Earnings Labs

Huntsman Corporation (HUN)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 18, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q4 2014 Huntsman Corporation earnings conference call. My name is Alison, and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session towards the end of the conference. As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. And now I would like I turn the call over to Mr. Kurt Ogden, Vice President, Investor Relations and Finance. Please proceed, sir.

Kurt D. Ogden - Vice President, Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Alison, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on our earnings call this morning. Joining us on the call are Jon Huntsman, our Founder and Executive Chairman; Peter Huntsman, President and CEO; and Kimo Esplin, Executive Vice President and CFO. This morning, before the market opened, we released our earnings for the fourth quarter and full year 2014 via press release and posted it on our website, huntsman.com. We also posted a set of slides on our website, which we intend to use on the call this morning in the discussion of our results. During this call, we may make statements about our projections or expectations for the future. All such statements are forward-looking statements and while they reflect our current expectations, they involve risks and uncertainties, and are not guarantees of future performance. You should review our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for more information regarding the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these projections or expectations. We do not plan on publicly updating or revising any forward-looking statements during the quarter. In addition, we will also refer to non-GAAP financial measures such as EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income or loss. You can find reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings release, which has been posted on our website at huntsman.com. We have chosen to include comparisons of our results to prior periods on a pro forma basis adjusted to include the acquisition of the Performance Additives and Titanium Dioxide businesses of Rockwood Holdings and the related sell of our TR52 product line used in printing inks to Henan Billions Chemicals. We believe this helps understand trends, specifically within our Pigments and Additives division. In our earnings release this morning, we reported…

Kurt D. Ogden - Vice President, Investor Relations

Operator

Thank you, Peter. Alison, will you explain the procedure for Q&A, and then open the line for questions, please?

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much, sir. Your first question comes from Bob Koort from Goldman Sachs. Please proceed, sir. Robert Andrew Koort - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thanks very much. Good morning, gentlemen. Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Bob. J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning. Robert Andrew Koort - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Peter, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit in the MDI business, in the fourth quarter, did you see any benzene relief? And then, how would you expect that to flow through during 2015? And can you help us size – you get some moving parts with the PO/MTBE outage, which sounds like maybe it's a little bit bigger hit in the first quarter than before. But, of your $730 million of EBITDA in that segment, can you give us some sense of what's MDI and other things and what's PO/MTBE? Thank you. Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Bob. Yeah, as we look at the pricing in the fourth quarter, we saw average pricing for benzene in the fourth quarter was just under $4 a gallon. That was down where our average price in the third quarter was around $5 a gallon. So we started to see the falloff in benzene prices take place in the fourth quarter. We currently see benzene today depending on where you're buying it around the world somewhere between $2 a gallon and $2.20 a gallon and that price does move every day. I would note that we have a supply chain of about 75 days to 85 days from the time that you buy benzene somewhere around the world and we transport it, we ship it, you store…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question that comes from the line of Sabina Chatterjee from Wells Fargo. Please proceed.

Sabina Chatterjee - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please proceed

Hi, good morning. Just hitting in for Frank Mitsch today. Just, it sounds like between the puts and takes that you just talked about in polyurethanes that you're calling for EBITDA growth in 2015. Just wanted to see if that was a fair assessment or is the outlook still uncertain given all the variables between FX and whether your competitors actually hold prices in MDI or what have you? J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: No. I think you're reading it right. I think what we've said is, is that, again, urethanes will offset any erosion in the PO/MTBE side, but then you have the turnaround, so we're really talking about an adjusted turnaround year. So again, if you adjust for the turnaround, it would be up.

Sabina Chatterjee - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please proceed

Okay. And then on TiO2, obviously still struggling and now you've got the FX issue. I just wanted to see how confident you are in making the near-term EBITDA targets of $225 million and $350 million for the legacy pigments business and the Rockwood businesses? J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well...

