Koppers Holdings Inc. (KOP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. I'll try that again. Good morning. Welcome to Koppers' Investors. It's probably kind of a strange thing for you for the guy that runs Zero Harm to be welcoming you to the meeting. But what I'm going to do is, I'm going to walk you through something that we do all the time. It's a safety briefing. And the reason we do it is we care about you. We want you to be okay while you're here. And in the event of an emergency, a lot of people freeze myself included. So this is just a series of triggers to make you think what happens in the case of an emergency. So the first one is how to get out of the building. So if we hear an alarm or somebody makes a comment that we need to exit, these doors go back out into the lobby. When you make a left, you'll see an exit sign, a green exit sign over a series -- 2 series of doors. There's a curtain hanging in front of those doors. Pull the curtain back, head down through the doors, they're a one-way door. So once we're out, we're locked out. That will take us back on to the street level. So that's how to get out of the building. The second one is we need somebody in here that will volunteer to call 911. Can't be Mike Zugay because he's got a reserved job he does every time we do this. But can I get -- okay, we got a couple of 911 people, Travis, you're the guy, fire extinguishers. This one is a little difficult, go out the door, take a right, there's a dark area over there that has a room that goes back into the kind of the utility area. On the wall on your left-hand side, there's a fire extinguisher. So if we need to do that, we can get to the fire extinguisher. CPR and First Aid, there's an AED kit and a CPR kit down behind the front desk. So when you came in the front door, we'll need somebody to run down and get the AED. Can I get a hand for somebody that will do that? I can see Fran in the back. Fran will do that. Anybody's CPR and AED trained? Okay, we got a number. So if we need to do that, we'll have a couple of folks do that. And then Mike, it's your turn. Who's going to be the flagger? Thank you, Mike. This is Mike's reserved job. We always know what he's going to do. Okay, COVID. Everybody that's in the room this morning is vaccinated. So we were concerned, obviously, with the pandemic issues going on. So that was one of the requirements that we were asking people to take care of before they actually came in person to the meeting. So everybody in here just for your own comfort level is vaccinated. We're asking people to mask while you're here in the room. If you're actively drinking or eating, you don't need to be the -- wearing the mask, you'll see the presenters take it off when they come up to the podium and speak. It's just a way to make sure that you're protected as much as we possibly can. And just so you're aware, Allegheny County is in one of the high spread areas. I think most of the country right now is in that category. But that's why we're doing what we're doing. That's the CDC guidance for this. And then finally, if you do end up with symptoms, or worse, if you get a positive COVID test in the next few days, please let us know because we will do the contact tracing and everybody that was here with us will get notified about that. So before I step down, Quynh asked me to remind you, there's water and coffee out in the hallway. So that's another comfort thing for you. Are there any questions before I step down here and turn it over to Quynh. All right. Thank you. Enjoy the day.

We can start the webcast. Good morning, everyone. I'm Quynh McGuire, Vice President of Investor Relations of Koppers. Welcome to Copper's Investor Day. We're excited to have you here. We have posted materials to the Investor Relations page of our website at www.koppers.com that will be referenced in today's discussion. The event is being broadcasted live on our website and a recording will be available for replay for 1 year. At this time, I'd like to direct your attention to our forward-looking disclosure statement on Slide 2. Certain comments made today may be characterized as forward-looking statements as defined under the Private 5Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties and including risks described in the cautionary statement included in our presentation and in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. There are significant uncertainties inherent in the forward-looking statements included in the company's comments. You should not regard the inclusion of such information as a representation that our objectives, plans and projected results will be achieved. The company's actual results, performance or achievements may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during today's discussion. References may also be made today to certain non-GAAP financial measures. The company has provided with its presentation, which is available on our website, reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. The presenters for today will be Steve Tritch, Chairman of the Board; Leroy Ball, President and Chief Executive Officer; Jim Sullivan, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; Mike Zugay, Chief Financial Officer; and Jimmi Sue Smith, Vice President, Finance and Treasurer. I'll now turn the discussion over to Steve Tritch.

Well, good morning, everybody. We're very happy to have you here. And all of those that are connected virtually to hear the Koppers story, we are excited about our business and the opportunities that we have in front of us, and we'd like to share that with you today. And I will encourage you to ask questions at the end. I think it's a very good way to get further information for everybody. Let me tell you just a little bit about me. I am Chairman of the Board of Koppers. I have been Chairman now for coming up on 3 years. I've been on the Board since 2009. So we've had a good experience as Koppers has grown and changed. So I'm happy to be part of that and been very fortunate to work with the team and work with the executives here. I've also been on some other boards. I also chaired the Board that I recently stepped down from, chose not to run for reelection. That Board was called Charah Systems, and I chaired that board for 3 years, beginning with the IPO for that company. I've also been on the Board of Shaw, which is -- not Shaw, the rug company, Shaw, the electrical contractor company, a company that was located in New Orleans. That company was sold to CB&I. So that stopped my involvement in that Board. And I've also been a participant in a number of nonprofit Boards. I did Chair the University of Pittsburgh Board for 6 years. So I've been fortunate to have these kind of opportunities and bring some of that experience to the leadership of Koppers. So let me tell you what I would like to get done in my time today. I'd like to communicate to you the high-level Board overview, kind of what the Board -- how the Board is made up, how we operate as a Board. Leroy himself will come up after me, and he will introduce Koppers to you, lay out our road map for the next 5 years. What we plan to do, we've got some exciting opportunities in front of us. And then Jim Sullivan, who is, as you heard, is the COO, will tell you how he and his team plan to actually get us there, some of the more details after Leroy lays out the strategy. Jim will talk about some of the -- how we're going to make those things happen. Then you will hear from Mike Zugay and Jimmi Sue relative to the numbers. So just lay out the numbers for you. And then Leroy will come back up at the end to kind of lay close things up and initiate the Q&A session. And as I said, we would encourage some Q&A. So I have about 15 minutes to kind of lay all this out for you. So what I want to talk about is the corporate governance. How we link pay and performance. How we manage the Board. I think it's a solid Board on how the Board leads the company and interfaces with the operation of the company. And finally, some emphasis on the values, and I'll do that very briefly at the end, but it's important to us. So I wanted to make sure I touched on it. In terms of corporate governance, these are some of the things that we do, and these are all pretty well appreciated by ISS and the other firms that analyze how you run your company, how you run your Board. For example, majority voting is required when a -- each year, when directors go up for renomination. So if you don't get more than 50%, you would be required to resign from the Board. We do have term limits for our directors, age limits for our directors. That limit is 74. And when you reach -- if you're age 74 at the annual meeting that year, you then cannot run for reelection. We do have a declassified Board structure, which I think is important. And we go through annual both Board and committee self-evaluations, and we take them serious. I can tell you, when we talk about those things, we're happy to see the good points, but we always focus on how we can improve. We look at those various items and there's good feedback in those. It isn't just everybody says everything is great. People say, maybe we should do this different -- this better, and we do take all of that to heart. We do not have a poison pill for the company, which I think is important. Many companies have had less and less that's happening. And our Board is independent. Leroy, as CEO is the only member of the Board who is not independent. And we have stock ownership guidelines and requirements. Guidelines for the Board and requirements for the Chief Executive and his team, corporate governance guidelines. We look at best practices for how you govern a company, and we pay a lot of attention to that, and that's how we operate. And finally, we have very strong board attendance. I think in the last couple of years, we've had like 98% participation in our Board meeting. So the Board takes us to heart. They're very serious about it. We also have limits on how many Boards you can be on. Because some people will get on so many Boards, they can't focus, they can't read the material, but that is not true on this Board. My time on this Board, I would say this is the strongest Board I have been on in terms of how they -- both, challenge Leroy and his team, but work through things together as a Board. Boards don't always agree, but we do always come to consensus on what the best path forward is. So that's how we operate this Board. Second thing I want to talk about is the link between pay and performance, and I won't go through everything that's on here, but annual increases are not automatic. They're not guaranteed. In fact, in 2020, only named executive officers who assumed new responsibilities. So if you didn't change your job, you didn't get a raise that year because of how things are going at the advent of COVID. So we do pay attention to that. And some people just give a 3% to 5% or whatever the inflation rate is raised to everybody. We don't do that. We analyze how you perform. And unless your job changes dramatically, your raise will be based on how you have performed during the year. We look at a number of other things. I won't go through all of them. We do have an annual cash incentive for the Board and long-term equity incentives. We do like to tie our pay to the performance of the stock. So there are ties to PSUs, auctions and RSUs at about a 50-30-20 percentage basis but all of that is aimed at making sure that our people really benefit only when the shareholders of our company benefit. So we do pay a lot of attention to that. This is a strong board leadership, and I'm not saying it's me. What I'm saying is that our Board, I think, does a good job in terms of how we help lead the company. As I said before, we do have separate Chairman and CEO roles companies are moving that way, but that's kind of become the standard at Koppers. And I think it is the right way to operate a company. We did establish a sustainability committee in 2020. Before that, we had a Safety Health and Environment committee, but we wanted to broaden that to take into account other important aspects that every company now has to pay attention to, in addition to how you perform as a stock. We wanted to make sure we're paying attention to the other things. And when we get into values right at the end of my discussion, you will see some of the ways and some of the items that we pay out all a lot of attention to. It's not just putting words out there. It's something that we take very seriously in this company. So I think that's an important aspect of this. These are the ownership of the stock by the executives and the Board, and you can see they're pretty substantial in terms of what everyone owns and there are requirements that you own a certain number of shares. For Leroy, I believe that is 6x for most of the Board. I believe that is 4x. So our officers are required to hold in most cases 3x their base salary. So we -- as I said, we are motivated to create value for shareholders throughout the company. And let me end in my last 5 minutes or so, talking about what we value and you can see the 3 major circles here and it's need to have 3 circles where it's easy to remember, planet, people and performance. But what's really important is what do those mean to us. A lot of people -- every company I have been involved with, whether it was my time as CEO of Westinghouse, or whether it was my time on the various boards that I served on, everybody's got values that they talk about. But this company better than any company I've been involved with, I would say, even Westinghouse, pays an awful lot of attention to this and really does use this as part of how we run the company. So I wanted to just go through these with you briefly. First one is people. And you can see the various items put up here, Zero Harm, and the biggest one is one that we talk about almost every day and every meeting that we go to. It's how we take care of the people that work for Koppers, making sure we have the right safety. We look at a lot of different measurements to make sure that, that safety flows down through the company. But we extend that also to how we operate with our customers and with our suppliers. So we think through Zero Harm and what it does to affect the people that interface with Koppers. We are an inclusive company. That's one of the things I've noticed the most about Koppers when I came, the relationship of the team that runs the company but also that relationship between that team and the Board. And it isn't like the Board just says, yes, go ahead. There are a lot of questions. I can tell you at every Board meeting, we do have executive sessions where everybody, first will have one with Leroy in the room and none of the rest of the management, then we'll have a second one with just the Board to make sure that there's anything that anybody has questions that they might not have wanted to bring up in -- with everybody in the room, we get that on the table and we then deal with that. And we do that. I can tell you at the Board level, what the Board and I run the day that we go through the board materials, we do that every time. I don't think we have ever missed one of those, and we do it almost every time at the committee level. So we do a lot of that. We work hard for learning from our mistakes. We do make mistakes. Every company makes mistakes, but we try to limit those and we try to learn from those and not repeat those. So that's something that we do pay a lot of attention to. So the bottom line on this is people matter to us, the people on the Board matter, the people who run the company matter, the people who work for us matter, the people we interface with in the community, people that are our suppliers and our customers. Value the planet. And all -- what we mean by that is basically what's our -- how are we affecting things like the environmental impact of our company. We look at a lot of different things. We are in a business that deals with some of the harder aspects of that, and we pay a lot of attention. And while that continues to occur, those operations, treating lumber occurs and will occur for some time until we or someone else comes up with something better. But we do it, I think, better than any of our competitors in terms of paying attention to the environment. We also look at strategically as we grow the company. It's one of the areas that we're focused on. How can Koppers come up with business ideas that will be a benefit to society in these various ideas. And we do have some interesting and exciting things that we are looking at. And I will end with this one. And it's really about our performance, and it always, always goes back to performance. We're honest about what we're doing. I hope pick that up today. You'll see that. We'll tell you the things we're doing pretty well and what our hopes and aspirations are for this company. And I think lately clearly for the last several years, we have met what we said we would do. And I think my opinion as the Chairman of the Board, that's what I've told them is we need to lay something out it. It needs to be aggressive, but it needs to be something that we can also deliver on. And we have done that pretty consistently now for several years. So that's kind of the story I came up to talk about. Again, I welcome everybody here. We're very happy you came to hear about this, and I'll encourage you one more time to ask questions. And with that, I will turn this over to Leroy Ball, our CEO, who will summarize our 5-year strategy. So Leroy?

Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Koppers' 2021 Investor Day. Now for those of you who already follow us, we'll be sharing some new information and diving deeper into our strategic initiatives on our path to $300 million. Now for those of you new to Koppers, we look forward to actively engaging with you after you hear the story of where we've been, how we got to hear and more importantly, where we're headed in the future. But before I do that, I want to play a short video for you to level set how we approach what we do here at Koppers. Our Chairman, Steve Tritch, talked to you a little bit about our value for people, planet and performance. It is our value of those first 2 people and planet that I believe sets the stage for our winning performance. So please listen to Joe Dowd, who you heard from earlier, our Vice President of the Zero Harm as he talks more about how we drive performance at Koppers through Zero Harm. [Presentation]

Sorry about that glitch. I promise you. That worked perfectly yesterday, but we have several other videos to show. So hopefully, we got that out of the way. So I'm going to start by just, again, honing in on Zero Harm because I know everyone in the room and watching here online is here today to hear what we plan to do to drive even greater financial performance as we look forward and how we can create value for all of our shareholders here at Koppers. And trust me, I get that, and we'll do our best to help you understand the road map by the end of this morning. But make no mistake about it. Without our commitment to Zero Harm getting to $300 million becomes a lot tougher, a lot tougher. And at no time has that been any clearer than this last 1.5 years as we've had to deal through -- deal with COVID. So I think those that are here in the room for showing up in person today, under what I know are difficult conditions and for those tuning in, I do hope to meet and see you sometime soon in person. So 300, the 300. It's a number you've already heard me say a couple of times today, and you'll hear me and others say it many more times before we're done. And we plan to spent some -- we spent some time yesterday with those that were able to again join us in person over a beautiful PNC park, watching the Pittsburgh Pirates, play the Washington Nationals. And in baseball, 300 holds a very special place signifying excellence. A 300 hitter is one that's known to be at the top of his craft. The legendary Pirate, Roberto Clemente hit over 300 every year, but one in the final 13 years of his 18-year hall of fame career in Pittsburgh. 300 strike outs by a pitcher in a season has always been a special accomplishment, and it's even more rare today now that pitch counts are imposed on pitchers. A number of impressive names are on the short list, like Randy Johnson, Nolan Ryan, Sandy Koufax. And most would never know it, but Pittsburgh actually has one member on that list, too. He's a little known pitcher, named Ed Morris, who accomplished that feat for the old Pittsburgh Alleghanys back in 1986. Finally, 300 career wins for pitcher as a tremendous feat, a superior performance over an extended period of time. It's also a feat that just might be becoming extinct given the changes in the game today. And once again, Pittsburgh actually has one entry on that list. He also happens to be the inaugural member of that exclusive club being the first to accomplish the feat on October 5, 1888, Mr. Pud Galvin, who I know we all know, right? Like the baseball milestones tied to the number 300 I just referenced, for Koppers, the number 300 when reached will also represent an incredible accomplishment given where we started our current journey Back in 2014, when we finished that year at just $123 million of adjusted EBITDA. And you're about to hear about our plan to expand and optimize, drawing on the power of our vertically integrated businesses to deliver that magical $300 million in adjusted EBITDA at a minimum by 2025. So now that I've armed you with some good bar trivia, let's get started with the key takeaways of what I'm hoping will resonate with you for this morning. First, I'll say we believe the macro drivers are pointing in the right direction with aluminum, steel and copper trading at or near long-standing highs, with oil in the $70 range, existing home sales, still robust and repair and remodeling indices still showing healthy forecasts. We have a proven business model that's been strengthened through its transformation over the last 6 years, which we'll tell you again more about today. We have multiple growth drivers that will fuel our rise to 300, so we're not overly reliant on just one big idea. Part of our transformation involves significantly derisking our business. And now that the heavy lifting is done, it enables us to focus our attention in a different direction, actually growing our business. We've always had a strong focus on financial performance with a disciplined capital allocation that I think sometimes gets lost in our messaging. So we'll spend some more time on that today as well. Let's start by revisiting who we are. Worldwide, we're the market leaders in each of our business segments and in many cases, Koppers holds the #1 spot in the end markets and geographies that we serve. Wood preservation represents the biggest part of our business. And while it's important, it's not the only thing that we do. In fact, almost everything that we do serves either industrial or residential infrastructure markets. A common thread of wood preservation runs through each of the businesses and ties them together, which you'll hear more about from Jim in much greater detail when he comes up. And we capture a great deal of value through our vertically integrated business model, and that's unique to the industries that we serve. In our Railroad Products and Services business, we procure hardwoods and pressure treat railroad cross ties with coppers produced creosote to enable the North American railroads to transport goods safely. In our Utility and Industrial Products business, we procure a mix of soft and hardwoods in the U.S. and Australia, and we pressure treat utility poles and pilings with Koppers-produced CCA and creosote and other preservatives to enable the utilities to provide power and connectivity to homes and businesses. In our Performance Chemicals business, we source scrap copper as a critical raw material component to produce our patented micronized copper waterborne preservative, that's the industry standard for treated wood used in residential and commercial construction. In our Carbon Material and Chemicals business, we take coal tar, a byproduct from producing coke in the blast furnace steel process and produce the wood preservative creosote as well as all sorts of products that go into making aluminum, carbon black for rubber production and chemicals that go into construction and transportation markets. Now these businesses that feed off each other through the common bond of wood preservation serve a diversified mix of end markets, which makes Koppers not reliant on any single one, which is one of the things that sets us apart. And it's that diversification that's allowed us to post 6 straight years of improved EBITDA, culminating with record EBITDA and record underlying safety performance in 2020, a year when the majority of industrial companies struggled mightily. The effort that we put in to derisking and rebalancing our business model really paid off when we needed it most. Now before I begin to talk about the 6 strategic pillars that are going to drive us to $300 million, I'm going to spend all of 1 minute to tell you one of the things we did not build into our numbers. Federal infrastructure spending. That's not because we don't believe that we'll benefit, quite the contrary. Approximately 1/2 to 2/3 of our business touches U.S. infrastructure markets in some way, whether it be rail, utility, roads, bridges or buildings. So dollars that get directed in these directions will no doubt have positive impacts for Koppers. We unfortunately also know how dysfunctional our government can be sometimes. So we don't want to set our expectations that leave us reliant on bills getting passed and money being dispersed that we cannot control. Now if I can point to one of the biggest changes we were able to make in our culture over the past 6 years, it's been to get everyone to focus on what we can control. And in so doing, every decision that we make is through a lens of, will this put us in a better position to control our own destiny. And what should make you feel good is that we're confident we can achieve our goals independent of any anticipated infrastructure bill. So while we logically stand to benefit from any new infrastructure spending, we consider that to be a bonus on top of our established plans. So why own Koppers? Well, we believe that the Koppers story is attractive and is driven by a proven business model, integrated strategy and steady bottom line growth. We've achieved leadership positions in concentrated niche markets, and we plan to continue building on those strengths moving forward. Drawing on our decades-long history, we've proven that we can grow our margins even in challenging conditions due to the diversified end markets that we serve. Our transformation proves that we know how to take significant cost out of the organization as evidenced by what we did in the CM&C organization. And with our businesses stabilized and our business portfolio stronger than ever, we expect to generate consistent cash flow and further strengthen our balance sheet over the next 5 years. Now a greater financial flexibility will free us to have many attractive options for how we deploy our available capital moving forward. And we have a plan to continue growing our margins and driving additional cash generation to be helpful to the business and deliver attractive returns. Again, it's simple. If you appreciate steady bottom line growth, you're going to want to invest in Koppers. Our underlying strength comes from the enduring essential and sustainable nature of our enterprise. Enduring because the types of products we sell, the markets that we're in and the business model overall has withstood disruption and made us stronger than ever. Essential, as proven by the global pandemic, where our products were necessary to keep critical elements of the economy functioning. And of course, sustainable by continuing to do the right things in the right way to continue earning our social license to operate and by placing priority on our values of people, planet and performance. Now we always believed that our contribution to society was critically important. But those are just words until you're tested under the toughest of conditions. And after going through the thick of the pandemic last year, if anyone doubts the essential nature of the products and services that we provide, you just haven't been paying close enough attention. The importance of our role in the global economy was brought home time and time again throughout the global pandemic and our essential contribution continues to this day. In short, we enable our customers to deliver goods and services keep the lights on and provide connectivity and so much more. And it may sound corny, but we're a critical cog in the global economy, the smooth functioning of which depends on Koppers in one way or another. That makes us proud, but it also keeps us humble and dedicated to always doing our part. So what separates Koppers from our competitors? Along with a dedicated global team, it's our vertically integrated business model, the linchpin of our success that brings tremendous value. Offering our full suite of customer-driven solutions gives us a clear competitive advantage. That's the value Koppers provides to our customer base. We can link our businesses together when there are meaningful synergies while still having some that serve their own unique markets. We can deliver better -- we can better control the supply chain on behalf of our customers through applying our expertise in wood procurement, chemicals, responsible disposal of end-of-life poles and ties and the servicing of these products. A prime example is how our Chemical segment enables our wood treating businesses to deliver value-added products and services to our customers, which is an important differentiator for Koppers. Now our performance over time, the long-standing loyalty of our customers who have served for many decades, attest to this successful formula. And by investing in any one of our segments, we're actually investing for the long term in our integrated business. Later this morning, again, Jim will delve into our vertical integration in much greater detail. So for those of you that don't know us as well, we're a global business, but with a heavy U.S. footprint. Over 2/3 of our sales and profitability arise out of the U.S. But we look at the international markets that we serve to provide further diversity and risk dispersion to our business model. Now you might notice that one absence of our presence is in China. Now we've actively exited our 3 CMC-based businesses over the last 6 years due to the difficulty and running a stable, profitable business in China. And from a wood preservation standpoint, China's markets are relatively modest. So we want to be where we can get the greatest return on our investment for the appropriate risk and it's in our determination that China is not that place. The growth opportunities are being actively pursued in other regions such as Europe and South America, where we don't have as much of a presence. And in addition, we're taking a closer look at Africa as an emerging market. We already sell into Africa, but are looking at when and where it could make sense to establish a stronger presence moving forward. Now our complete value creation strategy, the path from $211 million at the end of 2020 to $300 million in adjusted EBITDA by the end of 2025 is represented by the 6 pillars seen here, each of which contributes to expanding and optimizing our business. And here again, Jim will get into greater detail, but I'll provide highlights on each of the 6 pillars at this point. So the first, portfolio enhancement. It draws on the versatility of our R&D team to develop products to grow with an established markets or either -- or enter new ones such as getting preservative market share by replacing pentachlorophenol, a popular oil-borne preservative for treating utility poles, that's being regulated out of use in the U.S. and Canada with our CCA product and proprietary climbing additive or a different oil-borne product that we would consider adding to our production portfolio. A second example is entering the fire retardant market with a new product, FlamePRO. And in just a few years since we first introduced FlamePRO, we went from not being in the market at all to having the #1 position for fire retardants. And the third example I'll use is in our carbon materials group, where we announced last week that we're participating in a groundbreaking study of extending the life of batteries for electric vehicles and other high-growth industries using enhanced carbon products made by Koppers. Not only would this displace lower-margin business in this segment, but it would also open the door to an exciting emerging market that will continue to command a lot of attention moving forward. Now our team has proven to be accomplished in supporting our customers' changing needs and leveraging our expertise to adapt to demand trends and gain market share. This work is clearly in the heart of what we believe we do best. Expanding our wood treatment businesses. The second pillar represents a major part of getting to the goal of $300 million of adjusted EBITDA. And let me tell you how we plan for this part of our strategy to unfold. We hold a leadership position with crossties and utility poles in North America and a #1 share in utility poles in Australia. And our experience in these markets in our vertically integrated model of chemical development and production and wood treatment provides a unique opportunity to enter and gain share in geographies where we lack presence. So in the utility pole markets, in particular, we believe that Texas, the Midwest and the West Coast are ripe for a strong second competitor. And we believe that our expertise in wood science, our value chain that captures the market needs from raw materials to end-of-life disposal and everywhere in between and the reputation that we bring as an organization focused on the same important issues involving corporate responsibility will make us a viable competitor. Now we're always working to embed our technicians within customer organizations in order to better understand their needs and in order to serve them in a manner that they should expect. The potential of this integrated model, generating top and bottom line opportunities over the next 5 years is very exciting. Now the third pillar, network optimization represents another major portion of our growth plan. Every good company, obviously works to optimize its business, and this applies obviously to Koppers as well. This is how we intend to drive value and grow our bottom line in the 4 core areas you see displayed, reducing operating costs, reducing supply cycle times, providing superior customer service and solutions and finally, increasing asset efficiency. And while the restructuring of CMC involved shrinking our footprint and consolidating capacity, this plan, over half of which relates to our wood treating businesses is slightly different. Now while some consolidation activity will occur, there's much more about making the most of the assets that we already have and being smart about where we -- about where certain production activities occur. So the following are a few examples of how we look for ways to increase our asset efficiency on the treating side of our business. An example on the consolidation front would be the closure of our facility in Denver, Colorado and the consolidation of that capacity into our facility in North Little Rock, Arkansas. A second example will be the conversion of our facility in Somerville, Texas from one that had performed a single function treating crossties to a facility that now performs 3 revenue-generating processes, treating ties, treating poles, and grinding end-of-life crossties for disposal. A third example would be adding drying capacity through our Newsoms, Virginia and advanced Alabama utility pole plants, which enabled us to lower our cost of inbound whitewood and lower our dependence on third parties, thus solidifying our supply chain. Now by clustering multiple processes and doing more at the sites where we operate, we've greatly reduced costs like transportation and as just mentioned, improved our supply chain efficiency. And over the next 5 years, we see the potential to extract significant value by continuing to optimize our network in this way. Now the fourth pillar, which we call cradle-to-cradle gets to our social license to operate while opening new avenues to expand our business. And this is still in the early stages of development, but in 3 to 5 years, we believe this could become a major element in and sustaining profitable growth moving forward. Our focus here is on ways we can convert end-of-life ties and poles into other value-added products. A cradle-to-cradle approach means being good environmental stewards while offering economically attractive options to customers. A win-win that helps them improve their sustainability record while entering new markets and creating long-term profitable relationships for Koppers. And while it's a smaller part of the benefits we expect to realize through 2025, the work being done here currently could be the next big thing that we talk about at a future Investor Day. The fifth pillar concerns strengthening our business model, which I'll admit to not being crazy about in terms of how we describe it, but basically, this relates to doing more of the transformative work that we've done to redeploy assets over the past 7 years. The biggest difference is that the heavy lifting of the transformation is more or less behind us. So at this point, it really is more about strengthening the model by working around the edges. We've divested 7 operating sites, added 5 over the past 7 years, and that doesn't even include the 8 operating sites that we've closed with several of them having since been sold. Now all that work was to transform our company into its currently vertically integrated configuration, which has provided us a strong base in wood technology while also giving us the strength that comes through a diverse business portfolio. And it provides us several other jumping off points that we can explore to grow the Koppers brand even further. Now one example is the start-up business that we began rolling out earlier this year called Koppers Utility Services. Now it's a business focused on inspection and remediation of utility poles in service. And it's a market with a relatively low barrier to entry where we bring several competencies that we believe can enable us to compete. Wood preservation expertise, deep utility industry relationships and staffing and training of field service personnel that we bring from our Railroad Structures business. To be clear with everyone, M&A is not built into this plan. So anything we would do on that front would be additive and used to either add or extend what we already do or jump-start expansion that we would look to do in a particular area. In those cases, we would actually consider the dollar spent on M&A is likely displacing some or all of the internal investments we will be making that we currently have built into our projections. The last of the 6 pillars deals with adding flexibility to our balance sheet and generating attractive returns on capital, which consistently outperforms our peer group. We carefully manage our working capital to conserve cash and have been most recently focused on optimizing our wood drying processes so we can push untreated product through our inventory channels and is efficient and cost-effective way as possible. Now this would allow us to deploy capital into other avenues for growth or return capital to shareholders. So it all comes back to the vertical integration model that enables us to do more with the asset footprint that we have in place while streamlining operations and increasing efficiency. The bottom line is that as our improved balance sheet provides greater flexibility from a liquidity perspective, we'll have more opportunity to deploy cash in attractive ways. Now we've done a lot to derisk our business, which has helped us weather the pandemic. All the hard choices we made and the heavy lifting we've done really put us in a position to have the record year that we had in 2020. And in the process, we've been able to diversify our business portfolio ironically, while also increasing our focus on the common thread of wood. And once again, it's that diversification that's proven to be a strength of Koppers. So on the far right of this chart -- this slide, this chart shows the last 7 years of performance for us in terms of our debt and net leverage ratio. And as part of our focus on expanding our wood-related businesses, we levered up to make some significant strategic acquisitions but have shown that we can bring that leverage back down efficiently. We've also demonstrated that we're a strong cash flow generator with an intense focus on paying down debt when we need to, improving our net leverage ratio from 4.5x at the end of the first quarter of 2020 down to 3.2x at the end of the second quarter of 2021. And that's opened up some new options for how we can allocate capital moving forward. So here, you get a picture of top line sales growth and adjusted EBITDA, which is how we measured our performance over the past 7 years. Now as we stand through the first 6 months of 2021, we've continued to report record results through the first half of this year, and our most recent guidance provided in August would have us finishing with our seventh straight year of improvement in our current configuration without our China business. So as I mentioned, we've generated 6 consecutive years of adjusted EBITDA increases and are on pace to add 7 -- year 7 to the list. And as we've done that, wood-related sales have become a steadily larger portion of our overall sales, reflecting the positive impact of our strategic focus in that area. This illustrates the impact of building a stable foundation in our Carbon Materials and Chemicals business, and adding performance chemicals and utility and industrial products into the fold. And you could find a long list of companies whose numbers pointed in a different direction due to the pandemic. By contrast, our diversification in the enduring and essential nature of our businesses allow Koppers to not only make it through 2020, but to also deliver record performance, which has continued on into this year. It's also enabled us to achieve 4 straight years of top line sales growth while also generating over $100 million in operating cash flow in 5 of the past 7 years. And stay tuned because there's more to come. Now the plan to expand and optimize our business is to reach our goal of $300 million means access to a significant amount of cash over the next 5 years, which Mike and Jimmi Sue will talk about. The work to transform the business to this point has put much of our large capital spend behind us. And as a result, we're now entering a period where we have the flexibility to deploy a more balanced allocation approach that will most definitely include internal growth initiatives but could also include returning capital to shareholders through dividends and/or share buybacks, risk-appropriate M&A opportunities and even further debt reduction. The main message here is that as leverage settles into that targeted range of 2x to 3x, it puts us in a new position of strength and opens up the door to more options. Now all the hard work that we've done has now put us in a prime position to further grow our business through our expand and optimize strategy, we've come through the pandemic even stronger, improving our top line, our bottom line and our balance sheet, which now sits at its lowest leverage since the end of 2017. It's quite a bit different result than some expected when COVID descended upon us last March. We've continued to improve our businesses, particularly in the Performance Chemicals and Carbon, Materials & Chemicals business segments, while also delivering the blueprint for our treating businesses moving forward. Our experience transforming CMC, while building upon an already strong PC will help us supply lessons learned during those experiences to substantially improve that treating business that we call railroad utility. The integrated nature of our company will help to make this rebound all the more possible. So for Koppers, our next phase focuses on expansion and optimization in wood treatment and other infrastructure markets. And through that, we can control our destiny and like those Pittsburgh athletes, I mentioned at the top of my presentation, increase our chances to get to the magic number of $300 million and beyond. So I'm now going to shift slightly as I prepare to ask Jim to come to the stage for his portion of today's presentation. I'll start by saying we're all aware of the accelerated energy that continues to build around corporate responsibility and the need for our world to provide more sustainable solutions. I'm proud to say that at Koppers, we've been one of the early movers in recognizing that what we do today will ultimately determine whether we remain in business tomorrow. We've been producing a corporate responsibility report now for the better part of 15 years. And at the beginning of 2020, we created a new position of Chief Sustainability Officer, the first of its kind at Koppers, and I named Leslie Hyde to that post. And Leslie is a 20-year -- 20-plus year Koppers veteran with a deep background in environmental health and safety and a strong passion for making the world a better place. So I couldn't have made a better selection. So during this transition, before Jim takes the stage to talk about he and his team are going to make 300 happen, I'd like you to watch the following video from Leslie Hyde describing sustainability at Koppers and how our focus on people, planet and performance drives strategy. [Presentation]

