Orbia Advance Corporation, S.A.B. de C.V. (ORBIA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning and welcome to Orbia's Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. As we turn to Slide 1, [Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Javier Luna, Orbia's Capital Markets and Investor Relations Director. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Sara. Good morning, and welcome to Orbia's Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. We appreciate your time and participation today. Joining me are Sameer Bharadwaj, CEO, and Edgardo Carlos, CFO. A friendly reminder before we continue, some of our comments today will contain forward-looking statements based on our current view of our business, and actual future results may differ materially. Today's call should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements contained in our earnings release and in our most recent periodic BMV report. The company disclaims any obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements. With that, let me now turn the call over to Sameer.

Thank you, Javier, and good morning, everyone. Let me start by again recognizing our 21,500 plus associates for their dedication to Orbia and to serving our customers despite COVID-19 and other challenges. Although the pandemic is not over globally, we continue to be optimistic as vaccination rates improve. We will continue to be watchful of regional conditions, and we'll remain vigilant about employee health as we adhere to rigorous safety and sanitation protocols. Let me now provide a high-level overview of the second quarter's positive business performance. I'm on Slide 3. First, Orbia delivered another incredibly strong consecutive quarter, building on the positive momentum that started in the second half of last year. Revenues and EBITDA have reached historic highs, delivering strong growth both year-over-year and sequentially. While this is a testament to the resiliency of our business model and improving global economic conditions, it is noteworthy that we also managed through some headwinds in the quarter due to supply chain disruptions, labor constraints and rising raw material and freight costs, as well as some continuing regional COVID-19 pressures, particularly in India. Our results were supported by actions to mitigate higher costs and supply chain issues, and we realized benefits from our diversified and integrated portfolio of businesses. On this point, and as we have seen in the last several quarters, supply disruptions in the raw materials value chain have hindered our nonintegrated competitors while we have been able to overcome supply disruptions and forge new relationships with customers, increase volume and improve our market position. The string of outstanding consecutive results are the outcome in large part of synergies associated with our integrated portfolio. Demand continues to be very strong across all product lines, and our growth initiatives are working. EBITDA growth was 113% year-over-year and 24% sequentially, with positive movement across all businesses, except for Dura-Line and Netafim. Comparisons to the second quarter of 2020 are difficult for both businesses, and Dura-Line in particular, given that raw material prices were at historically low levels at this time last year. Dura-Line also typically experiences a 3 to 4-month time lag before the company is able to recover higher raw material costs with increased pricing. I am confident that the margins for Dura-Line should start improving in the second half of 2021. Furthermore, all our businesses experienced strong market demand. We executed well on offsetting rising costs through proactive pricing plans and cost reduction actions. Our EBITDA margin of 25% improved 629 basis points year-over-year and 140 basis points sequentially. This was translated into free cash flow of $264 million during the quarter. Orbia also continues to prioritize investments in environmental sustainability in the communities in which we operate, and in governance. We published our 2020 Sustainability Report earlier in the second quarter, which can be found on Orbia's website. Last but not the least, we announced several weeks ago that Edgardo will depart Orbia to pursue other interests. Edgardo joined Orbia as Group CFO in August 2019 and has been a great partner to me and others on the executive leadership team. He will support a smooth transition of responsibilities to his successor through the third quarter of 2021. The Board initiated a search at the time of the announcement of Edgardo's departure. The process is going smoothly, and we look forward to providing an update once we have identified a successor. Let me now turn over to Edgardo to go through our financial performance in further detail. Edgardo?

