Ashland Inc. (ASH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. On behalf of the entire Ashland team, a very warm welcome to our 2025 Innovation Day. As always, it's great to see many familiar faces in the room. And for those that are newer to the Ashland story, you're joining us at a particularly compelling time. I'm William Whitaker, Ashland's interim CFO, and we are thrilled to be hosting you here at our Bridgewater, New Jersey campus and many others from around the world on our webcast. It's been roughly 18 months since our last Innovation Day. And at that prior event, we gave you a glimpse into the potential of our new technology platforms. And today is about more than just a follow-up. What today is about, it's a powerful demonstration of how that potential is becoming a tangible reality. So what does that mean? You have the opportunity to hear from various leaders from across the company. We want to highlight that we've made remarkable advancements on those platforms across business units, applications and markets. We also want to show you that the more detailed level of value proposition that we're bringing to the market. What you're going to hear is that we're solving complex problems in high-value markets for our customers, and we're excited about it. As a part of that, too, we want to show you that the technology is not only real, but we believe it's very valuable as well. So before we get into the exciting details, I do have some logistical points I'd like to cover for you. The first is the presentation is available on our website, ashland.com, under the Investor Relations section. We also are recording today's event. A replay will be available later this evening for your use. These are our long-term plans. We will be making forward-looking statements on several matters. They are based on our best estimates. However, actual results could vary based on a variety of factors and circumstances. We also will be referencing non-GAAP financial measures. So please refer to our website and the presentation for additional detail and reconciliation on those points. Moving on to the agenda. As I said, you're going to get an opportunity to hear from several leaders not only at the corporate level, but also the business units, packed with insights focused on our innovation platforms. We're going to start with Guillermo Novo, our Chair and CEO, to provide an overarching update on our strategic priorities with a focus on innovation. And then we're going to transition to Osama Musa our CTO, to highlight the remarkable achievements and advancements we've made on our technology platforms under his leadership. And then the majority of the time will be spent with the business units. We will get an opportunity to hear from the general managers as well as some of the leadership team for the business units. Those topics will be focused on the innovation strategy, but then also going a level deeper and highlighting the specific case studies that we view as valuable not only for us but for our customers. Following that, we're going to invite Guillermo back up on stage for the enterprise-level summary. This is important because what you're going to hear today from the technology platforms is it cuts across a number of our business units. So the Ashland level perspective is critically important as well. Following Guillermo's remarks, we will open it up to Q&A. We'd love to hear from you in the audience, and then I'll also be moderating the question bank from the online webcast. So please feel free to submit there as well. That will conclude the portion of our webcast, then those in the room, I would encourage you to go across the street. We will have a brief lunch and then we'll have a guided lab tour, where you'll have the opportunity to experience firsthand the innovation that we'll be talking about today in the prepared remarks. With that, it's a very exciting time. It's a pivotal moment for our company. We're thrilled to have your engagement, attention and interest. I'd now like to welcome to the stage Guillermo for his opening remarks. Guillermo?

[Audio Gap] The number of applications that are working, but also a lot of the markets that we're trying to get, how it fits with our strategy. But before I jump into the innovation side, I did want to give a brief update on how are we doing in terms of our overall strategy for Ashland. Number one, we basically finished our $30 million restructuring. We have a few things that need to flow through. But most of the communications have already been finalized and are well in progress. And this is a very important event for us. This really signifies the closure of our portfolio transformation activities. Over the last few years, we exited some -- downsized some businesses that we didn't feel were profitable. We've liberated a lot of the working capital and the assets that we're going to talk about repurposing in the future. We sold our Pharmachem business, and we made a commitment that we were going to eliminate all the stranded costs and all of the gross profit impact of the sale of the nutraceutical business. So with that, it's done. And this really is a big moment for us because it's not just done what we've done recently. For the last decade and a half, 2 decades, Ashland has been in constant transformation. And that's over. We are where we want to be. We have the portfolio of technologies that we wanted to have. And as you are going to see today, we have the strategy that we think will propel us to the future that we want and that we're looking for. So pivotal moment for all of our investors. I think the algorithms for tracking our growth and all that are going to get much easier, much simpler. And as we've done in the last calls, we're making them as transparent as possible so that you can see where we're making progress, where are the issues and that we can be very open about that progress. The other significant accomplishment is on the $60 million of manufacturing improvements that we're driving. As a reminder, there's 3 activities that we're focused on in this initiative. One is network optimization. We're moving around what we produce where. So that we can get the lowest cost. Second is productivity. These are things like cycle time, yield improvements, how we run our plants and our operations. And the third is the asset repurposing, all these assets that we have idle, how do we repurpose them for the future. All those will have a significant impact on the profitability and the financial strength of the company. But most importantly, they're focused on increasing our competitive position in several core areas. The big areas, the $60 million is driven mainly by the portfolio the network optimization. We're not including yet the impact of productivity or the impact of the repurposing. So those, we think, are going to be significant upsides to the numbers that we have today. And -- but the $60 million is really targeted on 3 areas: one, strengthening our VP&D business; two, strengthening our HEC business; and three, consolidating small plants that we have so we can move production and be more efficient some of our major plants. Third, globalization. We've basically made all the investments. We have 4 businesses. They're about 10% of our -- the sales of the company, above average margins to the company. We want to grow them. We're going to grow them $100 million over the next 3 years. And all the investments that we've added new commercial people around the world, new technology people, we've built in our plants. We have now the biofunctional actives plant in China operating. We have our Mullingar injectables lab and plant also in operation. We converted a nutraceutical plant into a tablet coating plant and microbial protection plan in Brazil. That's in operation now. We've moved production of some of our products, especially the microbial protection into the U.S. and also expanded capabilities in Europe. And more recently, we already started the project. We had bought land in India and we're starting the project in India for tablet coating. So you'll hear how that impacts some of the innovations that we're doing, but we're well underway on the globalize. On the innovate, I'm not going to talk too much, but we're going to hear the whole day about this topic. But we are innovating both in the core as well as with the new platforms that you're doing. And lastly, we're staying very disciplined on our capital allocation. That I expect us to maintain as we move forward. So our strategy is very clear, execute, globalize, innovate and invest. That's not changing. We're going to leverage sustainability as a big driver for some of the changes that are going on in the industry. And we believe that, that strategy fits very well in line with not only the activities we're doing, but even in this more difficult environment, all these activities help us perform better in the short term and help us build into the long term. For today, the focus is going to be the innovation agenda. So officially, let's talk about innovation. And I want to welcome you to our second Innovation Day. It's a really important day for us to showcase the progress that we have made. And I think we've made a lot of progress as we move forward. So first, the technologies themselves have advanced. And you'll see concrete examples, they're real. We believe that they're scalable, that they can really grow for us. We are validating these technologies with our customers directly with our labs. And we feel that they're scalable. And by scalable ways that they can have a significant impact on our company, not just in growth, but in that scalability, it's also driving differentiation. We've got tons of intellectual property that we're building around these technologies. So in the time of hypercompetition, it's good to have a renewed portfolio with more differentiated products that can be the engine of your future. And lastly is we have the teams. People are energized. They're dedicated. You'll hear about some of the upgrades and things that we've done over the year. So significant progress in just 18 months. Just as a reminder, why are these technology platforms important to us? Our business model is very simple. We built leadership positions in specific markets by creating that critical mass in those markets and intersecting that with as much new technologies or products that we can bring to our customers to -- so that we can deliver real long-term solutions, concrete solutions for our customers as they formulate and as they do their work. Where we have more intersections of the 2, that's where we build our leadership positions. We have our big 3 pharma, personal care and coatings that are a big driver. But we also sell out a lot of these technologies in other markets to get scale. So the issue is as the more you bring in new technologies, you can create more big core businesses for us. Also to recap, the technology platforms that we talked about last meeting in September '23, and that you'll hear about some of them today. 7 platforms are transformed vegetable oil, that's our TVO technology. We have the multifunctional starches, the pH neutralizers, super wetters, novel cellulosics, liquid cellulose plus and our bioresorbable polymers. We have a few other ones that we're still working on that aren't ready for daylight, but we consider -- continue to find new opportunities to bring in new platforms into our portfolio. We are very excited about these platforms. They align well with our big 3. You're going to see a lot of concrete examples where we're taking these technologies and applying them into pharma, personal care and coatings. But you're also going to see examples where we're going into new markets, into ag, into some of the industrial coatings type areas, into bioprocessing for pharma. Great new opportunities that we believe with a newer portfolio, we can continue to expand. As I said, these bring not just ability to grow, but its ability to differentiate for the long term with a lot of intellectual property. And also, it's a portfolio. We're not betting, we don't have 1 horse in the race. We have 7 horses, hopefully more, so we can manage the risk of innovation a lot better by managing a portfolio and that excites us a lot. So progress has been very, very strong. Big messages are we believe in the technologies that we've developed. We're validating with customers, the feedback that they're getting that they're working. So the technology side, we have validated. The issue now is working with our customers on developing the specific products for their needs. So it's more on the commercialization side as we launch a lot of these products. The other thing that we've done is the capability building. All these -- we brought in a lot of new talent. Many of the people you'll hear about today, new to the company, but not new to the industries that they're in, a lot of experience that can help us really advance these technologies. And that's in the commercial area, in the technology area, even manufacturing area, the company has changed much more than what you see in the outside world. And I think the most important part is that engagement. All of us, all the executive team, all the leaders in the company are engaging our customers. You'll hear a lot about the visits, the feedback we're getting and that's a big change because I think to drive that innovation, the first rule we need to do is we need to create value for our customers so we can then create value for ourselves. So one area that I do want to make sure that as we talk today is our commitment to our innovation growth that we shared with you in December has not changed. We're still very much focused on that. We're committed to delivering $100 million of innovation growth by fiscal year '27. The majority of that, obviously, is driven by our core innovation. So there's a lot of the products that we're launching. But the new innovations start kicking in as that process as we launch. So the upside potential for us is the sooner we can get more traction on the commercialization of new products, I think you're going to see a lot more of that traction and upside into our innovation growth. And the commitment is that this can add about 150 basis points to our top line growth. All these are much more profitable, newer things that we're doing, so greater than 25% EBITDA margins and strong free cash flow conversion. So before I pass it to our CTO, Osama, to do an update on the technology platforms, I did want to take a moment to recognize all the teams in Ashland. Developing new technologies is hard. It's a lot of work, risk, and we'll talk about it when I do my closing comments. The last 4 years, we have spent really pivoting this company into a very different portfolio changes, really honing in on the markets that we want and developing these big technologies. And as you know, the external environment has been quite challenging in the last 5 years. So this is a very big accomplishment. So I did want to take a moment to communicate also with our entire team how proud I am or the leadership team is with what they have been able to accomplish. It is truly exciting, and it will change our business for the future. So with that, let me pass it on to Osama.

Good morning, everyone. It's my great pleasure to be here to share with you a very exciting and amazing journey that we went through for the last 4 years. But today, what I want to share with you something is that the transformation of Ashland innovation portfolio is significant. So the question you could ask me here, Osama what do you mean? Take a look. We are driving the innovation impact by leveraging the superior technology platform across market. It's not easy way to do. How can you take a technology that can go from one business to the other, that with utilizing an asset that you have. The second element that we have, how to accelerate the performance of these new technology platforms by strategic resource allocation. We have put the right resources at the right spot. The third element, which is the most significant one, we are driving and delivering new-to-the-world technology. When I stand in front of you and tell you, we are really creating a new-to-the-world technology and new-to-the-world product, that's a very strong statement, patented technology by strong engagement with our customers, to create significant value for our customers. You could say, hey, Osama, how in the world you can accelerate and leverage the technology across business units. How did we do that? I want to remind the audience here that Ashland has a proven track record of taking the core technology and scale it across business units. Take a look. Ashland has two key core technologies. The first technology is the nature derived. Imagine, nature-derived ingredients, such as cellulosic, guar, cassia gum, [indiscernible]. The second core technology is the synthetic polymers. You have vinyl pyrrolidone and derivatives. You have vinyl ether and derivatives, you have polyurethane. You have polyethers, all under one company. Imagine you have the synthetic and the natural under one roof. And those 2 key technologies can go across business serving, cross business units, Life Sciences, Personal Care and Specialty Additive as well as the diverse and growing secondary market. Over 60% of our core technology dealing with naturality and sustainability. And we are taking advantage of that to expand our technology and technology toolbox by pivoting toward a new technology platforms. So now how are we leveraging the new technology platform across businesses. Take a look. If you look at the chart on the right side, you'll see that one technology platform can go across multi-business segments such as Pharma, Coatings, Personal Care as well as a secondary market. Take a look at the vertically, you will see that one business segment can go across multi-new technology platforms. Now the question how in the world, technologies like that can go vertically and horizontally? The reason of that, because this is a new technology platform, we created them not by accident. We invented them not by accident. They are sustainable. They are scalable, tunable with superior performance that can create significant value for our customers. That is the reason you see them going horizontally and vertically. This -- because of all of that, we have around 53 patent has been filed since we spoke in 2023. That's amazing. You could say, Osama, what else? We can say that the second part of our journey is to accelerate the performance of this new technology platform. How can we make more and more of that? To do this, we need to invest in the resources. So the resource for us become like -- for the last 4 years, it was a very important topic. Are we putting the right people at the right spot? Are we hiring the right people to do the job that you want them to do? The answer is yes. We already developed and expanded the applications of our new technology platforms by hiring, as Guillermo mentioned, by hiring very talented scientist and engineering with industrial experience. As a matter of fact, we already increased the R&D resource allocation to new technology platform from 10% in 2023 to 35% now. Our resource investments are paying off. That question is how? Why do you say that Osama? Take a look. When we spoke in 2023, our innovation pipeline value for year 5, it was around $330 million. And the new technology platform portion was a little bit small. As you can see from the pie. We expanded our innovation value of our pipeline by 50%, and we increased the platform pipeline value by 2.5x. This is significant to make the new innovation pipeline value around $460 million minimum. Now in 2025, what we are doing, we're working very hard to convert the pipeline value into greater reality by launching new-to-the-world technology, working hand-in-hand with our customers to create significant value for them. In addition to this, if you look at the overall launch value is increasing and we're expecting that value to be $80 million in 2025. You could see -- and you see a word launch there because here, Osama, how many launches based on the new technology platform Ashland has delivered since 2023 related to the only the new technology platform? The answer is 11. We already launched 11 real impactful product highlights the sustainability, tunability, scalability and superiority of our new technology platforms. These 11 products are those 11 products serving the unmet need for different parts of our business, Pharma, Personal Care and Coating as well as Crop Care. As a matter of fact, we will be launching another 6 products in fiscal year 2025 based on the new technology platforms. That's amazing. So with the total of 17 product, I hope and that hope is real, it will be happening in 2025. So now we are continuously driving the 7 new technology platforms from ideation to manufacturing success. But for today, we will be presenting 5 platforms as examples, to give you a flavor to see how this -- what does this mean? This translates that into reality. So please allow me to provide you with a brief overview of those 5 platforms that are going to hear most of the morning from my colleagues. The first platform is -- and please remember that what transformed vegetable oil, TVO, TVO and TVO, because we are going to hear it over and over today. TVO, the transformed vegetable oil platform is so attractive for us because it has attractive characteristics. What is it? Bio-based, biodegradable, non-microplastic, non-GMO and [ vacant ] as required. And we invented this platform for a major reason. What is it? To replace the microplastic acrylic additives. Imagine, to replace, a very strong statement, the acrylic microplastic technology. The second platform that we have is the super wetting agent, Super wetting agent also has attractive characteristic, sustainability, biodegradability, low VOC to replace the nonsustainable and forever chemical, such as PFAS and silicone. Very amazing. Too attractive characteristic of 2 different platforms. The third one is the bioresorbable polymer, Bioresorbable polymers are polymers that can safely degrade by the body. Safely degrade by the body for long-lasting injectables formulations. The fourth platform, we call it multifunctional starch. When you think of -- as you think of starch. Now we are entering another era of our technology related, not just cellulosic and guar and [indiscernible], but starch and we call it multifunctional starch to replace the unsustainable thickener suspending agent and biology modifiers. The fifth platform and the last one, this we invented this technology to answer the market's needs for the sustainable, no yellowing, low VOC, pH neutralizer while maintaining the efficacy and the performance. So those are the 5 platforms that you are going to hear from my colleagues today, and you can see their sustainability, patentability and core expertise checking every box. But for today, you will hear about an exciting lineup from our 3 business units: Life Sciences, Personal Care and Specialty Additives. Each business units will present 3 case studies with a total of 9 case studies. But take a look carefully from the 9 case studies, 5 of them related to the TVO. Please don't forget the name TVO, which is transformed vegetable oil, because 5 speakers, 5 things, going to talk about the transformed vegetable oil. 5 of the 9 cases, it will be related to the TVO technology. So those 9 case studies are a small portion of our overall market opportunities. These 9 case studies that you are going to hear today have -- including a $4.4 billion opportunity, which is a significant opportunity for a $2 billion company. With this, I would like to turn the floor to my colleague, Alessandra, to present Life Sciences. Alessandra?

Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. It's a pleasure to be here. When I joined Ashland in June of last year, I was excited to hear about our innovation platforms and our innovation pipeline. And now after having visited all of our regions, spent a lot of time in our key markets and in a lot of meetings with our global and regional customers, I can say that our technology, there is a market pull for our technology. And what we're going to present and talk about today, it is real, it is tangible and there's customer evidence, and I would like you to hear more from our leaders during the sessions today. Life Science, Pharma is our key end market and we have the broadest portfolio in our industry, a very diverse portfolio. We have a global reach and really presence across all of the regions with -- both with business development teams, technical teams, manufacturing across all of our regions. You can see that Europe and APAC, our largest regions followed by North America and Latin America. In VP&D and cellulosics, we have a market-leading position. We -- in Life Science, you can see on the top that we have been expanding our EBITDA margins. Our EBITDA margin is above 30% with the completion of the portfolio optimizations that Guillermo talked about for Life Science specifically, it's mostly the divestiture of our nutraceuticals business and with upside potential with the technology platforms and innovation as you hear today, and also with our network optimization. Looking at our strategy with 4 pillars in Life Science. So first, it is about maintaining and extending our leadership in oral solid dose. Our core technology with VP&D that grows across as both Guillermo and Osama talked about. VP&D is core for Ashland, not only for Life Science, it's critical that we continue to drive cost savings with network optimization and also, as Guillermo talked about, productivity improvements in this area, which are critical not only for Life Science, but across Ashland. Also on oral solid dose, we have been growing and expanding our leadership position with share gains in cellulosics with our core innovation. We have seen great success in the last year, and we continue to expand our leadership position with our core innovation in cellulosics and also on oral solid dose, we have, as an Ashland, an opportunity to take a leading market position as an excipient supplier for the growing oral biologics delivery with our core technology and also with transformation innovation into oral biologics. The second pillar in our strategy, it is about growing with tablet coatings and injectables. We have been growing double-digit both revenue and profitability in those 2 areas. We have been building capabilities across our regions, both with business development teams, technical, manufacturing. We talked about, last year, the expansion of our Mullingar, Ireland facility with both R&D and manufacturing co-located in that location. And also, we have been making investments and we'll be making investments in Columbus, Ohio, and you'll hear a little bit more about that with our bioprocessing strategy. Also in tablet coatings, Guillermo talked about our expansion in -- with the new tablet coating facility in Brazil and our ongoing construction in India. For both tablet coating and injectables, you hear more today about how innovation can bring high-value in those areas, and you'll hear more about this today. The third pillar for our strategy, it is leveraging -- is about leveraging our platform. So Osama talked a lot about our innovation platforms, our technology platforms. How do we leverage this? It is leveraging our technology platforms to unlock new opportunities for Ashland, penetrating in biopharma, the very attractive biopharma market and you will bring specific case studies on that area, and that is an opportunity for Ashland to tap into new opportunities and new addressable market for Ashland. With that, also with bringing differentiation in tablet coatings, crop care, so those are high-performing solutions and also with sustainability in very attractive markets, as you hear more. So on the third pillar of our strategy, those are markets where we have very low single-digit market share position today or 0 in some cases. So we have very low market position and the opportunity to tap into new markets, new areas. Fourth pillar of our strategy is about our inorganic growth. We have refined our M&A strategy over the last year to really focus on -- laser focus on injectables and bioprocessing. Those 2 areas very attractive areas where we can bring -- where we can expand our portfolio and also bring scale to accelerate our growth in injectables and bioprocessing with inorganic strategy. So as you see on the right-hand side, today, the focus of our -- the business case that we'll be talking about, it is in those 3 areas: tablet coatings, injectables and bioprocessing with the opportunity to tap into a new addressable market for Ashland of over $1.4 billion. You'll hear more about this directly from our Life Science leaders today. But I want to -- before I pass it over to our leaders, I just want to say that we do have, in summary, we have a rich portfolio in life science. We are changing the industry and we'll be changing the industry with our innovation platforms. And we will continue to invest and strengthen our core. Our core, it is very important for us in life science, and we will continue to invest and strengthen our core. So with that, I want you to hear directly from our Life Science team. So today, I'm joined by Kapish, who leads OSD for R&D and Sean, who leads -- who is our business leader for injectables and bioprocessing. So with that, Kapish?

All right. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Kapish Karan, I'm the global oral solid dosage form leader, and I'm very excited here to talk to you about our tablet coating technologies. Now globally, there's about 9 billion tablets consumed on a daily basis and about 50% of those are coated. Now tablet coating is really a crucial step for application of a thin layer of -- onto a substrate and it could be a tablet, it could be a capsule, it could be multi-particulates and these coatings are really crucial for pharmaceutical as well as dietary supplement companies. Now these coatings bring various therapeutic as well as manufacturing efficiencies as well as product differentiation. Now in terms of therapeutic aspect, they do help in control release, which helps with patient compliance, especially enabling lesser frequency of administration of tablets. They also help in masking unpleasant taste and order as well as ease and swallow ability, which is critical for kids as well as elderly patients. Now they also help streamline manufacturing with faster coating process times. And then in terms of marketing, they really provide branding. They help connect to the customer. They make the tablets look really nice and pretty and ease in swallow ability. Now when you think about this, this is the last step before you make the oral solid dosage from or a tablet, and it's really crucial to get it right because you have invested a lot of time and effort upfront. Now in several pharmaceutical companies, tablet coating tends to be a bottleneck. Now Ashland has an Aquarius line of film coating systems that provide both aesthetic and functional benefits. Now what we see is about a $360 million obtainable market, which is growing at 3%. And we see a clear path to attaining about 15% to 25% of the market share through innovation, innovative systems as well as supporting our customers where the productivity is a challenge. Now there's one competitor which dominates the market has about 65% of the market share and there's a clear need and our customers keep asking us to be the secondary player, which is globally compliant that can provide quality and productivity in this segment. Now pharmaceutical industry wastes about $50 billion in inefficient manufacturing and only 35% efficiency in their operational manufacturing and we see a clear path to overcoming or debottlenecking the tablet coating section through our transformative coatings and so on. Now as we work on our road map of film coatings, we are transitioning from the first and second-generation inefficient coatings to truly innovative systems. We have launched and are really working on rapid adoption of Aquarius Genesis currently and are also building for the future using Aquarius coatings based on transformed vegetable oil. Now this coating brings about 80% efficiency and faster throughput rate. And at the same time, it provides about 70% savings on energy certainly helping our customers to reduce their capital investment or defer those as well as increase their efficiency. Now there are 4 key reasons why we are going to win in this space. One clearly being we have a global network of world-class labs spread across strategically to help with customers. They're working closely with them with sampling, scaling up their process as well as localized manufacturing, and you've heard it clearly with our globalization efforts, we're trying to be closer to our customers, service this market even better. Now third, and it's really critical that none of our competition has is that we are backward integrated into our polymer system. So we make our polymers, we control the quality, the cost and the design, bringing new functionality. And what you're going to hear in the next slide is really looking at the how these innovative platform technologies are helping us develop something that cannot be achieved by products that are currently approved on the market. Now this is our journey that we have taken. So right now, we are working on commercializing and enabling rapid adoption of our first innovative coating, which is Aquarius Genesis and are working towards transformed vegetable oil-based coatings that are going to really enable us to deliver superior productivity in the future. Now we started our journey with coating material for transformed vegetable oil in 2024. And by mid-2024, we started seeing huge benefits, and we started putting that into application testing. And currently, we are in beta site testing phase, working with our top-tier global as well as regional customers. And the initial feedback has been very positive. Now these customers are really crucial for us because they are helping us evaluate a product in real market environment. But then they're also going to help us in regulatory approval, which is really crucial for the success of the product. Now the feedback has been positive, and we are working quite closely with them. Now some of the markets that are very attractive for us as well as our customers is where this large volume product. So think about obesity market, diabetes, hypertension and dietary supplements. And this is where they see a clear need for productivity improvement. At the same time, we are working internally with our regulatory as well as our toxicology team and have already initiated some toxicological testing to start with expediting the commercialization. And then 2025 and 2026 onwards, we are working on setting up our manufacturing capabilities, expanding our sampling to various customers as well as starting to register this product in key markets. Now TVO-based, transformed vegetable oil-based, coatings are really transformative. They are providing truly productivity benefits that are not feasible with currently approved products on the market. Now what you're seeing is that it provides operational efficiency as well as sustainability, helping our customers meet the ever-evolving environmental goals as well as producing medication sustainably, which has a lot of consumer appeal. Now this coating provides about 80% reduction in coating process time. This is significant and nothing that is on the market can truly deliver this. And in addition to that, if you look at the right-hand side, we are working with a North American customer for a single SKU that produces about 2 billion tablets annually. They see a net savings of about $2.5 million while getting 70% reduction in energy, 75% less water utilization and 80% lower carbon dioxide emission. And this is truly remarkable. And at the same time, it's an opportunity for Ashland to get about $1 million -- up to $1 million in sale. Now this creates a win-win situation for both Ashland and our customers. Now not only this, this technology, while being 80% more productive will give them the opportunity to add more production on the same coating equipment or add another product to that getting more and more benefits from this defer further capital investment and so on. So for some of our initial customer, feedback has been truly positive, increasing efficiency and sustainability while debottlenecking the coating process is a game changer for them. So with that, the TVO-based coating is not just a technical improvement, but really a sound investment for Ashland as well as our customers. So thank you all for listening, and I'm going to like transition over to Sean to talk about bioresorbable polymers as well as bioprocessing.