Good morning. Today's presentation will explain why our unique business model provides Koppers with a competitive advantage and positions us well for growth. The key takeaways are listed. We will walk you through why our structure and strengths provide Koppers with a competitive edge and a platform for growth. The visual on this slide shows our value chain, vertical and interconnected. We've also listened to key highlights. To start, we reorganized to align our business under 1 set of priorities to focus on what's best for Koppers. Operations works hand-in-hand with strategy. That's Leslie's team. Together, we built a strategy based on organic, project-based growth opportunities. All value starts with Koppers' chemical businesses, CMC and KPC and flows through our wood treatment businesses, RPS and UIP. To start, let me introduce our first business. Kristian Nielsen will provide insights into Carbon, Materials and Chemicals. [Presentation]

Okay. Carbon Materials are an essential building block for infrastructure products that provide a platform for future growth. There are 2 value chains shown on this slide. The vertically integrated value chain with UIP and RPS. Creosote is manufactured in CMC and used in RPS and UIP. The additional value chain to the side is our traditional products. These are essential raw materials for production of aluminum and plastics. In addition, we have started the process of optimizing our traditional products to move up the value chain. We call this our enhanced carbon products project, more on that later. Not only is CMC connected to RPS and UIP but is also directly connected to Performance Chemicals. Consider wood treatment chemicals. CMC has been making creosote for approximately 100 years. Koppers performance chemicals makes MicroPro, the gold standard for residential wood treatment. The combination of the 2 makes Koppers the clear leader in wood treatment chemicals. In addition, the referenced enhanced carbon products project is a collaboration between CMC and KPC. We will be -- also we'll be improving our PC, Performance Chemicals business in Europe with the assistance of CMC Europe, both resources and assets. Let's pause here and let Doug Fenwick tell you about Copper's performance chemicals. [Presentation]