Thank you very much, Sameer, for your words. And good morning, everybody. We continued delivering sequential growth both in top line and EBITDA since the third quarter of 2020, following global economic recovery. On a consolidated basis, our net revenue for the second quarter was $2.2 billion, up 59% year-over-year with strong growth across all businesses. EBITDA was up 113% with margins increasing 629 basis points despite the rising input costs in raw material, transportation and labor. Our strong performance in the second quarter also compares very positively to pre-pandemic performance levels in 2019. It is noteworthy to mention our outstanding performance for the last 12 months, in which we saw revenue exceeding $7.5 billion and an EBITDA of $1.75 billion, with our free cash flow reaching $610 million and our return on invested capital back to the 2 digits with 10.7%. We delivered strong free cash flow of $264 million during the quarter despite an increase in working capital tied to significantly higher sales activity sequentially, and to some extent, higher raw material costs in our inventories. Net debt has been reduced to $2.7 billion as a result of strong cash generation in the quarter, representing a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 1.56x reaching one of the lowest leverage levels in years. Capital expenditures of $63 million were up 17% compared to last year. In addition, during the quarter, we returned to shareholders $50 million in dividends as the first of the 4 installments for the full year 2021, and we acquired 31 million in shares under our buyback program. During the quarter, Orbia issued 2 sustainability-linked senior notes, a 5-year $600 million note and a 10-year $500 million note, at an annual cost of 1.875% and 2.875%, respectively. Proceeds were used to refinance selected existing debt. In total, we reduced our average cost of debt by 50 bps to 4.1% and extended our average debt maturity from 12.6 to 14.1 years, with our next significant maturity extended to 2026. In conclusion, we have a very strong balance sheet that provides us with significant opportunities to invest in growing organically as well as make selective acquisitions and return cash to shareholders at appropriate. Now please turn to Slide number 5, and let me give you some color of the performance by each of the businesses. Let me start with Polymer Solutions. We delivered another quarter of exceptional results fueled by strong top line growth and margin expansion. Revenues were up 93%, driven by strong PVC pricing from continued high demand in the building and construction market. PVC prices continue at historically high levels driven by global supply scarcity. EBITDA was up 348% with a margin of 34.9%. We expect PVC demand to continue to be strong for the remainder of the year, although PVC prices should start to ease in the second half of the year as supplies recover to normalized levels. However, as we have been saying for some time, we do anticipate that PVC prices to settle at a comparatively higher level until more capacity is added. Wavin posted another high-performance quarter reaching all-time records in profitability, supported by the very strong demand in the building, infrastructure and agriculture market, both in Europe and LatAm. Revenues were also up 93% from a very weak second quarter of 2020. We also saw some prebuying as customers remain cautious about supplies. While we experienced higher input cost constraint, we offset most of the impact with operational cost improvement coming from continued footprint optimization and SKU rationalization, commercial actions while increased volume of high value-added products, we are able to meet demand in Europe and LatAm despite raw material scarcity due to our integrated business model that Sameer mentioned earlier. EBITDA reached $140 million, up 419%, represented a margin of 17.8%. We expect that that will continue to be strong globally. In this environment, Wavin continued to expand its market share in the more attractive above ground segment while also investing in high-growth regions, such as India and Indonesia. Now let me turn to Netafim, which also experienced continued strong market demand driven by strong agricultural market following higher commodity prices for crops including corn, cotton, coffee and others, which drove revenue growth. Significant increases in raw material costs not yet fully reflected in our prices temporarily impacted margin. Revenue increased 27% on a broad-based geographical demand while the U.S., Europe and Turkey was ahead of the rest and more than offset the market weakness due to COVID-19 in regions such as India, and to some extent, countries in Lat Am. EBITDA decreased by 4%, reaching a margin of 16.1%. We have been facing unprecedented levels of cost inflation, in particular in raw material and transportation for some months now. We expect demand to continue to remain robust, and we will continue to invest in capacity to keep up with these positive dynamics. In Dura-Line and in spite of the healthy demand primarily in the U.S., we have experienced significant pressure on our margins driven by the continued increase of raw material and freight costs that are not yet fully reflected in our pricing, partially due to a pricing formula mechanism embedded in long-term contracts with our key customers. We also experienced longer lead time related to labor shortage in the U.S. and Europe. Revenue increased 24%, driven by higher volume and prices, geographic expansion and sales coverage. EBITDA, however, was down 44%, following the reasons I just commented on. I also want to remind you that the second quarter of last year was an extraordinarily high-performance quarter for Dura-Line as we benefitted from the historically low cost of resin. We expect raw material cost inflation and supply chain challenges to persist into the third quarter. However, we do see an improvement in our profitability in the fourth quarter when prices will fully offset the current raw material environment. The fundamentals of Dura-Line are very strong, following megatrend investment in high-speed connectivity around the world. Last, but not the least, core revenue increased by 21% from higher volume and prices in refrigerants and HF segment. However, the assets for an aluminum fluoride market remain challenging. EBITDA increased by 6%, offset partially by higher input costs. This resulted in an EBITDA margin of 34.4%. We expect demand in core markets to strengthen, and we are cautiously optimistic that the improvement in results of this quarter shows the start of a sustained recovery per quarter. In summary, another quarter of strong financial performance with a focus on execution for operational and commercial excellence while deploying our growth strategy. Now please let me turn it back to Sameer for final comments.

