Synthomer plc (SYNT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. I'm here with Lily Liu, our CFO; and Faisal Tabbah, our Head of Investor Relations. Lily and I will run through our respective section of the presentation, and we are then happy to take your questions. In terms of today's agenda, I will start by summarizing the context and rationale for the proposed rights issue that we have announced this morning alongside our interim results. Lily will then provide an update on our financial performance for the first half. I will finish by demonstrating the progress we are making to implement our strategy across each of our divisions as we reposition Synthomer for profitable and sustainable growth in the future. Starting with some of the key points we have announced today. Our financial results for the first half reflect our post-close update back in July. The trading environment has been unprecedented with weak demand across most end markets and geographies intensified by customer destocking and the increased competition, mainly from China in some of our base businesses. Robust pricing and a strong focus on margins, particularly in our differentiated specialty products helped to offset the impact of substantially lower volumes. Also EBITDA was there for much lower. We saw encouraging areas of progress demonstrating the group's underlying strength and resilience. This was especially evident in Coatings and Construction Solutions, and all our specialty businesses grew versus Q4 of 2022. This shows that the strategy works they will continue to increase our focus and investment in these parts of the portfolio. We have continued to take decisive actions to preserve cash and manage our debt position. In the period, we came in half a term below the covenant requirement despite such challenging conditions. Today, we are reiterating our full year outlook. We don't anticipate any improvement in demand this year, but still expect sequential progress in H2 against H1, supported by our self-help actions. All divisions have made good progress against their strategic priorities, which I will come on to. We firmly believe that customer demand will improve over time. We also believe that the fundamental strengths and mid- to long-term prospects of our business have not changed. The specialty strategy we set out last year will transition Synthomer into a faster growing, more profitable and sustainable business. We also recognize that our current leverage levels create significant risk in the near term. The actions to manage cash cannot continue indefinitely before they start to affect our long-term prospects. We have, therefore, launched a fully underwritten rights issue to raise gross proceeds of about GBP 275 million (sic) [ GBP 276 million]. This will significantly strengthen the group's balance sheet, taking leverage down to 2x net debt to EBITDA by the end of 2024, which is at the top of our target range. Critically, it will also provide stronger foundations for which we can focus on and deliver the group strategy and the medium-term targets we set out at the CMD last October. In addition to the proposed rights issue and linked to its completion, our financial position has been strengthened by the successful extension of our RCF, providing a $400 million credit facility to last until July 2027. As I said out last October, we operate strong businesses with leading positions in attractive markets. However, over the last 18 months, 3 near simultaneous factors have taken our leverage to elevated and unsustainable levels. First, in April of last year, we paid $1 billion for the Eastman acquisition, 3/4 of which was debt financed. Second, shortly afterwards, industry-wide destocking and demand weakness set in and has persisted since. Third, our NBR business came to a standstill following 2 record years relating to COVID and it's currently a breakeven segment. We took swift action to launch a GBP 150 million to GBP 200 million cash generation program to protect our balance sheet with capital allocation reprioritized and several growth opportunities deferred. This has included cost reductions, site closures to reduce complexity, a sizable divestment, working capital optimization, CapEx restrictions well below depreciation, dividend suspension and securing additional sources of funding and covenant extensions from our banks. Whilst our liquidity position remains relatively strong with more than GBP 400 million available to us today, leverage stood at 5.5x net debt to EBITDA at the end of June. With the macro environment showing a little sign of improvement this year, continuing with this level of debt clearly leaves us with limited flexibility to do anything but managed entirely for cash. Moving to the next slide that provides the context of the Board's unanimous decision to launch a fully underwritten rights issue. We are grateful for the strong support of our largest shareholder, KLK, who have irrevocably committed to take up their rights in full and to vote in favor of the transaction. In terms of what the rights issue will achieve first and foremost, a stronger balance sheet removes the risk of a covenant breach and gives us a greater degree of flexibility to execute the strategy we have set out. The proceeds will reduce our June 2023 leverage from 5.5x to 3.8x pro forma. Secondly, it has been sized with the expectation that continued near-term cash and cost actions an improving market environment, our ongoing strategic evolution and divestment proceeds will enable us to reduce leverage to 2x net debt-to-EBITDA by the end of 2024, which is at the top of our target range. And thirdly, it has supported discussions with our banks, leading to the successful extension of our RCS providing a $400 million facility until July 2027. Overall, what this transaction fundamentally achieves is a stronger foundation from which to focus on maximizing the long-term potential of our portfolio. It will also enable us to meet our medium-term ambitions and enhance our ability to rebound strongly and beat the market when the demand environment recovers. I want to finish this section on Slide 7 and touch on how we expect to deliver value going forward, areas that I will come back to in detail later. To state the obvious, the group's current EBITDA performance is significantly below its level in the recent past. Last 12 months EBITDA was GBP 158 million, which is slightly less what we generated in just the first half of 2022, and it's considerably below its potential. Our objective is to more than double it over the medium term with near-term actions end market volume recovery and the execution of our strategy all playing their part. To take this in turn and starting with the box on the left, we will continue to reduce cost enhance efficiency. I've already mentioned self-help initiatives that have been implemented a big part of which are within our Adhesive Solutions division. We are also announcing today that we are closing our 90,000 tonnes Kluang Malaysia facility and shift NBR production to newer, more efficient sites, mainly to Pasir Gudang, also in Malaysia. We are also well advanced with plans at several sites to optimize costs and enhance efficiency and reliability for our customers. We continue to execute our portfolio management plans to increase our focus and CapEx on higher growth areas. We expect more divestments and the right opportunity arises, and in conjunction, we will continue to simplify our footprint already down from 43 sites in October last year to 36 and on our way to below 30 in the future. Moving across to the middle box will also benefit from the market recovery when it arrives. Whilst trading visibility remains low, all indications suggest that volumes have reached a low point, and we are expecting things to get worse from where they are today. The estimate there is a GBP 100 million plus of EBITDA recovery potential for the business just from demand trends and destocking normalizing across our businesses. We don't expect our NBR business to return to its pre-pandemic rates of profitability anytime soon. We do, however, to continue to expect solid end market growth with a greater focus on hygiene, including in parts of the world where glove consumption levels have been low historically. But the oversupply situation in the market will continue to take time to unwind. So we believe recovery in this part of the business will take longer than in our other operations. And in the final box, we will benefit from our strategic evolution into a more specialty-focused chemicals company. We are fundamentally repositioning this business for the future. By concentrating on and investing in those areas where we have market-leading positions, we are confident that there are strong opportunities for growth, supporting our ambition for 70% of our revenues to come from specialty products. We are already making good progress to align our portfolio closer to high-growth end markets that are exposed to megatrends. We are getting closer to our customer and more embedded at an earlier stage of the product development cycle. You can start to see the potential of this strategy in large parts of our Coatings and Construction Solutions division already, and there is much more that we can do across the business. We will continue to expand and invest in innovation and sustainability to support that growth. And we will continue to leverage our global footprint not least in the U.S. and Asia, where we have expanded our presence following the Adhesives acquisition. These factors combined will enable Synthomer to deliver on our previously set targets of mid-single-digit revenue growth 15% EBITDA margin and mid-teens return on invested capital over the medium term. This business has the ability to deliver more than double today's trough earnings by becoming a more focused, more resilient and higher-quality specialty chemicals company. Let me stop here and hand over to Lily for a detailed review of our financial performance, and I will then come back to talk about the strategy and the divisions in a bit more detail. Thank you.

