Olin Corporation (NYSE:OLN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Scott Sutton : I mean — this is Scott, Jeff. I mean in general, it’s been fairly flat. But it’s not impossible that you see some product lines like caustic drift-off in the future. But again, remember, we make value out of imbalances between the 2 sides of the ECU. So when you see that drifting, it’s likely because of value coming somewhere else. We won’t go down, I don’t know. It almost doesn’t matter whether it goes up or down, right? We have a position to take in either case. In fact, I would sort of remind everybody that we actually delivered a higher level of quarterly EBITDA in our chlor alkali business, when caustic pricing was much lower than it is today.

Jeffrey Zekauskas : And secondly, Scott, can you remind me when do the contracts with Dow expire? Is the beginning of ’25 or the end of ’25 and is that a big event for the company?

Scott Sutton : Yes. Jeff, we really weren’t going to comment on any specific customer or supplier arrangements.

Jeffrey Zekauskas : Okay. Well, then I’ll ask a different question. With Winchester, is the oversupply in ammunition because demand was weaker than expected or because the competition just simply ramp up their volumes.

Scott Sutton : Yes. Brett, do you want to jump in?

Brett Flaugher: We did see in the second half of the year, some lower demand, but yet much higher than what our historical outlook or preview has been. As I mentioned in my opening comments, we were actually shipping more to our customers than they were selling as we were putting — filling up a pipeline. When that pipeline got full, we decided to pull back, reduce our run rate and not oversupply the market. As far as others, you’d have to take a look at what they’re saying about their business. But as far as we’re concerned, making those adjustments in the market going forward were necessary to preserve value..

Operator: Our next question will come from Mike Leithead with Barclays.

Mike Leithead: First question, can you just talk through your full year EBITDA guidance framework? It looks like we can basically annualize 1Q levels to get to the midpoint. So is that roughly what you’re assuming that first quarter conditions hold for the year? Just flesh out how you’re thinking about that.

Scott Sutton : Yes. No, I mean I would say that we’re expecting slightly lower performance in the early part of 2023. And that’s the way we’ve called it out for our chemicals business, a little bit better in Winchester. Look, I think when you look at a 12-month basis, that’s our target. I would say that we really reserve the right to take any actions that we need to, to make sure that we keep that whole 12-month trough as high as possible. And that may mean that we need to have one quarter that’s not as good as the one that we just credit. I don’t know when that quarter might come, but it certainly could be in the next 12 months.

Mike Leithead: Got it. Makes sense. And then second for Todd, just 2 quick ones on cash flow. First, I think in the prepared remarks, it sounds like there’s about $150 million or so of abnormal cash uses this year. Is that correct? And then second, on the $1 billion of free cash, I know it can be difficult to predict how or when some of these JV opportunities come through. But just how much of that $1 billion would you expect gets returned to shareholders this year?

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