Earnings Labs

Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. (AXTA)

Q3 2018 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 25, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Axalta Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Today’s call is being recorded, and replay will be available through November 1. Those listening after today’s call should please take note that the information provided in the recording will not be updated, and therefore, may no longer be current. I would now like to turn the call over to Chris Mecray for few introductory remarks. Chris, please go ahead, sir.

Chris Mecray

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live

Thank you, and good morning. This is Chris Mecray, VP of Investor Relations. We your continued interest in Axalta, and welcome you to our third quarter 2018 financial results conference call. Joining us today are Charlie Shaver, Chairman; Robert Bryant, Interim CEO; as well as Sean Lannon, Interim CFO. This morning we released our quarterly financial results and posted a slide presentation in the Investor Relations section of our website at axalta.com, which we’ll be referencing during this call. Both our prepared remarks and discussion today may contain forward-looking statements reflecting the company’s current view of future events and their potential effect on Axalta’s operating and financial performance. These statements involve uncertainties and risk and actual results may differ materially from those forward-looking statements. Please note that the company is under no obligation to provide updates to these forward-looking statements. This presentation also contains various non-GAAP financial measures. In the appendix, we’ve included a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. For additional information regarding forward-looking statements are not GAAP financial measures, please refer to our filings with the SEC. I would now turn the call over to Charlie.

Charlie Shaver

Analyst

Good morning, everyone. I’d like to begin our call this morning with a few brief comments, and then I’ll turn it over to Robert. Clearly with the announced CEO transition earlier this month and stock market volatility in the coatings group immediately following, it’s understandable that some of you might have questions relating to these topics. I don’t have anything specific to add to what was stated on the October 8th press release regarding Mr. Hahn’s departure from Axalta as you can likely appreciate, but the board took swift action on the matter, and I’m glad it was addressed efficiently, which was in the best interest of Axalta. As we look forward, I’d simply like to say that both the board and I have great confidence in Robert as a leader, and we’re really pleased that he agreed to step into the interim CEO role. Having worked with Robert for the past six years, I’m certain that he has a qualifications, acumen and skill-set to ably take on the role and be very effective leader for Axalta. He clearly has the support of management team, and I know that many of you have also provided a highly supportive feedback, which we all appreciate. Regarding next steps, the board is undertaking appropriate deliberation in accordance with good governance principles to ensure that we make the correct decision regarding a permanent CEO position. We intend to close this process without undue delay, and we thank you for patience in the meantime. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Robert.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is live

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today as we review our third quarter financial and operating performance and provide an update on our 2018 full year outlook. Before we begin, I’d like to note that I’m excited and very proud to take the helm as Axalta’s interim CEO. Having served as Axalta’s CFO for nearly six years and given my background in both financial and operating roles, I feel very well prepared for this job. I’m honored to serve Axalta and our shareholders, and I’m very excited to continue the path of value creation that we pursued since we carved out and stood up this business in 2013. While clearly subject to a board decision on my interim title, I look forward over time to adding focus and energy to initiatives that I believe can accelerate Axalta’s path to value creation. We have a strong strategy in place that guides our operating execution that we have implemented for some time now. That said, I see more to be done, and I anticipate sharing more of this on this topic in our key priorities and future communications, beginning with our 2019 outlook call expected to be held in mid-December. I look forward to our ongoing dialogue and updating you on our progress over time. Regarding Axalta’s third quarter performance, our results reflect solid operating execution and exceeded previously provided guidance. We continue to see broadly steady demand across our businesses, enabling strong progress towards our 2018 financial goals. That said, our business economics continue to be impacted by substantial variable input cost inflation. We remain focused on offsetting this inflation via combination of price increases and productivity initiatives to backstop our margin structure. Broadly speaking, we are pleased with both our quarterly and year-to-date performance. While we face certain…

