Solvay SA (SOLB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, you are currently on hold for today's Solvay 2024 Full Year Results Call. We are assembling today's audience, and will be underway shortly. Thank you for your patience, and please continue to hold. Good day, and welcome to today's Solvay 2024 Full Year Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. And now I'd like to hand the call over to Geoffroy d'Oultremont, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Solvay's 2024 Earnings Call. My name is Geoffroy d'Oultremont, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined here today on the call by our CEO, Philippe Kehren; and our CFO, Alexandre Blum. This call is being recorded and will be accessible for replay on the Investor Relations section on Solvay's website later today. I would like to remind you that the presentation includes forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. The slides presented in today's call are also available on our website. In today's call, we will discuss our full year earnings, and Philippe will also give you his perspective on the first year of the new survey and remind you who we are. Philippe?

Thank you, Geoffroy, and hello, everyone. As usual, we will start with a word on safety. And unfortunately, after the loss of one of our colleagues in August last year, we had to report two new losses in the fourth quarter of 2024, one in Bulgaria and another one in Spain. These are very tragic and sad news, and I would like to express my deepest sympathies and thoughts to the families and colleagues of the three contractors who lost their lives. Safety is above everything we do at Solvay. All of us should return home safely {nUH line with our strive for 0 accidents. We've launched what we call safety as first engagement. And as part of safe, we address safety in our meetings, we extended the Solvay lifesaving rules. We introduced a new process for our permit to work, but this year has shown that this is not enough. Therefore, we decided to take immediate action, and we launched a safety culture transformation program, which aims at elevating safety performance across all our sites and to achieve also a transformative shift in the safety culture across the group. To do so, we've created a dedicated group safety task force to completely lead on safety with the assignment to accelerate on all aspects that are needed. Safety is a fundamental commitment of Solvay. We will never compromise on that, and you can count on me. Now let me take a few minutes to step back and look at the achievements of last year. 2024 marked a pivotal chapter in Solvay's history. The spinoff has unlocked significant value and empowered us to create a more focused and a more agile organization. First, we successfully navigated the organizational shift, ensuring our 9,000 employees we're fully engaged in this new era. Secondly, our streamlined structure enables us to accelerate our transformation, exceeding our projected cost savings for the year. Thirdly, we continue to drive the energy transition of our plants, one after the other, and we remain on track to meet our ambitious sustainability goals. We're connected with a lot of customers, and we will continue to build strong partnerships to support them in their innovations. Think about the microchip producers for electronic grade H2O2. Our tire customers with circular Silica. Finally, despite a volatile economic landscape, we solidified our financial position through a successful EUR 1.5 billion bond issuance, and we delivered a solid set of results that surpassed our initial projections. Slide 7, you see an overview of this solid financial performance. As usual, Alex will provide more details in a few minutes, but let me share the following message with you. Everybody will agree that the environment has not been very supportive in 2024. However, our unique profile and strong focus on what we can control, allowed us to deliver solid earnings above expectations. More specifically, I would like to highlight the EBITDA of EUR 1.052 billion, supported by cost savings well above our own forecast, thanks to the acceleration of some initiatives. Our free cash flow of EUR 361 million with a CapEx at EUR 355 million shows that the resilience of our businesses allows us to generate enough cash to support all our commitments. Energy transition, payment of our dividend to shareholders and investment in future growth. This is a great achievement. So month after month with deep industrial roots and a well-defined strategy, Solvay consistently demonstrates the resilience of its financial results. I'm very happy with the energy I see in the company, and that gives me a lot of confidence for the future as well. And our future is essential. One year after the split, it is probably a good time to remind you who we are and repeat a few key elements of our strategy. We are essential chemistry, making progress possible for generations. At Solvay, we do not invent new molecules. The ones we have in our portfolio existed already decades ago and will still be needed for a very long time. All the products we sell are essential to our daily life. Take soda ash. One of the major users of soda ash is to enable the production of glass. There is not a single day when we are not surrounded by glass. With no soda ash, window glass would be a luxury. Silica is essential to the tire industry. Without our highly dispersible silica, we would still have tires, but those tires wouldn't have the same performance in terms of fuel efficiency, CO2 emissions and safety. Smartphone, without semiconductor chips, there's no smartphone. And without products like our hydrogen peroxide or our rare earth oxide, there's no chips. And these are just a few examples. Most of our businesses share those same characteristics. They are critical to the products you use every day. Moving to Slide 9. Our ambition is clear. We want to be the best in what we do. We want to be a leader in essential chemistry. And our purpose that we've just seen, we are essential chemistry, making progress possible for generation is the beacon that is guiding our ambition. The core value drivers supporting the strategy will be what will make the difference between a winning company and the others. Market leadership, cost leadership and sustainability. Our key enablers of that strategy are the way we need to operate and what we should expect from our teams, our operating model and our people and culture. The strategic priorities we need to focus on to make a difference and deliver the financial results we aim for, sustainable cash flows and attractive returns. Those priorities are the few strategic levers that we have selected. We will come back to them later on. Slide 10, please. Our products are not commodities, but they are not specialties neither. They have very unique characteristics that make them different. We can define them around the six following dimensions. Let me explain a few of them. Looking similarly at the product, Essential Chemicals would be, in most cases, close to a commodity. There may be a few references and performance matters. But very often, it would be sold on spec. And the product will basically be the same for all producers. But if you look at the technology, essential chemicals will be closer to specialty. Our processes are not available off the shelf. A strong expertise and know-how are required to be able to design and operate our plants. That's how we can license some of our technologies like our mega plant technology from hydrogen peroxide. They are not totally unique, but only a few companies own and master the technology. Similarly, the way we interact with customers is different from commodity players. In all of our businesses, we need to know our customers, understand their needs how they use our products and build relationships. While we don't sell value, we don't just apply an index that will vary every month or every quarter. And we tend to have stable long-term supply agreements and strong innovation programs with our customers. Being essential is also being focused. Our portfolio of products is simple. Five mono technologies, soda ash bicarb, peroxide, silica, fluorine and rare earth and one very strong regional business, Coatis, more focused on the Latin American market. We can be much more focused and much