LyondellBasell Industries N.V. (LYB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, listen, good morning, everybody. Thanks for coming out earlier this morning. For those of you that don't know me, I'm Duffy Fischer, the chemical analyst here at Goldman Sachs. We're very happy to welcome to New York, LyondellBasell, a company that I've known for a long time and a lot of different iterations, going way back through a bankruptcy and a fantastic run through the 2010s. And -- so anyway, I just -- I need to read a quick disclosure here, and then we'll get Michael up here to kind of run us through the nuts and bolts of what we've got to say today. I think, again, we had a good discussion with them last night. A lot going on in the business world around chemicals. I think some good, some bad. But I think there's going to be a lot of action around this space over the next couple of months. So we're required to make certain disclosures in public appearances about Goldman Sachs' relationships with companies that we discuss. The disclosures relate to investment banking relationships, compensation received, percent or more ownership. We're prepared to read aloud disclosures for any issuer upon request. However, these disclosures are available in our most recent reports available to you, our clients on the portals or on our firm's portals. So with that, again, we'd love to welcome Michael up to the stage. Michael has been a great partner in this role, CFO for the last 5 to 6 years. He's actually stepping down early next year. It will be sad to see him go. As again, you always want your CFOs to be good with cash, and Michael has been about as good as you can be with cash. Kept a tight rein on that. But again, I won't steal much of a time because we'll run out of time in the short session. So with that, Michael, please come on up, and thank you very much.

