Hello, everyone, and welcome to Ashland Innovation Day 2026. My name is Sandy Klugman, and I am Ashland's Director of Investor Relations. Today, you will hear from leaders across Ashland, including business executives and technology experts who will discuss how our innovation pipeline is creating differentiated commercial opportunities that drive long-term growth and value creation. Please note that we will be referencing slides during today's webinar. We encourage you to follow along with the webcast material available at ashland.com under Investor Relations. As a reminder, I wanted to caution listeners that during this call, the company's management will be making forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by our forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with the company's business.
These forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements contained in today's investor presentation and Ashland's SEC filings, including the quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Please review the safe harbor statements and the disclosure regarding our use of non-GAAP financial measures included in those materials. With that, I will turn it over to Guillermo Novo, Ashland Chair and CEO.
Welcome, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here today. Welcome to our third Innovation Day update. It is a pleasure to host you today. As you have heard in prior events, Ashland has made innovation a strategic priority to drive differentiation and value creation for the company. Today, we are here to give you an update on the progress that we have made, as we have promised in the last updates that we gave you. Before I go into the specifics, you are going to hear from our businesses and the teams that are actually doing a lot of the work. I did want to give a quick recap of the technologies and the things that we have said in the prior events. One, we have made significant progress in advancing our technologies.
Significant, tangible progress around validating our technologies, developing new products with our customers, and very importantly, advancing our regulatory and manufacturing capabilities to enable these new technologies. The customer collaboration has been very strong. We have brought in a very robust value proposition for our customers that they have been very excited about, and more importantly, that they have engaged us in collaboration to develop these new technologies into the specific markets that they are interested in. Now we are in the commercialization phase of the process. We are really in the thick of launching products, broad-based products that will cross multiple customers and markets, but also advancing specific product developments with some of our customers to develop the products they need for specific launches that they have. Very exciting time for us.
But equally important, we validated that these are very scalable opportunities, that for a company of our size, it can change our future, our prospects for growth, profitability. We validated these technologies. We are targeting sizable market opportunities, and you are going to hear about that today. But also, we also validated that the value propositions that we are bringing to our customers is things that they really need. More importantly, we have done a lot of this work internally as we started the work, but more recently, we did conduct a third-party evaluation of both those things. Are we targeting large markets, big market opportunities, and what do our customers, what does the industry think about some of these technologies? The third-party company, reputable company that has done this for many other players in the industry, came back with two messages.
One, yes, the opportunities are very large, actually a little bit larger than you guys think. So you will see some numbers changing in terms of the value opportunity. But more importantly, for me, I think the interviews that they had with our customers and with industry experts also validated that if these technologies are working the way that the data shows, that they are addressing important value propositions and do meet the needs, the requirements that the industry is looking for.
So very exciting progress on multiple fronts. When we look at our strategy, it is very clear and effective for us at this point in time. Execute, globalize, innovate, invest. We have done and we finished all of the portfolio transformations, the changes in the company. We have the company now to where we have it. So it is really about executing the strategy. Execute, simply put, is about being competitive.
It is a very competitive world. You need to be cost competitive. You need to have reliable supply, productivity, and that is what we are investing in strengthening our ability to compete in some of our core businesses. Globalize is about global share gain. We have four high-quality businesses that we want to grow. These are two in pharma, our tablet coatings and our injectables business, and two in Personal Care, our microbial protection and our biofunctional actives. How are we going to globalize them? We are globalizing them by regionalizing them. We are putting a lot more resources in each region to commercial resources, technical resource, and more importantly now, supply resource, supply capabilities so that we are more local. We can innovate, collaborate with our customers locally, but we can also supply them. As you have seen over the last two years, we have been reporting the progress.
These four businesses have been generating very good growth and results in our business. The third is innovate. This is what we are here today. The whole purpose of that is to rejuvenate our portfolio to bring differentiation and value creation opportunities to the company. You are going to hear more about that as we move forward. Last, it is about invest. It is about capital allocation discipline. We want to make sure that we are investing in the right projects. Specifically for us, it is about driving organic growth. It is about increasing our profitability and generating free cash flow. How do we do that? Looking at the organic growth areas that we want to invest, productivity areas, and bolt-on M&A opportunities that can augment the business strategies of each of the respective businesses, with pharma obviously being a big area of focus for us. Our business model is very simple now.
It's very clear. We're about additives and ingredients. These are products that are low cost and use high value and use for our customers. They're critical ingredients in their formulations, so that allows us for a lot of differentiation and value creation potential for our customers. We build competitive advantage by leveraging these scalable technologies around of selling them into some of these core markets where we have leadership positions. Today, pharma, Personal Care, and coatings are these leadership positions. Not only the older, old technologies that we have, core technologies, but all these new technologies. The more we intersect with bringing these technologies to those markets, they build competitive advantage for us, but they also allow us to grow faster. We do have secondary markets where we do sell to create scale.
The objective strategically would be, over time, can we get enough of those intersection to build a fourth or fifth business that we can build that level of strategic leadership position. We're talking about a lot of new technologies that we're trying to launch, and that means that we're replacing incumbent technologies. That's a difficult process to do. Incumbent technologies have well-built asset bases, the infrastructure to support them. These things are new technologies. For us, we feel that there's four things that you need to bring to the market, to our customers, to be successful with these new technologies. First, it's about performance, superiority. The product needs to be better than the incumbent technology. Equal to or better. It cannot be, it's great, it's sustainable, but it doesn't work. Customers are not going to buy products that don't work.
Superiority is critical to their value proposition, so for us to be successful, we need to bring that to them. Second is cost. The economics of the new technology need to fit the long-term needs of our customers. Obviously, some of these are new technologies, so it's not just about the starting cost, it's can you build the economies of scale to bring the cost of these technologies down? W e believe we can do that. Third is sustainability. Sustainability is real. It's important to our customers in all industries. Personal Care, obviously, is more attuned to this than other industries, but we see it in industrial applications, coatings, all customers are very interested. The issue is not just bringing sustainability. Is the sustainability you're bringing significant enough? Is it relevant to what they're doing? W e think we have a very strong value proposition.
Lastly, but very importantly, the value propositions that we bring to our customers have to meet their strategic needs overall. If we don't meet this, they're not going to collaborate. For them to collaborate on these kinds of initiatives, it has to be important to them and it has to be important to us. Getting those mutual intersections of strategic fit are very important. T hat's why we're excited, because we feel a lot of our technologies are actually hitting all four of these areas, and that's, I think, why we're making very good progress in advancing them. Today, we have made a lot of progress. I hope you're going to see very different updates from the prior events that we've had. We started just a few years ago. We were in the ideation.
We just passed ideation, where we were talking about a few new technologies or applications. Now you are going to see a plethora of applications, products, markets. It is really evolved in multiple directions. We have validated these technologies work. It is not just our validated, our customers are telling us that. We have also now validated the products that we are developing for them are meeting their needs. So now it is an advancement to the commercialization. Great progress on the regulatory manufacturing front, which was one of the key drivers of the timetable for our innovation. So great progress, especially, I would say, in the regulatory area, which was a key issue. Now we are in the exciting commercialization phase. So the next year, 2 years, it is going to be about making sure that we are commercializing, creating, going from potential to real value in these technologies.
But before we hear from our businesses and specifics, I have invited here today my partner here, our CTO, Dr. Osama Musa. He has been obviously a critical driver here of these initiatives. I wanted to have a quick fireside chat just to talk a little bit about the broader things before we get into the specifics with each of the businesses. So Osama, what I wanted to do is three questions that I will place, and we will have a few slides for you to talk to. But one, we have focused on innovation a lot in the change in the portfolio, new techno, all the exciting things. But what I am seeing is it is changing us.
There is a lot of other things that we are seeing evolving. So I want to get your perspective. You talk to, obviously, the R&D group, all the commercial teams, manufacturing, our customers, the industry in general. How are you seeing how we are changing? The second question is about this issue of scalability. Three years have passed now since the first webcast events that we did, and these technologies have changed. Not only how have they changed, what have we learned from them? The last one, which I think is going to be very exciting, and I get asked that a lot is, okay, seven platforms we have been hearing about it. Is there anything new?
Let us talk and present a few new things that we are working on. Okay?
Excellent. Very good.
So let's start with the question of how have we changed? So what have you seen with how innovation and the changes that happened have changed Ashland?
Okay. First of all, Guillermo, thank you so much for that introduction, and it's my great pleasure to be here with you today to share with you some of the progress that we had at Ashland. There are three, Guillermo, there are three factors, key factors, stand out when I think about how innovation changed at Ashland. Number one, I truly believe we changed the way we think. We changed how we think. The new technology platform changed the mindset. We ask ourselves a very important question. If the new technology platform can be modified, leveraged, can we do the same with our core technology? So there's the first factor. Second factor, we brought in a new talent with intensive industrial experience.
