our key account customers in Coatings, where revenues exceeded $90 million. While in Personal Care, we saw sales in AP Actives grow 55% as we captured market share in a more favorable market. Efficiency is the third pillar of our strategy.
Our new AP actives plant passed certification and shipped its first products late in 2022. It's now ramping up and will be a source of cost savings in 2023. We delivered some $4 million of savings from our continuous improvement work this year, which improved the productivity of our plants. The $10 million cost savings commitment by the end of this year has been underpinned. In addition, we continue to make good progress on sustainability. Elementis has made a new and important commitment to develop science-based targets for Scope 1 and 2 emissions reduction and has set an ambition to achieve net zero by 2050. This commitment is underpinned by very real actions we are taking to embed sustainability into both our strategy and our operations.
Turning to ESG on slide nine, we can point to some clear progress. On the environment, we've already achieved big reductions in Scope 1 and 2 emissions since 2019. The Chromium sale will significantly reduce our emissions profile. We continue to focus on people by building capability and strengthening our culture. Our senior leadership gender diversity increased from 25% in 2019 to 33% in 2022. Our DE&I engagement index improved from 63%- 67% among all employees. We continue to invest in training and activities that support an inclusive culture. Being a responsible business is something we take at Elementis very seriously. This year we introduced a new code of conduct and created a network of ethics champions across the globe to embed it in our culture. 77% of our energy is now from renewable or low carbon sources.
Some external recognition for this progress was the award of an EcoVadis Gold rating for the second consecutive year. On slide 10, you can see the progress we've made against our 2030 environmental targets that were put in place in 2020. In all areas, we've made progress against our 2019 baseline, and in three of the four areas, we're ahead of our reduction targets already. On slide 11, I'd now like to highlight what the sale of Chromium means for Elementis. Simply put, we are now a focused specialty chemicals business. There are four dimensions of this change. First, growth. Our continuing business has more focused exposure to attractive growth markets, with every area having opportunities to grow revenues faster and organically. Second, quality. We're now a higher margin, less cyclical business.
The peak to trough earnings in Chromium, even in recent years, has been about 6 x, 4 x higher than the rest of the business. Post-Chromium, a more stable earnings profile can be expected. Third, our product slate becomes much more natural, up from 55% of sales to 69%. More and more, our customers are looking for natural formulations to create more environmentally friendly products. Finally, because making Chromium chemicals is an energy-intensive business, our greenhouse gas emissions will fall by over 70%, transforming our carbon intensity. Now let's look at the performance of our businesses by segment. Starting with Personal Care on Slide 13, revenue rose 26% on an underlying basis, driven by record growth in both cosmetics and AP Actives.
While we benefited as activity normalized following the lifting of COVID restrictions and by some restocking that occurred, we also won share by delivering $15 million of new business. Adjusted operating profit increased 55% to a record $53 million, with both higher volumes and improved price mix driving margins to 25%. On Slide 14, you can see two factors at work. First, on a revenue basis, our end markets have generally recovered to 2019 levels. Although we think volumes still have a way to go, as some of the impact here is price. Second, Elementis sales are now outpacing the market. In color cosmetics, we've played well into the prestige market.
You can also see here that from a small base, we're making great progress in skincare, supported by new product launches, where our product offering lends itself well to market preferences for water-based, naturally derived formulations. Sun care is another growth opportunity where we are beginning to demonstrate that our new products work well for our customers. AP actives had a fantastic year benefiting from our strong market positions as demand recovered post-COVID. Having a global production footprint that offers supply chain resilience is proving to be important to our customers. Equally, our high-performance product launches of REACH 9000 and REACH 701 L helped drive growth. Looking forward to how we will maintain momentum in our Personal Care business. In the past three years, we've launched 25 new products, and there is more to come.
The amount of sales from new products continues to grow strongly, and that, combined with the investment in people in growth markets, all feeds through to a record new business pipeline. This will underpin future growth in 2023 and beyond. Turning to Coatings on slide 16, you can see that this business also performed well in 2022. Sales increased 5% on an underlying basis in challenging conditions. Volumes were negatively impacted by a severe market demand downturn in China, and we also faced rapidly rising input costs. Disciplined pricing actions and an improving product mix helped improve margins. We also saw a strong growth in decorative segment sales driven by $34 million of new business. All this contributed to a 25% rise in underlying operating profit and an expansion in our margins from 16.1% to a record 18.8%.