Sean Lannon

Analyst

Thank you, Robert, and good morning, everyone. As you can see on Slide 4, third quarter net sales, excluding FX, increased 6.9% year-over-year including 11.1% growth in our Performance Coatings segment and relatively flat net sales comparisons in Transportation Coatings. Acquisition contribution this quarter was also nominal as we have lapped the 12-month anniversaries for most acquisitions posted in 2017. Broader drivers of third quarter top line growth were led by organic volumes, which rose 3.6% in the period as well as continued acceleration of positive price-mix contribution at nearly 3%. Most of the pricing progress to date has continued to be in the Performance Coatings segment across both the Refinish and Industrial end-markets. While price has yet to make substantial contribution in Transportation, we are pleased that the consolidated picture remains very positive. We are doing well at maintaining our overall corporate margins. FX translation shifted to a headwind in the third quarter, as expected and noted in our last update your outlook, given sequential dollar strength versus the euro as well as various emerging market currencies. The 2.5% headwind compared with a 2.4% benefit in Q2 and a 6.3% benefit in Q1. This dramatic reversal during 2018 was expected partially in the last quarter financial guidance update, but the magnitude was greater than our previous outlook, and as such, we have again revised our assumptions here looking forward. Q3 adjusted EBITDA of $235 million increased 12% versus the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margins increased 140-basis points to 20.6% in the third quarter. The third quarter results reflect the strong contribution of volume and price mix in the quarter, offset impactfully by higher variable costs, including raw material, freight and packaging cost inflation as well as by notable FX headwinds. Margins increased 10-basis points sequentially from the second quarter,…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question today is coming from Duffy Fischer from Barclays. Your line is live.

Duffy Fischer

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is live

Yes and good morning. I was wondering could you flush a little bit more the program that’s going to take some of the cash in Performance Coatings. It sounds like maybe you’re making a large investment working capital, a $100 million-ish or so. If you kind of think about the high-teens you talked about that should be an incremental $50 million plus of EBIT next year, but can you just kind of talk through what that is? And how that’s going to work out?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is live

Good morning Duffy. This is Robert. Regarding those investments, we’re not going to comment specifically on the individual investments, but we do evaluate all customer investments from a value-creation standpoint, and enter into only those agreements that we view as having attractive financial and strategic returns. The agreements we entered into in the third quarter were very attractive from that perspective. That makes up the majority of the variance that you mentioned. And then the other part, is just related to the timing of some working capital accounts.

Duffy Fischer

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is live

Okay. And then the market share that you guys are gaining in the body shops, two questions there, geographically how is that broken out? And then two, in general, when you pick up new body shops, the per body shop number, is that accretive or decretive to the kind of the overall business?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is live

In the Refinish business globally, we’re gaining shops in all geographies around the world. And as it pertains to each individual shop and the accretion of those, it really depends on the market and the size of the body shop. But the body shops that we add are accretive.

Duffy Fischer

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is live

Great, thank you guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And the next question today is coming Ghansham Panjabi from Baird. Your line is now live.

Ghansham Panjabi

Analyst

Hi, everyone good morning. I guess, just following up Duffy’s question on auto refinish, can you just maybe take that one step further and just characterize for us, what you’re seeing in this market on a global basis adjusting from your – for your comparison from a year ago. Do you see any shift in end-markets across North America and Europe, just given the lower collision rates, et cetera, so far in 2018?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is live

No. I think overall, we see very stable market conditions in each one of the individual geographies. As we expected in North America, given the commercial changes that we made last year, we expected to see a strong rebound in the third quarter in terms of the year-over-year comparison. And that’s exactly what happened.

Ghansham Panjabi

Analyst

Okay, thanks Robert. And just one more in terms of your low-double digit cost inflation for 2018, realizing it’s early, how should we sort of think about cost inflation for 2019 at this point? Are there any pockets of deflation that you are you starting to see on a global basis. Looks like TiO2 for example, has weakened a bit in certain geographies. Just trying to get some level setting from your end as it relates to 2019? Thanks so much.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is live

Yes, I think if we see oil prices stay at the levels that they are at today, essentially as we look forward into 2019 – and we’re not yet providing guidance for 2019 – but as we look forward to next year, the rollover, the carryover effect of the inflation that we’ve seen this year would translate roughly into a low single digit inflation number for raw materials. And at this point, in general, we’re not seeing much relief in any of the categories – in each one of the categories of raw materials that we purchased, we do continue to see inflation.

