Solstice Advanced Materials, Inc. (SOLS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Great. Well, thanks, everybody, for joining us this afternoon. David, thanks for coming up to spend some time with us. The Solstice story, I think, is very interesting. It's a spin out of Honeywell. We'll let David kind of talk about some of the key parts because it's fairly new to the market, new to most investors or at least the ones that I chat with most, there's probably some Honeywell guys that know the assets pretty well. So I think they've got a really interesting opportunity to kind of introduce the company to the market over the next several months. They've got some really good businesses, some interesting stuff like a lot of spins, hodgepodge, we all got to get to know different businesses. I've had to start going back to my old chemistry lessons on uranium.

But anyway, maybe with that, David, if you would, and again, thanks for spending some time with us, just walk us through the big parts of the company, kind of the big businesses that you think are going to drive the overall growth. And you maybe highlight, look, which ones grow a little bit faster, which ones grow a little bit slower? And just some qualitative around the quality of those businesses as they contribute to the whole.

Yes, yes. Well, first off, thanks for having us, Duffy. It's great to be here. And you're right. I mean we -- there's an education that I think we need to do being part of bigger Honeywell what encompasses Advanced Materials. And what really has us excited right now is we are just a part of some really intriguing secular growth trends that are happening across not only in the United States, but globally. So if you start with our refrigerants business, which is probably the most well known. Obviously, the transition from HFO to HFC -- sorry, HFCs to HFOs. That's gone extremely well. We have a really strong patent position and coming off a really strong year in growth. And we just continue to see that growing with the continued shift over to HFOs with continued need and data center growth as well as automotive, which plays a part in refrigerants, European legislation has been mandated. North America obviously has been mandated. So we're just in a great position with our patent portfolio. So we feel great about refrigerants. The other business, you talked a little bit about, nuclear. We feel great about our nuclear business. We are the conversion side of uranium, making uranium hexafluoride, we have the only converting asset in the United States. I think everybody has seen the explosive growth that's been associated with nuclear. The current administration has said they want to see nuclear growth 400% over the next 25 years. Our backlog is sold out through 2030 with a $2.2 billion backlog. So a unique asset, vertically integrated with hydrofluoric acid coming in into our converting sites. So we feel great about that with the need for more energy. And then the third is our electronics business. I think a lot of people aren't aware of how deep we go into electronics, we just announced actually yesterday a $200 million plant expansion in Washington. It is the only manufacturing site that makes copper manganese for sputtering targets. And as we go into leading-edge nodes, copper manganese is really the preferred material for the purity and quality that's needed as these chips get thinner and thinner. And then obviously, we do thermal interface. We do heat spreaders, we're in etching and we're also in polymers. So we have a great electronic business in that regard. And then another business that's really growing is our Safety and Defense business. We make a very lightweight protective fiber for ballistic protection and life-saving vests for military and law enforcement as well as helmets. This product also goes into health care for surgical equipment. So you've seen a lot of the investments go around in safety and defense, both in the United States and globally. We're coming off a nice quarter in that growth. So when you think about secular trends, energy, electronics, thermal management, safety and defense. I mean, we just feel like we have leading technology, great patent positions and unique manufacturing capabilities. So we think we're a great growth story, Duffy.

Awesome. And then, is there a way algorithmically to kind of just boil that all the way up, if you think about x percent volume plus x percent price gives us this for sales, we can lever at 1.5x through the P&L, which would give us Y percent EBIT and then that leads to an EPS growth of -- how would you walk on investors for that, like what the algorithm is for EPS growth over a 3-, 4-, 5-year period of time?

Yes. So we've talked about in our -- at our Investor Day recently was we want to be prudent being a new company and make sure we deliver on what we say. So we've been saying about a low to mid-single-digit growth rate. And then if you flow that through the bottom line, then a mid-single-digit EBITDA increase as we move forward. And so that's how I think about it. And then with these CapEx projects that we have, you're seeing an elevated CapEx as we reinvest because of the demand profile that we have, our ROIC is over 20%. So these are great growth projects. We've determined -- demonstrated we can get great returns at it. So we're going to continue to see that margin expansion with that as well.