You can see on the next slide, slide 17, decorative coating sales growth was exceptional, driven by stable U.S. Market conditions and new business won, especially at key accounts. Industrial demand was weaker, impacted by China volume weakness caused by lockdowns for much of the year. I've mentioned our strong U.S. performance, it was also good to see growth in Europe. Up 11%, where price actions and an improved product mix had a major impact. Another key driver was our global key account focus, which continues to deepen as we build close technical and commercial relationships with our largest customers. Our focus on joint development projects and product solutions helped to increase sales from global key accounts by 21%. We see on slide 18 how this focus has translated into growing operating profit and much better margins over the last few years.
Our commitment to innovation has supported our four growth platforms at our most important customers. I'm gonna talk more about our growth platforms in a minute. Our Coatings business has built a record $200 million new business pipeline, which will help to underpin future growth. To ensure we can meet this increased customer demand, we continue to invest in capacity expansion. Our NiSAT capacity has increased by 50%, and our new investment in low temperature organic thixotrope capacity will come on stream later this year. Coming back to the four growth platforms I mentioned, these have been driving the performance in Coatings for several years now, with a clear focus on differentiated technology-led products that are positioned to meet specific market trends.
You can see on slide 19 the success of this focus with the compound annual growth rates over the last three years ranging from 6%-33%. Our NiSAT growth has been driven by success in U.S. and European decorative markets. Whereas the organic thixotropes growth is in industrial markets, with strong growth from emerging adhesive and sealant demand. In industrial Coatings as well, we're growing sales of our additives designed for water rather than solvent-based Coatings. Customers are looking to reduce VOC emissions across a wide range of industries, including automotive, construction, machinery, and timber Coatings. Our range of products not only deliver great performance, but also help customers use less energy and improve sustainability. Finally, performance hectorite sales have done well, partly based on our access to unique raw materials.
You can see from the charts indexed to 2019 how both our sales from innovation products and our new business pipeline has grown materially over the past three years. Over the last year, we launched nine new products and have a pipeline of $200 million of new business opportunities, which will continue to drive growth. Coming on to Talc on slide 20, last year, we faced exceptionally challenging market conditions that only got worse as the year progressed. Our Talc business is over 80% Europe-based, and due to war-related negative economic impacts, the volume decline was severe. We also faced surging input cost inflation, and while we took multiple price increases throughout the year, the volume impact took its toll.
The net result was a 2% constant currency sales growth, driven by pricing and better mix. A decline in operating profit from $14 million last year to just under break even in 2023. This is disappointing. We've had a good start to 2023 and are confident of a material profit recovery. To go into a bit more detail on what happened in 2022, you can see on slide 21 some of the market challenges we experienced. Volumes were down about 20%, with a sharper reduction in the second half. This was driven by destocking in Coatings, continued soft automotive demand, a prolonged first half paper strike in Finland, and the negative impact on customer demand from the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
In addition to these demand headwinds, we saw surging cost inflation, particularly in energy costs, where, despite some hedging, we experienced big increases in Finnish and Dutch electricity costs. We also saw transport costs rise sharply over the year, affecting our logistics costs on both raw materials and finished goods. In summary, 2022 was an incredibly difficult environment for our Talc business. On slide 22, I'd like now to discuss what we've done and will do to turn this business around. Multiple pricing actions that we took in 2022 are feeding through and will benefit full year 2023 results as margins recover. Importantly, we've been able to do this and maintain the loyalty of our customers. We've implemented a new business segment to combine Talc and Coatings to create greater market focus, improve our execution, and reduce costs.
In addition, this change enables a single integrated sales force. We continue to focus our attention on value rather than volume, looking to serve the higher margin segment of the market. The new organizational structure allows us to move to a common global distribution network. We've already taken the first actions in Europe. As we start out in 2023, we've seen some recovery in volumes since the prior quarter, as well as a moderation of energy prices. Together, with more new business wins, this combination of self-help and moderately improving market conditions gives us confidence in a significant profit recovery for Talc this year, and we're off to a good start in the first quarter. I've spoken about bringing together the Coatings and Talc businesses to form Performance Specialties. On slide 23, you can see the commonality in the end markets of the Coatings and Talc segments.
