Greetings, and welcome to the conference call, Celanese to acquire majority of DuPont's Mobility & Materials business. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Brandon Ayash, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.
Thank you, Daryl. Welcome to the Celanese Corporation conference call to discuss the agreement to acquire a majority of the Mobility & Materials business of DuPont. My name is Brandon Ayash, Vice President of Investor Relations. The press release announcing this acquisition was distributed via Business Wire earlier this morning and posted on our investor relations website, along with presentation slides and accompanying prepared remarks. These items were also included in an 8-K issued earlier this morning. As a reminder, some of the matters discussed today may include forward-looking statements. Also, some of the matters discussed include references to non-GAAP financial measures. Explanations of company non-GAAP measures, as well as reconciliations to the comparable historical company GAAP measures, are included on our Investor Relations website under Financial Information Non-GAAP Financial Measures. Please note the language regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures contained in the slides.
With me today on the call are Scott Richardson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Tom Kelly, Senior Vice President, Engineered Materials. With that, let me go ahead and turn it over to Scott for introductory comments.
Thanks, Brandon. Welcome to everyone listening today. Unfortunately, Lori is dealing with a personal issue that keeps her from joining us this morning. At Celanese, we constantly remind ourselves that our people come first, and that holds true even in big days like today. Lori's fine, and she'll be able to join us on any follow-up conversations about the acquisition next week. Since we put out extensive overview materials earlier this morning, including slides and prepared remarks, I will keep my comments brief. We are very pleased to announce the agreement to acquire a majority of the Mobility & Materials business of DuPont for $11 billion in cash. This business is a globally leading producer of engineered thermoplastics and elastomers, serving high value end markets we all know well, including automotive, electrical and electronics, industrial, and consumer.
The strategic fit of this acquisition with our Engineered Materials business is unique and unparalleled. With it, we will immediately double the strength of the Engineered Materials product portfolio in terms of leadership position, flagship industry brands, and backward integration. We will immediately enhance our ability to deliver customer solutions by combining the commercial excellence and project pipeline model of Engineered Materials with the product and technology leadership of the M&M business. Simply put, this acquisition will establish Engineered Materials as the preeminent specialty materials company. As a result of the complementary fit of these businesses, we expect to deliver approximately $450 million of synergies, nearly 3/4 of which will come as cost synergies. This will drive an effective multiple of about 8x EBITDA on a post-synergy basis.
A strong balance sheet as well as growing cash generation enable us to fully finance this acquisition with committed debt financing. We expect to swiftly deleverage the balance sheet to reduce total debt to below three times EBITDA within two years of closing the transaction. Achievement of synergies will drive growing free cash flow that we expect will double over the next five years. We are excited to welcome the Mobility & Materials team to Celanese. They have built a leading specialty materials business, and we are eager to work together to drive continued growth at Celanese. With that, I'll turn the call back to Brandon to start the Q&A.
Thanks, Scott. Daryl, please go ahead and open the line for questions.
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for your questions. Our first questions come from the line of Ghansham Panjabi with Baird. Please proceed with your questions.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Congrats on the deal.
Thanks, Ghansham.
Morning. Can you first off just give us some insight into how differentiated you know the chemistry of the platforms you're acquiring truly are and also frame R&D as a percentage of the sales base and how that's averaged you know historically?
Yeah, good question, Ghansham. This is Tom, by the way. In terms of the quality of the businesses, if you think about it, DuPont is far and away the leader in PA66 nylon in the Hytrel elastomer space. They've just got a fantastic portfolio of vertically integrated polymer families that link up really well with what we do. In terms of R&D % of sales, I'd say relatively comparable to where we are.
Okay, that's helpful. Then, you know, Scott, maybe on slide 15, where you had the 5% sales CAGR, you know, can you just give us a bit more color on that dynamic? How much of that is sort of driven by just technicality, some of the currently challenged end markets like auto OEM recover, and what are the other constituents that add up to the 5%?
