Andrew Tometich: Yes, I think yes, things have stabilized again back to our portfolio of materials. We work with over 3000 different raw materials. And so compared to where we had been maybe a year or two ago, where there were a significant number of supply chain issues, those have, for the most part, mitigated. There’s always anecdotal situations, but that is not a constraint for us going forward.
Vincent Anderson: All right, that’s good to hear. And then I just wanted to revisit a couple of things that were brought up already. But if I remember correctly, you had launched a fairly robust pilot program for your fluid intelligence system at a select customer or two. I was curious if you would be willing to go into any specific milestones related to that program that you’re looking for in 2024. So if it’s just going to be another learning year or if you have goals to expand the platform or the number of customer trials in 2024?
Andrew Tometich: Yes, that would be the level of detail that we would go to. We’re continuing to build on. I think as I highlighted last year, we had implemented our tools and capabilities within all of our own internal laboratories and operations, and we’d extended that to a group of targeted customers. Within those targeted customers. We’re developing new applications again to cover more of these unit ops that I referenced a few minutes ago, and we’re also extending into additional customers. So we’re going to continue on the journey that we started on this process.
Vincent Anderson: Excellent, thanks. And then just one last quick one again just following up on some of the questions around seasonality. Just looking at the chart in your deck, you called out seasonality again this quarter, but obviously in 2023 it hadn’t been as drastic. Was there anything in the fourth quarter that was maybe offsetting some of that seasonality, whether it was much better than expected share gains or maybe there were some underlying demand improvements that helped kind of smooth things out this year?
Andrew Tometich: Yes. So the Americas kind of had the seasonality that we would have anticipated as well as there was the impact of the UAW situation. APAC was relatively stable. We didn’t see a big adjustment there and typically the fourth quarter is not a big mover with respect to that. EMEA was actually a little bit stronger than we would have expected from a seasonality perspective.
Vincent Anderson: All right, very helpful. Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.
Andrew Tometich: Thanks.
Operator: Our next question is from David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.
David Begleiter: Thank you. Good morning. Andy, talk about demand trends you’ve seen in the first two months of the year and what you’re seeing in your order books for March?
Andrew Tometich: Yes, well, what I kind of indicated was we assume things are going to be relatively stable, not a lot of movements relative to the fourth quarter. EMEA, and of course, all of these numbers are well down versus pre pandemic levels, but EMEA continues to kind of bounce around the bottom, although, as I indicated, fourth quarter was a little bit better from a seasonality perspective than normal. Americas continues to be resilient, and we would expect some seasonality benefit as we’re moving into the New Year off of the fourth quarter. And APAC is relatively consistent. We’ve seen improvement in the back half of the year across APAC, both in metals and metalworking. So we’re hopeful that that trend continues.
David Begleiter: Very good. And back on pricing, excluding the contractual pass-throughs, do you expect underlying pricing to be up in 2024 and if so, how much of that is new pricing versus carryover pricing?
Andrew Tometich: Yes, well, the team has done a great job on really managing our margin improvement initiatives as we move through the last several quarters and balancing customer relationships with that. And primarily, we’re focused on that total cost of ownership and earning the value for what we provide. We, of course, always have to balance against the cost to serve as we’re working with customers on that basis. But we do still have the 25% of our business that’s index based. And given some of the raw material trends in the last half of the year, although now things have stabilized, there could be some minor pressure in 2024 as that rolls through predominantly in the first half. But I think the important message is we expect to maintain or grow our margins as we move through 2024, and we’re committed to earnings growth.
David Begleiter: Great and last thing just on raws. Andy, how much should raws or do you expect raws be down in 2024 versus 2023?
Andrew Tometich: Yes, as I indicated, raws, we’re anticipating going to be relatively stable in 2024. There was a low to mid-single digit rap effect that comes from the decline in the last half of last year, and that impact will be mostly in the first half of this year.
David Begleiter: Thank you.
Andrew Tometich: Thanks.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Arun Viswanathan with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed.
Arun Viswanathan: Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on a pretty strong 2023 there.
Andrew Tometich: Hi, Arun. Thanks.
Arun Viswanathan: Hey, Andy. I wanted to, I guess, get a little bit more of your thoughts on how EBITDA should evolve from here, so the last couple of years you’ve had the benefits of those price increases which appear to be waning and then, but now you do have maybe volume kind of coming back. So when you think about moving into Q1, I think you called for EBITDA growth. Last year if you look at your results, it looks like you did about 45% or 48% of your earnings in Q1 and Q4 and the remainder in Q2, Q3. So are you looking for like a similar split in 2024? And that would kind of imply maybe low 80s on the EBITDA line in Q1 and maybe some growth from there in Q2, Q3, and then Q4 looks closer to Q1? Just want to get a little bit more detail on that.