Sabina Chatterjee - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please proceed

What have you factored in as far as demand and pricing in that outlook? J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Listen, Sabina, we've talked about the legacy side of that and we're clearly not going to make that $200 million in 2015. But I think it's a good number for the Rockwood businesses. I think the Rockwood businesses are differentiated; there's non-TiO2 businesses in there. And we think that business is capable of doing roughly $200 million in 2015. Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sabina, also when we look at those numbers around that $2 billion number, I would say that where I'd have a little bit of heartburn getting to that $2 billion probably would be around, as Kimo mentioned, the legacy TiO2 business. As I look at the $2 billion number though, look at the Advanced Materials portion, the Performance Products portion, we've already met or exceeded the targets that we put out. And I believe that those businesses over the course of the next year or two are going to continue to expand their EBITDA. So, we might be a little light on the TiO2 legacy side of the business. Conversely, when you look at the Performance Products, the Advanced Materials, I'd even throw in Textile Effects, I would say that we should quite soundly beat the projections that we gave for the $2 billion. So, again, I think that we still have a great deal of confidence in the $2 billion number. It may not be exactly the way that we put it forth in March of this past year. But, I think that when we look at the overall composite, we still feel very confident about that. J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: And I think that's – again, Peter is talking about the $2 billion number and I think that's right. I think we can even get to the $200 million legacy EBITDA in the timeframe we're talking about the $2 billion. My comment was specifically around 2015, in our discussion, when we bought the business, that the legacy business would be $200 million of EBITDA. I don't think we're going to get there in 2015, but I do think it's very doable in that two- to three-year timeframe that we talked about.

Sabina Chatterjee - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please proceed

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Edlain Rodriguez from UBS. Please proceed.

Edlain Rodriguez - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · Edlain Rodriguez from UBS. Please proceed

Thank you. Good morning, guys. Just one quick question on pigments again. I mean, Peter, how confident are you that you're going to be able to get the price increase in Europe? I mean, because after all, this is not the first time that the industry has been trying to push prices. So why the confidence that consumers will accept that price increase? Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, we're now 72 hours into the price increase. So, yeah, trying to say exactly how much of that we're going to get, probably a bit too early to call something out one way or the other. I am very confident though that we will get a large portion of this increase. I base that simply on the fact that the economics or it's just simply impossible for this industry to continue at the losses that are being incurred in Europe. If you look at the closures of our facility, you look at the layoffs that have been publicly announced, the losses that are being sustained by the mining industry and so forth, that are supplying us ores; the lack of imports that are coming into Europe because of the low European pricing. I think that when you factor all of these things together, I can only speak of Huntsman's pricing discipline, but this isn't something that we're going to try to get, this is something simply that we have to get. And we're prepared to walk away from volumes in some cases and so forth. And just fundamentally, the trend needs to start turning and moving the other direction. And as far as Huntsman is concerned, again we're ready to take, as we've outlined, some extreme measures to the see that this happens. Even after – even after this happens, we still – you look today, European pricing for TiO2 is at or slightly below Asian pricing. I mean there's zero incentive for anybody to be importing and pushing product into Europe and even after this price increase, we still are going to be having to push up prices just to get on parity with the rest of the world. So, it's long overdue, it's badly needed and it just has to take place. And this will be the first of I think multiple initiatives. J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: If I could just add, the dollar-denominated prices have fallen significantly because of the weakness in the euro, and you'll remember our ore raw material costs are dollar denominated. So this price increase largely just captures the reduction in dollar terms that we've seen from a weakening euro currency. And I think based on that alone, setting aside utilization rates, it's justified and I think we will be successful just getting back to the differential we had in European and U.S. dollar pricing in the third quarter.

Edlain Rodriguez - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · Edlain Rodriguez from UBS. Please proceed

That makes sense. Another quick question on MDI. I mean, when you look at – there's still some skepticism about the sustainability of the benefits of lower benzene cost into some of the products. And one thing we're trying to figure out, so when oil prices were going up and benzene prices were going up, did you experience a significant margin correction – or contraction in the differentiated businesses there? Because if you're going to see the benefit from lower cost, then you must have seen some headwind from costs going up. J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah, I mean, we've talked in prior quarterly calls about the lag in our pricing on our differentiated side and our ability to get our prices up as benzene moved up. So, that's completely fair. And I think if you listened to what Peter described, we're going to keep margin as benzene falls, but our component business and in our businesses that have pass-through contracts, which is roughly 50% of our business, we're going to see that benefit go away after 90 days or 120 days or something like that. We're hopeful that longer term we can keep the most differentiated system business, but in a big chunk of this business, we keep that for just a short while.