This move is primarily about growth opportunities, attractive end markets we can serve most effectively as one business with a single sales force and a common distributor network under very capable leadership. We've already delivered our targeted revenue synergies, we're now organized to achieve more. Combining under one proven management team will also generate $2 million of cost efficiency savings by 2024. I'd also like to confirm that we will continue to report both Talc and Coatings results to maintain performance transparency. We're excited about the growth opportunities ahead for Performance Specialties, and I'll talk about some of these shortly. First, I'll hand over to Ralph to cover the financials.
Thanks very much, Paul, and good morning, everyone. Turning to group revenue on slide 25. Revenue rose 4% on a reported basis and 10% on an underlying basis, with the main currency impacts being the strength of the dollar versus the euro and renminbi. Volume declines impacted revenues by around 13%. This was focused on a few key areas. The large majority of the volume related decline was due to Coatings Asia, with industrial activity in China very subdued, and also due to Talc, which was affected by the Russia-Ukraine conflict and soaring energy prices. Despite these headwinds, our revenue grew because of very successful pricing actions and a much better product mix, particularly in Coatings. Looking at group adjusted operating profit on slide 26, this rose by 14% on a reported basis and 23% on an underlying basis.
The volume impact I've spoken about from Coatings Asia and Talc, in particular, hit operating profit by some $41 million. We were also impacted by raw material, energy, logistics, and fixed cost inflation, amounting to over $90 million across all our cost base. We were still able to progress the P&L in 2022 through the pricing actions we took in every region and segment, as well as better mix, again, in every region and segment. Turning to leverage on slide 27. We've made some significant progress on debt reduction since 2018, taking it from $498 million of debt to the pro forma $260 million today. We completed our refinancing mid-year and have paid down debt with the Chromium proceeds, resulting in lower leverage and ample headroom and liquidity.
We remain committed and focused to get into our medium-term target of 1.5x , which is now more visibly within reach. Fundamentally, Elementis is a strongly cash generative business, and we expect further debt reduction in 2023, driven by earnings delivery and working capital improvement. We're on track to deliver our $10 million of cost savings targeted for 2023, as we show on slide 28. The new AP actives plant in India is a key pillar of these savings and is now ramping up as customer qualification completes. This plant will help to create a lower fixed cost base and optimize tariffs on key raw materials. Our team of global process engineers are driving our continuous improvement program. In procurement, we're bringing more spending under our expert procurement function, focused on disciplined category management.
We're also targeting a $10 million reduction in working capital with a focus on inventory reduction. Due to market conditions in the latter part of 2022, with supply chain challenges and weakening customer demand, inventory has increased more than we anticipated. Our focus in the coming months will be to improve on finished goods stock levels, supported by integrated forecasting, while minimizing inventories of slow-moving goods. Post-Chromium, we also have a simplified organization with two business segments. The $7 million of stranded costs which reverted back to the group after the Chromium sale will be a key area of focus, with the aim of eliminating the majority of these costs by the end of 2023. Turning to cash flow on page 29, there are a few key points to highlight.
On working capital, we saw an outflow for the year of $59 million, which was phased $49 million in the first half and $10 million in the second half. Working capital to sales remained broadly in line with historic performance. This dollar million size of outflow is reflective of the price effect of input costs and finished goods, as well as our decision to secure several key raw materials and thus ensure continuity of supply to our customers. The drop-off in demand in the latter part of the year also impacted inventory. I mentioned on the previous slide that managing inventories will be a key focus this year. Tax-related payments declined on the prior period from $44 million - $13 million. In 2021, we had two tax-related cases amounting to $33 million, and in 2022, cash taxes were at a more normalized rate.
Net cash flow in the period was $34 million, resulting in a net debt of $367 million and a leverage ratio of 2.2 x. The Chromium disposal receipts in Q1 2023 take that pro forma debt down to $260 million and a 1.9 ratio, assuming the removal of the $7 million of stranded costs. Finally, a word to reaffirm our capital allocation priorities on slide 30. First, we will invest organically to grow our business. Capital expenditure will be approximately $40 million-$45 million, we're focused on growth and productivity opportunities. Second, debt reduction continues to be a major priority. We see a clear path to get to under 1.5 x leverage while simultaneously investing in growth. Third, on shareholder returns. We suspended dividend payments during 2020, given the COVID-related demand uncertainties.
