Huntsman Corporation (NYSE:HUN) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Huntsman Corporation (NYSE:HUN) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 22, 2024
Huntsman Corporation isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Greetings. Welcome to the Huntsman Corporation's Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'll now turn the conference over to Ivan Marcuse, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Mr. Marcuse, you may now begin.
Ivan Marcuse : Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Huntsman's fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. Joining us on the call today are Peter Huntsman, Chairman and CEO and President; and Phil Lister, Executive Vice President and CFO. Yesterday, on February 21, 2024. After the U.S. equity markets closed, we released our earnings for the fourth quarter of 2023 via press release and posted to our website, huntsman.com. We also posted a set of slides and detailed commentary discussing the fourth quarter of 2023 on our website. Peter Huntsman will provide some opening comments shortly, and we will then move into the question-and-answer session for the remainder of the call. During this call, let me remind you that we may make statements about our projections and expectations for the future.
All such statements are forward-looking statements involve they reflect our current expectations they involve risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance. You should review our filings with the SEC filings for more information regarding the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these projected and expectations. We do not plan on publicly updating or revising any forward-looking statements during the quarter. We will also refer to non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income or loss and free cash flow. You can find reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings release, which has been posted to our website, huntsman.com.
I'll now turn the call over to Peter Huntsman, our Chairman, CEO and President.
Peter Huntsman : Ivan, thank you very much. Thank you for joining us this morning. Last evening, we released our prepared remarks for the fourth quarter 2023 results. Before opening the call to questions, I'd like to take a few minutes and share with you our latest plans and views as we enter the second half of the first quarter. At the outset, I remind you that we have complete financial results for the month of January, but still have two more months until we know the full results of the first quarter. I'm also still a bit haunted by the ghost of a year ago when many of you and most companies were projecting 2023 to have a weak beginning but a very strong second half, second half proved to be nothing short of a disaster. Let me begin by sharing with you our five main goals for this year.
First, we will be -- this will be a year wherein we will recover some lost sales from 2023. A year ago, we showed strong pricing discipline early in the year and in many cases, we held the line and kept pricing from falling faster than they otherwise would have. In some cases, we lost business competition who are pushing volume over value. Going forward, we will be pushing much needed price increases in most of our product ranges, but we will also be negotiating to get back some of that lost volume. Our second priority would be to improve our free cash flow generation. This will be at the top of our incentive pay targets for 2024. We will do this through a continued focus on working capital controlling both indirect and direct costs and moving more volume and higher prices.
Our third priority is to maintain discipline in our cost structure. We will complete our previously announced cost reduction programs in each of our divisions and our corporate functions. We will also be focused on offsetting projected 3% to 4% inflation increases. Our fourth priority will be to continue as we have for the past several years, assessing our portfolio on an ongoing basis to ensure that we are the best owners for the businesses and assets that we have. We will continue to look for M&A opportunities to expand our more differentiated downstream businesses. Lastly and most importantly, we will invest to continue improving our environmental and safety stewardship and our operating reliability. This focus on managed risk will also apply to our investment-grade balance sheet.
Our Board of Directors remains committed to returning cash and value to our shareholders. To this end, we will be raising our dividend by 5% to share to $0.25 a quarter. While we do not plan to buy back any shares in the first quarter, we look forward to restarting our buyback program as soon as market conditions warrant. As I said at the beginning, it is still too early in the quarter to make bold predictions. However, the order patterns that I'm seeing in most areas of the world tells me that in most of our divisions, we have seen the end of a very long period of inventory drawdowns and prices and volumes look to be gradually improving. With the restarting of China's economy post New Year celebrations, I feel more optimistic than I did at year-end and see more proverbial green shoes than I have over the past 12 to 18 months.
We have a lot of recovery before us, but I believe we're taking the right steps in the right direction. Thank you very much. And with that, operator, why don't we open the line up for any questions.
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