Thank you very much, Kapish. So my name is Sean McMahon. I lead the businesses in injectables and bioprocessing. And I have 2 really exciting case studies to show you today, which I think impact mass populations. They're really at the cutting edge of medicine. The first is bioresorbable polymers. It's part of our injectables portfolio. If you look on the left-hand side of the screen, this is the chemistry route, we synthesize these polymers. We start with lactic acid. So you're all familiar with it in your muscles, you produce it if you don't get enough oxygen. It's a very safe compound. We build it upwards to create materials that have predictable degradation time frames. So we can control how long they last in the body, whether that's a week or several weeks or several months or several years. And it turns out that control is massively impactful across medicine. If you look at the left-hand side of the screen, these are a sample of the applications, representing hundreds of products in the top left with drug delivery and on the bottom with medical devices and dermal fillers. In drug delivery, you take a drug molecule, you encapsulate it in a polymer that Ashland creates. Depending on how we've created it, it could last a month, it could last 6 months, delivered to the patient. And you've created something that's one single injection over those 6 months versus an injection every single day. There's massive implications aside from people's dislike of multiple needles, there's other implications for patient compliance and how effective that treatment is. If you look at the bottom right of the screen, you're also familiar with this concept, though you might not recognize it. In medical devices, there's a big movement from permanent materials that stay with you for the rest of your life to degradable options that perform a function and breakdown afterwards and the most simple example is sutures, which uses this technology. Traditional sutures used to be used to close wounds. You go back to the therapy to remove the stitches. There's a pain. There's also a cost in terms of getting back to the doctor. There's an access problem and there is scarring. Modern sutures, the more relevant compositions that we work with, are breaking down over time. You don't have to go back to the doctor and there's all kinds of values associated with that. That same concept is applicable across medical devices transitioning from permanent to degradable in orthopedics, in coatings, in hernia meshes, in scaffolds. Across the space, there are more and more applications every week, and we come across a lot of companies doing new things in this space. Looking at Ashland, we focused on 3 key areas, and this is how we've built our business. We started in long-acting injectables on the left-hand side of the screen. It's a big space. There are many existing products. If I told you that 50%, half of prescriptions for chronic diseases, chronic disease means a long-term disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer's, half of those prescriptions are not taken as prescribed. So while there's lots of work going on to make better drugs, you can be certain there's a lot of work going on to make better drug formulations for existing compounds. And that is happening in this space. And what it does is we trap the drug in the matrix, deliver it to the patient, and you take a decision out of the patient's hand and you put it into the formulation itself, it guarantees compliance. You get the most out of your therapy and you don't have to wonder about how they eat, how they sleep, all kinds of behaviors that may be associated with the disease itself or their age. In that space, we have millions in sales that have grown rapidly over the last 3, 4 years. We have over 200 programs. They are big programs in many cases. Think about obesity. People are taking injections every week now. You can be certain there are programs in clinical trials trying to use this system to create monthly or multi-month dosage forms in this area. In the center of the screen, I talked about medical devices. There are many different cases. Dermal fillers is another example. They use these polymers inject them into the wrinkle to fill the space instantly. It breaks down into lactic acid that I talked about, your body is familiar with that. It stimulates collagen to be formed, so that reduces their appearance over time. It's a very, very large volume application. You're not treating a disease. You're working with patients and populations that are growing, rising middle class income and the tolerance and the application for these technologies and dermal fillers is growing beyond the consumption today in terms of supply, and we see massive drivers there pushing Ashland to launch additional products. In the long-acting space, we launched the best-in-class purity in 2023. In the dermal fillers and medical device space, we're launching a new grade portfolio in June 2025. We have prelaunched sales, which is a really good indicator. They are quite significant. In terms of prelaunch sales for a new product, they're really pushing us as fast as we can move to supply the materials. And on the far right side of the screen, this is the future. So we're familiar with nucleic acids and their value through COVID, mRNA was delivered, and that was facilitated by lipids. And while it worked, they're not perfect. They have challenges. They are notoriously complicated to formulate. There's multiple components that go into them. They have stability issues. So you heard about and you read about shipping them all around the world under a low temperature, and that can be difficult in certain regions. And then finally, they accumulate in the liver. It's where lipids go on your body, which is useful if you're targeting the liver, which was okay for COVID, but there are all kinds of new diseases and therapies that need to go beyond the liver and they're looking for something else that can do this more effectively or more cost effectively or more straightforward in terms of targeting. We have developed technologies here. We are using our platforms to enable that. They work exceptionally well in the lab setting. We're currently doing animal testing and partnering with customers in the space. And that one is pretty transformative because that will disrupt a whole new industry that's growing as fast as it can. So in terms of the market opportunity for injectables as a whole, it's $750 million. That's the target for us as a market size. We want to capture as much as possible and it's growing at about 7% per year. That growth rate is fueled by many big drivers. First and foremost, the modern therapeutics are generally going to be injected. If you think about the likes of biologics, RNA antibodies, some of them are not stable in the stomach. Some of them cannot be absorbed in the stomach, so they have to go with injection. For that reason, 8 of the top 10 drugs by sales are injected. Second one, if you think about aging populations, the number of people over the age of 60 is going to grow by 40% by the year 2030. So that's 5 years from now. That is the population that consumes the most drugs. Drug consumption is directly proportional to excipient. And that's what we supply as a company. That's a good thing for us in Life Sciences as a whole. And then finally, on the bottom of the screen, we're not just treating diseases. Aesthetics market is a very, very large market with dermal fillers, and we see volumes growing quite significantly in that space with all of those factors that I talked about. So in terms of Ashland, we are unique in the space. In the long-acting space, we're the only company in the world that has 3 key ingredients going into these formulations. So we're part of every conversation anyway. And that is why we've been able to build such a large pipeline in the long-acting space so quickly. Ashland is also a leader in terms of purity. So a lot of these compounds are very sensitive to impurities. We have best-in-class purity with the Ultrapure launch that we launched end of 2023. We've co-located operations and R&D in Ireland. That expansion is complete, and that's winning business in the market. How is really speed? We have the faster lead time in the market to supply customized polymers here. And all of this together allows us to partner with customers when they develop long-acting formulations. When you bring 3 ingredients, you have a better technical package. We can do a lot more for these customers with a package versus 1 single ingredient, which is what the market leader has in this space today. On the right-hand side of the screen, we've pursued the market in steps. We've developed our long-acting pipeline. It has grown quite significantly. We're entering dermal fillers and medical devices with those same materials and in the future, we'll bring new solutions for advanced drug delivery in nucleic acid delivery. So in terms of where we were and where we're going, you've heard about the expansion in Ireland that was a significant expansion. And it was developed and built to cater for the center of the screen, and this is the most exciting piece of the injectable portfolio. If I was to sum it up in one visual. This is our pipeline. So to develop an injectable drug product, it takes years. You go through clinical trials, preclinical animal work, Phase I, Phase II, Phase III. Those are all samples. So sample population, small quantities being used, lots and lots of work and energy that we have to spend, that our customers have to spend to get it to market. And that represents the investment that we've made, and we have made it to create this outcome. And what happens when it goes to market is a significant jump and I can give you a very positive example. Recently, we had a program with the customer, 3 years of sales for us going through clinical value was about $100,000. They placed the first commercial order going to market next year, and its value is $2 million and that's 1 program of over 400 programs in our pipeline. So we have a lot of confidence about where this is going. It's a translation of pipeline to revenue, and we see revenues grow. We also see profitability grow. As you can imagine, the technology that I've just talked about, they enable the solution at our customers' end. In many cases, they are more important than the drug itself, the long-acting version of an existing drug is enabled by the polymer that we make. For that reason, price levels are very high, and we can talk about that in the lab tours. Profitability opportunities are significant here. We grow volume in medical devices and dermal fillers. And then we hope to pioneer in the new spaces in novel drug delivery. So it's a really exciting space. We're really confident about growth here. We've seen it over the last 4 years, the growth level is significant, but the big steps are happening right now actually for us with new orders going from Phase III to market, which is already happening for us. So as a case study, if I show you one of the projects, this is developed by a company called Oakwood Labs. They're 25 years making long-acting formulations. They work for end pharma companies in many cases. This is an oral drug for cancer, you have to take it every single day. So 365 tablets a year. And I have already told you that half of those won't be taken in general case as prescribed. So what they're doing is they're translating those 365 into 12 monthly injections, which can be administered at the clinic, which guarantees the compliance outcome. So you get the level of drug that you need. On the bottom right, Oakwood uses 2 different ingredients from Ashland to create the release profile. What you're seeing here is drug release over time. The time function is 25 days. We want a consistent release profile, which is achieved by the center green line. All 3 lines are Ashland polymers. All 3 of them use 2 of our products but the center green line is ideal, and that's customization that's enabled by the Ireland facility with R&D working side-by-side with manufacturing, and that is scaling up and now manufacturing takes over and produces bigger batches so that they can supply it in their later-stage clinical programs. On the bottom left-hand side of the screen, the average program value when it goes to market, is about $0.5 million. It's very profitable. It's a very sticky business. It's extremely difficult to displace somebody in this space because they're quite customized. Beyond that, they have very long lifetimes in the market. There are long-acting injectable products that exist today who have 40 years of sales that continue to grow in the market. They don't come and disappear short term. They take time and energy to create, but when you're there, they're quite sustainable. We have over 200 programs in our pipeline at different stages. We do have programs with 5 of the top 10 pharma companies by revenue in the world. And we have some programs with extremely high value. There's more than 10 that have individual value when they go to market between $2 million and $20 million, and that's linked with how they're used. If they're used for something that's quite widespread, for example, obesity or dermal fillers, the volume is going to be very, very high. And those are the cases that will really change the business dynamics for this. We know we're going to be successful. We already see growth. It has been significant. But if these cases happen and hit, the steps will be very, very large and very, very quickly for us. So I would say it's a really, really exciting space for us. We've done a lot of work, and we're now seeing the outcome. We've even built the capacity to supply this for the next 5-plus years in Ireland. The second case study is a totally new market for Ashland. Although we participate in pharmaceuticals, and we know all these companies, we haven't traditionally participated in biopharma. And what this is, is bioprocessing. It uses living cells and organisms to create the biologics themselves. So we're not talking about formulating a drug, we're talking about making the drug compound itself. The way it's done is you have these large bioreactors. They're big, big tanks maybe 2,000 liters each. You grow cell count and density over time. The biologic is actually within the cell. So it's a monoclonal antibody, for example, that we want to harvest from the cell. They're extremely expensive materials at the end of a process from a 2,000-liter reactor with huge volumes of chemicals going into it, you get about 1, maybe 2, 3 kgs out of that. Those kgs have values between millions to tens of millions per kg. So it's a very, very high value space, high chemical input, low yield output. Anything you can do to improve yield in this process is going to be extremely valuable because CapEx expansion is extremely costly for those companies. There are many steps in the process in the bottom of the screen, starting with growing the cells up as much as you can, followed by rupturing the cells, so you can harvest them, filtering them and extracting that finished product. We have multiple solutions that can be used at multiple stages in this market. I'll talk about pH neutralizer and its function as a buffer. So that creates a nice environment for cells to grow. Thereafter, when cells are reaching maturity points, you want to rupture the membrane. So think of it like popping a balloon so that you could access what's within. We have our super wetter technology, which I'll talk about for that. Outside of that, we have 3 other programs. Some of them are shown on screen. Bioflocculants are used to aggregate the cell debris, so it can be easily filtered. In the super wetter case, the second example is viral inactivation. So because they're coming from living organisms, you have to inactivate them to prevent any viruses being transferred. So in terms of bioprocessing chemicals, it's a $5 billion market. It's a big, big space. It's all new for Ashland. It's growing really quickly. So this is the faster growth that we present today at 9% as a market. We have 5 solutions that we're working on for this space. 2 of them have a combined value of $335 million, and we're targeting growth in the space with our buffers and cell lysis technologies. The growth in the space, as you can imagine, is driven by biologics. Every headline you read is going to talk about biologics and investment by pharma companies in this area. Look at the top 10 drugs by sales in the world, 7 of them are biologics. It's a big booming industry. Two is complexity. Anything we can do to make it simpler or improve yield is going to be highly valuable to the customer. Three is regulations. When this industry started, which is relatively new, the chemicals that were used were not necessarily designed for it. So they weren't designed for high volume use. It's grown really, really quickly over time and the environments are reacting. They're banning certain chemicals that are not degradable, which means there's an opportunity for Ashland and then finally, rapid adoption. They're used as process aids in the formulation. So we add it at the start of the cell cycle, we take it out at the end. It doesn't go into the injection that actually reaches the patient. Therefore, the adoption times are much, much faster. It's not the same type of regulatory approval that you see with FDA formulated excipients. This is very different. You have regulatory requirements and safety requirements, but that is it really and then you need to convince customers to move to your product. Fortunately for us, the regulations that I'll talk about are already pushing them that way. For those 2 that I'll show you, the first is pH neutralizer. As a reminder, what is a buffer, it creates a neutral pH. Why is it important here? You need yourselves to grow over time. If the pH becomes acidic or basic, you can kill those cells and you lose yield significantly or all of it potentially. The market leader is a primary amine-containing buffer. If you look at the right-hand side of the screen, it's a useful material, but it has certain limitations. One of the most difficult applications is with enzymes, which is top right, and we started there that's a known issue for the market leader. It binds to the enzyme, it inactivates the protein. So it's not very useful in that application. That buffer doesn't work for those kinds of technologies. In our case, what we see is the enzyme activity over time with pH neutralizer in blue continues to go up, which means our technology is more versatile for these difficult-to-use cases. And that's an obvious entry point for us to get into the market. But the bottom right of the screen is what's really exciting for us. This technology, if you continue to add buffer over time, you will kill the cells. So that's a problem with the existing technology with all buffers generally. But we see that you can add 10x the quantity of pH neutralizer without killing more cells than the existing market leader, which means flexibility. If you can add more of our chemical, you can push these processes further, which is a big advantage that will allow customers to have all kinds of process flexibility in their outcomes and then finally, the degradation property. So our material is inherently biodegradable. We're exploring that opportunity as an advantage for wastewater cycles. Can customers more effectively waste and dump their waste using Ashland technology as opposed to what they currently do in terms of purification and waste disposal. That's a very, very costly side of the process. That's something that we want to try to exploit with inherent degradability. The second case study is a cell lysis agent. So after you've grown the cells up, you need to rupture the membrane without damaging what's inside so that you can harvest it. Super wetter is the technology that we've tested for this application. This came to us as a market need. So the market leader is a nonionic surfactant. It has been banned in Europe. It's a chemical that's classified by REACH as a chemical of high concern. That's a nice situation for us when we look internally at our platforms, and we find cell lysis agents are perfectly formed with our super wetter technology. They rupture the membrane, they don't damage the protein and imagine how excited our teams are to find that we have performance advantages even beyond the degradability performance. So bottom right of the screen is the pretreatment. These are cells that have been treated to fluoresce. So when the membrane is intact, you see the individual cells. When you rupture the membrane, the content spill outs, so it looks like a haze of green. We see versus the market leader that Ashland's product creates more complete cell lysis. So you're rupturing more of the cells, that means you have yield potential outcomes. It also means that you can use less of our chemical in the process to achieve equivalent results. And that's a big, big opportunity for yield improvement. Not only that, they're looking for somebody else. Even if we had comparable performance, we would already have a very good opportunity here. For us, when we bring new products, you look for performance advantages, we have that here. Imagine what we expect to find in the market when we go to multiple companies who are already looking for something to replace what they already have. And that's the situation that we're finding. We have validated this with customers. There's a lot of excitement and they're testing our solution. So in terms of bioprocessing and where we were versus where we're going, there are clear market needs here. It's driven by sustainability outcomes. Customers need more sustainable solutions. There's an opportunity. We've validated that with customers. Today, we're testing our solutions with customers. We've done our own work. We know we're excited about the space. It is a new market. We're validating that excitement with our customers. We're building out toxicology plans, manufacturing plans, regulatory requirements and we're trying to do this as quickly as possible. So on the right-hand side of the screen where we're going, we want to invest here. This is one of the bigger opportunities that we can see. It's a huge market. You can see how fast it's growing, and there's many, many things pushing it towards us. We just need to reach out and take it. And I think in that sense, we're investing upfront in R&D. We have 5 programs that we want to get to market as quick as possible. After R&D investments, we're investing in sales and operations to scale them and to take as large a share here as we possibly can in a shorter period of time. So we plan to launch multiple products here in 2027. So in summation, the key takeaways for the Life Sciences business. First and foremost, we presented attractive new markets. There are markets that are right next to what we already do. They are the same customers that we already serve but they're new markets for us. We have small shares in many of them or none at all, for example, with the biopharma space, there's opportunity for significant growth. They are also high-value technologies. Sales in these areas are highly profitable to Ashland, which will affect the profitability outcome for us. They're perfectly aligned with our strategy. They fit our platform technologies. We're finding solutions that have already been developed internally, which will allow us to move quickly to capitalize on these. Secondly, in OSD, we talked about film coatings and the opportunity that Kapish presented with optimization, with cost savings, with value creation for our customer and for Ashland. We did not talk about oral biologics. We have a massive program in that space. It's launching in the coming months, and that's one we didn't talk about today, but that's one that will create a lot of value in a space that we already lead within. Thirdly, in injectables, it's all about the pipeline. We have built it. It is converting. We are very confident, and we see those outcomes. You see it in the reported double-digit growth. We see the opportunities as being much, much bigger in front of us than behind and that's a space that will be sustainable in terms of long-term revenue capture and profitability for Ashland. In biopharma, the needs are clear. The market has come to us describing those needs. Fortunately for us, we have our platform technologies, which have proven successful. They're better than the incumbents in many cases. The incumbents are also being replaced. It's a perfect time for Ashland to capture share in that space. And then finally, in M&A, it makes sense that we're targeting these spaces organically because we have solutions to address them. We can scale faster if we find opportunities inorganically in those target areas, in particular, in injectables and bioprocessing. We've built out a team to do this. We have worked on our strategy. We've refined it. We're working through that to identify targets, to engage targets and that is an ongoing process that we hope to action to help us move as quickly as possible to grow in those target spaces. So I'll finish on that, and thank you and hand over to Jim and the Personal Care team.