Thank you, Edgardo. I am now on Slide 6. Next, I would like to discuss our strategy. As we have demonstrated, our integrated business model provides significant advantages with security of supply being the most evident. Other benefits include realizing efficiencies in product development, cost synergies and the ability to leverage our geographic footprint. We are seeing a strong rebound in most of our end markets and are pursuing value generating organic growth projects in each of our businesses. We have identified target areas for potential bolt-on acquisitions, and we are well positioned with lower leverage and historically low borrowing costs. Finally, we continue to emphasize sustainability, investing in the communities in which we operate, and enhanced corporate governance. In sum, our strategy is to invest in growth and focus on value creation for global leverage while maintaining our commitment to advance life around the world. We are expanding capacity to meet demand and investing in geographic expansion, downstream growth, high-margin services and developing or acquiring cutting-edge technologies and capabilities. In the second quarter, we continued to make these growth investments. Let me share a few examples with you. In Polymer Solutions, we are actively exploring options to expand our capacity in a capital-efficient manner in order to meet demand. Alphagary completed the acquisition of the majority share ownership of Shakun Polymers Limited. Shakun is a market leader in the production of compounds for wire and cable markets in the Indian subcontinent. While this is a smaller acquisition, it has a diversified footprint and next-generation products that will allow us to expand our market share in Asia. In Wavin, investments in strategic high-value segments are driving momentum, while we continue work repurposing 2 former Dura-Line sites in India. We are also steering efforts to develop a site in Indonesia. Netafim completed the acquisition of Gakon Horticultural Products and also launched a new groundbreaking product, Alphadisk, the most advanced disc filtration solution in the market. These investments enable Netafim to continue to help solve critical global challenges associated with water scarcity and food security. In Dura-Line, we continue to invest in geographic sales coverage and technical skills. Major conduit capacity expansions are underway across the U.S. in the Southeast, Texas and on the West Coast. Koura has brought to market CLIA-473a, the first of its next-generation low global warming potential refrigerants. This is the first touchpoint in launching a broad portfolio of sustainable energy-efficient refrigerants for a variety of heating, cooling and refrigeration applications. Finally, Orbia Ventures led and completed an investment in Battery Resources, which was announced last quarter, and complements Koura's R&D work in lithium-ion battery chemistries that will enable the world's transition to sustainable energy. We will continue to drive our growth agenda, investing across all our business groups, and taking advantage of the high ROI opportunities that will help us create sustained value for shareholders. Finally, let me update you on our expectations for 2021 and capital allocation plans. I'm on Slide 7. Clearly, our businesses have been performing extremely well and better than we expected in the first half of the year. We anticipate that the conditions driving this growth will continue in the second half. As a result, we now expect EBITDA growth in the range of 32% to 35%, up from the previous 15% given in our last earnings call. This revised outlook assumes no pandemic related or other disruptions to Orbia's businesses. For the full year, we continue to expect strong cash generation as global markets continue to recover, supply chain is improved, and additional investments in working capital normalize. We will continue to prioritize organic growth and strategic bolt-on acquisitions while maintaining our day-to-day investments in operational excellence and ES&G. Let me close by reinforcing the resilience of Orbia's business model and strategy. I'm on Slide 8. We remain focused on growth while improving our cost position, recognizing and using the advantage our integration provides, and improving our liquidity and cash positions. We are also committed to embedding sustainability into a strategic decision-making process across our business portfolio. We are proud of the performance our global team has continued to deliver and are cautiously optimistic in our updated outlook. Our portfolio of businesses is well positioned with opportunities for growth as well as returning cash to shareholders. We will continue to be disciplined with your capital and focused on sustainable success. Finally, I would like to thank Edgardo once more for his outstanding contributions to Orbia's transformation journey, and I wish him the very best in his future endeavors. Thank you. Operator, we are ready to take questions.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Nikolaj Lippmann with Morgan Stanley.

