PPG Industries, Inc. (NYSE:PPG) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Tim Knavish: Yeah, Arun. Great question, and one we talk about a lot. And I’ll first qualify it by saying it’s still pretty early given all the macro stuff that’s happening around the world to really nail in our 2024 volume assumptions. But I will tell you that I’m optimistic based on a few things. We’ve talked a lot about auto and aerospace and Mexico and refinish and we fully expect those businesses to continue to perform. In addition to that, I’ve talked about a few businesses that we think are bouncing off the bottom and they’re not small businesses for us. So eventually, bouncing off the bottom will turn to positive. China, we have a really strong presence in China. China ramp up in recovery been slower than expected. But if you think about that for 2024, that’s a positive, particularly with any government stimulus.

And the last one I would point out is Europe. And while Europe volume has been very muted, for the first half of the year, we still printed all-time record earnings in Q1, all-time record earnings in Q2. So the team has done a great job of positioning from both a margin and cost base standpoint. So any incremental uptick in volume across any of those businesses in Europe will be a real positive for us. So, still a little early. We’ll talk more about that in the next earnings call, but there are a lot of indicators that could point to positive volume for us for 2024.

Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I turn the call back over to John Bruno.

John Bruno: Thank you, Carla. This ends our second quarter earnings call. We appreciate everybody’s interest and confidence in PPG. Have a good day.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.