Good morning, everyone. It's great to be with you all here in Bridgewater and for those online joining us. My name is Jim Minicucci, and I lead our Personal Care business. We are thrilled to share with you today the progress we have been making in advancing our technology pipeline. Our teams have done a tremendous job progressing on our innovation front. We're going to share with you 3 examples today. And I believe these 3 examples, they're going to bring these technologies to life for you, make them real, tangible, give you a view of what's happening inside the bottle and how our products work. We've shared with you in the past our Personal Care business. It's broad, it's diverse, it's profitable and growing. Last year, on an adjusted basis, we did just under $600 million in sales. As we've shared, we've completed our portfolio actions. We recently closed the divestiture of the Avoca business. We're now complete. We're done with our actions. Within Personal Care, we manage 3 business lines. Our care ingredients, this is our largest business line. It includes our cellulosic materials, our PVP products, guars, vinyl ethers. Our second business line is our microbial protection business. And then our third is our biofunctional actives business. We are mainly a personal care beauty supplier. Skin and hair are our largest segments as well as oral rounding out personal care. Home care, it's always been more of a secondary market for us. Now with our new technology platforms, you'll see us innovating in a much more purposeful way being very intentional in our participation within home care. We're already seeing advancements both in laundry and in dish. So in Personal Care, our vision, what we believe and what we are doing is two things: one, changing the industry in building and growing businesses. So how does that happen? First, it starts with having a healthy base. Our care ingredients portfolio. The actions that we're taking in our network optimization as we reduce our CPU and strengthen our supply base as well as in our commercial excellence activities. We'll continue to accelerate growth in our care ingredients. Building businesses, our microbial protection business and our biofunctional actives business. We've talked about globalizing these businesses. We've built out the teams around the world for both of these business lines. We've brought capacity online in various geographies as well as labs. We have a very rich opportunity pipeline and our teams are working every day to close these opportunities as we increase our penetration rate with existing customers in these 2 segments. Lastly, innovation. That is why we are here today. And what we believe is that we will be bringing the next generation of industry workhorses to the market and really changing the industry with new novel materials. Today, we're going to go through 3 examples with you. You've heard TVO, I hope, when you leave, you remember, TVO. We'll share with you 2 examples from our TVO platform. Both of them are within our hair care segment. And then we'll share a third example from a different platform, our multifunctional starch related to skin care. And I think it's important to understand that when we say TVO, it's not just one TVO. If you think about our core technologies, HEC, there's not one HEC or PVP or guar, same here. The TVO that we've developed for hair fixes for hair spray would not work in the second example in conditioning and vice versa. The TVO that we've developed for hair conditioning will not perform in hair spray. Just these 3 examples expand for us a $1 billion market opportunity that we don't serve today. So why do we have so much conviction? Why do we believe that we can change the industry? I think the first thing is we have a lot of confidence in our technology, in our toolbox. The second thing is we are fortunate that we're in a market that has favorable tailwinds in change drivers happening in this space. The first one is sustainability. There is a need, a responsibility, both socially and environmentally to replace synthetic microplastic nonbiodegradable products with renewable biodegradable materials. And we are leveraging that change driver. But it's more than that. I would say the second is us, consumers, how we use products, how we interact with them, how they make us feel? The consumer experience with personal care products is changing. We want to have something that feels light on our skin, on our hair. And so when you look at the sustainability and naturality, as well as us as consumers wanting a different experience with products that's really driving the need for superior products, new materials. It's clear that consumers were not going to pay just for sustainability. And when we work with customers, if there's product A that's synthetic, customers are not saying, hey, can I have product A, that's natural and biodegradable. We need to bring A prime, A squared, 2 A. If it's a film former, it still needs to be a film former. If it's a conditioning agent or rheology modifier, it still has performed that function, would have to really elevate the overall performance of the product. So today, we'll be sharing 3 examples. As mentioned, 2 of them within our TVO platform in hair. And the takeaway is we're targeting new market spaces, and these are large market spaces. The first example where we've developed a TVO product for hair spray. We are the leader in hair fixative in hair styling. We participate in all formats, except hair spray. We're in mousses, we're in gels, we're in creams. And now we've developed a TVO product to replace an acrylic-based film former in hair sprays. So this is expanding our space even in a market where we are currently a leader. Second example is going to be in shampoo and conditioning, where we've taken that TVO platform, derivatized and developed a different product as a conditioning agent. Today, the majority of the conditioning agents and shampoos and conditioners are silicone-based, 2 predominantly, aminodimethicone and dimethicone. The third example is going to be within our multifunctional starch platform for skin leave-on. Rheology modifier thickeners, they go across the industry in skin and hair in both leave-on and rinse-off applications. Today, we're targeting specifically skin leave-on applications. The industry workhorse is mainly acrylic-based carbomer, rheology modifiers. There are some natural modifiers as well, some starches, gums and cellulose, and we have seen great performance with our multifunctional starch in this space. So who better than Dr. Galder Cristobal, who leads our R&D group within Personal Care to really deep dive and bring these technologies to life. Galder joined us a year ago. He jumped in with 2 feet. He has been working side-by-side with myself and the entire Personal Care team as we've developed these technologies in our lab and in our customers' lab. Galder?

Thank you, Jim. Good morning, everyone. I'm Galder, senior R&D Director for Personal Care, 20 years in the personal care industry, working on surfactants and polymers. And throughout my experience, I have worked in North America, obviously, as well as in Europe, but also in Asia for more than 15 years. If you can hear me, correct? All right. I joined Ashland, as Jim said, over a year ago. I was seduced by the mission, by the vision of the company. And I was also seduced by the transformative power of the technology platforms to come with the solutions that the personal care industry needs. So as Jim said, we're bringing tangible -- bringing real examples of projects where we are working, advancing with customers and to replace the industry workhorses that they have been here for decades in the personal care industry. So the first example is on -- the first project is on hair care in styling. Have you ever wondered what it is in a hair fixative care. The can is made of mostly for propellant. There is also a solvent and alcohol, and there is at the ingredient level a polymer. This polymer, it is the performance engine of the hair spray. The polymer is there to deliver the hold, the stiffness, the look, the shape to the hair that the consumers, they are interested for. These technologies, they work by applying a film, a thin film on the top of the hair. That thin film is able to bind glue hair strengths together to give provided texture to the structure of the hair that comes with the properties that you have after using the hair spray. These materials, they are, in a way, for the last decades, dominated by acrylics. These acrylics, they are synthetics. They are nonbiodegradable and they are persistent in nature. So what's wrong with these technologies? And why the market is looking for alternatives? First, as we said, the consumers are asking for natural and biodegradable technologies. Second is from a performance perspective, consumers are asking for give me the hold, give me the stiffness, but give me something more. Give me something that is natural. Hair that has a more natural dynamics, something that is -- looks nicer in a way. Correct? And then there is a third element, which is today to formulate these sprays, you have to use an amine neutralizer that comes with some safety concerns because they are toxic. And the industry is looking at replacing these materials. As in Ashland, we have put TVO as a cornerstone of our innovation strategy in hair care. What better than an oil to deliver the functions that hair needs to provide. So from that perspective, and leveraging the flexibility and the tailoring of the TVO, we have modified [indiscernible]. We have converted and transformed a vegetable oil into a styling polymer that is delivering the high level of stiffness and the high level of hold that the industry is requiring. This has not come overnight. It has required a lot of efforts, I mean, successive generations of our technologies, sometimes also with our customers that are giving us the feedback on our technology, and we have developed this superior technology that today is giving that level of performance. Look at the chart. On top of providing a high level of stiffness and hold, we are also able to provide that natural dynamics. The natural feel that is reflected into a better shape retention, in a better core balance and an overall appearance that is improved versus these acrylics that have been dominating the market for all these years. You will have the opportunity to go later to the lab and experience yourself what I'm talking about. So it's great to have these performance benefits. But at the end of the day, the technology has to be -- has to go into a can. It has to work, right? So from this perspective, I'm sharing with you that the technology that we have, it is compatible with ethanol. It is compatible with the most common and available propellant, the DME. It doesn't require an amine neutralizer and then when it comes, when actioned, it comes with very similar properties from a [ particle ] perspective to the benchmark that is used today in the industry. If on top of that, you add the high naturality index of our technology, which is higher than 80%. And then on top of that is inherently biodegradable. You have a superior technology, and we're ready to go and partner and bring it to the market as soon as we can. On top of this, we're also looking at the science behind our technology. It's good to deliver those consumer features, but also we need to understand what is the reason behind. And from this perspective, we're looking at from a mechanic perspective, hair mechanics perspective, what is different in our approach towards this synthetic materials. So a lot of material science going on. We believe that it is really the very nature of the film that we are applying into the top of the hair that is much more flexible than the [indiscernible] film that is provided by the acrylics that is giving that elegant and natural movement to the hair together with the hold and the stiffness that is required. So all in all, we're ready. As Jim is saying, the TVOs are helping us to go into a space where we are not today, hair sprays, in order to reinforce our leadership position in the styling -- hairstyling space. We're very focused on the activities on the projects that we have with our customers to bring them all the way as soon as we can, and we're working into bringing the technology to the market by 2027. We are ready for that. And moving forward, we're looking at expanding the use of this technology into other styling spaces, particularly in hair oils as well as in mousses. I'm going to move into the second project. Second project now is another feature very important for hair. It is conditioning. So unlike styling polymers, which is about -- all about giving shape and giving form to the hair, conditioning is about giving -- providing volume, providing softness, providing lubricity, providing detangling to the hair. The mechanism is very similar. So it is about the technology that has to go and coat the surface of the hair. And then here is the, again, given the binding, the gluing of the hair, we're providing the lubricity that gives the freedom to the hair in order to be conditioned. There are 2 good teams that we are very familiar with every day to deliver the conditioning performances into the daily products. One is the 2 in 1 shampoo, the second one is the conditioners. Here also, at an ingredient level, fine compounds, they are there in order to bring the performance related to the conditioning. I'm talking about botanical oils, esters, [ some osmolytes ], these are fine compounds, obviously, silicones. Silicones because they're very particular in nature, they give and surpass the best condition in performances today in the industry and the technologies I mentioned before, they are way far from the performances that the silicones provide. There's 2 types of silicones, dimethicones and amodimethicones, which are the amine-derivatized dimethicones that are designed to deliver the care to the damaged hair. So what's wrong with the silicones? The silicones they come with high energy intensity when production. So they are -- there is very, very high toll from a carbon footprint perspective. The second, they are also synthetics and they are not biodegradable. The second problem is these materials, they go down the drain. Silicones are -- the volumes related to the silicones are very large and they end in the municipal water stations, which is putting more and more pressure on these technologies from the government agency's perspective. And the third one is consumers. Consumers, they follow trends in the USA in the society and the trends related to free off, free of dioxin, free of microplastic, free of nitrosamine, free of sulphate, there's now free of silicones. So the brands, they are getting away from the silicones because these 3 reasons. Again, here, our approach is unique. We put the TVOs in the cornerstone of our strategy -- innovation strategy in hair care and then we derivatize the TVOs in order to, again, transform a vegetable oil into a conditioning agent. Here, what we're doing is different actions in here from a chemical perspective. We can make them cationic. We can then hydrophobic, we can play with the molecular weight of the TVOs. Basically, unlike others, we have a very clinical approach to a very technical material. Silicones are extremely technical. The TVOs are giving us the opportunity to develop that technicality in order to drive the performance, the superiority that the market is asking us. And the customers are telling us and they are delighted to go with this. Look at the chart. The chart is telling you the level of performance that we are getting is amazing. From a volume softness and detangling perspective, not only our technology is on par with the silicones and amodimethicone, but sometimes, we are overperforming the silicones. This is in shampoo formulations when comparing amodimethicones to our TVO, the most promising TVO and in dry conditions. So not only these performances are great, we also have some shortcuts. So in terms of shine and fly away that we believe that with some tweaking, we will be able to overpass with some ingredients in the formulation, we will be able to bridge. But this level of performance is really incredible. If I go to the next. All right. The consumer test, they have to be also back up by instrumental testing. So the industry is developing different instrumental testing in order to, again, assess the performance of the technologies that we develop. There is dry friction, wet frictions that is coming for reduction, deposition measurements that we need to provide in order to show how equivalent our technology is to the silicones. Here, I'm showing with you whether it is a combing measurement experiment in which an apparatus is going to comb a tress from the root to the tip and it's going to measure what is the force that needs to be provided in order to comb the whole tress. Obviously, the higher the conditioning level, the lower the force that has to be delivered. And as you can see in the graph, our material, our TVO is performing at the same level as the amodimethicone the industry benchmark in the market. So from a hair combing perspective, hair friction perspective, dry/wet, we have equivalent performances to the silicones. On top of that, what is very exciting is the sustainability profile. We are able to deliver this level of performance while having [indiscernible] biodegradable technology. This is not easy to get. Also it's getting a lot of traction, a lot of interest of our customers in order to accelerate on the technology adoption of our technology. And the last one is the easiness to formulate with TVO. It doesn't require to reformulate the shampoo. It doesn't require to reformulate the conditioners, basically can go in and then you have materials or shampoos with very similar aesthetic visuals as well as very good stabilities. So all in all, when it comes to the road map, we are leaders on the conditioning space with our polymers with cationic polymers. And on top of that, we're adding the possibility to venture into a new segment with the TVOs, where to cap and get a position into the conditioning ores. We're very much focused on bringing the projects that we have with our customers to the end. We are in very, let's say, intimate discussions and progress in some of the projects with some customers. Our focus is to bring the technology as soon as we can to the market and where we're going. So beyond looking at applying these technologies in hair care, we bring into home care, particularly on public conditioners as well as in hair coloration and in skin. I will now move into the last project. So we're going from here to skin from shampoos, conditioners, hair sprays to emulsions, from the TVOs to the multifunctional starch. Emulsions, they are formulations that have developed in order to provide care to the skin or to provide protection from external factors like UV, for example, in sunscreen formulations. They are made by 2 noncompatible bodies, water, aqueous media and emollients, which are fine compounds. And in the middle, what you need is some ingredients that help them to make them compatible. These materials are emulsifiers and particularly thickeners. Thickeners, here again is our performance engine in order to provide the stability, the texture, the rheology, the appearance as well as the, I would say, the sensorial of the emulsion. This space -- it is dominated for the last years by acrylics, so the carbomers of the world together with more natural technologies that are coming in that is Xanthan gum, some starches, et cetera. So what is the industry looking at? The industry, as we mentioned before, is asking for give me something that is natural, but is having the same level of performance as the carbomers. Give me something that also can enhance the sensorial of the emulsions. And this is where we're coming. We're coming with something that is also unique. We have years of leadership in the rheology space, in oral care, in hair care, in home care. We have decades of functionalizing having the technology expertise to drive the cellulosics into the next level. So here, we are integrating a new polysaccharide to our, let's say, toolbox, the starch, which comes with great sensorial. But with our technology expertise, we're doing some modification in the starch in order to develop a best-in-class and new-to-the-world rheology modifier in the skin care area. As you can see in the chart here, the level of performance that we get in terms of viscosity, it is equivalent to the carbomers and significantly better than the Xanthan gums that are also coming into this space. From a texture and product perspective, you see the level of standup we are able to get compared to, for example, to the [indiscernible] at equal dose levels. You will have also the opportunity to go later to the lab to experience the technology with Hani and the team who will be in the laboratory. Most important thing, this market is very fragmented. So we have approached more than 40 customers all over the world, big players, medium players, small players to get the feedback from the customers. The feedbacks are impressively positive. They like sensorial, they like the level of rheology that we're able to bring. So let me bring you through the experience wheel in which we start with the textural appearance of a cream when you open it. So as we shared, we have something that is equivalent to the acrylates in the world, then you're going to go through how is the [indiscernible], the firmness and how is the pickup of the technology of the emulsion from the bottle in a way. Here, what you see our technology overperforming to the carbomer. This is because the very rich texture that the starch is able to provide to the formulation. Then it goes to the initial breakup, which is how -- when you spread in the scheme, how they would say the cream is basically behaving and here, the carbomers are performing slightly before us because they have a very particular sensorial from that perspective. But afterwards, when it comes to the absorption, the tackiness, the grittiness and the [ meat ] which is the appearance of the skin, we have something that is equivalent. The last one, the most important one is the texture -- sorry, the fill, the after fill when using an emulsion that is formulated with the starch. Here, this is where we have sensorial that is [indiscernible]. We have done also further measurements, more instrumental measurements to understand that powdery fill, what happens into the friction on the hair -- on the skin, sorry. And what we see is that the starch emulsion is giving less friction, is giving a more firm skin than when the same emulsion is applied with carbomer. So all in all, we're leaders in the rheology space, and now we are leaders also in the rheology space in skincare. We have added a new technology, a new polysaccharide into our toolbox. We've cellulosics. We've [indiscernible]. Now we have the starches to come with the solutions that the industry is asking to replace synthetic and nonbiodegradable materials. We are very much focused in order to really bring this technology to an industrial reality and start basically supplying with our customers, those customers that they have told us your technology is great. And beyond that, we're looking at positioning this technology outside [indiscernible] particularly into hair care, leave-on and [indiscernible] I'm going to finish with this. As Jim said at the very beginning, we truly believe that we are creating the next generation of the industry workhorses. The TVOs, the novel cellulosics, they're giving us the technology platforms to come and propose the solutions that the industry needs to replace the synthetic and non-biodegradable technologies. We have shared with you 3 examples, but we have more examples in the pipeline. The good thing is the customer, they see how different we are. The customers, they are really willing to work with us on the styling side as we just shared, on the conditioning side, on the rheology side. So all these are the programs that are working together. And now as we speak also, we're expanding these technologies, which are highly tunable in other markets in order to attain and have a bigger market share. So with this, I give back to Dago.