Thank you, Michael. And good morning, everyone. Okay. Let's start with overview of our financial performance during the first half. Overall results were in line with our expectations at the start of the year and also the update we provided in July. Given the subdued macro environment, we are pleased with the sequential volume improvement that we have seen for H2 '22. Robust pricing and margin for our specialty businesses, and the positive progression in the first half that we have seen that Q2 was stronger than Q1. The first half of '22 is clearly very different. It's a different world. So I would largely compare our performance to the second half of last year. The actual from the first half '22 included in all the tables for comparison purpose. Continuing revenues for the group were GBP 1.1 billion, 7% down from the second half '22. The continuing business excludes laminates, Films and Coated Fabrics business following the successful divestment at the end of February. Volume for the whole group was up by 2.2% sequentially, led by Coatings and Construction Division and our Specialty Businesses. Price moved down by 8%, reflecting the raw material price deflation environment, although we retained more raw material price savings versus price adjustment. Continuing group EBITDA reduced to GBP 72 million from GBP 86 million in '22. Price management, together with tight cost controls helped generate resilient margins. Reported group EBITDA for the first half was GBP 74.5 million. Our depreciation costs went up as a result of the acquisition, so did our interest charge, resulting in a net loss for the period with an EPS loss of 1.1p. As previously announced, there was no dividend for the period, reflecting the necessity to preserve cash as we focus on further deleveraging. Our strong focus reduce costs and successfully manage cash alongside of our divestment activities helped lower the net debt to GBP 796 million versus just over $1 billion at the end of the last year with leverage of 5.5x. Now turning on to each of our divisions and starting with CCS. Revenues were slightly up versus H2 '22 for the whole division, led by volume growth over 10%. Now the table shows a sequential price reduction of 8.9%, which was due to moderating raw material input costs. We retained our price more than the RM cost reduction across the division, reflecting the specialty weighting of our businesses. This resilience, together with the implementation of good cost control, resulting in EBITDA of GBP 55 million for the division, 36% higher than H2 '22 and the EBITDA margin of 12.2%, 310 bps better than H2 '22, a very encouraging performance. We have seen a gradual improvement in trading during the half with Q2 stronger than Q1. This was largely driven by the special strategy part of the portfolio with a progressive improvement in Coatings and record levels in Energy Solutions, offset by weaker construction and consumer materials due to the microenvironment. Strong cost controls helped to offset lower capacity utilization, and we have initiatives underway to further enhance our efficiency. This will include closure of small taxes production site in the second half of this year. We are strengthening our organic growth capability by aligning the division to our end markets and improving the geographical balance so that it is more weighted to North America and Asia. We're also continuing to invest in innovation and our customer propositions. These actions are expected to increase market share and enhance margins over time. Now coming on to Adhesives, where performance has been adversely impacted by both the macro environment and the planned reliability and supply issues that we highlighted with the acquisition. Against H2 '22, volume was modestly down by 1.6%, reflecting the low demand in the market. Our price was down by 7.4%, a combination of raw material price input cost environment and greater competition in our hydrocarbon business, Michael already mentioned, due to the European energy cost spike. In our specialty product portfolio, namely Lithene, Amorphous Poly-Olefins APO, and Pure Monomer Resins PMR, both pricing and volumes remain robust. Demand for tapes as well as packaging and plastic solutions is lower in the current environment, but tire additives has been much more robust. We have reprioritized capital expenditure to broaden the raw material supply and expand capacity in certain high-growth areas, namely APO. A new management team is now in place, and they have made good progress to expand our original acquisition synergy work streams with target to improve both operational reliability and cost efficiency in the division. The majority of the $23 million synergy that we identified at the time of the recent acquisition have now been delivered. We raised our target to $25 million to $30 million. The team now expects to achieve further improvement, including capturing revenue synergies given our enlarged footprint in products and technologies. We are confident that we will deliver the business case that we set aside at the time of acquisition in the medium term. Now moving finally on to Health & Protection Performance Materials, HPPM division, EBITDA down to GBP 11.3 million, largely reflecting the oversupply in our NBR businesses, that followed an exceptional period of demand for medical gloves during the COVID. H&P volume fell 6% versus H2 '22, with unit margin relatively stable at a low level. Underlying demand for medical gloves continue to be robust, but with stock levels remaining high and additional capacity being added to the market during pandemic we do not expect production levels of NBR to improve this year. As a result, we have announced plans to close our NBR production at Kluang facility in Malaysia and transfer volume to other plants. Our Performance Materials business also experienced a significant fall in volume due to the end market environment. With this portfolio being less specialty in itself, we have seen pressure on pricing from customers as raw material price started to moderate. In the current environment, we have increased our focus on cost efficiency and process optimization. We are making progress towards divesting 2 parts of the business, and our project to separate core consumer phone manufacturing from our paper and carpet operations is progressing well. Now turning next on to net debt and cash flow. At our Capital Markets Day in October last year, we identified between GBP 150 million to GBP 200 million cash management actions from reduced cost, dividend suspension lower working capital and stringent cash management. Since then, we made good progress in all the areas. The division reorganization last year has already delivered annual savings around GBP 10 million and we are on track to deliver further savings by the end of the year, namely the GBP 20 million. Overall free cash flow for the half was GBP 19 million versus negative GBP 62 million in H1 '22 and the inflow of GBP 130 million in H2 '22 . Net working capital decreased by GBP 12 million in the first half. The benefit from moderating raw material pricing and additional factoring receivables was partially offset by the H1 seasonality and activity levels. The performance improvement plans that we have implemented, I expect to drive working capital lower in our dress business during the second half. CapEx was GBP 34 million, in line with first half last year, largely reflecting investment in safety and systems with very selective investment in growth CapEx. As I've mentioned elsewhere, we continue to report CapEx to support areas where it is needed the most. And we're seeing the benefit of this, especially in our specialty businesses. Our CapEx guidance remains the same for '23. And finally, divestment of our Laminates, F business raised proceeds of GBP 200 million. Now turning the slide on to balance sheet and liquidity. Michael has already touched on the rationale for the proposed rights issue that we separately announced this morning. I won't repeat. The proceeds will be used to strengthen our balance sheet by reducing a portion of group's debt and other liabilities and also to support our strategy delivery. As part of the overall package, I'm pleased to report that we agreed with our existing banking group to extend the RCF of $400 million to July 2027, largely based on the current terms subject to successful equity raise. The equity raise, together with the RCF extension will provide stability and predictability on the funding side with our pro forma liquidity for June over GBP 600 million. A note on our cost-efficient factoring program, we continue to use it as a tactical tool in near term to provide much needed flexibility on the balance sheet side and support growth investment. We do intend to phase out the program over time. The rights issue accelerate our objective to reduce group leverage, but there's clearly much more to do as we work towards our target range of 1 to 2x. We expect to achieve this by further divestment proceeds earnings growth that will come from both macro recovery and strategy delivery, and we'll continue to aggressively manage our cash and cost in the meantime. We will reinstate regular dividend when appropriate. Now turning on to the next slide, as you can see details on the rights issue, also further technical guidance on the page. Let me highlight 2 important dates. The Ex-rights date is 28th September and share consolidation effective on 26th September. And finally, let me reiterate our outlook that we provided in July trading update. Since the period end trading has been in line with our expectations. Our visibility remains limited due to the current macro environment. And while we were encouraged by H1 volume improvement and better H2 performance, we don't expect to see any material improvement in demand this year. Progress in the second half relative to the first will be underpinned by our self-help actions, which we expect to deliver further $20 million savings, as I mentioned. Let me stop here and hand back to Michael.

