Ashland Inc. (ASH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone. And welcome to Ashland's 2023 Innovation Day. My name is Seth Mrozek, Director, Investor Relations for Ashland. Thank you for taking the time to join us this morning here at our Wilmington Headquarters and research campus. And those of you who are joining virtually around the world. Over the next few hours, we will be referencing slides that are currently being webcast as a part of the live event. These slides are also available on the Investor Relations section of Ashland's website. Before we begin, I'd like to bring your attention to our forward-looking statements and Reg G declaration on Slide 2 of the presentation. I will ask that you familiarize yourself with the language, the terms and limitations on the slide as they do pertain to information that we will be discussing today. On Slide 3, you will see a brief overview of today's agenda. You will hear directly from multiple executive leaders from Ashland. Following these presentations, we will host a moderated Q&A session. Also note that during the live webcast, you can submit a question at any time via the Q&A box below the video and slide area of the screen. Please enter your question and click submit. And we will do our best to address your questions during the Q&A session. Today's content will be available on Ashland's website for the next 12 months. Now I'd like to introduce today's speakers. Joining me today in Wilmington are Guillermo Novo, Chair and CEO; Jim Minicucci, Senior Vice President strategy, M&A and portfolio management; Osama Musa, Chief Technology Officer; Min Chong, Senior Vice President, Personal Care and Specialty Additives, Ashok Kalyana, Senior Vice President, Life Sciences and Intermediates; and Kevin Willis, Chief Financial Officer. One final note or 2 final notes. For those in the room, please remember to silence your cell phones, your mobile phones as a part of this presentation as it is being broadcast. I'd also like to recognize and thank my colleagues at Ashland and our partners who have worked tirelessly over the months to bring today's events to you. We are grateful for their expertise and their efforts. With that, it is my pleasure to welcome Ashland Chair and CEO, Guillermo Novo.