These talented people, from engineers to scientists to leaders, they looked at our core technology as a new technology because for them it's new things, and they start looking at the core technology as a technology that can we modify it? Can we do something with different new lenses to this core technology? Can we do something different with the new ideas? The third one, which is my favorite one, is that we really created a culture of curiosity. Learning becomes our passion. We start learning more, reading more, and learning from each other more and more. We ask a critical question, which is, what if? So these three factors really become the catalyst that ignited the revolution of Ashland's innovation in both technology, in new technology, and core technology.
Can you share, so in results, what has that generated?
Yes, very good point.
Products and-
Yeah
What have you seen?
Yes. So just to share with the audience here is that our core technology is really rich core technology. We have the synthetic polymers, and we have the nature derived polymers under one roof. Imagine you have from the nature-derived polymer, the cellulosic, the guar, the cyclodextrin, the biofunctional, and we have the synthetic polymer. Water soluble, water insoluble, solid, whatever you like in under one box, under one company. What happened is that now I will give you an example. We innovate not just only in one business unit, the three business unit. Let's give you an example of each one of those business unit. In Personal Care, for example, we just launched a product related to biofunctional, which is the Collapeptyl.
Collapeptyl is a synergy, a formulated hybrid of three ingredients from peptides to hyaluronic acid to CMC, which is a cellulosic core material, become a skincare longevity material for us. One of the superior, talk about superiority, here it is, a superior material for skincare longevity material. If you look at Life Sciences, in Life Sciences also have an exciting things. One of them is that you will hear later on in the presentation that we really created a material such as sodium caprate for permeation enhancers, as well as to reduce the nitrite level in our cellulosic. So very powerful to do a process innovation, differentiated ingredients.
As well as in Specialty Additives. People say, "Well, can you really invent HEC?" We will be launching in the upcoming several months, a multifunctional HEC. As you can see, we can really innovate in our rich core technology.
I want to just commend you and the team and part of the results, the IP that we found. It is 52 patents. It is a lot. I know you guys have been working hard, but they cover a broad range, and they are coming from the businesses. So a lot of big changes. Very exciting. The motivation, we have been able to hire a lot of people. There is a lot of excitement and energy coming from the team. But let's talk about scalability now. I have chosen three projects or three platforms, and maybe you can comment. TVO, which is one we knew was going to be very scalable.
What have we learned? That has really gone and what are the learnings that we are getting? The starch, which is really moving very well right now, but it is earlier on, so where are we on that? The last one is the Super Wetter, which you and I have been surprised on how it has gone. It was a very niche-y product, niche-ier platform, and it has actually surprised us. Let us talk about those three, but let us start with TVO. How has the TVO changed in these last few years?
Thanks, Guillermo. That is a really good question. The Transformed Vegetable Oils, the TVO, is a really unique platform. You can say, why is it unique? Unique because it is sustainable, renewable, non-microplastic, biodegradable, can be vegan, and non-GMO as required. When we invented this technology, we invented it to replace the microplastic additives such as acrylates. So it is a broad range. A couple of years ago, when we launched the first product for skincare, it was, for us, revolutionary at that time. What we did, we said, "Can we scale it up in Personal Care?" Not just only in skin, in others. Now, I am happy to share with you that we are utilizing the TVO technology as a silicone alternative in hair care application for shampoo and conditioner.
We are utilizing it and using it for hair styling, for hairspray to replace the microplastic additives that use in hairspray polymers ingredients. Also very unique, we can use it for home care as a dispersant and oral care as an active delivery. So this is just scalable just within the business unit itself. Think about now, what about can we scale it up in other businesses? The answer is yes. We already expanded the TVO technology into Life Sciences. Now, we are using it for oral biologics as a permeation enhancer, as a gene delivery to replace lipids, which is very complicated to make, and for crop care, to have a film former, non-microplastic seed coatings, and we launched two product based on this technology for crop care. In addition to that, not just in Personal Care and Life Sciences, also in Specialty Additives.
You are going to hear today some real example from Specialty Additives related to TiO2 spacer in coatings, as a biobased alkyd binder, corrosion inhibitors, and reactive oligomers for UV. You know what, Guillermo, what's the most exciting things? We already launched six products based on this technology.
Right.
We filed 33 patents on this technology.
Osama, in a lot of what we talked about in the prior ones, it is about we brought functionalizations. We are able to take the oil and functionalize it, and that has created these opportunities. But there is more. What is the other developments that you have done? I know you have a lot of new IP there. What have you done and why is it important?
That is a very good question. Since last Innovation Day in May 2025, we also expanded the TVO technology into a polymeric. The oil itself is not a polymer. Can you make an oil a polymer material? Why is it important? From a regulatory become to register it is easier. You can change the physical properties. You can have increase the viscosity, become a tunable material. You can make high molecular weight oil. You can make lower molecular weight TVO.
It is becoming a diverse polymeric oil, with differentiated functionality for different applications.
With everything that we have done and we are showing, there is still a lot more potential for years to come on that technology. Let us talk a little bit about the starch. It is a little bit earlier.
Yes.
A lot of excitement, great customer receptivity. From a platform perspective, what is your perspective on how this can grow and become a broader platform?
It is a very good question again, Guillermo. As you know, Guillermo, microplastic is one of the major visible sustainability challenges facing our society, in particular, Personal Care. Why is Personal Care? Because majority of the thickeners that use in Personal Care are synthetic microplastic polymers, and those polymers are thickeners and only thickeners. What we did, we invented a renewable, sustainable, a product based on a raw material that is coming from a starch, but new to the world and has multifunctionality.
You can ask me, "What multifunctionality you mean, Osama?" What I mean is that in addition to the thickening ability, it can also be a film former, stability, and sensorial benefits, has it for many of those application. In addition to this, what I like about this platform, Guillermo, it can work in different environment, higher pH, lower pH, higher temperature, lower temperatures. As a matter of fact, we filed two patent on this technology, and we already manufactured the first manufacturing scaled of material just in July and August of this year.
I know a lot of the focus has been Personal. Is there opportunities beyond Personal Care and other markets?
Right now, we are evaluating it for food, for nutrition, for hair care applications.
Just to let you know that, for example, the first launch is going to be for skincare application in 2026, and the second product of multifunctional starch will be in hair care application in 2027.
Beautiful.
The beauty of all of that this technology achieved global regulatory clearance, and that is very exciting for us. We can sell it in Asia, Latin America, Europe, and U.S.
Very exciting. Tell us a little bit, just to close this out, on the Super Wetter. Specifically, we have talked about it a lot, and how has it changed? When we talk it is a platform, multiple application, is it the same product or is it different products that we are developing?
When we invented the Super Wetter, it is to replace the forever chemicals, which is PFAS and silicone. We design ingredients that the backbone to be water-soluble and the arms water-insoluble. We can change the composition, the water solubility, the water insolubility, for different application and different performance. So different polymers, and different ingredient under the same platform. That is the technology. The first time we launched this product was for wood coatings. Now we are expanding it to crop care, which is to increase the pesticide contact to the leaves, in bioprocessings, in haircare, for texture hair.
But is it the same product, or you have changed it? How do you change it? It is different-
Yeah. We change the raw material, the backbone. We change the water solubility. We can make it longer chain, shorter chain. The hydrophobicity, which is the water insoluble, we can change it in and out.
So really exciting. This one, as I said, even internally, we have been very surprised on how it's evolved. Let's talk about new things.
Yeah.
Let me set it up for you, and then you can talk about what is it that we're bringing to the market. One area that is very important for us, cellulosics. We're one of the biggest producers. This is one of our core business, and we're always looking for innovation. Here's an area that many other companies have tried in the past. Sugarcane bagasse is a huge potential source of cellulose in the market. It's not really being used a lot, so this is a great upcycling opportunity, which for our customers is very important. If you look at it from our perspective, there's over 700 million metric tons of bagasse produced every year. Most of that is going to waste. The mills use about 70%, if they can use the electricity to generate power for their own operations.
The reality is about 10%-30% of the bagasse goes to waste. It's either burned in open fires or it goes to rot. Both have, and you can comment on it, significant environmental implications to that. It's a wasted source. Our team here has been working on it. A lot of people have tried, but they have succeeded in now converting the bagasse into a usable cellulosic source. Now, that's one part of the innovation that we're doing. Now it's also taking that and applying it to all our core businesses. We have something. That material can be 50% cheaper than our wood or cotton sources. There's a huge advantage in the cost structure of the cellulose. That's nice, but the more important part of it is that it brings superior properties. We are now able to tune.
If we take this material and if we put it in a new HEC, we can now fine-tune it with other production changes that we can make and bring a lot of different properties. Again, think it is cost effective. We are going to be more competitive in our core business, but also that we can bring superiority again to our customers in an area that we already have built out infrastructure, and we can probably move pretty quickly. Tell us a little bit about this product and the work your team has done.
