Greetings. Welcome to Huntsman's first quarter 2026 earnings call. This time, all participants are in listen-only mode. The question- and- answer session will follow today's formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'll turn the conference over to Ivan Marcuse, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Thank you. You may now begin.
Thanks, Rob. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Huntsman's first quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining us on the call today are Peter Huntsman, Chairman, CEO and President, and Phil Lister, Executive Vice President and CFO. Yesterday, April 30th, 2026, we released our earnings for the first quarter of 2026 via press release and posted it to our website, huntsman.com. We also posted a set of slides and detailed commentary discussing the first quarter 2026 on our website. Peter Huntsman will provide some opening comments shortly, and we will then move to the question and answer session for the remainder of the call. During this call, let me remind you that we may make statements about our projections or expectations for the future.
All such statements are forward-looking statements, and while they reflect our current expectations, they involve risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance. You should review our filings with the SEC for more information regarding the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these projections or expectations. We do not plan on publicly updating or revising any forward-looking statements during the quarter. We will also refer to non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income or loss, and free cash flow. You can find reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure in our earnings release, which has been posted to our website at huntsman.com.
I'll now turn the call over to Peter Huntsman, our Chairman and President.
Ivan, thank you very much. Thank you all for taking the time to join us this morning. Before I begin my remarks about our company and recent events, I wanna simply say that I hope there's a quick and peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Over the past 40 years, I've had the opportunity to visit every country bordering the Persian Gulf, with the exception of Iraq. I have always been treated warmly and fairly by the people I've encountered. I hope that my comments do not come across as being callous in any way to the suffering and fear emanating from this region as I address the economic impact of these events to our bottom line and industry.
From the first hours of this conflict, our number one commercial priority has been to increase prices enough to offset rising costs. I believe we've been successful in doing this. This will require continued communications with our customers and suppliers, also the discipline to make sure that we are not a shock absorber between raw material costs and finished product pricing. Our next priority is operating our plants in a reliable manner to make sure that we have the product to meet our demand.
Our operations during the first quarter and going into the second quarter have been excellent. From a sales perspective, we're seeing stronger than expected demand going well into the second quarter. I would say that this is being brought about by three factors. Number one, seasonality as we move into the second quarter and the building season resumes across North America, Europe, and Asia. Number two, customers who are buying ahead of the expected price increases that are being announced. Number three, disruptions that have been seen in certain trade flows that have impacted supply. An example of this would be some of our maleic customers in Europe who have become overly dependent on Chinese- supplied maleic, have seen a disruption in supply as raw materials and shipping costs have increased from that region.
These three factors are also happening at a time when most inventory levels are very low across many supply chains. These improved order patterns are being seen as we enter into the second quarter in most of our regions and across many of our products. The obvious countervailing point to all of this is how long does it continue? I can't see order patterns that go through the month of June, but the guidance that we have shared from each division in Q2 reflect what we've seen to date.
Today, that visibility is less clear as we look further into the quarter. I struggle to see how inflationary pressures, particularly in areas reliant on imported energy, like much of Asia and Europe, will not see an inevitable downward pressure later in the year as consumer spending gradually shifts towards higher prices. To what degree this occurs is yet to be seen. I am heartened to see the housing starts and durable good orders in the United States better than expected for the month of March. I'm also keeping an eye on residential permits, a step that precedes construction starts down 11% for the month of March.
There will also be some longer- term dislocation of traditional economics. If you were a producer that enjoyed discounted raw materials coming out of Venezuela, Iran and Russia a few months ago, it is likely that you're not seeing such discounts today, and I highly doubt you'll see them in the foreseeable future. Many customers are looking for closer and more secure sources of supply. Supply chains are shifting and being reassessed. I believe that there will be some lasting impact for certain regions and products that may not seem too apparent today. It is simply too early to know how lasting some of these will be.
In short, we are aggressively raising our prices to both cover our cost of our raw materials while also expanding margins from the trough economics that we've been experiencing for the past three years. We will continue to manage our costs and deliver these objectives on budget. We will be focused on volumes and make sure that spot buying also comes with longer- term volumes and obligations. I'm glad to see the trends that we're seeing in the second quarter, but we still have a ways to go to get to our normalized margin levels. This will require stable and longer- term demand trends to continue. I feel that we're in a strong position today to capitalize on such changes going forward. Thank you.