Let me just kind of go back broadly speaking at the organizational kind of enterprise level, Ghansham. I mean, we've historically said Engineered Materials grows in the high single digits from a revenue standpoint. The Acetyls business has some more volatility to that, but more kind of historically low single digits, largely driven by price, at least over the last decade, as opposed to volume. We bring this business in to Engineered Materials. We expect that revenue growth again to be kind of more in that mid- to high-single-digit range overall. When we kind of blend that together, that 5% we think is kind of over time where we'll land on average, kind of with the blended portfolio.
You know, some years it's gonna be higher than that. We do expect we have that opportunity here over the next several years. Some years it may be a little bit lower, but we really do believe that 5%'s a sustainable growth level.
Okay. Thanks so much, and our best to Lori.
Thanks, Ghansham.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of John Roberts with UBS. Please proceed with your questions.
Thank you. Excluding Delrin makes the antitrust easier here. Are there other areas that might result in an adjustment after the antitrust review?
No, John, there's really nothing material at all with the portfolio that we're buying.
Okay. Was there an option to structure this as an RMT? It would seem to have been at least within the reasonable possibilities of structuring it that way.
I think, you know, given what the public comments had been from the target, I think a cash transaction was the preferred transaction and, you know, for us, we were happy with that as well.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Jeff Zekauskas with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your questions.
Thanks very much. What are the cash costs for the cost savings?
The cost of synergies, Jeff, is around $300 million, and we expect that largely to be weighted towards 2023 and 2024.
Are there any non-strategic assets that you think will have to be divested? Do you think you'll hold onto the whole thing? Are there any tax synergies?
Hi, Jeff. This is Tom. In terms of the assets that we're getting, we're really very excited about all the assets that are coming over. If you see one of the assets, the Tedlar films business, we worked with DuPont to exclude that because we just didn't see the strategic fit, but the other ones are all complementary. Do you wanna take the tax question?
Yeah. I think we'll work the tax angle, Jeff. I think, you know, we would expect, just with the fact that, you know, from the base Celanese business we have today, our JVs come in on an after-tax basis, so that does bring our tax rate down a bit. We would expect our overall tax rate to move up, a little bit because you don't have the benefit of the JVs as prevalent here, with this acquired asset. We will work on kind of what that optimized portfolio will look like over time.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Duffy Fischer with Barclays. Please proceed with your questions.
Yes, good morning. First question is just around when the deal closes, what would you anticipate the leverage to be day one? When you look at how you want to structure the debt, you know, what are your thoughts kind of fixed versus variable? You know, what will that look like once you get it set?
Yeah, Duffy. I think at day one, we expect to be just slightly above 4x. We will structure the debt in a way that is a combination of fixed and pre-payable. It is important that we have an element of pre-payable there early days as we generate cash flow. You know, as hopefully we're even more that we see the synergies come faster. If we do, de-levering is certainly the priority. Having that flexibility on pre-payable in the first several years is critical.
Okay. I believe that DuPont had some favorable contracts within INVISTA around nylon. Nylon has had some pretty wild pricing swings, PA66 . Is there a part of that $900 million this year that you would say is kind of overearning that is gonna normalize around that spread between the favorable contracts and, you know, where nylon's trading? Is that still long tenured for you going forward, or is that something that will roll off fairly shortly after you take these assets?
No, we don't see any favorability built into that $900 million, Duffy. Look, we've spent a lot of time, obviously, as you can imagine, you know, diligent in the position that DuPont has around the HMD supply, and feel very confident that we'll be able to manage any volatility that comes with that going forward.
Great. Thank you, guys.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners. Please proceed with your questions.
Yes, good morning. Scott, would you walk through the various sources of cost synergies that you envision? On slide 14, you quantify those as $275 million-$350 million, and there's a fair amount of detail there, but I think it would be helpful if you kind of walk through the plan and where you see low-hanging fruit and higher hanging fruit over time.