more reactive than before the split. And we serve a high number of customers in a wide range of end markets, take automotive, construction, healthcare or electronics, each account for less than 20% of our overall sales. This brings resilience and resilience is important for our clients and for all our stakeholders. Now being close to our customers is another key element when you want to build long-term partnerships. This is why at Solvay, more than 80% of our sales are actually regional, or local to local. And this brings a lot of advantages, such as competitiveness when you know that essential products can be expensive to transport. It's also good for security of supply and it's the best protection against tariffs. In the following slides, I will deep dive into our strategic levels as they are driving our choices for resource allocation and also for setting priorities. So the first one is operational excellence. This means continuous progress and optimization of operations and systems. Our initial plan was to achieve more than EUR 300 million of savings by 2028. We are now increasing that target to EUR 350 million. And we accelerated the delivery as we expect EUR 200 million already by the end of this year. That will contribute to ensure our businesses remain competitive, and that will improve their position as benchmarks in their respective industries. For each of our manufacturing sites, we have built detailed plans to optimize our operations. For each of our corporate functions, we are building a target operating model. And as you can imagine, digitalization is a key component of those plans. For example, we use more and more devices to monitor the equipment and improve the reliability of our assets and as a result, our maintenance costs. We also implement digitalization and AI capacities in all our support functions, especially in our global business service centers. But digitalization is not everything. Here are a few other examples. We are saving on our transportation costs by changing the transport mode, the lot size of number of rotations. We improved yields on our energy and raw materials consumption. We continue to take initiatives in procurement as well. Now moving to our next strategic lever, sustainability and the energy transition. In 2024, we have taken the time to redefine the sustainability agenda of the company while aligning it with a new Solvay profile. So today, I'm very happy to launch For Generations. For Generations is our new sustainability roadmap. We have refreshed our ambition, added new commitments, redefined our processes and our covenants. But the ultimate goals remain the same: reduce our impact, create trust and value. This roadmap is structured around two pillars: planned progress, focused on climate and nature and better life for people and communities. It will be deployed in all our sites around the world, and it will be deployed through the Star Factory which aims at designing the factories of the future. It is also integrated into the incentives in all layers of the management with safety, CO2 emissions and diversity as the main KPIs. Next slide, please. This slide summarizes the KPIs we track as part of our For Generations roadmap. We confirm our main climate targets, carbon neutrality by 2050, with an interim target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030. We are well advanced, minus 17% so far. In 2024, we maintained our greenhouse gas emissions reduction scope 1 and 2 despite increased levels of production in some of our businesses. This was achieved through the strategic execution of our energy transition project and our successful exit from coal at two of our plants in 2024 in Germany and in Wyoming USA. We have added an additional voluntary commitment regarding biodiversity. We are already recognized for our good practices on biodiversity in several of our sites like Paulinia in Brazil, Rosignano in Italy and Torrelavega in Spain. We are now pledging to allocate 30% of our land around our sites to support nature conservation and restoration efforts by 2030. We will partner with the IUCN that's the International Union for the conservation of nature to achieve these targets. Several projects are already underway, like the reforestation projects in Brazil, the tiny forest in the Netherlands or the mangrove projects that we have in Thailand. Regarding safety, the overall trend is positive, yet the three tragic accidents we experienced in 2024, which I addressed earlier, served really a critical reminder vigilance is nonnegotiable. We must and we will do better. We've made also tangible progress in advancing diversity within Solvay, putting us on course to reach 30% of gender parity by 2030. And finally, a word on the United Nations living wage initiative, I'm happy to confirm that we are on track to have 100% of our employees at the right level in 2025. This is 1 year earlier than planned. Now moving to the energy transition road map and the need to accelerate execution. This is really a strategic imperative. It's driven by our commitment to the planet, the clear expectation of our customers also by the fundamental need to remain competitive, particularly in Europe, where the rising cost of energy and of carbon emissions creates a distinct economic advantage for sustainable businesses. This is critical for our long-term success. We act on decarbonization and our track record is there. Both Alex and I have successfully deployed some of the largest global decarbonization projects within the group in the past. And thanks to this, Solvay in general, has already reduced its CO2 emissions by half in the past 20 years. Our road map outlines clear milestones, minus 30% emissions cut by 2030, a further 1/3 reduction by 2040 and net zero by 2050. Implementation will involve coal phaseout, the rollout of e.Solvay and other technological breakthrough projects. We will invest as Solvay a CapEx that is affordable. It will be EUR 30 million to EUR 35 million annually until 2030, increasing to EUR 50 million per year by 2040, which will be complemented by strategic third-party financing for some of the key large projects. Third strategic lever, process innovation. This is how Solvay started by revolutionizing the soda ash process in the 19th century. So we understand very well the importance of staying ahead of the curve and continuously improving our processes. It can take many forms from bringing improvement to existing processes. For example, new generations of catalyst for our peroxide plant, to finding technologies to offer circular materials like our silica with the rice ash process in Italy, our digital tools to transform the way we operate at the level of the shop floor. With our flagship e.Solvay process, we reinvent a new way to manufacture soda ash, and we are making rapid progress. We are reaching technological feasibility and we can now work on the economical equation. Finally, production capacity. Production capacity both to sustain our market share in our traditional markets and to capture growth in targeted high potential opportunities that our products can serve. In our traditional markets, growth is close to GDP. We invest when our customers need it. This can be through expanding our production capacity, building new units or increasing production through partnerships. But it always entail sites where we have a competitive advantage and where we have a clear road map in terms of sustainability. Beyond these core end markets, each global business unit has growth applications where we see high potential opportunities and where we want to invest. Here are a few examples. In our Soda Ash and derivatives business, we have now Bicar applications such as Solvay Marine, an innovative technology used as a dry exhaust gas treatment system for sulfur oxides and particle removal for the shipping industry. In Silica, circular highly dispersible, Silica is expected by tire manufacturers to increase the share of circularity in their total sales. In special chem, we will inaugurate the first production of rare earth oxide for permanent magnet in a few weeks from now. So that concludes my 2024 update for today. Our strategy, I hope is clear, solid. The split allows us to be much more focused on what is important for Solvay and its businesses. And I would like now to hand over to Alex for the review of the financials.