Thank you, Galder, and good morning, everyone. I'm Dago Caceres. I'm the Senior Vice President and General Manager for Specialty Additives. And here with me today is Dr. Ling Li. He's our global R&D Director for the business. And very similar to what Life Sciences and Personal Care presented, we're going to show you 3 examples as to how the platform technologies are shaping the future of our Specialty Additives business. But before I do that, I just wanted to introduce the business to all of you again who we are at Specialty Additives today. So what you can see here, we're about $550 million business and primarily focused on industrial applications. We participate in 4 segments that you can see on your right. Number one is coatings. Number two is performance specialties. Number three is energy & resources and number four is construction. The reason why we have highlighted the first two is because that's where you're going to see the examples that we're going to talk about today. Those two coatings and performance specialties are considered our most strategic segments. If you look at the pie charts in the middle of the slide, kind of get a feel for our business. So first of all, we are a well-diversified business from the regional standpoint. Second point that you can see here is that coatings is by far our most important segment. So coatings represents about 2/3 of what we do in Specialty Additives. And then our most important chemistry also by far is the cellulosics chemistry. The last point that I will make here, this is important for our strategy is that we are known in the market as a rheology modifier powerhouse. So that's really our heritage. That's how our customers know us for rheology modification as our #1 additive. So that's where we are today. Let me just show you where we want to be moving forward. This is basically our strategy and our strategic pillars. So the pillar #1 is protect rheology. We are the leaders. We're planning to continue to be the leaders in this space. We are making significant investments and innovation plays a critical role in making sure that we stay as leaders in this space, both core innovation and platform technology innovation. So that's our #1 pillar, very important, a lot of effort going into this one. The second one is really expanding the portfolio of additives that we supply to the coatings industry. So if you go back a few years, we were pretty much a one-trick pony. We want to be expand. Customers like to do business with us. And what we're doing today is expanding our portfolio of additives. It's going really well. This is an area that is actually getting pretty good traction for us. The third one, which we call beyond the can, is really participating in the industrial coating space. So we're very strong in architectural coatings, that's our bread and butter. Now we want to be stronger in industrial coatings. Why do we like industrial coatings? Number one, there is a really good overlap from the customer standpoint, customers that compete in the architectural paint, they also compete -- tend to compete in the industrial coatings. So we have good access to the market. And number two, industrial coatings is very much a science-driven performance-based technology-driven type of application and that's what -- that's a good fit for what we do at Specialty Additives. And the last one, absolutely last but not least, is our transformational technologies. We're working on several technologies and we're looking at disrupting existing markets. There is several that we're working on multiple spaces where we're really seeing the traction in the market. So today, we're going to talk about 3 examples. Dr. Li is going to walk you through the super wetting agents, a very interesting technology and also is going to walk you through the TVO oligomers. And then I'm going to take the lead on the last one, and then we'll wrap up. Okay? Dr. Li?

