Greetings, and welcome to the Quaker Houghton Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call. A brief 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 Jeffrey Schnell, Head of Investor Relations. Mr. Schnell, you may begin.
Thank you, Paul. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Quaker Houghton's Q3 2022 earnings conference call. Joining us on the call today are Andy Tometich, our Chief Executive Officer and President, Shane Hostetter, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Robert Traub, our General Counsel. Our comments relate to the financial information released after the close of the U.S. markets yesterday, November 3, 2022. Our press release and accompanying slides can be found on our investor website. Both the prepared commentary and discussion during this call may contain forward-looking statements reflecting the company's current view of future events and their potential effect on Quaker Houghton's operating and financial performance. These statements involve uncertainties and risks which may cause the actual results to differ. The company is under no obligation to provide subsequent updates to these forward-looking statements.
This presentation also contains certain non-GAAP financial measures, and the company has provided a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in the appendix of the presentation, which is available on our website. For additional information, please refer to our filings via SEC. Now it's my pleasure to hand the call over to Andy.
Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. In the Q3 , we delivered double-digit growth led by strong price realization. We continue to execute on the items within our control, countering softer market conditions, continued supply chain and raw material challenges, and significant foreign currency translation. We are making further progress addressing our overall margins by offsetting the significant and persistent inflationary pressures on our business. Throughout the quarter, the team remained focused on our objectives. This included taking steps to optimize our business and control costs while balancing investments to support and accelerate our long-term growth initiatives, all while we continue to prioritize delivering value for customers in a highly complex operating environment. As we expected, the end market environment was uneven in the Q3 .
While we performed in line with our markets, we are not immune to the lower underlying market activity impacting our customers and, in turn, our volumes. Specifically, activity in Europe and China softened throughout the quarter, whereas demand in the Americas and our global specialties business remained healthy, leading to our record sales and earnings performance in those segments during the Q3 . Despite the complexities of the operating environment, we delivered $70 million of adjusted EBITDA and adjusted diluted earnings of $1.74 per share. In short, strong price-driven sales growth and cost management more than offset continued raw material inflation in a softer market environment. The progress on our strategic pricing initiatives drove an improvement in our gross margins, which we expect to continue in the quarters to come.
Pricing in the Q3 increased 25% year-over-year as a result of our ongoing value-based pricing initiatives, but was partially offset by lower sales volumes and foreign exchange headwinds. We estimate underlying market growth rates declined by mid-single-digit percentages on both a year-over-year and sequential basis, which were in line with our underlying volumes, considering the impact from the Russia-Ukraine war and the expiration of the tolling agreement as part of the combination. Our results also included continued new business wins focused on higher value products and services, which were offset by business we declined as we focus on higher value opportunities. These new business wins continue to be a testament to the ability of our teams to demonstrate to our customers the value of our products and services even as we implement our strategic pricing initiatives to offset inflation.
Inflationary pressures on our costs did remain a challenge in the quarter. As expected, the pace of raw material inflation has declined sequentially in the Q3 , but overall continues to increase. Raw material availability also continues to impact our ability to win further business as we prioritize continuity of supply for all of our existing customers. Gross margins were approximately 33% in the Q3 , an increase of more than two percentage points compared to the Q2 of 2022, and a slight increase compared to the Q3 of 2021. This was primarily driven by continued price capture as we implemented targeted actions to offset the impact of ongoing raw material inflation. EBITDA margins also increased, reflecting the improvement in our gross margins.
Though they remain slightly below the prior year, they have increased more than two percentage points sequentially as we effectively leverage our model and manage our costs. Moving to sales by segment, once again, price capture was strong across all of our segments, both on a year-over-year and sequential basis. Volumes increased compared to the prior year in our global specialties business, but declined in our regional segments. Sequentially, volumes also declined as increases in the Americas partially offset softer demand in EMEA and Asia Pacific. Unfavorable foreign currency translation intensified in the quarter and was a headwind in all of the segments, but the Americas. Importantly, the recovery in our year-over-year segment margins continues.
Margins in the Americas, Asia Pacific, and our global specialties business improved on a year-over-year and sequential basis. However, remain below pre-pandemic levels due to continued inflationary pressures.
That said, we expect the improvement trend to continue, and pricing actions will be complemented by actions we are taking to drive efficiencies throughout the global organization. While the macroeconomic environment remains challenging, we have confidence in the value proposition of Quaker Houghton and the ability to leverage our scale and capabilities to generate value for customers. This will be reinforced with the targeted investments we are making to continue to drive long-term performance above market growth rates by providing even more value-added innovative solutions to our customers around the world.