Thank you very much, Lily. I want to spend the next 10 minutes or so reinforcing some of our key points around the focus, strengthen, grow strategy that Synthomer has embarked on. This slide from our Capital Markets Day last October summarizes the key pillars of the strategy that we are focusing on, most of which I touched on at the start of the presentation. Turning to Slide 19. The more differentiated approach that we are taking to our portfolio is 1 of the most significant themes of our strategy. We have made these changes to ensure that the business becomes fully focused on areas that are more specialty, higher growth and where we know we can win. The green bubbles highlighted on this slide, Coatings, Adhesives, construction. These are attractive growth markets growing at 4% to 5% per annum, supported by megatrends. And there are some really niche higher-margin areas in each, including energy solutions, Lithene or Amorphous Poly-Olefin where we have market-leading positions. We are allocating capital and resource in a more targeted way to drive innovation and evolve our technology. As we have consistently met our target to deliver 20% of our revenues from products launched in the last 5 years, it is clear that we can do even more, not least with broader social trends and the regulatory framework, driving the requirement for cleaner, environmentally friendly solutions and renewable raw materials. Health and Protection in blue also offers attractive long-term prospects with the underlying glove market growing between 6% and 8%. Synthomer is a market leader in NBR, and we will benefit from that strong position as the current oversupply situation normalizes. But we also view this part of our business differently than we have a few years ago. As you can see, currently, it is a cyclical business, and so our focus will be on cash and cost management rather than it being a priority area for future investment. We are also mindful that the few, but important Chinese players have taken share in the glove market during COVID. I think standard is hard to know what the lasting impact of that will be, but we think there will certainly be some. And the result of both is that Synthomer will be less dependent on NBR that we have been over the last 10 years as we focus on the more specialty and less cyclical parts of our business. And then finally, we have identified several parts of the business as being non-core and [indiscernible] is an important part of our strategy. So having already executed on the largest opportunity, which is the divestment of laminates, films and coated fabrics, we expect others to follow in 2023 and 2024. We remain very disciplined as we go through these processes. And whilst the key objective is to focus our portfolio on higher growth areas, these disposals will inevitably also help to reduce our leverage further. The output of our strategic evolution is illustrated on this slide, one that you will also be familiar most of you. Historically, Synthomer's portfolio has been evenly split between Base and Specialty. Our ambition is for it to be 70% weighted on specialty, more focused on sustainable growth areas with resilient margins and limited cyclicality. The divestment early in the year and the progress we are making in our Coatings and Construction Solutions division as well as a slowdown in India for medical gloves have driven significant progress against this metric in the first half to 60:40 specialty ratio. In terms of geography, the business was previously heavily concentrated on European markets. The Adhesives acquisition and our strategy has begun to shift our footprint to the U.S. and Asia. So the balance is better than it was before 2022. We want to leverage the opportunity that comes from that and improve our geographical presence further. And finally, we want to be more streamlined, allowing for more efficient capital allocation. I have said previously that for a business of our size, we operate far too many sites. The ambition is to reduce from 43 to less than 30%. And again, we are making good progress here being halfway how to target in just 12 months. I mentioned earlier that we are making good progress against our strategic priorities in each of our divisions. Starting with CCS, the progress that we are making here is very exciting and is the future opportunity as we continue to leverage market-leading positions and grow the specialty part of the portfolio. Our key priority is to strengthen our organic growth capability, and we are pushing this forward by focusing on 3 areas that I highlighted 6 months ago. We have reorganized our commercial teams that our top global customers have dedicated account managers and to ensure that there's stronger emphasis on marketing to regional players, particularly in North American, Middle East and Asian markets. Closer alignment with customers also driving our efforts to enhance the differentiation of our product portfolio and innovation is helping to drive momentum in this area. We are also progressing a number of asset optimization projects, improving cost control and capacity management through our Synthomer Excellence programs. For example, a modification of 1 of our specialty additives processes at our site in Ghent, Belgium resulted in substantial energy efficiencies and carbon emission savings. We have also announced the exit of a smaller manufacturing site in Texas, consolidating operations elsewhere in the region. Turning next to Adhesive Solutions. The opportunity in this division is just as compelling as it is in CCS. Clearly, it has its current challenges, but the strategic logic of the adhesive resins acquisition announced in 2021 remains clear. The business has many leading market positions in Europe and in the U.S., strong, long-term relationships with its customers and an exciting innovation pipeline. The acquisition has also significantly rebalanced the group's exposure from Europe out North America. Having delivered the synergy actions that we were identified at the time of the acquisition, our primary focus now is on improving the