Yeah, Kevin, let me kind of break it down into four buckets. You know, we see about approximately 1/4 that will come from manufacturing utilization and scale of kind of that wider manufacturing network. The second is about 1/4 from backward integration into polymerization and other procurement synergies. Then about 1/4 for more productive customer engagement via kind of bringing the commercial and technical functions together. Then the last area is also about 1/4 , which is other efficiencies from really kind of bringing the broader fixed cost base together. That's kinda how we look at that breaking down, and it really does work out to be about 25% in each of those four buckets.
That's convenient. Then secondly, would you comment on D&A? A few facets, if you don't mind. You know, what is the D&A attached to the assets that you're buying? And do you have any preliminary view of step up and how you might treat that for reporting purposes as it relates to the deal-related amortization?
Yeah, I think let me take that second piece first. We are working on the structure of that step up. It really is just gonna be dependent on the various jurisdictions and how it comes in. More to come on that. With regards to the D&A, it's right around $250 million.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your questions.
Thank you and congratulations, everyone. Maybe just to start with, Scott, you know, one of your objectives is to increase their win rate with customers. Maybe you could talk a little bit about your own experience competing against them and what you think you're gonna be able to do better now that you own the assets. The other thing I found interesting in your slide deck, in those, in one of the charts, you indicated that you thought they had stronger brand equity than you did. Maybe you could just sort of help us understand how you're gonna capitalize on that.
Yeah, let me start with that second piece first, Vincent, and then I'll turn it over to Tom to talk a little bit more about win rate. You know, these are recognizable brands. Much like we talked about when we did the Santoprene acquisition, customers ask for the brand. They don't ask for the chemical name. They ask for the DuPont brand.
That, for us, we felt like even in the early days of having Santoprene in the portfolio, the power of that, when you take that brand equity and put that onto the way that we drive projects, and the deep customer relationships that we have, we think bringing that together with the legacy Celanese polymers, bringing that together with the Santoprene brand that we've acquired, we think really gives us a really good revenue synergy optimization opportunity.
No, I think you said it well, Scott. Look, in every transaction we've done so far, and we're already seeing this, happening with Santoprene, we've been able to add at least a percentage point of growth to the acquired businesses from really implementing that project pipeline model. 'Cause, look, it's really studying in a lot of detail where you're winning, where you're losing, digging into why, and then putting actions in place to improve those win rates. We're really confident about that, Vincent.
Okay, thank you. Just to follow up, is there any capital investment that you need to make? You know, where are they on capacity? You know, have the assets been constantly reinvested in, or is there gonna have to be some type of step up?
We don't see that as being overly material right now, Vincent. You know, we are going to do what we've been doing in our own assets, which is really looking at opportunities to get more efficient on using lines, a lot less changeovers, you know, putting single polymers on each line. That naturally gives us the ability to, you get more on-stream reliability time, you get more capacity out. You know, with the wider network now, of plants around the world, it gives us a really great opportunity to really take a step back and say, "How do we wanna optimize that network, broadly speaking?" I do think we're gonna have some productivity opportunity around really capacity across that broader network.
You know, one thing I do wanna also highlight, that we put in the materials is the Asia presence here of this business is really strong. That's an area that as we kinda overlay, you know, what our base business, we think that's a real opportunity to further optimize in that region of the world. You know, obviously, we historically went to market in Asia through our joint ventures. You know, with the Polyplastics divestiture a couple of years ago, the continued growth of our base business, this acquisition really accelerates our presence into Asia. The M&M business has really great customer relationships that we think we can leverage.
Okay. Sounds great. Congratulations again. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of P.J. Juvekar with Citi. Please proceed with your questions.
Yes. Hi, good morning, Scott.
Hey, P.J.
You know, I'm trying to understand how do you ring-fence the PFAS liability 100%, and what steps have you taken so that nothing comes back to you at some given point in time in the future?
Look, I think, as we put in the materials, P.J., we have a broad uncapped indemnity from DuPont for the historical PFAS liability, and that was part of the negotiation from day one. This has been a clean deal, and we feel strongly about, you know, where we landed there.