Strong technical skills drive value. These are Koppers hard skills. These are engineers, scientists and operators. These technical skills enable us to develop products, patent products, patent technology and drive efficiency gains through engineering and design. These skills combined with our operation excellence, provide for a critical information loop that allows Koppers to fully vet new products and optimize traditional ones. Our competition does not have this. Extended value chain through wood treatment operations provides for a connection to end users and a critical product development input. A key differentiator for Koppers is that we drive value from chemical production through wood treatment through recycled, sorry. Our competitors do not have this. Our wood-treating competitors do not have the chemical manufacturing piece or the associated technical skills and assets. Our chemical manufacturing competitors do not have the treatment network and the connections to the end user. This leads to another key differentiator. Surety of supply. Our customers are confident that we can supply them because we've derisked the supply chain. 1 metric ton of coal tar distilled in CMC through RPS into a tie to an end user, 1 pound of copper through Koppers performance chemicals into UIP into a utility pool. Deep customer relationships provide a partnership for growth. 50% of the U.S. residential wood market has been consolidated by our customers. Industry leaders select Koppers. Koppers has been on the right side for consolidation because we've built extremely strong partnerships providing technology, engineering, marketing and a competitive cost model built on patented chemistry and a vertically integrated manufacturing process. This has not been an accident. Koppers did not get lucky. We supported the industry leaders, and we've grown together. Retailers adopt our value and adopt our technology based on a proven track record of performance. Retailers, while not our direct customers, understand the value of our patented products, our technology, and they value our technical expertise. These are decision-makers. They are loyal to our products. We are selling quality, value and surety of supply. As a result, they're specking our products. Project-based strategic plan. Okay. Two key numbers on this slide, $100 million in EBITDA and $300 million in growth capital. How do we get there? We start by understanding that we are pivoting. Koppers has done a lot of heavy lifting over the past number of years. But with that behind us, we needed to look for new opportunities for growth. It starts by pulling everybody together, business leaders, R&D, engineering, procurement, strategy and asking questions like what if, what if we did this, what if we did that, can we do this, can we do that? That's our idea funnel. We have 95 projects in our idea funnel right now. This is the funnel. Projects fall out, projects get executed, but we're always feeding this funnel. 70 of these projects are in some phase of execution, and they have been quantified. They've been vetted through operations, engineering and finance. Only the best projects rise to the top. This is a disciplined approach with frequent -- with a frequent review cycle. We reprioritize as needed. This is a build strategy. Building is cheaper and less risky than buying, but it takes longer. We will consider bolt-on acquisitions, but they are not in the strategic plan. The potential benefits of an infrastructure bill are not baked in either. Let's talk about what we have done at Koppers. 2014 to 2020, a $123 million in EBITDA to $211 million of EBITDA. Let's go back to 2014. It was good, and it was not so good. We were really excited about acquiring KPC. But as we were acquiring KPC, CMC was taking a significant downturn. We did not have a robust network of operations and it was exposed. We needed to stabilize CMC. Our mindset was bulletproof CMC. To the extent possible, bulletproof CMC. We needed to strengthen the foundation of the company. So this is a busy slide. We were busy. We were optimizing CMC. So what do we do? 11 plants to 3, 12 terminals to 6. We divested properties, we sold businesses. We divested the properties at Follansbee, divested the properties at Clairton, we sold KJCC in China for approximately $100 million. It was a lot of work. We're not quite done yet. We have 1 more plant in China to -- actually, it's going to be liquidated. It's nonoperational right now. We should be done that early next year, and then we will be 100% out of China for CMC. We need to optimize Stickney. We will invest in Stickney, our North American CMC plant. We will get a return on that investment. All the time that was going on, we were buying companies as well. We acquired Ashcroft, a wood treating business for ties in British Columbia. We bought KPC. We bought what is now our utility business, UIP and we bought what is now our tire recycling business. In addition, we expanded KPC the whole time. We expanded at Millington. We expanded at Rock Hill. We expanded in our Hubbell facilities. Why did we expand because we were growing with our customers. We have the capabilities to get a lot of things done. We have a proven track record of execution. We stabilized and grew the company 6 straight years. The past was a heavy lift. The future will be challenging, but it won't be as difficult as this. 2020 to 2025, 211 to 300 plus, the path to 300. We are excited about the future. Let's pause and let Travis Gross and Jim Healey introduce their businesses. [Presentation]

Okay. Leroy showed this slide earlier. These are our 6 pillars for growth as defined by our strategic plan. All of our projects fall into one of these categories. I'm going to talk about 3 categories and give you some examples on projects. Network optimization, portfolio enhancement and wood treating expansion as they represent the bulk of the EBITDA that's in the 2025 strategic plan. Wood treatment expansion, 20 projects, approximately $35-plus million in EBITDA. So this has been referenced already, but I'll just give a little bit more detail, and this is the expansion of our pole business into the Texas market. So why do we like this? Well, first of all, the Texas market for poles is a creosote-treated poles. That's the market. The other thing we like is that we have treatment facilities in Texas and our Somerville, Texas operations. So we've already treated poles at Somerville and we've already sold poles at Somerville. This project is optimizing the supply chain, all the way from -- Jim referenced, marking a tree, so all the way from marking a tree, peeling it drying it and getting it to Somerville for treatment. We're confident that we're going to do very well in the Texas market. So that's -- like I said, that's well underway. We should have that project lined out early next year. So that's well along its way. The next project, it was also referenced is that -- and it's in the earlier stages and that is that we want to expand our pole business into the Western market of the United States. So getting the trend here, right? We didn't buy our pole business to stand still. We look at the Western pole market, and that is a good market relative to the pole business. It's big and there's very limited competition. So we want to go out there. We're very confident that we'll get market share. But we're in the early stages of that project. We're scoping it out, deciding what -- exactly where we want to be and what we want to do. And the final project I'll reference is the continued expansion of our KPC business. So we've had a lot of growth in KPC, and especially in North America, but we actually are pretty confident that, that's going to keep going on, and we're going to keep growing with them, and we're going to optimize how we grow as well. Okay. Network optimization. So the first project I'm going to talk about is that was referenced to, and that's our North Little Rock facility. So what's going on here? So we have a customer in the rail business, we deal with a lot of Class 1 customers. They -- for to sell to them, you have to be online with them. So they actually apply a fair bit of pressure like we want you, Koppers to be more efficient. We wanted to get your cost down. So we had a good conversation with them. They said, "Look, we can do that, but we can't service you out of 2 plants to do that." We have 2 relatively small-ish plants, one a lot smaller than the other, the Denver facility. And the Denver facility is suboptimally located with respect to hardwood supply. So we went to our Class 1 and we said, look, this is what we want. We want to service you out of one facility and we want more ties. And if you do that for us, we will invest in the North Little Rock facility. We will make it more efficient. We'll get efficiencies just by size, but we're also putting in new technology. So where is that project? That project is actually well down the path. If you drive by North Little Rock, you can see buildings being erected. We're most likely going to treat with our new cylinders late first quarter next year, early second quarter, the fall -- or early second quarter. Yes, sometime around March or April. So we're really excited about that project that's using existing assets to get additional market share. The second project I'll describe is our basic copper carbonate production. So what we're doing here is we're bringing BCC, that's our short form for basic copper carbonate production in-house to reduce costs and avoid long supply chains. So we already manufacture BCC that was in Doug's video. We take scrap copper, we process it and we come up with basic copper carbonate. So we expanded that process. But our internal production of BCC needs to be augmented from outside suppliers. And what we were doing with that was we were getting supply from places like China, Korea, India. That was a long supply chain, pre-pandemic. It is an extremely long supply chain post pandemic. Okay? So we've partnered with a domestic manufacturer that has expanded to augment their facilities to augment what we need for extra BCC. So it's kind of a two-pronged attack to build up capacity for BCC in North America. And finally, on the network optimization. Leroy referenced it and actually saw some pictures of what we're doing. We're doing a bunch of small projects at UIP that just build efficiencies. So that could be -- in the video, you saw a pole getting peeled. We don't have peelers at every facility. I don't think there's a picture of a kiln in there, but you have to dry the wood before it goes in for treatment. So we're adding that where we need it. Those are great projects. They're not super expensive projects. But once they're done and once you start up, you start dropping more money to the bottom line. Portfolio enhancement, 32 projects, $25-plus million in business. So this was referenced earlier in Leroy's presentation. He talked about a disruption in the preservative market for utility poles. A preservative is going away. It's on its way out now. That's penta. So that's going to leave a hole in the market. So we know that CCA can fill part of that hole, and that's a project I'm talking about. So we have CCA capacity at Millington. In fact, we can make quite a bit more CCA without adding any fixed cost, no more capital. The other thing that we have to do is we have to convert what was a penta-treating plant to a CCA-treating plant. So we've done that already with one plant in UIP. So we're already seeing an uptick in our CCA business. So that's double benefit, right? So we're getting the benefit of selling or producing more CCA in Millington. The fixed costs are already there. So everything is just marginal costs. And then we're running that through our plant and that one's in the Southeast United States. One of the other projects that I will not spend too much time on, and that is new products for Koppers' performance chemicals in Europe. So that's well underway. We're developing a bunch of new products for that market. And the last one I'll touch on, last big project I'll touch on is the enhanced carbon products project, okay? So what is this, right? So this is a 2-phase project. The first phase is a yield improvement project underway in Europe. So we take our traditional -- some of our traditional products and we put them through another unit operation. And when we do that, we're able to move up the value chain for the traditional products. So the traditional products have carbon black feedstock sells for a different price than [ old ] pitch. What we're looking at is moving that moving some of our products up the value chain. So that's underway. That unit operation is in place. It's operational. We need to do some work on our tanks in Nyborg to finish it out. That should be finished fourth quarter this year. We'll be counting on some benefit from that in 2022. So what is Phase 2? So Phase 2 is Phase 1 plus an additional unit operation. This is patent pending technology for products that have the potential to be used in the electrical vehicle market. Lab scale material has been produced with positive results. These products have the potential for improving battery efficiency. That's what our press release was about, we put out a press release. Those are 2 companies, an example of 2 companies that we were working with. So they've looked at our product, and they want to work with us as they develop their battery technology. So we're excited about this project. This is in the early stages, and there is no money for this project in our 2025 strategic plan. So the last slide on the pillar sort of a catch-all slide. We've summarized the rest of the pillars and just talk about a couple of projects. So one of them is the tie recycle business expansion. So we really like that business. We like the way it fits inside of our tie business. We're working with a couple of large customers right now. But this fits into our network really well. So what we -- we're obviously selling ties to the Class 1s in commercial business, and those ties have -- they reach end of life. We take them back. And in the case of Somerville, which Leroy referenced, we take it back to our existing plant, we grind that material up and we sell it for BTU value. So we're going to continue to expand that business with the other Class 1s. They want us to do that business for them, quite frankly. They're asking us to do that business for them. And so we're working out the details. It's always the same issue they want us to do it for really cheap, and we want to get paid for it. So that's where we are right now. So we'll sort that out. I referenced Stickney optimization early on the transition and where we are with CMC. So when you look at Stickney, which is our Chicago plant, it doesn't have the operation efficiencies as Denmark or Mayfield, Australia. So we're going to invest in Stickney and we're going to make it more efficient, and that investment is going to have a return on investment. And then finally, we're going to continue to optimize Koppers Performance Chemicals. Last slide. In summary, Koppers has a unique business model that provides a competitive advantage. We have a robust strategic plan and a proven track record of performance. We are well positioned for growth and excited about the future. Thank you. Mike and Jimmi Sue are going to walk you through the financials.