operational reliability and cost efficiency of the business. Our new leadership team is driving forward our performance improvement plan, which is already well advanced. We are making progress to broaden supply of raw materials, optimizing procurement, manufacturing and supply chain reliability whilst improving our cost efficiency data and net working capital management. We have also reprioritized capital expenditure to resolve some of the challenges, but also to expand capacity to capture certain specialty growth areas, notably in Amorphous Poly-Olefins. We are continuing to drive revenue synergies from the combination of our businesses and benefits from leveraging our range of leading positions in specialty adhesives in the U.S. and in Europe. In Health & Protection, and Performance Materials, Synthomer is the leader in the $3 billion NBR market, which remains an attractive business for us despite its obvious cyclical challenges. In the current climate, we have continued to focus on capacity management where utilization rates have improved modestly in the first half. We expect this to improve further as oversupply reduces aided by our own actions to decommission our Kluang facility. This eliminates 20% of our capacity and also helps to strengthen the overall cost competitive of our supply chain in the region. We have also focused on improving our intimacy with the future key customers. This has enabled us to more closely monitor demand and market flows and a challenging point in the cycle and optimized alignment with these selected key customers. They have also made good progress to build relationships with potential new customers, including in the U.S. and in China. Process innovation is lowering energy consumption and carbon footprint for our customers and ourselves. We have also revised our innovation and capital expenditure plans across the division. This means that we are now more focused on our most differentiated products and opportunities such as the thin glove materials, bio-based Acrylate Monomers and our specialty vinyl polymer business in [ Halo ] in the U.K. And finally, our noncore portfolio rationalization program continued to progress during the period. Two divestment processes are currently underway and our project to separate core business manufacturing from our paper and carpet operations in Europe is advancing ahead of plan. Before I finish, I want to reinforce the point that we believe the current challenges are temporary. When the trading environment starts to normalize, the recovery potential for this business is significant. As I mentioned earlier, we believe that the last 12 months EBITDA of GBP 158 million broken down by division on the left-hand side of this slide and at least double. We are estimating that the GBP 100 million plus of improvement can be driven by end market recovery alone. Running through the middle column, CCS has the greatest specialty weighting, which helped to underpin its resilient performance in the first half of this year. This stability has enabled us to implement our strategy in this division more quickly, fueling our confidence for further recovery in the short term with the potential for more upside when the macro environment improves. In Adhesive Solutions, our challenges are both macro and operational with the major part of the current gap versus the Eastman deal model coming from lower volumes. We are making strong progress to address these challenges, the benefits of which are starting to become evident in the second half of the year as we deliver on our self-help initiatives. A good proportion of our portfolio has leading market positions with specialty character areas that we are investing in to accelerate growth. Improved demand will not only accelerate progress in these higher-margin areas, but it will also stimulate more cyclical parts of the business such as tapes and labels, packaging and plastic solutions. The additional benefit of delivered synergies and operating as a stronger combined entity underpin our confidence of returning this division to historic EBITDA levels in the near term from this low point today. And finally, with global demand for medical class continuing at between 6% to 8% per annum, we foresee that the oversupply situation will gradually resolve itself over time and the division can return to growth in 2024. As I said earlier, it is hard to anticipate what the lasting impact of China's entry into this market will be. But as a global leader in NBR, Synthomer will certainly benefit from its recovery when it comes. In addition, there is then the impact of the strategy that we are implementing across the business. We are already encouraged by the progress that is being made in tough conditions and our steady evolution into a more specialized global business. This, alongside becoming more focused on our end markets, customers and high-growth areas where we know we can win, underpins our confidence in being able to deliver our medium-term targets. So in summary, whilst our first half results have been significantly impacted by a combination of headwinds, these are temporary and will end in due course. We are encouraged by the performance of our differentiated and specialty portfolio, and we will allocate resources accordingly to drive further growth in these areas. Our efforts to reduce cost and preserve cash have been successful with progress against all priority areas we identified last year. We now want to transition the focus from short-term cash and covenant actions to real and sustainable value creation. The proposed GBP 275 million (sic) [ GBP 276 million ] rights issue that we have announced today will enable us to do that, strengthening our balance sheet and increasing our focus on strategy execution. Stronger foundations, greater strategic focus and an improved volume environment will enable us to achieve our medium-term objectives. It will also deliver a new Synthomer business that is more aligned to global megatrends, more focused and more competitive and ready for profitable growth. We are now happy to take your questions.