Okay. My second question is, are there any revenue synergies? Because you have nylon, they have nylon. Is there anything that you can do there? Related to that, you know, DuPont, if you think about it, has been busy forming DowDuPont and the split. They had other divestitures that happened. You know, now you'll be focused on this particular asset. You think you can grow this business faster than what DuPont did?
Hi, P.J., it's Tom. Absolutely. If you look at the back, we kind of break out where the revenue synergies are coming from. About roughly 1% of the revenue synergies in terms of top line growth are coming from implementation of our project pipeline model, which has been proven over time to be successful in providing top line growth. The other 1% is gonna come from commercial excellence. We talked about how we have the ability to move through pricing in our end markets and make sure we get value for the products that we sell. We think that's another 1% of top line growth. Then there's another remaining bucket around what I would just describe as cross-selling synergies.
What we really feel strongly about is they've got a very strong commercial sales force with application development personnel that are very capable. We've got a great commercial customer-facing team. You put those two together, and we'll get even faster growth. Overall, we do see pretty significant revenue synergies certainly coming in the next two to three years.
Yeah, P.J., as we break down revenue synergies in any deal, we kind of look at it as access. You know, access to different customers, access to different polymers or different geographies. You know, this asset is very complementary to what we've done. We know the asset very well. You know, we've seen them in the marketplace for a long time. That complementary nature, we do believe, presents an opportunity when you bring these together to really lift that growth profile.
Great. Well, thank you for the color.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your questions.
Thank you, and congrats on the deal, Scott and Tom. Scott, in the prepared comments, you referenced $4 billion of value creation. How do you calculate that number?
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different ways to get at that. You know, David, I mean, a simple way is to kind of take that synergy number that we put out there and then put a simple multiple on that. You know, hopefully, the multiple would expand, but put, you know, a 10 x on it and you get that $4 billion. You know, if you look at the value creation potential and kind of DCF that back, that's another way, and it all kind of ends up in that $4 billion-$4.5 billion range.
Great. Just wanna make sure about that. Should we assume on buybacks, Scott, that all buybacks are suspended until further notice going forward, especially this year?
Yeah, David, the focus is really gonna be around reducing the debt here over the next several years. You know, the one thing I will say, we had said 2022, a greater than $15 a share. We still believe that will be greater than $15 a share even without repurchases baked in.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Bob Koort with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your questions.
Thanks. Good morning, gentlemen. You gave us a margin and sales forecast for this year for the acquired business. I think it's 24% margins. Can you talk about the history and volatility of that margin pattern and then what you see out over the next couple of years as auto builds come back?
Yeah. I'll just talk about the going forward, Bob. Certainly, we see the leverage that you're gonna get from recovering auto builds, it being a real driver in moving that EBITDA margin level up, just as you see in our base business. We think it's, although it's 23% in 2022, that's our projections, we would see that moving closer to the top end of, you know, 25%-30%.
Yeah. Volatility is something, Bob, we've looked at too at the overall enterprise level, bringing this into the portfolio. A larger Engineered Materials business within, you know, all of Celanese does enhance kind of the predictability and consistency of the annual earnings growth. When we model that going backward, you know, it does kind of help mute some of that volatility we've historically had, largely driven by the Acetyls business. You know, there are natural hedges that exist in the portfolios, you know, Acetyls versus Engineered Materials, and now with the M&M business included in that, you know, from everything from currency to raw materials. And that also kind of reduces that overall volatility.
Now making Engineered Materials, you know, greater than 50% of the overall enterprise, we think adds a level of scale that will over time reduce that volatility that's historically been in our earnings.
You know, you guys have done a remarkable job on the project model and being nimble, being very deliberate and you know, quick to act on new opportunities, whether, you know, to push them out or to develop them.
I guess I was under the impression DuPont had quite the same strategy here, and maybe some of their products were higher volume. How do you marry the two models, your sort of quicker, nimbler cross-selling versus what theirs may have been more of a traditional long run, higher volume model?