Edlain Rodriguez - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · Edlain Rodriguez from UBS. Please proceed

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Peter James Juvekar from Citi. Please proceed.

P.J. Juvekar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Peter James Juvekar from Citi. Please proceed

Good morning. J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Hi, P.J.

P.J. Juvekar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Peter James Juvekar from Citi. Please proceed

There's been a lot of discussion about this oil price. Can you discuss this sort of segment by segment? Because what happens is in Polyurethanes MDI benefits but MTBE sort of gives some of it back. So, maybe can you just discuss at a segment level, which segments where you think you can hold the benefit of low oil? Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, yeah. Let me try to just put this in very broad senses. And, P.J., I would just note before I say anything that the ability to contain margin in falling prices is not necessarily of our company to control. And the competition and competitors and so forth, there are people out there that are willing to give up margin for market share and so forth and so on, so – and what I'd say, I just want to be absolutely clear. What I'm say is I'm looking at the world from Huntsman's perspective and we've got other people out there that are obviously from their perspective perhaps of not looking necessarily to gain margin, but to gain volume. So you're going to see all sorts of industry dynamics of supply and demand within the same product grouping that will obviously confuse some of this. But as I look at it on a broad basis here, as I look at our Polyurethanes, Performance Products and Advanced Materials, we believe that we will see margin erosion taking place in our North American raw material feedstocks around ethane to ethylene. So, within our Performance Products on the upstream side, the margin that we've been making on ethylene, we will see that margin decrease. I think that as we look at our Performance Products, we will see our downstream businesses particularly our amines businesses,…

P.J. Juvekar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Peter James Juvekar from Citi. Please proceed

Thank you for that. And then just quickly, you made an interesting comment about Chinese TiO2 exports, I mean what do you think – is there a risk that if Chinese growth and construction slows down, those guys – Chinese producers can export even more TiO2 in the future? Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I think if you look at Chinese TiO2, and again that comment, I believe and what I said earlier was a quote from a consultant. So, that wasn't necessarily my research and analysis that led to that. But I think that as we look at the Chinese product that's coming into Europe where our biggest base is for TiO2, we just don't see this – I don't see the Chinese factor as being the reason why TiO2 prices are where they are today. Perhaps a contributing part of it, but it certainly isn't the primary factor. As I look at the Chinese producers, most of them have environmental issues; most of them have a cost structure that I think one of the big misnomers in North America is that the Chinese somehow are able to make TiO2 for next to nothing. I think that there are some very competitive Chinese producers. I think there are a lot of very small uncompetitive producers that in today's environment are shutting down. And we have dealt and worked with some of the Chinese manufacturers who are – we are seeing larger facilities, more competitive facilities and better technology. But we're also seeing with the smaller producers that have high energy costs, high logistics and poor quality, I think that you're seeing a consolidation and in some cases the outright closure of some of that capacity. So, as we look throughout 2015, I'm not sure that you're going to see a great deal of net new capacity coming on in 2015 and even 2016 with what's being put into the ground there. J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Again, Peter said, Asian prices are similar to European prices and we talked about $300, $350 a ton shipping and duty costs from Asia to Europe. It is very unattractive for a Chinese producer to ship to Europe right now. And we're not seeing imports increase, in fact, they've been stable for four years, five years.

P.J. Juvekar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Peter James Juvekar from Citi. Please proceed

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of James Sheehan from SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed, sir.

James M. Sheehan - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

Analyst · James Sheehan from SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed, sir

Thank you. Peter, just on your outlook for the first quarter, you've got this big outage that's, you said is going to take $60 million of impact. Do you think that you could manage to have sequentially higher EBITDA in the first quarter given the benefit from lower benzene costs? Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: That will offset that closure?