Operator, with that, we'll open the time up for Q&A.
Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. We ask you to please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad, and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants that are using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Thank you. Our first question is from the line of Patrick Cunningham with Citi. Please proceed with your questions.
Hi. Good morning. You know, in the release you talked about the potential for a more durable return to mid-cycle profitability. You know, this likely depends on both supply and demand side at this point, but can you give us the latest view, you know, on what this crisis may do in terms of supply side rationalization for MDI and polyurethanes? You know, how do you see this playing out in terms of structural energy cost, pressure, feedstock availability or potential closures at this point?
Well, I don't see a great deal of structural change as we look at MDI. I do see pressures continuing in Europe. If you're a European producer now having to put up with natural gas that's priced somewhere in the mid-teens versus where we are today, I noticed in the Houston Ship Channel price this morning was under $2 per MMBtu. These are real material gaps in shifts. I can't help but think that there's gonna be continued pressure on petrochemical producers across the board and in MDI across Europe. Having said that, I also think that there are probably some structural issues that may make Chinese exports in certain products. I won't get into exactly which products those are, I think that they're varied across the board.
If, if you're relying on coal as a raw material in China, you're probably doing quite well. If you're integrated into a world scale refinery and integrated system in China, you're probably doing quite well. If you're part of what they call the teapot collection of refineries integrated into export bound chemical facilities, you may be under some cost pressures as you see some of the discounted crude products. It's not just what we see from a competitive point of view, it's also what we see from the raw material that many of our customers and many of our competitors, and the industry in general will be facing. I think those are some of the longer- term issues that we'll be dealing with even after the Strait of Hormuz hopefully opens soon here.
Very helpful. Could you talk about, you know, some of the sustainability of the positive trends you're seeing in Advanced Materials? You know, particularly interested in line of sight into aerospace and power order books and, you know, what that potentially means for segment profitability in 2026.
Yeah, I think, and I don't wanna get too much into our numbers as to where we planned and where we saw a lot of upside and since the beginning of the war. My CFO will start kicking me in the side here. The performance we're seeing in Advanced Materials is largely what we expected a quarter ago. We may have seen a little bit of impetus there in pricing, but remember that that business is not reliant on any one major raw material, as you would see, for instance, in benzene going into MDI or some of the raw materials, caustic and chlorine prices and so forth, into some of our Performance Products materials.
As you look at our Advanced Materials, that continues as we see. As we've said now the last couple of quarters, we see the recovery continue with aerospace, power. These better- than- GDP growth businesses. That business is just gonna continue to get traction and I'm not sure the results this quarter, in the second quarter, where we finished the first quarter. I'm not sure that would be materially different from where we'd be without the Gulf conflict.
Our next question is from the line of Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners. Please proceed with your questions.
Yeah, thank you and good morning. Peter, can you speak to operating rates in MDI, both for Huntsman and also what you're observing at the industry level? Related to that, you know, how are things changing post-war versus pre-war?
Yeah, I think that as we look at the industry in general, you're probably looking at the low to mid-80s. I think, you know, now from where we are, we would be in the high 80s. We're sold out completely in our Chinese operation. Our U.S. operation for the most part is sold out. Europe, as we said in the when we announced our first quarter earnings before the Middle East conflict, we're starting to see some green shoots there. We continue to see, you know, some opportunities in Europe. I would say that we're operating at pretty good levels across the board.
There have been a number of outages and I would say short- term and also planned disruptions in the industry. Not to be too unexpected. When you go have an industry that's been operating kind of at a low, probably 70%, 80% for the last couple of years, and now all of a sudden you see an increase in demand and pull-through, you know, you typically have operating issues. I can't speak about the competition, but I can just say in our facilities, all three of our MDI facilities, our associates there have done a fantastic job in their operations.
Okay. Thank you for that. Then, secondly, I imagine your PO/MTBE joint venture in China has become more profitable. Maybe you can talk about what you might expect for equity earnings trajectory moving forward.