Okay. Thanks, Dago. Good morning, everyone. Today, I would like to give you an update for one of our most exciting platform technology, which is a super wetting agent. So as Dago mentioned, we are a leading supplier for rheology modifier, which is one of the additives in the paint can. So when you go to Home Depot, buy a can of paint, they're about 9% of value coming from additives. However, it is very important. Just think about when you cook a meal, that's all about the secret source and spices. So today, as we -- Dago mentioned, right, people know us as a rheology modifier supplier. But today, I want to really share with you one of our journey on the specific additives called wetting agent. So why we need a wetting agent is all about reducing the surface energy. When you think about the ring of water hits on the lotus leaf, it beads up, it slides down. However, when you try to use waterborne paint to coat a surface, you don't want it happen. So coating by definition is for degradation and protection. Just think about a paint without wetting agent. When you try to coat a surface, you got all kinds of defects. It doesn't look pretty. Even more than that, all those pinhole creators are going to prevent you to protect the substrate. For example, metal is going to get corrosion. So that's why we need wetting agent, and it's very important ingredient in waterborne formulation. So historically, there are many different type of wetting agents, typically, the high-performance wetting agent either is fluorocarbon based or silicone carbon-based and there's a synthetic hydrocarbon-based wetting agent typically is a low performer. So what actually invest on the super wetting technology is basically going to a market size about $280 million just as wetting agent in waterborne formulation. This is still a growing market, about 3% to 4% annually and the unique combination of Ashland technology between the sustainability and high performance give us confidence we're going to take 10% to 15% market share at maturity. Why it happened, right? So first of all, in the coating industry, the formulation is transformed from solventborne to waterborne because of the sustainability profile. When you move to waterborne coatings, there's a high demand for high-performance wetting agent. And also, in addition, people probably all heard about the keyword about PFAS. So PFAS is a high-performing wetting agent in waterborne formulation. Almost all the major coating companies are working very hard to try to remove the PFAS from their formulation. So this combination give us confidence to really go to follow this market trend. So we started from a wood coating, and quickly, we moved to the metal coating, now while also working with automotive coatings as well as some other industrial coating. So why we think we can win in this market? Because we have a very strong value proposition with a combination of sustainability, performance and cost. We already mentioned about the PFAS. Everybody just wants to get rid of PFAS in the formulation. More than that, the super wetting technology is also biodegradable. It's at low VOC. So the overall sustainability profile makes it very attractive to coating formulators. Second thing is it is a greener technology, hydrocarbon-based; however, it has to work, it has to wet the surface. So we are basically something around the world, people testing plastic substrate, wood substrates, metal substrate. In most cases, this greener chemistry actually performed as well as PFAS silicone-based wetting agent. In some cases, it's even performed better. So it does work as a high-performing wetting agent. The last point is about cost. So coating is an industry you have to be cost effective. So the good news for super wetting agent is because it's leveraging one of our core chemistry. So we have a deep know-how, how to make those kind of molecule. We have existing manufacturing capability to produce it. So that's where the combination of the sustainability, high performance and cost profile give us a very strong foundation to have the business win in the market. Wetting agent is a surfactant. Just think about you added surfactant in water, it brings some superior performance, but also perhaps some shortcoming. For example, surfactant goes to [indiscernible] generally foam. So as you can see on the top hand side -- left-hand side, we basically map out the existing wetting agent in coating market to really look at the balance between the wetting performance and the foaming tendency. So the yellow star over there is either wet. That's our trademark, but our super wetting technology actually has one of the best wetting performance. At the same time, it has a lower foaming tendency. So that performance balance really give lots of attraction in the market. So since we launched this technology about 18 months ago, we have some over 1,000 samples around the world. And we've got lots of positive feedback. The bottom side is one of the specific example. People use our wetting agents, putting the waterborne metal application. As you can see, if you see the coating spray on the metal, super wetting agent, easy-wet actually performed even better than silicone based. So later on in the lab tour, you'll see lots of very interesting demo actually on different substrates. And that's why we have very strong confidence. Our product does perform very well, better than -- sometimes better than PFAS and silicone-based material. So we had the first launch of this technology in Q4 2023 with a patent protection. We started from wood coating, metal coating. Since then, we have launched 5 grades around the world. This is the tunability of this technology to really feed the local formulation details as well as different applications, different substrates. So as I mentioned earlier, we sampled about 1,000 samples to the customer all around the world and we started to see the commercial success in 2024. And with all those qualification, regulatory compliance, we're confident that this technology can take off for the real commercial success in the near future. So what's next? So beyond waterborne coatings, we're expanding this technology to waterborne ink to metalworking fluid to waterborne adhesives. Even more than that, we're talking about PFAS replacement. But most recently, especially starting from Europe, people have more and more concern about silicone material, similar rationale because of persistency in the environment. So beyond the PFAS replacement pool, we have even stronger momentum with the silicone replacement. So now let's switch gears to talk about something we call reactive oligomers. Basically, this is something beyond a few percent additive in the formulation. It's going to be the major formulation components as oligomers in the UV-cure coating application. So it could be as high as 40% in formulation. The total market size could be more than $3 billion. So why UV-cure coating? UV-cure coating is one of the, I will say, the future coating technology with the best balance of the sustainability and high performance. So UV-cure coating basically is 100% solid, solvent-free, low temperature cure, so it's much better than solventborne and waterborne coating technology. Second thing, because UV-cure coating is a reactive chemistry, it will give you much better film performance between longevity and durability. So that's why Ashland really made a decision to invest in this type of technology toward the UV-cure industrial coating. So as you heard a lot about TVO, so this is also part of the TVO platform. And the bio-based nature of TVO technology is really aligned with a lot of the coating trend for sustainability. So what's different here is we install the reactive functionality onto the TVO backbone, which enables this technology to be applicable to many radiation cure applications. So today, we're going to really focus on its application in the lithium-ion battery electric coating, which will help to improve the EV battery safety. It can also be used in the electron beam cure coil coating which will help to transform the coil coating from solvent system to the solvent-free system with a better carbon footprint. This technology can also be used in UV ink, which will help the plastic packaging recyclability with easier removal of ink. Last, it can also be used as a grafting agent or cross-linking agent in high-performance adhesive to give you the good balance between high performance and sustainability. So that's why you can see this technology can be used in multiple different radiation cure applications. Today, we will have a little bit deeper dive on its application in the EV batteries. Overall, EV battery or EV technology is greener energy, low carbon footprint. So the bio-based nature is really aligned with this profile. More than that, you probably heard quite a bit a story like when electric vehicle got a car accident, it catch fire. So that's where it's very critical to have the dielectric installation layer on the battery case. When there is a car accident, if the electrolyte leaks out from the battery case, you want to make sure you have a high-performance insulation layer to avoid catching fire. So in this application, now in this industry, the most attractive technology actually is UV-curing dielectric film. So that's where this has strong needs for high-performance formulation ingredients. In this case, oligomer to really address high-performance needs for the safety. So that's why Ashland developed this TVO reactive technology, which will be used in the UV-cure formulation for battery coating. So that puts action on the top of the value chain as a high-performance raw material supplier. So next, the coating formulator will use Ashland reactive TVO technology with other components to formulate the high-performance dielectric material, dielectric coating, and that's suitable for the EV battery application. Actually, when I travel a long road, this becomes the hottest project in the coating industry, almost all the major coating companies invest R&D, invest technical capability to develop products for the UV battery coating. So next, those UV curable battery coating will be used by the battery manufacturer. So it's a continuous spring process and curing [ situ ] with UV and LED. That basically will help to put that insulation layer on the battery case. The major battery manufacturer, for example, the top ones in China, they start to invest production line with this technology already. Finally, this technology is really going to be used by the automotive OEMs. So basically, OEM will basically assemble those coated battery case into module and put those module into the EV car. So one of the major German OEM, the first basically launched this type of technology in 2023. So now you -- actually this technology already on the road. You just don't see it at the bottom of the EV car, right? So as you can see, through the whole value chain, there's a very strong pull for high-performance UV curable oligomer because they are related to safety, related to the sustainability and/or even I will talk about productivity. So the total UV curable oligomer market size for UV curable battery coating is about $550 million. It's a very fast-growing market with a 9% annual growth rate and it's a space with Ashland new technology with balance of good performance and sustainability profile. We believe -- we're confident we can take 10% to 30% market share at maturity. This is all about the battery safety and the battery production productivity. So we believe this technology will take market share from the existing technology, which is [ PET ] tape. So they use the tape to wrap the battery case to give the insulation layer. We believe we're going to replace or take market share of that technology. Meanwhile, as everybody projects the EV car or the green energy growth, the whole the pie is going to grow as well. So that's why we think we have a tremendous opportunity for our growth with this technology for EV application. So how are we going to win as actually in this new application area? First of all, actually it is not new to the UV industry. Actually, we're supplying 2 specialty monomers, [indiscernible] UV industry for decades. So in-house, we do have in-depth know-how about UV formulations. But overall, how we can win is all about safety and productivity. First of all, like for the current battery, as I said, like it's using a [ PET ] type to wrap the battery case. As you can imagine, at edges and corners inevitably, the tape is going to leave some defects. And those defects, as I explained earlier, it's going translate to the safety concern. So that's why UV -- a spray coating, UV-cure technology gives you a defect-free coating, which is much better performance or safety feature. This is all coming from, I would say, the Ashland reactive TVO technology, have a superior flexibility, superior metal adhesion. Again, those eventually translate to the battery safety as well as a very good electric properties and electrolyte resistance that's where if the battery electrolyte leaks out. More than that, it's about productivity. With all the projection on the EV market, you would imagine there will be massive production of battery cases. So the current tape wrapping technology is wrap battery individual one by one is not the most efficient way to produce it. So moving forward, with actually UV curable oligomer, UV curing technology basically is a continuous spray coating process and use UV LED curing [ situ ]. So that really address the productivity concern with the current technology. Again, the combination of the safety improvement and the productivity improvement, I think this is a market we can win moving forward. So we already demonstrated with Ashland UV curable oligomer technology can compete or replace the [ PET ] type technology, both for safety and productivity. But within the UV curing market that conventional bio-based UV curable oligomer. So that's why you can see on the left-hand side, the top row basically is aluminum substrate. The bottom row is a galvanized steel substrate. So we compare Ashland technology with conventional bio-based UV oligomers. As you can see in both cases, Ashland reactive TVO technology gives you much better metal adhesion. It doesn't matter it's aluminum battery case or a steel battery case. And those adhesions eventually can translate to the battery safety. So we do have the high-performance, sustainable product here to really win even compared with other UV oligomer suppliers. So hopefully, I show we have built a very strong foundation on this reactive TVO technology. We're filing patents. And Ashland is well known for our coating expertise and also we have a very good battery lab. So the combination of the know-how between coating and the battery give us a unique position to develop differentiated product in this specific application. So we have defined prototypes for this technology, and we already moved to the pilot stage. We already sampled some key players in this market and received very positive initial feedback. So next step, we will form the stronger strategic partnership with top players in this market and receive feedback and fine-tune the prototype for the product launch. Meanwhile, we'll finalize our manufacturing plan, the cost-in-use details as well as regulatory compliance around the world. And with all those combinations, I think we are very confident we're going to convert this superior technology to the commercial success. With this, I give it back to Dago.

Okay. So let's -- I'm going to walk you through the third and last example for Specialty Additives. And this is a very interesting example because I'm not going to talk about a particular technology, although I'm going to mention TVO. But here is really to show how the multiple technologies and platforms that we're developing today will allow us to enter into new spaces, into new markets, into new applications. So the one that I'm going to talk about today, it's metalworking fluids. And this is an area where we want to participate more strategically and more holistically in this space. The question number one is why do we want to participate in this space? When you look at the size of the additive space alone for metalworking fluids, that's a $5 billion market, total. I'm talking about the total additives space. Now what's interesting is if you look at the formulation that we have on this slide, you can actually see some similarities with coatings. Both systems, if you look at metalworking fluids do require a high level of additives and those additives are actually advanced and complex. So this is our bread and butter. This is what we like to do. This is what fits well our strategy. So interesting space, science-driven, an area where we would like to go in a whole lot more detail. Let me double click real quick on the size of the opportunity on this one because I think it's important. Our entry point in this space is really lubrication additives with TVO. If you look at the lubrication additives market today, that's about a $400 million market, growing mid-single digits. And of course, our participation will depend on the performance that we're able to demonstrate. So it can be 10%, it can be 30%. We really need to go through the trials to understand what we have in our hands. Now having said that, this is only one of the additives -- the lubrication additives. If we're able to add multi-functionality to our products, we can potentially go and replace other products. Let me give you an example. If we partially replace the lubricating oil, I'm not talking about the additive, but the oil, we can add another $300 million to $300 million of this addressable space. If we add, let's say, anticorrosion properties into the system, that can be another $800 million market. Corrosion inhibition is an $800 million market. And last, but definitely not least, a lot of the additives that we use in coatings are actually used here as well. So if you think about deformers, if you think about pH neutralizers, if you think about wetting agents that Dr. Li just talked about, those have applicability here. Of course, they will have to be tuned, but they do have applicability here. So that will be another easily $1.5 billion opportunity for us. So the size of the market is big. That's why we're excited. That's why we want to open a new market. Now how do we get there? And I think Dr. Musa mentioned this, it's really by developing superior technologies that offer differentiation to customers. That's what we're doing. Here what it means is multifunctional additives, as I mentioned. So can we improve the lubricity and can we add other properties into the system? That's what we're looking into. We're also doing a lot of VOC. We're getting closer to the industry. In any industrial applications, kind of the needs you hear from customers are the same. Always it's about performance, it's about productivity, it's about cost and it's about sustainability. We are looking into those trends. Sustainability, we know we have it. It's a vegetable oil, TVO, right? And the industry is trying to eliminate or reduce the use of mineral oil. So we do believe we have a strong value proposition there. And the last point, and this is very important, is that we don't want to stay with one product. What we really want to do is open up the whole space, service the industry with a multitude of additives. Just a quick example on this one. We're working with a leader -- leading company, a global multinational company in the metalworking fluids space. And like any other company, they are looking for differentiation and we've been able to work with them and send them some prototypes. The intent here was to improve lubricity and look for other properties. If you look at the graph on your right, you will see that the relative friction with one of the samples that we developed, this is the Ashland prototype #3, went down. Down here is good. Down means less friction. Friction means better performance. So this is a significant improvement versus the incumbent technology and something that -- it's early days, but it's something that really gets us excited about the opportunities that we have in this space. Of course, number one, and we are very mindful of this when you go into a new application, it's really all about working with partners. Our partners understand the application. Our partners understand what they need. We understand polymer design. That's really where the magic tends to happen. Okay. Just very quickly, if we go to our path forward and our journey, this is relatively new to us. Let's say, we've been working on this for about a year. The first year it was all about understanding the space. So you need to map out the chemistries, the technologies, who is who in this space. So we are doing that. We are getting closer to customers. I mean this is an area that is dominated by a few large players. We need to understand that. We need to understand the unmet needs. And equally important, we are building capabilities to be able to be much faster at developing these type of products. So that's what we've been doing. We've been pretty busy for the last year or so working on this. Where we are today? What we want to do is we are developing prototypes and by working closely with customers, we expect to have that rapid feedback that will enable us to accelerate innovation. That's the intent. And where are we going? Of course, the ultimate like with all the technologies, the ultimate goal is to commercialize. We expect to commercialize in a couple of years. Again, early days, but very promising days for us. And maybe access the market with the TVO-based technology, but then after that follow with our portfolio of opportunities, right? We have the pH neutralizers. We have the wetting agents, et cetera, et cetera. All of that has potential applicability in this whole new segment. So let me wrap it up for Specialty Additives with some of the things that you heard today from Dr. Li and from myself. The point number one is that we really continue to expand our portfolio of additives way beyond rheology modification. Rheology modification, it's important. It's our core, but we're going way beyond that. And how are we doing that? Really through differentiated technologies. That's number one. The second point, and I want to emphasize this one more time, our platform technologies are tunable. And the fact that they are tunable means that we can go after different markets, after different segments. That gives us a couple of things. Number one, diversification, which is very important for new technologies. And number two, it expands our addressable space, and that's what we're doing. The last point that I would like to make here is that we are actually utilizing our assets and our capabilities, I believe Guillermo mentioned this, to not only lower the risk but to accelerate the access into the market. And the very last point, what you saw today is literally the tip of the iceberg. And of course, we don't have time to go through the whole portfolio. But rest assured that we have many other technologies that support each one of our strategic pillars, and the objective for us is to continue to grow the business sustainably. And with that, let me turn it over to Guillermo.