Thanks, Guillermo. This is a really, it is an area that I am very excited about because imagine most of the people think this material is a waste. Turning waste into something effective and efficient. What happened, just to put things in perspective, for every 10 metric tons of sugarcane processed, 3 metric tons of bagasse generated. One third is bagasse. Now we ask ourself, "Where can we use this material that we call it as waste?" People tried and tried until comes to us. We are unlocking the sugarcane bagasse potential by converting it into real rich polysaccharide. Polysaccharide is a cellulosic type material for superiority and sustainability. How we did that, we build or transformed the bagasse with consistency, reliability, and scalability to make a building block.
Our idea to make a building block, and this building block can be tuned to have it more water-soluble, water-insoluble, to have a new to the world performance. That is where the game changing is happening. How can you take something that people, as at your point, is waste, to convert it into a new to the world performance material?
When you have applied it to HEC, to our core technologies, what did you find?
Some of this material that we have, it can be a film former, a rheology modifier, and provide adhesions. The beauty of all of that, Guillermo, is that we utilize our expertise in cellulosic. We are a cellulosic company. So we take this technology, use our scientists to create all of that. The way we are designing it, we are potentially utilizing our existing manufacturing asset to make those materials.
Ossama, I love this. It really shows innovation is real. A lot of other industries, I hope for the chemical industry, we need to get back to this kind of innovation. That is really what is going to drive the transformation and the change of the company.
The patents we will talk about.
We have a lot of the patents that we have got. So for now, let us pass it on to our business team to give you a more in-depth view of the work that they are doing. Let me pass it on. Let me start with Jim in Personal Care. So Jim, I will pass it over to you.
What an incredible year it has been. It is great to see our innovations advancing towards commercialization. Welcome to our Bridgewater Lab, where many of these innovations first began to take shape right here. What excites me most is not just the breadth of innovation, but the number of opportunities that are validated, scalable, and poised for growth. Galder, as you look across the portfolio, what gets you most excited?
Jim, I joined Ashland to develop new, impactful innovations. The combination of our technical capabilities, technology portfolio, and a great team is making this a reality. More than anything, customer engagement and feedback have exceeded my expectations.
Absolutely. In a minute, we will join you in the lab to learn more about these exciting technologies. Our customers are at the center of our innovation model. Their needs keep us focused on the outcomes that matter to consumers, while their feedback validates our differentiation and builds confidence as we move towards launch. We are innovating across the entire Personal Care ecosystem with scalable technologies that move across segments, applications, and product formats. We are expanding in skincare, deepening our leadership in hair care, broadening our oral care offering, and selectively innovating in home care. Years of work are now materializing. We have built a robust toolbox of chemistries, and behind each opportunity is a technology tested with customers and advancing through our innovation model. We are co-developing at the bench, bringing our scientists and our customer scientists together to accelerate development and validate market readiness.
Today, we will focus on two examples coming to market from our Transformed Vegetable Oil and our multifunctional starch platforms. Together, they show how we are translating science into scalable growth. The first project spotlight is Softhance, a Transformed Vegetable Oil for hair conditioning. Softhance expands our addressable market and hair care by $850 million. The market structure for hair conditioning agents makes this opportunity particularly compelling. Because demand is concentrated among a handful of industry leaders, each major customer win has the potential to generate meaningful step-change growth for the Personal Care business. We will also spotlight Stabileze S, a multifunctional starch for skin leave-on applications. Stabileze S expands our addressable market by $300 million. This is our first launch in starch, combining high-performing rheology with a differentiated sensory experience.
In approximately three years, the team has advanced the technology from concept to launch while maintaining focus on performance, scalability, and customer relevance. I am excited to share we have received our first commercial PO, further validating the performance and trajectory of this technology as it comes to market. Now join us in the lab for a closer look.
Let us see our products in action. I will start with Softhance TVO, our silicone replacement technology for conditioning hair. The market need and our job to be done is clear. Consumers want more performance from fewer ingredients.
[Presentation]
Importantly, we have a formulation-ready solution. Softhance TVO is a drop-in material, compatible with both anionic and cationic surfactant systems and easy to process, delivering equivalent finished product appearances. Softhance works in shampoos, conditioners, and hair serums. The result, multifunctional performance with superior conditioning plus added hair benefits. We experimentally measure conditioning performance in our lab directly on hair by tracking wet and dry combing forces. Lower combing force indicates easier combing due to improved detangling and reduced fiber-to-fiber friction. Compared to silicones, Softhance delivers equivalent performance with particularly strong dry combing results. Another important product attribute is shine, where we also see strong performance. Using a specialized camera, we quantify how much light is reflected at specific wavelengths and how uniformly it is reflected across the hair fibers. The results confirm that Softhance TVO matches leading industry benchmarks and delivers brilliant shine.
The most critical part of our assessments takes place in the salon. Here, our professional stylist assesses the product performance and sensory experience. Attributes such as combing, detangling, softness, suppleness, and shine are evaluated on real consumers both during and after product application. Consumer feedback is the ultimate decider of product performance.
[Presentation]
The regulatory foundation is also well advanced, with chemical registration granted in key regions, including the U.S. and Europe, and registration in China progressing well. Softhance TVO is proprietary to Ashland and is patent-protected. Softhance TVO is in beta testing with customers across regions where they are assessing performance in their own formulations. Customers are advancing through material qualification with real consumer testing complete. In parallel, manufacturing scale-up is progressing smoothly, supported by existing Ashland assets and process know-how from our prior TVO launches. This gives us confidence in our fiscal year 2027 launch timeline. Softhance TVO is more than a single hair care product. It is expanding across Personal Care applications, including skincare and color cosmetics. We have developed lipstick and foundation formulations that leverage the same core technology for pigment dispersion, texture enhancement, and distinctive sensorial performance. The platform tunability is what makes TVO strategically valuable.
It provides Ashland multiple growth directions from a common technology base. Let's now discuss our second project spotlight, multifunctional starch, where we are launching Stabileze S in 2026, our first commercial product from this platform.
[Presentation]
This architecture allows formulators to build tunable textures that feel rich, smooth, and elegant on skin. In short, we have transformed a natural starch into a high-performance cosmetic ingredient. From a formulation standpoint, Stabileze S is practical and easy to use. It is supplied as a powder, is cold processable, and unlike conventional acrylates, does not require pH adjustment. It incorporates easily and forms a visually rich, stable emulsion, meeting industry-required shelf life criteria. The ease of use translates into broad formulation versatility, from lightweight serums to pumpable body lotions to beauty butters and solid facial balms. Stabileze S performs where other technologies fail. On the customer front, more than 150 customers have beta tested Stabileze S worldwide. Feedback has been consistently positive and has validated our own application assessments. Moreover, the technology has been recognized through global industry awards.
Our customers confirm the technical and sensory attributes that make Stabileze technology unique. Luxurious appearance and texture, strong pickup, attractive firmness with a smooth flow and premium sensory performance without the stringiness often associated with natural gums. With customer validation in place, the priority is now commercial execution. In 2026, we scale the technology from pilot to full manufacturing readiness with a U.S.-based tolling partner. This is an important capability expansion for Ashland as it is our first full-scale multifunctional starch production. The first commercial lots have been successfully produced, and we have already received initial commercial purchase orders. Stabileze S is proprietary to Ashland and is patent protected. We are now extending multifunctional starches into hair styling, which includes gels, mousses, and pomades. Styleze S can replace acrylates while bringing intrinsic styling properties. It enables formulation of clear gels with strong hold and high humidity resistance.
Unlike other natural polymers, Styleze S does not flake or leave any residue on hair. Customer evaluations are on their way, and we have received very positive early feedback. We expect to launch multifunctional starch for hair in 2027. With that, I hand it over to you, Jim.
What we shared today are not simply two promising products. They are examples of how Personal Care is translating differentiated science, customer collaboration, and market insight into scalable commercial realities. The story extends well beyond the innovations we have highlighted today. Within TVO, our breakthrough hairspray polymer is in late-stage development, which would replace a 50-year industry standard. In biofunctional actives, Eternight and Collapeptyl are gaining rapid market adoption. Our superwetting agents are advancing across hair, oral, and home care. Multifunctional starch is already expanding beyond skincare into hair styling. These technologies are at different stages and together demonstrate the breadth of our Personal Care innovation pipeline. We are addressing meaningful market needs, engaging customers earlier, and creating multiple growth opportunities from scalable technology platforms. That is the model you have seen today. It is strong science moving with greater speed and purpose towards commercialization.
We are proud of what our teams have accomplished, energized by the opportunities ahead, and confident in our ability to bring new technologies to market. We look forward to building on this momentum in 2027.