Thank you, Seth, and good morning to everyone. It's a real pleasure to have you all here at our Wilmington campus for everybody that is online. Thank you for taking the time to join us to hear about Ashland hopefully, a new Ashland something very different from what you've seen in the past. It's about not where we came from, but about where we're going. For those of you that are here, I hope that besides the events in the morning, the presentations, the question and answer, you're going to have an opportunity to actually see the people that actually are doing this Science, the projects, the technologies and actually some of the labs. I hope that also gives you a good picture of what we actually do. Some of the biggest questions and challenges as we talk about additives and ingredients, most people don't actually see what we actually do because it's not the main ingredient of a lot of the company. But you're going to see the scientists, a lot of the concepts, a lot of the ideas behind all these innovations. But before I start into the presentation, I do want to take a moment. We're going to be talking about the future. But I do want to acknowledge where we are -- where we've come from and what we are today. We're not going to be talking about that in the presentation. But it is important, and I want to acknowledge the team, the last 4 years, like everybody in the world, for Ashland has been a big challenge with pandemics. And all of the implications that have come with that. Obviously, major shutdowns, fiscal stimulus that have caused huge peaks in demand, supply chain shortages, manufacturing challenges, supply chain breakdowns. And all through all that, Ashland has performed. Every year has been a different challenge. And every year, team has really jumped up. Whatever our plan was, frankly, what we did during the year was ended up being totally different because things change and they perform. We're now in the end stages of the process, and this great reset. Different companies are -- and industries are feeling it a little bit differently. And I want to have -- acknowledge that we're in the midst of that. Some industries, we look at travel industry, service industries, filed at the front end. They've obviously gotten over it. We're feeling some of it and our peers in the back end of it is a lot of the inventory resets and such things are impacting us. But the big message is we will get over it. It will life continues. And as life continues, we need to think about the future. It's not just about today. Our teams are focused, we have plenty of other forms where we'll talk about that today and all the things that we're going to do in the coming months. But we need to talk about what we're going to do in the coming years, and it starts -- the sooner you start, the sooner you go. And as we look to the future, it really is about going back to the fundamentals. And for Ashland, the fundamentals are 2 things, and you'll hear about it today. One is technology leadership. We're in additives and ingredients company technology at the end of the day is really what drives and differentiates us. But then it's also market leadership. How do we use that technology to build strong leadership positions in key markets to really drive our competitive growth. So with that, if we're going to talk about the future. Welcome to our 2023 Innovation Day. Today, our goal today is really to showcase the strong innovation focus and portfolio that we have. So that you get a glimpse of where we're going to be investing in the future, which is very different from where we have come from in the past. Message from myself to all of you is very, very clear, very simple. One, we have a very healthy portfolio that we like; two, that we have a very healthy business model that we like and we think we can grow. We have a very strong innovation portfolio, innovation capabilities that we've got to leverage and that we have these leadership positions that we can continue to grow. And most importantly is that we have a lot of new, new portfolio of innovation, technologies. And when I talk about technology, I'm not talking about products. Products are something that you develop for a specific application. A technology is something that you can tune. So that you can develop many of those products for specific applications. So we're really early on launching some new technologies, think of HEC as a technology. Somebody amended it and then was able to modify it and grow it in multiple areas. So that's what today is about. I know that there are some people that are newer to the story. So -- if you give me a moment, I do want to just level set for those of you that are new to our story, to give you just a little bit of background on Ashland. Today, we're about $2.3 billion company. If we look at the last trailing 12 months from last quarter. EBITDA would be around $533 million. EBITDA margin is around 20%-23%. We have 4 reporting business units, our Life Science, our Personal Care. Our Specialty Additives are in our intermediates business. Each one is very Different. And as you'll hear about some are very integrated in different ways. Life Science, pharma is our big pillar business, but they also cover other areas like nutrition, nutraceuticals, crop protection and -- and other segments. Personal Care is a much more integrated business. Personal care is the market. But we have a lot of technologies that we can sell into all parts of the Personal Care business. Skin care, oral care, hair care and a lot of different subsegments within those categories. We also use some of those products to sell out into the home care market. In Specialty Additives, it's sort of a catch-all for a lot of different segments. But fundamentally, we're about coatings. The biggest business is actually coatings and it's our -- mostly for architectural coatings -- but if you look at other parts of the portfolio, performance Specialties as an example, really the majority of applications are around case type applications. Case [ being ] coatings, specialty coatings, adhesives and sealants. Those kinds of applications, it's these kinds of ingredients. So coatings a real big fundamental and that films and things that permeate across many of these other segments. And then we have an intermediate business, which is really about back integration. We make one of our basic raw materials. This team produces that raw material, but then to get scale, we also transform into other derivatives, which we sell in the merchant market, really 2 things, NMP and BLO, which are very important products in today's world going into the semiconductor industry, now especially big growth in the EV battery market and also is used for AI production in Pharma and in Personal Care. So a very nice portfolio across the board with different types of integration. Very global company, all the business. We have a big footprint in all regions. All businesses have a very good presence in terms of infrastructure, lab capabilities, talent that really moves our position around the world. We have a very high-quality customer base in all segments. We service everybody from the global companies, the major regional companies and the mid- and smaller companies around the world. And lastly, as we've transformed our portfolio, we really focused mostly on consumer segments, Pharma, Personal Care, coatings, much more consumer. Most of those segments, even today, I mean, we're feeling it because of destocking and all that. But if you look at our customers, even today, those segments tend to be more resilient and historically have been more resilient. And we like that because that means demand our prospects are much more stable as we go. But for today, we're not going to focus on all the portfolio. We want to narrow down a lot of the focus of the discussion on our core integrated business, and you'll understand why later. But if you look at our Life Science, Personal Care coatings. Here, we take ingredients and some of them are specialized for 1 segment, but a lot of the important ones we sell across these segments. So it's a very integrated part of portfolio. If we just look at that, it's about $2.1 billion of our business. We exclude the nutraceutical and intermediates because they're very different businesses, business models, [ nutraceutical ] is really U.S.-based business around ingredients for [ nutraceuticals ] and manufacturing and other services that we do. And intermediates is integrated, but it's about back integration rather than forward integration like the other businesses. And we start. The other part that you'll see is sustainability would be a big theme around where we're going, our innovation, a lot of these activities. So today, the starting point for our portfolio is very healthy. Over 60% of our products are highly sustainable and about 25% is sustainable in U.S. So we're helping our customers achieve their sustainability targets. So as we look at innovation and where we're going, we're leveraging that position to really advance. For us, the sustainability drive is not a burden. It's an opportunity. It's a way that we can differentiate and create value. We believe that you can drive innovation, you can drive improved performance and be sustainable through innovation. But we're also a responsible operator. We're looking at how we run our plants, how we run our supply chains so that we're also committed to sustainability and ESG. We've already submitted our science-based targets. You'll hear more about it next year as we get all the feedback and start confirming the targets and how we're going to achieve them. We're also -- because we have a high sustainability, a high profile of natural products as raw materials, we take very seriously, our procurement, our supply chain, where we source those materials, not just the sustainability of the raw material sourcing. But if you look in a lot of the Personal Care, the social impact of a lot of those activities that we do. So a core part of who we are. We have different segments, and you'll see it. Personal Care actually is one of the leading segments for us that really drives us in this direction, then we can leverage those technologies across other parts of our portfolio. You've heard me talk about our big businesses. And if you look out at the core of the company within all these, it's really about Pharma, Personal Care, and Coatings. Those are our big 3. They're very different, but they are integrated in terms of a lot of the technologies we sell. In Pharma, we are one of the largest excipient supplier for oral solid dose. -- to all the additives that go into making pill for controlled release for the manufacturing, a very strong leadership position. We're building a position now in the injectable space, and you're going to see some examples of the things that we're doing in that area. And as we develop some new technologies, we're now expanding also into the AI consumable productions, raw materials that go into the production of active ingredients in the Pharma space. All on the material side are servicing different markets within Pharma. Personal Care is a little bit different. We already have a lot of critical mass. We're in all aspects of it. So the issue is to continue to feed our technology toolbox. How do we bring more tech more sustainable technologies into the toolbox. This market, our customers are committed to switching over. They're going to make the same products, but they want to make them with different raw materials, more sustainable raw materials. So there's a huge opportunity in our industry, not just driven by their growth, but it's really driven by their shift in technology. So we have a strong position, and you're going to see a lot of the new innovations that we're doing are about helping our customers with that journey and transformation. So how do we bring in new technologies? How do we make sure that we're focused on this -- all these ESG initiatives to drive that business. And then we have our Coatings business. We're very large there, too. But our core strength is around rheology, [ thinking ] how you apply the paints, the ingredients that go into the application of the paint. In architectural coatings, we would like to make that business more like personal care. Can we bring in more ingredients. We already have the infrastructure. If we could bring more ingredients, we can bring more solutions, not just rheology solutions, but broader formulation solutions our customers. So expanding our additive portfolio beyond rheology is very important. And as we do that, it will open the door to go into other market segments. Can we grow into industrial coatings into other specialty case type markets with the performance that we bring. And as we built this portfolio, we've been very mindful and this is not something that we've just been doing in the last few years. It's been a decade of work that the company is going through transformations. But right now, we're in a very good place. The majority of our portfolio is around the core businesses that we like. They're integrated at this point in time. If you take out the intermediates business, the big 3 are about 80% of our portfolio. So we feel that we have strong leadership positions on which to build and grow the portfolio -- we have today a very strong technology portfolio. Portfolio of the different technologies. These are not the products, but the under technologies that are behind our current business. We have a lot of natural derived products, things like HEC, MC, War and other raw materials. We have also a very strong portfolio of synthetic, polymers are PPPs or vinyl ethers Aquaflow -- we work with acrylics with polyurethane technologies as we develop many of our different products and ingredients. And then we have a large number of other technologies that really complement. Think of our biofunctional. These are extracts from plants, mRNA that we use to make a lot of the new ingredients for Personal Care. It's the new preservatives. We bought -- it was an acquisition we did from last from Schulke & Mayr, really changed our portfolio, but brings a lot of very exciting technologies that we can grow and change. And this whole theme of extraction, bioconversion. If you look for more natural products, we have a lot of capabilities, and we're seeking to expand those capabilities into new offerings for our customers. But what is our business model? And you hear me talk about additives ingredients. It was a great business to be in, low cost in use, high value end use. But how do you build competitive advantage as an additive and ingredient player. Well, there's 2 things you need to achieve, technology leadership and scale. It's easy to really to build a differentiated product and sell $1 million, to sell $100 million, $500 million is a different story. By design, these are great markets when you have them because they're low cost in use, high value in use. What does that mean usually is that you use very little of the product but it has a huge impact on the performance of the product. So think about it if a large customer for 1 product is $1 million, and we're $2 billion, how much business to create to build scale. So scale is a big theme in how we look at technology and where we want to invest. It's not just develop interesting cool products. It's can we scale them across? And how do we scale them? Well, 2 things you can do, develop a product that is very big in 1 application or you can develop a technology that you can modify and go across multiple applications and you build that scale going across multiple applications. And we have examples of both. HEC, for example, within Coatings, gives us a lot of scale, but we also get breath by selling it across. Other ones, we sell basically across and the other ones we sell only in 1 market. The idea is that you can get something big in different segments, but you get that scalability. And that builds a competitive advantage because scale in additives gives you better cost, gives you better supply -- options. So it's a critical part of our business model. But technology alone isn't what creates the competitive advantage. We have to intersect that with the markets that we serve. How do you build competitive advantage in the markets that you serve? Well, you build that competitive advantage by intersecting the more technologies you can get into that specific market. That gives us ability to build scale in that market. We can put lab capabilities, we can put infrastructure around the world to service our markets. And with a broader portfolio, we can not just sell a product, we can formulate solutions. So a lot of -- in our big 3, a lot of the customers really come with us with a problem, a challenge, and we solve it not with 1 product, but with a formulation of several products. We've achieved that intersection, the value, the competitive advantage is when you can do both, build that scale and technology and that scale in business. Today, we've done that in our big 3, Pharma, Personal Care and Coatings. We sell out into other segments. Those are very important for us. The more differentiated our technology portfolio is, the more valuable that is. If you have a patented differentiated product, and you're selling it in a specific application, you can make a lot of money. In other segments, you're selling a less differentiated product, you can get scale, but you're not going to get as much differentiation. So ideally, we want differentiated products but also can we build scale. And as we grow, and especially as you hear about some of these new technologies, the real objective is, hey, if we can sell out into the secondary markets, can we bring more technologies in specific segments so that we can also create that competitive advantage at the market. And can we move from a big 3 to a big 4, big 5, really start expanding it, but it really comes from that intersection of those areas. So important simple concept, but as you look at what we're doing in terms of technologies, I hope you see how this intersection really drives where we're focused, where we're investing and how we want to make sure that the things we do not just give us growth, but it gives us build -- helps us build that competitive advantage that we want. And it makes a difference. If you look at our portfolio today, it's very clear. If you look at technology differentiation and market leadership, the big 3, we got -- we have both. And it has not surprised us. That's our biggest part of our business and our most profitable part of the business. But if you look at the secondary markets, if you have good product technology differentiation, you can also make a lot of money and value. And we have a lot of segments that are there. And some of these new technologies we're going to be able to sell out very well into many of those segments. But then you have areas in these secondary markets where they're less differentiated. And I'd point out to, nutrition and construction that we've been talking about that is most or CMC and MC business, there, we're not the market leaders. We don't have as much differentiation. And that's, for example, a lot of our challenges this year really is around those areas. Where we have less flexibility. Same dynamics are going up in other segments, but we have the leadership position to really manage those things much better than we are in some of those segments. So our whole focus is how do you move up to more differentiated technologies and then leverage those to really build those leadership positions in the key markets. So when we bring all this together, it's really about leadership positions, making sure that we have the right technology capability combination that we're building off the big -- our big 3 is sort of our source of innovation, and then we carry it out to other areas. But as we do that, can we continue to develop these other markets. And as we look at this analysis that you also continue to optimize the parts, invest in the things you want to grow, and you're going to see where we're investing and why those investments are not just about growth. All those are more profitable growth than our current business. And then, yes, how do we take actions to address some of the lower-performing parts of our segments. So that's our business model. How are we going to leverage that moving forward. So we have a very clear, simple priorities in terms of what's going to drive our growth and profitability improvement in our portfolio. 4 things: execute, globalize, innovate and acquire. Execute is we have a strong core business. We need to execute well. We've been sold out. I get a question, have you grown? Have you not grown? In 2020, we have plenty of capacity. A lot of these products we've been sold out since 2021. So what do we need to do? We need to invest. And you're going to see that we're not investing in everything. We're investing in the areas that we have leadership positions, that we have premium margins, that we have an ability to grow and to continue to build that competitive strength across both technology and market positions. Where are we investing, HEC a Klucel, Benecel, Aquaflow all critical ingredients within our portfolio. And then we need to work on several items, CMC and MC that we are not as well positioned, and we have to figure out how we optimize those parts of those -- the portfolio smartly. And you'll see we have some opportunities to do some of that as we look forward. The second part is Globalized. We have several businesses that are smaller. Some we've bought -- and several we've bought. They're very either regional or they have a certain focus. Our intent is how do we globalize them? Which of those are Biofunctionals business, our Preservative business, our Coatings for pills or oral solid dose coatings and our Injectables business. You're going to hear a little bit about the Injectable business, but you're going to see how a lot of these innovations, we're going to grow based on the technologies we have today, globalizing them, but as we innovate and bring new things, we can energize those segments with a lot more strength, stronger portfolio ,more differentiated, better offerings that we can bring. And then we have Innovate, which is the focus of today. And you'll see 2 parts of innovation. One, we have our core business, and we're innovating. We're launching new improved products, in Klucel, Nubel -- Benecel, new Aquaflows. Those continue to build on our business and our competitive advantage. But now we want to really bring in new, new, new technologies that, over the next year, the next 5 years, the next decade. We really can start building out and shifting our portfolio to a richer, more asset-light, more differentiated patented type technologies that really can change our portfolio. And then we have [ acquired ], you'll see organic growth. We've got a lot of things we can do. We don't have to do M&A, but we want to do M&A and there is specific segments that really augment again, our strategy. Does it add to our technology does it add to our market positions. And it's a very clear message. You've heard it before, for Pharma. Injectables is an area that we would like to find good acquisitions that really augment what we're doing, especially around polymers, that you'll hear about. In Personal Care, it's about technologies. Can we bring in more things that we can sell through our channel and things that are more ESG driven, more sustainability-driven in terms of the portfolio. And in Coatings is, again, anything that can augment our portfolio beyond just rheology and they can allow us to go into other segments. So our underlying goals, even in this environment, I will tell you, we will get over and we will reset. But the longer-term goals haven't changed. We believe this portfolio once -- you go back to a normal world is going to be, not just for us, but for a lot of other good players in these industries. These are high-quality industries that we can grow in the mid-single digits. We believe, and you're going to see if we can grow in the right areas, we -- there's plenty of room for margin expansion. As we get critical mass, we're investing efficiently. All these new investments are in existing plants so we can productivity and scale as we go. As we grow some of these globalization, they're all higher value businesses for us and especially as we innovate. All these can all contribute to that engine of getting us to the journey of over 30% EBITDA margins. And where are we putting our resources, it's on organic growth, and we've -- we're looking to be very disciplined on the M&A side of things, so that we're not just buying anything. We don't have to buy things. We want that strategic and financial benefit that comes from those acquisitions. So what does that mean for us in terms of our outlook and where we're going to go and really what you're going to hear from the other speakers as we go through it. Well, if you go back to our Investor Day in 2021, we were really talking about our first 3 items: execute, globalize and innovate within our core. We still believe those are going to be the key drivers for our underlying growth model and the goals that we had set. But now we overlayer a huge opportunity to really change the game in terms of technology. And what does that do for us? Well, 2 things. One, if we're doing everything correctly, it's augmented growth. If we can even grow higher and these are much more profitable segments for us, we can lead the industry in terms of performance and growth. We can augment our algorithm. But if you say, hey, you guys -- a lot of wishful thinking. There's the world, okay, things can go and change and markets can grow. Well, at the very least, it derisks our portfolio. It adds resilience to the portfolio because now we have a much bigger area to play. And you're going to see some of the activities. The issue now is how quickly can we move, how quickly can we launch, how quickly can we grow? And the sooner we can do that, the sooner we start working on the future, the sooner we get to the future. So that is going to be the focus of our discussions today. With that, before I -- actually, before I pass it on to Jim, I did also want -- what's changed because a lot of people ask me -- so innovation, great, you guys are doing, what has changed in your view of innovation. So just to give you a short view of why are we doing all these platforms now and where do they come from? Several years ago, we started the work and we looked at our portfolio, say, look, with what we have today, can we really get to our longer-term aspirations. We really want to grow. And what we saw and it varied by business -- you don't want to generalize. But in several of the businesses, we were just doing incremental innovation, trying to just make something better, a little bit better, a little bit greener, a little bit bluer, that is not going to change. Again, so we took a lot of time and saying, look, what do we have and what do we need? And our conclusion is, look, we need to do something really focused on new, new things. And we started looking at how we change that portfolio. And we didn't just innovate. Some of the examples you're going to see. We looked at our entire roster of all the things we have done in the last decade. And by the way, we found a lot of things that were there that we didn't act on it. So -- we see them as being very valuable. We've dusted them off. We've actually developed a lot of new technology around them, new IP, and we think you're going to see some very exciting. And other ones are totally new. We started from scratch and really came in. So really it was a purposeful thought process to really refocus the portfolio. And as part of that, we changed how we look at innovation. Most companies use a gate process to manage their portfolios. So how do you ideate, how do you run it? And it's really about discipline in project management so that things move smoothly, you kill them or you advance them and you get your objectives. It's a very important process. The only issue is it doesn't manage the portfolio dimension of it is we're doing a lot of projects that are very well managed, but they're not going to get us to where we want to go. So for many of you that are in the investment committees, you're buying just the stock or are you looking how much my allocation on equity versus fixed income. Our portfolio management is the same thing. Where are we today and how are we rebalancing. So what we've done is shifted a lot of our investment away from new product development. We've put much more new platform development. We've identified a few. Those are longer-term investments, and that's where we're putting more money. We've put more resources on process technology development because a lot of these new technologies we need new processes, new capabilities. And we want to make sure that we're spending 0 is not good enough in exploratory. You got to have enough there, not your biggest investment but keep that fresh engine -- and this is a dynamic environment. If we are successful with all these technologies that we show you really move, what I would expect is that you might shift back to say, "Hey, you have a very nice portfolio now, monetizing spend more money now on derivatizing the products that you want. So -- and different businesses are going to be in different places. This is going to be a very dynamic environment for us as we move forward. So with that, what you're going to hear today is that we're launching a number of new technology platforms. We'll talk about our transformed vegetable oils. We get more information, some novel cellulosics, super wetter. I've talked about it before, what is super wetter, what are -- you'll find out what it is and what it does. Liquid cellulose plus moving from powder products to cellulose liquid format allows us to do a lot of very different things in our bioresorbable polymers. We have a few other ones that are -- is still in development, but we've selected 2 that we are very excited about and trying to accelerate. One is to multifunctional starches, very important, obviously, in Personal Care, but that can have later on potential across other parts of our portfolio. And a pH-neutraliters is an additive also that goes very broadly across many, many applications. So with that, I do want to invite Jim Minicucci, our Senior Vice President for Strategy, M&A portfolio. And he's going to give you really what does this all mean in terms of our growth outlook, what we need to do for our portfolio. So Jim.