Charlie Webb from Morgan Stanley. Maybe just first, you obviously noted an improvement in CCS to a somewhat interesting sequential 10% volume improvement. What are you seeing with those customers? Is that just the end of the destocking H1 on H2 of last year? Or is there any signs of life that demand is starting to pick up a little bit?

Yes. Two answers to this. Number one, we have 3 issues that are depressing the volumes right now. Number 1 is the destocking part, which we clearly see to the whole chain. Number 2 is the consumer weakness that the consumer is simply not buying right now these industrial products. And number three, and that's only in the base businesses that the Chinese are kind of flooding the market with cheap imports. I believe that number 1 and number 3, they are on the way out. I think that destocking, you have 2 proof points for this. I think the destocking is on the way out. I believe towards the end of this year or early next year, it will come to an end. One proof point is that the industrial production is much higher than the chemical output, that tells you that there is inventory still in the stock, which is going down. The other proof point is that we are talking to our customers, especially in the coatings area, and they clearly indicate that the people at the end, the consumer -- the stock in the end point of sale, I think there are certain trends that it starts to restocking. So I think this element will come to an end. My personal guess a bit out the end of this year, early next year. The second portion is the consumer demand here. Honestly, I don't see any improvement. I think that's in line with the industry consumer. We don't have proof points that the consumer is really starting to buy. And the third point is related then in a way, and these are these Chinese imports only, again, in our case, it's hydrocarbons and then we are predominantly, but I think that is something the moment the Chinese domestic market improves, I believe that this will lower down. You will always have cost competitive Chinese imports in many industries. But I believe the magnitude, as we see it now is going down at least the moment when the Chinese economy comes up. So clearly, and that really proves our strategy again the green shoots we see on this destocking is logically first in CCS and in the specialty parts of adhesive solutions and in certain areas also of our health and production no -- of the Performance Materials, I mentioned our [ Halo ] business before where we have a pretty strong business. But these are kind of niche businesses where we can see good demand. But again, the correlation between specialty and having successful how it's an end of a destocking is quite obvious. So yes, I think there is coming, but nothing on the consumer side.