Hello, everybody. Steve and Leroy and Jim are hard acts to follow. So you're going to have to bear with me because I don't think I'm as a good a presenter as the 3 gentlemen that went before me. But I just want to say hello, again, to everybody. I'm Mike Zugay, the Chief Financial Officer of the company. And I'd like to thank you for your participation in today's event. The takeaways that we are going to talk about, actually, Jimmi Sue and I am going to split this, but I'll be providing you with a historical overview and then we'll hand it off to Jimmi Sue and Jimmi Sue will cover the financial projections associated with our strategic plan and our future. The information on these 3 main takeaways is as follows: First, Koppers past performance shows that we have significantly derisked the business. We've talked about that in Leroy's presentation as well as Jim's presentation. And on the next slide, I'm going to show you more of the details. As a result of that derisking of the business, we now have a strong foundation that's primed for growth and top line as well as bottom line. So in the past, we focused on bottom line but the top line is going to grow as well as we move forward. The second takeaway is our improved profitability and strong cash flows have allowed us to fund our growth through prior acquisitions as well as organically. And third, on this slide at the very bottom, we have a disciplined capital approach plan that prioritizes growth investments and market expansion activities. As you'll see later in the presentation, we will also discuss various opportunities to return cash to our shareholders. One of the examples that we put out a press release on is that we've already have a share buyback authorization plan in place that was passed by our Board of Directors at the last meeting. Longer term, we anticipate the dividends will also be considered given that we are nearly within our targeted range for net leverage of less than 3x. We're going to focus on the derisking actions that the company has taken over the past years, and you'll see 5 buckets, if you would. And we're going to talk about each one of these buckets moving from the left bucket to the right bucket. So in that first bucket on the left, we exited a joint venture in China in September of '20. And the divestiture yielded $65 million in net cash, which we used to pay down debt. In the second bucket, we successfully implemented our strategic initiative on the supply chain strategy. And what -- we've talked about this a little bit earlier as well, but this was very significant for us. So we have less single sourcing of key raw materials now, and we have more with domestic suppliers and less with international suppliers. And that has significantly reduced our delivery times. And it's also helped to reduce our transportation costs from our overseas suppliers. One of the other things that we've done is we've renegotiated our North American coal tar contracts to be linked to the pricing of our end products. So what this has done is it reduced the potential exposure for any margin volatility in that particular business. Moving to the capital allocation bucket, I'm going to give you 2 examples of what we've done there. First of all, we've invested more than $40 million to upgrade and modernize our North Little Rock facility. And this, again, follows the closure of our Denver plant. This Little Rock improvement increases our capacity to handle additional crosstie volumes. We've also spent more than $35 million for capacity expansion at our Performance Chemicals facilities. This included new grinders, distillers, digesters and mills. This resulted in increased production of our raw material feedstock, which you've heard Jim talk about, and also a higher output of wood preservatives in order to keep up with the demand levels in the home repair and remodeling section. Moving to the next bucket on pensions. In the past 7 years, we've contributed more than $30 million in cash to our legacy defined benefit plans. As an example, we have a U.K. pension plan that was underfunded only 5 years ago by USD 18 million. But now we are close to being fully funded. And we are in the final stages of divesting the U.K. pension plan to an insurance company in the U.K. So we will finally be out of the business, the pension business, in the U.K. On the next bucket, we downsized our CM&C business from 11 plants to 3, and that cost the company about $80 million over the last 6 or 7 years. And the cash component of that $80 million was about $60 million. So now these restructuring opportunities are behind us, and we can deploy this cash toward higher-return opportunities going forward. So that's a high -- this slide is a high-level overview of the steps we've taken to derisk our business. This particular slide shows our historical performance, and it demonstrates our ability to continue growing our business over the long term and, more importantly, deliver improved profitability. Everything that we've done to date has basically been geared to increasing profitability and paying down debt. Our revenue trend reflects the downsizing of our CM&C business. So if you can see the lower bars, I believe in 2016 and 2017, let me give you an example of what's happened in this particular CM&C business. In 2012, the revenues of this business were about $1 billion alone. In 2020, the revenues from this business were less than $400 million. This was part of our strategy and was done on purpose. So when you take a look at our revenue history, understand that we reduced dramatically our revenues in the CM&C business in the years 2016, 2017. The other thing that shows on this slide, and you've seen this slide, I think, in Leroy's presentation, is that we've delivered 6 consecutive years of adjusted EBITDA growth. And our range for '21 that we've given to Wall Street is somewhere between $220 million and $230 million. And if we achieve that, it's going to make 7 years of consecutive growth. And we believe the impressive part of Koppers' story is our ability to drive this improved profitability even during the most challenging of conditions, including the current COVID environment. And the last slide that I have before I turn it over to Jimmi Sue is this one. And if you take a look at the chart on the left-hand side, you can see that we've consistently generated strong cash flows that have been in the range of $100 million to $120 million annually with one exception. If you take a look at 2018, you'll see that the cash flow generated wasn't that great. The rationale for that was that we had a Class I railroad customer that switched to a black-tie model, which negatively impacted our cash flow that year by approximately $50 million. And in simple terms, we now carry that untreated inventory for that customer on our balance sheet rather than the customer carrying it on their balance sheet. And this was basically a onetime hit to us that obviously we recovered when you take a look at what we've done in 2019 and 2020. On the chart on the right-hand side, these were restructuring actions that we've taken over the years, which includes some very, very difficult decisions to close a number of plants. That's all now behind us, and our business model has definitely been transformed. So now I guess the $64,000 note is that now that we have our house in order, I'm going to turn it over to Jimmi Sue, who's going to talk about how that future will take shape at Koppers. And just like everybody else has talked today, needless to say, we're very, very excited about that future. And Jimmi Sue is going to take over the CFO role effective January 1, 2022. So now I'll turn it over to Jimmi Sue.

Thank you, Mike. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for coming or for tuning in today. And thank you, Mike, for taking us through how our past restructuring, delevering and other actions have put us in a position to excel going forward. This past success shows that we are more than capable of creating value through expanding our market presence and optimizing our current network to support profitable growth. This is a great business, one where we have unique strengths, and this strategy is the best way for us to create value for you. In the few remaining slides, I know you're all probably getting a little bit restless, I'm going to walk through our expectations on the financial results of this strategy. A couple of things to keep in mind as I do this. These results include the impacts of the initiatives in the 6 pillars that Jim laid out for you. There's no assumed M&A in this, although, of course, we always remain open to the right opportunities. These projections do not include any benefits from the potential infrastructure spending bill or from our enhanced carbon products initiatives. And finally, this plan will be funded from our free cash flow over the next 5 years. So it will naturally result in lower leverage and/or more opportunity for capital deployment as we grow EBITDA without increasing debt. So by 2025, execution on the initiatives that we have laid -- have in process will increase our adjusted EBITDA to over $300 million. In round numbers, that's about a 50% increase over 2020. And as you can see here, all of this growth comes from the pillars that Jim laid out, all things that are well within our control. And most of this EBITDA growth, as he covered, comes from enhancing our portfolio of new chemicals with product offerings, expanding our wood treatment volumes through new geography or capacity and optimizing our network, especially in our wood treatment business. It also comes from the remaining 3 pillars of our enhance and optimize strategy, which will add about $20 million over this period. The biggest piece of that is from efficiency improvements in areas like our internal production of BCC, which is one of the main raw materials in our PC business, and in improvements to our North American Carbon Materials and Chemicals plant. In terms of our business units, this EBITDA growth is going to be heavily weighted to our PC business, which is our highest margin business at around 19% in 2020, and to our wood treatment businesses, which will also benefit from improved margins. In total, as you can see from the graphic on the right, our adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to improve from 13% in 2020 to around 16% in 2025. And as Mike showed you before, by 2025, we expect to generate $200 million to $250 million of operating cash flow for the year and to have free cash flow, which we define as operating cash flow less maintenance CapEx that is necessary to maintain our current operating levels, of about $150 million annually. This strong cash flow sets us up for significant flexibility in the future. But even over the next 5 years, we expect to generate $550 million to $650 million of operating cash flow, which will give us broad, flexible capital allocation options over this period. Now as you can see here, we will use $250 million to $300 million of that to invest in the growth we've been describing to you today. So let me just reiterate that point. We're going to spend about $300 million and get a $100 million of adjusted EBITDA. That 3x multiple is way better than what we think we can do in the M&A market today and is why this expand and optimize strategy is the best path to value creation. And importantly, even after spending that growth CapEx, we will generate an additional $250 million to $350 million of cash over the next 5 years. That cash can be used to return capital to shareholders either through dividends or share repurchases or for other growth initiatives, potentially including M&A. The slide on the right graphically shows the historical and potential future uses of our cash. As a result of the EBITDA growth from our initiatives, we should have no need for further debt reduction over the next 5 years. And by 2025, we expect additional borrowing capacity of over $150 million at our target leverage of 2 to 3x debt to EBITDA, and that capacity is reflected here. And you can see from this chart how that changes our capital allocation. Over the next 5 years, we expect we could allocate about 45% of our available cash to return capital to shareholders through dividends or share repurchases or to accretive acquisitions or other investment opportunities in our businesses. And you can be certain that we will be disciplined in allocating that capital to those options that create the most value. And so to bring this all together, our past performance has set us up to expand and optimize this business, a business where we have a unique position and a proven ability to execute. The financial rewards of expanding and optimizing are significant, and they're shown here: Annual revenue growth of 4% to 5%, resulting in revenues of $2.1 billion in 2025; an expanded EBITDA margin up to 16% from 13% in 2020; $550 million to $650 million of cumulative operating cash flow over the 5-year period. And finally, by investing $250 million to $300 million of that cash flow in our expand and optimize strategy, we are going to increase EBITDA to over $300 million in 2025. This will set us up to generate over $150 million of free cash flow annually thereafter. That free cash flow generation positions Koppers for the future to fund future growth and return capital to shareholders through dividends or share repurchases. And with that, I'll turn it back to Leroy for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Mike. Thanks, Jimmi Sue. So now we're here at the dangerous part of the day because I get to wrap up and I don't have a script. So that's allowed me to sneak this slide in there. You don't see this one in your book, right? But I did -- I was having breakfast with somebody today who told me he always enjoys a good CEO rant over the valuation of their stock, so here you go. No. We did think it was important. We talk a lot about the things that aren't in our projections and trying to keep it to the things that we can control best. I think it is important to show the fact that there has been a separation, unfortunately, between us and who you might describe as peers, but whether from a small cap or mid-cap standpoint. And it hasn't always been that case. Again, you see going back to '16, we actually were above that small-cap chemical producers median. And we're above it really up through, for the most part, a good part of -- through the end of '17, into early '18 and even reached as high as, at one point up, around that mid-cap space. And since then, it's been a tougher slog. And so we spent a lot of the time down below, having a strong '19 in terms of shareholder return and kind of catching back up to the small caps but still a pretty healthy gap between us in that mid-cap group. Obviously, the pandemic came and hit. And we took a hit as did everybody. We spent a lot of time and effort to try and reassure the markets last year that we were going to make it through okay. We were doing monthly updates to the market, which I know were very much appreciated. And it actually, I think, got us right back up there for a moment in time. And for some reason, again, we sort of stagnated while the others managed to stabilize and even move up. These things represent, again, moments in time. And obviously, over this course in time, a trend, a trend that we've not been pleased about. And we're doing everything we can to try and focus on the things, again, that we can control while also trying to tell our story in a way that hopefully will resonate a little bit differently because we have been in that 7 to 8x range before, which I still think is on the lower end of things. But 6.3 and in the 6s is sort of new for us here over the last couple of years. So we're focused on trying to do what we can. I tell my team, you focus on execution and getting things done. Mike and Jimmi Sue and Quynh and I will focus on trying to tell the story so that we can close that gap. So we'll continue to do that, and we'll continue to put everything on the table in terms of how we tell the story moving forward. But we do think we have a great story to tell. We do think that as that story gets out there and we execute and demonstrate that performance, we will see stronger shareholder returns coming forward. So moving into really the final slide before we go to Q&A. There's really 3 points. I mean, we threw a bunch of stuff at you here today. The 3 things that I would hope that you all walk away from today with is, we have a strong foundation here at the company, a strong business model, that vertically integrated business model that we have stressed so often this morning, and a proven track record of performance and results, producing essential products and services that we supply again to keep the global infrastructure markets and the global economy moving. I think that's an important point to make because, again, as you sit and process what you believe our ability is to go from $211 million to $300 million plus over the next 5 years, I think it's important that you can look back on what we've accomplished in the last 6 years and say, "Okay. They've been there. They've been even -- they've seen worse times, and they've been able to pull themselves out of that. They've been able to make strategic changes, transformational changes that have dramatically improved the performance of the organization." So we got from where we were in '14 to today. There's no reason we can't go from where we're at today to $300 million plus. So the second thing that I want you to take away is, again, that magic number of $300 million, our EBITDA target for 2025, and the fact that it's mostly within our control. And there is significant upside over and beyond that. So we said a few different times today, right? There's nothing in here for an infrastructure bill. There's nothing in here related to M&A. There's nothing in here related to that second phase of enhanced carbon products that Jim talks about that goes into the EV markets. There's nothing in here for organic growth. I don't know if you recognize that or not, right? It's basically specific, project-driven results that we think we can get through those 6 pillars that we've put up there. So you have all that. And then you have all those other things sitting in the background to support and buffer if things don't go our way in any of those particular areas. But these are all things that we feel pretty good about. Our team is really, really good at identifying opportunities and getting things done. And this process that Jim has talked about is a different -- a little bit different process than we undertook, again, 7 years ago because the process 7 years ago was all about stabilizing the business and really building the foundation moving forward. And so that's where the effort was. And I told my team back then, "Do not worry about top line. Focus on driving bottom line results. Focus on driving EBITDA. Focus on driving EPS up and getting our margins up to where they need to be. Let's stabilize the business." And the team executed on that rather well. And so here we sit today, now looking at and having the bandwidth to actually look at how we grow from here. And so there's been a lot of effort going into really mining those sorts of projects. So $300 million, we believe, is absolutely within our control. And like I said, we have these other opportunities that provide upside beyond that. Finally, double that number, $600 million, midpoint of cumulative operating cash flows. We think we can really actually do better than that, but we like to make sure that we put things forward that we can deliver upon. This obviously opens us up to a more solid balance sheet moving forward. We're already getting into that stage right now where we're moving into that 2 to 3x sort of comfort range that we talk about. Obviously, we've operated at higher. We don't have an issue with that, but the market seems to have had maybe an issue with that. And so we're focused on taking the cash flow that we're generating and putting it back into the business to work for the most part but also that will open up opportunities again for returning capital to shareholders, even continuing to pay down debt if we feel the need. And of course, we're always looking for opportunities to add in or around our businesses if it makes strategic sense. So those are the 3 key points, and we're going to move it to a Q&A session now. And before I ask Chorus Call to give the instructions for how the folks that are watching and tuning in virtually will do it, I'll just say if this goes my way, the great thing about being in the quarterback for this session is I get to choose all the people who get to answer the question. So -- and the meaningful part about doing this today, right, is the opportunity for you to hear from the folks who actually are getting things done, right? I'm the mouthpiece of the organization, but I think it's important that you hear from the folks who are actually doing the work and getting things done. So in all seriousness, I will try to deflect as many questions as I can to our management team that's in the room, and I'll chime in here or there where appropriate. So with that, we're going to open it up for questions. But again, before I take questions from the in-person attendees, the operator is going to take a moment here to provide instructions for the virtual audience. So let's just pause for a moment.