Thank you, Duffy. And good morning, everyone. Good to be here. So I was going to give you guys an update on the company including kind of an updated near-term outlook on the fourth quarter. So moving right along. So on Slide 2, we have the typical cautions regarding our forward-looking statements. I'm not going to read all of this, Duffy. All right. So a bit of an update on our strategy. I know most of you have followed LyondellBasell for many years. But those of you who are new to our story, let me begin by saying that LYB is a company that provides essential solutions for modern life that touch you and you use every day. Just 20 months ago in March of 2023, we launched our new strategy to build on the strong foundations in place at LYB, which positions the company for durable and sustainable growth. Our aim is to improve focus. We're not trying to do everything everywhere. We know our strengths and we know we are highly focused on growing these strengths and reallocating resources away from areas where we don't want to be a leader or where others are better placed to lead. We are leveraging our scale with impactful moves enabled by our global reach, leading positions and advantaged technologies. And we're making rapid progress on these strategies. Strategy without execution is meaningless. LyondellBasell is not waiting. Despite challenging market conditions, our aim is to lead the industry and build a more profitable future. We have organized the work streams under LYB with 3 strategic pillars. First, we are growing and upgrading our core, focusing our portfolio around businesses with long-lasting competitive advantages, where we will reinvest to generate superior returns at meaningful scale. Last year, our new PO/TBA capacity grew our mid-cycle EBITDA by $450 million. This year, we formed a new Saudi JV, where we have a 35% position in historical EBITDA of $155 million, and we are sharpening the focus of our portfolio through our divestiture to INEOS, the upcoming shutdown of our refinery and our European strategic review. The second pillar of our strategy is building a profitable, Circular and Low Carbon Solutions business. Market demand for recycled and renewable polymers is far outstripping available supply. Financial returns for these products are superior to our fossil-based production, and LYB's required capital investment is relatively modest. For these reasons, LYB is focused on becoming the leader in this space. By 2030, we expect to produce and market 2 million tons of these products, representing about 20% of our Polyolefins sales. We expect these 2 million tons will generate an incremental $1 billion of EBITDA relative to our fossil-based production. And finally, we are stepping up our performance and culture. We are instilling a focus on value creation to leverage our leading positions of operational excellence and cost. With modest investments in people and capital, we are capturing low-risk, high-return opportunities that have languished for years due to previous, almost singular focus on cost. LYB's value enhancement program is on track to unlock at least $600 million in recurring annual EBITDA by the end of 2024 and $1 billion by the year-end 2025. Let me touch on a recent milestone in building our Circular and Low Carbon Solutions business. In September, we began construction on our first commercial scale catalytic advanced recycling plant in Germany. MoReTec is an acronym for molecular recycling technology. This is a proprietary LYB technology that converts hard-to-recycle mixed plastic waste into feedstocks for use in our existing olefin crackers and downstream polymer production. I think some gearheads came up with that name. Our path to leadership in Circular and Low Carbon polymers is relatively capital light. We will continue to utilize our existing cracker and polymer assets while building the MoReTec units as a front end for converting plastic waste into valuable circular and low-carbon polymers. Our catalytic technology improves yields, reduces the energy and emissions intensity and allows for electrification of the process using 100% renewable power. And you can see in the photo, German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and other dignitaries joined Peter in Cologne for the groundbreaking. And just before the Thanksgiving holiday, we discussed plans with our Board. We're beginning the engineering work on MoReTec-2 in Houston, at twice the scale of Germany. But we are not waiting for our technology to be built. We are already establishing a rapidly growing DLCS business by sourcing feedstocks from third parties. In 2023, we sold 123,000 tons of these products at very attractive margins. And over the past 5 years, volumes have been growing at a 55% annual rate, and we are on track for similar growth in '24 and in '25. So let's talk a little bit about how the year has evolved here on Slide 6 and how we're thinking about near and midterm outlook for the business. Since December of '22, our industry has been challenged by one of the longest and deepest downturns in the history of the chemicals industry. Nonetheless, LYB's business portfolio has exhibited resilience. Over the past 12 months, we generated $4.6 billion of EBITDA, roughly $700 million more than the pandemic trough of 2020. While demand for nondurables has been relatively consistent, our industry is feeling the effects of the downturn in demand for durable goods. Over the past 12 months, we have seen some improvement in demand within our core markets of olefins and polyolefins. Year-to-date, demand for North American polyethylene is up almost 7%, and polypropylene demand is up about 3%. North American domestic demand for PE is up 4% in 2024, a nice turnaround following 2 years of declining demand. And there is more upside as demand for durable goods begin to rebound, particularly for LYB sizable polypropylene and propylene oxide businesses. For LYB, the biggest change in our profitability over the past 12 months has been driven by the decline in gasoline crack spreads affecting both oxyfuels and refined products. The majority of this impact has been seen in our I&D and Refining segments, where results are more than $900 million lower than 2023. Despite the decline in margins, oxyfuels and refining are not the same. As you know, we will be shutting down our refining operations during the first quarter of 2025. After 2 good years of profitability, Refining once again is a very challenging business, and we are very comfortable with our decision to exit this business. I think Refining is going to have a challenging 2025. Oxyfuels margins are lower than the peaks of 2023, but still attractive and within seasonal norms, we expect low cost for butane raw materials and strong octane premiums will once again drive healthy margins for our high octane oxyfuels during the 2025 summer driving season. At LYB, we have adapted to the markets and are focused on the controllables while advancing our long-term strategy. Duffy, talk about cash? Cash generation has fallen, but remains substantial with LYB even during this prolonged downturn with a disciplined approach to operating rates and working capital we have maintained our long-term average of converting EBITDA into cash at a rate of approximately 80%. At the end of the third quarter, we kept $2.6 billion in cash on the balance sheet to help us confidently navigate through these uncertain times. With less than 2 turns of net debt to EBITDA, LYB's balance sheet is in great shape. Our debt portfolio has an average rate of 4% and a weighted average maturity of 17 years. And in May, our disciplined capital allocation provided us with confidence to raise our dividend by 7%. 2024 is our 14th consecutive year of annual dividend growth. We intend to continue building on this track record. Before we go to your questions, Duffy, let me summarize how we view current markets. As I mentioned, North American polyolefin demand is improving relative to 2023. But fourth quarter profitability is facing headwinds from a slower seasonal demand and trade uncertainty that is creating more downside than we originally expected. The October decline in U.S. polyethylene pricing was surprising. LYB's U.S. October polymer order volumes was the strongest month in 2024. Volumes for November and December will be lower as customers seek to reduce year-end inventories. Nonetheless, North American costs remain quite favorable on a global scale and should continue to benefit integrated polyethylene margins. Across the company, we expect to see seasonal demand patterns that will result in lower fourth quarter profitability across most of our businesses. In Europe, market conditions remain stable, but very slow, and we are seeing downside from typical seasonal demand reductions. Indications of near-term market recovery remain elusive. Pressures from prolonged trough conditions and the need to reinvest in aging assets are reshaping the European chemical industry. Capacity rationalizations should result in a smaller European supply base that is better aligned to serve future local demand. We are encouraged by the closure announcements we have seen thus far and expect more to follow. Chinese markets are slowly but steadily improving from levels far below pre-pandemic conditions. We continue to monitor the impacts of recent stimulus initiatives and we're encouraged by the improvements in China PMI data over this past weekend. In packaging markets, we continue to see steady demand with customers becoming more discriminative around affordability. In building and construction markets, U.S. stimulus programs are driving increased investments in infrastructure. Lower interest rates and pent-up demand should provide tailwinds for both industrial and residential activity in 2025. Within automotive markets, tariff uncertainty is likely to lead to even lower production during the fourth quarter, particularly in North America. OEMs are in a challenging environment with customers waiting for lower borrowing costs, steeper discounts while struggling to address rising inventories and trade uncertainties. For LYB, oxyfuels margins have declined from the peak we saw in 2023, but are still within the range of seasonal norms. We expect the 2025 summer driving season will be another good year for oxyfuels. So in conclusion, let me wrap up my prepared remarks by updating our views on the fourth quarter and the path ahead. With reduced expectations for pricing and increased trade uncertainty, we now expect the fourth quarter results will be lower than our prior expectations. LYB's fourth quarter EBITDA is likely to be the lowest of any quarter since 2020. In North America, trade uncertainties are reducing industrial confidence. Globally, markets are softer than expected. At LYB, we are controlling the controllables. Our priorities remain on leveraging advantages from low-cost feedstocks in North America and the Middle East. We are optimizing operations across our global footprint to capture market opportunities, and we are laser-focused on robust cash generation and conversion. Backed by our investment-grade balance sheet, we continue to execute on our long-term strategy and portfolio realignment. We're optimizing our European footprint and exiting noncore businesses like ethylene oxide and refining. We are growing our circular and low-carbon solutions business with modest investments in advanced recycling using our proprietary technology. And our value enhancement program is on track to unlock at least $600 million in recurring annual EBITDA by the end of '24 and $1 billion by the end of 2025. With that, I'm pleased to turn it over to you, Duffy.