Maybe a little bit linked to that, but also a point you made around NBR and China's significant capacity expansion and how that probably will change things, but it's not necessarily clear exactly how it will, do you see China -- I mean, given how much capacity added, do you see them already as an exporter of NBR outside of China? Or is this more about a market share domestically that used to be a market opportunity that now has been sourced...

I don't see them as an export of NBR in big quantities. I think what we see and there were during COVID, there were many, many Chinese entrepreneurs went into the glove production. We see a lot of them are going out already, but there's 1 or 2 that are very dominant players evolving there. They want to do gloves. They don't want to do NBR. They even have some quality issues sometimes. They do the NBR because they need it. I don't see that NBR is largely being exported out of China. So I think for us, it's a challenge to find a way also to cooperate with these Chinese customers because I think they will not go away. There will be a few of them, but they will be there and they will be very strong. Like we have seen in many, many industries in the past as well. But I think it's a glove game and it's not an NBR game within China.

And maybe just lastly for Lily, just the free cash flow bridge for the second half. Maybe you could just help walk us through some of the moving parts that would be helpful.

Sure. Look, if you -- as we mentioned a moment ago, if you look at our EBITDA, we said with limited visibility from a demand side, the second half sort of EBITDA is supported by our self-help actions. And then you look at the -- from a CapEx perspective, we said we're going to maintain the CapEx guidance. So you can see first half, we spent about GBP 35 million and second half probably in the order of GBP 45 million to GBP 50 million and interest costs probably somewhere around the GBP 25 million for the second half. And tax, we do have some good news. We can report that remember last -- or interim last year, I talked about the cash tax payment to the Malaysian tax authority because of the super profit we made in 2021, we managed to get that back in August this year. So that's an inflow of about GBP 20 million, offset by the normal sort of tax payment that we need to do. So that's a low teen sort of cash inflow for the second half of the year. So those are the major moving parts plus you need to -- on top of the free cash flow, you need to factoring in the exceptional cost that we do expect in the second half, supporting some of the programs we mentioned probably in the order of high teens. But then is working capital, right? That's the big moving part. Clearly, seasonality would unwind from the first half into second half, which would be positive. And clearly, we need to factor into the additional sort of working capital optimization program, I mentioned, especially in the adhesive division in the order of about GBP 20 million that we foresee between now and end of the year. And clearly, we need to factor into the activity levels as well. So we do expect for the second half, generating good cash flow, good free cash flow, good net cash for the business, but overall, for the full year, probably around the GBP 40 million, GBP 50 million level.

Wait a second, you get the microphone, maybe.

[ Richard Phelan ] at Deutsche Bank. Given the group's improved liquidity position that you'll have pro forma for the capital issue and the extension of the revolver. Will you seek to reduce any debt in the short term? including the U.K. facility that you borrowed? And if you could provide any terms on the new extended RCF in terms of the margin that you're paying and how it ranks relative to the existing bond that would be great.

So look, in the short term, we don't expect to see any reduction on our gross debt level. Clearly, today, we do the fundraising to take a step change towards the covenant reduction or covenant fixing to our policy of 1 to 2x. And from our perspective, we also have divestment program that we are actively working on at the moment. Michael mentioned the two we're working on at the moment. And so we want to use the opportunity to rightsize what's the right level of debt going forward? And we do have a bond that we need to consider, which expires in July 2025. Longer term, notwithstanding we said we're going to potentially phase out the factoring program, which is very cost effective as of today, we do expect that the gross debt level to reduce.

I mean we have about GBP 130 million drawn on the RCF of more than 9%. So that's obviously the first one to go. Then the second 1 is, over time, our factoring, which we are doing since 1.5 years, which now at GBP 139 million right now. This will exit over time, but not immediately. Because it's a more cost-efficient way of financing. It protects our balance sheet. So this will exit over the next 2 to 3 years. And then we have to invest with the proceeds of the equity we have to invest into the execution of the strategy release for me personally, probably the most important issue. And then the next one, so we have all the flexibility and transparency until July 2027. The only thing we have to reorganize then is the bond, which ends in 2025. And this we will address in the first half of next year, I will find a good solution at probably a lower value.

That's clear. And also, if you could share the margin on the RCF, if that's available and if it -- how it ranks to the existing bond?

Look, we are -- we'll probably not share that before. But if you look at the average level of the interest across the group today, we are across all the facilities we've got is just under 6%.

The bond is at [ GBP 3875 ] that's public.

[indiscernible]. So just a related question on the RCF. Is there a spring in the maturity.

No, there's no spring maturity. It's fully extended to July 27.

Contingent on a successful ratio.

Correct. Yes.

[indiscernible] Just following up on the earlier question about the 2025 bonds, do you plan to reduce -- do you plan to buy back in the secondary market, given where the bond price is -- from the process from the rights issue?