These value-adding capabilities delivered through our customer intimate model will continue to be a key differentiator for us in the marketplace. All the while, recovering our margin profile to pre-pandemic levels remains a top priority. It is anticipated that costs will remain elevated, both raw materials and other costs, including labor.
Our commercial leaders are working diligently with our customers to implement further price actions while balancing future growth potential and underlying market dynamics in these critical relationships. Additionally, we are pursuing various avenues for cost improvement globally, including footprint operations, headcount efficiencies, and other productivity measures. We will be balancing our decisions to ensure the macroeconomic pressures we face are addressed by the cost measures we pursue while also considering our customer relationships and the requirements to achieve long-term growth.
Any actions taken will help address efficiencies within the organization, and together with the investments to contemporize our business, will help advance our capabilities, improve our profitability, and better align the enterprise to deliver on our long-term strategic growth initiatives. To support our strategic growth, effective January first, we will align our organization under a more streamlined business structure and leadership team.
Joe Berquist, who currently is our EVP, Chief Strategy Officer, and Managing Director of our Global Specialties business, will assume the role of Chief Commercial Officer. Our global commercial approach, implemented locally under Joe's leadership, will facilitate additional revenue synergies through increased share of wallet while helping to streamline and standardize processes, and through the use of tools which will drive a higher level of intimacy for our customers. Additionally, Jeewat Bijlani, who is currently our SVP and Managing Director of the Americas segment, will assume the role of Chief Strategy Officer. Jeewat will have ownership of implementing our strategic plan and will lead us to drive enterprise-wide ownership and improvements.
Our updated global approach will unlock company-wide opportunities to enhance our organic innovation and business development, improve global pricing and sourcing initiatives, advance the success of our corporate development, as well as drive us towards a more sustainable and digital enterprise. Joe and Jeewat are seasoned, committed, and accountable leaders that have extensive experience across geographies, businesses, and with driving successful transformation. Their leadership will help us harness the energy in the organization to drive meaningful multi-year improvement in our globalization, digitization, and sustainability focus, which will all power our future growth.
Working seamlessly together, we will fuel our growth engine with innovation and optimize more efficiency with productivity as we focus on our journey of continuously generating and earning more value for and from our customers. Turning to the outlook, we expect continued execution by our team in the Q4 and beyond.
The demand environment, which softened further in Europe and China during the Q3 , is expected to remain challenging and is further subject to typical seasonal patterns in the Q4 . The primary external factors which will have an impact include higher energy and other input costs for our customers' operations, raw material availability challenges, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and China's Zero-COVID policy. Specific to the Q4 , our pricing initiatives are expected to continue to drive year-over-year organic top line growth, partially offset by slower end market demand, continued inflationary pressures, and foreign exchange. We continue to expect a sequential improvement in our gross margins, and we will maintain our disciplined cost controls as we did in the Q3 .
As a result, we remain committed to our previously communicated outlook of generating EBITDA growth in the H2 of 2022. Compared to both the H1 of 2022 as well as the H2 of 2021. We expect to generate positive cash flow in the Q4 . I am pleased with our execution in the Q3 , and I'm confident in our differentiated customer-intimate approach that drives our growth engine. The outlook for the company is bright, and we're committed to delivering results. We exited the Q3 with momentum, executing on those things within our control. Through the Q3 , we have driven meaningful net new business wins by increasing customer wallet share as we add new value, and we also drive productivity enhancements for our customers.
We have continued momentum with our pricing initiatives and are focused on reestablishing our pre-COVID margin profile while also balancing the valued relationships, growth opportunities, and commitments to our customers. We will drive higher innovation and expand our capabilities, including through the use of data, particularly as we advance our digital transformation. We are advancing our growth initiatives through sustainable solutions as we capitalize on the opportunity to drive deeper relationships with our customers. We are leveraging our capabilities and strategy work to drive continued progress in our existing markets. We are identifying and expanding our total addressable markets and into new value-added growth areas, while we also optimize our processes, productivity, and footprint in order to better align the company for future profitable growth.
We will continue to invest in our people, our culture, our expertise, and our diverse talent around the world, providing our team with the development and tools needed to drive meaningful results. We will maintain a healthy balance sheet and liquidity to support our capital allocation strategy, including our M&A playbook. Taken together, these growth and profitability enhancing actions, combined with our differentiated customer intimate model, is expected to support earnings growth in 2023 and beyond.