Let us now move to Life Sciences. Today, I would like to give an update on our Life Sciences innovation strategy, which remains unchanged versus last year. I am excited to provide an update on the significant progress we have made against that strategy, which is heavily focused on expanding our reach in the higher-growth biologics segment. We have advanced our technologies and are rapidly gaining commercial traction across pharmaceutical bioprocessing, injectable drug delivery, and oral biologics and GLP-1 delivery. The first space we will cover is bioprocessing. Here, we are extending Ashland's expertise in purification, pharmaceutical quality systems, and high-purity ingredients into biologics manufacturing. This is a large, attractive, and fast-growing market that is highly complementary to our existing portfolio. We believe our capabilities provide a differentiated entry point, allowing us to participate across multiple stages of biologic drug production while leveraging strengths that already exist within Ashland.
Our second pillar is accelerating growth in injectables. Over the past several years, we have built a differentiated portfolio of high-purity excipients and advanced drug delivery technologies supporting long-acting injectables, biologics, and complex therapies. We are now seeing the benefit of those investments. Customer programs are increasingly converting into commercial drug products, generating multimillion-dollar orders and resulting in revenue streams. As a result, the business has entered a rapid scaling phase, providing tangible validation of both our strategy and our execution. Our third pillar leverages our leadership in oral excipients to serve the booming oral biologics and GLP-1 space. We have a multi-product strategy in this segment that will allow us to capture a high market share in a $270 million directly addressable market. This segment is growing rapidly with high double-digit growth underpinned by a broad research pipeline.
We will talk a little bit more about these technologies and commercial traction behind each of the three innovation areas, which open up an additional $1.6 billion market for Life Sciences, which brings our total addressable market to over $4 billion with a high attractive underlying growth profile. Now you will hear more from Seán and Kapish, who are joining me here today.
Thank you, Alessandra. We are really excited to talk more about our new products. Biologics represent one of the most attractive growth opportunities in healthcare today. They are among the fastest-growing therapeutic classes, driven by strong adoption across peptides, monoclonal antibodies, vaccines, and next-generation therapies. What makes this particularly attractive for Ashland is that biologics require high-purity materials throughout both drug substance manufacturing and drug product formulation and delivery to the patient. We have built positions across the biologics journey, from cell culture and harvest through purification technologies, through the formulation of injectable and oral delivery strategies. This creates a differentiated advantage for Ashland. Rather than participating at any single point in the process, we engage customers at multiple stages of development and manufacturing, increasing both our addressable market and our strategic relevance to those important customers. Importantly, many of the world's leading biologics companies are already Ashland customers.
We are leveraging that existing relationship with pharmaceutical quality capabilities that Ashland already has and technical expertise to introduce new solutions across the expanding market. This results in a multi-platform biologics strategy for Ashland that gives us exposure to approximately $1.6 billion of additional addressable market opportunities from products being developed by Ashland. This is supported by high growth margins in those segments and growing commercial traction across several points in the value chain. Over the next few slides, we will demonstrate how strategy has moved well beyond technical innovation and into commercial execution, with customers adopting our products and revenue growth across each of these platforms. Our first biologics growth platform is bioprocessing, where we leverage Ashland's purification expertise to supply ultra-high purity ingredients used in cell expansion and harvest to produce these biologic drug molecules. The global pharma bioprocessing chemicals market is a very large multi-billion-dollar market.
Our current innovation programs target approximately $600 million of this opportunity, with underlying market growth exceeding 10% CAGR annually, driven by increasing biologics and biosimilars production. Our purification platform is a key differentiator. It enables Ashland to manufacture high-purity materials, pharma-grade specifications that meet demanding requirements of biologics manufacturers. This creates competitive advantage for Ashland through specification-driven wins, premium value capture in terms of pricing strategy, and high barriers to entry. More importantly, we are converting that advantage into commercial traction. Over the past year, we have launched two Vialose high purity, low endotoxin sugars and polyols used in bioprocessing. We have generated more than $1 million in new bioprocessing revenue from products we have developed in this space, expanded our pipeline into buffers, cell culture reagents, cell recovery and lysis technologies, and we have established global channel partnerships across the market to accelerate growth.
The Columbus purification facility that you see here is the foundation of that strategy. It supports today's commercial products while enabling growing pipeline of future launches across multiple bioprocessing applications. While still in the early stages, bioprocessing has moved from an opportunity to an execution. We have launched products, we have secured customers, we have generated significant revenue, and built a broader portfolio in terms of innovation pipeline. This creates scalable growth opportunities aligned with the long-term expansion of biologic medicines. Having discussed biologic drug manufacturing, let's now move to drug formulation and delivery. Injectables remain the most common delivery route for biologics and represent one of the most attractive growth opportunities within our Life Sciences portfolio.
[Presentation]
We have built a broad injectable platform enabling long-acting injectables, biologics, and advanced therapies. What began as a leadership position in long-acting injectables has expanded into stabilizers, solubilizers, dermal fillers, and advanced drug delivery technologies. This multi-platform approach allows us to address a larger share of the customer spend, deepening strategic relationships, and creating opportunities to commercialize multiple technologies within the same drug development program. To support future growth, we have expanded manufacturing and purification capabilities in Ireland and Columbus. These expansions provide the quality, scale, and reliability required for global manufacturing, and they support continued expansion of our injectables portfolio. As with bioprocessing, we have moved beyond capabilities. The traction we are seeing across injectables demonstrates execution. Since 2022, we have launched seven high-purity products. We have grown sales by more than 400%. We have built a commercial pipeline exceeding $100 million in value.
Today, we support over 500 customers developing drug products using our excipients. Our bioresorbable polymer platform highlights this momentum. Last year, we discussed a pipeline of approximately 200 customer programs and several potential game-changing opportunities. This year, we have large sales converting. Drug products containing our materials have reached the market. Multiple customers have placed multimillion-dollar orders, and we have secured our first game-changer program wins, generating more than $5 million in sales from a single customer within our pipeline. These wins validate that the strategy is working. The pipeline continues to mature, and with more programs advancing into later-stage development with increasing visibility to future revenues, we are very confident that we can build this program out and really monetize the platform. The economics are highly attractive.
Once designed into an approved injectable drug product, our excipients typically remain for the product's entire life cycle, creating long-duration cycles for revenue streams, attractive margins on products sold, and high customer retention. Taken together, commercial wins, manufacturing expansion, and a deepening pipeline reinforce our confidence that injectables will remain a significant long-term growth platform for Ashland, with substantial runway for high-margin conversion. A lot of really exciting developments and more to come with Kapish.
Oh, absolutely. The oral delivery of biologics and GLP-1 medicines is one of our most exciting growth platforms. Today, most of these drugs are injected. Turning them into a simple tablet is a very large opportunity. Oral dosage forms, like tablets, are usually preferred by patients over injectables. The diabetes and weight loss market should exceed $100 billion by 2030, with early proof points in oral delivery of RYBELSUS and Wegovy pill. Yet, it is still early. Over 70% of the programs are in pre-formulation, so oral delivery is largely unsolved, and that is exactly where we are positioned.
[Presentation]
We are building two complementary solutions. One, permeation enhancers, such as our permexa sodium caprate, that help these molecules cross the intestinal barrier and lift bioavailability, as well as co-localization and disintegration excipients leveraging our core VP&D technologies. We are clearly differentiating our solutions through formulation know-how and tablet processability, and are leading the industry in this regard. We aim to solve three needs at once: bioavailability, tablet processing and stability, and patient comfort by supporting oral solutions. This is a large, fast-growing, still early market where Ashland holds a differentiated science-led position. We are thinking about oral biologic space strategically and have deployed a stage path to becoming the premier excipient partner to our customers in this space. We are already actively supporting multiple top-tier pharma customers with GLP-1 formulations using our core VP&D technologies. This year, we launched sodium caprate, which is our first permeation enhancer.
We have several additional pipeline projects underway to expand our IP-protected portfolio with existing and novel technologies to enhance bioavailability and enable tablet manufacturability. If you focus on our recent permexa sodium caprate launch, we see that the customer need and the opportunity is real. More than 40 sample requests came in before launch, and we are actively engaging with top-tier pharma companies to support their formulations. These opportunities have enormous potentials, up to $30 million per opportunity, as they are anchored on disease areas with large patient populations, like diabetes and weight loss. What resonates with our customers is that we deliver bioavailability while improving powder flow and tablet processability, solving the whole formulation and manufacturing challenge, not just one piece. With FDA approval and regulatory pathway cleared, this science is no longer theoretical.
It is on the market, and Ashland is well-positioned to deliver and scale with our customers.
Thank you, Seán and Kapish. That is exciting. We have three scalable and high-impact technology growth pillars, and each one has moved from strategy to proof this past year. In bioprocessing, we are advancing our purification lab portfolio into a double-digit growth market. Our participation is anchored by the Columbus Center of Excellence, two Vialose launches, and more upcoming new launches in 2027, our robust channel strategy, and our first $1 million plus sales in 2026. In injectables, we have delivered strong growth progress over the last year, accumulating seven high-purity launches since 2022, over $100 million of active sales opportunities, our first $5 million order from a single customer, two large facility expansions in Ireland and Columbus, and an overall high-margin business built on purification knowhow that others cannot easily replicate.