Thank you, everybody, the team. Great presentation. Hopefully, you got to see a lot of different examples. We chose, as Dago said, this is the tip of the iceberg, there's a lot of other things. And we try to choose things that cover all the businesses, things that we're launching now, things that are in advanced development, and we expect to launch in the next few years and things that we really see for the future. So this is a portfolio of technologies. This is, as I've said, several years of work of what we can do for the future and really sets up Ashland for a very, very exciting future. But what are some of the things that we're doing to make this happen across the company. To leverage some of these new technologies is not easy. We know our customers want sustainability. That's a very clear statement. But we also know that they will not accept inferior performance or uncompetitive costs that make that challenge their own use. So when you're comparing to incumbent technologies that everybody wants to change but perform well and have been there for decades. They have built out infrastructure, manufacturing around the world to compete with that economically in day 1 can be a big challenge. So we need to partner with our customers. This is a journey. Some of these things are going to move much quicker. Other things it's going to be families of products, and you're going to see them generate over the coming years. So we feel as we talk to our customers, really the story is 4 things need to happen to enable some of these technologies. Number one, you need to have application scale. You need to find markets where either one application uses a lot of materials so that you can make it of significance to the supplier that they can enable the technology investment that is required, but also that it's meaningful for the market and for our customers. So that scale, a volume scale is very important for success. Second, you need to have economies of scale. You're going to need to be competitive, cost competitive in a lot of these areas. And that is, again, how do you build out that infrastructure over time. And third is, hey, if the big driver is sustainability, is it relevant? Is it just a little bit more sustainable? Or does it really move the needle for our customers? If the answer is yes to all 3 of those areas, we go to our customers and we say, look, this is something. In some areas, we can do it ourselves. We can move very quickly, super wetters. We can move quickly. In others, we need to collaborate with you because you need to start launching products, start getting the volume so that you can start building that infrastructure that is required. So why are we excited about this? I hope you heard. I mean these technologies are real. it is not one application. They're very tunable in terms of functionality. And we're actually just following what other technologies ahead of us. If you think of acrylic technology, they started in paint, they went in textile, nonwovens, adhesives, leather, detergents. I mean, it went through a plethora. It didn't happen overnight. It started really to grow and expand over the years. You've seen the examples. We see this with a number of -- a lot of TVO, but look at the super wetter, the pH neutralizers, not only are we going in different markets, we didn't mention some of these are liquid products. That same product, sometimes we make it in solid form. So it can go into a lot of very, very different applications for our customers. So we see the opportunity for scalable growth that can change Ashland, but the most important part that we can create value for our customers. We can help them change their industry to achieve their goals, and that is a huge opportunity for us. So that's a big plus. The other part that it does with us is it diversifies our portfolio of technologies, high IP, high differentiation. And as you saw, the value creation opportunities. It's not just replacing products, we can bring productivity. There's a lot of other sources of value that we think we can bring to create value for our customers. The second part is cost. And I'll use some examples. Some of them we already have good cost position. We're making them in our products, the super wetter, pH neutralizers we're launching, and we're moving. Let's look at the example of TVO, we believe it's going to be very, very competitive. Why? Well, let's go back to the future. Go to history. Before acrylics, what was the dominant technology. It was called oil paints. Oil paints were alkyds. Alkyds were oil-based paints. What we can do is modify the oil to make it alkyd in the future that can have more functional properties that align with what acrylics do today. So it's not just the same old technology, we can rejuvenate it. We can modify it into a lot of other different areas. So costs, alkyds to sell today. They were solvent based, a lot of in industrial coatings, you see them a lot in water-based systems, different parts of the world and in other applications. But they have limitations of lack of functionalities as an example. So that transformation, I think, creates a great opportunity for us. That's just one chemistry. You saw oligomers, you saw hair fixatives. There's a lot of other applications. But fundamentally, the cost structure of using oils to make high-volume products that can compete with synthetics is already there. So raw materials, we have a good position. Second is the equipment, reactors. We have the reactors to launch the product. We don't have to make a lot of investment. We know how to make them. But by the way, these are the same reactors that make a lot of these other chemistries. So we might not have all the reactors in place to scale this over time, but there's a lot of them -- a lot of our customers have already captive production capability. There's a lot of assets that are not creating a lot of value around the world. We can make acquisitions. So there's multiple ways that we can grow and do this. So we see that also from a manufacturing cost -- unit cost perspective, it is also very competitive. So the issue now is how do we scale, how do we grow a lot of it? So we believe that we can provide our customers a very clear and compelling value proposition that they understand and they understand this cost structure very well because in many cases, they're already doing a lot of this chemistry. So if we look at then what are the risks as we invest and grow in the business. So we're very excited that we've made a lot of progress. So 3 things if you look at technology-driven growth, what's the risk that we need to manage. There's 3 big risks. One is technology risk. You invest millions of dollars to develop technology, will it work? The second is commercial risk. Well, can you develop products that really have a value proposition that your customers will buy? And third is investment risk. Hey, everybody likes the product. You need to build a plant before you have the business, if you build the plant and the business doesn't materialize, you have investment risk. That's over the last few years, we've made a lot of progress in this. Number one, I think we're showing that we're proving that the technology works. So the technology risk factor has really come down for us. We've passed that gate. We're right in the middle now of the commercial risk. We're developing products for specific applications, and that's the part that over the next few years, you'll see how we perform and where the technologies actually hit. Good news for us is we have a portfolio. We have a portfolio of technology platforms, so 7 that we're working on. But even within the technology platform, look how many applications. Are they all not going to work? Are they all going to work? There's a lot of flexibility. So we have this portfolio risk mitigation that we can bring by leveraging our portfolio rather than we're not -- we don't have 1 horse in the race, we have 25 horses in the race. Some of them high chance of winning and a lot of them are going to qualify and get into the finals. So we feel very good about that. And specifically on the investments that we need to do. So for most of these, we're already leveraging all these assets as we did our portfolio optimization, exiting low-margin businesses where the assets and the working capital wasn't getting an appropriate return. Now where we can repurpose these assets. We're making all the super wetters, all these products in existing assets with minimal investment. We can do the same thing to launch the TVOs. So commercial risk part we can cover. As we grow, you're not investing in risk anymore, you're investing in success and really trying to now grow with your customers and where you want to develop. These are very regional businesses so we can grow and have different growth mechanisms, grow internally. We can license. We can partner. We can do a lot of different things depending on the technologies as we grow. So we don't see that as a huge growth investment. The one area that, by the end of this year, we're going to make a decision, that's probably the biggest investment that we need to make is on the novel cellulosics and the multifunctional starches. And that's basically converting the CMC plant that we shut down last year, converting it to some of these new products. That same unit can make all these technologies. Now all these technologies are not moving at the same pace. So we're a little bit in the chicken or the egg. We need to have the plant ready, so that we can start selling the first products that go, but it will take a little bit of time. It's not a big risk for us. It's about we can stage the investments to increase the capacity over time, but probably invest $10 million to make the conversion. That's the highest risk that we're going to be taking. We think it's very manageable, and we will be making that decision by the end of this year, really based on validation from our customers. So we're in a great position. This -- if you look at growth as a growth driver, this is what I would consider a cash-friendly -- free cash flow friendly organic growth because actually the intensity of the capital is not as high as you would think. I think the other big message is a lot of development work, but we are not doing. Our teams are focused, they're driving it, but we are not alone. We're working with our customers on this. Every business, all the steps forward are based on validation, work with our customers. They have a lot of skin in the game. We want them to have skin in the game because a lot of these things are going to be a journey over the coming years, and we need to start introducing the first-generation products so that they can learn, we can learn how to use them, modify them and grow over time. We're also working. We've had several associations. If you look at vegetable oil associations around the world, there's a lot of other parties that are very interested in enabling some of these technologies as raw materials. So we're going to work with other partners to see how we can grow and ensure that these technologies are successful. So the next 5, 10 years, 3 years, our story is going to be very, very consistent. No more change, it's about growth and driving our agenda. Execute, that means making our core businesses stronger, more profitable, that we can share gain in these tough competitive environment. We're going to be globalizing. We're going to be innovating and we're going to be investing in growth. We have a strong balance sheet. The last few years that were a bit tougher. We focus on a strong balance sheet so we could invest in our future. And because we believe in the future, we want to make sure that we maintain that capacity. We did add another small extra workload that we need to do is obviously the global trade mitigation, is on our radar screen. We're going to be working that. That's changing over time. But frankly, if you look at all the globalization work we're doing, and even this innovation that allows us to now invest in localized production around the world. This fits well in terms of more -- if the world is regionalizing more, a lot of the things that we're doing, I think, will take us in the right direction from that perspective. So algorithm is going to be simpler, less noise from all the changes that Ashland did in the past. We have a core business. It's about what the market -- how the market is doing, how we're doing in terms of performance in share, in productivity, execute, globalize, innovate and invest as we grow. And we believe this portfolio, you've seen that we're going after big opportunities. These are not small markets, has huge potential. You can argue, can we get more share, less share. All these things are going to be worked out as we get more validation of some of these applications. But what we feel comfortable is that at a minimum, we can deliver on our commitment of a growth algorithm saying 200 to 300 basis points over market, which should be mid-single digits, 5% growth. We can deliver on EBITDA margins over 25%. We're there, and I think we can continue to expand that. We want to manage growth versus margin at this point in time so that we can catalyze growth and top line growth is going to be very important for us and free cash flow conversion. This is a free cash flow friendly environment for us because of the decisions that we've made over the last 2 years to free up assets and resources so that we can support growth. So with that, thank you so much for your time, your attention. The message is we've advanced. This is 1.5 years and you can see all the changes that have happened in the company. We validated the technology. These are not new ideas that we're just thinking about it. We've been working on for 4 years. The last few years is really looking at time the technologies to applications, and you're hearing now the alignment with the business strategies. These are not now about technologies, these are about business strategies that each business sees a lot of value. We see the opportunity for sustainable growth. These are big markets that can transform us and on top of just growth transformation, differentiation. These are high-value products that we are going to own the real estate in terms of the IP positions that we have, and I think we'll enrich and strengthen our overall portfolio. And lastly, that we're delivering on this, and this is driven by ownership and accountability of the businesses. This is not a corporate-driven initiative anymore. We did start that at the beginning to start the pivot. But right now, it's in the hands of the teams that you've just heard from. And as you can see, very experienced, very committed and very excited team. So with that, thank you so much for your attention. And let me pass it over to William for our Q&A session, and I would like to invite the general managers up here, and then we have the other guests that will answer any questions that you may have. So thank you very much.

So we do hope that a prepared remarks to give you a better appreciation of what and why and how we're doing this. I do suspect there's some questions that we cover a lot. So we'd like to start in the room. I also have a few that have come through on the webcast I'll start [indiscernible]. In terms of process, I'd ask you to stay with me on the front and we'll go from there.

Dave Begleiter, Deutsche Bank. Guillermo, in the current macro, are you seeing customers slow the rate of adoption? And how big of a concern is that for the overall development of the portfolio?

This has been different. Like we saw that more when COVID happened that the shortages came and people were switching lab time to really try to replace other sources of raw materials. So that was more disruptive. Right now, I think everybody is -- saw that slowdown. We're not seeing a slowdown in terms of innovation. I think the big companies, there's a lack of innovation period in our industry and in our customers, too, and we'll hear it very clearly. So if anything, I think our customers are very interested and excited about these opportunities and need the innovation as much as we do.

Look back in the center [indiscernible] how you characterize how much [indiscernible] past 2 years, 5 years, however you want to characterize it.

So very, very good question. We've made significant changes. So obviously, in the leadership team, you've seen the changes. But if you go down, a lot of our technology leaders have changed. We're bringing in -- we have our forte. We have a team that's very experienced in certain parts of what we do. But some of the things that you heard are taking us into a new direction. So we're bringing in people that can also augment, bring some diversity of experience and thought in some of these new areas. So a lot of our commercial teams, leaders around the world, a lot of sales, a lot of marketing people, our technology, not just the leadership, but below, we're bringing in. We're moving and promoting also from the ones that we have that are very experienced, also giving them a lot of opportunity. We had last year in November, and I'll get you the exact number, but out of 100 top, I think, 25%, we're less than a year in the company. So that's that -- and I think over 3 years, it's probably over 50%. And if you go over 5%, I include myself, it's a pretty big change. And I think that's what's enriched. Everybody is learning from each other. We can learn from legacy groups that understand the technology well, but we can also bring some of these new ideas into the company.

Charlie Rose of Cruiser Capital Advisors. When you talk about your '27 goal, Guillermo, of $100 million from these new actions, how much are you losing from old -- how much is coming from old? How much is going away from old versus new? And then can you talk about what would be the curvature of growth that you think that $100 million would look like in -- over a multiyear period? What would that look like in '28, '29, '30? What are you sort of -- what are aspirational issues that you're thinking about, please?

So I think there's a clear ramp rate. The -- as I said in the first comments, the $100 million that we talk about for 2027, the majority of it is coming from core technologies. So we still have very good positions. If you look at pharma as an example, Klucel, Benecel, there's a lot of new things we're doing, new additives that we've been working on. So that is the majority of it. On the back end of it, we're launching a lot of these products. You start seeing the contribution from some of these newer technology platforms. The pickup really will come after -- if we can accelerate and bring more in, obviously, we can outperform the $100 million. And that outperformance probably would come from a lot of these newer technologies. So it's really about the ramp right now of launches. Some of these products, we need -- we're working through regulatory approvals. So the launches work, as an example, our ag super wetter. We launched it in ag in Brazil. Why? Because we could launch over there. As soon as we get the regulatory approval in the U.S., we'll bring to the U.S. So there's a lot of things that we need to do between getting the customers to trial, approve, align with their launches and that we do a lot of these work. But I would say the bigger numbers will come '27 through '29, '30. That's where the bigger numbers are going to come. And it depends on the market. Some you can see if you hit in coatings or in household, a win is big, tens of millions of dollars. If you win in a styling polymer or a new injection, it's going to be a lot of smaller increments. So we have a mix, and it really depends on how successful these technologies really are in the adoption with our customers.

That if you take a $2 billion company, you're taking $100 million in '27 from a lot of smaller actions. Is there one action in all these three verticals that you think really has the, let's call it, the scalability issue that really drives the company that gives you more momentum relative to the other two verticals?

If you look at -- I mean, they're all significant and you need to look at revenue and EBITDA. If you look at some of the bioprocessing, the revenue is a little bit lower, but the EBITDA is 3x higher. So you can multiply the revenue opportunities by 3 to do an equivalency. So it really depends on the segment. I think the issue for us right now is how do we scale. I think the [indiscernible] obviously, is the one that has bigger scalability across multiple areas and larger implications for growth momentum. But all the other ones, if you look at the pH neutralizers, I mean, the players that are there have a very, very healthy EBITDA multiples much higher than ours. if we can get a significant share there, it really does build up our portfolio. So the issue now is balancing how we create the scale for Ashland, and we might have some priorities where we all focus on certain things because we need to enable that growth or investments that we're going to do, but also give flexibility to the businesses to drive their own strategies because, for example, if you're going to build a bioprocessing, it's not one additives. It's going to be three of them that they need. So they need to move and get that flexibility. But they will benefit from the progress that the other businesses make.

Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners. You guys talk a lot about across all your segments about customer relationships and the depth and history that you have there as well as having a leading market presence in a lot of these markets. So that gives you a seat at the table, I guess these potential customers or partners listening to that the discussion about a new, new material rather than just an incremental innovation. I was wondering if you can talk about the differences in the development process and kind of how the time line looks when you're trying to introduce a new, new material versus just an incremental innovation on an existing material? And can you talk about how that no care customer and coatings or other specialty additives customer?

Well, let me ask the GMs to give a sort of a high-level view of what's the big drivers. If you want to start, Jim?

Yes. Sure. Can you hear me okay? I would say when you look at existing products. We have our care ingredients our existing products, cellulosic, protection material. There, you're bringing a new product, you change your spec viscosity, maybe a different preservative package, 6 to 12 months is usually a good rule of thumb for being able to introduce that material. What we're doing now with the new technology platform, I think a couple of things. One is the interaction we're having with customers. So without disclosing names, many of the leaders in this case, we have monthly steering set up with them on specific projects, aligning our road map with their road map. They're looking to change a certain ingredient in a shampoo or in a hair spray or in skin cream. And so we have that interaction with them. We're sending them prototypes, they're testing it, they're giving us the feedback. We're then adjusting our reservation and modification. The overall time line, you have multiple parts of the process. The first step is the formulation development. And that is a function of how quickly we can get TVO or starch to perform at the level that the customer needs in their specific formulation. Then you go to consumer testing. Okay, we have a formulation, we think it works. Now let's start testing with consumers. Assuming check, consumer testing goes well, great feedback. Now you need to go to brand launching introduction. When are they going to reformulate and launch the next brand for shampoo or conditioner or cream and then you go to market. So that time line, it's really somewhat customer dependent. It kind of comes back from what's the brand strategy at the customer side, rolling all the way back, you lock in your formulation, you get through your consumer testing, then you go to package, label, production scale up and then ultimately launch the market, 18 to 24 months, if things are going well, but it's really customer dependent on what is their brand launch -- brand launch strategy and how quickly we can advance the technology to that as well.