We are balancing our near-term priorities with our longer-term opportunities. The value in our model is evident, especially when raw materials and other inflationary pressures eventually improve. We will not wait. We are taking steps to better equip the business for whatever macroeconomic environment we face. Quaker Houghton has much opportunity ahead, and the company is demonstrating the resiliency of our business model and our people.
I am confident we have the right strategy, and our leadership is committed to unlock our team's potential to continue to deliver customer and long-term shareholder value. With that, I'd like to pass the call to Shane to review our financial results in more detail. Shane?
Thanks, Andy, and good morning, everyone. The Q3 was another strong quarter for the company, delivering net sales of $492 million, which was a 10% increase compared to the prior year. This was driven by a 25% increase in price and mix, which was partially offset by an 8% decline in total sales volumes and a 7% unfavorable impact from foreign exchange. Consistent with recent quarters, we experienced a strong increase in net sales directly related to our strategic pricing initiatives. These were implemented across all our businesses in response to the significant raw material increases that began last year and have continued into this year. We've maintained this pricing momentum as we prioritize these initiatives and on a sequential basis, realizing pricing of another 8%.
While our volumes declined 8% year-over-year, this includes a reduction due to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, as well as lower volumes related to previous tolling on divested volumes as part of the combination. Without these two impacts, we estimate our volumes declined approximately 5%, which was largely in line with our underlying markets, but with regional differences. New profitable business wins continue to be a focus for the company. In the quarter, we estimate that new business wins contributed approximately 3% to volumes compared to the prior year.
This was a strong result and driven by the team's continued focus on driving higher value products and services to our customers, which in turn increases their productivity and profitability. During the quarter, our value-based pricing initiatives resulted in lower volumes, which did offset our new business wins on a volume basis.
That said, we anticipated this outcome as we work with customers to offset the inflationary pressures that are currently impacting our business and our cost to serve. Further, we will continue to prioritize higher value products and service offerings as we work to regain our margins and focus the company on long-term profitable growth opportunities. Sequentially, net sales were flat compared to the Q2 . This was driven by an 8% sequential increase in price and product mix, offset by lower volumes of approximately 5% and an unfavorable foreign currency impact of 3%. Net new business wins of approximately 1% were similarly offset by our value-based pricing actions compared to the prior quarter.
On a sequential basis, our volumes were also broadly in line with our underlying markets, which softened during the quarter. Our European business continues to be impacted by the direct and indirect impacts of the ongoing war in Ukraine, including its impact on energy costs. Our Asia-Pacific operations were impacted by uneven customer order patterns, the zero-COVID restrictions, and other impacts on our markets in the region. It is important to note, however, that on a year-to-date basis, our volumes have outperformed our underlying markets, which are down mid-single-digit percentages due to the net new business wins, even when considering the impact of our value-based pricing initiatives.
This continues to highlight our ability to earn new profitable business despite our strategic pricing initiatives as we continue to make progress increasing our wallet share and driving increased value for customers when they need it most.
Our gross margins in the Q3 were 32.7%, an improvement of 40 basis points compared to the prior period and 230 basis points compared to the Q2 . Overall, I am pleased to see our pricing initiatives begin to help drive an improvement in our gross margins. Our commercial teams have worked extremely hard to offset the continued and significant inflationary pressures on our business. We continue to expect our gross margins will show sequential increase next quarter. Looking at our SG&A, we had an increase of approximately $8 million or 8% compared to the prior year. This largely reflects year-over-year inflationary pressures on labor costs. SG&A was down slightly sequentially and as a percentage of sales remained consistent.
Adjusted EBITDA was $70 million for the Q3 , which is an increase of 6% compared to the prior year and an increase of 20% compared to the Q2 . These increases were a result of improvements in gross margin, which offset the impact of lower volumes and FX, which was approximately a $3 million headwind year-over-year. This is a solid result despite the lower end market demand and the macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges we are facing. From a segment perspective, compared to the prior year and exclusive of FX, the Americas, EMEA, and Global Specialty Businesses delivered double-digit sales growth, driven by significant increases in selling price and product mix. Our sales volumes declined in all segments except the Global Specialty Business.