Thank you, Philippe, and good afternoon, everyone. So moving to the financials. Let me start by reminding you of the two elements that impacted the presentation of our financials in 2024. The partial demerger of Syensqo in December 2023 and some ATM and scope changes that started in 2024. I invite you to go back to the various communications that are available on our website for more detail. And as usual, I will comment on the organic evolution, meaning a constant scope and currency unless otherwise stated. So let's start with sales on Slide 21. Underlying net sales in 2024 reached EUR 4.7 billion, lower by minus 4% versus 2023. This rather small decline is explained by lower prices as expected, mainly from our soda ash business. Offsetting partially this impact, our volumes were up in the majority of our business. In Q4, volumes continued to grow year-on-year for the fourth consecutive quarter, and we can especially highlight our bicarbonate and peroxide businesses as contributor to the recovery as well as the fact that we have seen generally a less pronounced seasonality in the last months of the year compared to what we observed in 2023. Underlying EBITDA amounted to EUR 1.052 billion in 2024, down 8% year-on-year. This is slightly higher than our latest guidance that you probably remember to be at the higher end of minus 10% to minus 15% organic growth range, thanks to the resilience of our volumes that I've just highlighted. But also thanks to the strong cost discipline, which translated into the 4% lower annual fixed costs. Quite an achievement in a year of sustained inflation and higher utilization rates of our assets. As just said, our fixed cost decreased as we delivered significant structural savings in our manufacturing plants and corporate functions. But we also delivered significant variable cost savings by reducing our energy and raw material consumptions. In total, cost savings were EUR 110 million, largely exceeding our target of $80 million. Moving to the segment review. And here, I will mostly focus on Q4 development. Let's start by Basic Chemicals on Slide 24. This segment continued to demonstrate solid performance in Q4, especially on the volume side and is the main reason for the quality dip of Solvay in terms of EBITDA for this quarter. Soda ash revenues were higher, especially in the seaborne market compared to the low base in Q4 2023. While bicarbonate demand continued to be strong, especially for the flu gas treatment application. In peroxide, volume continued to be up year-on-year in all segments that we served, showcasing the strength of this business. In Q4, we also booked the initial profit from the new license for our peroxide businesses. While it is positive when looking at the quarter comparison, you have to keep in mind it is neutral when you look at the full year as we signed such license in Q3 2023 last year. In terms of EBITDA, it was down 1% in Q4 with the year-on-year volume offsetting the negative soda ash net sales. The EBITDA margin reached 29% in this quarter. Performance Chemicals on Slide 25. Our Performance Chemicals segment is generally more subject to Q4 seasonality due to its exposure to such elements as automotive or Brazil end markets. This explains the sequential decrease of sales and EBITDA compared to the previous quarters. Year-on-year, Q4 volumes were slightly lower in silica tire application and special chem auto fertilizers, but prices have been resilient across businesses. Hence, compared to Q4 2023, the overall segment EBITDA was up 6%, thanks to the positive net pricing. The EBITDA margin increased to 15%. Free cash flow to shareholder from continuing operations amounted to EUR 361 million thanks to the solid EBITDA performance and the good control of our working capital, especially at the end of the year. This represents the 34% free cash flow conversion ratio. As expected, CapEx accelerated in Q4 and reached EUR 355 million for the year. Provision cash-out, EUR 193 million were higher than last year, mainly due to higher restructuring and settlement of old litigation. This contributed to the reduction of our long-term provision in the balance sheet. On the other side, financing cash outs were lower due to the timing of the coupons payment from the newly issued bonds. Financing costs are projected to rise to approximately EUR 80 million in 2025, reflecting the full year coupon payment on the bonds issued in 2024. Additionally, note that provision cash out is expected to be to temporarily increase by EUR 50 million, mainly due to the Dombasle Energy transition project. Capital structure. Underlying net financial debt was EUR 1.5 billion at the end of the year, quite stable compared to the end of 2023 and the underlying leverage ratio was 1.5x EBITDA. Based on the free cash flow generation and in line with the dividend policy of the company, the Board of Directors has decided to propose a gross dividend of EUR 2.43 per share, subject to shareholders approval during the AGM of May 2025. If approved and taking into account the interim gross dividend of EUR 0.97 per share paid in January, the final gross dividend of EUR 1.46 per share would be paid in May 21, 2025. 1 year after the split, we have the balance sheet we wanted. We are investment grade and we successfully refinanced our short-term debt into long-term bonds while our dividend cash out is well covered by our free cash flow basis. Now let's step back and see how 2024 compared with the last 7 years. And I draw your attention to the fact that the figures before 2023 are not restated for the phaseout of two businesses in 2023, which accounted for approximately EUR 100 million EBITDA. This chart simply confirms once again that our unique profile allow us to resilient even in time of crisis or challenging conditions. We are essential, and we have the flexibility to adapt our investment to the market condition. This ability combined with the quality of our individual businesses and the portfolio effect ensure resilient and steady cash generation. Let me conclude my presentation by reminding you of our capital allocation policy. We generate enough cash and we are deploying it strategically. First, EUR 250 million to EUR 300 million annually for essential CapEx, which includes safety, maintenance, regulatory compliance, leases and, of course, our energy transition projects. Second, a stable to growing dividend, a commitment we never missed in the past 40 years with approximately EUR 260 million allocated in 2024. Finally, and depending on affordability and merit, we will prioritize growth project with strong returns while keeping the optionality to return excess cash to shareholders. But whatever the level of cash we generate trust us to be extremely selective, we will never invest for the sake of investing. With that, Philippe, back to you for the outlook.