Good morning, everyone. As Guillermo mentioned, I'm Jim Minicucci, and I lead our strategy, M&A and portfolio management activity here at Ashland. For some of you who maybe are newer to Ashland -- to our story, I also recently joined. And while I spent a lot of my career in the specialty chemicals industry, I recently came from the semiconductor industry. Have some of you are familiar with the notoriety that semiconductors received during the pandemic. In the semiconductor industry, it's an industry where technology is the lifeline of that industry. And they're innovating at the leading edge of technology. Coming here to Ashland. I have to say, I have been extremely impressed with the technologies that we have, especially these new technologies that we're going to be talking today. And so as we go through the rest of today, I hope you also come away with the same impressions that I've developed around our technologies, the breadth of our technologies, the performance as well as the opportunity. As mentioned, we've created a sales growth algorithm that has 2 components to it: our core growth, which has 3 parts. And then this new part that we've layered on, related to our step-out growth from our new technology platforms. And we'll walk through each of those separately, first starting with our core growth. Our core growth is aligned to our first 3 priorities: execute, globalize and innovate. Looking at our first 2 priorities, execute and globalize, specifically within execute. We're going to continue to manage our base business well, control what is within our control. optimize certain parts of the portfolio and expand capacity in high-value technologies. As many of you are familiar, we have pushed up against our capacity in many of our technology platforms. And we're not expanding across the platform. We're being very purposeful to expand in high-value technologies. These are technologies that create significant value for our customers, and we're also able to participate in some of that value. Technologies like HEC, Klucel, Benecel and Aquaflow. These are technologies that have growth rates in the mid-single digit to double digit with margins that are accretive to our overall company average. So as you think about that, as these expansions are commissioned and they load and they ramp, that growth is going to be accretive to our overall enterprise average. In addition, we have 4 extremely attractive businesses. Our biofunctionals business, microbial protection, tablet film coating for oral solid dose as well as our injectables business. These are really, really attractive businesses with leading technology positions. And in each of these businesses, we have leadership either in a certain geography or with a certain customer segmentation. And so what we've done, we've created plans. We've been executing and we're executing today on those plans. To expand these businesses into new geographies and broaden the customer base, leveraging the technology leadership. Most of these businesses in the globalized priority have double-digit plus growth rates. And as those businesses continue to scale and globalize, they also will be accretive from a growth standpoint. And again, they create significant value for our customers that we're able to share in and they have very, very healthy margins. compared to our company average. Moving to our third priority within the core growth, which is innovating in our existing technology platforms. Innovation is fundamental for several value drivers. First, we've talked about sustainability. Innovation is a key part of how we're continuing to improve our sustainability footprint as well as for our customers. We're very judicious and conscious. As we're looking at new product developments, what is their sustainability footprint and profile. Right now, we have roughly over 100 projects in our pipeline just focus on our existing technologies. And out of that pipeline, 75% of them are ESG based. Those are new products that are natural or nature derived, biodegradable, sustainable in use as well as provide wellness. In addition, we're also leveraging our innovation pipeline to strengthen our leadership position. You've heard about the big 3. Pharma, Coatings, Personal Care. This is our focus, where we have leadership, and we're focused on ensuring that we continue to defend and extend our leadership position in those spaces. Roughly 70% of our pipeline is focused on introducing new products within the big 3 markets. We also have a metric we use internally, we call it a freshness index. And this really helps us in terms of calibrating when we're launching new products, how differentiated and defensible those products are. And you can think about that from a margin stand. Freshness is the product new to Ashland. So it's something that could be commercially available, but not within our portfolio or truly new to the world. In products that are really new to the world, these bring significant differentiation in defensibility as we launch. Products that are new to Ashland also helped to extend our growth. And the combination of these 3 really drive our overall growth. I think it's important to take a moment to just look at how we've been performing from a new product development standpoint. A lot of work has been done. You heard about how we've evolved our innovation process. And if we look at our launches last year as well as year-to-date this year, our performance -- we're being much more productive and impactful with our pipeline and our new product launches. Last year, we launched almost 30 products, twice as many as we had launched in prior years. This year, when you look at the launch from each of our new products, and you forecast what the annual peak sales will be for each of those new product launches this year. On average, they're 15% higher annual peak sales versus 2022. So we're continuing to shift our activities and our focus in our pipeline to look at products that are higher impact, higher value from an annual peak sales at full ramp. In addition, the products that we're launching align with our priorities and our value drivers. 70-plus percent of the products that we've launched are ESG based and within our big 3 categories. Just to give you a feel for what are the kind of products that we're introducing. We've highlighted a couple of both last year as well as this year. Last year, one of our key launches was within our Pharma business, which is extending our position, our leadership in excipients. And this year, we're very excited with the new additive we've launched within our biofunctionals business, leveraging our Zeta Fraction technology and biofunctionals is one of those businesses that we're looking to globalize. In general, the products that we're launching are line extensions. We're taking flagship products. We're modifying them for regional specific needs, improving purity, quality levels for those products. And as we look at the overall pipeline, we've highlighted the top 10 projects within our pipeline. A couple of things to think about. First, the pipeline is well balanced. When we look at the mix between products that are within the big 3, versus our secondary market, it's well balanced. When we look at the size of products that we're introducing, both large and medium at a full annual peak scale as well as the timing of launches. The pipeline is built such that we're launching continuously over the years to come. And on average, we're looking to launch roughly 20 to 30 products per year. And to give you a sense for the rough velocity or resonance time through that development cycle on average, from stage 2, which is after ideation through Stage 4, which is right before commercialization. It's about an 18-month development cycle. Within Pharma, it can be a bit longer, but that's on average. And when we look at the entire pipeline, we estimate the potential to create an additional $200 million of incremental sales. Timing, of course, is dependent on the launch and ramp of those products. And not only the sales growth potential but the margin potential as well. These products that we're introducing, again, are all accretive to our enterprise average margin. So putting it all together, core growth, 3 parts: execute, globalize and innovate within our existing technology platforms. All 3 of the areas that we're investing in have growth rates higher than our company average and margins higher than our company average. Now I'd ask all of us to just take a moment and let's switch gears. Everything we've talked about thus far has been on the Ashland that you know, in our existing technology platforms and everything that we've talked to you about in the past. Now we're going to flip the page and talk about our new technology platforms, truly new chemistries and new technologies that are different from what you've heard from us in the past. As mentioned, we've developed 5 new technology platforms and the focus is going to be on these 5. We do have 2 in development plus several others, and we'll highlight where we make specific comments on these 2 platforms that are in development, but the majority of the conversation is on these 5 that we've developed. And we'd like to take a moment to just explain a bit what are these platforms. Before we start to get into numbers and talking about market and opportunity, I think it's important that we just calibrate a little bit what are these technologies, what are the applications that they're going to go into, what are the markets that they're going to serve. And we think about this from 2 dimensions. There's commonality across all of these platforms, and then there's uniqueness within each of them. What's common as you look across all the platforms is one, the sustainability profile. All of these platforms are nature derived, biodegradable or improve the sustainability profile for us and our customers. From a performance standpoint, we've tested all of the products that we're developing in these platforms that show superior performance to industry benchmarks. And then the value. We're launching technologies in high-value market spaces. Now specifically with each of them, what is a transformed vegetable oil. We have taken every day oil and transformed it such that it has 2 key characteristics to it. The first, everybody knows the age old saying oil and water don't mix. We've been able to develop a technology where we can precisely control how much oil and water are mixing or dissolving, anywhere from 0 to 100%. And that opens up a wide range of applications and market spaces depending on what the needs are there. In addition, this platform, transformed vegetable oil has a 4-in-1 functionality. It can be a dispersant, a binder, a film former and the delivery system. So where customers would have needed to buy multiple ingredients to achieve each of those specific functionalities. We can now bring all of those within 1 product. Our novel cellulosics, this is something that was very much initiated within our personal care space, where we took our cellulose and we pulled out the EO and we're using other materials in that formulation where we're still getting the same rheology performance, but now we're also seeing other functionality such as binding. Super-wetting agents, very simply here, a wetting agent is about how well when you put a liquid on a surface, does it roll off? Or does it stay on the surface? How well does it stay on the surface? How well does it spread? Those are super-wetting agents, you can think about surfactants. In the majority of super-wetting agents in the market are all silicone-based, which present sustainability challenges for customers. We've developed a silicone-free super-wetting agent that has superior performance. Our liquid Cellulose plus, typically, most of our products are in powder form. We've taken cellulose and formulated with it, adding other technologies to it, where it still has that same superior rheology performance, and we've added the plus because we're having other functionalities that are now introduced through the formulation and taking several technologies together. And lastly, our bioresorbable polymer. Here, these are degradable carriers, degradable polymers where you can put an API, an active ingredient into the polymer. You can inject it into the body. That polymer degrades over time, releasing the API into the body for advanced drug delivery technologies. And lastly, our 2 platforms that are in development, multifunctional starches. Here, we've created a nature derived suspending agent. Much of the industry is served with a synthetic microplastic alternative. We've created a nature derived solution that has superior performance. In pH Neutralizer, think about these as buffers. They're used in a wide variety of markets in pharma for API consumable manufacturing, in Personal Care, in Coatings and a can of paint, you're adjusting what is the pH in that pain. We've created a pH neutralizer that has superior performance and an enhanced sustainability profile versus the industry benchmark. So what makes us really excited is this idea of scalability. You heard about our model and how building scale and additive ingredients is extremely difficult. When you get it, it's really good, but building it is challenging. As we launch these new technology platforms, we have initial launches in one of our big 3 markets and we're extending that technology to other markets. Our transformed vegetable oil, initially, we've launched it within Personal Care. We're extending it into Coatings, as a dispersant into Pharma, in tablet coating for our OSD business, also into our secondary markets within crop care for seed coating. Similarly, if you look at our super-wetting agents, initial launch within coatings, it's extending into Personal Care and household, in Pharma as well, we're finding applications within our injectables business as a replacement for other products. As well as secondary markets where we can use the super-wetting agent for tank mix for pesticide delivery. And this is really the scale of these technology platforms. They were adding these technologies to our existing portfolio and then extending them across multiple markets. And this allows us to not only continue to build scale in our big 3 but potentially 1 or 2 of these secondary markets could become a big 4 or big 5. In this scaling of taking a technology platform, launching it in a specific market segment and then extending it across the portfolio is expanding our market opportunity. Today, for a moment, if you just switch back to our existing technology platforms with the business that's in scope, we service roughly a $14 billion market with our existing technologies, our HEC, our CMC, our PVP products and other technology. With these new technology platforms, we're now expanding that serviceable market by 50%. If we also look at the 2 technology platforms that are in development that are not part of this analysis, they have the opportunity to open another $1 billion to $1.5 billion of additional market space, bringing the total to over $22 billion. And what has us excited about this market space is it gives us a lot of different ways, a lot of different pathways to grow. We can grow within our existing markets as well as the new markets. Within our existing current market space, there's 2 paths to grow. We have significant headroom to grow in our existing market, and we can capture more share with these new technology platforms. If you look at liquid cellulose plus, this allows us to capture additional space within our current market space of architectural coating. Especially within Personal Care, we already service a very large market within Personal Care. And these new technology platforms will enable us to not only participate in the transition to natural and nature derived product, but really lead in that space. They also allow us to defend and strengthen our leadership position in our existing markets. In new market spaces, the new technology platforms allow us to grow into new market segments as well as new applications. So as we dimension the opportunity and we think about this from both our current markets as well as our new markets. For our current markets, as mentioned today, we service roughly a $14 billion market. If we look at the portfolio that's in scope, $2.1 billion. That imputes roughly a 14% to 16% share on average. And I think just given the forum of today, we're not going to get into specifics on what our share gains are going to be within our current market space. But just to help dimension for us as we gain 1 percentage point, 100 basis points of share in our existing market space, that equates to roughly $140 million of incremental sales, all else being equal. If we move down to our new market space, $7 billion. We're able to achieve an equivalent market share in our new market spaces as we have in our existing market space. That's the potential for an additional $1 billion in sales opportunity. I think numbers to the side, I would say 2 key things. I think the first one is really the size of the opportunity. These technologies, they're going to launch at different times, their adoption rate is going to be different. And our degree of success is going to be different in each of those technologies. In some spaces, we may achieve greater than a 15% market share in other spaces, perhaps less. It's not a straight line. But it is a significantly wide area that we're playing in that has a lot of opportunity. The second is the diversity of growth. This is not 1 technology in 1 market space. If I bring you back to the lattice in that intersection of technology and market, the $7 billion market opportunity is the summation of all of those nodes in the lattice. It's the summation of all of those intersections of taking the technology platform into different applications in each of the market segments. And that's providing significant diversification in the growth as well as derisking the growth. And as we think more about derisking, we're looking at this from 2 angles. One is the technology and commercial part, and then the second is on the capital side. From a technology commercial standpoint, these new technology platforms, they're not ideas. They're not concepts that we're thinking about. They're also not scaled $100 million, $500 million businesses. That said, we have launched in 4 of the 5 platforms. Which is derisking the technology as well as the commercial part. We're already starting to get customer pull in adoption in the market segments that we've launched. As we move to the capital side, inherently, technologies have a riskier profile to them. We're extremely fortunate that we're able to leverage our existing network to manufacture many of these products. The transform vegetable oil. We're making this today in one of our assets in our network. Our super-wetting agent, we're utilizing the existing asset that was underutilized that we've repurposed and we're making this technology today. Our liquid Cellulose Plus, we're also working with one of our tolling partners and manufacturing that product today. Our bioresorbable polymer. Here, we are investing in Mullingar, Ireland, which is our center of excellence for bioresorbable and injectables. We're expanding our capacity and our R&D capability. For novel cellulosics, as mentioned, we are looking at parts of the portfolio and decisions we might make in certain parts. And as we make those decisions, it does create opportunity to repurpose those assets and utilize them for a technology like the novel cellulose. So as we think about the risk profile in our capital allocation, you can expect that we will be very disciplined in how we allocate capital. both organic as well as inorganic. But here, we're able to utilize existing assets to launch new technologies. We significantly derisked the capital exposure because it allows us to launch and ramp those technologies and have a much better understanding of what is that ramp curve and degree of success going to look like as we then potentially need to invest in the future for additional capacity. So I'd like to leave you with 3 key takeaways. First one is on growth. We've created a much more robust and resilient growth algorithm. The 3 parts of our core growth, plus when you layer on these new technology platforms give us much more confidence in not only delivering but potentially achieving more in our growth objectives. Second is the margin profile. As we talked about, if you look at the execute where we're expanding capacity in technologies that have accretive margins, globalizing attractive businesses introducing new profitable products as well as our new technology platforms. The margin profile for our growth going forward is at a higher level than our company average. When you put the growth in the margin profile, plus what we talked about in terms of the capital needs, where we're utilizing existing assets to launch many of these technologies. We expect our free cash flow conversion to be higher going forward. The summation of those will create a high-performing business. So I hope you share some of my impressions that I've had as I've joined. And with that, like to welcome Guillermo Novo back to the stage as well as our CTO, Dr. Osama Musa who's really going to bring these technologies to life for us. Thank you.