Similar to last quarter, FX was a double-digit headwind in our EMEA segment due to the strength of the U.S. dollar compared to the euro and British pound, and was a lesser but meaningful impact on our other segments. Sequentially, all segments saw positive price momentum compared to the Q2 . Volumes declined 5% compared to the Q2 as increased volumes in the Americas were more than offset by softer conditions, uneven order patterns in EMEA and Asia Pacific, as well as a 3% foreign currency headwind. We delivered record operating earnings in our Global Specialty Businesses and Americas segment, but EMEA was behind prior year due to continued gross margin pressures. Operating earnings in Asia Pacific were flat compared to the prior year as softer end markets were offset by stronger gross margins.
Importantly, though, our segment operating margins improved in all segments except EMEA on a year-over-year basis and sequential basis, which gives us confidence that we are on the right path to recovering our margins globally. Below the line, both interest expense and other expense were slightly higher sequentially and against prior year. Interest costs continued to increase during the quarter, largely due to higher borrowing costs, with our cost of debt at approximately 3.4% for the Q3 . From a tax perspective, our effective tax rate, excluding non-recurring and non-core items, was largely consistent at approximately 26% in the current period. We continue to expect this current year effective tax rate to remain roughly in line with 2021 levels, pending any changes to domestic or foreign legislation.
Our GAAP diluted earnings per share were $1.44, and our non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were $1.74, which were up 7% compared to $1.63 in the prior year, reflecting the improvement in our overall operating earnings. Switching to liquidity, our cash flow from operations was an outflow of approximately $18 million for the quarter or $26 million year to date. Our working capital continues to be impacted by higher accounts receivables due to our pricing initiatives and higher inventories due to raw material cost increases. We are taking steps to improve and optimize our cash flow conversion and our working capital efficiency. We expect to show a working capital improvement translating into positive operating cash flow in the Q4 . Additionally, we expect our free cash flow conversion to normalize next year.
Outside of operating liquidity, we invested $5 million in capital expenditures in the quarter or approximately $20 million year to date. This translates to approximately 1.4% of our net sales and is expected to remain at the low end of our prior guidance of 1.5%-2.5% of sales for 2022 as we invest in certain profitability and productivity improvements. Also, we paid approximately $7 million in dividends in the Q3 , having increased our dividends for the thirteenth consecutive year in 2022. Our net debt at the end of the Q3 was $815 million, and our net leverage ratio was 3.3x adjusted EBIT. This was higher than our expectations due to the timing of cash flow generation. However, our liquidity remains sound.
On a bank basis, we are at 3.1 times adjusted EBIT, which provides us ample room compared to our ceiling of 4 times net leverage on our credit facility. We also have no material maturities until June 2027. We remain committed to reducing our net leverage towards our target of 2.5 times, and we will continue to balance the other priorities in our capital allocation strategy. To summarize, as we look ahead, the macroeconomic and geopolitical environment remains highly uncertain and very difficult to predict. We will continue to execute on what we can control. Specifically, we expect continued momentum with our pricing initiatives, which are intended to exceed further expected increases in our raw material costs.
We expect to continue to demonstrate progress on our margins in the Q4 , providing a solid foundation as we enter into 2023. This momentum gives us confidence in our ability to deliver on our 2022 commitment of EBITDA growth in the H2 of 2022 compared to both the H2 of 2021 and the H1 of 2022, as well as delivering earnings growth in 2023 and beyond. I remain optimistic on the growth and cash flow generation potential of our business and the steps we are taking to improve the foundation and future of our company, which will position us to provide the best products and services to our customers and deliver long-term value for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn it back over to Andy.
Thank you, Shane. Before we address your questions, I wanna once again thank our team who has executed well this year and has stayed focused on our objectives. Their commitment to our customers and our company reinforces our core values and underscores our ability to prepare for and execute in any environment we may face. With that, we'd be happy to address your 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'd 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 call for questions. Thank you. Our first question is from Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, good morning, and congratulations on a nice quarter in a challenging environment.
Good morning, Mike. Thanks.
Andy, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the Americas business and the nice sequential improvement you saw in the margins there. Just curious if there were any one-time drivers that helped the margin performance or if you feel like that getting toward that mid-twenties level, it's a sustainable margin level.
Yeah. Thanks, Mike. First of all, thanks for recognizing that. The leadership team's really been doing a great job, as we move through the year. , it's not a single factor. They're working on improving the mix, deepening customer relationships and the value we add in various solutions. There have been new product introductions, as well as , taking advantage of some of our innovation. It's a myriad of things and again, we wanna build on that, additionally within Europe and take a cue from that in some of our other segments as well.
