PPG Industries, Inc. (NYSE:PPG) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Timothy Knavish: Yes. So Ryan, the question on pricing, again, we’ll continue to execute as we always have in Refinish as I described. But all across performance, we deliver a value proposition that’s far beyond the tin of paint. And that’s what enables us to continue to offset things like wage inflation, which are higher than we expected. Things that — offset things like logistics expenses, which are higher than we expected. And that’s because we typically supply very advanced technologies in our own products, but then additional services and tools to help the customer beyond what’s inside the can of paint. So we expect to get price in Refinish, you’ll see incremental price in Aerospace. We expect it in parts of PMC, where we have some really good sustainable solutions for our customers that they’re very interested in. And so, we really expected to see almost across the whole portfolio of Performance Coatings.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Michael Leithead with Barclays. Your line is open.

Michael Leithead : Great. Thanks. Good morning, guys. Question for Vince on raws and inventory. Can you just talk about where you guys are relative to more normalized raw material buying patterns? It looks like you maybe still have a few extra days of inventory. And then I appreciate you don’t give free cash flow guidance. But just given your full year assumptions of raws down low to mid-singles, volume up for the full year. I guess broadly, should we still expect working capital to be a source of cash this year? Thanks.

Vincent Morales: Yes. I’ll take the end of that, Michael, because our assumption is we’re going to continue to work down. We have excess inventory relative to our history. We’re going to continue to work that down, especially as we’re in this peak production season that Tim alluded to earlier. We’re probably carrying four to five days of excess inventory versus history. All of that’s in raw materials. . And we’ve made progress. We were at 10 days at 1 point last year. So we’re about halfway through our journey. We hope to take another bite out of that in Q2, a sizable bite in Q2. And then for the balance of the year, continue to be prudent in our purchases and that should generate a positive working capital on a year-over-year basis — working capital impact on a year-over-year basis on free cash flow.

In terms of our purchases, as I said, the opening — or as Tim said in the opening remarks, most of our suppliers have excess supply, this is a market that is advantage for us, and we’ll continue to push that. But again, our intention is to work down raw materials in concert with the peak season.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Laurent Favre from BNP Paribas. Your line is open.

Laurent Favre: Yes. Good morning. I had a question on China. I think you talked about growth in Q1. But presumably, this was still a quarter impacted by COVID. So I was wondering, when you look into Q2, what kind of momentum are you seeing there on the ground? Thank you.

Timothy Knavish: Hi, Laurent. Thanks. Sure, there was an impact — some impact on COVID. But Automotive was a big driver. We expect that to continue. We’re expecting double digit, high single-digit kind of growth again in Q2 from automotive. Industrial Coatings grew in China for us and we expect that to continue. Refinish, grew in China and we expect that to continue. So it’s really — we’ve been maybe more confident than others on China for the last several quarters and that is actually playing out as we expected. So I don’t think you’re going to see overnight going back to the growth rates of five to 10 years ago, but we remain confident in continuous growth in China.

Vincent Morales: Yes. And just a couple of other data points. Our Aerospace business is doing well there. The Chinese New Year brought about record travel in the country. And again, industrial activity there for our set of products and our set of businesses, we expect to remain strong.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Arun Viswanathan with RBC. Your line is open.

Arun Viswanathan: Great. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to go back to the volume outlook. So it looks like you’re guiding organic sales to be up low single digits in the second quarter and for the full year as well. So if you look at that second quarter number, it looks like low single digits, you can have some targeted price initiatives. So should we assume kind of flat volumes for Q2? And then similarly for the full year, how are you thinking about kind of consolidated volume growth? I know you’ve given out some guidance by segment as well on the slides. But it would look like that you need a kind of ramp to about the low to mid-single digits on volumes in the back half. Am I reading that correctly? Or yes, maybe you can just clarify how you’re thinking about volumes, how they should evolve through the year.

Timothy Knavish: Yes. Thanks, Arun. It’s Tim. You’re reading the second half, I think, correctly. But Q2, one adjustment, you said price up, volume flat. We’re actually expecting more price flat volume up. Some of that because of what Vince talked about earlier, we still have a little bit of carryover of price negativity from that European energy cost pricing from last year. So Q2 price flat volume up and the rest of the year, I think you described it well is that we’ll see volume growth momentum moving through Q3 and Q4.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Josh Spector with UBS. Your line is open.

Joshua Spector: Yes. Hi, good morning. I wonder if you could just talk about Americas Architectural a little bit more. So excluding the loaded impact, it seems like your volumes are up slightly curious just how much of that is COMEX continuing to grow versus what you’re seeing in the U.S.? And if you could help us kind of delineate in the U.S., what’s going on with Pro and DIY from a volume perspective in the first half?