Ashland Inc. (NYSE:ASH) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Kevin Willis: Yes. So just looking at the current situation, the bigger volume issues — revenue issues for that matter were China and Europe. I mean China is — I mean, in its own way, compartmentalized. A lot of that, we believe, is COVID related. Early in this quarter, January certainly is less COVID, probably more Chinese New Year. So as we finish out the quarter, I think Guillermo mentioned this earlier, we’ll have better visibility about what we believe is going to be the future trend in China. Guillermo, you’re back.

Guillermo Novo: Yeah, I’m back. I don’t know what happened. Sorry about that.

Kevin Willis: Technology, yeah. I was just mentioning, China and Europe, we’re really — the volume and revenue , where Guillermo, as you mentioned, the distributor impact was a huge chunk of that. And I think as we get through the quarter, we’ll have better visibility about what that’s going to look like going forward.

Guillermo Novo: Lauren, sorry about that.

Laurence Alexander: Thank you. Perfect.

Guillermo Novo: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And this will conclude the Q&A session of the call. I would now like to turn the conference back to Mr. Guillermo Novo for closing remarks.

Guillermo Novo: Okay. Well, thank you, everyone, for your participation and questions. I hope you’re seeing, I think, the core things that the company is focused on and controlling around pricing, around innovation, about driving our core business. The team is performing very strong. I think as we look at this transition, this reset part is creating some challenges, and we’re working through them. But I think still a lot of the fundamentals as we look forward we feel confident that we have a strong portfolio, and our portfolio itself, I think, is one of the big changes that we’ve had in the last few years that position us well servicing very resilient, high-quality markets that should provide us significant growth opportunities and a degree of stability, not immunity, but stability relative to other areas.

So we will continue to communicate openly and transparently during this period of higher uncertainty, and we look forward to connecting with all of you in the coming weeks. So thank you for your time, and thank you, everybody. Bye.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect, and have a pleasant day.