Great. Join me in the chair.

You bet. I forgot to advance my last slide. I apologize.

Great. So just because -- obviously, this will be the money slide that people are key on. To level set, I think we're talking to Dave before I stepped up here. So this lower than in the quarter includes actually 2020. And I think we were saying that there was a quarter in 2020 that was like $670 million of EBITDA. Basically, that's the low watermark.

Yes. That's right.

Okay. So most people probably come out and say, $650 million to keep around number, something like that feels like the right place to kind of go for the quarter. Is that fair?

Yes. I mean I'm not going to give specific guidance, but that's probably a little too harsh.

Okay. Fair enough. And then I do want to get into some [indiscernible] stuff here. But then just to think about Q4 as a glide path into next year. Is there something abnormal about what you saw falling off in Q4 that you think snaps back rapidly in Q1? Or is Q4 a decent baseline to kind of extrapolate into Q1, obviously, better, but better off of a lower base?

Yes. There's no doubt -- I mean there's no doubt that the fourth quarter is the seasonally weakest quarter we have, and Q1 should be better. I think there's just a little bit of uncertainty caused by some of the tariff talk and things like that. And I think as we move through the fourth quarter and get into the first quarter, I think things will get slightly better.

And then just the last one to put this to that relative to what your expectations were before, the chunks of the business that weakened the most -- I mean, obviously called out polyethylene, you didn't expect a $0.03 in October. But when you go through your other big businesses, PO, oxys...

Yes, the big wins that are faced into kind of crude price volatility and crack spreads, right? So it'd be oxyfuels with crude price coming down pretty rapidly, and then crack spreads.

Okay. And then I was going to hit it a little bit later, but when you think about Oxy structurally, obviously, you went through a couple of what I'd call great years, maybe over earning depending how you look in the cycle. You showed the one slide that they're down, I think, like $475 million. Was it '22 versus the LTM or well -- maybe it was '23 versus the LTM. But one of those numbers, would you call kind of normalized, if you want to extrapolate for the next 5 to 7 years or somewhere in between? Or how would you think about what a normalized would be Oxy for going forward?

Yes, I'd say a couple of things. First and foremost, the Oxyfuels business is a phenomenal business. And if you go back kind of the decade before the pandemic, I mean, this business had a track record of kind of consistently delivering $400 million of annual EBITDA. And now it's a much bigger business with the PO/TBA facility that we opened up in Houston. Obviously, 2020 with what happened, it wasn't a great year. But since then, the business has been doing phenomenal. '23 was unusual because there were some margin flare-ups with some capacity that had come down temporarily, where margins sit today or at actually historic norms for the fourth quarter. So we're very comfortable. And as we move into the first quarter, margins will start to widen out and then further as we move into the summer driving season. But it is a great business. There's a lot of demand for octane, and we have an incredible cost position in particular here in North America.