We recognize the value of dividends to our shareholders. We'll look to reinstate the dividend later in 2023. I will now hand back to Paul to wrap up.
Thanks, Ralph. I'll finish with a few comments on strategic priorities before turning to our 2023 outlook. Turning to slide 32, as I said, I'm excited about the potential in our business that is feeding through to our performance, we will continue to drive outperformance in the medium term with our innovation, growth, and efficiency strategic framework. We've set ourselves ambitious but focused goals to underpin our delivery. On innovation, we're planning to launch 15 new products this year and to drive new product revenues to 17% of sales by 2025 across Personal Care and Performance Specialties. As you've seen in our business reviews, we're well on our way with our focus on higher margin growth platforms and investment in capacity expansion. Much of our innovation is coming from ever stronger collaboration with our global key accounts.
Under growth, we're planning to secure a further $50 million of new business wins annually. We are laser-focused on delivering the profit recovery in Talc, whilst in Personal Care we're looking to achieve double-digit revenue growth in skincare. Further efficiency is critical for continued financial progress. As Ralph spoke about, we've good underpinning of our prior targets of $10 million of cost savings and $10 million of working capital savings by the end of 2023. We're moving quickly to eliminate the $7 million of Chromium stranded costs with the majority to come out this year. In addition, our new Performance Specialties structure will enable $2 million of efficiencies over 2023 and 2024, and we will continue to leverage our continuous improvement capabilities for further productivity gains. Underpinning these strategic priorities is our commitment to further sustainability progress.
Our science-based targets have already been submitted for review, and we're now working on our framework for the path to net zero. Slide 33 highlights progress against our medium-term financial objectives. As you can see, our margins are improving and there's more to come. Cash conversion remains strong and close to our target, and our deleveraging target continues to come closer in sight. Turning to the 2023 outlook on slide 34, I'm confident that we're on track for continued financial progress and deleveraging. We have two strong businesses with compelling opportunities for growth in attractive end markets. We continue to focus on operational excellence and cash generation, and we've made a good start in 2023, but it's still early days, and we expect that demand will likely be stronger in the second half of the year.
To conclude, we're confident that we're well-placed to make continued financial progress. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at our Capital Markets Day in May, when we'll be giving an update on our continuing strategic transformation. With that said, Ralph and I would be happy to take your questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, you can press star one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, you may press star two. Please ensure you're unmuted locally when asking your question. Our first question for today comes from Kevin Fogarty from Numis. Kevin, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hey, Kevin.
Thank you very much. Hi there. Morning, all, thanks for the presentation. If I could just kick off with two, please. First one, just kicking off on working capital dynamics. Obviously you continue to kind of invest in working capital in H2. You've touched on that in the presentation in terms of the kind of drivers of that. I just wondered, can you help us in terms of what the sort of supply chain conditions look like now for you? Perhaps what does that mean for sort of ongoing, kind of inventory investment or inventory, you know, levels of inventories you need to hold given what you've said about demand and just if there's any easing in supply chain conditions? You know, obviously in a post-Chromium world for Elementis, what might that look like?
Just secondly, in terms of Coatings, obviously we've seen good margin progression during the year, albeit sort of coming back a bit during the second half of the year. Given that mix has been a sort of medium-term driver of the margin, you know, in a potentially kind of softer demand environment, would you be more confident of retaining, I guess, more of that margin improvement going forward?
Okay. Thanks, Kevin. I'll start on the working capital, Ralph, you can quantitatively follow up, I guess, on that one, and then we'll talk about Coatings. I think in terms of working capital dynamics, what we saw was really a tale of two halves in the sense that demand was quite strong in the first half, and our supply chain was very busy, I think, catching up. You know, there were backlogs and such. As we expected, and I think we talked about at the mid-year, we felt the second half would tail off in terms of demand, and it did, a pretty good amount of destocking on the Coatings side for sure.
We end the year, I think, in a pretty good position, in terms of, you know, product availability. We don't have backlogs, and really Just keeping our eye on the demand as we go forward, I think it puts us in a better position, in terms of, in terms of managing, the working capital. Ralph, anything you wanna add, particularly on the Chromium side of the question?