[Operator Instructions] At this time, I'll turn the floor back over to Leroy to take any questions from -- in the room.

Okay. Yes. So while we have the folks in the virtual environment working to get in the queue, we'll start by taking any questions in the room. Yes, in the back.

Leroy, with, as you mentioned, the magic number of $300 million in EBITDA, how are you folks going to get to that between now and there? Is that a straight-line kind of growth of the EBITDA? Is it front-end loaded or kind of back-end loaded over the next couple of years?

Okay. So here, I said I will deflect the questions, but I'll take that one on -- that one, I'll take on. So how are we going to get from $211 million to $300 million? Well, this year already, right, is year 1. And we've set our goal out there, our target out there for $220 to $230 million. So if you just kind of move to that midpoint there, we're talking about going from $211 million to $225 million. We would all love progress to be in a straight line. And we are -- I would say, we're expecting growth in each of the periods that get us there. It's not the same level of growth in every year. There's pieces of it that relate to some of the expansion that Jim talked about that we're in the earlier stages of. So -- and those pieces are significant pieces. So I think you're going to see it intersperse. I think, again, if all goes as we would plan it to be, it will be successive level of increases as we go through -- out through and into 2025. It just isn't going to be the same, if you will, 7.5% per annum. So it is a plan that has a number of projects as you see in it, and they're all in different stages of development. So we feel pretty good about it. But -- and we do feel pretty good about being able to get there in that time frame without it being sort of that last giant leap in year 5. So yes, Mike?

Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners. Kind of a related question on the CapEx. Is that going to be -- if we think about $250 million to $300 million of growth CapEx, is that $50 million to $60 million per year? Or should we think of that as being more front-end loaded? And then the second piece of that question is, if you guys do some M&A, is it possible that we see some of that growth CapEx get deferred or go away? Does it change the math, I guess, on the growth CapEx if you do some M&A?

Sure. And so I'll start out, and I'll ask either Mike or Jimmi Sue if they want to go up and -- because they'll have a little more of the detail in terms of how that lays out. But I will say certainly, there's a good slug of capital that's early on. We're seeing that actually this year. If you recall, right, our capital spending plans are $110 million to $120 million, much of that being growth-related capital. And so the things that we're investing in this year, we're not actually getting returns on this year. It won't start until next year. Again, we also have some dollars we expect to come back through some of the divesting of assets that will put us in a net range of, I think, between $80 million and $90 million in terms of net CapEx spent. But yes, I mean, the fact that we have to spend to get the money, you're going to see probably a heavier spend in the earlier part of this 5-year program, again, starting already in 2021, that's year 1. And from an acquisition standpoint, yes, Mike, yes, there will be opportunities for us, I think, to make some potential strategic acquisitions that then would enable us to not have to spend some dollars that we might otherwise spend on some of the expansion activities that we're looking to do in some of these other geographies. So yes, it's not -- there's some stuff that could be additive, but there is an element of this, there's no question about it, that could displace some of that capital to the extent we get -- arrive at any sort of strategic alliances or strategic agreements that will enable us to do that. So Jimmi Sue or Mike, I don't know if you have anything to add to that. But Mike, you're going to -- if you're going to -- you can take the microphone or get up. Okay. Sorry.

Yes. I think Leroy covered it fairly well, but we also have a revolver with our syndication of banks. So Mike, if there's something that comes along from an M&A standpoint that works through our funnel and we have an opportunity to do something from an acquisition standpoint, we have the availability already in the revolver and the relationships that we have with our syndication of 14 banks. So there's nothing big on the horizon. So I would say that if something does come along and presents itself, that we would borrow on the revolver on a short-term basis to make that happen. So that's really the only thing I have to add.

And just, again, I've said this, I think, on earnings calls as well, I mean, look, it's -- we are not fearful of levering up. We've done it in our private days. We've done it early. In fact, when we first got spun out in 2006, we were pretty fairly highly levered, and we brought that down. And we made a couple of key acquisitions that presented themselves over the last 7 years that caused us to lever up. So we're not afraid of that. We know that we generate good solid cash flow. And again, if last year did not prove the essential nature of our business and the fact that we are going to be around and we're going to be running for quite some time, then nothing will. So we have no fear in terms of doing that and then working to bring it back down. Again, however, certainly, there's a whole host of things you might be able to point to over the past couple of years and say, "Well, again, why that gap in valuation?" I'm sure there's a number of things that play into it, but leverage is likely one of those. And so I'll just say, we're planning to really, now that we're down here, endeavor to sort of stick within that 2 to 3x range, which we think is a comfort level that many others like and still be able to generate enough free cash flow to reinvest back into the business. Another question from the group before -- yes.

Very impressive presentation, so congratulations on what you all have been able to achieve already. Jim, I had a question for you. The project-based strategic plan and highlighting the 95 projects that you've got, can you talk a little bit about how those are originated and then maybe a little bit more about how those get distinguished between those that get investment and those that don't?

Yes. So you kind of touched on it a little bit. It's really idea generation from a number of people in the company. And then you just sort of go through a vetting process like how hard is it going to be to execute this, what are the market conditions around it, is it something totally in our control that rises to the top pretty fast. Something like the example I gave for Jim's business, adding peeling and drying capacity in a pole plant. That's 100% in our control. We can look at what we're paying for a piece of wood that has been peeled and dried, and we compare that against the investment to do it ourselves. And the return is pretty good. So that rises to the top pretty quick. On the other end of the scale, even though we don't have it in the strategic plan, would be acquisitions. So there's a lot of due diligence that's got to go on that. And there -- you're never going to know all what you want to know. So that would have a little bit more of a risk factor put on it. I don't know if that -- did that answer your question?

Yes. And I think, again, just to reinforce the fact that the work that we've done over the last 6 years has put us in a position to actually have our people thinking in that way, where, again, the thinking before was around how do we fix what we have. Now again, we have pieces of our business that we're running very well and enjoying strong market opportunities like our Performance Chemicals business. And so we have this synergy and interrelationship where we do cross over boundaries. But we also have these businesses that touch the different areas and teams that sort of run independently that can focus on their own particular areas. So while we were focused on how do we expand our operations in Performance Chemicals to serve what is a growing market there, and we were doing all of that, at the same time, we were reconstructing our whole carbon material and chemical business. But now that they're through that, more or less, now we get to take all of that brainpower and horsepower that was focused over there and actually put it to work, looking at other opportunities and look at enhanced carbon products and how that sort of originated as a result of that. And the part that people may not have caught, hopefully you did, is -- when Jim was going through his presentation, is that first phase is not insignificant. So for not a lot of capital, we get to move products up the value stream. And so we get to take parts of our business that are, if you will, some of the lower-margin piece of that business and actually, if you will, reclassify that product into higher-value product. So for a little bit of incremental additional cost, we're able to take product that might have averaged $400 a metric ton of price and move it up to double that, okay? So that's a tremendous opportunity for us. And again, now that our folks are able to focus their efforts on thinking more forward-looking in the future, we get those sorts of ideas that have come up. So yes, just to again reinforce some of that work that we've done. Any other questions in the room? Yes. Yes, please.

A terrific presentation, a lot of depth and well done, congratulations. My question shifts gears a little bit. Given what you've talked about, about derisking the business and given that a number of business units are exposed to the climate transition that's occurring, how is the Board thinking about that in terms of risk, strategy and capital allocation?

Okay. So that's great. Mr. Chairman, I don't know if you want to -- well, actually, Leslie, why don't you start off with that? And then Steve, if you want to chime in, and I'll be happy to as well. But -- so [ Joanne ], do you want to just repeat that question for...

Just given the exposure to a number of business units to climate transition, how is the Board thinking about that from a [ risk ] and strategy and certainly capital allocation?

So I'll start by saying that sustainability is not new to our company. We've been working on this for a number of years under different names, of course. And so as we improve our facilities, we're looking at things like energy efficiency and water use and the risk to those facilities. So we look at it from a derisking the business perspective. Going forward, the company is really built on a circular economy model. We take materials that might be waste to other companies, and we use them. So coal tar is a waste to the steel industry. We use it to produce products. We take waste copper, and we use that to produce our products. And so in our new business, so our recovery business is looking at the end of life of those products. So our business is taking waste products, putting them into products that sequester carbon. So when you treat wood and it preserves that wood for decades, it's sequestering that carbon for decades to come. So that's how we build that in currently. Going forward, we're going to be looking at the risks to our businesses from climate change. So we have a team that's working on this specific issue, climate change. We look at every facility from a weather perspective, from a flooding perspective and what their risks are. And then we'll also look at just reducing greenhouse gases overall, again, energy efficiency, different product mixes, how we can actually reduce our carbon emissions going forward. Does that answer the question?

Absolutely.

Okay. Steve, would you like to add anything?

Just a couple. From a Board perspective, exactly what she said, we look internally at our businesses and what we generate and how we can improve operationally while respecting the environment and dealing with what we all have to deal with. And we look externally at what some of our customers are dealing with. They've got issues, and we can help them with those issues. So in a way, this creates opportunity for us, too. And we're pretty excited about some of the thought processes and products that this team has come up with that represent some of the projects that you see are actually projects that are aimed at helping our customers deal with this issue. So yes, the Board pays a lot of attention to it.

And I think it's evidenced by the fact that we added a Sustainability Committee of the Board of Directors to have an even more enhanced focus on that. And my team has heard me say many times and sometimes get a chuckle out of it. We understand the businesses that we operate in, and the businesses we touch sometimes certainly don't have the best reputation in terms of their impact. It is essential -- they are essential products. They're not going away. Somebody has to do it. Why not us? And why not us, because we can press the bounds of pushing ourselves to do it better. And I think that, that's the mindset that we've taken. And that's what caused us to move into the recovery business because we knew that we make these products. We put them out there with the railroads, with the utilities, and we knew they were struggling to figure out what they do with that product end of life. And so we wanted to step in and be part of that solution partly to protect our own business moving forward in the long run, but also partly to, again, do the right thing and create a competitive advantage for us, knowing that, again, that's where the world is going. So we're not going to sit here and deny that. We're going to be a part of that solution. Yes. You're welcome. Yes, back to Mike.

Yes, I've got a few more, believe it or not.

Okay. Is this a 7-parter or...

No, this one is -- it relates to the vertical integration. And obviously, we're in a very challenging supply chain environment and your vertical integration gives you some competitive advantages. Can you talk about how that integration is reducing risk in this challenging environment right now and creating opportunities? And maybe also give us an update, one of the areas where you guys are dealing with some challenges is in tie procurement. Maybe give us an update on what you're seeing across that [indiscernible].

Absolutely. That's perfect. So I think Jim can handle the first part of that, and we might ask Travis to handle the second part of that. So...

What was the first part again? I had the answer until you switched to the second part.

Vertical integration.

The vertical integration. So a couple of things under vertical integration, right? So we sell that. So when you look, and notwithstanding the situation with the hardwood ties right now and Travis can talk about that, if you look at our wood business, right, the part where we're treating wood, wood is sustainable, right? So you might not like the price, but you can get it, right? Like that's a fact. What's finite is the chemicals that we produce, right? So when we're selling to a Class 1 railroad, we're selling that whole value chain. We have security supply domestically for the critical raw material. There's only 2 critical raw materials in a tie, right? It's wood and the preservative. And so you can get the wood, like you just have to -- you have to pay for it. They don't like to pay for it when the price goes up. But it's there, right? But the critical part we have, we manufacture and you're our customer, it's a subtlety, right? Our competitors don't have that. They're just treating wood and they're buying preservative, and we're selling the interconnection. And in this vertical integration, we talked about what Doug and his team is doing with respect to basic copper carbonate production. Same thing, right? His competitor doesn't have that. They don't have their own BCC production. So we're selling that. And our customers value it, to a certain extent anyway. So Travis, do you want to just talk a little bit about where we are in hardwood?