Congratulations on the phenomenal results there. On Wavin, first question, can you provide a bit of color on the regional breakdown and some of the trends that you're seeing? To what degree was this driven by LatAm, to what degree was this driven by Europe? And anything you can say in terms of when you expect supplies for nonintegrated players to kind of normalize? And then second question, if I may, if you could provide any color on Dura-Line and Netafim, sort of the breakdown between volume and price. You commented, I think, on the strong volume outlook for Dura-Line, but what are you seeing? We just don't have the data necessary to separate volume and price in these 2 divisions, so any color there would be highly appreciated. Thanks a lot, and again, congrats on the numbers.

Thank you, Nik. Let me address the first, the Wavin performance. Again, I mean, when we compare versus -- last year probably is an easy comparison, but also when you compare versus last quarter, that was a very strong performance, I will say that roughly the $50 million increase in EBITDA coming from the first quarter is split $30 million in Europe and $20 million in LatAm primarily. But really, there are several factors that are contributing to this outstanding performance in Wavin. First of all, as we commented, the value of the integration with the PVC chain is bringing a relevant position to satisfy our customer needs in this environment, most importantly LATAM and to some extent in Europe. Second, there was a continued execution of our operational excellence plan and further footprint rationalization. Now we are focusing in Ireland, Lithuania and Norway. But if you remember, in late 2019 and during 2020, we conducted a significant downsizing or restructuring of our footprint, getting optimization in several facilities, consolidating production. That brings a lot of value in terms of better logistics and much better cost utilization with utilization of the facilities. Third, this is very important, as we mentioned several times, we continue doing significant inroads in the very high value-added segment like storm water management and indoor climate system pretty much in Europe and now moving into LatAm as well, where also several of our high-end products are totally sold out at this point in time. Four, definitely, we have an easy comparison, as I said, with 2020. But still, I mean, the discipline in costs really help us to bring a significant value for LatAm and EMEA. And also, we are continuing transitioning toward monetizing services for prefab investment and piloting with connected products as well as market expansion in APAC. Incorporating the Dura-Line brownfield operation in India, which is a very important project. We do see strong momentum in Wavin continuing in Q3, while demand has continued very strong, and we are aiming to maintain our healthy margins. I will pause it here and, Sameer, probably you can go over Dura-Line and Netafim.

Sure. Yes, so Nik, I think a great question on Wavin. And without a doubt, you can see our integrated model working here because the security of supply that we have, particularly in LatAm, has really benefited us across the entire chain. And even in Europe, this has benefited us in a pretty strong way. There have been a host of issues, but fundamentally, demand remains very strong. You had a second question around Dura-Line, whether it is volume or price. And what I can tell you is fundamental demand in the Dura-Line business remains very strong. And this is driven by -- a large part of it is U.S., driven by the growth in 5G, the rural deployment of fiber, cloud computing. And all of our major customers have significant growth plans. And as a result of which, we are having to accelerate our investments in debottlenecking and increasing our capacity. And so volume performance for Dura-Line has been fundamentally strong. Much of what we are seeing here is -- has been caused by 2 factors. One is the fact that it takes several months to catch up on price. And we did have disruptions related to raw material availability and labor shortages that prevented us from fulfilling as many orders as we would have liked in the last quarter. So hopefully, that helps, Nik.

Very helpful. If I may, just a follow-up question on that. I think it becomes abundantly clear when you look at your numbers that integration worked really, really well this quarter and probably going forward the next quarters given the supply issues. I thought the answer related to the structural part was quite interesting. Is there any way that we can sort of quantify? I know year-on-year, sequential, everything is kind of difficult. But can we say it played a 30% role? Or can we quantify that the importance of having taken some costs out of the system on a more structural basis? In other words, just to see how sticky these higher margins could turn out to be?

So Nik, I think -- we have been continually optimizing our structural costs in Wavin. And then of course, when we combine Wavin among all the LatAm operations. And we are continually looking at ways to optimize our footprint, improve our cost position. And it's a relentless journey. And this doesn't happen overnight. And with every step we take, we are improving our overall margins by 0.5 percentage point, 1 percentage point, and inching our way to the mid-teens for overall Wavin? And so I think that's the best way I can answer that question. And we are not done yet. I mean there's a few more opportunities where we are looking to improve our structural cost position, and we will keep doing that.

