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

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Michael Leithead: I just had a bit of a follow-up on the raw material basket. Can you just help us with how you think about that evolving broadly over the course of this year? I guess, with 1Q demand being pretty benign or restock volume was down five-ish-percent or so, why do you think input costs aren’t coming down faster? And if China does recover in 2Q and beyond pretty quickly, how do you think about what that does to your raw material cost?

Tim Knavish: So, Mike, I’ll start and let Vince fill in some color. I think there were some actual artificial demands in the second half of ’22 that has maybe delayed some of the basic supply-demand economics, because you’ll recall that for most of ’21 and the first half of ’22, raw material availability was our number one issue and a lot of our coatings peers’ number one issue. So as that availability improves, we all stocked up and got safety stock and, at the same time, demand started to collapse. So if things were kind in — when I say collapse, I mean, particularly on the DIY and eco side, but big driver to the overall raw material change. So, I think a lot of companies, and you’ve seen that in what companies have said, ended the year with more inventory than they would like. So, there was a bit of artificial demand that delayed what would be a normal supply demand curve.

Vince Morales: Yes, Mike, let me just add some color here. So as we enter 2023, again, we’re destocking. We know from a public commentary, a lot of our peers have excess inventory and are destocking. I do think there is this type of war with the supplier base typically Q1 and Q2 are peak volume orders for coatings raw material purchases. I don’t think that’s going to materialize in the same manner this year. So, we’ll have a lower buy — PPG will have a lower by in Q1. We have suppliers in virtually every week or every day for the past couple of weeks, indicating to us to have excess supply to give to us. And so, we’re going to maximize that to the benefit of our shareholders. And we’ll negotiate our Q1 and Q2 pricing accordingly. We do believe, as we said for the last couple of quarters, there’s ample supply in our supply base.

Operator: Our next question comes from Silke Kueck with JPMorgan Chase. Please go ahead.

Silke Kueck: This is Silke for Jeff. I was wondering whether you can discuss your volumes and your price and your U.S. architectural stores. And secondly, I was wondering whether you can talk about what’s happening in the packaging business?

Tim Knavish: Sure. So, the stores pricing, we’ve raised price there multiple times, and we held that price throughout the year. And 2023, it will depend on what happens from an inflation standpoint, but that’s one of the businesses where we moved fairly quickly to keep up with cost inputs. On packaging, we did have strong margin recovery in that business throughout ’22, and we expect that to continue in 2023. We do see some softness there in pockets around the world, driven by — in China, it’s the lockdown. And in Europe, it’s just consumer confidence in beverage spending. So, we have seen some softness in volume, but strong margin recovery. And we also continue to convert to our Innovel Pro BPA-free content material, and we’ve had some nice wins in that beverage space, that will be launched as we move through this year. But overall, at a high level, good margin recovery, some softness in demand around the world.

Operator: Our next question comes from Arun Viswanathan with RBC. Please go ahead, Arun.

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