Then, looking over at Asia Pacific, I was a little bit surprised to see the volumes there down 20%. , definitely worse than last quarter when we were expecting lockdowns to have the most severe impact. We had also heard that auto production in Asia was improving. Maybe just a little more color on what's going on there and what your expectations might be for volumes in Asia Pacific as we get into Q4.
Again, thanks for that, Mike. I mean, as we've signaled for multiple quarters now, there's an unevenness in China that we're still experiencing. There are still direct, as well as indirect impacts with the zero-COVID policy and the lockdowns that have come as a result of that. Within our business as well, there's also variation in customer order patterns that plays into it. I might also highlight that like we're doing in all regions, we're using strategic pricing, testing elasticity, and the net result of that is the profitability and the of the mix of business we have is very healthy and has improved. We're expecting some of the unevenness to continue. There does not appear to be a movement away from the lockdown policies.
The Q4 as well, we typically have some seasonality. Beyond that, I think we feel like we're well-positioned in what we've been doing with the business there, and we'll be in great shape as the recovery does come.
Yeah, Mike, just to add on to that, you mentioned some of the indicators around auto and some of the KPIs. , we estimate our markets were down high single digits.
Obviously, we just did not see what we see the auto indicators there, and I think it's been publicized in the market. , we're seeing a little bit more weakness compared to what the auto indicators see.
Interesting. Okay, thanks for the color there. My last question for now is just on the Q4 outlook in terms of revenue and margin. I guess any further detail you can provide there. The math that I did suggests that you're seeing kind of like the $57 million EBITDA level as kind of a floor for Q4. I'm looking at where consensus numbers are and it looks like they're kind of smack between the $60 million you did last year and the $70 million that you just did in this quarter. I was wondering if you could comment on how you feel about where that consensus number is for Q4. Thank you.
Mike, let me start and kick it off, and then I'll ask Shane to add some color. I mean, first of all, just a reminder, we continue to execute on the things we can control. There's still significant macro challenges in the uneven demand as well as some of the seasonality that I mentioned. , sequentially, we are continuing to work on value-based pricing, as we continue our path for margin recovery, as we move forward. We're also working very hard on new business wins and continuing that as we've done all year, and that will help us as we move forward, as well as we look to control our costs, to make sure that we're as efficient as possible.
With that, Shane, maybe you wanna add a little additional color.
Yeah. Thanks, Andy. I'll unpack it a little bit. Like, I'm not gonna get into specific numbers, but Andy just talked about the overall environment's pretty uncertain. , as you think about the percent decline we had on our volumes from Q2 to Q3, we see that continuing. However, we do see some additional probably volume declines due to seasonality in Q4, normal seasonality that we impact. Another headwind we'll see is the strong U.S. dollar from an FX perspective. On the bright side like Andy talked about, we continue to operate on what we control. I indicated in my script, we will price above where our raw material costs are going again, and we indicated that we'll show another uptick in gross margin percentage in the Q4 compared to the Q3 .
This should drive higher EBIT expansion as well. From there free cash flow should be positive in the Q4 as we unlock working capital and work on some of those efficiencies, as well as improving in our cash conversion.
All right. Thanks very much.
Yeah. Mike, apologies. One clarification, as I said, I just want to emphasize it was EBITDA margin, not EBITDA.
Right. Understood.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question is from David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, this is David Wong here with David Begleiter. I guess first, did you see any destocking impact in Q3? If so, do you expect that to be down by year-end?
Yeah. Thanks for the question. We haven't seen any significant trends with respect to destocking. No signals for us to suggest that that's gonna be changing.
Okay. Just on raws, looks like it's still going up in Q4. What's your current lag versus raw material price increases? I guess when do you expect any relief on raws?
Yeah. First of all, just a reminder for everybody, we've seen raw material cost inflation about 55% since the beginning of 2021. We have continued on our pricing journey on that recovery of margins to pre-COVID levels, and we're continuing there. Overall, raw materials, as we indicated in our script, have slowed in their rate of increase but are still increasing. Really, it's the basket of raw materials that, depending upon region and category, have slightly different trends. In total are up, in particular, some of our additives and our enabling chemistry surfactants, acids, bases, are still continuing to inflate. We're expecting that trend to continue, but again at a decelerated rate.
I'd also like to emphasize that, regardless of what raw materials are doing, we are implementing our value-based pricing and recovering value over and above what may be happening on an inflationary basis, and we'll continue that journey.
I guess lastly, are you seeing any incremental volume loss as you implement more prices?
