Ecovyst Inc (ECVT) 2024 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good morning. My name is Risa, and I will be your conference operator today. Welcome to the Ecovyst Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Call and Webcast. Please note, today's call is being recorded and should run approximately one hour. (Operator Instructions)

I would now like to hand the conference over to Gene Shiels, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to the Ecovyst Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. With me on the call this morning are Kurt Bitting, Ecovyst's Chief Executive Officer; and Mike Feehan, Ecovyst's Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we'll take your questions.

Please note that some of the information shared today is forward-looking information, including information about the company's financial and operating performance, strategies, our anticipated end-use demand trends and our 2025 financial outlook. This information is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results and the implementation of the company's plans to vary materially. Any forward-looking information shared today speaks only as of this date. These risks are discussed in the company's filings with the SEC.

Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures mentioned in today's call with their corresponding GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and in presentation materials posted on the Investors section of our website @ecovyst.com.

I'll now turn the call over to Kurt Bitting.

Thank you, Gene, and good morning. We are pleased with our results for the fourth quarter of 2024. While global macroeconomic fundamentals continue to present challenges in the fourth quarter, we delivered financial results in line with our expectations, further demonstrating the resilience of our core and industrial businesses.

I am also extremely proud of my Ecovyst colleagues for producing more than 3 million tons of products without a single offshore recordable injury in 2024. This was the best performance in Ecovyst's history and is a testament to Ecovyst's dedication to producing and delivering products in a safe and responsible manner.

Our ecoservices segment continued to deliver solid results with adjusted EBITDA up nearly 12% compared to the year ago quarter, driven by increased sales volume and favorable contract pricing. In addition, sales for advanced silicas increased 5%, driven by higher sales of advanced silicas used in the production of polyethylene. However, and as anticipated, sales for the Zeolyst joint venture were lower, principally due to the timing of hydrocracking catalyst sales.

Overall, for the fourth quarter of 2024, we delivered adjusted EBITDA of $76 million, up 8.7% compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. For the year as a whole, strong cash generation provided for a net debt leverage ratio of 3 times at the year-end, down from 3.2 times on a trailing 12-month basis at September 30, 2024.

2024 was also a year of continued progress in executing on our strategic and operational objectives. During the year, our investments in reliability initiatives in our ecoservices segment provided for improved operational efficiency, supporting volume growth, and we anticipate realizing further benefits from these reliability initiatives in 2025.

In addition, we continue to position Ecovyst for the future with capacity increases underway to support our core and industrial businesses as well as for emerging technologies. The capacity expansion for our Chem32 business is underway, and we expect to complete the polyethylene catalyst capacity expansion at our Kansas City site late this year. This capacity increase backed by customer commitments will support expanded customer demand in 2026 and 2027.

Lastly, we continue to collaborate with industry leaders to further refine technologies to enable advanced plastics recycling and to serve anticipated growth associated with biocatalysis and carbon capture processes.

As we turn to slide 6, I'll provide an update on our near-term demand outlook. We maintain a cautious posture of near-term demand in certain end uses due to ongoing uncertainty in the global macroeconomic environment. However, we believe that most of the segments that we serve are underpinned by strong demand trends, so our long-term outlook remains positive.

In ecoservices, we project continued positive momentum for regeneration services in 2025 with stable gasoline demand and high alkylation unit utilization. Our refining customers are planning more maintenance activities in early 2025 as compared to 2024.

As a quick comparison, six of our refining customers will execute turnarounds in the first half as compared to just two in the first half of 2024. Ecoservices, in turn, will execute four of its five turnarounds in the first half of 2025 to coincide with the customer turnaround activity.

For virgin sulfuric acid, the mining sector continues to show robust growth, driven by the increased use of copper in data centers and energy infrastructure. In terms of virgin sulfuric acid used in the production of nylon precursors, we foresee near-term uncertainty due to global industrial demand fluctuations and the ongoing surplus capacity in Asia, which may affect sales in the first half of the year. However, we believe demand will strengthen in the second half.