Our next question comes from Frank McGann with Bank of America.

Just to follow up in Polymer Solutions, the JV with OxyChem, I was wondering if you could comment on how important improvements were there in this quarter and how over the next 2 to 3 quarters you could potentially see those either staying as strong as they are or potentially softening a bit?

Yes. Very good question, Frank. So in the Polymer Solutions business group, the JV, the cracker JV with Oxy plays an extremely critical role in positioning us much closer to the left of the supply curve versus the competition. And I would say, despite the challenges we faced in the quarter, weather-related challenges, logistics-related challenges, it's the integration in the cracker that's really benefiting us and the ethane ethylene spreads that we are seeing as well as the downstream VCM PVC spreads. For us, that's absolutely critical. And we see that benefit continuing going forward. In this value chain, it's incredibly important to be integrated all the way, right from caustic chlorine to ethylene to VCM and to PVC. And it's a critical part of our success and will be going forward.

Yes, if I can add something to give it color, Frank, clearly today of course, the margins are very, very high. But even last year, remember when the price of the PVC was close to $550, $600, we were able to get a very reasonable cost, variable cost structure, to continue making profit in that environment because of the full integration with the cracker. So it has been proven in a very extreme condition like last year. Not to mention now, we are enjoying this incredible moment for the PVC.

Is there any way to quantify how much it contributed in the quarter to you?

So it's -- I think both factors, if you look at the components of the PVC chain, Frank, so there's the margins in each of these components, there's the ECU, there's the ethylene, the cracker, and the downstream. And historically, the profit pools have been more upstream in the cracker and in the ECU. But I would say that in the past couple of quarters, it's more balanced, both upstream in the cracker portion as well as on the downstream side where the spreads between VCM and PVC are also quite substantial. And so I don't have specific numbers off the top of my head, but I would say it's a very balanced view of profitability across that chain.

Our next question comes from Andres Cardona with Citibank.

Congratulations on the second quarter results. What I would like to ask has to do with the performance of the share, because year-to-date, we have seen a very strong performance of the company at the operational level. And the outlook remains very strong, but there seems to be a disconnection between the performance of the operation of the company and the equity performance. So what I would like to get from you is, what type of concerns have you identified from the market about the business plan or whatever you get from the market? And the second one will be a derivative of the first one, it's what can the management do to solve these types of concerns and help the performance of the equity to follow the strong performance of the operational business? Thanks.

Andres, thank you for the question. And also thank you for your coverage, where we see that your understanding of our business is actually quite good. It is disappointing to not see the stock follow the performance of the company. And as we have talked to a number of analysts and investors, what we realize is there is still a perception out there around our earlier strategy that we were going to sell the vinyl business and essentially become a downstream company and participate only in the higher value downstream part of the chain. And what me, Edgardo and the rest of the management team are going to be focused on going forward is to really help our analysts who cover us and investors understand that the perception that the upstream part of the chain is low value is not the right perception, okay? This apparently commodity business is having extremely high EBITDA margins. And even when it normalizes, it will settle down at substantially higher levels and is a strong generator of cash that we can deploy across our value chain in much higher value, in other value-added opportunities. And so I think it's very important for everybody to understand our growth strategy. And we know that we are now seeing a lot of benefit from the integrated chain. We have substantial growth opportunities in each and every one of our businesses, both organic opportunities as well as strategic bolt-ons that we can continue growing this company. And I think in order to do that, we plan to, sometime in the next few months, we will organize an Investor Day, and we'll invite all of you to come and spend time with me, with the business group leaders, and we will go deep and explain the excitement we have in each of our businesses. And hopefully, that's going to address any concerns people have about our strategy and the fact that this company post-pandemic is incredibly well positioned to grow. We have a strong post-pandemic recovery in most of our businesses. We are yet to see a recovery in Koura, but that should come as the situation, the supply-demand situation corrects in that part of the chain. We have historically the lowest cost of borrowing, and we have strong cash generation. And now is the time to invest and grow. And that's what we're going to be focused on. And I think when analysts like yourselves and investors appreciate the magnitude of the opportunities we have in each of these businesses, and the relentless focus we have on execution while being extremely disciplined from a commercial excellence standpoint, cost management standpoint, and we are able to deliver sustained earnings growth, the stock price should follow.

