Operator: Thank you. Our next question, one second please, comes from the line of Vincent Andrews from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Will Tang: Hey, guys. This is Will Tang on for Vincent. Can you hear me?
Raviv Zoller: Yes.
Will Tang: Okay. Yeah. This is Will Tang on for Vince. Just one quick question, you guys called out an elevated inventory levels at the end of 2022 in industrial products. Was that a comment specific to kind of the flame retardants business or something broadly characteristic across all your end markets there, all your product categories.
Raviv Zoller: Are you talking about our inventory?
Will Tang: Yes. I think all I heard was, elevated inventories at the end of 2022.
Raviv Zoller: Okay. So our inventory levels in recent years have been tracking between 26% to 28% of sales. And we finished the year with 27.1%. In terms of where we see a higher inventory at this point, we see a higher inventory in industrial products, and again, because some of the flame retardants, some of our customers are stocking down, there’s always a balance when you go down on production and reach lower efficiencies versus how much it costs to hold inventory. And in our case, it’s better to not stop production or produce the inventory that we’re sure we can sell. So In industrial products, the level of inventory we have is higher than we would probably like, but it’s not unusual given the circumstances. And our other businesses were pretty much where we need to be in the phosphate specialties, a major supplier had a force majeure situation, so that also caused us to have inventory a little higher than we’d like at the end of the year.
So we have two divisions that have higher inventory at the end of the year than we would have liked. But at the same time, we’re well within our range, which again is 26% to 28%, actually 26% to 28.5% we had in 2018, we’re 27.1% now, so we’re still in a healthy place.
Aviram Lahav: Just to add if I may that we have delivered plans in place to reduce that actively in every place where we have excess inventory, it probably take us anywhere from one to two quarters, maybe a little bit more than that. But we’ll get it back in line. I think the typical phenomena that stems from what happened in 2022 and the sharp differences that we are seeing these days.
Will Tang: Got you. And then I guess just a quick follow-up, if I may. Going back to an earlier question on your value over buying strategy there, buying down 30% industrial products. Is that what’s characteristic of kind of, I guess, the sell through of the entire bromine market? Or is there somebody there who’s kind of taking share from you guys on the back half?
Raviv Zoller: Our position in the market is that, we have no problem increasing market share for one, two, but the price we pay is the price level. So we try to be disciplined about the way we make decisions And in some of the products, there’s very, very healthy demand. So I mentioned the clear brine fluids. There’s even some products that usually we don’t sell very well that are suddenly a hit like we have a product that treats mercury emissions coming from coal. That’s a product that actually was not very successful in recent years given that coal was almost outlawed. But now given the energy crisis suddenly, there’s new demand. There’s always some business that’s doing well. And fundamentally, the most significant influencer in the foreseeable future is the electric vehicle industry, and we’re very confident of the positive trajectory there.