Thank you. Thank you, Alex. And indeed, let's move to the outlook now. So how does that translate into expectations for 2025? And what about our midterm targets? So for 2025, the current challenging macroeconomic context do not -- does not suggest any significant volume recovery in our main end markets. Net pricing is anticipated to be resilient compared to 2024, and that includes the impact of the soda ash annual contract, which impact between 10% and 20% of Solvay net sales. We will continue to focus on the transformation of the company. We target an additional EUR 90 million in cost savings contributing to a cumulative EUR 200 million since 2023. We expect this to mitigate both inflation and the temporary corporate stranded costs expected from the exit of the transition service agreement with Syensqo. These actions will support our guidance of an underlying EBITDA between EUR 1 billion and EUR 1.1 billion in 2025. Free cash flow to Solvay shareholders from continuing operations is projected at approximately EUR 300 million, and that's with CapEx between EUR 300 million and EUR 350 million. Notably, provisions are expected to increase by EUR 50 million, as just explained by Alex. Now an update on our midterm targets. So following a successful first year as an independent company, we are happy to confirm our 2028 trajectory as presented at our Capital Market Day in November 2023. At the core, we confirm our commitment to mid-single-digit organic underlying EBITDA growth over the '24, '28 period, driven by both top line growth and cost savings. We recognize the questions around our '24 performance, which is tracking below '23 levels and the implied acceleration required to achieve our 2028 objectives. However, we entered 2024, fully aware of the challenging market conditions, and this was communicated during our Capital Markets Day. Furthermore, our confidence is rooted in the long-term prospects of our markets. They will recover at some point. And for some of them, like soda ash, where limited new capacity is projected in Europe and in the U.S. before 2030. That implies a supply demand that is tightening. Importantly, we are increasing our cost saving target with an additional EUR 50 million, a lever that is firmly within our control. We also confirm our guidance for underlying EBITDA margin and return on capital employed, underscoring our commitment to sustainable profitability and the efficient capital utilization. Regarding free cash flow, we are moving away from a specific free cash flow conversion ratio. We are convinced that our capital allocation policy is clear and reflects the way we intend to spend the cash we generate. First, essential CapEx, then a consistent dividend policy. And finally, depending on merit and affordability, strategic growth investments and further shareholder returns as appropriate. This was also highlighted by Alex earlier on. So let me clarify a few things as we received some questions around this already this morning, and I would like to thank all of you that came back to us. First, our focus on cash generation has not changed. But it is important that we keep the ability to decide what makes the most financial sense. And this is not consistent with a fixed free cash flow conversion target. Second, we're not saying we will necessarily accelerate investments. As an essential company, we typically invest when supply demand is tight. To achieve our confirmed 2028 EBITDA target, by the way, no significant new investments are needed. Bicar and purified grades of hydrogen peroxide are probably the main businesses where we need to add some capacity, and those are not capital intensive. Third, we confirm our ROCE targets, which should also bring some comfort to investors on the returns, and the best possible use we will make of cash. Now before we take your questions, I would like to leave you with these few words. I'm convinced about what we do at Solvay and also by the way we do it. We have a clear strategy that gives plenty of confidence for the future of Solvay and the new culture is only one of the many enablers we have to achieve our goals. We started our transformation to adapt Solvay to its new reality and leverage new technologies that allow us to be more efficient. We also started to transform our safety culture after the events of 2024 that remind us how critical for a company such as Solvay. And finally, we redefined our sustainability road map For Generations, keeping our ambitions at high levels and clarifying the way we will achieve them. At Solvay, the energy transition is a journey that started decades ago, and we keep accelerating it. The biomass project at Torrelavega in partnership with Enzo, which we announced yesterday is a great example where we will reduce the site emissions by half before 2027. And consolidated the competitiveness of the site. Thank you for listening. And now we're happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions]. The first question is from Wim Hoste from KBCS.

