ChampionX Corporation (NASDAQ:CHX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Saurabh Pant: Hi, good morning, Soma and Ken. Just sticking to Production Chemicals first. Soma, I think on the last quarterly call we were talking about the top line in PCT growing at multiples of all volume growth, right? And you walked through all the reasons why it would be multiples of all volume growth, right? But just looking back at 2022, I think you grew PCT top line 7.5 to 8 times all volume growth, and we know there’s a lot of pricing dynamic going on both gross and net, right? So how should we think about, how much of a multiple we should see in the PCT top line in 2023?

Sivasankaran Somasundaram: Yes, Saurabh, I think this is one of those things we will detail out more in the upcoming investor day. So, but we do expect 2023 to be another year of solid growth, right? Because we believe, production spending, production volume will also increase. So we do expect it to be a solid growth. And we talked about in the call, how much was pricing, how much was actual volume growth. So I don’t expect our pricing to grow like it did in 2022. So if you look at it, it should be another good multiple of growth. We are not necessarily saying what it is. Can it be a low double-digit growth? It possibly can be going forward, but again, this is a short cycle business. Right? It’s really hard to predict what happens in Q3 or Q4, but we do believe it will be a solid growth year going forward.

And one thing I want to remind Saurabh is, as you know, Russia is still part of this business. Right? So that will be depending on what happens with Russia in the year, that will be a, that can impact the top line.

Saurabh Pant: Yes. Okay. Perfect. Soma I got one on Drilling Technologies, but before that, just a quick follow up on Production Chemicals. It seems like with your 20% exit rate margin guidance, first thing is it fair to resume 20% for PCT as well? Because I know that was your intermediate term target. Is it fair to resume 20% for PCT by folks you, and then just on that 20% number, right, how should we think about that 20% margin being a peak margin, being a mid-cycle or normalized margin? How should we think about that? We don’t have enough history on the Production Chemicals front, so just give us a little context on how should we think about that number for peak versus normalized?

Sivasankaran Somasundaram: Yes, I mean, I think the, if you — again, if you go back in the history of Production Chemicals and the historical numbers, obviously when they are part of Ecolab it’s, the cost structure at Ecolab and, being part of a bigger company, I think I’m not quite sure that’s fully representative. It’s a guidance, but I don’t, I’m not sure it’s fully representative of the margin potential of this portfolio. Right? Especially of our Production Chemical business. So going forward, right to answer your first question on Q4, no we do expect PCT to exit at that target rate of 20% in Q4, and we do feel there is more opportunities for us to build on it, right? Our teams have done really great job in working through the pricing, working through the productivity.

We are laser focused on driving productivity and network optimization, operational excellence. So I do believe that there is more opportunities to go beyond 20, but right now we are focused on making sure that we exit at the 20% margin rate in Q4.