James M. Sheehan - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

Analyst · James Sheehan from SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed, sir

Just overall for the company, your first quarter EBITDA, will be up, down or flat with the fourth quarter? Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: At this point, until I get the plant back up and running in Port Neches and until we actually can see the impact, I think that when we look at the first quarter impact on benzene, it will be hitting us rather late in the year as will the Chinese New Year, demand for China and I think that maybe in one of our Investor Conferences or something perhaps later in the quarter, we might give a little bit more guidance, but right now with the pieces moving as quickly as they are, I'd just be getting myself in trouble.

James M. Sheehan - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

Analyst · James Sheehan from SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed, sir

Okay. And then on your TiO2 capacity reduction, you mentioned 13% of your capacity in Europe is going to be impacted by this action. Could you break out what portion of that is your own capacity? And what is represented by the TR52 tolling agreement that will be persist after that action. Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, the 13% capacity, that is of our European capacity. So our European capacity, that's our total global capacity of TiO2, about three-quarters of that is in Europe. So if we look at that 13%, that's just not for Europe, that's a global number for us as well, so we have total capacity in Europe of about 700,000 metric tons, 750,000 metric tons and we're shutting down 100,000 tons of capacity and that's what that 13% to 14% capacity utilization comes up to. The TR52, again, given that's a specific product going to a specific customer grouping so forth, we've not publicly talked about that actual volume. We have a contractual agreement to produce that to a Chinese company, the Henan Billions that we have sold that business to as part of a European Commission mandate and we will continue to fulfill the terms of that agreement and supply them. So that's – the rest of our European business, we intend to keep that, and we intend to continue to be at an aggressive marketer of TiO2 in Europe.

James M. Sheehan - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

Analyst · James Sheehan from SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed, sir

And what's your TiO2 inventory levels at right now? Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I'd say that right now, it would probably be around 70 days or so, I assume that would be about where the industry is as well. J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: It's about where we were last year. Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah.

James M. Sheehan - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

Analyst · James Sheehan from SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed, sir

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Kevin McCarthy, he is from Bank of America. Please proceed.

Kevin W. McCarthy - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Kevin McCarthy, he is from Bank of America. Please proceed

Yes, good morning. My question relates to your medium-term free cash flow outlook. If I go back to your Investor Day in March of last year, I think you were looking to generate $720 million prior to dividends or $600 million after dividends. Since then, I guess you've got some new capital projects, some restructuring, et cetera. Are you still committed to that level of free cash flow generation in the two to three year timeframe that you specified last March? J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Kevin, great question. And absolutely we are – I think – in fact the way we described 2015 is in that context. For example, in our free cash flow target of $700 million that you referenced, we have $525 million of capital expenditures. And so, in 2015, we described our business as $525 million of CapEx plus this $100 million of sort of Rockwood capital that is sort of going to be completed by the end of the year. So, we think that CapEx number is good. We think our interest – our cash interest number that we provided near term is a good number. Cash taxes, we've reiterated and we've been talking about working capital benefits. And then, the next big number of course is restructuring payments and I think of the $200 million that we're going to spend this year, most of our restructuring will be done. And so, going into 2016, it may bleed over into the first quarter or second quarter. But, for the most part, it will down to the level that we talked about in our Investor Day of right around $25 million of annual cash restructuring, certainly not the elevated level we're at. Pension costs are coming down, notwithstanding discount rates fell tremendously and our unfunded amount increased by about $400 million. But we think that pension funding will be below $100 million a year over and above expense. So then you just need to hit the $2 billion EBITDA number and I think that all flows pretty well. But we're on track with that, Kevin.