With oral biologics and GLP-1s, we are building an industry-leading portfolio in an area with enormous volume growth potential. Our recently launched permexa sodium caprate, it is a first strong proof point in this space and has already attracted interest and samples requests from over 40 strong pharmaceutical players. Our VP&D portfolio is also embedded in multiple GLP-1 formulations. The common thread is that we are not chasing single products. We are building positions along the biologics value chain, where purity, formulation knowhow, and scale are the barriers to entry, and where the market is growing fast. That is life sciences. Innovation converting into growth.
At Ashland, we believe sustainable growth comes from differentiation. Across the market we serve, customers are under pressure to reduce cost, improve performance, and address sustainability expectations. In this environment, innovation must do more. It must solve meaningful customer problems and create measurable value. Today, we will show you how Specialty Additives are meeting the challenges through scalable innovation. I am excited to share how the Ashland Transformed Vegetable Oil, TVO, platform is helping address important market challenges through differentiated and tunable chemistry. In coatings, customers are focused on performance, raw material optimization, and lower formulation costs. In battery-related applications, customers are seeking alternatives to legacy technologies that enables faster curing, lower energy use, and more efficient manufacturing. Industrial coil coatings customers also need fast-curing, durable solutions for applications such as metal roofing, HVAC systems, and stadium seating. Sustainability is an important part of the value equation.
Because Ashland TVO is a proprietary, scalable, tunable, and renewable technology, it supports multiple innovation pathways. Today, we will highlight two examples. First, we will cover TVO TiO2 spacer for water-based architectural paints. Second, we will discuss TVO radiation cure for EV battery and industrial coil coating applications. TVO TiO2 spacer addresses one of the most significant economic and sustainability challenges in premium paint formulations. Let us start with the fundamentals of making a paint. TiO2 is the key pigment that gives paint its opacity and coverage, allowing manufacturers to deliver brighter colors and better performance with fewer coats. That makes TiO2 one of the most important ingredients in premium paint formulations, but is also the largest contributor to raw material cost and a significant contributor to the paint's carbon footprint.
As a result, paint formulators are looking for ways to reduce TiO2 usage while maintaining or even improving hiding performance. Ashland TVO TiO2 spacer technology addresses this challenge by increasing the efficiency of TiO2 in the paint film, helping manufacturers achieve differentiated performance with lower formulation cost and a reduced carbon footprint. The result is a more cost-effective solution that benefits paint manufacturers while delivering high-performing paints for consumers. How can formulators get more performance from less TiO2? That is exactly what Ashland TVO TiO2 spacer technology enables. To learn more about this exciting technology, let us throw it to Ling in the lab.
Thank you, Dago. Now let us look at the science that makes this opportunity possible.
[Presentation]
In this demonstration, we compare three paint formulations. The first is a control formulation using a standard TiO2 level. The second contains 20% less TiO2 without Ashland TVO TiO2 spacer. The third contains 20% less TiO2 with Ashland TVO spacer technology. Each formulation is prepared and applied under identical conditions using a controlled draw down process. As film dries, the difference becomes visible. The reduced TiO2 formulation without TVO TiO2 spacer shows the expected undesirable reduction in opacity. The formulation containing TVO TiO2 spacer maintains hiding performance much closer to the original control. As you can see, the practical value is clear. In this U.S. semi-gloss paint example, reducing TiO2 by 20% with Ashland TVO TiO2 spacer results in significant economic and sustainability benefits. The formulation demonstrates an approximately 12% cost reduction and approximately 15% carbon footprint reduction while still maintaining great hiding performance.
For our customers, this means a lower cost per can of paint and a lower carbon footprint to help them meet their sustainability goals without sacrificing performance for consumers.
The technical proof is compelling. Our focus now is in converting that proof into commercial value. The TVO TiO2 spacer program is progressing along a clear commercialization pathway that includes strategic partner collaboration, scale-up, meeting regulatory compliance, and commercial launch planning. Importantly, the approach includes multiple business model, including technology licensing and exclusivity opportunities. To date, we are encouraged by the level of market engagement. The project currently includes more than 10 global partners, multiple regional launch pathways, and several commercialization models depending on customer needs and market requirements. This level of engagement gives us confidence that demand exists for this solution that addresses performance, cost, and carbon footprint challenges. TVO TiO2 spacer further demonstrates how this technology creates customer value. Now, we'll turn to TVO radiation cure for multiple applications.
Ashland TVO radiation cure is another example of how the TVO platform can be scaled to solve different customer challenges. Radiation curing is among the fastest growing formulation systems, driven by demand for faster processing, lower energy use, and high performance solvent-free coatings. It combines the performance customers require with more efficient processing and solvent-free formulation. In EV battery applications, coating helps electrically insulate metal components and protect them from corrosion, moisture, chemicals, and physical stress. Strong adhesion helps the coating remain intact through manufacturing, temperature changes, and long-term use, supporting battery safety, reliability, and service life. Industrial coatings present a different set of demands. Customers in both markets are seeking rapid cure, processing efficiency, and durable long-term performance that today's solutions do not always provide. Let me turn it over to Ling again so that he can explain the science behind the technology.
Let's look at how we test the TVO radiation cure performance in the lab. Ashland formulates a UV curable system containing our TVO radiation cure technology. The coating is applied to an aluminum substrate and passed through a UV curing unit. Within seconds, the coating cures completely. We then evaluate multiple performance attributes. First is coating adhesion to the metal. Strong adhesion helps maintain coating integrity during manufacturing and use. Second is flexibility. A coating must withstand bending and fabrication without cracking. Third is durability. Long-term performance under environmental exposure is critical for demanding applications. Together, this test demonstrate the balance of fast cure, adhesion, flexibility, and durability. As Dago mentioned, industrial coil coatings are used in exterior applications such as metal roofing, HVAC systems, and stadium seating, where long-term gloss retention and durability are critical. The wearing results provide strong proof of these demanding uses.
Following 2,500 hours of UV exposure, the Ashland TVO based coating demonstrates 94% gloss retention compared with 74% for competitive bio-based technology. These results indicate differentiated durability and long-term gloss retention. Now, let's go back to Dago to discuss how this performance translates into market potential.
The commercialization pathway includes prototype development, beta testing, product scale-up, regulatory compliance, and launch preparation. These activities are being advanced in collaboration with leading global battery manufacturers and industrial coding partners as we move towards commercialization. That collaboration is also building strong market validation. The program has generated positive feedback from leading global customers and continues to expand into a broader portfolio of high-performance products. A preparation for global launch activities is underway to support customers across Asia, Europe, and North America. Together, Ashland TVO TiO2 Spacer and TVO Radiation Cure demonstrate the broader potential of the TVO platform. What you've heard today demonstrates that TVO is more than a single product. It is a scalable technology platform designed to create value across multiple applications.
TVO TiO2 Spacer helps paint manufacturers maintain hiding with less TiO2, while TVO Radiation Cure combines processing efficiency with the durability required for demanding battery and industrial coding applications. Together, these innovations show how Ashland is extending one differentiated platform to solve distinct customer challenges with additional opportunities across our portfolio. We are seeing the same momentum across our other technologies platforms in Specialty Additives. Let me just give you a few examples. We have commercialized five grades of super wetting agents. We launch a pH neutralizer using novel chemistry, and our liquid cellulose platform is advancing all paint manufacturing with the potential to significantly reduce raw material handling costs. By bringing together differentiated technologies, application expertise, and close collaboration with customers, Ashland is commercializing new-to-the-world solutions that help our customers compete more effectively and support our own sustainability growth.
With that, I am going to turn it over to William, our Chief Financial Officer, to give us a perspective on our growth potential and expansion opportunities. William, over to you.
Thank you, Dago, and good morning, everyone. Before we get into the financial details, I want to pause for a second and recognize what we just saw. These are big problems, but also big opportunities. Clearly a lot of momentum underway, but it is not just the technology, it is the team behind the technology as well. I hope what you saw from the divisions, excitement, confidence, momentum. I am very proud to be a part of this team, and I am going to spend the next 10 minutes translating what that means in terms of our financial potential and all that great technology you heard this morning. Some of the key questions that we need to ask ourselves, how much growth, and what it will take to get there. First, let us ground the discussion in our overall financial targets. Guillermo spoke at opening on our strategic priorities, execute, globalize, innovate, and invest.
I think of them as four distinct strategic pillars that drive different outcomes for our long-term financial targets. Execute, grow the base business at market rates, drive productivity, ensure that our core technologies are competitive, improve margins via productivity and network optimization. The globalize and innovate, they are part of our financial targets is driving outperformance first market. Globalize, investing in the four business segments. By the way, above-market growth, strong growth rates, and it is accretive to Ashland’s overall margins. Innovate is why we are here today. We do have core innovation, of course. Platform innovation is where I will spend my time in the coming slides. Then invest. We want to make sure that that growth is high-quality growth and we convert it to profitability and free cash flow. Overall, the framework is simple.