Ghansham Panjabi

Analyst

Thank you, Robert. And good luck in your new role too thank you.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is live

Thank Ghansham.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question today is coming from Arun Viswanathan from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now live.

Arun Viswanathan

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now live

Great thanks good morning and congrats on the new role Robert.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now live

Thank you Arun.

Arun Viswanathan

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now live

Just a question here on. And welcome Sean as well. So on Light Vehicle, I guess, understanding that you do have some new assumptions in place for Q4. Are you also seeing potentially some moderation in your outlook for 2019 from IHS builds forecast perspective? Does that likely to come down as well?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now live

So yes. I mean, I think if you look at the IHS data for 2019, you do see that starts to pull off a little bit. And the primary driver of that, of course, is China. We saw China, I believe in July, builds come down about 0.6%. And then in August, I think, they came down something around 7.7%, and then in September, 7.6%. So we got a couple of months here of China really pulling back from a bill perspective. So I think, we’ll have to see if that’s just a momentary blip or if that’s an overall trend. That’s probably the biggest driver. We do see a little bit of a slowdown in EMEA from a production perspective as well. But at this point, overall, for the market, I think we’re not projecting outside of that any type of cyclical downturn.

Arun Viswanathan

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now live

Okay, great. And then just as a follow-up on the price cost side. Given some of the productivity gains for the $50 million this year and potential for similar amount next year and your price increases, when do you expect that pricing should fully offset cost, including some of the challenges you faced in Light Vehicle? Thanks.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now live

So overall, within Performance, I think, we’ve done a nice job as far as offsetting that raw material inflation both between getting price as well as getting the productivity on Transportation. As you can clearly can see we’re little still a little behind as it relates to 2019. We will be giving more guidance on that when we give our December update as far as 2019 outlook goes.

Arun Viswanathan

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now live

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from David Begleiter from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live.

David Begleiter

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live

Thank you good morning. Robert, in performance in Refinish were the customer arrangements you signed related to the market share gains you referenced as well in Refinish?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live

No. They were not. These type of customer arrangements into which we entered are long-term contracts with strategic large customers in Performance Coatings. So we would see the benefit of that as we move forward over the next several years. They wouldn’t have had any impact at all on third quarter.

David Begleiter

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live

So these new customers to Axalta?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live

These are existing customers to Axalta who are growing quite nicely.

David Begleiter

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live

Very good. And lastly, on OEM pricing – I know it’s been difficult challenging any pricing – any movement by your large German or Japanese competitors in perhaps raising OEM pricing?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live

Probably shouldn’t get that specific in terms of pricing trends that we’re seeing in the market place. I think overall as a market, that market continues to be somewhat challenged from a profitability perspective for all the players in the coatings market. I think we all continue to work with all of our customers in order to explain and highlight the amount of cost inflation, not only on the raw material side, but also on the freight, logistics and packaging side, and then now the new element of tariffs. And I think we’re all working together with our customers to highlight the impact that, that’s had to our profitability. Additionally, though, our customers always expect us to continue to work on our cost structure and to become as efficient as we can and we’re also doing the same thing.

David Begleiter

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is coming from Robert Koort from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live.

Chris Evans

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live

This is Chris Evans on for Bob. In North America Refinish, just curious if you were to exclude the benefit from comping against the prior year issue, what might you estimate the volume growth would have been in the third quarter? And then also U.S. vehicle miles driven is finally stalling out after several years of steady growth. How correlated is this metric to Axalta Refinish sales in the U.S.? And curious if you have any insight into trends in other significant regions?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live

Chris, I let Chris Mecray comment on the second part of your question. On the first part of your question, if we take the sales and profitability drop that we saw in the third quarter of last year related to some of the changes that we made, the increase in sales and profitability that we’ve seen this year more than offsets that drop. So that gives us a general indication that not only did we recuperate what we saw in the third quarter of last year, but given some of the market share gains, specifically that we made in North America Refinish, that we’ve also had some growth.