Kevin W. McCarthy - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Kevin McCarthy, he is from Bank of America. Please proceed

Thank you. That's helpful. And second question if I may for Peter, would you provide an update on the timeline that you envision for separating the TiO2 business and whether or not the new restructuring efforts in France will impact the timeline that you had put forth previously? Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No, I don't think that the time – the issues in France will not move that mark one way or the other. We committed to the market two years after the closure of the business that we would be looking to take that business public. And I would still stand by that number. I think that as we look at the – by the end of next year, which will be two years, by the end of next year, the vast majority of our restructuring, our synergies will be complete. I believe that prices, the recovery in TiO2 should be well underway and I'm not going to say that we are going to be – that we're going to lock ourselves to that timeframe. I'd sure like to see it happen by then. But obviously, we've also got to see a market that is conducive to IPOs. And there's some external market conditions that we'd obviously want to see take place. But as far as having the business "in shape" and ready to go with upside and so forth, but still have the ability to assume debt and so forth and operate as a standalone entity. Yeah. I think that that timeline is realistic.

Kevin W. McCarthy - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Kevin McCarthy, he is from Bank of America. Please proceed

Okay. Thank you.

Kurt D. Ogden - Vice President, Investor Relations

Operator

Thanks, Kevin.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Hassan Ahmed with Alembic Global. Please proceed.

Hassan I. Ahmed - Alembic Global Advisors LLC

Analyst · Hassan Ahmed with Alembic Global. Please proceed

Good morning, Peter. Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi.

Hassan I. Ahmed - Alembic Global Advisors LLC

Analyst · Hassan Ahmed with Alembic Global. Please proceed

Obviously, a bunch of questions around raw materials and the like and completely understand there are a variety of moving parts and the like. But let's – if we were to run a theoretical exercise and assume that oil stabilizes where it is for the remainder of the year, all other raw material prices be they benzene or methanol or the like kind of just freeze where they are right now, completely theoretical, but we obviously have a sense of what your annual purchases are, and you obviously update those amounts at your Analyst Days. I'm just trying to get a sense that in that sort of a theoretical environment, what percentage of those cost savings could be captured? Is it 10%, is it 80%, just some sense of scale? Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: All right. Hassan, it's a great question. There are just so many moving parts in that question, I mean when I look at the impact of what's happening with ethane to ethylene and look at the impact of what's happening with MTBE and premium gasoline and the impact of people chasing down finished prices to try to maintain volumes and so far, I look at those negatives, frankly, they come up to $150 million, $200 million, they come to a very large number. I look at the impact – the positive impact to MDI because of falling benzene, the impact to our Advanced Materials because of falling raw materials around phenolic resins and so forth, I look at the impact of lower propylene and ethylene prices to our Performance Products groups and so forth. I look at the lower energy costs that will be coming into our TiO2 and what have you, which – the falling prices in Europe of oil are going to impact utility savings and so forth more in Europe than they do in the U.S. because Europe is more oil dependent. I mean look at all of the pluses and that comes up to several – a couple hundred million bucks a year as well. And so, it really – and when I put those two numbers together, the benefits outweigh the negatives. And it's not where it doubles our EBITDA or something radical, but I think that this is a business unlike some of our competitors that have large ethane cracking commodity sectors and so forth that – where you're permanently going to lose something, I don't see a permanent loss if you will coming to the business because of falling raw materials. I continue to see a net benefit across the board.

Hassan I. Ahmed - Alembic Global Advisors LLC

Analyst · Hassan Ahmed with Alembic Global. Please proceed

Very fair. And moving on to TiO2, again, a couple of moving parts as it relates to 2015. One of the things that you talked about was a slight increment to the effective tax rate, and the comment that you made was that primarily as a result of not being able to utilize tax allowances out of Europe particularly within the pigment side of things. So just wanted to sort of get a sense that if I were to take a look at your EBITDA for pigments for 2014, it was around $84 million, which includes one quarter of Rockwood. Now, the puts and takes obviously for 2015 are that you'll have the benefit from the synergies, which you mentioned. You'll get the EBITDA benefit from restructuring and the like, but there will be charges associated as well for the restructuring in particular. So what I'm just trying to get a sense of is that in that tax rate guidance of yours, if I look at the core EBITDA, scraping away restructuring and the like in the sense the negative impact of the charges of restructuring. I mean on a core basis, will you see an uptick in pigment segment EBITDA? This is 2014 to 2015. J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, so, we provided you on a pro forma basis to kind of help you think about 2014 full year with the Rockwood businesses and inks TR52 stripped out, we provided that in the earnings release. So clearly, with restructuring benefits in 2015, TiO2 on a pro forma basis will be down. But of course, it will be up on a GAAP basis because, as you said, we didn't have the Rockwood businesses.