We will evaluate in due course. And to Michael's point, we'll consider together with the divestment program and the size and going forward, the size of the bond and what market instrument we'll be using.

[indiscernible] from Blackrock. A couple of questions. The first one, I think, can you please provide some updates on the divestment, the 2 remaining that you have for later this year and next year? And also in terms of the AT synergies, the $25 million to $30 million, do you have kind of time line expected from your side? The third question is more on the demand side. We start to see some raw material prices to pick up. Just wondering if this would help some customers who were waiting to see the raw material prices continue to decline? Would this help on the demand side? And also without the impact of seasonality, how do you -- can you just briefly comment on the demand...

I'll take the first one. First, divestment, very consistent what we have always said. We have 2 processes running right now. These are the 2 smaller processes. They are advancing. As you know, it's not exactly a seller's market, and it's not easy these days. We will, as I also mentioned, we'll stay very, very disciplined. We will not sell businesses for nothing. So we will get the value these businesses deserve, but 2 processes are advanced. If everything goes right, we will conclude them in this year. The bigger process that relates to the paper and carpet industry in Europe is also on the way, but just started. We have to do this famous disentanglement of the factories, the production transfers in the European footprint. And that will conclude -- if it concludes always in M&A, the disclaimer that will conclude in the first half of '24 of next year. And then the second question about the synergies, the synergies, we are well on track on the adhesives, we introduced at the time of the deal, USD 23 million. We can confirm that they are coming. They're coming already started in our results now. The bigger portion is now in the second half of this year and then also going forward into next year. At the last year's Capital Market Day, we even upgraded these synergies, USD 25 million to USD 30 million. And that part of the business, we are very confident that we are delivering this year and next year. Then your third point on the demand, I'm afraid here, I have a less positive answer. Yes, we do see lower raw material prices, which gives us some flexibility in certain parts of the business to go after some business maybe we could not have gone 2 months ago. But I'm afraid it's not driven by a demand recovery, really, it's probably almost the opposite. Also some manufacturing issues of some of the large monomer suppliers is going away. So I don't think that you can link it. It gives us opportunities to do some deals we couldn't do in the past, but I don't think it is linked really to demand recovery. I mentioned in a differentiated way we see in our specialty businesses, we see the opportunities for us. But I think this is more stealing market share from others, as it is really a demand recovery from the end market. So yes. We all know it's coming back. I think nobody knows exactly when it's coming back, the demand. We all think it will come back in '24, but I would exclude '23. And seasonality, we do have some seasonality. But honestly, I think the seasonality is a little bit overplayed. Usually, we have 55, 45, but I think the world is changing a bit. This is becoming much more flat. So one year, it's more in the first half, the other year, it's more in the second half. I think this famous 55, 45, I don't calculate with this anymore. I think there are so many special situations that you have to take it year by year, quarter by quarter, so many influences, so many different parameters influences all over the world. So I wouldn't take a lot of seasonality. Do you see the question? I don't see the question.

Can people on the phone, please ask questions if you do have.

If you have questions, yes, on the phone, please ask them. We are ready for your questions.

Sure. Thank you. We will take the first question from line of David Farrell from Jefferies.

I was wondering if you could just provide a little bit more color on the steps from moving from 3.8x net debt to EBITDA to 2x by the end of 2024, perhaps a view on kind of where the EBITDA moves within that equation, also what you expect to see from working capital improvement and divestments, just to give us some kind of confidence of the ability to get to that 2x.

Yes. I think I can start with it. It was -- from 3.8 pro forma [indiscernible] higher range of our target. I think it's a certain recovery of demand we have in there, certain improved trading conditions during 2024. I think that's the main answer to it, but there is also some additional cash measures from our side coming in. So I think it's from the EBITDA side and from the debt side, some improvements. But Lily, maybe you want to give a few more details.

Yes, sure, David. If you look at our net debt, June this year, it's just under GBP 800 million, if you [ pro forma ] it and also allow some improvement, as Michael mentioned on the working capital side, then you would get to a pro forma somewhere around the $500 million towards the end of this year. If you then think about what we have talked about in terms of the longer-term trajectory of this business, plus $100 million recovery from the market plus $40 million from a strategy implementation, you get to the doubling of our EBITDA in the medium term? And then towards the end of 2024, you would expect us to be somewhere in between that number and versus what we currently see versus the last 12 months. And that's how we see it, and that will get us towards the 2x. Clearly, that still include the benefit of fracturing facility, which we say it over time, we are going to look at opportunities to facilitate investment versus winding down that facility.

Okay. And then just in terms of kind of this year's GBP 20 million cost improvement over the course of the second half. How confident are you that gets delivered? Is there anything within kind of the actions you need to take that there would need to be kind of -- are uncertain that might see some of that pushed out into a 2024 benefit?

We are confident on this. And the actions are the symptom excellence programs. I mentioned the opportunities mainly in our Adhesive Solutions, our new divisional manager there. I think he had taken already decisive steps to get costs out to make efficiency improvement in the supply chain, in the raw materials, in the manufacturing. So we're actually very confident on this.

We will take the next question from line of Chetan Udeshi from JPMorgan.