Okay. Okay. And then I guess, first, bigger picture question. You talked about kind of your 3 pillars and doing some structural stuff within the company and some changes. How should investors grade that when you see kind of the macro looking so negative and the actual numbers trending down? How do you juxtapose that with the big chunks of kind of structural EBITDA that you think you can grow within the company? How should investors grade better? How do we see that's going to be there when we get to some normalized period?

No, it's a great question. So at our Capital Markets Day that we had in March of '23, we put out some big goals, right? Starting off of a kind of a cycle average base of $7 billion and then ultimately, getting to $10 billion with a stop next year at $9 billion, right? On that $2 billion path, we think we're probably about 2/3 of the way there. And we'll do an extensive update on the fourth quarter call, kind of detailing everything out. But the other thing I want to kind of emphasize is we were purposeful when we put those targets out there using kind of a cycle average basis, right? So they're based kind of looking backwards on a 10-year average because we didn't want to predict the future of the cycle. Thank god, we didn't, because we've been in the longest trough of history. So no, we're super pleased with the progress overall of what we can control and what we're executing upon. And despite the challenging market conditions, we continue to make progress, and we're facing forward.

Okay. And again, you brought it up a couple of times in your prepared remarks. Obviously, we're all looking at it from a lot of different angles, but new administration coming in, a lot of talk of tariffs, counter tariffs. I guess when you look at your portfolio, whether it's you or potential competitors for you in different areas, where do you see the biggest, I guess, risk and where do you see the biggest opportunity from some of the stuff that the new administration has talked about as far as trading -- changing kind of trading patterns?

Yes. I mean I'd say a couple of things. So I think there's an awful lot of noise and an awful lot of bluster, and I think that's part of the strategy. I do think the administration is going to be focused on kind of reciprocal, where we don't have reciprocity or fair arrangements or equal arrangements between respective countries they're going to focus there, in particular, I think, with China. And then specifically with China, they're going to focus on, I think, high tech and auto as well. If you go back to Trump Tariffs 1.0, the market ultimately adopted and adapted relatively quickly with trade flows. And then also because China is short of polyethylene, they started issuing waivers pretty quickly. And if you think about LYB, specifically, generally speaking, most of what we manufacture gets sold, where those facilities are with probably 2 big exceptions in North America, and that is we export a fair amount of polyethylene, and we export a fair amount of oxyfuels. And if you think about oxyfuels, it would make no sense for a country who imports oxyfuels to put tariffs on that because it's going to immediately hit the gasoline pool and consumers. And then if you think about polyethylene, it's typically being exported to countries that converted into something else and then reexport back out, which is why China was issuing waivers in Trump 1.0. So I do think kind of overall, there's probably some negative net-net implications. But I think as a company, I think we're prepared to navigate it fairly well.

Okay. And I guess, which parts of your customer base would you worry about or even maybe your raw material side? Because I guess, if one of the things is they want to export a lot more carbon, let's say, does that speed up the potential or increase the potential that maybe ethane trades kind of at its value as opposed to trading kind of the methane floor, or you don't see us exporting enough that you get to some kind of parity on that front?

No. I don't see it. I think far, far away from that.

Do you have a walking around number here like how much oversupplied we are on ethane in the U.S. that if we started to export or build more capacity, where you get to some kind of balanced level and it wouldn't be oversupplied? Or you don't see that in the...

Not off the top of my head. And listen, it's far, far away.

Okay. Fair enough. Then maybe let's just go back. We talked a little bit about the October price decline in polyethylene. After action review, looking back, I mean what was it that ended up being weaker in the market? Or why was the price down when most of the industry, I think, was kind of thinking $0.01 or $0.02 in the fourth quarter, but most people are kind of thinking in November-December, just a normal seasonal, that seemed to kind of catch most people by surprise. In hindsight, I guess, what do you think drove that?

I'll be honest, I think we were a bit surprised. I think other industry participants were surprised as well. The way that polyethylene prices are set in the market, it's a little bit complicated and a little bit unusual with kind of a third party who's kind of decreeing kind of what happens kind of in the market and then a lot of contracts actually are tied to kind of what they decree. So it's not necessarily fully transparent. Now good news on November pricing, actually settle flat though.

Yes. That was last night, I think, right? Yes.

Yes, last night. So we're pleased with that.

Okay. And best guess from here kind of over the winter, we're flattish. Is that...

Yes.