Yes, I would like to ask two, please. First one is on the soda ash market and the consolidation announcements that we have seen in the past few days. Any thoughts about how that might change the structure of the markets and also in light of future capacity addition projects, et cetera? And then secondly, I wanted to dive also into your take on the transactions, were you blocked by antitrust for -- and was that the reason for not participating, for example, or did you participate? Any thoughts about your potential interest that you might have had in that deal would be interesting. And then the second question I would like to ask is on the e.Solvay project. You said that you're advancing nicely. Can you talk a bit on potential timing of rolling this out and also kind of quantify the potential cost advantages. You highlighted the environmental advantages, but the cost advantages that this project might have, if you can just update us on that as well, that would be interesting. Those were my questions.

Yes. Thank you very much for your questions. So regarding the announcement of the We Soda acquiring Genesis, I think first of all, it does not add any new capacity in soda ash market. So I would say, globally speaking, it doesn't change the supply demand balance and the market perspective. It just, I think, highlights a little bit what we're trying to explain when we say we are between commodities and specialties, we are essential chemicals, its a market where you have a limited number of players that are developing the way to reach in the best possible way and in a competitive way and sustainable way to customers. So it doesn't change really what's happening. It clarifies probably a little bit the way the market operates. One interesting thing in the public communication that was issued by We Soda is that they say very clearly and we are perfectly in line with that, that at the current level of margins on this market, it's easier to invest and build on an existing capacity than to build a greenfield unit. And so does it mean anything for the big projects that were announced in particular in Wyoming? I don't know, obviously, and I will don't give any answer on this. But I think it's interesting to see that we're expanding our capacity in Green River at a very competitive cost in terms of investment. They -- We Sida is buying an existing capacity at a certain level of cost per ton. If you want to build a new plant, it costs much, much, much more. That's, I think, what we need to take away. Then another important thing is that we continue to be a player that is both active in synthetic and natural. And I think that's very important. Why is it important? Because the world needs both, both synthetic and natural. And so you're talking about e.Solvay. e.Solvay is exactly about it. It's always about having different options and in particular, the possibility at some point also to build greenfield units in areas where today there is no production. In particular, in areas such as Latin America, Southeast Asia, Middle East, Africa, areas where soda ash is needed, growth is there, but there is no big capacity of production. So I think this is an option that we have and that others don't have. In terms of time line, we are just, as we said, finalizing the industrial pilots in our plant of Dombasle and we will move into now the economical assessment because we need first to optimize the cost of investment. And second, also to make sure that we can have access to long-term competitive low-carbon electricity. This is absolutely needed in order to do e.Solvay. Now you mentioned if we look at those type of projects and so on, do we have antitrust considerations and so on. Well, clearly, I mean, let's be clear today, we're really focused on organic growth. Of course, we're looking at what's happening in the market, but we want to take the best possible thing -- the best possible use of our assets.

We will now move to our next question from Martin Roediger from Kepler Cheuvreux.

First question is for Philippe. You shift a bit your strategy towards more growth CapEx to create additional value what is the likely payback time when comparing the growth CapEx to EBITDA? Is it 3 years or 4 years or 5 years? And the second question is more for Alexandre. It's related to the charts 21 and 22 of your presentation. You show in these two charts that EUR 231 million volumes and mix effects in revenues contribute EUR 103 million to EBITDA. Does 45% of the top line effect falls to the bottom line. Why is it that high? Does that volume mix column on Page 22 also include license income in peroxide?