200-300 basis points of performance above market, Adjusted EBITDA greater than 25%, and convert that EBITDA at a greater than a 50% free cash flow conversion. What is the roadmap? How do we get there? I am going to step you through first, how big the market size is, and then ultimately how much and how quickly, right? That is the growth potential behind that market opportunity. Then which way? There are several scenarios that we will talk you through to better understand the potential path forward. Then lastly, at what cost? First, I would like to get us started with the market opportunity. This is the third time that we have sized the new technology platform market opportunity. 2023, $7 billion. We had five platforms launched. We updated that last year, 2025 Innovation Day. Seven platforms launched, $8 billion.
In 2026, as Guillermo Novo mentioned in his opening remarks, we wanted to do something different. We are very confident in how we have assessed the market, the value proposition, and the sizing, but let us challenge ourselves. Let us have an independent assessment. As a part of the refresh this year, we had an outside-in perspective. What did that mean? Experts in our space understand the material sector. We connected with several blinded research studies, took over 150 expert inputs, independently validated the market size as well as the value capture over time, and that is what you are seeing on the page. That is the $9 billion opportunity in 2026. How do we think about the mix of that opportunity? It is balanced across the portfolio. The biggest is Specialty Additives at $4 billion, Personal Care second at $3 billion, Life Sciences third at $2 billion.
Not only are they sizable market opportunities, the growth rates are very attractive. Many of these markets growing 4%, 5%, 6% over time, so it compounds. What are some of the key inputs that we found from the research? First, we are solving important unmet customer needs. Many of the things that we are solving for, the big problems for our customers, these are must-haves, not nice-to-haves. Of course, the markets themselves, attractive and growing. One of the parts that was most encouraging for us, the upside case also validated. We will walk you through the scenarios on how we get there, but we came away from the independent research noting that there was upside to our base case and our upside. Lastly, you heard this from the talk with Osama Musa and Guillermo Novo earlier, these are additives. They are scalable, they are tunable.
The more we learn, there is more white space behind all of this. As a part of that independent work, also over $1 billion of white space opportunities that we have not talked about yet, so it is a really exciting time. The market is real, so now the question is: how much of that opportunity can we capture? What we wanted to do is highlight the ambition. The ambition is this is a transformational opportunity for a company of our size. Very big markets, and we have strong value propositions. What does that mean, William ? 200-300 basis points of incremental growth over and above market. That is the ambition. Part of how we wanted to lay this out is the chart on the page.
What you can see is, as you move across, this is a time horizon, then the incremental growth delivered from our new technology platform portfolio. The area that we have highlighted in the middle is the 200-300 basis points. That is the ambition. On top of that, we have mapped the scenarios. That is how we think about it. If something is novel, new, you can take many shapes, sizes, adoption curves. What we have done in the last year is we have worked the leadership teams, segmented the market, segmented the customers, better assess the value proposition to that customer set, and have identified various adoption curves. That is the low case, the base case, and the high case. Before I walk you through that, I want to start with where we are.
So where we are today, you heard on our Q3 earnings call, greater than $20 million of innovation contribution this year. The other piece that we have said, too, is that most of that is coming from core innovation, which is a really key piece of the overall growth algorithm, particularly in the near term. But the platforms are contributing, and it is moving, and you heard a lot of that momentum today. As we move ahead, market entry, two to three years, several things that the teams talked about today are launching. We believe that can be anywhere from 40 basis points to 110 basis points additive over the next two to three years. Then you say, "William, you are targeting 200- 300 basis points." Good news is we have the core innovation. We also have the globalized parts of our strategy that are contributing now.
Over time, the opportunity, of course, gets bigger, right? Part of how we talk about this is customer wins over time compound. Reformulation cycles are a key part of the compounding growth over time. By the way, there is step change potential with large customers. You heard many of them today from the divisions. As you look five to seven years out, we believe that this can add 250 basis points to our overall growth outlook, right in the middle of the growth corridor. Then as you go longer term, all three of our cases are within that ambition. Just to keep it simple, we talked about a $9 billion opportunity. That is in today's dollars. 10%-20% of that share at maturity, $900 million- $1.8 billion of sales. Keep in mind, we are just shy of $1.9 billion. Clearly a very transformational opportunity.
I think the key thing for us around this is that it is several opportunities, right? It is not one particular project, one particular platform. It is a portfolio. That is how we think about it. Now what I would like to do is double-click on that middle part, the growth ambition corridor, the 200 - 300 basis points. What are the ways that we can get to that? But first, what does that mean in dollar terms? Five years out, 200- 300 basis points, that means $200 million- $300 million of incremental sales for the company. You take that a step further, go 10 years out, $400 million- $600 million in incremental revenue. Okay. What are the paths to get to that $200 million- $300 million over five years? The first one, pathway one, we have developed base cases for all of the technologies you heard today.
Again, validated some of those adoption curves. If all those deliver the base case risk-adjusted, you end up with that 250 basis points that we just talked about. I think something that is probably more likely is when you have something new, you are going to have breakout success. That is pathway two. What do I mean by that? You heard several opportunities today that have very large potential to TiO2 spacer, silicone replacement, bioprocessing, injectables. If any of those hit their upside case, you need one, two, three of those to hit, and the remaining 37, we are indifferent. We are still within that 200- 300. Of course, we would like the upside, and we are working towards that upside. But to deliver the growth corridor, two to three of the high-impact projects can get you there if you deliver the upside. Then maybe a more cautiously optimistic scenario is sustained adoption.
Maybe you find targeted customers, niche applications that are important but not as scalable. These are sizable. They are fast market growth rates. You compound that over 10 years is how you get to the 200 basis points even 10 years out. The last piece is the white space. It is the least tangible today, but it is also something we know from experience. The more we experiment, the more we learn, the more opportunity there is on new applications of existing technology on the platform. That is the really exciting part, is that there are multiple ways to get there to achieve our growth ambition. The question is not whether one project wins, it is whether the portfolio performs. Now what will it take? The answer is, it is less capital than expected. We have been very focused on this for a number of years.
Osama and the team have done excellent work. 52 patents. We have demonstrated the scalability of the technology across multiple end markets. You heard the momentum today. We have a significant head start in terms of proving out the technical capability of the offering. We have got to make it. On the manufacturing side, we do have existing capacity. You even heard the example today that there are some times we are partnering too with Manildra, the tolling relationship on the starch. All of this is important because it de-risks the investment risk associated with scaling novel technology. The important piece too, as I think about the invest corridor for us, all of this will fit within our free cash flow framework, greater than 50% of EBITDA going forward. The last piece is the channels to market.
If you think about the themes you heard today, a lot of them sit within the big three: pharma, Personal Care, coatings. These are areas that we have market leadership that provides access to customers, and speed to market. How do I think about, and as a leadership team and a company, how do we think about adding additional resources or capabilities or capital to each of these? It is a really important question. How do we decide to spend more? What I will tell you is it is very disciplined. As I think about a novel technology, what it is, it is a series of questions, and it is a series of questions with price tags. Those price tags are milestones. We try to answer one question at a time. Does it work? Will customers test it? Will they qualify it? Can we manufacture it?
Can we manufacture it a lot? Can we sell it once? Can we sell it multiple times? All of these are different milestones that determine how we are thinking about dialing up or dialing down resources to capture that value over time. The important piece that I want you to take away is that investment follows traction, but the company is very healthy, and as we find opportunities, we will invest to capture that growth. To close, five simple takeaways. It is a validated $9 billion market opportunity, growing very strong. Our growth ambition is 200- 300 basis points above market. There is significant value creation over and above that ambition. There are multiple pathways to get there. We are not betting on one of the things you heard today. There are 40, and it is growing. Investment will follow validation and demand.
We are able to do that in a very efficient way by leveraging existing infrastructure, both on the assets, technology, and people. Overall, I will leave you with, this is a very transformational opportunity for Ashland, for our stakeholders, and myself and my colleagues, and our stakeholders, we are energized by the opportunity. With that, Guillermo, I hand it over to you.
Thank you. Thank you, William, and thank you everybody for joining us today. Just a few closing comments to remind you of some of the key messages that we want you to have. First and foremost, I hope you saw how exciting the progress, we have made significant progress across all of the technologies, but most importantly, the potential that these platforms have. As William said, we are not betting on one horse. We have a portfolio approach in how we manage it, and that improves our probabilities of success with many paths to get to the growth area. As we look at Ashland, our industry is going through a lot of change right now. Our industry will have to change significantly, as will many companies. The good news for us, we have been working on this for the last few years, and most of our transformation is done.
