PPG Industries, Inc. (NYSE:PPG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Tim Knavish: Yes. So, Jaideep, I’ll take it and then Vic, you can jump in. On pricing, you got to remember that the pricing that we’ve achieved over the last couple of years was to offset what’s happened in inflation in the last couple of years. And our customers have visibility to what’s happened to our net margins. And so, they have optics on where we are on a margin recovery standpoint and they also know when we have these discussions with them that we’re not back to peak margins. And so it’s not like we’re going, in most cases, above and beyond that. So, as we move forward, we’ll continue to be competitive, and we’ll continue to price to offset non-raw material inflation.

Vince Morales: Before Tim answers the protective question, Jaideep, I think we have discussions with our customers and almost every business. And they want us to be a healthy supplier that continues to innovate and they understand that and again, get paid a fair price for innovative technology that typically helps them. And we’re coming into a period of time, given the inflation and base and salary where our customers really value functional attributes of our coatings products. And again, they’re pushing us — not so much on products, they’re pushing us to help them with their productivity right now, which is a much bigger cost pull for them, cost opportunity for them than the price on coatings. So again, we’re in a lot of discussions with our customers about how to improve their productivity, which again is a key attribute for them.

Tim Knavish: Yes. On your protective question, our protective and marine business actually had a very strong year last year. Even though there was volume degradation in Q4, that volume degradation was China because whether its marine new builds or large petrochemical protective projects, a lot of those are done in China. So, that will — some of that will follow the China closing and then reopening curve. But beyond that, a couple of things are happening in protective. There is significant investment in LNG, all aspects of LNG, and that’s that area uses a lot of our advantaged protective products. There’s an infrastructure investment certainly coming in the U.S. and other countries that leads to future growth for the protective business.

And then, finally, on a PPG-specific protective opportunity, we had a fantastic distribution network in Mexico, over 5,000 store locations that has historically been very heavily architectural and deco focused. Well, we’re now leveraging more and more of that network to grow our protective business, which is how we’re successful in that business in other countries, like the U.S. and Canada. So, that’s a really great growth opportunity in the protective area that differentiates PPG.

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

John Bruno: Thank you, Emily. We appreciate your interest in PPG. This concludes our fourth quarter earnings call. Have a good day.

Operator: Thank you everyone for joining us today. This concludes our conference call. You may now disconnect.

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