Thanks, Sameer, for the very detailed answer and for the kind words. Again, congratulations on the results.

Our next question comes from Luiz Carvalho with UBS.

Hi, everyone. Thanks, Sameer, for taking the question. Edgardo, very good luck and best of luck, and thanks for the partnership during the times. And also, to all of you, congrats on the results, very strong. I basically have 2 questions here. If I may come back to the last question and take your answer, Sameer, at least to me, and maybe I have missed something over the past couple of quarters, but your speech is, I would say, at least to me, again, points to a different I would say different direction in terms of capital allocation strategy of the company. And while I hear you saying that the polymer business do bring some synergies with other of your businesses, it's way more cyclical than others. And essentially nowadays, we're talking about the peak of the cycle, right? So back to the capital allocation strategy, as you just said, you have a very low net debt to EBITDA level, you already paid some dividends, you gave some details about you do not pursue to actually to divest from the polymer business anymore and gave some of the details about each of the segments. But what will be the drivers here in terms of when you think about the capital allocation strategy? And to the last question, would you consider to actually perform some buybacks now? Or is it something that you're looking -- when you get to the acquisitions, for example, or the growth, you're looking to ROE, ROIC. What are the metrics or the thresholds that you're looking that we can try to, I don't know, track looking forward? And the second question, it's also a follow-up in one previous question in terms of resilient and recurring the results for the second quarter were. Of course, you gave, you updated your EBITDA guidance for the rest of -- for 2022, sorry, for 2021, sorry. But I'm just trying to, I don't know, get a sense from you guys, what would be the outlook for 2022 as we are almost in August, and I think that investors are starting to look to 2022 results? Thank you.

Luiz, again, an excellent question. And let me address that head on. This whole perception of peak of cycle, right? Let's talk about cycle. What causes cyclicality in any commodity business? Cyclicality, so demand, is growing monotonically. I mean it's growing continuously and especially demand for PVC, driven by emerging markets and demand for clean water, sanitation, building and construction, is growing at a significant clip, 4%, 5%, 6% a year globally, which is higher than world GDP, right? Cyclicality is caused by extremely large additions of capacity at the same time that the market cannot absorb that capacity. And so for a period of time, prices go down and it causes the cyclicality, and that's what people have been used to. Now if you look at the vinyl chain, this is an industry that has been grossly underinvested in over the past decade. Most of the assets out there are very old and falling apart, which is why you've had so many supply disruptions. Now of course, all these force majeures and supply disruptions will go away and PVC prices will come back to some normalized level. But that normalized level is going to be at a very different level than what it was only a couple, 3 years ago because demand has continued to grow. And so I think it's very important to address this perception of peak part of the cycle. And because nobody can add capacity overnight, including us. Any of these projects we're talking about are multi-hundred million dollar or billion-dollar projects, and they need to be capital efficient, and they take at least 2 to 3 years to execute. So I think I would -- everybody should understand that for the next few years, at least it's our view, that this is an industry that will be constrained until there is a substantial addition of capacity. Now in that context, for us, the integration has tremendous value. We will invest across the whole value chain. So for example, we are looking at capital-efficient ways to debottleneck our PVC assets to see if we can create more capacity through minimal investment and capital. We are looking at potential alternatives to increase our VCM capacity as well. Keep in mind that there's very few players in the world that have the skillsets to operate in this space. And it's not easy to thread the needle in an industry that's associated with both caustic chlorine and PVC. And we are one of the few companies that has the ability to do so, and we will do that carefully. Having said that, we are going to allocate capital across our chain. We are, as I mentioned, we are looking at growth projects in Koura, in the refrigerant chains, in the energy storage chain. We are looking at expansions in Wavin, particularly in India and Indonesia. We are looking for ways to enter the U.S. market. We have strong fundamental growth in Dura-Line and Netafim. And frankly, the challenge will be to keep up with adding enough capacity to meet the demand. So you can see that from a capital allocation standpoint, it will be across the chain, and we will prioritize products, projects, that has the highest returns on invested capital and create long-term value and have a strategic link to one another. Your second question was on outlook for 2022 and Edgardo can shed some more light on this.

