LyondellBasell Industries N.V. (NYSE:LYB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley.

Vincent Andrews: Shifting back to polyethylene. Could you give us what you anticipate a reasonable range of outcomes is for Chinese polyethylene demand growth during 2023? And how much of that you think will need to be sourced from the ex-China market? And if you also had a view on what their demand growth actually turned out to be in 2022, that would be helpful.

Peter Vanacker: Yes. Thank you, Vincent. Ken is already close to that. So…

Kenneth Lane : Yes, we are very close to that. Vincent, thank you for the question. Look, our view for the last 2 years is the demand for polyethylene in China has been relatively flat. So when you talk about a range of outcomes for 2023, if you look historically, after 2 years like that, you would expect to see a significant snapback in growth, but it doesn’t mean that that’s a guarantee. So you could see anything from flat to plus 8%. It’s very hard to call. That’s why that’s one of the markets that we watch very closely just because it is largely the price that are in the market. And will drive the absorption of all the new capacity that has come on. But we’ll watch it closely and hope to see some more signs of recovery in the near future and more to come.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Aleksey Yefremov with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Aleksey Yefremov: I have a long-winded question. So U.S. ethylene and polyethylene capacity has — there’s a cost advantage. And there’s long-standing thesis that due to cost advantage, U.S. can export to anywhere in the world almost as much as necessary. It’s not what’s happening right now, right? You and the rest of the industry has lower capacity utilization. So why is there not an increase in export? Is it not economical or other logistical limitations that don’t allow it? And could this change as we go through 2023 such that your utilization rates go up due to higher exports and there’s no imbalance in the domestic market as a result?

Kenneth Lane : Alex, this is Ken. I’ll take that question. We’ve — during the quarter, we actually did see both as an industry but in LyondellBasell as well an increase in exports. Some of that was related to some improvement in demand overseas, some less imports coming into some of the closer markets like South America from other regions. But also the relief of some of those logistics constraints that we were dealing with in the first 3 quarters of the year, it really started to free up in the fourth quarter. So I think that you’re going to start to see that continue in the first quarter and we’ll get back to a more normal level of exports for 2023.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Michael Sison with Wells Fargo.

Unidentified Analyst: This is Richard on for Mike. Just wanted to touch on the value enhancement program. You’ve identified $150 million in cost savings for 2023. I know we’re probably going to get more details on the call Markets Day. But any details early on in terms of what you’ve able to identify where are the buckets of savings are coming from? And then also just the cadence of the savings through this year would be great.