Yeah, it certainly in the past, it's been a little bit of a drag on us. I think, you know, today we're probably in the low to mid- single- digit millions of dollars of impact on that business. Certainly doing better than it has been in the past. You know, I would hope that MTBE, that C factors should improve as you get more into the driving season. That's there's just so much volatility right now in the whole refining chain and what's going on with PO economics. That'd probably be one of the murkier businesses that we have as far as looking to the future.
Remember, Kevin, the price of gasoline is managed differently in China than elsewhere in the world. MTBE margins aren't what you would expect in China. Where the Chinese joint venture is making money today is on propylene oxide, and the margins that we're seeing there over and above propylene.
The next questions come from the line of Frank Mitsch with Fermium Research. Please receive your question.
That's interesting. PO is doing better than TBA and MTBE in China. Thanks for that, thanks for that enlightenment. Peter, I was wondering if you could speak to the polyurethanes and MDI pricing initiatives that are underway, how that relates to underlying benzene costs, and what sort of successes are you seeing or not on that front?
Well, I'd say that we're seeing, we're certainly staying ahead of the benzene curve. Never as far ahead as I would like to see it. I'd like to see it multiple times better than what we're seeing. I highly compliment our sales and marketing groups on their aggressiveness in making sure that we're covering our raw material costs and staying ahead of that. Yes, both from a volumetric basis, we'll see a positive influence on it and also margin expansion above and beyond raw materials. We should see expansion on that.
All right. Terrific. All right, margin expansion. If I think about, you know, the price mix for Huntsman overall, it's been negative for several quarters here. Given these initiatives that you have underway, is the expectation for the full company to show positive price mix here in 2Q and hopefully beyond?
Certainly in Q2, hopefully beyond. I would reinforce that as well. As I look at some of the pricing trends that we're seeing, going to the second quarter, and just to give you an idea, in North America, I'm talking about all products, all prices, so I'm not talking about any one division, but we have not seen a quarter-on-quarter growth in pricing trends. I mean, you're unfortunately you're right in what you said earlier. We haven't seen that since 2022. The trends that we're seeing right now and the jump that we're seeing on a quarterly basis right now in North America, we haven't seen that in years now.
Europe isn't too dissimilar. We've seen a few quarters here and there where we've seen some, you know, some up pricing, but that's more to do because of the strength of our Advanced Materials business in Europe, not because of the macro trends there. Yeah, I like, I like where we're going into the second quarter. You know, my only, my only question is, you know, how sustainable is it? Look, it's a lot better than where we were a quarter ago.
Our next question's come from the line of Hassan Ahmed with Alembic Global. Please receive your questions.
Morning, Peter. Peter, I just wanted to revisit some of the earlier commentary around MDI supply, both as it pertains to the product as well as the feedstock. You know, I mean, there's at least one facility in Saudi Arabia that seems to be offline. Obviously I would imagine there would be sort of broader issues in terms of the availability and pricing of benzene as well as methanol.
Could you comment a bit about sort of, you know, operating rates for MDI, keeping in mind, you know, some of these outages as well as, you know, some of the feedstock availability issues the world may be encountering and, you know, how long it may take for some of these bottlenecks, you know, if peace was declared tomorrow, to sort of be ironed out to the system?
I think that as we look, you made reference to a, you made reference to a Middle East producer. That's roughly about 4% of global capacity. If you kind of think that the industry's operating in the low to mid- 80s, that would say that we're kind of pushing the mid- to upper 80s at 90% capacity utilization globally. Again, that's not across the board. There'll be parts that are better than that and parts that are worse than that. Just globally across the board, when you reach 90% in the MDI industry, given what people have as stated capacity and the outages that take place on a yearly basis for maintenance and so forth, you're really in an industry that starts to strain at 90%+ capacity.
I mean, statistically on paper, you can see where the industry is now moving into the upper 80s. In some regions of the world, it's gonna be, again, better and worse. I've not seen nor heard of any problems with the procurement of raw materials in MDI around the world and that's available. You know, longer term, you know, my biggest question on MDI is gonna be the sustainability of the demand. Because again, previous to February 28, I would say that. I don't wanna say that we were going great , but we're starting to see some green shoots in Europe, as we reported earlier. We were moving into the North American housing season and, you know, China was stable and in pretty decent shape.