Overall, we project that demand fundamentals for virgin acid sales will be firm and will improve in the second half, supported by incremental customer demand from new mining projects plants and higher anticipated demand for nylon precursors. Demand for our ex-situ catalyst activation performed at Chem32 also is its effectiveness of sulfiding the catalyst and the HSE risk mitigation it offers to customers versus other technologies.

Moving to our AM&C segment. 2024 was a good year for hydrocracking catalyst sales, albeit not a peak year as was the case in 2023. 2025 looks to be a stronger year for hydrocracking catalyst change-outs.

In addition, we continue to see heightened interest in AM&C technology, which allows enhanced flexibility and improved distillate yields for our refining customers. As a result, we currently project sales of hydrocracking catalysts to be up this year compared to 2024. As these sales typically have long lead times, our expectation for increased sales this year is based upon orders in hand.

We believe the near-term outlook for catalyst sales into emission control applications will remain subdued. The four-year deferral for implementation of Euro 7 for heavy-duty diesel vehicles, uncertainty around EPA 2027 and challenging macroeconomic conditions have adversely impacted customer demand.

For advanced silicas, the global outlook for polyethylene demand remains subdued, and this is compounded by excess production capacity, particularly in Asia. In the US and Middle East, where we have our highest polyethylene exposure, producers are benefiting from cost-advantaged feedstocks and energy costs, which translate into higher overall capacity utilization rates for these regions.

We believe that our customer preference for our custom catalyst design capabilities will continue to allow our sales growth to outpace overall global polyethylene demand growth. We look forward to the completion of the Kansas City capacity expansion, which will support the planned ramp-up of our customers' capacity expansions in 2026 and 2027.

Turning to our emerging businesses. We continue to believe the longer-term outlook for catalyst sales supporting the production of sustainable fuels remains positive. We expect demand recovery in sales supporting renewable diesel production in the next 12 to 18 months.

Concerning the increase in the production of sustainable aviation fuel, the European Union has now implemented the 2% blending mandate. Additionally, major airlines are maintaining their 2030 SAF usage targets. We also continue to see favorable trends for emerging applications that utilize advanced silicas such as biocatalysis and carbon capture.

Through 2030, the global enzyme market is forecasted to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of approximately 14% and the value of carbon capture utilization and storage is anticipated to increase sixfold from approximately $6 billion in 2022 to roughly $35 billion by 2030. We continue to see strong customer engagement in these areas as we work with leaders and innovators on product qualification.

As you hopefully have seen, earlier this month, we announced a strategic partnership with ChiralVision, a leading innovator of biocatalysis-based technologies for collaboration on enzyme and mobilization applications. And in the Zeolyst joint venture, our Opal Infinity family of catalysts has been proven to significantly reduce the thermal intensity required in the production of pyrolysis oil and enable the production of higher quality and higher-value pyrolysis oil for customers.

We believe that projects for advanced recycling remain broadly on track. And accordingly, we anticipate that Ecovyst sales will follow and commence in late 2025 through early 2026.

I'll now turn the call over to Mike for a more detailed discussion of our financial results for the fourth quarter.

Thank you, Kurt. Good morning. As Kurt mentioned, I will begin with a more detailed review of our fourth quarter and full year financial results. Higher volume and favorable contract pricing of regeneration services, along with increased demand for advanced materials used for the production of polyethylene, drove the 5% year-over-year increase in our Ecovyst sales in the fourth quarter.

Within our Zeolyst joint venture, the expected timing of hydrocracking catalyst orders led to lower sales compared to the prior year. During the fourth quarter, we recognized a non-cash $65 million impairment charge on our investment in our Zeolyst joint venture, driving the net loss in the quarter. The investment in our Zeolyst joint venture was stepped up as part of the business combination when PQ and ecoservices merged in 2016. This impairment charge reduced a portion of that step-up. The reduction in the carrying value of our investment to an estimated fair value was primarily due to the demand outlook for catalyst materials used in emission control applications and the production of sustainable fuels.

Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter was $76 million, up nearly 9% year-over-year, reflecting higher volume and favorable contract pricing in ecoservices and higher sales of advanced silicas used for the production of polyethylene, partially offset by the timing of hydrocracking catalyst sales within the Zeolyst joint venture.

For the full year, sales were up 2% year-over-year. This was primarily driven by higher volume and favorable contract pricing, partially offset by the impact of lower pricing from the pass-through of lower cost in ecoservices.

Advanced Silica sales were flat as higher sales for finished polyethylene catalyst and niche custom catalysts were offset by lower sales of polyethylene catalyst supports. And sales within our Zeolyst joint venture were down year-over-year, driven by the lower volume of hydrocracking catalysts related to the timing of customer change-outs as well as the decreased demand for catalyst materials used in emission control applications in the production of sustainable fuels.

Ecovyst's adjusted EBITDA for 2024 was $238 million compared to $260 million for 2023. The lower adjusted EBITDA was primarily driven by the lower sales volume in the Zeolyst joint venture.

Moving to the next slide. I'll highlight the major components of the change in adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter. The price to variable cost ratio for the fourth quarter was positive, driven largely by the strong contractual pricing in regeneration services.

Our fourth quarter sales volume was up in ecoservices and advanced silicas. This was more than offset by the lower sales volume in Zeolyst joint venture. The balance of the change in adjusted EBITDA relates to lower turnaround costs in ecoservices and the benefit of cost reductions in the Zeolyst joint venture.

I'll now turn to the fourth quarter segment highlights, starting with ecoservices. Sales of $150 million were up 5% over the prior year quarter, driven by higher volume and favorable contract pricing in regeneration services.

Adjusted EBITDA was $54 million, up nearly 12%, reflecting the higher sales volume and pricing, favorable fixed cost absorption associated with the timing of inventory build and lower turnaround costs compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. The adjusted EBITDA margin for the fourth quarter was 36%, up 210 basis points compared to the year ago quarter.

For our advanced materials and catalysts segment, sales for advanced Silicas was $33 million in the fourth quarter, up 5% year-over-year on higher sales of advanced silicas used for the production of polyethylene as well as higher sales of niche custom catalysts. Sales from the Zeolyst joint venture were down principally due to the timing of hydrocracking catalyst sales.

Adjusted EBITDA for the advanced materials and catalysts segment was $28 million, up modestly compared to the fourth quarter of 2023 as higher sales of advanced silicas, favorable absorption of fixed cost and the benefit of cost reduction actions taken in 2024 largely offset the lower overall sales volume within the Zeolyst joint venture.

As we move to our discussion on cash and leverage, cash generation remained positive in the fourth quarter, leading to a full year adjusted free cash flow of over $85 million, up $13 million compared to 2023. The higher cash generation was driven by higher dividends from the Zeolyst joint venture and favorable changes in working capital, partially offset by higher capital expenditures, specifically for the ongoing growth capital projects for expansion of polyethylene catalyst capacity in our Kansas City facility and the Chem32 catalyst activation expansion.

We ended the year with approximately $146 million of cash and our available liquidity, including availability under our ABL facility. In light of our positive cash generation, our net debt leverage ratio was 3 times at year-end. With continued positive cash generation expected in 2025 and assuming no discretionary uses of cash, we anticipate making significant progress towards our target net debt leverage ratio of 2 to 2.5 times.

I will conclude with a discussion on our outlook for 2025. As Kurt noted, although we foresee relative stability in many of our core businesses as we move into 2025, we remain cautious about the near-term outlook for global macroeconomic activity. This cautious outlook is factored into our guidance for the year.

For 2025, we expect our GAAP sales to be in the range of $755 million to $815 million. Relative to 2024, this outlook includes an estimated $35 million of higher anticipated pricing related to the pass-through effect of higher sulfur costs in 2025.