Hassan I. Ahmed - Alembic Global Advisors LLC

Analyst · Hassan Ahmed with Alembic Global. Please proceed

Sure. Sure. J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Now just a little bit more guidance, the Rockwood businesses with the benefit of restructuring could be up, but the Huntsman legacy businesses will be down significantly given where prices have gone.

Hassan I. Ahmed - Alembic Global Advisors LLC

Analyst · Hassan Ahmed with Alembic Global. Please proceed

Fair enough. Fair enough. Very helpful. Thank you, Kimo. Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, Hassan, let me also just note, kind of going back. I want to make sure that we're clear on the gives and pluses and minuses of energy, because it is something that – I don't want to try to confuse people, but as we look at this, let me just say in a very simplistic way. If we look at the GAAP EBITDA for 2014 versus 2015, from what we see today, we believe that 2015 is going to be stronger across the board for this company than 2014. And so, as we look at the benefits and the challenges that we're going through in pigments, I think as I look at the budgeting process we've been through, the planning process and everything, I think 2015 is going to be a great year. I think 2014 was a terrific year. I think 2015 is going to be better.

Hassan I. Ahmed - Alembic Global Advisors LLC

Analyst · Hassan Ahmed with Alembic Global. Please proceed

Very good. Thank you, Peter.

Kurt D. Ogden - Vice President, Investor Relations

Operator

Thanks, Hassan.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Alex Yefremov with Nomura. Please proceed.

Aleksey Yefremov - Nomura Securities International, Inc.

Analyst · Alex Yefremov with Nomura. Please proceed

Good morning, everyone. Peter, first question on Polyurethanes business and in particular MDI and the systems business. So far what we have seen on MDI benchmark prices, they've been pretty stable, only $0.05 per pound decline in January and then flat in February. Are you seeing any discounting to these benchmark levels in MDI specifically? And also, do you see the systems business prices maybe declining more than MDI? And I'm just asking it to you maybe get additional color on your comments about competitive pressure and competitive behavior in the Polyurethanes business. Thank you. Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Alex, again, I don't mean to sound evasive in this answer. But 2,500 different SKUs, almost 3,000 different SKUs that we've got in this business. Some of our business – some of our products will not be moving down at all in pricing even in the face of falling benzene; some of our products are already coming down because of benzene weakening and so forth. The benchmark prices that you see for MDI, I think directionally that they're probably somewhat accurate, when we look at the individual prices that they record, I mean we have MDI pricing that is all over the board, right? I mean, unlike polystyrene or polypropylene, ethylene propylene, something where you have a pretty tight range of a couple of pennies per pound, we go from dollars per kilo, tens of dollars per kilo. And so, it's tough for me to say that a $0.05 reduction here or there is really what we're seeing. I mean if anything, we want to try to get away, as far away as possible from the benchmark of MDI. We want to add as much value to that and move it further downstream. So,…

Aleksey Yefremov - Nomura Securities International, Inc.