You know, my whole question is really around sustainability of demand as you start looking out into the third and fourth quarter. And like I said, Hassan, it's just too early to start looking at those order trends.
Understood. As a follow-up, you mentioned the polyols market in Europe, you know, obviously was volumes-wise up 4%, which obviously is decent. You know, in your prepared remarks, you obviously talked about easier compares as well, because last year you obviously had the sort of Rotterdam turnaround. You know, what green shoots are you guys seeing volumes-wise in Europe? You know, over the last couple of quarters, obviously, along EBITDA lines, it seems, you know, for the PU business, EBITDA was negative. Have you guys currently sort of turned that around? Is it actually generating positive EBITDA now?
Yeah. To look at your first area, I would think that CWP composite wood products in Europe is looking pretty good. Technical insulation is. That would be, you know, your sandwich boards and so forth, that are going into data centers, warehouses, prefabricated buildings and so forth. Your ACE business is adhesions, coatings, elastomers business is doing. Again, I don't wanna paint the details of going through the roof in Europe, but we're seeing some green shoots in these areas, badly needed, by the way. Yeah, I think that certainly is moving towards an area where we don't just wanna see a positive EBITDA coming from Europe, but we want to see positive cash coming out of Europe. Yeah, we're at that precipice and seeing things improve.
Hassan, as we sit here today, we would expect Europe to be positive from an EBITDA perspective.
Next questions are from the line of Michael Sison with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, good morning. When I take a look at your outlook for Polyurethanes for 2Q, you know, margins look like they're gonna improve, a little bit, but not a lot. What do you think needs to happen to get the EBITDA margins for Polyurethanes at, you know, at better levels, you know, going forward? Just curious what the pricing for the segment should imply for 2Q year-over-year.
I think the two things that we need more than anything else are demand and raw material stability. We're projecting in the second quarter that we'll take in well in excess of, you know, around $100 million of raw material costs, and we expect to offset that and get prices higher than that. That's a tremendous amount of raw material costs that we're absorbing in one quarter. Of course, in order to have any sustainability in pricing and pull- through in pricing, we've got to see the demand. I did note in my prepared remarks, a cautionary note on inflation and what inflation factors may play in Europe. There's also, you know, I'd say on one hand there's those inflation factors that give me concern.
Europe has been so lethargic for so long, I can't help but think that there is pent-up demand, whether it be in housing or remodeling and, you know, just in industrial demand, defense rebuild and so forth across the board. That's gonna be for the second half of the year, the single biggest variable in my opinion is going to be demand.
Got it. Thank you.
Next questions are from the line of David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank. Please receive your question.
Thank you. Good morning. Peter, just on Performance Products, why isn't that business a little bit stronger in Q2, given some of the, you know, strength in maleic?
David, that's an excellent question. I think as we see the strength in maleic, that certainly is gonna be manifest through Q2 going into Q3. A lot of our European customers on maleic are actually buying that and negotiating purchases of that FOB Florida, so of our plant in Pensacola, Florida. Picking it up in the U.S. rather than us shipping it over to Europe and taking, you know, the time and the tying up working capital and so forth. We'll see the impact of that going forward.
I'd also remind you that we also had one of our facilities in Q1 and also presumably could see some impact in Q2, where we have an ethyleneamines facility, joint venture facility, which we believe is one of the lowest cost facilities in Saudi Arabia on the wrong side of the Strait of Hormuz. That's going to also be a little bit of a headwind in that business.
Very good. Do you have an update on your U.K. aniline plant, given some prior comments? Thank you.
I again, that facility, when those comments were made, we were seeing $20-$22 gas in Europe and a government that was lethargic at best in concerns with it. We were seeing import pressures that were countering that. I think since that time, imports have lessened a bit. We've seen gas plummet from $20 to $15. I still say that's a pathetically high number for an energy less policy-driven government. I wouldn't say that that facility is. When I look at the economics of it, I continue to be concerned. The people that work there, the reliability of that facility, the ongoing maintenance and operations and so forth, that facility are absolutely A+.