Sales for our proportionate 50% share in the Zeolyst joint venture are projected to be in the $115 million to $130 million range. As a result, we expect total sales, including our proportionate share of the Zeolyst joint venture sales to be $870 million to $945 million.

We anticipate growth for ecoservices in 2025, driven by favorable contract pricing and higher volume. Excluding the expected $35 million sulfur cost pass-through impact, our anticipated base growth would be in the mid-single digits. However, taking into consideration the pass-through effect of the higher sulfur costs, we project sales for ecoservices to be up on a low double-digit percentage basis.

For advanced materials and catalysts, we expect our sales of polyethylene catalysts to continue to outpace global demand growth, and we believe that there will be continued traction and higher sales of advanced silicas for biocatalysis applications this year. As a result, we project advanced silica sales to be up in the low double-digit percentage basis compared to 2024.

Within the Zeolyst joint venture, we expect a stronger year for hydrocracking catalyst sales, albeit not at the peak level we saw in 2023. For catalyst sales, we remain cautious and projected sales growth to be flat to slightly up in 2025. Overall, we anticipate the Zeolyst joint venture sales to be up on a mid-single-digit percentage basis. We anticipate adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $238 million to $258 million, which is up 4% at the midpoint of the range compared to 2024.

In terms of segment results, we anticipate ecoservices adjusted EBITDA to be up on a mid-single-digit percentage basis within a range of $204 million to $220 million. For advanced materials and catalysts, we project adjusted EBITDA to be up on a mid-single-digit percentage basis in the range of $65 million to $71 million, noting, as we have previously discussed, sales of certain products within the advanced materials and catalysts segment can be lumpy as they are often large event-driven sales. We also expect our earnings to be more heavily weighted toward the second half of the year, similar to last year, driven by the timing of hydrocracking and custom specialty catalyst sales.

We expect corporate costs to be approximately $32 million in 2025. Capital expenditures are anticipated to be in the range of $80 million to $90 million for the year, reflecting incremental investment this year as we expect to complete the polyethylene catalyst capacity expansion at our Kansas City site by year-end and our ongoing activity to expand our catalyst activation capacity at Chem32. As a result, we project adjusted free cash flow for 2025 to be in the range of $60 million to $80.

For interest expense, considering the interest rate caps we have in place covering approximately 75% of our exposure as well as the recent repricing of our term loan, we expect interest expense to be in the range of $47 million to $53 million for 2025.

In terms of specific guidance for the first quarter of 2025, we project first quarter adjusted EBITDA for ecoservices to be between $29 million and $34 million. While the first quarter is historically the lowest adjusted EBITDA quarter, the lower than typical adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2025 is expected to be driven by the timing of turnaround spending, planned customer turnarounds and the absorption of fixed costs.

We plan to execute more than 50% of our annualized turnaround costs in the first quarter as we conduct maintenance to coincide with customer turnarounds. We also anticipate lower volumes within virgin sulfuric acid and treatment services in the first quarter, which are expected to be stronger in the second part of the year as we complete our turnarounds, taking advantage of the anticipated higher incremental sulfuric acid demand that Kurt mentioned earlier and also through the timing of contractual pass-through of certain costs, including energy and other index costs.

For advanced materials and catalysts, similar to the prior year, we expect a lighter first quarter based on customer order timing, more typical second and third quarters and a strong fourth quarter driven by the timing of certain product sales within the segment, particularly around hydrocracking and custom specialty catalysts. Therefore, we project adjusted EBITDA to be between $3 million and $8 million for the first quarter. Assuming unallocated corporate expense of approximately $8 million, we expect consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter to be between $24 million and $34 million.

I'll now turn the call back to Kurt for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Mike. In retrospect, the global macroeconomic environment remained challenging in 2024, and we experienced a revision of our near-term expectations for our sales into the production of sustainable fuels. However, many of our core and industrial businesses continue to exhibit resilience, performing well in 2024.