So before we get into our chat here on technology, I wanted to present our CTO, Osama -- Dr. Osama Musa and his team are really the ones behind a lot of these innovations. So Osama, why don't you give a little bit of your background to the [Indiscernible] team.

Thank you so much, Guillermo. It's really my great pleasure to be here. My name, again, Osama Musa, I'm Chief Technology Officer. I'm in the company here for the last 15 years. Before that, I was at National Starch -- and I'm so excited to be with you to talk with you about our novel and unique new technology platforms.

All right. Good. So I need your help Osama. Very nice numbers. a lot of potential -- the question I always get from many of the investors that are here in this room and outside and online. Is it real? Are these -- we hear a lot of companies, these technologies, how different are they? How big are they their potential. So I need your help to tell that story on where we go. So let's go through some of these examples and introduce them and talk a little bit if you could share your views on some of these technologies. But let's start with the tranformed vegetable oil. Sure, Jim. But what is the transformed? And what does it do?

Sure. Exactly right. Thanks, Guillermo. Thanks a lot. So first of all, if you think about the transformed vegetable oils. This thing about the vegetable oil, what is really why vegetable oil? Vegetable oil have very unique and attractive characteristics. They are natural, renewable, microplastic -- non-microplastics, they can be degradable, they can also be non-GMO and vegan as required. So if you think about this raw material, say, what does - what can we do with this? So I'm excited to share with you that Ashland developed, transformed vegetable oil technology that change the morphology and the physical properties of the oil to take it to the next level. For example, as Jim mentioned, oil and water do not mix. So can you make oil dissolve in water without any aid? Can you make oil even not soluble in water, to be even more hydrophobic -- mean not soluble in water. Can you make it in the 2 range -- can you do that? The answer at Ashland is yes. So what can we do? So we can program our transformed vegetable oil with the precise control and the percentage of how much dissolve in water and how much not, for example, if a customer ask us a question, "Hey, Osama, can you give me a transformed vegetable oil to be 100% soluble in water or 100% doesn't dissolve in water, which is 0% dissolving water or any range in between precisely. So we can offer our customers with the choices they are looking for. In addition to that, Guillermo is that our transformed vegetable oil has very unique and superior performance as compared to any other oil. It is a multifunctional mean 4 in 1, you can have 1 molecule, 1 oil that can have multi-application for 1 molecule only. That's the reason we call it new to the world. It's dispersion, film former, binder and can be a delivery system that will open significant doors in Personal Care, in Pharma, in Coatings and other secondary markets.

Osama, we talk about transformed vegetable, is it all oils? Is it just soybean, how can you blend them, how does it work in the types of raw materials?

That's another advantage of this oil. So as oil has -- many, many, many oils we have soybean oil, sunflower oil, avocado oil, any all you like. So imagine now you can modify the oil, different type of oil, or we can marry them together with different applications. We are just scratching the surface with this new to the world differentiated and IP protected.

So tell us. We've launched some in Personal Care. We're going at it what -- it's soluble, give out what does it do? And what are the products that we've launched?

Yes. That's a very good question here. So Ashland has already launched 3 sustainable and best-in-class product in the Personal Care market. So it's real. It's not something we are dreaming blue sky. We already launched 3 products. And those 3 products. As I mentioned, in Personal Care markets, 2 of them in Skin Care and 1 in Oral Care. As you can see, they are scalable within even 1 market, Skincare and Oral Care. The common ground between those 3 products they are natural, [indiscernible] and biodegradable. Let me give you an example that the first product that we launched is antaron soja. The antaron soja, it's fill former water resistance and SBF booster. The second one is the soft [ cans ]. We utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate distributed novation and launch this product and bring it on to market as quick as we can. As a conditioning agent and to provide the skin with moisture retention. The third one is for Oral care. For oral care, it's water soluble. Imagine an oil soluble in water. We call it gantrez soja. That's for toothpaste as well as for mouthwash. That can deliver active to the mouth through some carrier -- just carrying and active and its long-lasting benefit with them.

So great, it's oil. We know the sustainability story in Personal Care. How do we leverage that? You're going -- why is it important in the other segments that we are talking about?

That's right, good. So here, as you can see, we cut this oil and scalable within Personal Care, as I mentioned, Skin Care and Oral Care. In addition, we are expanding this technology beyond Personal care. In Coatings, in Pharma, in the Crop Care. Let me give you an example. In Coatings, we are utilizing the transformed vegetable oils to the nature derived, film former and dispersant for titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, clay and other pigments. In addition to that, it can be a cross-linker, can be AUV absorber in that segment. In Pharma, for example, it's also utilized as a tablet film coatings and use as a solubilizer of difficult -- or low soluble drugs. And in Crop Care, it's -- which is the ag part -- it's utilized as a film former and in seed coatings. You need in seed coatings, you need a very hydrophobic ingredient, but to be on microplastic non-GMO, biodegradable. At the same time to have high dust of efficiency. This is really crucial for our farmers all over the world.

Exciting technology, obviously, a very different platform that we can grow, and we'll talk a little bit more as we execute on these areas. But let's move on to our super wetter. Some of you have heard me talk about super wetter, super wetter. What is Osama, what is a super wetter? What does it do?

Yes. super wetter is -- let's talk about what is wetting. What's the difference between wetting and spreading. wetting is how a liquid, you bought a liquid, interact with a solid surface. Does it roll off? Can It interact with it? How really does that look with interact with a solid surface. To do that, you have 2 things to interact with it. So that's the reason we call it Wetting agent. So the wetting agents are usually the increase the spreading and the penetrating properties by reducing something called surface tension. If you reduce the surface tension, by increasing the properties of the spreading as well as the penetrating properties. Why is it important? Because you can now when you apply that liquid, how the finished look is so important. It's bubbling or is smooth? So it's very, very important in many applications.

So what is used today? I mean there's other super wetters, -- what are the technologies mostly used today?

What -- right now, most of the products that use on the market, either silicon-based or fluorocarbon based or other synthetic wetting agents, but they have some limitations. So those products, the silicone-based and fluorocarbon based products, they have a strong performance. But the solubility profile is low. So people trying to say, okay, can I have nonsilicon, nonfloral wetting agents, -- those products have an average performance and an average sustainability profile. I am excited to share with you that Ashland invented nonsilicon, nanofloral-based silver wetting agents, with superior performance and superior sustainability profile. And the question is, how did you invent that? How do you guys -- Ashland, how did you do this? How -- we managed to invent a process to control or precise control of the composition of those super-wetting super. Those products or this material will be 100% yield, control the precise of the functionality because you have a water soluble and water insoluble, we can tune it the way we want. In addition to that, they are -- when we make them, 0 waste and 0 solvent. And the most important and crucial part they are biodegradable.

But where do you use these -- let's talk about some of the things we're launching and where we're going to use them?

Yes. Similar to the transformed vegetable oil, I am really excited as well. to share with you, Ashland just launched as unique super-wetting agent called easy-wet 300. The easy-wet 300 has unique and differentiated properties. It is silicon-free, 0 VOC, non-ionic and biodegradable and IP protected. It has superior performance, the performance of those high efficiency, antiforming and low surface tension that can improve that finish appearance of the surface.

So it seems to be a very fundamental additive that used in many applications. Obviously, very important coatings. Tell us a little bit about these other applications that we're developing, especially around Pharma and other properties at this product and [ can show up for ] our customers.

So the product that is easy-wet 300, the first initial launch was for wood coatings. So now we're expanding it and extending this unique technology beyond wood coatings. In Pharma, for example, can be acting as a replacement to the benchmark wetting agents for injectable applications as well as to enhance the drug stability and solubility. In personal care operates as a silicon replacement. In crop care, can be a superior lead wetting solution to increase pesticides contact on the leaf and can be also applied in coating beyond wood coating, such as metal coating skin.

So a lot of applications, multiple growth areas, very exciting technology for us. Talk us -- we're talking a lot on the injectable front. We have obviously expanding our portfolio, not just the bioresorbable polymers, but a lot of these other areas. But bioresorbable polymers is at the center. What is it? And where are we going with our bioresorbable polymers?