They're having to battle some really poor energy policies.
Thank you. The next questions are from the line of Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your questions.
Thank you. Just wanna try to piece together a couple of the comments you made, Peter, as it relates to Polyurethanes, and if I'm conflating things, please obviously correct me. You're talking about how you've been able to get pricing ahead of benzene, and we traditionally think of you having about a two-month lag of benzene flowing through. Then maybe later in the year, we may see negative demand elasticity from the consumer at the end market working its way back up the supply chain.
Do we think about 2Q , you know, your spreads being strong because you're ahead of that benzene, and then maybe benzene catches up with you in 3 Q, and then we have to see how much more pricing you can get, and that, I guess, would be a function of demand. Are we thinking, you know, 2 Q and 3 Q may be flattish in terms of profitability in Polyurethanes? Or do you think 3 Q could actually be up a little bit or maybe it would be down a little bit? What's your latest thinking on that?
Well, far, far too early to comment on Q3. Again, I believe Q3 is gonna be more demand-driven than anything else. I do. The trends that I'm seeing today, we are staying ahead of the price on benzene. We also are picking up some volume that we see on a year-to-year sorta growth basis. We're gonna continue to be pushing prices through. Now again, the ability to push those prices through will be predicated on macro demand and so forth. As I get into the third quarter, and again, I don't wanna be overly pessimistic about that. I merely say that as right now there's I feel there's a bit of euphoria in the industry, and I love seeing it. I think it was long overdue.
I hope it continues into the third and fourth quarter. A lot of that is just too early to tell on demand.
Thank you.
The next questions are from the line of Matthew Blair with Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Please proceed with your questions.
Great. Thanks, and good morning, Peter. I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about just underlying construction activity. One of your peers mentioned that it has been weakening. You talked about the diversion in March data between starts and permits. Are there any trends in Q2 on construction activity that you can share so far?
I would say that we're not seeing a drop-off, but we're also not seeing a lot of improvement. I think that, you know, I would say right now it certainly isn't shaping up to be a bad season for us. It's just not a lot of growth in that. I'd say, yeah, there's some stability. I'm sorry, I probably should be saying it's either going up or it's going down, but it seems to be quite stable at the present time. That's why I say there's some decent trends on housing starts that feel pretty good and I think in second quarter, going into third quarter, we'll probably see 2%-3% low single- digit growth in construction this year.
I'm also concerned when you see a 10% drop in one month in housing residential permits. Again, that's the step before the housing starts. You know, again, I don't wanna read too much into a single quarter of data because February, both of those numbers were the complete opposite. Permits were up and starts were down. I think we'll probably see some very gradual growth this year.
Sounds good. I was also intrigued by your comment that you're seeing some customers that are buying ahead of expected price increases. Is this occurring in some products more than others? If so, which products? Also on a regional basis, you know, would this be something that's more, more prevalent in Europe relative to the Americas? Thank you.
Yeah, I would say that as we look at it, you're probably talking about two, three days of on MDI, that would be the area where we probably see the most pre-buying. I'm gonna just say that there's I wouldn't say that there's a big wave of capacity that is being pulled through. I think that we're managing that very carefully as well. When customers coming in and increasing their orders from where they were just a few weeks ago, we're discouraging that and making sure that we kinda keep an equilibrium on orders and so forth.
In other areas where people are coming in that haven't bought from us for some time on a spot basis, you know, we're seeing if we can't extend contracts from what you need over the next month or two to what you need over the next year or so. Some of our Performance Products customers and so forth that may have shifted supplies to China out from Europe and the U.S., for example. Yeah, I think on both of these demand trends, we need to make sure there's a difference between those that are spot buying, panic buying, and those that are just trying to buy ahead of a price increase. They all need to be managed a little bit different. Sorry, there's not one size that fits all.
Right now, if there is pre-buying that's taking place, I would be very worried if we were seeing what would be the equivalent of a week or two or three of pre-buying taking place. I would say right now we're seeing low number of days of inventory, that is pre-buying at this point.
