Eastman Chemical Company (NYSE:EMN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mark Costa: From a Q2 point of view, the end market-wise, I’d say — from an end market growth point of view, I don’t think much has changed in our view across all of our end markets. We haven’t seen different end markets get worse or better. Auto is strong. Obviously, discretionary markets are under pressure. The personal care, water treatment, those kind of markets, are off 3% to 5% as all those downstream customers of ours that you can see in the fast-moving goods and everything else reporting that they’re focusing on pricing discipline, and as a result, having a little bit less volume. I don’t think anything that’s changed really. It’s been more of — it’s all about inventory management. It’s the entire story for some of the negative surprises like medical packaging and ag in the second quarter, and destocking dragging out into the back half of the year, right?

I just think that the extremity of COVID and then the following stimulus and the supply chain crisis has just led to a lot more inventory being built throughout the world than I think any of us really understood. And it’s taking, obviously, a lot longer to pull it down, especially when demand is soft to some degree in every market.

Greg Riddle: Okay. I believe that was our last question. So thanks very much for your interest in Eastman and for joining us this morning. I hope everybody has a great day.

Operator: This concludes today’s call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.