Yeah. Well, I'd like to highlight that one of the key strategies for us is to continue to have profitable new business wins for us. We talked over the long period of time that we expect to grow over and above our underlying markets. At the same time, right now we're also doing some strategic pricing to test the elasticity in order to recover our margins. In the Q3 , we really did both. We had about 3% in new business wins, but that was offset as we implemented the strategic pricing on a volume basis with reduction on choices of where we wanted to serve business. The net result, however, is our portfolio is much healthier, margins are up.
While we anticipate there could still be some volume decline that will be focused on lower value business that we'll be replacing with higher value business. We continue to balance that as we manage things. The focus of the organization remains on profitable growth as well as margin recovery.
Thank you. Our next question is from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, everyone. It's Dan Rizzo for Laurence. Thank you for taking my questions. If current conditions persist in terms of cost cutting raw materials and pricing, what would the initial setup look like in 2023?
Yeah, Dan, thanks for the question. Good morning. , it's premature for us to give guidance at this stage. We haven't finished 2022 yet. As you imagine, we're in budgeting season and so forth. As I've highlighted before, we're really focused on executing on the things we can control. That includes focusing on value value adding for our customers and earning more wallet share from them. Long-term trends in our markets, we think are still positive despite some of the short-term challenges that could carry over. Our strategy is to remain customer intimate, to execute our model and outperform the underlying markets regardless of what they do.
We'll be balancing our pricing as well as margin recovery and efficiencies on cost, and we expect earnings growth in 2023.
Can you answer maybe how we should think about CapEx and working capital for next year, or is it too early for that as well?
Maybe I'll kick off with CapEx and then ask Shane to talk a little bit more about working capital. First of all, our capital allocation strategy remains intact. No change there. That clearly includes CapEx in particular to support our organic growth, our innovation, and continuing to be more customer intimate and do that in an efficient way. At the same time, we're gonna be prudent on our spending. As Shane indicated we'll maintain within the levels that we've been previously, but maybe you wanna highlight a little bit there and then working capital.
Yeah. Dan, we had talked about this before going into this year. We said in the next couple of years, we'd be within the range of 1.5%-2.5% of CapEx compared to net sales. , this year we're at about 1.4%. , next year going into there, we think we'll probably be in the mid-range in the 2s. However, as Andy just talked about we will be flexible and prudent depending upon where the economy goes and spending associated with that. As we look about working capital I indicated in my script that A, we're going to be working on improving conversion as well as working capital efficiency.
Specifically, we did take on a little bit of more safety stock to make sure that we could serve our customers on time during COVID. We're working on reducing that to normalized levels. As I look ahead to next year, we will come back to a normalized cash conversion. , in a normal period without those raw material cost hikes I would look to unlock a significant amount of working capital next year.
Okay, thanks. Last question. If just a little clarification. If you look at, like, your end markets like auto and steel, are the volumes declines in line with what we're hearing from OEMs and what's happening, or have you been sheltered by new product launches and lags?
I would say, as I think about the Q4 , you kind of look at the bridge here. We were down roughly 8% in volumes for the Q4 . Within that, we were down from a year-over-year perspective. We were down 8% volumes. And then within that, we had 3% volume decline due to Russia and Ukraine, as well as the tolling for the previously divested products. Without that, we get down to around 5% decline, and that shows neutral share gains offset by the strategic pricing losses. That 5%, we think is in line with where we believe our markets were, which were down low- to mid-single digits.
That is a blend of obviously our auto, steel, as well as overall industrial markets.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question is from Jon Tanwanteng with CJS Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Good morning. This is Stefanos Crist for John. Thanks for taking our questions. Could you talk about-
Good morning.
Good morning. Could you talk about what's driving the strength in the U.S. And if you think that's sustainable?
Yeah, I think we've seen progress really across the board. , the underlying markets, we're continuing to perform over and above those. Some of the things I referenced a little bit earlier about some of the innovations and mix that we've continued to improve as we move forward. Really just deepening our relationships with customers, providing more solutions, participating in a greater percentage of their wallet. I think some of the macro challenges that exist in China and Europe, for example, are not as acute in the U.S. On top of that, we're executing extremely well on our strategy.
Great. Thanks. Could you just talk about your confidence level in continuing to push price as your end markets do come under pressure? Do you think you can get back to historic gross margin levels just on price?