Let me share with you a couple of things about our fascinating bioresorbable polymer platform. You can ask me, "Hey, what is really a bioresorbable polymers? What is it really?" Bioresorbable polymers are tunable, degradable polymer that can be safely degrade by the body. So so easy, you can put in the body, you integrate it to ingredient that's safe to go away. That is so unique polymers to have something like that. So we took advantage of that. The bioresorbable polymers used in cross part of the medicine across medicines, such as long acting injectables, advanced drug delivery and in medical devices and regenerative medicine. So for the long acting injectables can be used in animal health and in chronic disease. In advanced drug deliveries can so easy to improve the mRNA delivery to cells. In the medical devices, act as a replacement to the permanent model by using a biodegradable device such as sutures, screws and plates. In addition, can be utilized as a regenerative medicines, for example, that when we use in dermal filler, so when you inject to fill and promote, to fill and promote the collagen regeneration in wrinkles. So they have a lot of application given.

So we've been doing a lot there. Tell us a little bit about the investments, some of the new products that we're doing within bioresorbable?

So the question you can ask, "Why long-acting injectables so important?" Long-acting injectable is so important because can reduce the dosing frequency. You can have 1 injection once every 6 months. And the -- our product can deliver the API slowly for 6 months. So this is very unique, very unique technology for us, and it can reduce the side effect. The long-acting injectable also can be improved the patient compliance. And I'm so excited to share with you that Ashland just launched a product called Viatel ultrapure long acting injectables. This product offers more consistent drug release, longer lasting performance and superior drug stability in addition of being ultra-high pure products.

So Osama, one of the questions I do get we've been talking about injectables. So where are we on the pipeline? What are our -- we heard about some investments? What have we been doing really over the last few years to really get momentum in that space?

Yes. So in addition to this unique ultra-pure product that we launched. We have over 150 customer projects in the injectable pipeline between preclinical to Phase I, Phase II, Phase III and generics. Our injectable pipeline include oncology, dermal fillers and animal health. In addition, we really expanded our capabilities and capacities in manufacturing and R&D in our center of excellence in Mullingar, Ireland. We already invested over 100 -- sorry, over $15 million in investment, 4.5x in footprint, and we increased our head count by 2.5x.

Right. So a lot of exciting things. These are not things for the future. We're investing it's the 5 -- example of the 5 new platforms that we're launching. But I know that you have a lot of -- we have more coming, and there's 2 that you're very passionate about. Can you give us a little bit of insight into these 2? I know we're trying to accelerate and moving them forward a lot. But talk to us about the multifunctional starts and why that is important or interesting technology?

Excellent. I think, again, there are 2 platform that's still in development, and we are excited to bring them into reality. The first one is multifunctional starch. As you can see, for the first time, you hear Ashland and starch, it's new to us. It's a new discovery that Ashland is entering into this area, which we call it multifunctional starch for a reason. First of all, this -- and this technology, we invented multifunctional starch suspending agent as a clear replacement for synthetic and macro plastic suspending polymer such as carbomer. This multifunctional suspending agent has unique characteristics, including superior heat stability with desirable skin feel and texture. So it's a multifunction. If you look at this Ashland multifunction starch suspending agent, it has excellent suspension performance at both room temperature and hot temperatures. It's not easy to find a suspending agent to survive high-temperature environment. If you compare this multifunctional starch, suspending agent to the nature derived on the market or the synthetic microplastic suspending agent, you find Ashland's product is much more superior at both room temperature and high temperature.

And obviously, very important personal care, a lot of the natural, the ESG-driven changes. But is it -- will it be useful in other applications?

It's definitely, right now, we're evaluating it in personal care because remember, when we have a suspending agent, you get a suspend and active to survive the suspension at higher temperature. Now one of them is personal care. And multisite of personal care, skin care, hair care, it could be in oral care. In addition, we are looking at, for example, in pharma as well as in the crop care.

Excellent. Well, let's talk a little bit about your other passion, the new pH neutralizers?

Yes. This one, it's really -- I'm really excited to speak about this one as well. It is really something we started, but has a really unique performance. First of all, if you ask me, "Hey, Osama, what is the pH neutralizer in the starch with?" What do we mean with pH neutralizer. pH neutralizer means you can control and make a solution higher you can have -- you can increase or decrease the pH of a solution to make it more acidic or more basic. You can make it more acidic and more basic. Why should we care? Why is it important? It's important because every product we have, either in pharma, in personal care or in coating or others, you get these -- for the product to survive, it has to have the right environment, either an acidic area or the basic area or in between. So that's where we call it a pH adjuster or pH neutralizer. So Ashland developed a new to the world pH neutralizer, and it's IP protective technology. And why is it important? Why should we invest in this area? Because take a look, Ashland pH neutralizer has 25% more efficiency as compared to the leading benchmark, which is an amino alcohol. It is 3x lower in VOC, which is the volatile organic compounds. 3x lower in VOC as compared to the benchmark, which is an amino alcohol. Ashland pH neutralizer is a clear pH neutralizer and has no odor and water soluble. And that will open many doors for our application in personal care, in pharma as well as in coatings.

Osama, thank you. I hope that this has help me convince our audience and our investors around the world that these are real. They're being launched. Some are really in far, far along in development. And before you go, I did want to say thank you to you and your team. A lot of these technologies really has been a lot of work from the team, and they're making a huge difference. So...

Thank you so much. Thanks so much.

Thank you. So I hope, is the technology real. You're getting some examples, some color on what we're doing. But the next question is new technology doesn't sell itself. So what are we doing actually to commercialize, to emphasize our focus. So I'd like to invite or 2 leaders for our businesses. Ashok Kalyana is our leader for -- Senior Vice President for our Life Science and our Intermediates business; and Min Chong is our leader for our Specialty Additives and Personal Care. So gentlemen, thank you for joining me. Same question, I was talking to Osama, a lot of new things and new things, there's always well, how real, what are we going to do differently. We're very excited about the technology. So 2 general questions that I'll ask, and I'll some more specifics on your business. But one, how do your teams feel about all these technologies, and what are you going to do about it? But more importantly, what are you going to do different? What -- how are we going to execute to grow these things over the coming years to really get the value that we can? But let me start with you, Ashok. So one, first, how do your team feel about the technology? But more importantly, you have a very strong pharma business. It's one of our big 3. But even within pharma, you have oral -- the oral solid dose excipients, you have coatings, you have injectables. They're not all in the same place. What do you do differently? And then as you extend into these secondary markets, you're not going to be acting the same way. What are you doing differently in those areas?

Thanks, Guillermo. First of all, let me address why the excitement? For us in Life Sciences, we are super excited about these technologies for several different reasons. Number one, Osama and Jim, and you guys talked about it. These technologies are scalable, tunable, very heavy biodegradable component, sustainability component and has the potential for a very disruptive performance improvement or efficiency. So that's very exciting. Second, it really enables us to strengthen some parts of our core, and I'll talk a little bit about it in pharma as well as enter into some new market spaces which are very, very attractive. So if you think about the core, you're right, pharma, we are very strong, but we are very strong in oral solids. We talked about film coatings, which is a business that we want to globalize, which means we are putting more steel on the ground, closer to the regions, closer to the customers, strengthening the technical service and strengthening the customer intimacy. We have some good technologies, titanium free coatings, genesis. But think about the transformed vegetable oil. This has the potential to deliver flawless finish to tablet coatings. You talked about superior hiding. If we are able to capitalize on this, this really catapults puts us in a much different technology leadership position. So that's very exciting. Think about injectables. We talked about bioresorbable polymers. That's a key high-value excipient, but there are other requirements to make an injectable, the right. Solubility is a big, big issue that our formulators in the pharma industry are trying to figure out because many of the new chemical entities are poorly soluble, either in water or in solvents. So the super wetter or even the transform vegetable oils, if it can really help us with solubility, it's a game changer for us. So let's talk about new markets. Let's talk about even within pharma, you need to make the actives. Our main business is in drug formulations. But if these technologies can put us more into helping synthesize API. It's a completely new market that we are able to get in. Crop care that we talked about. That's an adjacency if, again, if we can deliver that flawless seed coatings or improved superior wetting capability for leaf, again, it really opens up another very attractive market for us. So that's the exciting part for us. In terms of what we are going to do different or what we need to make it more successful? I would say, building an injectables team is really giving us a blueprint. 4 years ago, we launched -- we bought this technology from a university offshoot. Over the last 4 years, the team has been really building the pipeline. You see today, 150 customer projects are in the pipeline. We just launched an ultrapure, and we have purchased orders to fulfill this product even before we make it. So what's the difference? We built -- or we put together a focused, dedicated team. So a lot of R&D development, a lot of business development was mainly focused on that particular segment. 2 years ago, we started the crop care AtChem journey. We took some of the resources from Nutrition and re-purposed them to focus on product development for ag. Today, we have very compelling results from the lab that we are validating externally. So that's the journey. To put a dedicated team, focused team, really focus on R&D development and business development and really unleash the teams do to go after.

And it's good to see that we can synergize the technology growth with our globalization efforts and a lot of strengthening some of our core business. So hopefully, everybody can see that, that it really ties together in terms of our strategy. But man, you have different businesses, but the same in a degree. You have personal care. You got a lot of scale, a lot of ingredients that you bring a little bit more like the oral solid dose, then you have specialty additives where you have a little bit more concentration of some of the technologies. They're different. What are you going to be doing differently? How are they differently? So how your team is feeling about it? And what are you going to do differently in each of those?

Sure, Guillermo. First, let's talk about excitement, okay. Let me first talk about personal care. Why are we within personal care excited? We're excited because we have an ability and an opportunity to further strengthen our core, our core in skin, oral as well as in hair. Strengthening by creating different ways to further differentiate our product performance. But at the same time, enhancing and moving forward the sustainability journey, a journey that our customers are asking for and the end consumer is ultimately demanding. Progressing this journey to meet specific challenges, such as microplastics, biodegradability as well as sustainable sourcing. The other part that's really exciting is these platforms, they enable our customers significant opportunities. And through this tunability, we're getting unparalleled access to our customers. Ultimately, their innovation process, which is enabling a different level of dialogue that we've never had before. That is very, very exciting. Also, let's switch to Specialty Additives. I want to highlight 3 specific areas. It's all about, first, strengthening our core. As you've mentioned, as Osama has mentioned, all about rheology, specifically in architectural coatings. That is our core. We need to strengthen that. We have an opportunity with our liquid cellulose plus to further strengthen the global leadership position, all driven by performance enhancements as well as productivity improvement. Second, we've all talked about in the last 3 years, how do we grow beyond rheology? All these adjacent verticals, dispersants, surfactants, pH neutralizers, we now finally have access to additives that's going to give us scale growth opportunities. First, in our core architectural coatings. But as importantly, additives that allow us to grow in industrial coatings. Industrial Coatings, the additives market for industrial coatings is roughly $2.9 billion to $3 billion. Ashland, we have less than 1% share. The fact that we now have additives for us to participate with scale that is really exciting our team members. The third, as Jim mentioned, not just growth in the big 3, but growth in the adjacent lattice. A lot of our additives not only apply to the big 3, but especially in our industrial segments within our Performance Specialties business line. additives that enable us to really grow that lattice with scale. That is what's really, really exciting. Now going to your second question, what are we going to do differently? Let's first talk about personal care. It's all about maximizing this unparalleled access that we're having with our customers and the different dialogues that we're actually having right now, okay? And remember, as you heard from all the speakers, our platforms are tunable. And through these dialogues, our scientists are actually able to tune the products that we're developing to better meet the needs of performance, sustainability and cost, which ultimately meets the needs of our customers, but also addresses the profitability targets that we have. Now 3 of these dialogues we're learning that to get the kind of scale, we are going to have to make some investments, especially in the regions. We've already taken actions to redeploy our existing resources where possible, but we are going to have to surgically add in the R&D groups as well as in the commercial groups out in the regions. Similar type of changes within Specialty Additives. With our core architectural coatings, we have the scale, we have the locations. We have the resources. The platforms become a simple plug-and-play, but all about focused execution. Very different story and challenge for industrial coatings and the industrial applications and Performance Specialties. In these areas, to be very frank, we don't have the scale. We don't have all the resources. So we are surgically adding in both the R&D and commercial areas as well as establishing the right channel to market so that we do capitalize on all the opportunities that exist.