And we can say that we have visibility. Our customers share, hey, we're going to reform brand X in year Y. So either you're there or this is sort of like the semi -- no change. If you're not there by that time, then you're going to have to wait until -- these are big brands. They don't just turn on a dime and just introduce a new product and reformulate everything. So we need to map all these projects out with them so that we can align. But you have the longer one.

Yes. So pharma, I will give 2 examples. So first, I mean, Sean talked about bioresorbable polymers on injectables, where really our time line, it is very linked with our pipeline management. So it's our customers' pipeline. And Sean gave the example from preclinical to clinical to commercial, we are talking about 7, 8 years -- around 7, 8 years. And I also -- Sean gave the example of how we go from selling $100,000, which is really samples, right, on the preclinical, clinical stage to then $2 million plus when it gets commercial. So the time line for bioresorbable polymers injectables, it's about 7, 8 years and then sometimes more. However, Sean also talked about how we are excited and investing on biopharma, which is new. We don't have any market share in biopharma today. And this is a pull from the market, as Sean talked about. And in this case, we are talking between 2 to 5 years depending on the technology. But really, it is a faster adoption, and it is -- there's less regulatory hurdles. And it's a market pull. We talked about we are bringing sustainability and performance with our solutions. So that's a faster adoption and less regulating.

So can you hear me okay? So for industrial customers, I will say when you bring new-to-the-world technologies to them, there is kind of three areas that are different from just bringing another product, right? So the good thing about new to the award, of course, is you're creating a sustainable business. Usually, your profits are higher. You have a more sustainable business. But it's three things -- three areas that we always keep in mind. Number one, regulatory. -- right? So do we need an additional regulatory filing? It varies by country, it varies by application, it varies by product. That's outside of our control. So it can be months, it can be years, again, depending on the country we're talking about. So that's something that we need to be very mindful of, right? The second point that we also need to align is, and that's why we have our very disciplined stage gate process. You also need to make sure that your manufacturing strategy aligns with your regulatory strategy, which aligns with your business strategy. So from a manufacturing standpoint, yes, we have the assets, but we may have to tweak them, change them, add something. We need to make sure that those assets are ready for the customer. And the third point, which I think Jim mentioned this, is they are working with a product they have never seen. So the first sometimes mistake that a customer can make is assume that the product they're using today is going to perform very similar or the way it's going to process is similar to the product they used in the past. So there is a lot of back and forth on two areas. Number one, tuning the product to make sure you get to the right product, right? And then when you use the product, here's how you use the product, that is more handholding so that you ensure success. So I would say those three areas, I just lengthen the time line. And it really can go anywhere from -- in the case of industrial, so I don't have to wait years like life sciences. If it is a country that moves fast with a customer that move fast, we can be in the market in 3 months. Now if we're talking about a completely new product in a heavily regulated area that we need to go through the filing, et cetera. Now we're talking 2 or 3 years. So it's really the whole spectrum depending on what we are attempting to do.

As we answer that question, the other comment I would say, look, if you look at history, again, transformation, clearly surprise. Companies I've been in before, introducing a new buy side in personal care. We worked for 7 years in [indiscernible] on some things. And then overnight, one of the big players said, okay, I'm going, and you got $30 million, $40 million of business overnight and a very profitable thing, but it takes time to do the things, rotate polymer. -- new to the world things, it was a decade of work for teams to do this. But the growth came throughout. It's just it was -- usually came in steps because it really depends if a big customer moves, you get these steps. But I think that's why we want to commit to that 5% growth, that algorithm is the minimum that we want to do. If we can deliver that, I mean, we're going to be generating a lot of cash. We're going to be in a very good position. And the upside is it's hard, very hard for us to do when are those steps going to come. But as you can see, we're aiming high in a lot of these areas.

Abigail Ebretz at Wells Fargo. So you talked about consumer preferences for more biodegradable natural option driving demand for your TVO and starch products. Is there also a higher cost associated with this, i.e., are you expecting consumers to pay a premium for a more natural solution?

I was saying at the end, the customers have been very clear. It's got to -- we're not giving up on performance, and they're not going to go be noncompetitive in that. So we need -- and that's where we're excited that we think we have the performance features, we can actually deliver better performance in many areas and that all these technologies are cost effective. They're competitive with silicones. They're competitive with all the technologies. And in the TVO, which is the bigger one, it's already proven Alka technology. We're not inventing this. It's already there. The economics are pretty solid. It's just now our functionalization and how we want to play the game that's going to be very different. Again, how we accelerate. If we go alone, it's a certain pace, we can license there are certain areas, for example, some of these technologies we haven't talked about. Look, we're acrylics still. We're not in textile, leather. We're not -- we might license some of this stuff, and we can accelerate things. So all these things will be worked out as we validate the technology and as our partners that are working with bring ideas for us of things that we can do.

Jeff Zekauskas at JPMorgan. I've sort of two questions. If you took your $100 million in sales goal and you allocated it to your 3 main divisions, how would you roughly allocate the $100 million to Life Sciences, Personal Care and Specialty Additives? And secondly, is it fair to say that if you were a baseball team, what you were trying to do? What was to hit a lot of singles and get your runners to score as you hit more singles? Or are there particular product lines or customers where maybe that singles can turn into doubles or triples or home runs and how might that work?

Let me answer the second question, and then I'll ask each of the GMs to sort of talk about what the near-term growth focus is for them and what are the key drivers. But if you look at it, I mean, this isn't really a baseball game. This is really now -- we're validating technology. We're trying to make sure that we're screening that these are meaningful. There's a lot of other ideas that are just small and we're not going to go after. That's why we like the part that they are platforms. These platforms are a home run. You might have to do a lot of singles, you might have to do a lot of things. That's where the derisking is. It's -- we're not betting any on one home run to get us to the end. But the potential of the technology is there. So we are validating this last few years is not focusing on a lot of -- we focus on 7 things that we thought could have scale, that could be scalable and validated that at this point in time. And I think you're seeing some of the applications, these are examples. There's a lot more, can look smaller, but it's the totality of them that really create the market. Now as we advance, we're obviously going to allocate more resources and priorities depending on the specific opportunities that come. But that's really where we have been right now. We didn't have anything really 4 years ago. And now we have this rich portfolio that I would say for a $2 billion company, I don't see a lot of companies that have a lot of the innovation potential that we can do. I think what excites us now is now we're going to get on the field to play. We're launching products. Now the choices are going to start getting real of where we invest, which ones we prioritize. And that game is going to start being played really now. Even the launches that we did, it was more validation that technology works and that we can get momentum on that. As I said, these are not -- we're not going after little markets here. These can really change the game if we're successful. But you guys want to talk a little bit about your near-term innovation?

Yes. For Life Science, looking at $100 million for 2027 and even our target for 2025. As Guillermo mentioned, it's coming -- the majority is coming from our core innovation because in life science, I just gave the examples that it takes time. It's a highly regulated -- those are highly regulated markets. So it takes more time for our true new-to-the-world technology platforms to materialize. So specifically to your question, in 2027, it's going to come a lot from our cellulosics, where we have launched recently high-quality cellulosics, and we have seen the success and basically traction in the market, gaining share with our Benecel and also Klucel LS. So it's going to come from cellulosics, but also on the injectable space, where we have -- this is an acquisition we made 7 years ago. And as our customers bring to -- as our customers commercialize depending on their pipeline, which is our pipeline is linked to, we are also going to see the growth coming from that area in the next 2 years.

You want to take any?

Following your baseball analogy, more of a soccer guy, but I'll stick to that. We have a very disciplined portfolio approach. So we have regional innovation, core innovation and platform innovation. And today, we talked about platform innovation because that's your home runs. Having said that, we really pay attention to regional innovation and to core innovation as well. Regional innovation is to get you to first base, and that's pretty much it, and you go first base, first base, first base. It's very quick, lower risk, but you can run and run and run and not get too far. So that we are very mindful of that. Then you have core innovation that can get you into second base and third base. And we have the platform innovations that can really kind of hit it out of the park. Where we are today with in industrial application, we're very mindful that we can move faster, right? And we're very mindful that a lot of these technologies do have applicability in multiple segments for us. So I will describe ourselves. I'm not going to promise. I'm just going to say where we are in the baseball game. We have all the bases loaded, and we have three really good, good guys ready to go at that and just need a little bit of push, and we'll get there.

Within Personal Care, we have 3 business lines. We have our care ingredients. We have our microbial protection and our biofunctional actives business segment. So I would say our mix is relatively well balanced. I think our care ingredients, what we've launched in the past has been more what I'd call incremental. So if you look at the launches within our guar product line in some of our PVP product lines, it's been more incremental in Sun and in hair and in conditioning. Those are starting to now get incorporated into customer formulations, especially within Sun. I mean, sunscreen, it is a bit more of a longer qualification with new products there, and that's starting to ramp. Our biofunctional active NPI pipeline is very healthy. It's very active. We just launched last quarter a new product called [indiscernible]. First time in the industry, this is a hybrid. We're taking our cellulose experience with 2 peptides and hyaluronic acid. First time I've seen in this space, this is a bit of a longer development cycle where 2 months after launch, we're already getting customer POs, and we're already locked into formulations and products that are launching in 2026 and early 2026. So I expect our biofunctional active pipeline to continue to perform quite well. And then with our microbial protection business line, there, it's really about bringing natural preservatives and multifunctional preservatives. So we've seen really nice growth year-on-year, and we continue to fuel that. So we have a nice mix. I do think the care ingredients piece as these new technology platforms, and you saw the spaces that we're targeting really start to get adopted, I think we'll see probably outsized growth in that space.

And the growth to -- it's pretty balanced across the 3 businesses in terms of the the $100 million. I think the bigger impact ones, I would say, in terms of steps would be the Klucel, Benecel. -- those pharma ones come in some bigger steps and very, very strategic business for us.

[indiscernible]. Your base business has a couple of foundational molecules in cellulosics and acetylenic. Is there a foundational molecule in the super wetter like an alkyl ether that's patented that you build on? Is there something similar in the pH buffer that you kind of build a moat around that's there? And then on the TVO, is it mostly soy oil, corn oil, palm oil, interchangeable? How do you think about your raw materials in the TVO platform?

Yes. Thanks for the question. For now, to answer the question, it's everything we talked about based on the soybean oil as a raw material. The reason of that is that the availability. However, now we're looking at other oil such as sunflower oil and others, but that's an area that we're exploring as we can do and...

But the IP is all that small?

Exactly for what we described to you, the IP, everything under the sun and vegetable oil, that's what the IP is.

And on the super wetters and...

And for the other molecules are -- most of them are synthetic, like, for example, the supper wetter for example, synthetic. However, it's biodegradability. So we design it in a way to make the material new to the world, but also biodegradable and sustainable by design. And the others such as like multifunctional starch, of course, it's a nature derived material coming from the starch. But the way we make it, I mean, say how can you invent from a starch. And that's why we just filed a very powerful patent just less than a year ago on this technology, which is to be new to the world, multifunctional, not just only be like a thickener or a suspending agent that has other functionality in addition to the thickening ability. So these type of things that, for example, the PI2 neutralizer as well when we designed it, it's a new-to-the-world molecule that can be biodegradable from a sustainability point of view, but still synthetic material.

And these are families of IP. So we got the molecules, we got the application. So we're building a number of areas of preservation of our intellectual property.

Okay. And we'll take 1 or 2 more questions from the room. We'll go back to Dave on the front.

Dave Begleiter, Deutsche Bank. Guillermo, on that point, on TVO, are there other players working on the same technology? And where are they in their development?

Well, we have the IP on all this area. So if they have a different technology, it will be a different one, and we haven't heard anything really of this nature.

Okay. And then I have one last, I think it's an important one from the webcast. So Guillermo, it sounds like you're covering a lot of ground with the platforms. Execution will be key to scaling the commercial opportunity. How are you thinking about prioritizing the platforms? And what are the key milestones or KPIs you're monitoring to decide, particularly in the context of the execute and globalize strategic pillars that the company has?

So I think the first thing that we are very happy about, and I'll repeat it, that our transformation is over, and we are happy with the portfolio. You can't imagine how much of the distraction that is in the process, not just in the last few years. We made a lot of changes here, but think of the last decade. That accomplishment now allows us to focus 100% of our time on growth. So that is a big driver for change and even just closing some of these actions that we're taking now, I think, are going to be very important for management focus, people focus and emotional focus for the entire organization. Second, I think the -- we will prioritize over time. We were casting a wide net to validate a lot of these technologies before we make the decision too early. I think a lot of them are moving very well. Clearly, we will start prioritizing things that we need to prioritize at a corporate level to drive a corporate agenda. So manufacturing, scale, those kinds of things that we might prioritize all businesses to focus on certain technologies because we need that to create the scale that we want. But in other ones, I think it's really -- we're going to let that choice to be done by business. If we already have the scale, it really depends on their priorities. If you think of pharma, it's a long cycle time. They need freedom to move and move to their agenda. So it's going to be a balance of the 2, but it really is going to be dependent on what happens in the next year, 1.5 years in terms of the traction that we get with the different technologies.

Okay. Thanks, everybody, for the interactive portion. So what's next? I would encourage you to stick around. We'll have a brief lunch across the street, just right across the street. And then I would encourage you to stay for the guided lab tour. I know these technologies very well, and I still learn something every time I do the dry run. So it's going to be a really fantastic time and good use. So we appreciate you joining us for the prepared remarks and look forward to continuing the dialogue across the street.