So yes, so Leroy touched on this a little bit [indiscernible] at our Q2 earnings call, and we've experienced these tie shortages a couple of times in the last 7 to 10 years. What's a little bit unique about this tie shortage is we saw this peak in demand for softwood. And typically, that doesn't have a direct correlation to hardwood. What we saw this time was the price per pine, it went up so high that the hardwood mill said, why am I cutting hardwood? I can go cut pine and make money. So they've done that. And like Jim said, these sawmills will cut wherever they can make money. The biggest differentiator for us is what the customer's willingness to pay is. And that's what we've seen in the Class Is is they don't -- they'll sit back and say, we'll wait until the price comes down. And it's not what we've seen. What we're doing today is we're changing the way that we do things in RPS from top to bottom. And one of the things is our supply chain, what can we do differently, how can we be more efficient in buying wood and how can we insulate ourselves from some of these peak demand areas where we're short in supply.

So Mike, going back to one of the questions you have related to, again, how have we used the vertical integration to shore up our supply chain and things like that. I mean, probably particularly on the Performance Chemicals business, where again, we didn't -- don't have enough capacity to produce all the copper carbonate for our own needs. And so we were sourcing some of that internationally, sourcing some raw materials internationally as well. And there was a lot of work put in actually last year as we were going through this, really caused us, again, if you will, a little bit of a wake-up call to say, okay, we have to shorten this and we have to take some of the risk out and strengthen our supply chain by providing a little bit more local domestic sources. And so we've gone out, and we've done that. It's put us in a stronger position from that standpoint. And the nice thing about the majority of our business model is that is the majority of our business model. So from a treating standpoint, we're located in these hard and softwood baskets, right? So wood baskets. So we're sourcing wood, obviously, because of the cost of getting it to where you need fairly close. We're obviously producing our own creosote and CCA. From a coal tar standpoint, raw material standpoint, we have our facilities, again, close by to where those blast furnace steel operations are at where we're taking that raw material. There are some chemicals on the PC side that we still have to source internationally. We've been fortunate overall to withstand some of the pressures that we know some other industrials are dealing with from a supply chain standpoint. We're not immune to it. But for the most part, the way our business model is set up, we're sourcing the majority of what we do, if you will, locally. And that's a tremendous advantage. Yes?

All right. Just a couple more. These are both on the Performance Chemicals business. I believe at one point, you mentioned leveraging the CMC presence in Europe to help to expand the Performance Chemicals business. And you've also talked in the past about some potential in Latin America. So I'm just curious, how does that fit into the capital -- the growth CapEx plan? And what could the timing look like on that?

Okay. So I'm going to let Doug answer the second question on Latin America. On the first part. So look, our infrastructure in Europe for CMC is very strong. Nyborg is a very good plant in a good location. A lot of our business for KPC is in that region. So what we're doing there is we're just leveraging simple things, to some extent, like we have a really good laboratory in Nyborg that can do anything PC wants. We have resources, engineers and scientists that can help them. And so Doug and his team are working with Christian Nielsen and his team to optimize our footprint in Europe so that we can expand. And Doug's been involved with what we're doing in Latin America. So I'm going to let him take that question.

Thanks, Jim. The Latin American market is very exciting for PC right now. It's an exploding marketplace, still pairs -- pales in comparison to what we're doing here in North America. But as an example, Brazil is opening 70 treating plants a year right now, 70. Yes, U.S. is opening 3 to 4. So U.S., the developed market. The Brazilian market right now is putting a ton of cash, a lot of land grants into farming right now. And with farms, you need fences and with fences, you need treated wood posts. So that market is expanding tremendously right now. We've got a big market presence down there, dominant market presence that we're continuing to expand on. As Mike and Leroy mentioned in the last earnings call, we're putting some capital into that marketplace right now to become more basic in manufacturing. And that's leading us in the next 2 years to be more basic in manufacturing, maybe 3, depending on some regulatory challenges that we may have down there, but we're extremely excited about that market.

And I think great thing, Mike, I would say is as it relates to that particular business, right, Performance Chemicals, it is not, relatively speaking, a capital-intensive business. So the dollars we have to put into adding production capacity maybe in Brazil or if we're looking to add something in Nyborg for our European operations, it's relatively modest compared to the types of dollars that we have to spend to do something like building the naphthalene plant that we did for $105 million a few years back. So I would say that of the dollars that you -- that Jimmi Sue talked about that we'll plan to spend over the next several years, it's a relatively small piece of it that relates to additional production capacity in the PC business.

One last one for Doug. On the -- in terms of the margin target for the Performance Chemicals business. You've got copper prices that are going to be higher than what you've been paying or where you've been hedged for the last couple of years. So maybe just talk about how you're thinking about price versus cost with respect to copper and how much confidence you have in your ability to get to this 21% to 23% EBITDA margin target.

As Mike mentioned in the last earnings call, we do have a good hedge position for next year. We're actually in a better position next year than we are even this year. It's the following years that there's going to be some challenges. What's going to make it a little easier for us is that the general effect on copper on the treated wood article is fairly minimal. So as an example, on a treated 2x4, you've seen the lumber market double, almost triple over the last year during the pandemic. 2x4 today treated at a box store at around $5, $5 a stick for a 2-foot -- 2x4, 8-foot long piece of lumber. The equation of the metric to get to today's copper price adds about $0.10. So it's really insignificant to the overall consumer. The treater, the retailer, they'll still battle with us, but it's going to be our cost model that's going to keep us in place, our relationship that's going to keep us in place. We'll no doubt have some fairly heated arguments and discussions going into the '23 season where we feel like we're in very good shape for '24. But going forward, the vertical integration, the investment that we've made in our Hubbell manufacturing facility and our own trucking fleet and in our fairly advanced patented technology and MicroPro is going to save the day for us.

And we've been signaling, obviously, that if copper price holds, right, we're heading in that direction, that should not surprise anybody. I mean I mentioned earlier a lot of macro drivers are pointing in a good direction for us in terms of aluminum steel. It's a good direction for us in terms of our business, maybe not a good direction for those of us in the audience who are going to be looking to buy consumer products and all of the other stuff that this stuff gets made with. But the point that Doug made is an important one, right? And it shouldn't be lost, and we're -- this is a point we try to drive home as well. The cost of our product is a component of a stick of treated wood. It's minuscule compared to the variation that you have in terms of the lumber market in general. And so we saw what that rise in lumber pricing didn't slow people down until it got to about 3x where it was before and people were distracted with other activities and decided to hold off, which brought lumber pricing back down. But the cost increase that we're talking about would be significant for us to take. It would be significant for our customers, the treaters to take, less significant necessarily for the retailers to take. But again, nobody has to, right, because it really needs to get pushed on to the ultimate consumer, again, of which you will never notice it when you walk in to get your product because it'll be such a small piece compared to what's going on in terms of the variation from a lumber standpoint. So -- and the fact of the matter is that is just where the industry is at. That is not a copper-specific issue, right? It's an industry issue. And so I can tell you, our customer -- or our competitors are certainly in no stronger position to be able to take and absorb that sort of cost increase. So it ultimately has to go on to the consumer. And that's what we've been already trying to lay the groundwork for. So I'm going to pause for a moment. We can always come back to the room, but I want to give the folks on the phone -- I have no idea how many we have in the queue. And so I want to make sure we do get to some of the folks that are on the phone waiting to ask some questions. So I'll toss it back to the operator to see if he can pipe in the first question from the virtual audience.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from Chris Howe from Barrington Research.

I hope everyone can hear me okay.

Yes, Chris, you're coming in good.

Okay. Great. I wanted to ask the question, first, starting more broadly on the utility pole business. You mentioned geographic opportunities in areas like the West. Can you talk about the challenges towards those opportunities as we look to growing this business? And my follow-up to that is more narrowly focused as we look at the current issues and recoveries on hand in areas like Louisiana. And if we compare Hurricane Ida just some time ago, Hurricane Katrina, can we talk about the replacement of existing poles presented by natural disasters and how those have eventually flowed through the financials?

Sure. Thank you, Chris. And I'm going to turn it over to Jim Sullivan to start this.

Yes. I'm going to let Jim talk about the second part, I'll talk about the first part. So going out West, the challenges there are we're going to have to build assets somewhere out West. So there's the same challenges anytime you want to build assets, where are you going to locate them, what's the ideal location, where you get the raw material. And then you have the, okay, we're going to design it and we got to build it and the ongoing working through. That will be a relatively decent sized project, sort of in the neighborhood of North Little Rock type project opposed to a Stickney naphthalene-type project. So those are the main challenges that we'll have. But I'm going to let Jim answer the question on what's happened with the last hurricane. He's got hands-on experience.

Thank you. What's going on with Ida, one thing that we never plan on a storm in our budget. We don't know it's going to happen. It seems like lately, they happen too often. But working on Ida, we did not have a direct customer in the path of Ida in the South. But to say we've put over 5,000 poles down there since last weekend. The utility that was affected directly, Entergy, called us directly to see if we could help. We've also helped a number of friendly competitors in that area that we supplied them poles directly, either untreated or treated, so they could supply to their customers. Now as Ida came up the coast, one of the things that we don't like, and you talk about the supply chain, is all that rain. Our poles come from the woods, the woods get wet. Fortunately, Ida stayed mostly in the South. Some of the rain came up the coast as well. Know it affected New York, New England area. That's not where we get our poles. Ida took a turn around us. So our supply chain is still strong. The biggest thing about our supply chain is our poles come from everywhere from Texas all the way up to Virginia. So if one hurricane comes in Virginia, we can still pull from the south and vice versa. So our supply chain is pretty robust in that area. The other thing is with all our plants, we can move our production from plant to plant to plant. Many people worry hurricane will come in over one of our plants, and it has, and we've been able to move production to another plant and come up that way. The last thing on our supply chain is we've approximately right now have 185 railcars in our fleet, something most people don't think about. We can load a railcar and move it up to backfill. Probably not going to use it to get there tomorrow, but we can backfill all our yards through the rail lines.

Our next question comes from Laurence Alexander from Jefferies.

Two quick questions. One, in the Q&A, you alluded to the kind of mix effect you have from upgrading some of the lower-value products. Can you translate that into how much of a tailwind you should -- that should generate for EBITDA or margins over, say, 5 to 7 years? And secondly, on M&A, can you flesh out in a little bit more detail kind of what your hurdles are or constraints apart from it being accretive? And in particular, what you think is reasonable adjacencies for M&A? And what would be an example of a business that will be too far for you to consider?

Okay. So Laurence, in terms of the first question. We -- I'm trying to recall the sort of the numbers that we have baked into our overall numbers as we look out over the next 5 to 7 years for what we've put up in terms of our profit generation. I think we had $25 million overall that we're expecting to get from EBITDA in terms of our portfolio enhancement of which this is a part of. And I want to say that by the time we sort of get to the end game here, that the number coming out of this area is in the maybe 1/3 of that number in terms of EBITDA generation. I'm looking at Jim just to -- just for confirmation.

