Albert Chao: Yeah. I think as I said earlier, China’s [ex] (ph) PVC, 80% is on the carbide based, it’s not welcomed maybe on South Asia maybe or South Asia, but you don’t have carbide PVC going to Europe or go into North America. So — and there’s a moratorium on new build. So really, it’s existing demand, existing capacity, that’s the problem in China as Chinese infrastructure and residential improves, then the demand PVC will improve. But we’ve seen last year, Chinese PVC exports, as I said, to South Asia and South Asia. But we are seeing a big slowdown because the Chinese government are trying to really reduce carbon emissions and pollutions and the double control from GDP — carbon emissions per GDP by cities and province are really — people are watching carefully. And so we don’t expect the Chinese PVC be flooding the market. And then also, still a high cost. Energy is still higher cost in the US.
Hassan Ahmed: Fair enough. And since I have you, one last one, if I could squeeze it in. Just you talked about sort of lower margins, Q3 to Q4, primarily on sort of higher export demand in PVC and caustic. And obviously, that coincided with all the sort of shipping related cost escalation that had happened on the back of the Red Sea. I mean, did that play a material role in some of the margin squeeze that you guys saw in those two product areas in particular?
Albert Chao: You’re absolutely right. The shipping freight rates, we heard increased by $200 to $300 a ton. That could be even higher. And also delayed route arrival. It’s really impacted the global trade. And since we’re talking about Asia exports to Europe and some to the US, it has stopped or slowed down a lot of that. And I think that helped also supporting price increase as we said in our remarks, going up.
Hassan Ahmed: Very helpful, Albert. Thank you so much.
Albert Chao: You’re welcome.
Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Salvator Tiano from Bank of America. Your question please.
Salvator Tiano: Just wanted to check, essentially, you’re pretty much saying that your HIP guidance, about 20% EBITDA margin, it’s contingent on the $0.05 per pound PVC price increase. So I’m wondering, if that doesn’t go through or if price overall for the year don’t increase as much, how much would that benefit HIP earnings on the expense of PEM earnings?
Steve Bender: So as I indicated, I think that the guidance that we provided is reflective of our outlook today. Certainly, if we don’t see that strength in PVC that raised that price, we haven’t seen reductions in building products prices at the end of the year. You saw that they were relatively flat. So the contribution, really, to the HIP side of the business should continue to be constructive. Obviously, we’re more heavily weighted on the PVC side. So obviously, while there is benefit of having lower input costs, we have more heavily weighted volume in PVC than we do in the building products using that PVC. So it would be more constructive to get that price nomination of PVC accrued for the — when you think of the whole of Westlake.
Salvator Tiano: Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much.
Steve Bender: Welcome.
Operator: Thank you. This does conclude the question-and-answer session of today’s program. I’d like to hand the program back to Jeff for any further remarks.
Jeff Holy: Thank you. Thanks again for participating in today’s call. We hope you’ll join us again for our next conference call to discuss our first quarter 2024 results.
Operator: Thank you for participating in today’s Westlake Corporation Fourth Quarter and Full Year Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this call will be available for replay beginning two hours after the call has ended. The replay can be accessed via Westlake. Goodbye.