Chris Mecray

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live

Yes, I think that it’s unfortunate and we wish there were one, but to-date we’ve been unable to find any publicly available source data that really properly correlates to our business that we can use as a direct indicator. So while we have snippets of the market from insurance companies, from other industry observers, nothing that really correlates directly to Refinish sales either North America or our global business.

Chris Evans

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live

And then a question just regarding the rationale behind the recent consent solicitations you put about a week or so ago. In that release, you cited this as being an enabling factor, potentially permitting the company to effect certain corporate transactions. Can you provide more color here on what terms are restrictive and the underlying need for this change?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live

Yes. This is really just a technical amendment. Our parent company, the registrant was not a guarantor under the debt structures. So we’re adding that as part of the consent and it will allow for additional flexibility. Just as far as internally when we had restructuring – and really going forward, this just allows us in a quickly changing regulatory environment to move our legal entities around and have that flexibility.

Chris Evans

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live

Perfect thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is coming from Kevin McCarthy from Vertical Research Partners. Your line is now live.

Kevin McCarthy

Analyst · Vertical Research Partners. Your line is now live

Would you comment on the impact of the implementation of WLTP in Europe on your auto OEM coatings volumes in 3Q? And whether or not you would anticipate any impact in the current quarter?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Vertical Research Partners. Your line is now live

Basically for Q3 and Q4, we’ve seen Western Europe light vehicle builds decrease approximately year-on-year by about 400,000units. And we can’t directly attribute that to the impact of WLTP, but we believe it’s safe to say that this would be the primary driver of that reduction when looking at an industry level data.

Kevin McCarthy

Analyst · Vertical Research Partners. Your line is now live

Okay. And then a second question, if I may, on capital deployment. I think you mentioned in the prepared remarks that you passed on a few opportunities recently. Obviously, public market equity prices are shifting rapidly. How would you – how your thinking involved with regard to repurchases versus ongoing acquisitions and industrial and perhaps other areas?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Vertical Research Partners. Your line is now live

Kevin, on that one, we had – as I said, we had a couple of internal high IRR of customer investment opportunities. And so we did, in terms of looking at some M&A deals that we had in the pipeline. Now we did take that into consideration in terms of our thinking. And in terms of our capital allocation moving forward, we have, as we commented before, we have a $675 million share repurchase plan in the market, we purchased a little over $200 million against that plan. And our stock repurchase plan will continue to be opportunistic in nature. And then the only variable there is really the amount that we would buy back in any given quarter as a function of what we see in terms of those international investment opportunities as well as M& A opportunities. And there is basically just a risk-reward trade-off decision.

Kevin McCarthy

Analyst · Vertical Research Partners. Your line is now live

Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from Donald Carson from Susquehanna Financial. Your line is now live.

Donald Carson

Analyst · Susquehanna Financial. Your line is now live

I want to go back to Refinish and two specific questions. First one is related to the underlying end-market growth. Back at your Capital Markets Day in March, you said you thought the market would grow 3% to 4%. Is that still the case because I know a competitor of yours is saying that the market’s actually declining by that amount in the EU and the Americas?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Susquehanna Financial. Your line is now live

I think, overall, if we look at the global refinish market, we continue to see favorable market trends. Certainly in North America, even stripping out what we think the estimated effect was of the change in commercial terms that we made last year, we feel that we made good progress in the third quarter. In terms of Europe, some of the overall economic conditions have slowed slightly, but we continue to have a franchise business in that region. And I would point out, as we mentioned before at Capital Markets days and other conversations, we are over-weighted in some countries, but under-weighted in other countries within the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. And so we’re really focusing on some of those countries where we are under-weighted for growth. And we are making progress there.