Right. So thank you, gentlemen. I really do appreciate it. I hope you see the change. Just to build on and then you can comment a little bit more, this issue of unparallel access and tunability, you heard it across even internally as we try some of these platforms, they work in one place, very excited, somebody tries it and it doesn't work. The big question we asked is, well, why didn't it work? Because they're tunable. "Hey, it didn't work, and you understand why not, then you tune it and suddenly it works." A lot of these learnings that we have across segments, they don't -- it's not a one product that works across everything. It's a technology. When we talk about the products that we're going to sell in each of these areas, they're different, different technology, different IP positions, different offering to customers. But specifically, as we talk, one of the challenges that we've heard from our customers in personal care specifically with sustainability. It's great -- it's too expensive, how to -- they have -- they want to change, they want -- how this offers us rather than selling a product a technology that we can tune. How is that dialogue going with customers? I know it's starting in certain areas, but how is it going so far?

Yes. So I'll give you a real-life example. So we actually have one of our large customers in personal care in our Bridgewater lab last Friday. And it wasn't the purchasing group that was visiting. It was actually their technology group that was visiting. I spent the whole day with us, okay? And of course, they talked about performance. And they talked about sustainability. But through these dialogues, what we're learning is it's not just all about sustainability. It's not just all about performance. It's how do you find the right balance so that our customers are ultimately able to sell that to the consumer. This level of dialogue is enabling us to not only create premium products, but products that are able to address the mass consumer base. So that is what's really, really exciting. The other part is through these dialogues, the curiosity level is going up. I mean, you see it within our scientists that our customers are getting excited, and that's what's helping fuel the excitement internally as well. And it's discussions that we're having within personal care, but also these discussions, whether it's a dispersant, a surfactant or wetting agent. You know what, they apply to specialty additives. They apply to life sciences. So the discussions in those areas also happen.

How is that? I know we've worked by business and all that, but obviously you guys work together. How is that communication, especially around these new things so that we can really innovate that curiosity. How is the communication going across the businesses?

No, it's a good question, Guillermo, because we talked about AtChem and the relevance of these technologies. In fact, we took some of the products from personal care as a starting point that the ag team started working on it a year ago. And really worked hand in hand to foresee what the basic prototypes are doing. They were able to find some strengths, but also look for areas that need to improve. Then we pulled in Osama's team, and we were able to customize it. So now we have a good starting point, but we were able to leverage some of the hard work that the teams have already done in personal care. Same thing -- the same story is getting rolled out in pharma. So this is the exciting part. Now I think we will get to the next stage where these technologies are going to hit the customers and markets, and that feedback is continue to -- is going to get it more and more sharper in terms of us refining it as we go into other applications.

Gentlemen, thank you very much. I hope this is also very helpful for everybody to understand. These are real opportunities, but we are having to execute do things differently as we go. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us. So before we go into Q&A, just to close. I hope you see that -- we're talking a lot of new things. These are not about our old technologies and just trying to sell more load plants. These are really launching new technologies. We have a good portion that we can leverage a lot of these for manufacturing for launches. But there's a lot of other building a technology platform across is not about launching products, which our manufacturing strategy. If you scale up an oil, you can make this all around the world. We have 1 plant. Are we going to build plants around the world? Can we license? Can we work? There's a lot of business dimensions here, different markets, different segments, a lot of opportunities. We're early on, not in the commercial launch, but in really thinking through now what are the potentials that we can, and that really enriches the optionality that we have and how we want to drive growth. So one message I will give. We have 4 priorities that are really the underlying focus of our growth, execute, globalize, innovate and acquire. You've heard all the stories of where we want to go, and how important the first 3 are: Organic growth is our #1 priority. We were coming from an environment 3 years ago that many of you were asking me, "How are you going to load." Today, you're asking because we have a situation in the market. But fundamentally, a lot of what we're talking is not about loading assets. It's about launching new technologies with very different profiles that can open the door for new markets, they can strengthen our businesses and that are differentiated with very different profitability profile that if we grow in and of itself, they will be very profitable. So one message is organic growth is a priority. Two is bolt-ons are important, which is very focused on it. And they have to align to what we're doing in that organic growth injectables, sustainable technologies for personal care and additives beyond rheology that we want to bring in, but a big investment on that organic. So what can you expect to see is regardless of what's happening today, we are going to be investing in our future. You're going to see a lot more and a lot of our capital allocation is around these specific areas that are core to our growth, execute, globalize and innovate especially around these new technology platforms. It's not just about stealing the ground and footprints around the world. It's about people. In technology, it's about the people make the difference. It's the application expertise, it's the relationships and trust of customers to explore these areas because to explore these solutions, people, customers need to open up to you, and you need to provide solutions for them. So we're investing in those areas, re-purposing, we want to be efficient and effective in our capital allocation, and it's not just in steel. It's in the resources that we have. So we're re-purposing away from segments that are less critical to us into the segments, and you will see us add more resources around the world. And build out those capability developments, commercial, technology, build -- as we strengthen the core, develop a portfolio of products that we can sell out higher margin, higher differentiation, but the true goal would be, can we build these new platforms, that intersect in the market and technology so that we can build out a big 4 or big 5 and expand our leadership positions across the globe. And the rewards going to be significant if we do this correctly. One, we can achieve organic growth. All these things that we're focusing on are above margin versus our average, so we can get profitable growth, incremental. How do we get to growth and how do we get to these higher EBITDA margins, gross profit margins that we've been talking about. It's through innovation. It's really through that portfolio focus to build those leadership positions across technology and market segments. And that's where we're going to be putting our investment. If we do that well, we can achieve not only our goal of mid-single digits and margin expansion, free cash flow conversion. But especially with these new technologies, we can achieve even higher growth, or we can derisk our goals as we go. Both very important. Statistically speaking, world changes things happen over a decade. If we look forward, we'll probably be achieving both of those things. Some years it's going augment, some years it's going to be derisking. But over the journey, our objective would be, can we accelerate that growth rate and profitable growth rate. So big messages for us is we're focused. We have a very strong technology portfolio and business model. The majority of our businesses have leadership that we're investing on those leadership positions that we're growing. Our innovation pipeline is rich, not just in the core business, but a lot of these newer technologies that we're growing. We're clear on our organic investment. We're not investing in everything. We know where we want to go and where we don't want to go. And we're going to be investing appropriately and with discipline and that we are going to take, you heard all the things we're going to build, we are going to take actions on the portfolio to adjust as we go. So I really appreciate everybody's time and attention. I'd like to invite our executive team; you can come up here for the Q&A. And with that, let me open up the floor. And for those of you online, a reminder, you can submit your questions, and we will try to address them as we go. So there's a microphone, so just let us know.

Chris Parkinson from Mizuho. When you take step back, I think it's on Slide 19 or 20, just giving your goals? And just -- how should we be interpreting all the new products that you're putting put forth in terms of the growth rate of the 5% to 6% to 200 to 400 basis points of outperformance? We all realize that not all of these are going to be 100% of what you want them to be. But at the same time, how should we interpreting, how you got to that market outperformance because if people believe that number, your stock would be significantly undervalued, which is obviously my belief. But can you just give us a little bit more insight on how you and Kevin kind of came to those numbers and arrived at this conclusion to say, "Hey, we're pretty comfortable with these numbers based on the fact that we don't hit 100% on all these new technologies." Just some algorithmic thought process would be pretty helpful.

And I think as Jim said, for this event and for early on, obviously, we're transforming that into what our plans are going to be. First, we're launching. So really there's launch dates and rates. The whole issue is once you have a lot more in the portfolio already moving, then it's much easier to get those numbers and algorithm. So we're going to be looking at that on the different launch rates. The numbers that we have built here are more on -- here are the technologies, here is the potential that we can get, they're pretty significant even if you look at lower share. So that's really the story for us right now for all these. Look, we're not aiming at just growing and launching new ACC. We're not aiming at some of the questions I've been getting, are you doing something that you're going to increase the capacity utilization of a certain area? No. These are fundamentally new areas. If we sell a super wetter, this is a totally new market for us. We weren't talking about that in 2021. So all these are going to be augmenting. I think over time and as we talk about the future and all that, we will have a form, but we'll start outlining all that. But I think the big message is, hey, this is not, as I said in the last earnings call, we're not aiming for incremental 2%, 3%. These are big things, but we've got to invest in them. There are competitors, very good companies that are very successful in these areas. We've got to build our resources and all that. So we'll get back with more detail, but at this point in time, this is a bottoms-up number. This is not a top-down number. This is all the market potential across every market intersection of the technology. And as Jim said, the issue there probabilities. Well, it's just one, it's a win or lose. If it's 10 points. Your probabilities of success are going to go, that's one. So that scalability of the technology reduces risk in itself. The number of technologies reduce this risk. I mean we can come and promise you how great all these technologies are statistically speaking. If you've been doing this long enough, some things are going to be work, some things are not going to work, something's are going to work much better than you thought, and others are going to be a little bit less. What excites me is that we're talking about a portfolio. You're going to hear me talk about portfolio. Portfolio, this is not, if we were here telling you here is the one technology that's going to change the company. I think that's hard risk -- high risk. If we have a portfolio of then, it really does change the potential.

Dave Begleiter, Deutsche Bank. In terms of the margins, Guillermo, on average, how much higher margin are these higher -- are these biotechnology platforms and your existing core base business?

Yes. We -- they're much higher -- multiple higher than this is. You can look at it, we're very sensitive to talking about actual margins. We got competitors. We got a lot of the other players there. But these are not like -- if you look at the -- go segment by segment, if you look at the execute. We have some that are much higher margins, some that are slightly above. Those bubbles didn't represent size. So these are above margin. They're very solid business for us. We want to continue to grow. Other ones are much higher margin. In the globalized, they're much higher margins, significantly higher than our business. Some of these new technologies, we know what some of the other players have. Some of -- we've been in a lot of the companies, and we know a lot of these technologies, they're much higher margins where we are today. So there's a lot of opportunity. The issue it's here for us, one, how do we use these technologies to create value? If I've learned one thing and I am using semiconductor, which is a concentrated market, you would say, you'd be squeezed or whatever. If you create value for your customer, you can get value from that. If you don't, then you're just having a fight of who gets what. These technologies really allow us to offer a different value proposition. This issue of -- if I can get you equal or better performance and sustainability. Before it was here sustainability, but it's at a huge premium. We can offer now something that's different. Think of the oil-based polymer. We've already launched products. And we can launch with an oil as an example, and we did that. That is a super-premium. You want biodegradable, GMO-free vegan, those costs -- cost. They are more expensive oil. We can launch that, that's what we've done. But maybe for your brand, you want, "Hey, I just want biodegradable. I want the fundamentals." We can tailor that. Our discussion now and a lot of these things is not about, here's a product buy it. It's here's a technology. Here's a product or first one tested. If you don't like it, let's have a dialogue, we're early stage. Each of these technologies are also very different. But the oil one, I would say, is the one that we have a lot of work to do because it's very flexible. Like I said, you can make these regionally, you can do a lot of things. So this is -- these technologies is not about next year only. It's about the next few years, the next decade if we do our job, these available markets that we're talking are very big they don't happen overnight. So that's where our long-term journey is. I go back to the first slide. We got to do a short-term well, but the future does come. And we are investing in the future, and that's really where we're try to do that. But all of them are higher margin, much higher margin today.