Thank you very much. So I mean there are two types of growth CapEx. I mean, if you refer to additional capacities, right? Because half of the growth in EBITDA will be done through also improvement of the competitiveness. But if we look at the growth CapEx, you have the big investments like the ones that we're doing typically for soda ash and that we will start up this year. Those are done every typically 4, 5 years when the market needs it. We don't need to anticipate that. We do it when the market is there. And the payback is relatively fast, but it's true that the tickets are a bit higher. What we're targeting in the short to midterm is more targeted lower CapEx in some specific markets typically, and I will cite two of them. We have Bicar. Bicar is a market that is growing at least twice as fast as the GDP probably even higher as we speak. And those investments are paid back in a few years, very, very, very quickly. Second type of investments, electronic grade or purify grade, let's say, hydrogen peroxide. We're just starting new capacities in Southeast Asia and Taiwan and so on. Those capacities are immediately used 100%. We're talking about double-digit growth and paybacks that are very short. So in the short to midterm, we will really focus on these type of investments. Maybe, Alex, I don't know if you want to complement before moving to...

No, I can complement [indiscernible]. I don't think we are changing our strategy. I think it's after 1 year of operation that we think it's worth clarifying, again, Essential Chemical, we are not investing -- and let's make it very simple. Even for new investment in rare earths, we will wait to have customer commitment before making a significant investment. So that's very important to mention. Payback, it's not the main indicator for big investment. I mean payback is usually a good indicator for small investment at site level when we look things which are a little bit more strategic. We tend to look at the internal rate of return, the impact on ROCE our internal hurdle rate is around 15% because we know that we have enough investment opportunity not to have to look below that level. So this is normally the internal rate of return that will be the minimum required. And that's it. Yes. Sorry, there was a question on the -- the fact that you have a very high conversion between sales to EBITDA is because we have in Q4, peroxide license, which is almost straight from sales to EBITDA and which is recorded in volume. As I said, when we look full year with Q3 and Q4...

We'll now move to our next question from Thomas Wrigglesworth from Morgan Stanley.

A couple of questions, if I may. Firstly, can you unpack your guidance? Obviously, you've got a large-- at the EBITDA level, you've got a large number of businesses. very keen to hear specifically within that, the kind of how you see this bicarb opportunity evolving in '25 versus the assumptions that you've made for the soda ash business. The second question I have is actually just kind of a smaller one on the free cash flow bridge. There's this post [ 60 ] in the bridge there? I know that we can see that in the quarters as well. But could you just remind us what that positive driver that's offsetting the taxes bucket is?

Thank you very much. So I will probably let Alex answer on the free cash flow and start with the guidance. Well, the guidance is really based, I would say, on the elements that we have today, which means no significant change on our markets, and relatively stable net pricing in '25 versus '24. Why do we give -- I mean, what could be the difference between the low end and the high end. But I would say, clearly, the volumes. We don't see today some of the things we've seen last year, for example, the restocking that we had in Q1 '24 that we don't have in Q1 '25. We've seen also a little bit of prebuying in Q4 '24, that will potentially also slow down a little bit the restart in '25. We don't know if we will have a volume recovery, but if we have, then we could go a little bit higher -- at the higher end of the range. And then we also have a certain number of -- a lot of volatile elements that are impacting potentially all of the businesses. Energy prices are still very volatile. And even though we have a good level of protection on this, we still have some potential volatility there. We also have the implementation of tariffs that it's changing a little bit from time to time to say the least. So this creates also a little bit of uncertainty. So this if you take all this into account, this explains a little bit the range of the guidance and where we could move. Now Alex, maybe on the free cash flow.

Sure. The positive cash is, in fact, the main reason why 2025 provision will be -- the provision of cash out will be higher in 2025. In 2024, we've made provision for Dombasle Energy project overrun that you may remember, we communicated on especially in Q2 2024 with our Q2 results. This was not -- this has no cash or very limited cash impact in 2024. So in the bridge, if you want to offset the negative EBITDA impact by this element. And in 2025, we will see the other way around no more EBITDA impact, but an impact on the free cash flow as the project is targeted to be operational at the beginning of 2026. So most of the screening will take place in 2025.

If I can just follow up on the energy prices. Can you just elaborate a little further on that. So if we see -- if we do -- if we were to see a rapid change in, say, gas prices higher or lower, how much time would it take you to fully pass through that price to customers? Is it kind of -- is it on average going to take 3 months given the net effect of your contracting? Or will it be shorter than that, more like a month or longer?

It very much depends on the businesses. I mean the maximum is clearly 3 months, but normally, we can -- we are much more reactive in that. So that's why we're saying it can have a little bit of side effects but not big we are just fast and the impact will be limited, but still it can add to the volatility of the risk.

Especially [indiscernible] first, when you have such swing, the mechanism are never perfect. I mean, the more you have volatility, the more you create some small effects and certain volume export, especially if you take export of soda ash to the seaborne market, we have less protection, it's usually, there is a strong correlation but you don't [indiscernible] protection. So that's why we are paying you, not necessarily structural but on the [indiscernible].

And our next question is from Sebastian Bray from Berenberg.