Donald Carson

Analyst · Susquehanna Financial. Your line is now live

And a follow-up on the mix benefit in Refinish. I know over time you said that you’re transitioning to more higher percentage of value product lines in your Refinish business, which I would think would be negative from a price standpoint. But you had a positive contribution for mix. Is this because the year-ago comparisons where you had the destocking and most of that destocking was in your premium product lines?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Susquehanna Financial. Your line is now live

That’s correct. And at this point, the mainstream end-product lines that we have around the world, it’s a growing area for us, but in terms of absolute contribution, it’s not large enough yet to really have a material impact on the overall profitability of the business. Now in mainstream, we have not only mainstream water-borne, but mainstream solvent-borne products. In the mainstream solvent-borne products, that product line, as you know, utilizes much more paint than our water-borne solution, which is much more efficient. So, although you may see from a percentage basis some margin impact, you do see greater volume. And that’s where a lot of the volume growth is globally, is in the mainstream part of the market.

Donald Carson

Analyst · Susquehanna Financial. Your line is now live

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from P.J. Juvekar from Citigroup. Your line is now live.

P.J. Juvekar

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is now live

I had a question on your Light Vehicle sales, the OEM business, Europe and China were clearly down. Can you talk about where dealer inventories are there in those regions? And was there de-stocking going on, meaning that was the result at the end of the quarter were far worse than the beginning of the quarter?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is now live

PJ, in terms of dealer inventories in those markets, there’s not really a lot of updated terribly accurate data in that regard. We really haven’t seen dealer inventories necessarily build in those particular markets. We’ve just seen lower build rates, in particular, in China. And then as it relates to Europe, that really has more to do with our customer mix in Europe compared to the market more than anything else.

P.J. Juvekar

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is now live

Okay. And then a question on M&A. You talked about valuation expectations are still high. So strategically, does the industry need consolidation to get pricing with larger customers?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is now live

I think we’ll stay away from commenting directly on anything related to pricing. What I would say regarding industry structure is that our belief continues to be that we will continue to see consolidation in the coatings industry, given some of the strategic as well as operational benefits from doing so.

P.J. Juvekar

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is now live

I just had a quick question on TiO2 surcharge that you had. As TiO2 prices go down, do you have to give anything back? Thank you.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is now live

Great question, PJ. I think most of our customers with the surcharge just in terms of implementing that surcharge in their billing and information systems have actually said – just rolled it into the price increase. We have some customers that – where we have separated it out, but as we actually implemented that, many of our customers said that it’s just easier from a systems and accounting perspective to just roll it into the price increase, which we did in many cases. If we were to see a significant pullback in the price of TiO2, we would, of course, evaluate that and what that means in terms of our value proposition.

P.J. Juvekar

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is now live

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from Christopher Parkinson from Credit Suisse. Your line is now live.

Christopher Parkinson

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now live

Can you just give us some preliminary thoughts on how you’re thinking about the incremental non-raw material cost increments as we head into 2019? I know you’ve had a few facility closures and you discussed it a little in your prepared remarks, and Dan has also been working on a few different efficiency initiatives. Just can you give us any general sense on how strong your – the fight is here?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now live

So on the results that we’ve seen year-to-date for Axalta Way, our Axalta Way program and our overall restructuring initiatives that have been in addition to the Axalta Way program, year-to-date, we’ve had very good results. And as we move into the planning phase of many of those activities for next year, the pipeline for Axalta Way looks strong. And the one area that we are excited about is optimizing our manufacturing operations and supply chain footprint, not so much from a cost perspective, but really to be as efficient and effective as we can in servicing our customers.

Chris Mecray

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now live

Just add on as far as the Belgium comment. Most of those benefits really start to come in the latter part of 2020, and towards the end of 2021 will be our full run rate savings of the $30 million. So that’s essentially two years out from today given the announcement.

