DuPont de Nemours, Inc. (NYSE:DD) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Bhavesh Lodaya: You highlighted cost control measures initiated during the fourth quarter and those clearly helped from the margin perspective. Is there a way to quantify the benefit? And do you need to do more of these in 2023, or maybe what’s built into your guide around these?

Lori Koch: Yes. So, we took costs out in the fourth quarter. We opened a restructuring program. And under the restructuring program, we took about a $60 million charge. And a lot of that was to get after the stranded costs that we saw coming out of the completion of the M&M divestiture, and there also were some actions in the business is able to drive productivity. So, we have got further room under the restructuring program if we would need it to be able to continue to drive margin and the decremental margin that we target. As of now, there is really nothing planned or baked into the guide incrementally, but we have the flexibility as we need to.

Bhavesh Lodaya: Got it. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Mike Sison from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Mike Sison: Hey. Good morning guys. Nice end of the quarter. Nice end of the year. In terms of your outlook for construction, I mean are you hearing from your customers now that their backlogs are really weak at the end of the second half, or is it just more planning for difficult environment that with high interest rates and such?

Ed Breen: Yes. It’s just the planning at this point. And by the way, not to get overly optimistic, I heard a couple of homebuilders during this last quarter, actually reported numbers that were kind of nicely better than were expected with decent backlog, actually. So, I think it’s mixed out there. I think certain regions of the country, if you look at the detail, are doing better, in construction, some of the Southeast and Southwest areas. But having said that, again, we are also in a deleveraging mode here right now. And remember, some of our construction materials go into big box for do-it-yourself stuff and there is clearly destocking going on there. So, that part of it will end. But we have just planned look with interest rates where they are at the macro on the shelter business right now, just assume the whole year stays at about the level it’s at. And Lori mentioned the percentages. So, I think it’s just prudent planning on our part.

Mike Sison: Got it. And then for E&I, it does seem like you need some volume growth in the second half to hit the midpoint. How much of that is from new products and some of your innovation that you have done and maybe wins on new nodes and memory?

Ed Breen: Well, let me just give you, overall, our new products are €“ that have been launched in the last few years or like 30% of our sales. So, we track that very, very closely. We are constantly bringing out new versions, I would say, of our technology all the time. And that’s what keeps us ahead of the pack on, for instance, the advanced nodes in semi. And as €“ so it’s constantly happened. But I wouldn’t say that it’s not going to have a material effect on where our revenue ends up. That’s just a month-by-month that happens.

Lori Koch: Yes. I think I mean back to the outperformance that we highlighted. So, currently the full year MSI expectations are in the down mid-single digit range, obviously vary dramatically by the quarters with the first quarter starting at it, down kind of low-double digits. But our expectations opposite that full year down low-single digit MSI number or down mid-single digit MSI number would be to be down low-single digits. So, we would still expect that outperformance by the innovation engine that we have that allows us to be able to be more exposed to the high-end nodes and continuing to build relationships with those customers.

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