Our next questions are from the line of Jeff Zekauskas with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks very much. Can you comment on how much Chinese MDI is coming into Europe?
Hasn't been all that much. I wouldn't say that it's anything out of the ordinary. It's been pretty stable. It's worked in the last couple of quarters. I would say, if anything, maybe it's even a little bit slightly lower than what it's averaged over the last year or so. Nothing that would be nothing that would have a material impact on the industry or pricing there.
Okay, good. Then in Performance Products, can you frame the penalty from the ethyleneamines joint venture being behind the straight, either in the first quarter or the second quarter or for the year? In your guide, you know, you're going from, you know, $26 million in EBITDA to an estimate of, you know, $30 million-$40 million in the second quarter. You know, why so big a jump, and why is the range so wide for the second quarter?
The, as we look at the ethyleneamines facility, again, that facility, it was down for two weeks. It's operating today. I don't want to get too specific. It's operating, let's say at, you know, around 50%, and material is being trucked out to the Red Sea and also south. I mean, we're finding some means of getting product out of there. What the impact of that is going to be and how much that we can offset through operations from our Freeport facilities, I would say that impact could be as high as $4 million-$5 million for the quarter. As we look at that spread of $30 million-$40 million, a lot of that is going to be based on how successful we are in getting product economically.
I mean, because you're moving it out by truck, as you can well imagine, that's gonna be quite a bit more expensive than moving it than moving out by ship. There's some variability there. I would also say that there's quite a bit of spot material that seemingly is coming, opportunities coming in maleic. Now, how much that materializes, what we're able to get pricing, people inquiring, people talking about volumes and prices versus actual orders and so forth, we'll know a lot more about that in the coming weeks.
Jeff, in terms of step- up from Q1 to Q2, just as in Polyurethanes, we are seeing pricing exceed the raw material increases.
Our next question is from the line of Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners. Please proceed with your questions.
Hi, good morning.
Hi, Mike.
Peter, you mentioned in the prepared remarks there that we're still meaningfully below mid-cycle margins in the Polyurethanes business. I was wondering if you can provide any kind of an updated view on where you think mid-cycle margins could be. I'll hold off on asking you when you think you can get there, but what is the appropriate mid-cycle margin level for Polyurethanes?
Well, I think that we're probably I've always thought of it more on what it is that are on an EBITDA on average basis. I think that business, on average, ought to be a mid-teen sort of a business. How soon do I expect that to happen? As soon as possible. Sorry, I should. Yeah, it's long overdue.
The second question I had is just curious. I didn't see any comments about the specialty amines capacity that you've added to serve the semiconductor industry. I'm just curious how that's contributing relative to expectations and whether you expect to see some growth there given the strength in semiconductor.
Yeah, we continue to see that coming online. It's going through qualifications. As we've stated before, that is gonna go through a qualification of usually around nine to 12 months. Sometimes when there's supply disruptions and so forth on chemical products as there is right now, sometimes that can be accelerated, sometimes it slows down, actually. I think as we look in 2026, as we're building up to a normalized run rate, hopefully by the end of the year, we'll probably see, you know, $5+ million coming from that this year.
Our next questions are from the line of Josh Spector with UBS. Please proceed with your questions.
Hi, good morning. I wanted to see if I could just follow up on kind of the benzene MDI math in 2Q here. Just trying to think about if we say volumes are stable into 3Q, you're pricing ahead of raws in 2Q. Is that a headwind in that your raws are going to catch up a bit more from inventory in 3Q? Or are you exiting with enough price where you'd say that earnings and Polyurethanes would be stable sequentially in that scenario?
Yes, I would say that we are exiting Q2 able to stay ahead of the raw materials that we see going into Q3. We're also working towards more price increases to come in that area.
Great.
I mean, as I sit here today looking, unless there's a cataclysmic change economically, we will stay ahead of our raw material costs going into Q3.
Josh, benzene just settled at $4.71. The point is, we're ahead of that, and we'll stay ahead of it.
Understood. Thank you.
Our next questions are from the line of Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Please proceed with your questions.
Good morning, Peter. Do you see any end markets where, you know, your customers are indicating already that they're in pre-buy mode?