Christopher Parkinson

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now live

Okay. And just on the broader M&A opportunities, can you just give us any update or brief insights on strategic rationale, geographic focusing. And on the former, are these still mostly industrial/technology-focused initiatives. Just any broad insight would be appreciated. Thank you.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now live

Chris, as we’ve said before, our M&A strategy is just reflective of our overall corporate strategy, which is to continue to strengthen our franchise in our Refinish business globally. Certainly, an area of focus for us is mainstream, and that is a keen area of focus within our M&A pipeline. And then on our industrial business, continuing to build out the verticals in which we participate as well as the verticals in which we’ve made acquisitions, making acquisitions in those verticals in other areas of the world to continue to grow those businesses. So our M&A strategy remains very focused, and I think we remain valuation disciplined. We haven’t found that valuation has been an impediment to actually – just given the value proposition that we bring to the table when we sit down and speak with potential companies. It just happened that in the second and third quarter here, we just had even more attractive internal investment opportunities. And that’s why you saw more capital deployed in that area.

Christopher Parkinson

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now live

That’s helpful, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Michael Sison from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live.

Michael Sison

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live

Hi, guys. Hey, Robert. Can you hear me? Sorry.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live

Yes, we can hear you.

Michael Sison

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live

So I guess, when you think about 2019, and I know it’s a little bit too early to give specific guidance, but qualitatively, where do you think we should see some growth next year and how do you sort of gauge some of the headwinds that could pop up next year that somehow surprisingly pops up in any given year?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live

From a big picture structural perspective, I think we see opportunity for continued growth in our Refinish business, continued growth in our industrial business and in pockets of our transportation business as well, particularly in Commercial Vehicle. The big question is really going to be to see how car production evolves over the next quarter, and what impact there is, if any, in particular, of some of the tariff and trade discussions that are going on between the U.S. and many other countries in terms of what the outlook for that market is. As always, FX is a variable that’s difficult to project. But hopefully, we will get some greater insight at least into what U.S. monetary policy is going to be, which will be probably one of the [indiscernible] of the U.S. dollar, which, of course, is our functional currency reporting. So we’ll go from there.

Michael Sison

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live

Okay, great. And then when you think about where you’re at the beginning of the year in terms of your outlook for EBITDA and where you’re at now, it’s about a $20 million, $25 million impact. When you think about the delta, can you maybe talk about – is that all inflation, some of it that – is some of it kind of just weak demand? And then how much of that do you think you can make up as you head into next year?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live

Yes, if you look at the – sort of guide down from the midpoint of our guidance at the beginning of the year to the midpoint of our guidance this year, essentially you would say that the majority of that is due to unfavorable FX. Unfortunately, that’s not something that we can control, but we do our best to offset that. And then the other portion would be lower bills and certain challenges from a commercial perspective in our Light Vehicle business. Those would be the two primary drivers.

Michael Sison

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live

All right, and congrats on your new role.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is coming from Jeffrey Zekauskas of JPMorgan. Your line is now live.

Jeffrey Zekauskas

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now live

Thanks very much. Of your $82.5 million charge, how much of that is cash? How much of that is, we take cash terms this year? How much next year? How much is Axalta Way? How much is other stuff?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now live

So Jeff, the $82 million will all be cash. I guess, from a sequencing perspective, it’ll probably be around $10 million that gets spent next year, with the difference going out in 2020. And this is all Axalta Way related. So $70 million relates specifically to the Belgian closure. And the incremental $10 million, which is another global initiative we did as far as Axalta Way, which we fully expect second half of next year of 2019 will start to be at the run-rate savings of around $6 million in that $10 million charge.