Yeah. Look, I think there's opportunities to bring in a little bit of both into the commercial models going forward. Look, I think there's elements of what DuPont is doing, Bob, around focusing deeply with strategic customers. That's great, and we don't wanna lose that. We think there's a lot we can apply more broadly, taking their portfolio and implementing the project pipeline model. We're gonna find opportunities there to create a lot more value and growth in the future.
Yeah. Bob, I think specifically around taking these products into the non-auto segments, we've seen this already with Santoprene, very similar type of discussion, and we think that is an area, an important area of revenue synergies going forward.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Frank Mitsch with Fermium Research. Please proceed with your questions.
Yes. Good morning. My first question is, DuPont is reporting the businesses having the portion of M&M that they are selling as having $800 million in EBITDA in 2021. You're saying that the business will generate $900 million of EBITDA in 2022. I understand that these are round numbers, but you could talk about maybe how that would calculate to double-digit growth in EBITDA in 2022. How do you get there?
Yeah. I mean, I think at a high level, Frank, just given what we saw from a raw material compression perspective during 2021, it muted margins a bit. You know, we were seeing from the forecast, the volumetric growth baked in, similar to kind of what we're seeing in our base business. And then just as you know, we see recovery largely in segments like automotive, that volume is coming back. And so I think where we also saw margin compression in 2021, you know, pricing is moving up here in 2022, so you kind of get not just volume growth, but you get some margin expansion on a year-over-year basis.
The only thing I would add to that is they were facing some of the similar supply constraints that we were dealing with around raw materials, also logistics. A lot of that we see abating during the course of the year.
Gotcha. That's very helpful. Obviously, you know, Celanese has done several Engineered Materials deals in the past. I'm just curious if you could go back and look at the deals that you've already done. What are the sort of synergies that you've been able to realize, typically, you know, as a percent of sales or percent of EBITDA, you know, over years one, two, and three, on your EM deals in the past?
Yeah. Each deal's really been different, Frank. I mean, the nice thing about this is the scale element does, you know, present some different types of opportunities. You know, some of the more smaller one site only compounders that we bought a few years ago just had a bit of a different profile. But, you know, the four buckets of synergies that I outlined earlier, that is really the playbook. In some of those, you know, we were higher weighted towards manufacturing optimization. This one is really a balance of all four of those elements.
That's very helpful. Thanks, and congrats.
Thanks, Frank.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of John McNulty with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your questions.
Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. When you look at the customer overlap of the two businesses or the customer relations of the two businesses, I guess how much is overlapped and how much, if you can kind of put it in a percent, like how much new exposure does DuPont bring you?
Yeah. It's in terms of a percentage basis, it's probably a little bit challenging to calculate that. Look, just let's give a couple of examples, right? In medical, where we have a really strong channel to market and have been in that industry, in that market for many years, DuPont hasn't really been playing very much, right? That's wide open space for us. If you look at the E&E space, what's interesting is, we were about the same size in electrical and electronics as DuPont on a revenue basis. Look at the opportunity there. If you think about the scale of us taking the DuPont portfolio more broadly into our E&E customers, there's a lot of opportunity there. We see a lot of opportunity. To quantify, it's difficult, but we're pretty excited about it.
Got it. Fair enough. Can you just help us to think about the CapEx required for the business going forward, or for the business that you're acquiring?
It's, you know, how we've kind of looked at it historically, John, is, you know, let's kind of use a round number, in, you know, call it $500 million of CapEx in our base business. You know, we've said that kind of splits out about 50/50, or so, between the two businesses. I mean, you've got some corporate stuff in there. You know, we would see this business probably on an annualized basis. You know, if you were at $500 million, it's probably gonna be about 20% of that, probably a little bit less. You know, and I think what we will see happen is, as we get the business into the overall portfolio, there will be opportunities really to consolidate, you know, what we're doing in EM here.
We'll look at, you know, what does that timeline of capital need to look like, depending on, you know, what we can get from rev gen opportunities from synergies.