We have refocused our portfolio. We have streamlined our manufacturing. We are still working on some areas in driving the productivity in our plants, but they are well seen and worked. We have worked on the longer-term drivers for growth. The whole approach is about strengthening our core business to play in this more challenging environment for our industry, but also to build growth catalysts that can change us as we move forward. So we have a high-quality portfolio of businesses and products that are highly differentiated. We have built out commercial capabilities across our portfolio. We have innovated, not just the speed of the innovation, but the magnitude, the potential impact of innovation, both in the new technologies, but now bringing a lot of these things back into the core, I think, is going to generate a lot of opportunities for us. Speed has been a big issue for us in driving the innovation.
Asset competitiveness, as I said, very important, and disciplined capital allocation. Let's not get excited and throw money at everything. We want to make sure that we are hitting the right milestones as we drive our performance. Our strategy is relevant for these times. Execute is on the front side of it. The health of our core businesses. Our globalize and innovate, it's about creating company-specific growth catalysts that can enable us to grow above market. Right now, the markets are very challenged in terms of overall growth, so this is going to be very important for us and to get that incremental growth. Again, discipline around how we invest. Our investments are really driving up productivity, driving organic growth, and those bolt-on opportunities to extend our businesses into new directions. The good news, first, the big message is we are done with our transformation part.
100% of our attention now is focusing on driving our strategy for growth, profitable growth as we move forward. Central to our strategy is differentiation. This is a hyper-competitive market today. So whatever we do, we want to make sure that we're driving that differentiation into the portfolio. How do you get that? We are looking at multiple dimensions, and I hope you see that the things that we've done address a lot of these areas. One, we focused on higher quality markets where know-how and customer intimacy is valued, so that we can differentiate. Customers trust us. They share their plans early on. We're working intimately with them, and that's a big differentiator. Getting a seat at the table with them to develop new things is very important. We've developed a lot of proprietary technologies in this world of AI, speed, everybody moving.
Owning more real estate in the key areas that we want is absolutely critical, and this is one of the reasons why we have been investing so much in innovation, developing it, not just the commercialization, but making sure that we're getting the base innovation, the toolbox, filling the toolbox, so over the coming year and decade, we have a rich portfolio to drive our agenda for growth and profitability. We are in regulated markets in part of the portfolio and difficult markets to enter. The qualifications are very long. That can be a pain as you look for growth, but it's something we love once you're in. It brings a lot of stability. It's a big differentiator. A lot of our portfolios have those characteristics. O bviously, the manufacturing and supply chain very critical, both on the competitiveness, but really it is a differentiator for us.
Reliability of supply, having a balanced network of plants across a world that is changing in terms of the regionalization, and the cost positions around the world that we can leverage for our reliability of supply with our customers. Lastly, scale. Scale for growth, but also relevant scale for the markets that we're in, that we can drive and build our competitive advantage in what we do. We are one of the largest players in what we do. Bigger companies can be in a lot of other more commodity markets, other areas. We're in a very specialized space, and we are one of the largest. So that differentiation is core to building the future of our company. As I said, one of the biggest drivers for differentiation is innovation.
That's probably one of the strongest areas where we can differentiate and sustain that differentiation for a long period of time. We're very excited. You've seen the platforms. I think most of them are addressing the big value proposition that we want, superior performance, scalability to bring cost to be competitive, a strong sustainability profile, not just for us, but helping our customers achieve their goals, and that it's a good strategic fit for our customers and for us. A real opportunity for us to collaborate together. We're in advanced stages right now. A few years ago, we were talking about potential. Now we're talking about commercialization. I know everybody wants us to move faster and get everything tomorrow. These things take time. The reality of it, I've been through this in other companies that have done it a long time ago.
But it is an essential part of the process. We are in a different place today than where we were when we first started talking to you. So commercialization is the highest focus for us, but we will continue to invest in innovation because that is going to be the source of growth, not for a year, not for two years, but for the next decade. That is really where we want to go. So we are focusing both on core and new technologies. We want to broaden the base. There is an opportunity takes a lot of these new innovations, and as you saw with cellulose, all these things, we can rejuvenate a lot of the old technologies that everybody is now fighting for and commoditizing. We have an opportunity to come in and bring differentiation, new properties, new capabilities to the new, but also to the old.
There are multiple paths, as William said. We have algorithms and growth, and you are going to have some questions, but the reality is there are multiple paths. Having lived through this with other technologies, some are going to outperform what we expect, others are going to be underperforming. Having a portfolio is what is important for us. We do not want to manage or invest in a project. We want to invest in a portfolio project that we feel can give us the returns, the growth that we can. Some will grow faster and surprise us. Some will grow slower. But over a decade that we can start getting that momentum. Our algorithm is getting 200-300 basis points of growth over market, getting our profitability up over 25% EBITDA margins and free cash flow of over 50%. As also William said, we are very diligent in our capital allocation.
Fortunately, we do not need to make huge investments in manufacturing at this time. We have plenty of resources and capabilities today to launch to get the early stages of commercialization and manufacturing of these products. This is important because the financial risk, and many of us has been at If you have to build a plant before the technology goes, it is higher risk. We do not have to do that. When we need to make the investments, things start taking off, the technology will be proven, the commercialization risk will be lower, and at that time, we will make the investments, and we have the capability for what we are doing in additives and ingredients. We have the capabilities to do those investments. And we will invest aligned with progress. We hit milestones. TVO for TiO2-free is a great example. We believed in the technology.
Many of us have seen it already before. We took a different approach. We invested because we believed in the technology resources to develop. Now it is developed, we have all the IP, we see the performance. We are taking to customers. As we get more validation from customers, we are going to add more resources to then not just develop products, but take all these initiatives at a regional level. So pace our investments align with the progress that we make. So this is an exciting future for us. As William said, I want to recognize the entire team, not just the people that you saw here today in these presentations, but everybody behind them. Not just in R&D, in commercial, but in manufacturing, in our administrative. There is a lot of people. Innovation has infected us in all aspects. People talk about it, like safety.
Innovation for us is a core part of our DNA, and I thank all of you for your dedication, for all the energy you are putting, and for where you are taking this company to the future. Thank you very much, and let us turn it over to Q&A, and I will ask Osama and William to join me.
Guillermo, Osama, and William, your first question is from John Roberts, Mizuho Securities. At what point would capital spending for new products become material? Is there a revenue threshold or a timeframe where CapEx would need to increase meaningfully to support growth?
Well, a few comments, and William, you can also chime in. As I said just now, we do not need a lot of immediate capital. A lot of the infrastructure, with all the actions we took to get out of businesses, we have had idle capacity, and what we have done is repurpose it to more profitable uses, in terms of our portfolio. The Super Wetter, all the things that we have launched, we have used existing capacity. There are certain ones, you saw the starch, we have used tollers. We have the capacity to make it, but the capacity is too big for this stage. We go outside. Can we get economy of scale? Yes. When we get the volume, we can bring it in-house. We have cellulosic units that are empty that we can repurpose for a lot of these things.
Equally, I would say, over time, if the bagasse initiative goes and we can reinvigorate, there is opportunity to reopen a lot of these things, but not with commodity products, but differentiated products that we can bring in. Capital is something that is important. I would say the biggest need that we have in the future, let us say as things develop, is global. Our footprint is around a lot of our bigger plants and units. Some of these technologies, you look at TVO, and a few of them, it would be good if we can regionalize them, make more of them in different parts of the world. And that is where we are probably going to look either invest in building ourselves like we did with Globalize, or we can buy. This is a time our industry is not doing well. There are a lot of assets that we can look at regionalizing.
These growth curves, and you might want to comment on this, William, is based on our ability to ramp. If we buy assets, we can accelerate some of these things. The big message for me, and today we talk it's $7 billion, it's $8 billion, $9 billion. That's all nice. That's not what I'm looking at. This is big. Big is big enough. I'd rather see how can I accelerate going from 250- 300, to 300- 400. I don't need it to get bigger. There's plenty of opportunity. So our issue is, as we accelerate, if a customer likes the product and we make it and they say, "I need it in Country X," how quickly can I scale in those countries? That is how we're going to accelerate the growth. I don't know if you have any other
No, Guillermo, I think that was a really good overview. Maybe just a couple of specifics to ground some of my commentary on the greater than 50% free cash flow and how this fits within that framework. I think that's a really key piece. Obviously, Ashland has been on a journey around the network optimization. What that's allowed us to do is the maintenance CapEx over time has also gotten smaller. We're no longer investing in these areas that we needed, that we're able to optimize. So what that does, that allows more capacity for growth. As I think about the plant network today, probably $50 million- $65 million in terms of maintenance capital per year. As you think about greater than 50% free cash flow, that allows opportunity for growth investments.