Okay. I know it's not stuff that you've talked a lot about, but we get a lot of incoming questions. From the EBITDA to EPS, how much noise will there be? And kind of what kind of noise might that be over the next year. Should investors just without using like real numbers, but just coming out of Honeywell, there could be some sloppiness, I think, in that walk. So what is that we should be on the lookout for?

Yes, Duffy. It's a great point. To the extent we haven't even talked to EPS yet because there is a little bit of noise there. we feel really good when we get into '26, we'll have a very clean EPS story. But right now, we're really just talking EBITDA, and I would imagine early in '26, we'll be able to get all of the noise out from the transition to Honeywell and then be able to speak to EPS.

Fair enough. Great. And then let's jump into your biggest business. In one hand, we call it refrigerants, but it's also got propellants and foam in it. I don't know if you think of those collectively or you separate them out. But let's just separate out kind of think HFO refrigerants. So both mobile and stationary. What's the algorithm look like there because we can track a lot of different things from the [indiscernible] to the Paris accord and different step-downs but it gets very convoluted for investors looking at it because all of a sudden now you end up with aftermarket versus OE. But just how should investors think about that algorithm? How much growth is there in HFO over the next several years?

Yes. So it's a great question, and we do get a lot because there's a lot of moving pieces. The way we've kind of laid it out is if you look into the early 2030s, HFO Growth is projected to be high single digits. So we see that going -- and then with that, you're going to see HFC decline as that cannibalizes. The decline is going to be in the low single digits because you're still going to need HFCs have the aftermarket, you're going to need it for blends. So we have kind of projected that mid-single digit in refrigerants. And the other piece, and I'm sure you've talked about this is you have fewer players because of the patent position. So now you have a market share gain on top of that with what's going on. So that's why we feel so good about refrigerants. And then to answer the other part of your question, if you were to break out our refrigerants business, about 52% stationery, 48% automotive. And then overall, it's about 50% aftermarket, okay.

And the 52%, 48%, the mobile part, unless China decides to go is pretty much done at this point, right? So the stationary is the part where most of the growth is. So again, if we looked out 5 or 7 years, that would probably skew meaningfully differently. Is that fair?

Exactly correct. And then that's where also we'll start getting more aftermarket business which is a higher ASP business as well.

Fair enough. Okay. And then another question we get quite a lot is obviously, it's patent protected. You guys and Chemours share the patent for old Honeywell DuPont work that was done. How confident or how much confidence should investors have in that patent holding up for kind of what period of time before you have to start sharing some of that 50-50 that you have today?

So good point. We did do the joint development with Chemours for the HFO molecule. And what we've done on top of that is we have had a layers of patents on top of that. We have patents on our blends. We have patents on our processing and manufacturing that go well into the 2030s. That very first patent kind of drops off by the end of the decade. But because of our patent position, and we're actually continuing to add to them today, we feel very confident in our position well into the 2030s on our patents.

Fair enough. And then as you grow this, I guess, how should people think about the incremental margins kind of going forward? Again, we don't have a long history of this. So is there a lot of volume leverage uplift, do cost increase, decrease? Do you have to build another plant? How do you handle that? And how does that over, let's say, a 3- or 5-year period impact the P&L?

Yes, so the way we've kind of talked about it as we came to as a public company is, as we exit 2025, we'll be about a 25% margin business. I think that's a good baseline for us to think about. And then from there, we would like to see margin expansion with the CapEx we're doing, the growth that we have in higher-margin businesses. And so I think you'll kind of see that margin growth off of that 25% baseline.

Okay. And then I would assume the aftermarket carries a higher margin. So as the percent of that increases, that naturally drags up the margin. But is it a better return business? Or is it roughly the same? Because obviously, you probably need more SG&A to get involved in selling that, you might need more trucks driving around. When you look at like the OE versus the aftermarket on a total return on capital, to Solstice, how do those -- how differently do those look?