Yeah, I think it's really a question of timing. We continue to be very successful with our customers. I don't wanna minimize the challenges and the discussions with customers. No one's excited about having a price increase. As we've talked about previously, there's a lag in our business model because of our focus on value and the value that we're providing to our customers. I think the results show even with our strategic pricing that's relatively under control and allowing us to maintain volumes and improve the health of our portfolio and our margins is an indicator that our value is pretty sticky, and we'll continue to balance our approach as we go forward.
Great. Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Thank you. Our next question is from David Silver with C.L. King. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah. Hi, good morning. I had a question, I guess, about your new business wins and maybe your philosophy of , selecting which areas you wish to target. So my impression is that you bring , an awful lot, a very broad array of products and services that customers can choose to , upgrade or mix and match when they consider , signing on with you. I was just wondering if you look back to the current quarter, maybe Q1 or Q2 ago, is there a trend in which parts of your value proposition tend to be more successful or more convincing in securing new business? In other words, is it offering labor savings so they can outsource? Is it supply chain reliability?
Is it esg compliance? , among your array of benefits that you offer, could you point to any trend in which of those attributes are most attractive to new clients? Thanks.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the question, David. I mean, I think one of the inherent characteristics of a customer intimate model is we serve the customer based upon what problems they have and how we can add solutions for them. It's any number of things, including most, if not more than, you suggested there. Where we tend to add new business and greater share of wallet is where we build up an overall value in the number of solutions that we can provide to customers and our ability to adjust as they need us to adjust. It's not related to a necessarily specific product, but really more about the relationship with the customer and deploying the full capabilities. Which, of course, got much more significant with the combination two years ago to a greater portion of our customer base.
Yeah, just to add on to that, David, you started the conversation with choice around those share losses and the pricing side and how we get to that from product. It's not so much a product level, it's really our cost to serve, right? We look at things from a return metric. We pride ourselves on the EVA basis, economic value add, so looking at each individual transaction, both on a customer level and product level to ensure the appropriate return. So it's not necessarily just a product decision, it is a profitability decision to us.
Okay. Thanks for that. Maybe just a question about the nearer term outlook, and in particular in Europe, excuse me. From a number of my industrial companies that have reported today, I'm getting kind of somewhat mixed signals about how the major European customers are, let's say, coming back or coming back online, let's say, following the traditional downtime for vacations in August, maybe early September. , from your more strategic customers, is it your opinion that that they can continue to kind of operate or restore, mostly normal operations? Or would you say the tone is a little more negative than that and they're maybe hunkering down, for a more difficult stretch?
Just a sense of how your major customers in Europe are thinking about the the next few months or three to six months? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, David. First of all, Europe's a key region for us. For sure, we know we're a bit behind on the price cost balance, and we've done work, and we will continue to improve in that space. Price was actually up relatively significantly in the Q3 , but offset by some of the foreign currency translations. In fact, more than offset. We all know about the direct impacts of the Russia-Ukraine situation, but the indirect impacts of energy in particular in steel and automotive are continuing. I saw yesterday, ArcelorMittal just made a decision to take some of their capacity offline, at least temporarily. I think those pressures are going to continue.
At the same time, we're staying focused on our pricing initiatives, as well as controlling costs and looking for opportunities in that space. We believe with no new significant issues that we will reach an inflection point on margins in the Q4 . I don't know if you have anything you wanna add to that, sure.
Yeah. Only to add, andy as he mentioned, an inflection point outside of anything extreme, we do see our margins, our responsibility margins going up in the Q3 compared to the Q3 in Europe. That really reflects operating around things that we can control. Andy talked about our pricing initiatives in Europe. , it's important to look for the Q3 our organic top-line growth was actually positive as our pricing offset our volumes. But the FX was pretty strong.
Oops. Okay. Thank you for that. I appreciate the color.
Welcome.
Thank you. Our next question is from Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, just a couple more from me. First of all, you mentioned that you're still seeing some limited raw material availability. You said that was impacting your ability to win new customers, but it sounds like you still are winning some new customers with the 3% number that you threw out there. So maybe help us understand what your sales efforts look like relative to normal. , how much more new business could you be winning if you had the raw materials that you needed? I guess do you expect the availability issues to get better, maybe not next quarter, but as you look out into 2023?
Yeah. Thanks, Mike. I would say that the supply chain issues have certainly decreased compared to the acute period we experienced in previous quarters. I think we're trying to highlight that they're not gone. There are still spot issues in specific geographies or with specific products. For the most part, we're managing our way through that. We talk about our normal target is to be outperforming our underlying markets 2%-4%. We grew new business by about 3% in the Q3 . I think it would be safe to assume we would have been at the higher end of that range had we not had some of those supply chain issues, but I don't wanna characterize it as material.