Okay. Okay. And then maybe again, bigger picture on polyethylene. We added a decent amount of capacity in North America kind of up until early this year. When you look at, let's say, CMA as kind of the big gorilla as far as consultants go around the space. Their numbers don't look very good as you get into kind of '26, '27, '28. I know you guys have a little bit structurally different view than where they're at. I mean, what accounts for that difference? Obviously, even look at your numbers and their numbers and kind of parse it, where are you more constructive on the polyethylene cycle, let's say, over the next 3 years than they might be? And what do you think drives that?

Yes. I mean, I think probably the 2 fundamental differences and how we think about kind of the forward view and how they think is around closures, and then kind of the speed of which actually new projects actually get done and then actually ramp up. And so they really don't forecast on closures until decisions are taken. And that's not -- you got to take a point of view, right, as an industry participant who has a global footprint, who also has a global technology business who sells licensing into the space, we have a point of view, right? And so we have a point of view that's different on closures. And then we have a point of view on kind of the timing of new facilities that they typically get pushed out a little bit and then ramp-ups are slower. So those are probably the 2 fundamental areas where we're different.

Okay. And so like when you look out -- because I think, again, on CMA numbers, I think supply demand tightens a little bit next year, but then it loosens each of the next 3 years after that. What would your view on that look like? Is every year kind of in the next 3 or 4 tightening a little bit on your view? Or are there some years where actually supply is more than what you would have demand pegged at?

It starts to tighten.

It starts to tighten. Pretty consistent. Okay. And for the market to move back to a healthier place, how much do you think it needs to tighten? I mean, again, if you kind of use that 2010, is like a nice decade...

I mean, listen -- I mean, like in North America, I mean, we've seen -- we saw good growth this year after 2 years of decline in sales. So I think we get a little better growth in China and stability in Europe. But I think that's good. That generates some forward momentum. And a little bit of restocking.

Okay. And again, with your global footprint, are you seeing any green shoots when you look into China, when you look into Europe, is there anything that feels like it's on the cusp of getting better or...

So there's a modest momentum in China -- modest. Let's not get too excited because it's been super slow. And then in Europe, it feels kind of stable, but still very challenging. And I think if there were some good news on the Ukrainian front in the next couple of months, I think that would be very beneficial for European growth.

Okay. Fair enough. And you've got a process going on in Europe around some of the assets. One, I guess, if you were just, for everybody, to kind of size what chunk of Europe it is that you're looking at, and then just kind of how far are we along the process? And again, what should people think of as kind of the likely outcomes? How does this resolve it...

Yes. I mean -- and we disclosed quite a bit of the 6 facilities that we looking to exit a quarter before last. The process is well underway. It's in market. But obviously, there's not much more I can say. But I suspect we'll have more news to share at some point in 2025. And there are others that have announced that they're doing reviews as well. I can assure you that we've been working on this for quite some time. So we're -- it's quite advanced. It's in market.

Okay. And your view, because I always come back to this as more kind of philosophic or hypothetical, but is there a business model, and it's probably not you guys doing it, but that somebody could come in and kind of roll up the lower-quality assets in Europe because there's a number of players that would have some that you would argue probably a decent chunk need to be shut down. But if they could get big enough scale where then they would be willing to kind of take off-line, let's say, half of what they put together, but therefore, still have enough leverage to benefit from that. Is that what the fix for Europe is? And I always go back to kind of like styrene is maybe the business model for that where it was bad for a decade. And everybody kind of put a bunch of the assets into joint ventures and then they could rationalize what they needed to. Again, it's not a great market, but it got better. Is that the fix for Europe? Or what do you think the long-term fix is for European chemicals?

That could be a fix, but that sounds very complicated, very challenging, especially within Europe and very hard for a public company to do anything like that, I think. So -- I mean maybe there's a scenario where a private company with substantial resources could come in, but it's not evident to me who. And then doing M&A and closures in Europe is a difficult business.

Okay, yes. No, you guys had to do a bunch after the difficult phase...

Yes. And we know how to do it.

Yes. Let's go back to I&D. We talked about oxyfuels, but the PO side of it. Again, I think it's been a little bit less good than we would have hoped kind of when we put the big PO/TBA plant on the board, started building it. What happened in that market differently than what you guys would have expected? And what does the PO market look like from here forward in your view?

So a couple of things. So we love our PO business. From -- probably the one difference would be global growth has probably been a little bit lower, which has impacted durables demand. But that is a fabulous business as durable demand improves, the business results will improve as well. And from a cost position, we are first quartile and there is fourth quartile technology. In North America that's coming out, and also the same technology that China has banned which at some point, that capacity will start coming out of the market as well. So I think that business is well placed for the long term.