Well, just a couple of things on, just to build on what Paul said. The working capital I think was sort of, round about $59 million outflow for the year. $59, of which, $10 million was in the second half. As usual, most of the working capital outflow was first half of the year. But we did see a slightly higher working capital outflow in the second half than perhaps we might have anticipated because inventories ended the year quite high. As Paul says, I think we've now when we've now got a more stable supply chain, we can supply our customers well. We will be looking to drive inventories in particular down in 2023 versus where we ended up at the end of 2022.
I would make the point that our working capital as a percentage of sales is broadly stable. You have had a sort of a price effect on the dollar level of working capital. The third point I make is, you know, Chromium was actually running with quite high levels of working capital. In particular, it used to keep a six to nine-month stockpile of chrome ore for resilience reasons. That was sort of $20 million-$30 million of inventory, which we no longer carry. They had further inventory levels as well. Actually I think the working capital intensity of Elementis post-Chromium will be lower. The inventory levels, again, we should expect to be sort of rationalized over the course of 2023.
Yeah, I think, I think there's all to play for on working capital in 2023.
Kevin, on the.
Right. Thank you.
The question on Coatings margins. I mean, look, obviously we're pleased with the progress we've made. It's multi-year, you know, driven by our growth platforms, which are about 40% of our revenues now. All kinds of new products, I think that are higher value, higher margin. I think in the very immediate term, you know, we do see destocking going on. We do see a housing situation in frankly in both China and the United States that you know, is pretty soft.
Probably with if China kind of starts to really move, second quarter onwards in terms of their economy, you know, that, that has just a slightly lower margin, slightly negative mix effect. I think in the intermediate term, I mean, this us being in the high teens on Coatings, you know, this is where we will, we will be in the intermediate term because the innovation, the new business, you know, will continue, and we're gonna continue to drive these growth platforms. I think as long as we're, you know, continue to make those kinds of investments, this is where we'll be.
Great. Thanks very much. That's helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question for today comes from Andrew Stott of UBS. Andrew, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hey, Andrew.
Yeah, morning. Thanks very much for the opportunity. Just wanted to maybe get a bit more of a granularity around that $50 million of new business wins, Paul, you referred to in your slides. How do I think about that in two ways? How is that split across Coatings and Personal Care? How do you think about that in terms of the chronology? In particular, if you've got any pointers to FY 2023 within that $50 million, that would be useful. Thank you.
Yeah, Andrew. In terms of Coatings and Personal Care as it splits, we did $34 million. We did $34 million in Coatings. We did by product quite a lot of NiSATs, new business, as well as dispersants. Americas feature, if you sort of, you know, cut that $34 million, Americas was about 40% of it. 30-30 was Europe and Asia. It's a nice breadth, I think, in terms of split. It's just really a focus on new products that not only deliver a great performance, but do it frankly in a more environmentally responsible way. I think Personal Care, slightly different, about $15 million last year.
Three we did skincare. A good deal of skincare was about 25% of it, 25% cosmetics. Then we had quite a big year actually in antiperspirant actives for new business behind some new high efficacy products. In terms of regionally, the new business kind of splits. You know, we do kind of 40, 20, Americas, Europe, Asia, and that's basically how the business split. Yeah, those are kind of the highlights. I think as we think about the $50 million we're targeting in 2023, I mean, we feel quite optimistic because the slate of new products is strong.
I think what you can see if you look at the slides where we show the growth of the new business pipeline, there's a momentum to this actually. You know, our sales force is really quite high quality. The customer relationships are strong. Yeah, obviously the expectations are that we're gonna grow. So you can see those pipelines expand, and we expect that that, you know, really creates a tailwind for further success in 2023 and beyond.
Thanks, Paul . Quick follow-up on, Personal Care 'cause it's a phenomenal year-on-year, performance. Is there any reason to think that you can't sustain that margin as you look into FY 2023 and beyond? Is there anything exceptional in there?
I wouldn't say there's anything exceptional in there, Andrew. I mean, I think, sustainability of margins of, you know, we see the inflationary impacts aren't abating. You know, we're continuing to see inflation. Obviously we've gotta manage that price cost effect. We see that the inventories are higher. It feels like we're pretty well-stocked. There isn't de-stocking going on, at least not in our view on Personal Care. The other element is mix. Depending upon how the economy performs, you know, you sell more or less premium products, depending upon how China comes back. You know, there are some variables.