Our regeneration services business delivered on its growth objectives, and we saw stability in many of our industrial businesses, including virgin sulfuric acid and our sales of advanced silicas into the production of polyethylene. Moreover, we continue to make significant progress in the advancement of key technologies that we believe will provide for compelling future growth. These include technologies that support the production of sustainable aviation fuel, catalysts that significantly improve the efficiency of advanced recycling and technologies that expand biocatalysis and carbon capture applications.

I want to thank all of my Ecovyst colleagues for their significant contributions in 2024 and for their continued enthusiasm and engagement as we continue to deliver on our growth and strategic objectives in 2025 and beyond. Ecovyst remains intently focused on executing our strategy that we laid out in November of 2023 at our Investor Day. We are focused on capturing growth through enhanced reliability, debottlenecking and organic expansions across our core and industrial businesses and leaning into the favorable trends in the emerging segments.

Earlier, I spoke about our investments and enthusiasm in our emerging applications, where we have created dedicated marketing teams to work with our innovative customers and resourced pilot production capabilities for biocatalysis and advanced recycling in the last 12 months. We also continue to scan for inorganic opportunities that could enable volume growth in our core or adjacent end uses or add technologies that enhance our emerging product portfolio.

In December, we announced that the Ecovyst Board of Directors has launched a strategic review of our advanced materials and catalysts business, and we currently expect to complete this review in the middle of 2025. The company doesn't intend to make any further public comments regarding the strategic review until it has been completed or the company determines that disclosure is required or beneficial.

As we move into 2025, the macroeconomic environment and potential impact of geopolitical factors remain uncertain. Broad implementation of tariffs could result in disruption throughout global supply chains. However, we remain confident in the resilient performance of our core and industrial businesses, and we are planning for growth in 2025, and we will maintain our focus on capturing future growth opportunities as we remain committed to delivering compelling value for our shareholders.

At this time, I will ask the operator to open the line for questions.

(Operator Instructions) Patrick Cunningham, Citi.

Just maybe first starting off on the 1Q guide, can you help us frame what this means from a volume decline perspective across each business? How much financial impact do you have just from the cost of your own turnarounds? And is there anything to call out in terms of sort of the timing of price cost on the virgin sulfuric side, which is maybe a further drag here?

From a perspective of size, the turnaround costs that we're incurring are a few million dollars of an impact. The turnaround costs from our customers would be another few million dollars. And then in addition, the rest of the components are made up of the timing of some of our fixed cost absorption related to our inventory timing as well as the timing on virgin sulfuric acid that Kurt had mentioned earlier.

And then just on some of the near-term weakness you cited specifically on polyethylene demand. I think we're hearing somewhat stable demand increases for PE in North America. I'm just trying to understand, is this things not improving as much as you see in the overall market from low levels? Is there anything to call out specifically in terms of your order patterns?

I think what we see is that there's still obviously some overcapacity in certain markets like Asia. I think in our case, though, we would agree with what you said about North America and Middle Eastern customers benefiting from their energy position. In terms of our order timing, it's really more just order timing. So our customers did in fourth quarter, I'd say, built up stock in the first quarter. It's just going to be a lighter ordering pattern, and we expect that to pick up in the second half. As Mike said on the call, we do expect our advanced silicas business to be up year-over-year.

Aleksey Yefremov, KeyBanc.

I appreciate you providing a lot of details on Q1 guidance. But sort of stepping back, looking at overall EBITDA that you expect in Q1, I think this would be a record low for the company as far as my model goes, probably 2016 or so for the total company and for each of the segments. I guess, is there anything from a broader historical perspective that you think led to this result? Any of your businesses are just not as good as they used to be perhaps or just the severity of these temporary issues is still unusual, and it would be helpful to maybe quantify them in that case.

I'll take the first part and maybe just talk about the qualitative aspects of the business. So I think from a regeneration standpoint, we have turnarounds going on in our plants.

From a broader first half perspective, I mean, we're expecting to take four of our five turnarounds in the first half of the year to really coincide with the stepped-up refinery turnaround activity, which is quite normal. It's just this year that there happens to be a greater amount. We do expect that regeneration is going to be good this year. The factors that surround that business remain positive in terms of gasoline and more importantly, alkylation unit utilization.