Okay. Okay. Fair enough. And then, again, you mentioned it in your prepared remarks, but you're shutting your refinery down kind of late this year into next year. From both kind of a P&L aspect and a cash flow aspect, what should investors expect to see from that shutdown process into next year?

No. So good question, Duffy. So the refinery will close in the first quarter of next year. And quite frankly, as I said in my prepared remarks, pleased with the decision we've made. I mean, actually, the timing could have almost not worked out to be more perfect. So we got to pick up the ride of the last 2 years and generate some significant free cash flow for the company. Now it looks like the refining market is going to be challenged going forward again. And so again, good timing. So when we close it, we'll release, call it, about $0.5 billion of working capital, which will largely fund the cash closure cost. On the expense side, over the last couple of years, we've accrued to about $650 million of closure costs. And so those expenses have already been recognized. And then looking at closure costs next year versus the working capital release, we should net after closure cost, probably about $150 million to $200 million of cash. And then it will move to discontinued operations in the first quarter. So the segment will go away next year. And then from an operating cost perspective and disc ops, it will be about less than $50 million a year.

Okay. Okay. And then once you've shut it down, the remaining asset, should we put that in our sum of the parts is it big enough that, that matters, the land, any kind of existing equipment that's there or...

Well, listen, it's 700 acres on the Houston Ship Channel, and so the real estate itself is quite valuable. And then as you know, we're repurposing that site. It's our intention to lay down our second tranche of MoReTec technology there and then reuse some of the hydrogen assets, for example, that we have there at the site self.

Okay. It's a good segue into your recycling efforts. I think there's a couple of things that people always ask me about our investors ask. So one, how much premium do you think you will have over a durable period of time in recycled product, especially if it's a molecular recycled? And then two, how long will it take for that to be big enough? Again, we kind of talk about like $500 million chunks of EBITDA for you guys to move the needle off your $7 billion base number. So how long does it take for recycling to get to a size or a scale big enough to move the needle, do you think?

Yes. Well, at our Investor Day, we put out a goal of incremental EBITDA of $500 million by '27, a $1 billion by 2030. The '27 goal may be moved out a little bit, but not much. And the $1 billion is still intact. And so quite frankly, those goals, I think, are pretty meaningful. We have pretty -- we have very high confidence that we're going to get there, and which means at some point, that business actually turns into a segment.

And then to get to that $500 million and $1 billion, how much capital or cost do you think you'll have to spend to get there?

Yes. And so again, something that we disclosed at our Capital Markets Day. So if you look at our forward capital plan, it's probably about 1/4 of it.

Okay. Okay. Fair enough. I think that's most of them. We've got time for maybe one question from the audience. If anybody wants to jump in with anything? I guess -- but then -- so let's just go back on the recycling. So when you look at the demand profile for recycled plastic, you're talking -- you get good premiums today, but how wide is the breadth of that premium? Again, there could be some specialty clients, again, you think high-end cosmetics or whether they are willing to pay a big premium for something because they can turn around and charge and get value for that. But when you start moving into the bulk of that market, where it's more commodity-like packaging for food, how broad do you think that demand piece is for you guys that you can keep getting the premiums that you are?

So its advanced recycling, which is where you're running the pyrolysis oil back to the crackers is essentially virgin feed. Those premiums will be commanding for quite some time. Now if you go to the mechanical recycling, it's pretty varied. There's high end and there's low end and the margin and pricing that you can get varies a lot. For advanced recycling, it's got its own value proposition. We're not pricing it off of virgin. And then depending upon the application or the end market, the pricing can vary again widely as well. So we're value pricing this business, and be very disciplined to not let it get tied to virgin.

Fair enough. And then just last question, again, around recycling. When you think about the MoReTec technology and where you'd like it to be 5 years or 7 years from now, what do you think the long pole in the tent is? Is it getting enough of the ubiquitous feedstock that you need and getting that clean enough? Is it the actual technology itself? Is it the end market developing to the size and the scale that you need it? What do you think will be the biggest...

Yes. The biggest challenge that we've faced into and where our strategy is a little bit different is actually access to plastic waste, which is why that we've actually gone a little bit downstream into sourcing and sorting and which is where our strategy is a bit different than a number of the other players. But I think that is going to be one of the biggest challenges. The demand is there. The demand is there, significant demand.

Fair enough. Listen, Michael, thank you so much for coming to spend some time with us. Great to have dinner with you last night. Hopefully, I'll bump in seen for a couple of meetings today, but thanks again for the time.

You bet. Thank you, Duffy.