Olin Corporation (NYSE:OLN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Duffy Fischer: Fair enough. And then you often talk about managing one side or the other of the ECU. As you look out over the next year or so, which side do you think you’re going to have to work hardest on to manage?

Scott Sutton: Well, we work both sides of course, but I will say that right now you see the rate of change of caustic pricing, and so we’re just not participating in that market as much. In other words, we’re setting our whole participation according to that dynamic. And doing that, of course, slows that rate of decline. And on the other side of the ECU, it certainly enhances where it’s already a little bit tighter. So that’s our positioning now. We’ll stay in that positioning for a little while. I expect it to change. Maybe it’ll change twice over the next year.

Duffy Fischer: Great. Thank you guys.

Scott Sutton: Yes.

Operator: Thank you. And the next question comes from Arun Viswanathan of RBC Capital Markets.

Arun Viswanathan: Hey, thanks for taking my question. I had a question about the PCI and your parlay volume. So your parlay volumes looks like they hit a high point in the second quarter as a percent of your sales. And yet you’re still able to maintain the PCI and the high 250s [ph]. So is that really the swing wheel you have – the flywheel you have to maintain that PCI is the parlay volumes. So when the market comes back and your utilization rates go higher and volume you can service more of that volume from your own production, or how should we think about how the parlay volumes would evolve in order to keep the PCI constant and maybe as your profitability improves?

Scott Sutton: Well, I would maybe start with, let me redefine a little bit, what these parlay volumes are. So when we’re faced with weak market conditions, we may very well reduce our production as we have. It doesn’t mean that we back out of the market according to that same production volume decrease. We go out into the market and buy volumes out of the market to satisfy that demand that we have. And when I said earlier, we’ve been having to run the model deeper, this is evidence that we’re having to run the market. I mean, run the model a lot deeper and go out and buy more volumes. Part of this volume ride is working through our Blue Water Alliance joint venture, which is set up to go out and manage global liquidity as well. So all of those activities are just one contributing factor to keeping our profit contribution index up over time.

Arun Viswanathan: And then if I could just ask a follow-up. So on the potential peak EBITDA of $3 billion maybe if you annualize that it would be somewhere in the range of 700 or so for Q1 and Q4 and maybe 800 to 900 for Q2, Q3, could you potentially break down that by segment? And especially given some of the changes you’ve made on the footprint for epoxy and CAV, what are those potentially contributing per quarter now under the new structure? Thanks.

Scott Sutton: Yes, I would say if epoxy is not going to be the contributor that it was in recent history where we were running $700 million plus annual EBITDA included in that $3 billion is not epoxy at that level. It’s somewhere between today and that level. So what is in there is a strong performance from Chlor Alkali. As you know, the outlook on structure looks good, demand outpaces supply is very likely that in fact, caustic growth may outpace chlorine growth due to all the things that are going on with minerals and batteries and everything else. And that imbalance helps us in the future. So in the chemical side, it’s much more heavily weighted toward Chlor Alkali and in the – and Winchester is a contributor to that as well.