I would have two, please. The first is on the CapEx guidance, in particular, as it relates to environmental CapEx, has anything actually changed here versus the time of the split? It looks to me a bit as if the environmental CapEx net, excluding Dombasle has been cut a bit and the burden shifted to the post-2030 period. Is that right? Is Solvay basically making a bet that the environmental legislation only really tightens properly from after 2030. My second question is, can you give us a status of how long or how much you have in terms of free carbon allowances? Are you saving this up for 2030 knowing that you need to spend more a bit later? And final one, free cash flow. Does this include the provision for the EUR 50 million for Dombasle, the EUR 300 million guidance

So in terms of CapEx for energy transition, in particular, it did not change. I mean we always said that we would spend -- we are spending today around EUR 30 million per year. Now we say between EUR 30 million and EUR 35 million. I mean, clearly, there is a little bit of inflation, but it's not really material. And we will increase by EUR 50 million after 2030 because of the nature -- to EUR 50 million sorry, from EUR 30 million to EUR 50 million because of the nature of the project, right? So I don't think we've changed anything on the amount of CapEx that we announced for until 2030. I don't know, Alex, if you wanted to...

Yes. Maybe yes, completely for [indiscernible] I think we never expressed clearly the amount of CapEx we're expecting for the next decade. I mean, so we thought again, we have 1 year behind us. We have much more visibility on the projects as we get closer. So I know we think it's good to provide you that visibility. But fundamentally, I mean, you can see the trajectory, [ 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 ] to decarbonize and the affordability is...

The next question was on free carbon allowances. .

Maybe can you specify a little bit your question on the free carbon model? Yes. But on the hedging or the free allowance. If you don't mind could you repeat the question?

It's on the free allowances.

So today, there is no -- as far as we know, there is no change until 2030 in the ETS directive. I know that there will be some changes, but I think they will be positive because the commission would like to support energy transition projects, probably a little bit better by generating more revenues. So there is no today changes. The only thing we can say is that we see additional support from Europe and the member states. That's what they call the clean industrial deal and -- by the way, we just announced yesterday that we're doing a very important energy transition project in Spain, where we have received very clearly a high level of support, and we will be able to reduce drastically and cut by half the Tier 2 emissions of Torrelavega and do it in a very competitive way. So that's -- I think we're moving in the right direction. There's -- beyond that, there's nothing really changed, I think. On the free cash flow...

Yes, I confirm the guidance includes Dombasle Energy cash out as well as the other elements we've mentioned in the past, TSA exit [indiscernible]. Does that make sense?

We will now move to our next question from Chetan Udeshi from JPMorgan.

I was just curious, I don't know if this was already discussed, but can you give me -- or sorry, give us rather some sense of how you're thinking about Q1, whether it's year-on-year, Q-on-Q, any key points to keep in mind or even if you can give like a proper guidance, it's almost March. So I guess you have a good visibility now on Q1, where it should stack out. The other question I had was just going back to the whole discussion around CapEx and taking out this cash conversion target from 2028. I mean I think there is a bit of confusion to the extent that on one hand, Philippe, you are talking about investing in projects which are not capital intensive. And if I look at your CapEx already for 2025, it's EUR 350 million, which sort of implies that you've already spent roughly EUR 100 million on growth on top of Essentials. If all the new stuff that you are -- or future stuff that you're planning to do is also more debottlenecking less capital-intensive, why take out that cash conversion target at all? I'm just -- it just feels like it's like not consistent between what you are saying while at the same time, taking out the cash conversion target.

Okay. Maybe I'll start with your second question so that Alex can think about what he will tell you about Q1. No, I'm just kidding. So -- we say our central CapEx more is between EUR 250 million and EUR 300 million. So when we say -- and last year, by the way, we invested EUR 355 million. This year, we will land between EUR 300 million and EUR 350 million. So you're right, I mean, means will stand for our growth, what we call a discretionary CapEx between EUR 50 million and EUR 100 million, let's say, that's a few projects that are not really capital intensive. We're talking about electronic grade H2O2. We're talking circular silica in Italy. We're talking about a few millions to launch the production of rare oxide for permanent magnets in France. So we are talking about small targeted investments that can deliver high growth, but it's really not big tickets. So this is why we say it's more, at least in the short to midterm. We're talking about more small targeted investments. Then what we're saying is just that our capital cash allocation policy, which clearly states it's essential CapEx, dividend payment, and then we see how to make the best possible use of the additional cash that we might generate if the market conditions are there, to perceive the free cash flow conversion. That's the only thing we say. If you look at our free cash flow conversion this year, it's 34%, so we're not saying that we will not do 35%. It's just that this should not drive the choices that we will make. If we have more cash, we will decide. We don't think we should -- at this point, but maybe we can talk about it, but that we should deleverage our balance sheet. So should we invest in secured investments, should we invest in other types of shareholder return, we will see. But this is what will drive our decisions. Alex, I think you are expected on Q1.