Jeff Zekauskas from JPMorgan. I think this is working.

Yes, it is.

Okay, good. Two questions, in the injectables area, what are your revenues from injectables in fiscal '23? And what might they be in '24 or '25? And for the whole innovation pipeline, is there a revenue base for that innovation pipeline that we're working from in 2023? And is there an expectation for what that would be in '24, '25? What's the magnitude of all this so that we can frame this?

So let me address both, and I'll ask you to comment. One, we don't give specific revenues on a specific segment. I would say this is one of the businesses that we're building. So it's smaller portion, millions of, but not the bigger area. The pipeline has a lot of potential and I'll let Ashok comment. I think one of the parts that we are looking in terms of the revenue is that we are -- in the model, in pharma -- in the preclinical, we don't give samples. It's something you're working with customers who you're tailoring them. There's a lot of revenue involved. So that's one, and I'll ask Ashok to comment. On all the other ones, we're just launching, right? So 2 things. First 2 years or first year, you got to get the customers to test. So it's about the ramp rate. I think that's why when we were talking about filling, we want to have a larger launch rate of new products. The more we fill, it usually takes about a year customer testing if they like it, and they -- it depends on the industry. They got it code it, personal care, they got to go through a lot of technical issues, and then they approve it for use, and then all their formulary. So it is a process. So these -- again, that's what I'm saying, we got to get these things moving. These are technology. We're launching Gen 1. The more we can launch Gen 2, Gen 3, that's the ramp rate that we're going to go. But Ashok if you want to comment a little bit of the outlook for?

Yes. So as Osama talked about in his slide, if you look at our injectables pipeline, it's mainly preclinical Phase I, Phase II, which means you're providing samples or pilot quantities, which is intended to move the product to various clinical stages. And these are typically 6 to 8 years of product development before it goes commercial. But what we have been able to do is, as these projects move through the phases, we are also monetizing some of the samples that we are giving. So we will generate revenues even if the product is not commercial, but the significant upside for revenues is really going to come once the product gets commercial.

And can you comment on the importance of the animal health versus human health in terms of that?

Yes. No, it's a very good one. So again, human health, longer pipeline, longer lead time, animal health is much more shorter. So again, as Osama was talking about, we are trying to diversify beyond human health into animal health and even dermal fillers, which could give us a quicker pathway to commercialization.

And Jeff, that's one of the reasons we say from an M&A perspective, acquisitions in this space would be important because it is an area that you can't change the pipeline, and we can bring in some things that accelerate, that would be strategically very valuable for us.

And then maybe one follow-up. Your desire to move into making actives. They're big Chinese companies that...

Not. No, we're not making actives. We're selling consumables to the people that make actives.

Okay.

So we will sell, those are our customers. Those are our customers.

Okay.

This would be an area that we're going to sell consumables, buffers, solubilizers, a lot of these technologies are used by them. No active ingredients on whole.

Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners. I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you go about understanding the technology landscape of what's already out there. So that you can maybe inform a decision about what you're going to pursue organically and do your own research and development versus what might make more sense to go out and do an acquisition, particularly when you know you can leverage it, you have this opportunity to leverage an acquisition across multiple end markets?

I think there are separate areas that we would look obviously an acquisition, depending on the technology we're developing, we might want one that augments a new technology. But if you look at things that we're working and just technologies we don't have that we would bring in -- the #1 priority for us would be not dependent on M&A. If we can get a of our own growth engine that gives us a lot of flexibility on, what do we want to bring in. So in the organic growth, I mean, we have teams that know a lot of these segments. We've balanced in -- especially with new technologies and building across markets. Each business runs their business and their core innovation technology because they know what they want. So there's a pull, right? The market pull. When you're talking about new technologies, you don't know what you don't know. Did you want an iPhone? Did you want to iPhone -- somebody had the vision and pushed it. As we look at these technologies, we have to step back and say, look, we've developed now this new super wetter and look at all the properties we're learning about, where does it go? All of the businesses come in, let's talk because for us to be successful, especially we're going to manufacture at scale and all that, we -- this now is a corporate initiative across businesses because the strategic value is not only 1 segment. It has now become one of your priorities because we need to get that scale across multiple segments. And that's really where that dialogue is very important that we can combine. Some of the markets where we're launching aren't going to be the largest markets. It might be another one, but we're learning. This is the one that we chose because we know more. We have more technical capabilities, but as we modify it, we grow. So I think there's a lot of dialogue that's going on in a lot of these areas to be very frank. We have a very strong team, the marketing and the commercial teams, the technology teams. But frankly, even if you look at across, we come from the industry. We worked in a lot of these areas. We know which are the areas that are very exciting and good. We're not coming out with Me Too technologies. We're not saying, "Hey, Mike has a good product, let's just do that his product." Mikes in a good market. We can offer technology for that market, too. This is the whole story like pharma, as I've said, many of you know, pharma, personal care, additives and semiconductors are the best markets to be in terms of differentiation. We're in 3.5 because our intermediate business is on the other one, we have a lot of technology to offer. And that's our judgment, that's the marketing work that we need to do. We'd say, on the M&A to bring things in. One thing is finding them. There's a lot of companies that we go, "Hey, if I have this, I'd be great." But at the price you're going to pay, can you create value or not. Discipline is important. This is not just about getting bigger. We want to create value. So hopefully, things have changed over the last few years, and there's going to be more availability, things at a more reasonable rate that you can then create value. It was very hard. We participate in a lot of things that strategically; I would be up here giving you a great story. But financially, I'd rather invest in some of these things that we can create a lot more value for it. So discipline. What a strong platform technology portfolio gives us is independent. We can choose where we want to invest and where we don't want to invest. We want to do M&A, but we will be disciplined and do it in the right areas.

Vincent Anderson with Stifel. And actually, first question probably for Osama. So I'm just trying to better understand the vegetable oil product opportunity. And maybe you can help me by walking me through the genesis of that. Did you look at the big wide field of oleochemicals and see all the green pasture, or were you looking at maybe your experience with maleic anhydride chemistries? Like how did you end up at this product such that it forms it as a broader opportunity?

And Osama as you answer some of these, we've talked a lot about some of these areas, but there's a lot of other variations of this technology looking especially for coatings or industrial specialty coatings types applications beyond one chemistry, there several chemistry involved in the other product.

It looks like you had some of our patents, yes, indeed. Yes, I think we have several technologies, one is -- maleic anhydride is one of them. But you can -- the beauty here is that you can tune the modification and the transformation of the oil, the way you want. So for example, you can -- as I mentioned, we can take 2 oils, not just 1 oil, 2 oils, 3 oils together combined them and create new things, okay? So the maleic anhydride is one concept. It can epoxide, it could be anything else. But -- and it's based on -- as you know, we have verified patent on this technology for a while, but it is a unique, that's a reason area of quality new to the world, through the way we make it and maybe just to reinforce what I said. The way we make this technology, it's zero solvent, zero waste and zero catalyst. So what you put in the reactor, you get out. It's unbelievable. And now you can take this technology and do the [ sized ] element. So that's reason very exciting about it for the questions.

Similar to the wetting agent then, where is the process technology-driven platform. Okay. And then maybe just a part b, it will be quick, but you also launched a product recently, sodium hyaluronate. And that didn't make the presentation looks pretty exciting. Can you compare -- maybe just quickly compare and contrast, why that doesn't make the cut maybe more from a commercial perspective in terms of identifying your key opportunities that you highlighted?

Sorry, which product is that which one?

The Sodium hyaluronate?

So just a lot of these are in our core. So they fall in our core, and we don't really go into the specific details until we want to go into the specifics. So we have a lot of these things in the core. We've launched a lot of new the Trello. There's a lot of other new products, for example, but that's part of what each of the businesses. What we want to look here is are these things that we can expand across businesses. The scalability at a corporate level is what puts it here. There's a lot of really good, even novel, I would say, new, new, new, but we -- if it's not going to be scalable, it doesn't meet that strategic. We let each business do their thing. So these are things -- even if a business is doing it. And we say, "Hey, great innovation, but we actually see scale." we bring it all together to say, we got to communicate because to build that scale is going to be important. Now the oil question the -- what is your manufacturing strategy? This is a big thing. It's not something that we going to do one business at a time. I would say, I've been fortunate 30 years ago, the company I worked for, we were investing a lot of new technologies. It was a lot of teams. Working on -- if it was something new that it's not -- I have a plant and I'm just going to sell it, you have to have a longer-term plan that evolves because you don't have all the answers that we want to do. Oil-based, think about that. If you're going to do a crop, would you want to make it in Brazil, when you want to make it in different places. Personal care, you might make it in one ship around the world. So each business is different. We're launching the technology. So a lot more work. I'll be very direct. This is a 1-year, 5-year, 10-year journey that really transformed our portfolio. As somebody did years ago with HEC with a lot of these technology, somebody did the same thing. We've got to do the same thing, focus on those things to get that scale.

[Indiscernible] from Chemical & Engineering News. You mentioned non-coatings construction a few times is kind of lagging non-core kind of a segment. I wonder if you could talk about what plans might be for that market.

So we have in the construction and in nutrition, it's -- we have a lot of products, so it's not the segment. We have a lot of differentiation; I'll have both Min and Ashok comment. But it's specific technologies within it. So for example, nutrition, we have [indiscernible] very differentiated technology and very not differentiated. So it's not what we do with the segment, is what we're going to do with specific areas. Same thing construction, we have a lot of really differentiated technology. The problem is when you have -- these are older businesses for us, bigger assets, if you got to load them, and you have your good business, but then you've got to get into things that maybe aren't as differentiated, and that's the part that we need to make some choices of. We can stay in the core part; do we really just want revenue. And we don't want revenue what do we do with that, one. And two, we have an asset. And I would say, assets in the U.S. specifically, very valuable. You don't just want to get out is, what can we do with these assets? And as we've seen a lot of things that we're launching, which is re-purposing assets, that is no investment. And by the way, the biggest issue is not no investment, it's speed. We'd be talking to you that we're going to develop this super wetter, we're going to make it in 1.5 year if we have to build a plant. If we have a plant, we can move much quicker. But Min and -- and then you, Ashok, if you want to come a little bit on those 2 segments.

Yes. So I'll first talk about construction because that falls within Specialty Additives. So for the construction business, it's mainly related to our SBU called MC, and that is made in our European facility. The construction business is over $100 million, but 70% of that is in Europe, okay? And you can split the remainder between U.S. and Asia. We are not the industry leader in this specific SBU. We specifically target in the motor segment. But a lot of our competitors participate broadly in the construction segment. We are trying to differentiate in the specific areas through innovation, but that has limitations in terms of scale and the impact, right? So as Guillermo said, construction business, the profitability is not where we want from a specialty ingredient to an additive area. We're looking at are there other things we can do internally to reduce our cost structure. We're trying to innovate out of it, but also, we're being very honest with ourselves in terms of the time horizon and ultimately, what we're going to be able to accomplish. So those are some of the internal discussions that we currently have and ongoing, and it will determine what's the best path moving forward.

Yes, similar comments for nutrition as well, right? If I were to compare it with pharma, we have multiple products. We have a strong technical teams, and we have significant differentiation. In nutrition, it's very selective participation. And we are not the market leaders. There are plenty of other folks. So it's just recognizing what is your strengths, what are the needs of the market? Do they want a high-touch service model versus very transactional, very typical buy and sell. And you adjusting to that needs of the market as well. So similar decisions that we are having to make for some parts of our nutrition portfolio where we feel like more cost is king and more value is derived more on service levels rather than product differentiation. In those cases, you evaluate what is your position and adjust accordingly, so similar conversations.