Yes. The aftermarket is a better margin business for us. And so you're basically breaking down the bulk into canisters. So that's why there's a higher price. There is a higher margin business. And then when you think about the return on that, it's very even. So that's another reason why exactly to your point, Duffy, that we feel good about our margin expansion. Because with the conversion in North America, we just haven't seen a huge aftermarket yet, but we'll start to see that, I think, in the second half of '26.

Okay. And then because, again, most people are familiar with Chemour's business on the fluoro side, if you compare and contrast your business to theirs, what do you do differently? What do they do better? What do you do better? How should people think maybe about the business is growing or the margins they kind of move in lockstep over the next 3 years? Or will there be some differentiation?

Yes. Chemours has been a great partner in the development of the Molec-1234YF molecule. But really from the refrigerant standpoint, that's really the only overlap we have. We're very specialized in some of these other markets, and they're very high-growth markets they're noncyclical. So we feel great about that. In our refrigerants business, there's different blends we both do. There's different geographic kind of footprint we have -- but I mean, the reality is it's -- they're a great competitor on refrigerants, but they're also a partner, and it's a more limited playing field of supply base with the LGWP requirements.

Okay. Fair enough. Okay. And then in -- we talked about this a little bit last night. But I think your view last night was from a cost perspective, most people that will produce HFO will be in the same ballpark that there's not significant differences either in raw material purchasing or in production processes that would lead to a very steep cost curve. Is that fair?

Yes, I think that's fair. I mean, obviously, there's nuances to the manufacturing process, but there's not a wide spread of manufacturing. We've invested over the last 7, 8 years, well over $0.5 billion in our plant. So we feel like it's a world-class asset. But there's a pricing mechanism that's really important to that margin aspect.

Okay. And then -- and it's a question we get quite a lot. There was a lot of noise in the market this year around a product 454B just to kind of clean that up. So it was short in the market, which led to some price increases, some people kind of complaining and some of it was around the 454B, it seems most of it was around the actual way to transport it to smaller users. What really happened there in your mind, did it give an advantage to your competitor? And is there kind of a snapback next year or maybe some of the business that was short this year comes back?

Yes. I think whenever you do a major transition to a new product in an industry, there's going to be a little bit of a timing to get the supply chain right. And I think what happened this year is the demand definitely outpaced the forecast. So everybody that was forecasting what that demand would be, it was well under what the actual was. So that's what created a little bit of a shortage. What we're really proud about is we were able to leverage manufacturing around the world to ensure we kept our customers going. So you did see margin pressure, but it was more important for us to keep our customers in stock. The good news is we are past that. We have now completely stabilized the supply chain. So with the demand forecast over the next 4, 5 years, we feel really good about our position, and we think we're through that kind of challenge that we had this year with the supply-demand characteristics.

Okay. And then one of the areas of potentially really interesting growth for refrigerant products is around data centers, chip cooling that's gotten quite a lot of press in the last 6 months or so. When you look at that market, one, how are you guys attacking it? There's a couple of different technologies people are looking at. Where are you focusing -- which do you think has the best shot at actually becoming the solution eventually and kind of what's the timing of maybe what that would drive in your portfolio as far as sales go?

Yes. It's really a good question because we think we're really well positioned in data centers, and it's beyond refrigerants. What makes us unique to capitalize on this explosive growth in data centers is, first off, our electronics business, we are in the chip. So with all the products I talked about earlier, then we are with our HVAC customers on the cooling side and the data center. But now with these next-generation chips with all of these new data centers, there's just more heat that's being generated that the current thermal management process isn't enough. So to your point, the coolant, which is happening today, we're already starting to see some direct to chip coolant, which we're involved in today. The next piece of that getting that heat off the chip when you start getting down below 2 nanometers and stacks of these chips, that's not going to be enough. So you're going to need something like immersion coolant technology, which is exactly what we're working on today with customers. So we have development on direct-to-ship and immersion. The one piece on immersion that I would just make sure everyone understands because I know there's a lot of excitement about it is there is a redesign of the data center that's going to need to happen with immersion coolant. And so it's not a straight drop in. So it is probably a few years away. It is -- when you look at the ecosystem of the data center, though, you're going to need all 3. You're going to need the coolant, you're going to direct-to-chip and you're going to need an emergent coolant type technology. And we think we're really well positioned because we're also working with the chip manufacturer on the work we're doing there, and for the first time really ever, the chip manufacturers working with the data centers saying, how are we going to solve this chip problem. And then the data centers are saying, as we take this heat out in Europe, we can't emit it into the atmosphere. So now how do we repurpose that heat? So now we have technologies so we're working on that. And then the last piece, which gets us even more excited is we have an energy shortage. So how are you going to power these data centers and that's where nuclear energy, you're seeing the 3-mile Island announcements and these investments, and that's where our conversion business. So we think we're so well positioned in data centers, and we're just spending a lot of R&D resources with it.