I think my first question was you mentioned about the CCS business that you have a higher share of specialty portfolio in the CCS segment. I'm just curious if you can lay out some of the key product categories that you would classify as specialty within CCS and how differentiated they are. I think the related question was we've seen in the coatings market, some of the large coating companies in the last 18 months when things were tight, they started to add their own capacity on the resins. Is there something of a threat to Synthomer as you think about from a structural organic growth perspective. The other question was just as we look into next year and the scope to deleverage further beyond the reduction in interest costs of post the rights issue. What are the key moving parts? Is CapEx going to be the same? Or can you cut it further next year -- in terms of just looking at the deleveraging process, what are the key moving parts, of course, I guess, the improvement in EBITDA is the most important one. But besides that, are there some areas that you can tackle to maybe generate some cash outside of the EBITDA growth?

Yes. I'll start with the first one in CCS. If you go through the 4 different areas, which make up the division, I think right now, our strongest performance we have in coatings. I think here, our strategy to go moat out the regional players to go more into the U.S. where we were very heavy on Europe, that we are putting a lot of innovation behind that we improve our sustainability features. I think the coatings business is very competitive there. And even the volumes are down compared to last year first half, but as you have seen, they are up compared to the second half. I think we just simply make very good progress there in our strategy. And if you make really the apple-to-apple comparison to our main 3 competitors, we are gaining market share there with the strategy, as I have just said. I think here, we have a good position. As I mentioned, consumer demand is down. But in this area of coatings, the destocking starts to see some green shoots. Then if you look at Energy Solutions, also very strong. We have a very good niche positioning there. We have very good products for both [indiscernible] for the oil and gas business, which, as you know, is a strong industry right now and probably for the next 2 years, but also now much smaller still, but still very good business, the battery materials also here a huge industry growth, and we do have our role there, unfortunately, too small, but it will grow. Also Energy Solution, I'm very confident the very specialty portfolio like coatings is a pretty specialty portfolio. I think we are doing the right things there. If you go into consumer materials, that's 2 parts. One part is the foam business. That is more difficult because it's a bit more commodity type of business, but also here, we can make progress, but clearly on a lower level than coatings and energy. Here, we also work a lot on sustainability benefits in the foam, especially for the bedding for the mattress business. But I think we are making progress, but by nature more commodity. Then the other one in the consumer business, that will be the fiber bonding. Fiber bonding is also a market often related to construction markets. So also here a little bit on the lower level. I think here also, we have to work on the innovation and to make it more of a specialty business. And then the last one, construction. Construction is clearly affected by the low construction activity as everybody sees in the industry, I think here, we also have some homework to do more innovation, more sustainability. I think here, we also are a bit too much commodity still, but it is on the way, it is moving. So a bit of a differentiated picture. I would say in CCS, we have probably about 80%. You can really describe us 75%, 80% as specialty, very strong coatings, very strong energy and to a lesser degree and on the way to get there, the construction and consumer materials business. I think that's a few remarks about CCS. And your second question, what are the levers in '24, obviously and clearly, we do anticipate some trading improvement probably in the second half of next year. I think nobody knows exactly, but clearly, in our plans, we do have a moderated, reasonable, but we do have an improvement in trading conditions. We always have the clearly lower interest costs, which you can cover -- which you can see, then we have our cost reduction programs, which we laid out that will also help in the whole situation. And we have a CapEx, I can give you a forecast we had last year, we have a depreciation rate of about GBP 100 million we had last year. So if you have a growth strategy, you need a reinvestment rate over the cycle of 1.1, even 1.2 probably. We had last year because of the situation, we had GBP 80 million, we have this year GBP 80 million. It's very important to know that out of the GBP 80 million, GBP 54 million are for safety and for sustenance. So you have GBP 26 million left to really grow the business with originally 43 sites, now 36 sites. So you can make the math. There's not much left. And that is one of the reasons why we also talked today about this rights issue to give us strategic flexibility to do something and take the business forward. But talking about next year, we will not go ahead of GBP 100 million, which we theoretically showed. So our plans, initial plans now, it is till September is probably between GBP 80 million and GBP 90 million, so a slight improvement compared to this year. Also then not to forget, you dilute it, you divide it by much less sites. You have more firing power in the sites that we do have. So I would put -- if you want to make a model, I would go for between GBP 80 million and GBP 90 million.

Yes. Maybe I can add to it. Chetan, that's a good question. Look, from our perspective, if I cover other lines, I think, exceptional cost this year, we spent -- we'll be spending around the GBP 30 million level. And 1 point to note is the EU fund has not been moved from previously, we talked about second half of this year, we do the payment now that has been moved into early part of next year after the agreement with the European Commission. And other lines, clearly, working capital, we talked about it before. I mean, you have to balance between activity level and also further improvement. One thing to note is where is our AS division has a clear short-term objective to bring down inventory by the end of this year. Structurally there is further improvement that we can do to bring that business closer to the group average or the remainder group average of working capital to revenue ratio around 10% or sub 10%. So there's further opportunity there.

Thank you very much. There's no further question over the phone.

No more questions on the phone. I understand here, maybe 1 more. No more. And I wish everybody a nice day, and thank you for your interest. Thank you.

Thank you.