A bit like my answer on coatings, you know, we'd like the margins in this neighborhood. You know, with the amount of innovation and the amount of new business that we're driving, in the intermediate term, we expect to stay there.
Yeah. Andrew, I think one other factor is when the India plant fully comes on stream in terms of production, that's gonna open up further cost savings. You know, most of Personal Care improvement in 2022 has been through sort of top line growth, mix margin improvement. We will have a efficiency element coming through as the India plant serves our customers in AP. That should also help the margin sustainability.
Great. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Andrew.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, that's star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Chetan Udeshi from JP Morgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Morning, Chetan.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks, and morning. Hi. I have couple of questions. First was on Talc, and I saw that chart showing the volume development of Talc through the months of 2023. I'm a bit puzzled because we actually saw quite a good recovery in the European automotive production, at least on year-on-year basis in second half of last year. I think it was up 12%, 13% for all of second half. I think from memory, auto used to be, or auto is probably still a quarter or even slightly higher than quarter of Talc sales. Why are we not seeing the improvement in Talc volumes despite at least a recovery in the auto production in Europe from the low levels?
I mean, are you guys, proactively, you know, giving up volumes where maybe the margins are not good? You know, I also remember there was some exposure to catalysts, which may be falling off. I am not so sure what's going on with the Talc volumes, and why we don't see an improvement there, especially in second half. The second question was, you know, can you, I mean, shed some light on how will these stranded costs be negated to zero by end of this year? You know, it's quite a material number. What are you guys doing to get rid of those stranded costs? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Chetan. I think on the volume question, what we saw in the last 4 months were some incredibly aggressive levels of destocking. Obviously, our Talc business is around 80% European. You're right, there was a slight uptick in the second half on European automotive, but my recollection was it's kind of low to mid-single digits. What we saw was this destocking because everybody at that time, you know, sort of August, was quite worried that you weren't gonna be able to run plants potentially. Not to mention, you know, what are consumers gonna do? We saw that in a really, really massive way.
The other thing, I think if you step back and look at it in a broader context, I mean, European auto is down 26% in the last three years. It's a, it's been a pretty significant step down. In terms of the stranded cost question, yeah, there's about $7 million of stranded costs. You know, without Chromium, we're a 20% smaller company. What we have to focus on here is understanding, you know, what work's gonna get done, how, and importantly where. We're thinking more about our functions. We wanna obviously protect the capabilities that make the company go and make the company grow, but we need to get these costs out. There's a bunch of work going on right now to do that.
It's important to put this in context because, you know, this $7 million really represents about 6% of our fixed costs, less manufacturing. It's a to-do. It's, you know, it's something we have to jump on, and we will. We are. You know, it's manageable, actually. We've been putting a bunch of thought into it as we were kind of getting to the final paces on the Chromium transaction. We're kind of all over it. Ralph, anything you want to add on either of those points?
Yeah, just, you know, coming back and the mold out this year, Chetan, we've signaled we'll get the majority of them out this year. So most of them will come out this year. The balance will come out next year. Yeah, the sort of costs that are coming back are, you know, IT, HR, legal. They are sort of functional overhead. As Paul says, if your company is 20% smaller, you've gotta be leaner and simpler. I think our move to having two segments, whilst that's really focused on the growth opportunities for Performance Specialties, it will give access on a sort of secondary basis as well to some more efficiencies. So you know, for example, we've taken the decision to have one distributor in Europe for both Coatings and Talc now.
We've got some sort of overhead rationalization already embedded in our numbers. That's another element that will help us. We'll get the majority of those costs out this year and the rest out next year.
Understood. Maybe if I can follow up on Coatings. Are you seeing any signs of restocking yet? You know, typically we are getting to that stage where, you know, Q2 tends to be more like a peak Coatings, especially for the paints market season. Do you see any signs of restocking into that season pick up yet, or is that not visible in the order book that you're seeing?
Yeah, Chetan, we are, we're not seeing any signs of restocking as we look at our order book this month, next month, hasn't appeared yet. This is simple answer.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. We have no further questions for today. I'll hand back to Paul Waterman for any further remarks.
You know what? nothing further to say, in addition to what we've already said, other than thank you for coming and look forward to hopefully, meeting with all of you on the sixteenth of May at our, at our Capital Markets Day. Thanks very much, everybody.