Good question. We're in a pre-buy mode. None that are really that high. I mean, typically this time of year, you're going to get some pre-buy in construction. Installation, spray foam business, feels like, you know, it's in. There's pretty good demand and people are trying maybe to buy ahead of a curve in that business. Yeah, those would probably be the two areas. No, again, when I mentioned that earlier, it's something that we're working on very diligently when I said that, you know, we're kind of like a day or two worth of inventory going in that. I think we're— I'm not going to say that we're walking away from business.
We just want to make sure we're managing that very carefully with our customers. We don't wanna build up inventory, nor do we want to necessarily see it built up on the customer side.
I guess I appreciate that no one wants the customers to build up inventory, but is it unusual for with this kind of spike where several companies are out publicly talking about imminent shortages in different molecules that people who may see higher prices in the future aren't trying to pull forward orders? Is that unusual?
No, I don't think that's unusual at all. I don't think that we're at a point. I mean, I'm not saying I don't wish we were, but I don't think we're at a point in MDI at this time where we're seeing shortages and people saying, "I can't get it." I think that there are people that are concerned as they look at their suppliers, with their suppliers with announced turnarounds that have been scheduled for multiple years, that are taking place and so forth. Some of the disruptions that you're seeing in some of the energy flows and shipping flows. I'm not seeing panic buying at this point, but I am seeing higher capacity utilization.
You know, I think that there's an improvement in market conditions for the producers, but consumers can still get the product.
The next questions are from the line of Arun Viswanathan with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your questions.
Great. Thanks for taking my question. I guess, we did hear about an outage, with Wanhua a couple days ago, and maybe I can just get your thoughts on that if you, if you think that that could tighten up markets. I guess maybe you were asked this question earlier, apologies if so, but, what is kind of the potential for those utilization rates to remain consistently above 90%? Do you see any permanent kind of supply activities that could arise in the next few months? Obviously it depends on duration, but of the conflict. Are your customers kind of migrating to you in the face of other supply shocks or disruptions? Is there a share gain opportunity as well? Thanks.
Yeah, Arun. Good question. I'm not sure necessarily what's happened with the competitor facility when they do have multi-year closures. When I say multi-year, I mean, oftentimes, when you do a large- scale closure on a vast petrochemical site, you're renting equipment, you're planning equipment, you're planning workforces, usually 18, 24 months in advance. I mean, you know these things are coming and people are exchanging materials. I know that's happening. I've heard, read that a splitter may have gone down or something. I've not read that a facility, you know, there's been a large- scale cataclysmic outage or anything like that. No, I think that we're probably as an industry operating in the high 80s right now, depending on product flow in the Middle East.
That's gonna be a bit volatile right now with some of these large in China, you've got single-site facilities of, you know, 1 million metric ton sites. When those go down, a site that big, you will feel it globally. If they're down for an extra two weeks because of a problem or whatever, you'll feel it acutely on a short-term basis. You know, we'll continue— I think as we look right now, our facilities are operating well, and we're in a position where we can be a strong and reliable supplier.
Okay. Thanks for that. The other question I had was just on the PO market. Obviously, there's some tightness there. There was also a reduction of capacity by one of the suppliers recently, and I know one of the other plants are down. Are you guys feeling like your own kind of procurement for the Polyurethanes business is intact, or do you foresee any supply disruptions or rerouting of your supply chain that would be required? Thanks.
No, we don't see any disruption in our PO supply right now. We've got a good supplier. That plant operating, and I feel that we're, you know, we're covered with that. We've also got an excellent supply source in China as well. I feel we're okay with that. Operator, why don't we take one more question and we'll let people get on the way.
Sure. The next questions are from the line of John Roberts with Mizuho Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you. Not that it's large, but maybe your Saudi amines JV gives some insights into the disruption. If we had an agreement imminent here on the Strait of Hormuz, what's the earliest you think you might be able to resume full production and export by sea?
You're probably looking at 30- 45 days, would be my assumption on that. Again, there's gonna be a bottleneck of shipping that both to get there to pick product up and also shipping a product to get out. Yeah, I would say about that time, 30- 45 days.
Great. Thank you.
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Thank you very much.
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