Jeffrey Zekauskas

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now live

Okay. So this year you’ve described your free cash flow as $340 million. Last year it was $415 million, and your EBITDA is going to grow roughly $60 million. So if you add the $60 million to the 2017 free cash flow, you would be at about $475 million instead of $340 million. So given these payments that you’ve made on – or maybe receivable terms that you’ve given to your customers, is that a onetime item? And all things being equal, should your free next flow next year, assuming that business is flat or roughly flat, should your free cash flow be $475 million next year, roughly?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now live

So Jeff, we’ll give further upgrades on 2019, back when we get to December, but as it relates

Jeffrey Zekauskas

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now live

On the logical standpoint, I’m not asking you to forecast your business, is that a onetime outlay and it all comes back next year or these outlays just keep going.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now live

So maybe the comment on 2018 on your first part of your question. So these incentives, they are certainly up versus prior year. There’ll essentially be double what they were in 2017. So it’s onetime from that perspective. We are not necessarily expecting this to be the run rate. The other nuance in 2018 compared to 2017 is the raw material headwinds. We are seeing a roughly $25 million in headwinds in inventory. So those really are the two big pieces. And we go back to the other comment on accounts receivable, we have not extended any sort of terms with our customers as part of these incentive programs.

Jeffrey Zekauskas

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now live

I think your – are your inventories roughly flat?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now live

Inventories are up slightly year-over-year. But there’s about $25 million of raw material inflation in those numbers. And there is also, just to add to what Sean said, there is also some inventory build related to the Mechelen plant closure and the stand-up of some of our spokes sites as part of our manufacturing strategy.

Jeffrey Zekauskas

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now live

Okay. Great, thank you so much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from John Roberts from UBS. Your line is now live.

John Roberts

Analyst · UBS. Your line is now live

Thank you. PPG appears to be going through a Refinish channel issue. It looks kind of similar to what you experienced earlier. Should we just expect these sort of episodic channel shifts to occur because of the difficulty in tracking channel inventory in the fragmentation of the channel?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · UBS. Your line is now live

It’s difficult for us to compare and contrast with PPG because we don’t know the nature of their comments around third quarter Refinish. I think as we commented last year, in terms of the change that we needed to make just given the changes in the market dynamics with distribution as well as end- customers, I think in our case, that was a onetime change that we intended to make. We would not expect to see moving forward those same type of – or that same type of variability in Refinish volumes. Distribution, of course, can always from one quarter to another vary some, and we can’t control that. But it certainly, I think in terms of factors within Axalta’s control, we just don’t foresee those type of changes moving forward.

John Roberts

Analyst · UBS. Your line is now live

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Laurent Favre from Exane. Your line is now live.

Laurent Favre

Analyst · Exane. Your line is now live

Yes, good morning everyone. My question is going back to Jeff’s point on cash conversion. And I guess, there was about a $50 million swing in prepaid expenses. I assume this is where we’ve got those growth investments, those high returns growth investments. So I guess, first question is, am I right? And are we looking at about $50 million of those investments? And I guess, the second question is should we assume further investments in Q4? Or would you say that the change in your free cash flow guidance for the year was related to Q3 investments? Thank you.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Exane. Your line is now live

So these investments actually run through other assets within long-term assets. What you’re seeing in the prepay change is an impact as it relates to the revenue recognition and option that we did back in January of 2018. There was roughly a $40 million impact on that adoption. You should see a continued outflow as far as the other assets go when we get into Q4. And that’s why we’re revising the full year impact from a cash flow perspective.

Laurent Favre

Analyst · Exane. Your line is now live

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We’ve reach the end of our question-and-answer session. I’d like to turn the floor back to Robert for any further or closing comments.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is live

Great. Thank you. I just want to make sure that in the overall picture of what’s going on from a macroeconomic perspective, obviously, as well as some of the activity in the industry that we put things in a proper perspective. We delivered really one heck of a quarter. We had 6.5% top line growth, excluding FX and acquisitions. Our EBITDA grew 12%. Our Refinish third quarter sales and profits were strong, exactly as we said they would be. Industrial was over 6% growth x FX. And we are now lapped the acquisition contribution. And we had a strong contribution from our Axalta Way initiatives. So as a company, I think we delivered one heck of a third quarter, and we’re executing quite well. So we look forward to updating everybody in our December outlook call for 2019. And thank you all for joining today.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. That does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.