Virgin sulfuric acid, we expect a good year in virgin sulfuric acid, although the ramp is going to be more in the second half, and that's somewhat related as well to the production on our side. We have, again, four of our five turnarounds happening in the beginning of the year.

I will note, we do have new customer demand starting in the second half as well with the new mining project, expansions of battery plants that are going to kick in as well as our nylon precursor segment is forecasting higher orders for their business in the second half of the year, which will spill over to higher demand for us. So in terms of the bones of the business, remain solid. This is more really a timing issue.

Mike, you can comment on some of the financials.

I'd just echo Kurt's comment. I mean this is not an unexpected or anything that we feel concerned about. It's a lot of timing that we just went through on the ecoservices side.

And similarly for the advanced materials and catalysts side, that business, as we've talked about every year and every quarter is very lumpy. There are a lot of event-driven types of orders, whether it's the hydrocracking catalyst or the specialty custom catalyst. And it's just the timing of those orders when they come through. So it's not a concern for us.

It is definitely a low quarter, Aleksey, from a historic standpoint. But again, if you go back and look historically, you've seen some big movements quarter-over-quarter, including last year when we did have a heavier second half for AM&C, and then we delivered that at the end of the year. So we're confident that we're still going to be able to deliver our results that we've provided. The Q1 is purely a timing aspect for a variety of the different items that we talked about, cost side on Eco primarily along with the timing for the customers and then the order book in the AM&C business.

And as a follow-up, I think you've guided to about $45 million of net sales increase, excluding the pass-through. EBITDA is projected to go up $10 million. This just strikes me as somewhat low incremental margins given how high your margins typically are. Could you just give us a maybe a walk for that sales versus EBITDA bridge in your guidance?

I think your first point about the sulfur impact that is a margin impact from a negative standpoint. But again, the sulfur pass-through does not impact our EBITDA. It just inflates the top line. So that is certainly a component of it. There's also a mix component, primarily in the AM&C business where you do have -- some of our sales for hydrocracking in particular, are not as highly profitable as say, sustainable fuels that we've talked about in the past. So there is a dynamic from a mix standpoint as well. We did talk about higher costs overall for FMC turnaround costs just as they start to go up. However, we are increasing our sales pricing as well to commensurate for that difference. So it's a little bit of the sulfur impact and then the mix effect as well.

David Begleiter, Deutsche Bank.

Kurt, on the strategic review, can you at least discuss why the Board decided now to do this review on this business?

really good core businesses around it. They have hydrocracking, polyethylene as well as the emerging technologies that we walked through, biocatalysis and such. And the Board is really just looking to see how we can maximize shareholder value and are there alternate ways to do that other than its current setup. So that's really what we're looking at is we view that business as a high-value business, stable in terms of its core businesses as well as some great emerging opportunities. And is there a way to further create shareholder value with a different setup.

And just on the full year guide, at the low end, you're forecasting no growth. So what would need to happen for Ecovyst not to grow EBITDA in 2025?

I think some of that is always our order timing on the catalyst side, David. As you know, we have large hydrocracking orders and large other custom catalyst orders that can be, in some cases, north of $10 million per order type thing. So some of it is based on the timing of that, so not necessarily a miss on the actual capturing of the sale, but the timing of where it lands.

And the other part of the guide is really, is there any economic disruption that comes from the current environment that we live in today in terms of the uncertainty surrounding tariffs or other geopolitical issues that are floating out there. But if you look at the base core of the businesses, again, ecoservices, regeneration, we expect to be strong, albeit the first half is lighter just because of the customer turnaround activity, which is just they have to take turnarounds. It's the nature of the business. Virgin acid, we expect to be firm this year.

I will point out the question came up earlier. Pricing is not a drag on virgin acid right now, but the market has remained solid. And then our core businesses, again, with the catalysts across polyethylene and hydrocracking, a lot of that's really timing based.