Got it. Thanks very much for the color. Congratulations, guys.
Thank you.
Thanks, John.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Arun Viswanathan with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your questions.
Hey, Arun. Would you be able to check if you're unmuted?
Apologies for that. Thanks for taking my question. So my first question, I guess, is just getting back to some of the pressures that you saw in 2021 or this business potentially saw. You noted, I guess, some extra special pressure from energy costs on the natural gas side as well as in Europe. Was that also, you know, a drag, I guess, for this acquired business and do you see that dissipating or what's the outlook for that?
Yeah, there's a little bit of that there in Europe. We're a little heavier weighted towards energy consumption in our portfolio in Europe than what they are. I mean, as we said about, you know, call it around a half of their sales are in Asia. That's where, from our standpoint, you know, the portfolios are really complementary. We're a little heavier in Europe than they are, and so we had a little more exposure to that.
Okay, thanks for that. I guess my other question was a little bit longer term in nature. This business has really, you know, transformed through several acquisitions of SO.F.TER. and Nilit and disposition of Polyplastics and then Santoprene and now the DuPont Mobility & Materials business. Is there synergies still with the AC unit? Do you and you've kind of you know described this as the preeminent engineering materials company. Is that positioning it for separation ultimately or how are you thinking about selling these as a whole now post this transaction?
No, Arun , we're focused on getting the transaction closed and preparing for integration, and then bringing in and driving what we think is gonna be very robust cash generation to be able to very quickly reduce leverage. Our focus really is on these leading portfolio of businesses that we have. The Acetyl Chain and the Tow business really enhance the return profile that we have and generate tremendous amounts of cash flow. I mean, they also add a lot of scale and integration benefits to bringing this M&M business in here over the next several years. Our focus really is on integration, and that's gonna be where the leadership team is focused here over the next couple of years.
Got it. Thanks a lot. Congrats on the deal.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Please proceed with your questions.
Good morning. First, how much of the combined business is vertically integrated as a percentage of sales? As you look across the portfolio, how stable is the CapEx run rate expected to be? Are there any parts of either the acquired business or your own that on a five-year horizon need an investment cycle to, you know, to maintain your vertical integration?
Yeah. Let me start with the second piece on capital, and then I'll let Tom talk about vertical integration. You know, overall, I think when you put the portfolios together, I think that will be a very sustainable CapEx base going forward. You know, we've been very open about the fact that our Engineered Materials business needed additional assets in Asia. This allows us to acquire some of those assets. We will look at, you know, where and when do those investments in Asia need to happen now with the combined portfolio. My guess is as we look at the projects on the M&M side as well, we'll see some of those same benefits and opportunities to kind of bring the portfolios together.
We do see a pretty overall sustainable CapEx base and very stable CapEx base for the next several years for the combined business.
Yeah, Laurence, in terms of your question around degree of vertical integration, it's really outstanding. The combined portfolio will be about 80% backward integrated into polymer.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Matthew Blair with Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Please proceed with your questions.
Hey, thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the deal. The slides note that you expect to be below a 3x leverage by the end of 2024. What is your long-term leverage target now? Where does leverage need to be in order to resume share buybacks?
Yeah, Matthew, the focus is on getting down, and we believe we have a great plan to get there. I mean, the cash flow generation here, the combined portfolio is, as I said before, pretty robust. We think 3x is very achievable by the end of 2024. The long-term leverage will be in that 2.5x-3x range.
Great. Thanks. Then, the $275 million-$350 million of synergies in the first three years, any details on the cadence there, you think could be pretty ratable over those first three years?
Yeah, the cost synergies are probably—I mean, the best way to think about that would probably be 25% or so in year one, getting up to 50-ish% by the end of year two, probably slightly above that, and then hitting the full stride of those cost synergies by the end of year three. It always is slightly back-end loaded, but here we do think there's certainly some good quick wins in the first two years from a cost perspective.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Aleksey Yefremov with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you, good morning, and congrats. I wanted to ask you about electric vehicles. You know, what polymers within this DuPont business that you're acquiring could gain from EV content, and what areas do you think are most at risk to lose content?