And maybe the last one on data centers, but I kind of think of who's going to be the GC of the cooling system. Historically, you guys have kind of just sold a piece into it and a train or a carrier would design the whole thing. Obviously, now you've got a much bigger customer than you would have is just me as a household owner, so I'm not going to take any part of that. So who ends up kind of being the designer of what the system will look like? Is that something theoretically that you guys could move into and do some more of the structure and kind of get a bigger piece than just the molecule of HFO or how do you see that playing out?

Yes. It's something that's new for this industry because it's never happened before. But it really starts at the chip, until that chip manufacturer determines what is the best way to cool this chip. And then they can align with the data center that says, you need to design the data center, so I can cool the chip this way in the data center. So there -- that's why I say it's kind of a partnership because I don't think it could be one person because nobody is going to tell TSMC or Samsung or Intel, this is how you have to cool your chip. They're going to say, this is the best way to cool the chip and then work with the data center, saying, this is how I need you to design the data center so we can cool it. So I think it's going to start with that chip manufacturer, but that data center is going to have to play a role.

Fair enough. Okay. So listen, I'd love to spend much more time than we're going to have. Let's jump to nuclear because, again, it's the one that at least myself and the guys I talked to most are probably least familiar with. So basically, what you do is you upgrade U308 -- well, I shouldn't say basically, but what you do is upgrade U3O8 to U6. Why is that important in the system? How does the business model work for that within the uranium upgrade system how are contracts written? So just kind of walk us through why you think that's such a good business? And what does the growth look like for you there?

Yes. So it's basically kind of a 4-step process if we think about the nuclear energy. The first is mining, you need to mine the uranium. And for us, the -- our customers actually procure the uranium. So that mining will happen all over the world, and they'll send that uranium to us. We're step 2 in the process where you convert it, exactly what you say, you take U308 or you take uranium and convert it into uranium hexafluoride. And that's the conversion process that we do. And so we will work with the utility company and the contracts are typically 3 to 5 years, and we'll price that conversion. And that's the HF that we send. We convert that to UF6, as you mentioned. And then from there, we send it off for enrichment. Then there's an enrichment process, which is a third step that separates the isotopes and then that gets sent to the utility for fabrication for nuclear fuel. So that's kind of the process. We are step 2. And in conversion, there are 4 basically converters globally. We're the only ones in the United States. There is one in Canada, France and Russia. And then China has their own. And so with all of this demand, you have to have that conversion so it can be enriched for fabrication. And that's why we've just seen that our backlog sell out. You've seen, we have debottlenecked our plant. We've increased capacity from 24% to next year, it's going to be a 25% increase. And we're working with the DOE today to continue to look at further expansion to support the growth.

Okay. And is it unfair to say it's -- well, you're just processing for them, you don't ever really own the material. Is that fair? So you're like a toll processor that's an under...

No, no, no. It is -- it's a way to look at it. So we are holding that uranium for them. We take possession of it, then we own it. And we may swap it out with another -- depending on how we're managing the inventory. There is a little bit of a charge for that, and then we'll take that uranium, process it and then sell it. And then the way the pricing works is we price it with the contract with utility. So like a Constellation Energy or Duke Energy, that kind of thing.

