Minerals Technologies Inc. (NYSE:MTX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Doug Dietrich: Yes, Mike, let me take that one. I think there’s a piece of it that was absolutely known. It’s been volatile all year, energy in Europe and Turkey, in particular, it’s gone up almost 200% over what we experienced at the beginning of the year and about three different government mandated jumps. That latest one happened kind of late in September. We did have that in our forecast and we had some pricing adjustments to cover it. I would say the bigger surprise is some of the freight, the shipping costs that were more spot based for us that kind of increased significantly as a result of that as well. I’m not going to say though that I’d look back in hindsight 2020, we probably could have been a lot faster with our pricing increases at least in that business.

We probably could have been more aggressive. And so, I think when we look back on the same, what did we see, what didn’t we see, I think part of it was known and we made some pricing adjustments, part of it was surprise to us. We probably should have been quicker and more aggressive on our pricing adjustments in the fourth quarter. Those adjustments have been made. We’re moving through the first quarter. We have some catch up to do. But again, as Erik mentioned, we have 90-day kind of notification periods. And so being very aggressive and very timely with our going-forward pricing is where we are now. So, I’d say that’s the hindsight 2020 kind of look. We probably could have been a little bit faster on that pricing.

Mike Harrison: All right. And I guess just given the significance of the shortfall relative to the $1.20 in EPS that you guys were guiding in the quarter, did you consider making a preannouncement to call out these unexpected headwinds that you were seeing? Or, I guess, help us understand the thought process there?

Doug Dietrich: Yes, I guess, look, we — as we evaluated, a lot of these things continued through December. And let me start with — we don’t see anything really structural changing in our markets. The business fundamentals that we have, the operations, our cost positions, there’s not a lot of real mark, other than, I guess, China, but that’s kind of well known, market positions are relatively stable in what we saw in the third quarter. December was a very challenging time for the company in terms of the things we were dealing with in our plants in the United States and in China. And so, a lot of them have been kind of late in the month. I guess, we felt that these acute issues that we don’t see repeating were in the quarter and isolated that quarter and not something that was of a structural nature or a significant change to our go-forward forecast from a market perspective or kind of our operations perspective. I think that was our thought process, Mike.

Mike Harrison: All right. And then, a couple of quick ones on the PCC business. First of all, in terms of the new Asia satellite ramp ups, it’s good to see that flowing in. Can you give us maybe an update on how much additional volume has come on as of the end of the year? And maybe how much additional volume is still to come?

Doug Dietrich: Sure. Let me pass that to D.J., who can take you through that.

D.J. Monagle: Yes. Hi, Mike. So, right as we closed the quarter, we brought two new satellites on that are roughly 70,000 tons of PCC business. And then, going into through the course of next year, we’ve got, mostly in the second half, several satellites coming on. Two of those are PCC satellites, little over 100,000 tons there. And then, we had announced some time ago, and Doug had highlighted it, the penetration into GCC and that is a couple hundred thousand tons as well. So, as we come out of next year, you’ll see something in the neighborhood of 400,000 tons, that sort of a run rate going forward.

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