[indiscernible]

Okay. So Yes, that's right. So Jim is saying, third, maybe on the low end of it, up to probably close to maybe half of that $25 million could come from this project. We're starting it here in Nyborg, Denmark. We're planning to extend that into Australia next and then ultimately Stickney. So from that standpoint, it's a decent portion of the returns we expect to get from portfolio enhancement. And again, well within our control because all we need to do is be able to make the -- demand is there. All we need to do is be able to make more of the good stuff, if you will, right, or the higher value stuff. The second piece of your question, Laurence, was around M&A and sort of -- so how we look at that, maybe some of the adjacencies that we might consider and things like that. Maybe just starting, obviously, it is an expensive M&A market, right? We all, I think, know that and understand that. We've not been extremely acquisitive, but the acquisitions we made over the last 7 years, again, 2 of them, obviously, of pretty good size and scale. It's given us a lot to chew on. We've obviously fully absorbed Performance Chemicals at this point and have been able to continue to invest in it. It's been a tremendous return. Utility and Industrial Products was our foray into having a much bigger footprint on the treatment side and being able to have that pull-through of the chemicals that we produce, both in CMC as well as Performance Chemicals and optimizing our asset footprint, which we're on the way now. So we're still in heavy in the works of integrating -- really integrating that business and pulling the profit opportunities out of it. I -- a lot of the wood-based businesses that you see selling over the years have been of a more modest multiple than what you see probably on the chemical side. There's some chemical assets that have been out there that have -- that are a little bit more on the pricier side of things. We look at whatever synergies we can get and whether we can bring that growth multiple down to something that's more reasonable from our standpoint and, obviously, thinking about the strategic impact within the business and the geographies that we're looking to expand on. So thinking about Europe as one example on the Performance Chemicals side, right? We're the #3 player in Europe. So one of the slides I showed up there says that we're a leader in just about every -- everybody -- in just about every market and geography we operate in. Well, there's 2 notable exceptions to that. One is Performance Chemicals in Europe, and the other is Utility and Industrial Products in geography sort of outside of the Southeast and the East. And so those are the opportunities that we look at as the ability to really drive and add value into our business. Some of that, we think we're going to be able to do -- well, let's put it this way. We have a plan to do it organically but we're also having plenty of discussions with others that are in that market that might provide a good entry point to allow us to do it even quicker. And that was -- that goes back to some of what I talked about earlier, whereas we may have an opportunity to add something to the business that then enables us to maybe not have to spend some of the dollars that we would have in our plan to actually do the expansion. So we're always trying to balance that equation. We don't like to overpay for anything. We're pretty stingy about what we do there. But look, we're always looking for returns from our standpoint that can get in that mid-teens or better category. Those are the things that we look at. We want a return on our capital that's going to be in that area, right? We're not looking to just beat our weighted average cost of capital. We're looking to exceed it by a healthy margin. So those are the things that we look at. And then as you think about adjacencies, I'll say there's more than enough opportunities within sort of the scope of what we're doing today. But as we look forward, we do have some businesses that are on the rail infrastructure side of things, more service-related businesses that we keep an eye open to continue to build upon the capabilities we have there. I talked a little bit about Koppers' utility services in leveraging some of the expertise we have around having crews of individuals out there doing work on -- in the rail side on bridges and sort of taking some of that expertise and diverting it into utility pole inspection and remediation. Talk about the fact that there is a part of that business that it pays to have good wood science folks on your team. And obviously, the utility of relationships really enable us to get our foot in the door and get some business to be able to make our name there. So the things that we're looking at from an adjacency standpoint are probably more on the service end of things or things that we can look at in terms of enhancing some of the products that we're doing already on the preservation side. Enhanced carbon products opens up a whole different door for us, right? Because now it's -- we're talking about a market that is outside of wood. It's in a market that there obviously has a huge growth potential associated with it. It's a market that is going to require high-quality and therefore, high-value products. And so I guess, as we continue to work on getting our product qualified into those markets, we'll look for interesting opportunities to develop relationships that could expand into more than just what we're doing. So wood is important to us. It's an important part of our story. It's been an important part of our growth strategy. But we're not going to necessarily limit ourselves to that moving forward. We want to make smart investments that can help drive future improved performance, help move us up the ladder in terms of the profit profile that we generate and therefore, going back to my earlier rant, should ultimately move us up that scale in terms of the value that others see in Koppers. So long-winded response, Laurence. I hope I was able to touch on most of what you had asked about.

I really appreciate it. Just one question about culture, if I may, is you -- there's a thread throughout this presentation of pride in both how Koppers has handled the challenges of the last few years and how it's evolved. As you think about the next 5 years, what would you like to fix? Or what skill sets would you like to bring in that Koppers doesn't have yet?

It's a great question, a great question. I mean so we're very technically oriented. We have a lot of strong engineering talent, a lot of strong financial talent, really good operators. So from that standpoint, we're good at what we do and where we do it. The whole -- as Leslie talked about, sustainability is not a new word for us. It's not a buzzword for us. Inclusion and diversity is not a new phrase for us. We've been focused on those things for a number of years. I think from an overall culture standpoint, just getting everybody again, more aligned around those topics and the value they bring to the organization, so helping to connect the dots between just doing those sorts of things because we might think it's the right thing to do or the moral thing to do and actually connecting it to how we can drive value moving forward. That's the key piece. And so I think as we continue to search for talent moving forward, we want to have folks who have that mindset and alignment and aren't just good operators and aren't just good engineers or accountants or people like that, but that they also come to us with that mindset because again, the demands are only going to get greater moving forward. And I think if we can be out in front of that and be a leader in that space, then we can be a preferred choice for our customers who are also, in many cases, moving in that direction. Do we have another question from the virtual audience?

And ladies and gentlemen, at this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to Chris in the video operation department or any video or webcast questions.

Thank you. Our first video question comes from Liam Burke with B. Riley.

You look comfortable there.

A little underdressed for the occasion, but anyway. In the context of your geographic and product expansion, how do you view the competitive environment especially when you look at utility poles moving from your strength in one geography to another? Or in Europe when you're moving into another area of chemicals, when you're moving to #3 to #1, hopefully?

So maybe I'll start with that because it's along the lines of sort of what Jim talked about a little bit earlier. Yes, we're very, very strong in the Southeast and the Northeast on the utility side of the business. But again, these are businesses that aren't foreign to us. We're -- we've been in it a long time because we were in this business way back when as well, and we still have folks who are familiar with it. But the business that we bought that really provide us the breadth of a scale and presence, those folks have been, again, doing this for a long time. Jim Healey goes back to, again, the old Koppers days and has 35 years under his belt. So we know how to do what we do, and we do it very, very well. The thing that Koppers has been able to bring, and that's why we targeted this particular acquisition, is the scale and, again, that vertical integration in the wood scientists that we have sitting behind the scenes, if you will. So now Jim and his team can go out as they're doing the storm response and all the stuff that they do so, so well that actually, again, I think, really elevates us and sets us apart, we can also bring expertise to the industry as, for example, they're going through this preservative transition. So penta is being registered -- deregistered in the U.S. and Canada, it's in the process. And we can bring capabilities to the table that help our customer base understand what best preservative is the right and best preservative for them moving forward from a cost standpoint, a quality standpoint, whatever it is that they're looking to do. And there's no other -- other companies might go to bring people in from outside the organization, things like that. We have that all in-house. We have this network already in place of folks that are out there procuring the softwood. We have a network of, again, of peeling and drying operations both in and outside the organization, treating operations. So there's no, if you will, magic formula to treating a pole or treating a tie or things like that, which is why I think the vertical integration or everything we bring to the table, including disposal, end-of-life disposal, are the things that can really provide value to that customer base as we move beyond this region that we have focused on, on -- that business is focused on for so many years. So we're going to really rely upon that, and if you will, drive it home and try and double down, triple down in terms of that fully vertically integrated supply chain to sell to those markets. And those markets are underserved today. So we think it prevents -- it presents a tremendous opportunity for us to gain market penetration there. And in terms of Europe and what we're doing in Performance Chemicals. Somebody had asked about, Doug, about how do we get into that 21%, 23% EBITDA margin range here in 5 years, right? We're here today. We're actually there today, right? Part of that we know is sort of pandemic-fueled demand. So I understand and you, I think, all understand that as that pandemic-fueled demand starts to recede a little bit, right, that will have a little bit of pressure on margins. But the other piece that people again probably don't realize is our European business, as said, we're a third player there. It's a smaller piece of our overall business. We struggled a little bit in terms of some of the changes that have been going on in Europe and reregistration of products and stuff like that. So the work we're doing over there is really a wholesale change. And that's a business that is not a great margin generator today. And we think through the introduction of some new products over there, we can actually really vastly improve the profit profile of that business, which will help support Doug as we're looking to maintain those 21% to 23% margins moving forward. Again, well respected over there. We're certainly well respected globally in terms of the Koppers brand. And I think just bringing more of what we do in some of the other places and introducing it into some of these other geographies, we believe that the market will be receptive because we've seen it in the markets that we currently operate in. Does that help?

I have a little more granular on Stickney. That had been an operational and nice return project on the combination with Follansbee. Several times during the discussion today, you've mentioned more to do. at Stickney. Is there that much more low-hanging fruit there?

So I'm going to turn that to Jim if he wants to answer that or if he wants to turn it to Jason. It's up to him. But I'll lead in by just saying one of the -- so one of the misperceptions, and I want to make sure we're clear about this, because one of the misperceptions which drives me absolutely nuts about our CM&C business today is that, that business is a dog. I've heard it multiple times. I hear it when I'm out talking to people about, oh, I'm so glad that you've shrunk that dog of a business that you had of CM&C. And we did a perception study where a lot of feedback we got back was, hey, great job in shrinking the bad margin CM&C business. And I just want to be clear because if you look at that business over the last 4 years, yes, we shrunk it and that was part of the success that we've had there. But in the process of doing that, we vastly changed our risk profile, we vastly changed our margin profile in that business, right? That is now a 13% to 16% margin business. Yes, last year, in the pandemic, we finished at just below 12% in the pandemic, right? That business, back in 2014, 2015, when oil dropped through the floor, that business was bleeding cash, bleeding cash. If that business was the same then as it was -- same in 2020 as it was back then, game over, game over. The fact that we were able to do what we did through the pandemic should show people that business is not a dog. It's a smaller business, but it is a very profitable business. And it is a business that we're very, very happy to have as part of our portfolio. And there's still opportunities there. So with that, I'll get off that soapbox and throw it to Jim or Jason, who wants to talk about some of the things for Stickney.

Yes, I'll just take this one because it will be quick, right? So we spend a lot of time doing a North American consolidation, which you had to shut down Clairton, had to shut down Follansbee. And when we did that, we had to build a naphthalene facility at Stickney. So that was a big project. So while we were doing that, like so building a very large unit operation inside of an operating plant is not ideal. That's very difficult. And there's only so much of work that can get done at one time. So what we have to do now is we're actually upgrading the rest of the unit operations there. So we have a phthalic anhydride facility. We have our coal tar distillation. We have our utilities. So we're going to chip away at improving that. And yes, there's money there. Like some of that is actually maintenance capital, but that maintenance capital is actually going to have a return on investment. So we're confident when we invest in Stickney, we're going to get our money back. But that's what that is.

Okay. Thank you, Liam. Okay. We're -- I know we're running a little short on time. We have about 9 minutes left. Do we have another video caller in the queue, by chance?

And sir, at this time, we are showing no additional questions, so we can conclude today's question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to you, Mr. Ball, for any closing remarks.

Okay. So I will -- if anybody has one final question, I'll give you the opportunity for one final question before we close it out. I'm just scanning the audience, and I don't see a hand coming up. So -- okay. So we'll move to closing it out. I mean, look, maybe as I begin to close it out, I want to send a thank you to all the people involved in making today happen. And there's a lot of people. I'll mention one name only because I don't want to miss everybody else, and I know I will if I try to start mentioning names. But there is 1 name I need to mention, that's Quynh McGuire, our VP of Investor Relations. She -- I don't think the woman has slept in 3.5 months. It's scary to think, but no, she's done an amazing job pulling all this together. She's had a great team helping her. And again, at the risk of missing somebody, I won't mention the names, but you know who you are. Thank you very, very much. for putting together a great hybrid presentation in the world that we now live in. So again, go back to that slide of the 3 key points I want to leave you with and hope you walk away with thinking about us as you move forward, whether you're already invested, whether you're thinking about investing. Look, we've done this before. We have that track record. We have a good business model, a business model that's essential and will be around for many years to come. And we're doing all the work that ensures that it will be around for many years to come. So think of the magic number, 300. Think of Pud Galvin, the first 300 game winner ever in Major League Baseball. Use that the next time you're in a bar and say, I bet you don't know this -- the answer to this question. And then the $600 million of operating cash flow that we plan to deploy back both into the business and as well as into other areas, the flexibility that we will now have. But really appreciate you taking the time to come visit us today. For those that I see in the room that have endured all this totally masked up, thank you for doing that. And for those who have joined us on the phone, thank you as well. Again, I hope to see you all soon again in person someday soon. So thank you, everyone.