Analyst · Alex Yefremov with Nomura. Please proceed

Great. Thank you and a follow-up on MDI market as well. I think you had mentioned in your outlook, strong demand in the U.S. and China and softer in Europe. How do you see supply demand in MDI given continued ramp of capacity in China, and do you expect that to impact either U.S. or European markets in 2015? Thank you. Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, as we look to 2015, I'm kind of starting to look beyond 2015, looking to 2016. Remember, when somebody comes on with a facility, if we're coming on with a facility, and it's going to open and it's going to start operating in July 1 of this year hypothetically, Huntsman sales representatives are going to be out six months, nine months before the startup of that facility, and we're starting to get pricing commitments and volumes, right? You see the pricing impact of new capacity, you actually see it coming on a couple of quarters before the actual capacity comes on. When the capacity itself comes on and hits the market, that's usually less disruptive than when you see a couple of quarters in front of that, when people are out trying to buy up excess volume to fill the capacity. I hope I am making sense. So, you don't just start up a plant and say, let's go out and start selling now that we've started up a plant. So, as I look at the capacity that is coming into the market today, I believe that there's enough capacity that is coming into Asia that will continue to supply the Asian market. There is a little bit of – there's some few debottlenecking projects, there's no grassroots capacity that's coming on in the next year or even…

Aleksey Yefremov - Nomura Securities International, Inc.

Analyst · Alex Yefremov with Nomura. Please proceed

Great. Thank you very much. Very helpful.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Please proceed.

Laurence Alexander - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Please proceed

Hi. Thanks. Just one, quick one left, is there an inventory revaluation adjustment that will affect Q1 results as well? J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: No. Actually in Q1, we would expect inventory levels to rise in a seasonal basis, so it's unlikely you would see that in the first half of the year.

Laurence Alexander - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Please proceed

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Herb Hardt with Monness, please proceed. Herbert A. Hardt - Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co., Inc.: Good morning, gentlemen. It's a twofold question – one is, has anyone else gone along with your price increase on TiO2? And secondly, am I correct in understanding that net-net worldwide TiO2 capacity is sort of flattish over the next two years? Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I think that you have, globally, I'm trying to think of anybody that's adding capacity. There's a new plant that's coming on in Mexico. I described some years ago, we need that like a hole in the head and I'd reiterate that same thing today, but that's coming on probably in the next year or so. I'm not sure when that will come on, but beyond that, I think you've got some debottlenecking consolidation and so forth that are taking place in China, but I don't see any capacity, new capacity that's coming on anywhere around the world. Herbert A. Hardt - Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co., Inc.: And in terms of competitors meeting your price increase? Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, as far as competitors meeting our price – yeah, our price increase has been out there for about 72 hours and so I'm sorry, I thought the same part of your question was around the capacity utilization. The price increase, I haven't heard of any competitors at this point, but I certainly – I would be surprised if people would be responding within a day or two. I mean, look, we're doing not what the competition is – we're not trying to follow anybody here. We're looking at market conditions within Huntsman and everything and we're going to go out with or without competitive support, but knowing how much everybody else is hurting, I – we'll see what they do. Herbert A. Hardt - Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co., Inc.: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Zekauskas with JPMorgan. Please proceed. Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Operator, we'll take this as the last question. We've kind of gone over our time here. But I want to make sure that given the volatility and so forth within the market, we had adequate time on Q&A. So, Jeff, go ahead.

Jeffrey J. Zekauskas - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Jeff Zekauskas with JPMorgan

Okay. Thanks for squeezing me in. So, I had thought that China exported 150,000 tons more TiO2 in 2014 than it did in 2013 – and that that was the primary reason for the oversupply in the market. Is your data different? J. Kimo Esplin - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. Listen, when we think about Chinese exports, we exclude the Asian region, right? But that's a natural place for the Chinese to export to. We think about exports into our markets, which is North America and Europe. So, we think the North American and European imported product from China has been very flat and it's been about 150,000 tons. Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, a while ago, Latin America, Africa, U.S., Canada, Europe, over the last couple of years, it's – there's been some volatility on a quarter-to-quarter basis. But it remains fairly consistent and it's – most of that growth is taking place in the APAC area. So, I'm – sorry, when we look at Chinese exports, we typically don't look at what's going on within Chinese neighbors and so forth.

Jeffrey J. Zekauskas - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Jeff Zekauskas with JPMorgan

Okay. Great. Thank you so much. Peter R. Huntsman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Kurt D. Ogden - Vice President, Investor Relations

Operator

Allison, this is Kurt. We want to thank everyone for joining us this morning. We will be available for follow-up discussions if you'd like to have then. But once again, thank you for your time.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.