Yeah. Good question. Just a reminder that Celanese has been competing in this space for years now with our Ecomid and our Frianyl compounds. We've extensively studied really down to the model level, content per vehicle for polymers like PA66, i.e., nylon versus PA6 and other polymers. I would just say that what we've done from our work shows that there's still a lot of jump balls that are happening going forward in the transition to electric vehicles. Certainly hybrid is great from a content perspective from what we're acquiring, but even in EV we see opportunities to grow the portfolio. Obviously the transition has to be made. A portion of DuPont's portfolio is in more the traditional auto under the hood application.
We feel really confident that with our commercial model and our reach into the OEMs and the tiers, we'll make that transition very successfully.
Thank you, very helpful. Just to follow up on vertical integration, more into building blocks and raw materials such as ADN. Do you see this, you know, integration via long-term contracts sort of changing at all in any way over the next two, three years, let's say, compared to the last two, three years that DuPont was running the business?
Yeah. If you're asking whether we would consider backward integration into the key raw materials, we don't think that would make a whole lot of sense. If you think about it, the scale of DuPont's polymerization and compounded capabilities is really strong and makes them an attractive buyer for HMD. You know, we think they're in a very strong position, and with the market potentially lengthening as more ADN and HMD capacity comes online, it makes sense to just continue to contract for supply.
Thank you.
Darryl, let's make the next question our last one, please.
Thank you. Our final question has come from the line of Jaideep Pandya with On Field Research. Please proceed with your questions.
Thanks a lot. First question really is around the DuPont Teijin JV. Could you just tell us, like, you know, did you sort of strategically want this? And, you know, is this something that also fits in the core Celanese portfolio, or is this something which, you know, is a business you could exit potentially? The second question is around the synergies that you actually get from the ExxonMobil Santoprene acquisition and DuPont. You know, they have worked quite closely together on launching new next generation products in the past. So, you know, how excited are you around the elastomer space? And then finally, I mean, obviously, there are quite a few assets floating around, so maybe it's an unfair question, but was this always your preferred number one target?
you know, you've actually done a thorough due diligence of what is available and, you know, come to a conclusion that this is really the best fit for you. Thanks a lot.
Yeah. I'll take that last question first and let Tom answer the first two. You know, this has been, you know, a target that we've known very well, as I mentioned earlier, for a long time. It is, it has been, you know, really our first choice option if it ever came available, to really because of the complementary nature of the business from several of the things I mentioned earlier, the geographic footprint, the polymer set that they have, and then really the branding capabilities and the success that the business has had. This is a very high quality business, high margin business that fits very much kind of hand in glove with our Engineered Materials business, and we're thrilled to be able to welcome the M&M team into Celanese.
Just to follow up on the DuPont Teijin Films business. One thing just to step back again, remember, as you looked at the portfolio in the Advanced Solutions segment, we looked very carefully at each of those three businesses, and we made a decision that Tedlar was not a good fit, so we worked with DuPont to hold that back. In the case of DuPont Teijin Films, we saw it as two things. One, a downstream consumer of the Rynite PET, so it's important to continue that vertical integration. We also thought about it as the ability to access a different form factor for Celanese.
Films are not something we've traditionally been in, so being able to access that, understand how we can leverage that for other products in our family was important. On the elastomer space, you mentioned Santoprene being the leader in TPVs. Obviously, we're acquiring the leader in copolyester. These have applications well beyond auto into medical, other applications. We're really excited to have what are the two biggest leaders in the high value elastomer space.
Thanks a lot, and well done.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Brandon Ayash for any closing comments.
Thanks, Darryl. We'd like to thank everyone for listening in today. As always, we're available after the call if you have any further questions. Darryl, please go ahead and close out the call.
This does conclude today's teleconference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Enjoy the rest of your day.