Dan Rizzo: Okay. And then my other question, you mentioned electric vehicles as a tailwind, but I was wondering if it’s just like EV or if it’s EV and hybrid or is there, I mean, is there a difference between the two, because doing from reading that hybrid cells are now outpacing EV cells, I was wondering if that matters to you guys at all?
Andy Tometich: Yeah. It’s a great question. Just dealing with pure EV, it’s pretty nascent at the moment, but it’s evolving pretty quickly with a lot of complexities. And as customers have more complexities, that’s better for us, because we can help them by adding value and solving some of their challenges, and whether that’s new materials, new designs, new processes, and we’re investing with them to be in the right position in this space. Then when you think about hybrid, there’s the opportunities not only with the electric side, but also with the standard ICE engine, where we already help customers pretty significantly. So we’re going to continue to stay partnered with them, customer intimate, help them meet their challenges regardless of the powertrain that they’re planning to put into their vehicles.
Dan Rizzo: Thank you very much.
Andy Tometich: Thanks.
Operator: Our last question comes from the line of Arun Viswanathan with RBC. Please just use your question.
Arun Viswanathan: Sorry about that. I was on mute. Yeah. So looking at the volume trend…
Andy Tometich: Okay.
Arun Viswanathan: … it looks like you’ve kind of stayed a little bit kind of consistent here and flattish. Maybe you can just kind of go through some of your end markets, specifically kind of automotive and obviously metal and metal build — working, maybe aluminum as well. Maybe what you’re seeing in some of those end markets, it seems like things are kind of stable, but maybe a little bit of slowing, especially given the rate environment? Thanks.
Andy Tometich: Yeah. Sure. So I would like to highlight, even beyond what’s going on in the markets, we’re continuing to find new opportunities with customers and we continue to do that. But, yeah, markets in general are clearly soft, especially when you compare back to the 2019 and earlier levels really across. And when you think about our primary metals, we’ve seen some improvement, especially as we move through 2023. Still a lot of room to go, though, to get back to the previous levels. And then in metal working, which has more end markets, a little bit of a mixed bag. So, there’s been some challenges in the industrial, some of the industrial applications and packaging container. Whereas we’ve continued, it’s not as fast as we’d like to see it, but we’ve seen some improvements in automotive and in aerospace and we believe that the demand opportunities are still there.
So we’re optimistic that those will start to balance out as we move forward. We’ve seen some positive signs, but I wouldn’t call them trends yet. And that leaves us a little bit cautiously optimistic about the back half on what the underlying markets can do for us, but we’re going to control what we can control and we’re very focused on new business wins, regardless of what those end markets are doing.
Arun Viswanathan: Great. Thanks for that. And then just as a follow-up, maybe you can just give us some color on the M&A environment. I know that may be an area of focus, maybe in technology or geography. So how are you thinking about some of the opportunities that you’re seeing there? Thanks.
Andy Tometich: Yeah. Sure. Yeah. And again, I mean, this is a key component of our capital allocation strategy to add shareholder value. We know when we take advantage of our customer intimate model and build growth, we add value for our shareholders and M&A is a key part of that. We’ve got a range of sizes of deals, types of deals and geographies for each of them. There’s a lot of opportunities in our pipeline. We’re moving forward. We just executed on one last quarter that we talked about with IKB, which we just gave a little bit of an update. And they’re all focused on how we take advantage of our customer intimate model. And typically there’s one or more of the three angles we always look for, channel to market, geographic player, technology.
And as I mentioned last quarter, the IKB acquisition checked all three of those boxes for us. We got a great, a really improved balance sheet and we continue to generate cash. So we’ll continue to evaluate the options that are available. We’ll keep moving those forward and we believe we’ll continue to add shareholder value by utilizing inorganic growth as part of our capital allocation.
Arun Viswanathan: Thanks a lot.
Andy Tometich: Thank you.
Shane Hostetter: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. At this time, we’ve reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I’ll turn the floor back to Andy Tometich for closing remarks.
Andy Tometich: Yeah. Thanks very much. We really appreciate the continued interest in Quaker Houghton and ask you to please reach out to Jeff if you have any additional follow-up questions. Thanks and have a great day.
Operator: This will conclude today’s conference. We disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