Hamed Khorsand, BWS Financial.

I'm going to beat the dead horse here, but could you just talk about this timing issue, specific just to Zeolyst really, the hydrocracking, why has this continued to be the case? I think this is now like the second or third quarter that you're bringing this up.

I would probably say that we bring it up a lot. The timing around the ZI joint venture and the customer orders there has been in existence since I've been with the company a long time ago. So the orders are often -- for hydrocracking in particular, are usually three to four years from when they do a fixed bed change out. And those timing of when those orders come through can really vary in a couple of different months. So you can have a large order that could be $15 million, $20 million that hits in December 31 or it could go to January 1. And a lot of it has to do with the timing of when they're shipped and delivered to the customer.

Same thing for the specialty catalysts. Those are very lumpy event-driven businesses. So they could have orders that happen every four, five, even six years with some of the different customers. So sometimes it's a timing item within the customer order booking. And oftentimes, it's just when those orders are placed every few years.

And then as far as your emerging technologies goes, you've talked about different products and solutions being available right around '25. Is that still the case for this year? Are you still expecting sales from those emerging technologies this year?

As we talked about in the call, yes, the biocatalysis has seemingly having some good uptick with customer interest in terms of that just biocatalysis as an industry is growing very, very rapidly, and we're getting great feedback from customers testing our products in terms of the silica supports for those. So we have good confidence in that.

Advanced recycling is the other one I'll point you to where we've had some really good feedback from customer trials. Those advanced recycling plants are in process of being constructed, and we expect those sales really to kind of start hitting in late 2025 and into 2026 and continuing thereafter as those plants get built. So we're happy and largely on track where we think those emerging technologies, and we're very pleased with the feedback that we're getting from the customers who are pilot testing the products.

Laurence Alexander, Jefferies.

Firstly, on AM&C, can you give a sense for what percentage of sales or EBITDA is tied to the heavy-duty and sustainable jet fuel categories? Because those are like what you call out as being the subpar longer-term outlook.

We haven't really given any specific ranges of the size of that business. Again, part of it has to do with the timing of the orders. The hydrocracking is the largest component of the Zeolyst joint venture. The second one really is probably the custom and specialty catalysts, which can vary year-on-year.

And then really sustainable fuels or the renewable diesel as well as the emission control is really the next sized one. So we've talked about the sustainable fuels before being around 10% of the overall AM&C sales. So roughly, it's probably in that range or a little below that just given the decline from last year.

And I think just in terms of sustainable fuels, in the call, we had said we do expect it to be flattish to potentially slightly up this year. So as opposed to last year, where it obviously had a steeper decline. And long term, we believe that, that business will continue to grow, maybe not at the same rate of change as it did when it started in 2019 because there's still a need to decarbonize heavy-duty diesel vehicles.

And then sustainable aviation fuel has -- you have airlines in the US that still have 10% blending targets for 2030 as well as the EU that in 2025 now has a blending mandate in place of 2%. So there still is a need for those fuels there, and we expect them to grow long term.

And can you sort of give an update on your thinking on what the trade-offs are around keeping or exiting the Zeolyst JV?

We've been a part of the Zeolyst JV that has been in existence now for 37 years and was really formed around our expertise regarding the zeolites as being a key intermediate to the hydrocracking catalyst. Since the inception of the JV, that joint venture has expanded into multi different dimensions in terms of going to sustainable fuels, custom catalysts, emission control. So it's grown quite substantially and grown in different areas.

And now we are growing into the advanced recycling area. So it's not a one-dimensional JV, like a lot of them are they're geographically or product centric. This one has grown and both parties in the JV have been willing to invest in it over time. So we consider that we will continue to operate that way into the future.

And then lastly, around the timing issues, just to be clear, is your outlook range tied to like a normal level of timing or lumpiness? Or did you factor in some degree of assume that the timing continues to go against you at the same rate as it has the last several quarters?

No, I think the timing is just relative and typical for what we expect. I mean those orders can be positive and negative depending on when certain things come into the fold from a customer standpoint and shipping standpoint. So it's within a relative range.