Yes, sure. Sameer, thank you. Thank you, Luiz, also for the question and for the nice partnership that we developed together. In terms of 2022, probably still a little bit early to provide full color, but assuming that we will see PVC prices come into a range of at least $200, $300 per ton above historical levels, we may see some impact in our earnings in the range of $200 million, $250 million. However, it is very important to mention that some of our engines are not at full traction today, such as Dura-Line, Koura and Netafim. That definitely will help to mitigate this potential reduction. We do see 2022 significantly above 2019 level, both in top line and bottom line. And this is probably the most that we can share at this point in time.

Okay. And thank you very much for your answers. Sameer, if I may, just a quick follow-up on your first answer. That idea of potentially listing Orbia in other stock exchange like, I don't know, U.S., or how this process is on your mind nowadays. Thank you. I'm sorry for the third question.

No, no, that's a good question because it's been on people's mind. And look, while we don't rule out such a listing at some point in the future, that whole transition can be quite disrupting to the business at a time when we need to be focused on driving growth and creating value, right? And so our focus in the near term is going to be on value creation. And over time, there are several levers for unlocking that value and capturing that value, and we will not hesitate to exercise those levers at that point of time. But to directly answer your question, it's not an urgent thing for us right now to focus on listing in the United States.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Alejandro Zamacona with Credit Suisse.

Hi, Sameer. Hi, Edgardo, Javier. Thanks for the call and thanks for taking my question. Just a quick question on the guidance infrastructure plan. Probably not to quantify at this point, but any thoughts around any potential opportunity that's identified in this infrastructure plan? Thank you.

Sure. So Alejandro, it's a really good question. And as you said, it's tough to identify across all the sectors. But if I go business by business, clearly the infrastructure plan is going to require basic and advanced materials. And so all of our businesses associated with those materials should benefit, whether it is PVC, specialty resins, specialty compounds, our pipe and fittings business. Dura-Line, in particular, in addition to guidance plan, there are already significant plans for rural deployment of fiber and providing broadband access more unilaterally across the country. And so we are already benefiting from that. The new potential driver longer term, again, for us would be some of the encouragement that the Biden administration is providing for the transition to sustainable energy. And so particularly supporting any projects associated with lithium-ion batteries or product and technology development. And we are investing in that area even as we speak.

Our next question comes from Ben Isaacson with Scotia Bank.

This is Ziad on for Ben. Congratulations again on the quarter, that was a great beat. And a lot of what you said kind of came true, which is excellent for us to see. I just have a quick question on just the growth initiatives. You talked briefly about on the capital allocation priorities, how you're looking at organic growth as well as some bolt-on acquisitions. But is there any way we can frame the magnitude of those investments maybe in terms of a dollar amount spend or maybe a target EBITDA that you're looking to achieve with the opportunities you're seeing in your pipeline today? Thank you.

So great. And again, this is very high level, Ben, but in terms of size and scale of these opportunities, some of these are tens of millions of dollars of investment, some range from $50 million to $200 million. And then, of course, in the vinyl business, it will be -- that's a much longer scale project and those are several hundred million dollars type of investments, okay? I'm talking about organic growth projects or joint ventures where we co-invest capital in a growth opportunity. In terms of bolt-on acquisitions, once again, let me remind everyone our focus is on -- it's been very selective in terms of either addressing a gap in our geographic footprint and/or acquiring technology that we can acquire and leverage worldwide. And these typically, again, are in the range of tens of millions of dollars to maybe a couple of hundred, $300 million. Now having said that, my philosophy on M&A and our company's philosophy on M&A is, an M&A deal only makes sense if you have significant growth and significant synergies such that the returns on invested capital pay off over time. And if we cannot make that happen, we're not going to do any such deal like that. And so we'll be very disciplined when it comes to M&A and very, very selective when it comes to M&A. But we don't rule that out.

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. And I guess, just to confirm, in terms of the specific timing, if we're thinking about the PVC businesses, that has maybe a longer runway for us before we start seeing those initiatives. Whereas elsewhere, it could be maybe shorter term where we're seeing those initiatives really start contributing to EBITDA?