And we rather use the opportunity. These new technologies we do need to be able to produce it. So if we can really now consider our strategic alternatives. It's much better, we can re-purpose because it's -- we can just shift it. It still loads our -- all these plants are within -- our production units within plants. It's not a plant, it's a production unit. So if we can re-purpose it, it's good for the entire plant as we go.

Mike Sison, Wells Fargo. Guillermo, when you think about the big 3, do you think it -- has it shown evidence historically ability to grow 5% to 6%, that's question number one. Number two, I think you said some of these new technology platforms can be a big 4 or big 5. Any particular one that you think is closer? And then just kind of a follow-up to all that, if there's no market growth and you execute well on the base and the new technologies, are you implying that you can still grow 5% to 6% because without market growth. Is that sort of the message?

Well, 2 things on your first questions on the growth momentum of each of the areas. I mean, remember, these are -- we're launching. So it's not like we can say, tomorrow, one segment is going to grow more than the other, but we are being selective in each of the markets that we're targeting, especially as you go across segments, we can choose the big 3, where do we want to grow. And that gives us a lot of these technologies and applications. That's where we actually develop a lot of the initial goal, and then we go across. So where can we build these new big 4, big 5, it's yet to be determined, let's say, all 3 technologies that go into ag work. You can start building something. Only one works, well, then it's not the same thing. The good news for us is as we go into these secondary markets, all these technologies really are differentiated. So the difference between the example of selling into construction are the win. It was specialty at some point in time. Now it isn't -- if we sell into construction, one of these new additives at a different margin, we have sustainability because we have IP, we have a lot of things that we can do. So going to that scale with new technologies is very profitable as we go. It's different from building that market leadership with physician. That is really about looking at each segment where can we intersect more, ag, for example, would be a very interesting one. The oil-based -- but we might have multiple products. Think of the oil-based product exceed coating. You could also use it when you -- in the pesticides, insecticide, it's not just the wetting, you have to -- what -- to make the product stick to the lease. We could also tailor a product for delivery of that. All these are biodegrade. If you improve the performance, less use level, less overflow. So there's a lot of benefits. We'll have to see how it all plays out, but there's a lot of things that we could do. And as we develop those areas, I think we're going to be able to grow them more. So there are some -- and that's the part that we're doing right now, but it's -- we got to go launching and at the pace of launching. Another one, there's the big 3, and there's -- pharma is a big one for -- the biggest one. Well, can we put 1A, 1B and 1C because we're big in oral solid dose, I'd like to see to the question we were talking before. Can you get the injectables also to get scale and bigger business into itself and the AI production. Again, for us, it's not just introducing one product, if we can get a solubilizer a buffer and other products, dispersants, other, it really builds the scale. And yes, to your question on growth, now that's why we're -- I look at things statistically also. I get excited about the technology, but at the end of the day, the world is full of surprises. We've seen it in the last 4 years. How do you build the resilience. Resilience is step back and say, all this is nice. Give me some scenarios of what this thing can do. And if most of the scenarios are more positive, you're building resilience. And I think this, to your example, if the market doesn't grow, but we launch more products, you're going to be able to get more growth, right? So we have 4 avenues before we had 3. We just augmented it with a more profitable potential and a bigger potential moving forward. Let me be clear. Our objective is not to have the same market share in those segments that we have in the other ones. I'd like to have more. How much we're going to get? That's the work we're going to do. We're just launching. This is a part of our journey as a company. It is not just about year 1 or 2. If you've done this for a long time, this is about the next 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years. If we grow, we can really build out a very, very strong portfolio. And the stronger we build across multiple technologies in the market, the stronger we can defend the entire portfolio because we're a bigger supplier, we have more leverage. We have much more critical mass of resources to support our customers, they see us as more valuable.

Josh Spector with UBS. So I had a few questions around the core. I want to see if you had any change in view about how you think about the growth and really the margin potential of that core portfolio without these innovations. And I mean, you reiterated your growth algorithm, I guess, obviously, when you presented that a couple of years ago, it's a different base versus today, probably right now is not the right point to judge the success of that. But what do you tell people looking out over the next 2 years, how you should think about that algorithm off of this year versus going back a couple of years ago? And I guess, depending on how you answer that, do you think you can achieve your greater than 30% margin target for the core portfolio without these innovations, or do you need these innovations or potentially restructuring to get to there, if you don't get the demand back?

So if you look at the 3 drivers, execute, globalize and innovate. It depends on the environment that -- let's look at the last few years versus, it depends on the scenario that you're giving. If everything stabilizes moving forward, all of them, I think, will contribute. If you look at what's happened in the last few years, a lot of noise on market. First year went down, then went up. The market right now is the most volatile of all of them. So I think that one in the short-term, you could see a little bit of volatility. But in the long-term, these are resilient markets. And I go back to not us in our side of the industry where our side of the industry is clearly getting more of an impact. I look at our customers. Our customers' volumes are not as strong as before, but they're actually still pretty resilient in terms of underlying growth. And that means if they're doing okay, eventually, when things stabilize, we will do okay. So we will get that growth back. But in uncertain times, what suffers, is market growth and innovation in the sense that a lot of customers in the last few years delayed innovations because they were focusing on finding raw material, alternative raw materials. So there's a lot of noise that happened. So I would rate, right now, what's in our control, globalize is the one that's most in our control because these are existing markets, independent of what's happening in the market dynamic, if we can grow and expand our positions in different geographies, that's additive, and that's in our control. Market, but it will be -- what it will be, but if we are continuing to refocus our portfolio on more resilient markets, that will be a lot better. And innovation, things can get delayed, but our customers require innovation. They're very clear on it. Pharma, they don't delay. It's a long pipeline. They're continuing to work through crisis and not crisis. So I'm not worried there. And the other ones, they continue to work on it. They might launch a little bit later. So our view is just continuing to fill that pipeline. Eventually, once they get back to normalization, if these are the right products and they're going to add value, you are going to get the revenue. So I would acknowledge that there's a little bit more noise in the short-term, but that is not a normal dynamic moving forward.

You essentially rolled some of the proceeds from the adhesives business into capacity expansions and the big 3 already, in terms of the next 2 years. How should this group be thinking about just overall free cash flow, maintenance CapEx, growth CapEx over the next several years. It seems like there's a lot of moving parts, but that's also something that's naturally going to feed in your valuation. So any initial framework would be incredibly helpful?

So let me give you questions and maybe Kevin, I'll ask you to comment on also. So one, the big asset investments on are execute. They're in progress. So other than the Klucel one that will be later, and that's a really critical one for us. The Benecel is done, the HEC will be done shortly, the Aquaflow is in progress. So most of these things will be behind us. Most of the other investments really are in the globalized and on all these platforms. Much more asset-light in terms of the values that we're putting. So we'll talk about those as we go. But we're trying to be as efficient as we can. So globalize we're investing in China for our biofunctionals and our coatings, for example, for pills. We're building it in the Nanjing plant. We're being as efficient as possible, both -- actually, those are done. We're going to Brazil. We have a nutrition plant, not where we want to be, not the profitability, what we're trying to convert it, all the parts that we don't like, use that space to make the same thing, biofunctionals and coatings for pills. We're just buying land in India. That's going to be an area that we want to do that. These are not hundreds of millions of dollars, these are much, much lower investments. The example that some of our injectables, this is the plant for future demand. We didn't have capacity to even make the samples that they require. We had our labs just making samples. So we have already built the plant that we're going to need for the future. So as the pipeline goes, we're going to have that and the lab capabilities that we've added. So I think there's going to be investment, but it's not at the same rate. If you look at the portfolio, it's going to -- we have the assets for the launch I think as we invest, it will be on proven technology. So the risk, commercial risk, technology risk really go down, and it really will depend on the business model that we need to build across the entire portfolio. The one that is bigger and that we -- again, we -- you saw that I had no point is the novel cellulosics. We've got new technologies we can try to re-purpose. We could try to build a new plant. We're looking at that in a more holistic way because we also could re-purpose for other products that we already make that are more profitable. So it's a bigger decision. That's the one that we're not ready to really make a decision yet on. But Kevin, I don't know if you have any other comment.

Yes. And in terms of the maintenance CapEx question, that's about 3% of revenue. So call it, $60 million, $70 million a year, that's been pretty consistent for the past several years. So I would expect that to be so into the future. The growth CapEx piece, Guillermo kind of talked about that. The HEC expansion at Hopewell is most of that money has been spent. We'll be bringing that onstream end of this year, first and next. You look at the -- you look at some of the other expansions. We're pretty far down the road on that. Our expectation is we'll see elevated CapEx in fiscal '24. We don't have a solid number yet. But on a normalized basis, absent some investment in these platforms that we might have to make like liquid HEC, I would expect us to go back to a more normalized CapEx number, probably $100 million, $110 million a year. That's where we were before. And that delta between maintenance CapEx and that, call it, extra $30 million or so, a lot of that is tuning our facilities to incrementally increase capacity, debottlenecking, take out cost, those sorts of things. So those are very much value-added investments that we make in the facilities. They're not just to keep the lights on. And so those are evaluated based upon the value that they bring. And we do the -- some of those can be a little bit lumpy. But generally speaking, that would be the expectation. After we get these big buildouts done, we should be more in that, call it, $100 million, $110 million on a normalized basis. Everything else is going to be about incremental growth opportunities and what that looks like going down the road.

Seth, I think we have some questions online.

We do, Guillermo. One final question from the webcast participant. And perhaps a good question to close with, this is for you. How do you define success let's say, over the next 5 years for Ashland stakeholders, customers, employees and shareholders as well? What metrics do you use, how would you define success? And then please, we will adjourn at the end of this Q&A. Thank you.

So if I step back, and we look at the fundamental model that we've shared with you in the past, a company with high margins or 25%, let's say, getting to 30 -- above 30% EBITDA margins and improving through improved gross profit margin as we go, that we can deliver that mid-single-digit growth rate with the type of free cash flow conversion. If we could assure that, that would be a really big thing in terms of -- this would be a cash machine for -- in terms of the business model that we have. That's sort of the base. You have all the questions everybody is asking, can you derisk? Can you? What does success look like is, I want to make sure that we achieve that and then we can achieve more. And that, that is being done through innovation, that we're changing our portfolio, not the businesses. We've done the portfolio changes that we have in the core. We want to augment them. It's very simple to model. Can we build more leadership positions? Can we expand that technology portfolio with new refreshed higher-margin type and that they're scalable. If we can achieve that, this becomes a very specialized company. To build an additive and ingredients company of this size is very hard. We already have that scale. If we can augment this, then you get a momentum on scale and the scale of the company itself, that very few companies have in the industry. And that would be a great success for us. But innovation has to be at the core because that's what's going to drive the profitable geographic growth, that's going to drive the profit. It makes the big difference, but that -- we do that coherently. Good technologies will be great for a while, but good technologies with leadership positions in core markets, that's where we build that long-term competitive advantage. And that's why we've taken the time to explain what our business model is, that is what success looks like as we move forward. So with that, let me say thank you very much to everybody, all of you online. Thank you for your time. I'm sure there's a lot more questions. We'll be on the road talking to a lot of investors, so -- and customers that are online, same thing on a lot of these technologies and to our team that from Ashland, thank you for all the work you're doing. I hope you find this as exciting now that you're seeing how it could impact other people. And for those of you here, these are all words you've heard us. I hope that you see and hear the same and feel as you see some of the products, the same story as you talk to our team. So thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to connecting with all of you again. So thank you.