Do you expect a little bit of further improvement in supply chain issues going forward?
We certainly hope so. I think we've seen cases in particular bundles of raw materials. Again, it depends upon the region, but we've seen some areas where some of the mineral oil materials and some of the base oils, from a vegetable and animal derivative standpoint have started to stabilize. I think we're seeing signals, at least anecdotally, that things will continue to improve.
All right, thank you. Was also hoping that maybe you could give a little bit more color on the reorganization that you referred to, moving Joe and Jeewat into global roles. Are there still going to be individual business unit leaders, or is this part of a greater shift away from your regional structure toward more of a global or like a matrix structure?
Yeah. Mike, first of all, I mean, I always like to go back to the fact we have not changed our customer intimacy strategy, and that's really in service of this. But it's one of the activities that we feel is important to contemporize that customer intimacy and serving our customers exactly the way that they wanna be served and do that in the most efficient way for the value that's available and that makes sense. Taking advantage of our scale, we think this is an opportunity to deploy more of our capabilities in more places with more customers, get more of that wallet share, as we're able to cross-sell and get into other applications with technologies and so forth.
, at the same time, we'll be doing some targeted investments to be able to support this. That's gonna allow us to be even more efficient from a process standpoint, digital capabilities. We have some productivity enablers, as well as footprint leverage that we'll be taking a look at here. With respect to the comments that I made in the script, while Joe will be leading the commercial organization globally, we will still clearly be implementing regionally and locally.
All right. Thanks very much.
You're welcome. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question is from Arun Viswanathan with RBC. Please proceed with your question.
Great. Thanks. Good morning. You can take my question. Hope you're well.
Yeah.
A couple questions, just thinking about Q4 and some of the dynamics there. Do you expect double-digit price increases to continue in Q4? When do those start to lap kind of tougher comps? Is it, say, Q2, Q3 of next year? Then similarly, if I just look at the volume side, I think you said that you were down 8%, but maybe 5% if you normalize some of those things out. Do we expect kinda mid-single-digit volume declines for the next couple quarters? Maybe you can just help us with price and volume a little bit. Thanks.
Sure. Thanks, Arun, for the questions. I'll discuss price first. Looking at it sequentially, you were asking year- over- year. I think it's easier to explain sequentially, given some of what we talked about with our underlying raw material costs as well as on price and gross margin increase. , we indicated that our raw material costs are still going up, but at a decelerated pace. They went up roughly 4% from Q2 to Q3, so something less than that. We will price above that, albeit most likely a little less than what we saw from Q2 to Q3 to continue to gain gross margins.
From a volume perspective, I had indicated in one of the questions earlier, but Q4 for us, we tend to see seasonality in that 4% range-ish. We're going to see continued volume softness that we saw from Q2 to Q3, which was roughly in the 5% range, plus that seasonality. You're looking at at least high single-digit volume declines. As you think about unpacking the overall kind of performance there, I think I indicated before we are going to continue just to operate where we can control, right? The underlying markets are there.
We'll continue to try to gain share to offset that pricing elasticity volume as well as grow our gross margin percentages.
Great. Thanks. On that last point then, so I know that maybe on an EBITDA margin basis, the target is to get back to, say, 17% or 18% that you saw in Q1 of 2021 before all the inflation. What's kind of the path and trajectory that we should keep in mind? Are there any specific initiatives on the cost reduction side? Is it mainly gonna take just some moderation in inflation and the pricing to kick in and maybe some relief on the FX side? How should we think about the path back to those margin levels? Thanks.
Yeah. I think we'll start with the point that we're on a journey here, and we've talked about margin recovery being a journey that was gonna take us some time. I think the specific answer to your question depends a little bit on what happens with the inflationary environment. Of course, if raw materials and other inflationary factors start to recede, that will help us to get back to our targeted levels more quickly. I think it's unclear for us to be able to predict exactly when that's gonna happen. Prudently, in addition to recovering margins and capturing value through price, we're also continuing to control our costs and look for opportunities to be as efficient as possible in delivering our model. We'll continue that focus going forward.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Andy Tometich for any closing comments.
Yeah, thank you for that. Really, I wanna leave everyone with the future of Quaker Houghton is bright, and we are executing on our priorities, and we are committed to generating value for all of our stakeholders. I wanna thank you for your continued interest in Quaker Houghton and encourage you to please reach out to Jeff with any follow-up questions.
This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.