What I would say on the core technology today, of course there's some growth investments we're contemplating, but there's also going to be plenty of capacity for what we're talking about here. I would say, as you start to reach the inflection points on the, we had the three buckets of time, that mid bucket is where we're going to have to start to really think about some of the continuous production, particularly on some of the higher volume applications. But again, we're thinking that would fit within the context of what I described at the greater than 50% free cash flow.
Your next question comes from the chat and the webcast. As bagasse has significantly lower cellulose content than wood pulp, is it a viable starting material for cellulosic ethers production?
It's a very good question, and I'm going to let Osama, but I'm going to control him because I can't talk too much about all the new. This is new. The first time we're talking about this. Obviously, this is our core business, cellulosic. A big opportunity for us. It's on earlier stages, but we're very excited, both from a cost and from the technical performance that we can bring to many of our markets and the fact that we probably don't need a lot of assets to do this. A lot of people have looked at this, and that question is relevant to what a lot of people have done. That's the magic of innovation, that's the magic of IP and all these things. Our friend here and his team have taken a different approach, and that's really what is driving the difference.
One comment I would say in the yield. Bagasse is actually 75% cheaper than wood and pulp. We say 50% because we need to do some things to transform it in use for us. So there's some costs that we add to it, and that's why we've already brought down some of these things. The yield question I can't comment on because that's part of what we do differently. It is part of why we're excited about it because they've taken a different approach. I don't know if you'd say anything else.
Yeah. Thanks, Guillermo. Summarizes very well. What I think is that's the reason we filed four patents related to this technology. We have very differentiated with a lot of people thought about it for a long time, how to extract cellulose from bagasse. For us, the way we are differentiating ourself is a new to the world way. So we are making a building block, and this building block is where the differentiator is. Building block that can, by modifying it, giving you the efficiency that you need. So the point I'm making here, we don't need a full cellulose. That's where we are. Everyone is thinking about the cellulose itself. Hopefully, in two years from now, you will see the patent that we are publishing and we are writing. This is going to be a breakthrough. That's what Ashland is doing.
Nobody else in the world doing what we are doing. That is the excitement.
Good.
Your next question comes from Josh Spector from UBS Securities. At a high level for all targets here, what is really incremental or what will cannibalize some of the existing business?
This is exciting. What we're presenting here, it's mostly incremental. If you look at the new technology platforms, by the way, bagasse is not even in these numbers. This is new. This is a whole thing that in the next update we will provide. But most of these other things, TVO opens up, you see all these examples were not in many of these applications, the starch, all these are mostly growth. It could cannibalize here or there something. I would say probably, and maybe in certain applications in Personal Care, you could replace some of our synthetic polymers. But at the same time, we're augmenting a lot of these polymers with the new technology. We might be able to gain share with these products that are combinations and new technologies that we're developing.
Technically speaking, it's very hard, but the great majority is really upside, new markets, new opportunities, and that's why we believe that the transformation important. And that's why for our growth, protecting the core, making sure that cost and that we're able to differentiate the core is also important, but also that these new opportunities can allow us to shift our portfolio to new technologies, more differentiation, more IP.
Thank you, Guillermo. The next question comes from Chris Parkinson from Wolfe. How are you assessing market opportunity across pharma? Are you looking at OSD and injectables separately or together? How are you assessing growth rate by geography given GLP-1 penetration in the U.S., ongoing expansion in Asia, and growth of generics in India?
We play in all of them. Let me first start the broader and then in specific areas. Life Sciences is no different than the other markets in the sense that each application has its value proposition. You have to deliver performance. The issues in OSD are very different than injectables or in bioprocessing. Each one of these have to have targeted value proposition, be it technology, purity, whatever is relevant and valuable for each of those customers. That is one. Two, we look at it through our customer. Each customer, if they are global, they might be playing in different ways in different part of the regions. Our role is to be their partner. Maybe we enter in one region when they do, and until they decide to go into another region with that value proposition, then we go with them. But we are with everybody.
Frankly, the propositions for the big pharma versus the generic versus the over the counter is very different. Some of them all want technology, new things to enable new drugs, new delivery. Others want productivity and how do we make it faster, cheaper. You have from the OTC to the big pharma, the generics are in the middle. They do a little bit of both. It is different value propositions, and that is why having a portfolio of different things that we are doing. Tablet coatings is going to have a value proposition. It does go in the same tablet that maybe the permexa or some of the new PVPs or the PVPs that they are using in some of the oral-
Biologics
biologics. But each one of them, we look at them very different, and they each have to stand on their own. But the power is if we can bring them all together as a solution for our customers, that is where we get the differentiation.
Thank you for that. Your next question also comes from the chat in the webcast. What aspect of Ashland's innovation portfolio do you believe investors are most underappreciating today?
Well, I think, I hope what we are trying to show is more and more of the scalability. I think it is harder to communicate some of these newer areas. Most of our investors, there is a lot of different markets and all that, so nobody is an expert in every market. Painting that bigger picture of the portfolio, the opportunities, what are the different paths? There is not one path. We can put an algorithm that says whatever. The issue that we are looking is pressure testing. I am looking more at scenarios. What scenarios can happen that can get us to where we want to be? Hey, these things, three failed, but these two things hit it as strongly as William was saying, we are going to pass.
Our issue is investing on the things based on the information we have, and then trying to make sure that we have more scenarios that can drive us in that opportunity. That part of the communication, everybody, I think the feedback I am getting, very excited, but again, the proof is in the pudding. Until you see the commercialization, that is the question. It is cool, it is interesting, but I want to see the sales. I think that is a story that we are going to repeat. That is why we are doing these events of showing the progress. This is a long journey. The world is changing. We need to show our strategy, what we are doing, the progress, not just when we are getting the sales, but when we are doing. I will remind, when we started the globalize and innovate discussions, we were not growing those businesses that much.
It has been two years, and I think we put the investment. We have done everything that we said we were going to do, independent of COVID, to all these difficult times. We have achieved these things. Right now that we have finished this transformation, we are in a great position of the investments in globalize are there. The productivity, we have some issues that we are dealing with, but the fundamentals are there and we know what we need to do, and over the coming year, we will get all those things accomplished. This is the big thing. We have a big opportunity with more things coming. How do we pace ourselves to really drive that growth?
Your next question comes from John McNulty from BMO. Since the appointment of the two new directors, have there been any meaningful changes in strategic priorities, capital allocation, or personal initiatives?
So one of the areas is what we are talking about, innovation. A lot of discussions with the board, the new directors, it is where are we going, how are we investing, what are these opportunities. Interesting, the two directs have both experience with what we do. One was a CFO of Hercules, so understands a lot of what we are doing in cellulosics. So we talk about cellulosics, he gets it, gives great feedback to us, what was done, what was not done, and there is a lot of excitement there. The same thing, the other one actually worked for GAF and ISP in the past, understands our chemistry, sold our chemistries before. So very relevant. They have actually been very helpful. I think they are very excited about what they are seeing, as are our other directors. Our issue now is it has been a difficult transformation.
When you make these changes, there are a lot of things, and if you make these changes in this environment, it has been very difficult. But the progress that we made on the building blocks on which we are going to build the future of the company is there. I think they are seeing it. There is a lot of excitement. The question we are getting is, what can you do to accelerate. What investments do you need. So some of the same questions that our investors are asking, it is now, "Hey, if these things are working, what are you going to do different." And what are the investments and which are the projects that we want to make sure that we are driving more.
Thank you for that. Given the timing, we are going to go to one final question, and then I will ask you to please wrap up. We have covered a lot of ground today. If investors look back on today's discussion a year from now, what should provide them with the greatest confidence in Ashland's ability to translate its innovations portfolio into long-term growth and value creation.
I think the confidence, obviously everybody, the ultimate test is getting the sales, obviously doing. But I hope you have seen, we have shown a lot of transparency on everything that we have been doing over the years. We said we are going to restructure or change the portfolio. We did that. Changed our network. We did that. Globalize and invest, and we are showing the results. Good or bad, they are very visible. So our intent right now is to show, hey, what is the real traction. What are we doing. What is the progress. I hope you are seeing that here, is we are making significant progress. The customer engagement is very, very good. Talk to our customers, talk to the industry. I think there are other voices that you can do. Our issue right now, our excitement is we have different businesses, we have dedicated teams. We are not just betting on one thing.
Let them drive. At the center, we're trying to feed more innovation, more capabilities, but let them really drive it. The focus now is on execution of our strategy. Globalize and innovate. Commercialize, commercialize. The next two years, that is our priority. So launching products to broad markets, very important. These projects with our key customers that are more tailored, that are more customer specific development, advance them, partner with them. They have to win. We have to win. It's got to be mutual, and that's the big priority. No other distractions at this point in time. So with that, thank you very much for joining us. I'm sure we'll be encountering many of you over the coming weeks on our visits with the investment community, but I'm sure we'll have more questions.
Thank you for your interest in Ashland, for all the technology, and for the Ashland team, thank you for everything you're doing. So thank you.