Absolutely, Ben. More so in our downstream businesses as we are seeing strong fundamental growth in demand. This is about debottlenecking our plants, adding extrusion lines, and these can happen on a much quicker time scale. And given the growth in demand, these will also pay off much quicker as well, right? But it's a different scale we are talking about. And so with the diversification we have across our portfolio and the slew of opportunities we have, our goal is to deliver steady earnings growth over the next several years.

Our next question comes from Leonardo Marcondes with Itau BBA.

First, I would like to know if you guys could explain a little bit the dynamics of passing through higher costs in the Dura-Line and Netafim segments. Basically, I'm trying to get a bit more color on the margin compression for these businesses during this quarter. And second, I would like to know if you guys could give us a bit more color on your most recent acquisitions. I mean, what are the contributions in terms of revenues and margins you guys expect them to deliver over the next few years? So that's my two questions. Thank you.

Edgardo, do you want to take the margin compression question for Dura-Line and Netafim? And then I can take the second question on the acquisitions.

Yes. Clearly, the impact of the raw material and the cost structure of Dura-Line is more severe than Netafim which encompasses many other products, not only the resins. And I would say that today, based on all the price increases that we have done, we have covered probably a little bit more than 60% to 65% of the increase in raw materials. So this is a lag of at least 3 months to catch up with the full impact of the raw materials. And again, we have been developing for many years excellent relationships with key customers that are on the long-term basis, and we are really respecting, of course, all the terms and conditions to continue supply on time. We know that this sometimes goes, like last year, it was very positive for us. This year is exactly the opposite. In the case of Netafim, I will say that today, we are having an impact of approximately 6% to 7% in the total cost that has not been yet recovered. But again, there are a lot of actions that are taking place. And of course, the more that we -- but again, there was another increase in resins in July that was not expected. So at the end of the day, it's taking longer to fully recover. But again, the most significant one affected was Dura.

I think, Leonardo, you'll see the cycle with which we engage with customers in Dura-Line is different from Netafim. So in Netafim, it's short cycle, in Dura-Line, it's long-term projects. And so it just takes longer to get the increases through, especially with some of these strategic customers. But I'm fully confident that the team has taken every measure possible to catch up. And by Q4, we should have caught up. And Netafim then will be earlier than that. While we are in Q3, Netafim should be fully caught up as well. And then once we are there, that's a good position to be in. To answer your second question on our acquisitions, we announced an acquisition of a controlling interest in Shakun Polymer in India. And Shakun is the leader of high-end wire and cable products in the entire region. So this includes India, Middle East, Africa, and have had tremendous growth over the years. And we have a complementary set of products. And together with the synergies that we will realize with Shakun, there is an opportunity to substantially grow the business not only in India but in the entire region. So we have great expectations from this venture. Then the second one is the acquisition of Gakon Horticultural Products, the greenhouse technology company that we acquired in the Netherlands. And the contribution to earnings of that company are not material. That is mainly a technology and capability acquisition, which we can now leverage across the world through our footprint in Netafim on every continent. We are very excited about the opportunities in the greenhouse space in the U.S., in China, in Australia and many other places. And so that, in combination with Netafim has significant promise over the next several years.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is a follow-up from Nikolaj Lippmann with Morgan Stanley.

I'm sorry for coming back and for perhaps being a bit slow. Edgardo, just to make sure that I understood what you were saying about growth next year, you expect both the top line and the bottom line to show positive growth '22 or '21, is that correct? And if so, can you give any color on the importance, if any, of acquisitions in that statement?

No, Nik, my comment was referring to 2019. So basically, I mean 2020 I tried to take aside because of the COVID issue. 2021, we do have some significant tailwinds. So what I say is, on a normalized basis, we're going to be landing in 2022, both from top line and bottom line, significantly above 2019 levels.

Got it. Thanks for the clarification. Makes sense.

[Operator Instructions] Thank you, and I will now turn the call back over to CEO, Sameer, for any closing comments.

Thank you, Sarah. We are very well positioned to continue to capture growth and are confident in our ability to deliver strong returns as we support our stakeholders and communities worldwide. I thank you again for joining us today and look forward to talking to you all again at the end of next quarter.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.