And so remind me, your capacity or basically where you're at today and kind of what your increments of growth are capacity-wise.

So if you look at where we were in 2024, we're at 8,000 tonne capacity. With our debottlenecking in '26, will be at 10,000 and we are permitted at that site to go up to 15,000. And so we will continue to manage when we need to debottleneck, when we need to incrementally add to support the need for really the explosive growth forecasted for nuclear. But we're trying to be very prescriptive about it, not to build before the need. And that's why we're working so hard with customers and the government to say, okay, when is all this going to come online, so we can balance that.

Okay. And again, in this one, between you guys, the French, the Canadians, is the cost curve flat for this as well that you can do it about as well as them or they can do it about as well as yours or a big difference in the cost structure for processing?

Yes. I mean the processing is -- it's definitely a multistep process to get to hexafluoride. But I wouldn't say there's a tremendous difference in the cost structure. What I would say is we're vertically integrated because we make hydrofluoric acid that gets in there where others may not. So that vertical integration, I think, gives us a nice position.

Fair enough. And then you talked about having kind of 3- to 5-year contracts or obviously, the price around everything in nuclear has gone up. So how should investors think about maybe like an average -- an ASP today versus even if things didn't get better from here, just kind of anniversarying those contracts over there -- how much upside is there in pricing and is that all margin at the end of the day?

Yes. So the way the contracts work, Duffy, is, we are locked into an agreement. So our backlog through 2030, those contracts are pricing is set. In those contracts, we have inflationary mechanisms to make sure we cover inflation. And then we keep 10% capacity for the spot market. And that's been very opportunistic, but it gives us balance of a surety of our backlog with a little bit of the upside on that. The thing to keep in mind on the pricing, to your point, that spot market has really gone up over the last year or 2 is as every year, these contracts -- different contracts are rolling off, so the new contracts are coming in at the elevated prices in the market. And -- but what this does is it gives us -- and this is part of what we want to do as a company. We want to be very specialized where you don't see lots of highs and lows. So we have a very stable outlook, a very increase in price and margins that's very stable that will be noncharacteristic of a typical chemical company.

And because again, one thing you can argue is, again, several years ago, this plant wasn't running because there wasn't -- why couldn't you do like 10- or 15- or 20-year contracts when you think about utilities, nuclear plant is going to last for a very long time. Why wouldn't you extend it out in kind of like the industrial gases maybe where you just lock in a decade or a decade plus? Why doesn't that work?

You're exactly right. We restarted the plant in 2023. There has been so much so fast that a lot of these contracts were signed in '23, '24. So that's why today, we have to look at this differently because we have to know what to build to satisfy the capacity. So those are the discussions. And I think it's very fair what you're saying that because if we're going to build this capacity expansion, we want to have the commercial contracts in place versus just hoping they come. And so I do think those contracts will continue to evolve, to your point.

Yes, because I would think, yes, that'd be great for you, if you could just lock in a decade. And they've made that commitment, right? Again, if you were building a nuclear plant, once it's up, it's going to run. All right. I think that's -- and I'd love to dig deep. We're going to run out of time, and I do want to kind of hit something there. So if we go to the electronics, so one, I guess, who would you kind of think of as comps? Again, we've got a couple of companies. We've got the DuPont spin Qnity, we've got Element Solutions. We've got Entegris that kind of play in that space. Do you think any of those are kind of fair comps? And then how do you see that business developing for you both organically and inorganically over time?

So I would say how we look at this is, so I look at them as comps and all the ones you mentioned, just because we're all in advanced computing. But none of them really do copper-manganese for sputtering targets, but some of them do heat spreaders, some of them do thermal interface. So we do look at them as comps in a way. But I think all of us have a little bit of specialty. Some might be more prevalent on the packaging side, some might be more of on the chip side. But by and large, I think it's very fair to say to put our electronics business from a comp standpoint in that category because we're capturing that AI growth, just maybe different parts of the chip.