Well I mean Q1 we have been telling you every quarter that visibility is not great, but I can say this beginning of the year is even more challenging. So what I can say, it's generally in terms of business segments we continue to see what we see in H2. So the most dynamic segments are foods, seed, especially in bicarbonate, electronics, all of that is growing well overall, obviously, the U.S. as a region. And on the other side of the equation, or structure, no sign of recovery and auto very volatile, okay? . As far as Q1 is concerned, as we mentioned, Q4 was quite good. I mean, it was part of the reason for the -- so it's not completely clear with all the noise today whether it was some prebuy or we don't think there is a fundamental recovery in demand. So what we expect, we mentioned it not significant change the volumes between 2024 to 2025, but probably the profile will be different. Last year, we had quite a strong Q1, some recovery and then normalization, a lot of opportunities, market a little bit tight. We didn't see that this year. And but I must say, the noise created by the tariff is not helping. And keep in mind, Q4 this year, we have a onetime license. So when you just project Q1, you have to take that into account, so very little visibility, no drop, but a lot of nervousness in the market.

Maybe Philippe, if I can come back. So if I understand your comments correctly, you're saying at least for the next maybe 1, 2 years, you continue with the path of existing bolt-on projects? And then down the line, you just want to keep that flexibility in case something exciting interesting comes out for you to invest into something bigger. Is that how we should think about your comments on CapEx?

Yes, that's it, absolutely. That's it. And also, I mean, we will not take a bet. We will do it if it's secured.

And we will now take our next question from Alex Stewart from Barclays.

This sort of builds on Chetan's question a little bit. You've said a number of times over the last 15 months, there's no scope to cut prices in soda ash. That soda ash is at the bottom margins are at the bottom, bottom of the cycle. This is something that's come up time and again. And yes, I look at your return on invested capital, and it's almost 18%, including the headwind from your corporate function. So your underlying return on capital of your businesses is approaching 20%. So I suppose the question is really in two parts. Firstly, how can you say that we're at the bottom of the cycle, and there's no room for more investment when you're making a sector-leading return on capital, which would traditionally attract more capital into the market. And the second point around CapEx is that if you're making a return on capital that's 500 basis points above your internal rate of return thresholds for new projects. Surely, that suggests that you should be investing much more growth CapEx in order to profit from that arbitrage. Could you possibly rationalize your thinking with those two statements?

Let me take this one and then I'll let you comment. So on the first one, return on capital employed? I think, yes I mean we confirm soda ash is at the low end of the cycle, not in the mid-cycle position, but it's a profitable business. I mean, this is what we've always said it's resilient business. With existing assets, you can make some margins. But the margin is too low to trigger additional investment, new capacities because this would be more expensive and the marginal price would be quite low. And I would say, on the corporate cost, I don't see the -- in 2024, the corporate cost, they don't have a very significant impact. It would be more we mentioned TSX, CD synergies and so on, probably a little bit more in 2025 and 2026. . No I mean the fact that we have a hurdle rate at 15% means that we will not invest in all the investments that are above 15%, as we said we look at merit and affordability. That is very important. So yes, we have some several investment at 15% -- more than 15%. And then there is what we can afford. This is why we said, okay, we don't want to see free cash flow conversion. We don't think a free cash flow conversion KPI is required, still, I mean, you've seen it this year, we want to make sure we generate more free cash flow than our dividend. So we look at the 2 angles and we need to invest in the right time. I mean we don't want to invest too early. Specifically, this is what we do in several business lines, and...

Perhaps if I could follow that up if it's okay. Just a quick one. Do you think that you will cover your dividend this year?

Can you repeat, please? We didn't get your...

Sorry, do you think that you will cover your dividend with cash flow generated by the business in 2025. .

Yes, always.

So you're guiding to $300 million of free cash flow. And then there are always cash outflows which aren't included in that and your dividend is EUR 260 million. So you've only got EUR 40 million to play with.

Yes. I mean, we are a new company. We have a certain level of dividend. So this is what we're seeing. Even in a challenging environment, we are cash flow covering the dividend.

And we will now take our last question from Peter Clark from Bernstein.

I've got two actually. I think I'm getting the gist of what you're saying in terms of example, silica expansions. Absolutely not going back to 10 years ago when you were investing ahead of the market, two plants came on Korea, I think in Poland and the market disrupted here. We're talking about incremental investment on existing kit with the market demand already there? So that's the first question. And then secondly, the peroxide had a really good fourth quarter in terms of growth across the patch pretty much. Just wondering what's going on in the HPPO market, whether there was a kick in ant work in terms of volumes or something like that.

So I mean, indeed, when we talk about the investments in silica and in particular, the move towards biosourced material. We're not talking about really new big capacities. We're talking about a new market, certain type of biosourced silica, and we secure the investment. I mean we don't invest if we don't have the volumes secured with strategic customers. So we're not investing, I would say, ahead of the market. We're investing when the market is there. Now HPPO frankly speaking, today, we have three plants that are running, I would say, at normal utilization rate, and we're pretty much focused today on our licensing business in China because this is where the growth is taking place. I don't know if you...

With this, I'd like to hand the call back over to Geoffroy for closing remarks.

Thank you for your participation today. And if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to the Investor Relations team. We've added our roadshow program on our website. If you go in the financial calendar section, you will see the different roadshows and conferences attended by the management in the coming days and weeks. So feel free to react to that if you want to join one of these events. Thank you very much. We will publish our Q1 on May 19 -- May 8 sorry. Thank you. .

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.