Okay. And when you think about the business quality because like one question I remember when I was talking to Ben, the CEO at -- Element, he talked about they had looked back like 10 years and the number of contracts that had changed between them and competitors for pricing was like less than 1/10 to 1%. Is your business as thick, I mean, like when you look at like when you either lost business or won business, other than like technology advances, is it ever on price or on something that's kind of a competitive angle? Or is it mostly either from service or technology?

It's really -- it's technology, quality, purity first because we're a small piece of the pie. The worst thing that could ever happen is failure of that chip and about little over 40% of our electronics business is specified. So it's ensuring that -- because we're co-creating with our customers what's the technology needed, what's the product needed. So it's quality first. And for us, as you look back, our products actually fit better in leading-edge nodes. So we actually had more pricing pressure 2, 3, 4 years ago when you were at like 10 nanometers and above, because our products are so, the copper manganese is so pure, so high -- such high quality and you didn't need it for that. So we were maybe competing with lower quality materials. Now when you get into leading-edge nodes, you have to have that purity or it won't work. So it just fits perfectly in our sweet spot, and we're not competing on price anymore, and we're the only manufacturer in the United States.

And again, I wish we have much more time. So we've talked about kind of the key 3 businesses, I think maybe just touch a minute or so kind of on the remaining businesses, how you look at those? Is there anything that you would say kind of doesn't fit the portfolio at this point or doesn't help drive the growth you want, but just touch on the remaining businesses, if you would.

Sure. So despite the diversification that we have, we have 7 kind of segment businesses. Six of the 7 actually have a Fluorine component. So there is a synergistic aspect to it. The seventh that I talked about was our Safety and Defense business, but it's a very specialized product that we develop with our customers. There's really only 2 players in the market, and that is highly specified. From a portfolio standpoint, Advanced Materials has been within Honeywell as a stand-alone or as a business for about 10 years. And it's had a 4% CAGR, 100% organic. And so that's why we like it because it's been so resilient. But the benefit now that we're a standalone company is to reinvest. We also have a great balance sheet now that Honeywell gave us. So that allows us to maybe look at some bolt-on M&A but with the return on capital projects that we have, with the growth that we're now seeing that maybe wasn't even there, we just think this company is ready to kick off.

Okay. And then you mentioned it was all organic either backward looking, what could have happened or as you go forward, how should we think about the inorganic side? What might that add? Again, it will be lumpy, but over a 5-year period, is that at 1%, 2%, how to think about the inorganic opportunities?

Yes. It's always hard with M&A because you need usually 2 willing parties and timing is everything. But we do want to be a growth company. And when you think about those growth sectors that I mentioned, they're all growing faster than GDP, very attractive margins. So areas where we can add adjacencies to that to have an even stronger solution for our customers are areas that we will pursue. At the same time, being a new company and Duffy you've covered these kind of really important for us to do what we say we're going to do. So we want to deliver on our commitments, build credibility with the market and then continue to build on M&A from there.

Okay. And then maybe just the last question because we're running out of time. You've obviously talked to a number of investors since the IPO being on the road. As you talk to them and kind of have those conversations, where do you think you see the business maybe differently than they do? Where do they think that maybe it isn't quite as good, where is it better? But just where are the points of pressure, I guess, in the portfolio or in the story?

Yes. I think the thing that I've learned since as we've been out, we've been on the road quite a bit with investors, is telling the story and educating what is Advanced Materials because it's easy to default to a chemical company, and we're not. We are very specialized in very great market segments, with a strong value proposition with the right to win and differentiate it. And for us, to your point, what's nuclear and how is it? And so making sure people understand the uniqueness of our business and how well positioned we are, but the interest level is really strong. And so I do believe when you look at the sum of the parts of where we're at and the margin profile, the resiliency, we do believe once we demonstrate our ability to deliver, we'll get rewarded for that and at a multiple that we think is conducive to what we're delivering.

Terrific. Well, David, thank you so much. It's -- I mean, very interesting story. I think we're all going to spend a lot of time on it over the next year, but thank you and good luck with the new effort. So this is awesome.

Duffy, thank you, and thanks for all support and for being here today.

Yes. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you.