And I think on the ecoservices side, too, we have very good visibility to our customer turnaround times that sometimes two and three years out, and that's why we're able to plan our own maintenance outages around them. So we have pretty good visibility into where those are going to land. It just so happens this year is a heavier period in the first half of the year, and it's kind of concentrated up between our maintenance and their maintenance into the first half.

John McNulty, BMO Capital Markets.

This is Caleb, on for John. So I know we've talked a lot about the impact of the turnarounds and the order timing in the first half. But is it fair to say that the first half EBITDA should be within the normal range of seasonality where it's like 40% to 45% of your full year EBITDA? Or is it going to be significantly less than that?

So I'd give you the direction that for the ecoservices side, it's roughly a 40/60 split. So roughly 40% of the earnings would come around in the first half and 60% in the second half, and a lot of that is related to the topics that we talked about from the turnarounds and timing items.

For the AM&C business, it's more like a 30/70 split. So again, if you go back and look at last year, it's not too dissimilar with, again, some of those timings of when the sales are coming through and our expectation for those are. So those would be the split for the two businesses.

But with Q1 EBITDA at like the midpoint to be like 11% for the full year guide, that's implying that Q2 is at least like double Q1. I'm trying to get the math reconcile.

No, that's right, Caleb. And I think, again, it's not too dissimilar from what our expectations are. I mean you've seen before for ecoservices, they typically have more of a bell curve where Q1 and Q4 are usually lower and Q2 and Q3 are stronger quarters. So with Q1 being artificially lower for the reasons we talked about, that would show a significant increase in the second quarter. And then again, for the AM&C business that can have significant swings quarter-on-quarter because of timing of the hydrocracking and specialty catalyst and other items, custom catalysts that we have.

David Silver, CL King.

I want to just ask you for a little bit more budget, $80 million to $90 million this year. If I have it right, I think maybe $5 million, $6 million of that is money that might have been budgeted for 2024, but kind of is slipping. But just in general, if you could put the CapEx in buckets, maybe how much is sustaining?

And then is the balance of non-sustaining spending all in the Kansas City and Chem32 expansions? Or are there some other discretionary items that you might call out?

You are correct. There was probably about $5 million or $6 million, as you mentioned, that rolled from last year to this year is all growth driven. So it's all related to either -- and the predominance is the expansions in Kansas City under the AM&C Group as well as some spending in the Chem32 catalyst activation business that's under ecoservices. There's probably a few other million dollars here and there for cost reduction projects and other smaller projects that are growth-based.

And again, the way we look at our capital allocation strategy really is that first dollar that goes back into the business will give us the best return since we know we can control it, and we believe that we have a good return on those projects. So that's where the money is going to be spent for next year.

I did want to go back to the impairment charge. And I did read your description of it pretty carefully. I mean, in general, I think there's maybe three general events or circumstances that might trigger the impairment. And in your explanation, it is clear what you're saying, but it seems like maybe you're citing the ultimate or the approximate cause of it was a transaction back in 2016, but then you also cite some relatively modest portions of your current business mix. And I don't know if I'm juggling things or it's apples to oranges there. But if the original -- I don't know, if the original accounting was different or if your stock price was at a different level, would you still be taking that impairment charge? Maybe just a tiny bit more color on the genesis and the thinking behind that.

You're absolutely right that the original investment in our Zeolyst joint venture was increased or stepped up years ago related to business combinations. So the purchase accounting increased it back then at the then fair value calculation, to your point, what was done back then was done with the information at that time.

What we've done now, given some of the current focus, particularly around sustainable fuels and emission control and the demand that we saw there and the decrease in our earnings from last year led to a reduction of that original step-up. So it was only a portion of that original step-up that was reduced.

So the original investment that we had in the Zeolyst joint venture is not adjusted. It's just the step-up from the business combination from years ago that was reduced related to this. So hopefully, that helps add some clarity. It's non-cash accounting journal entry for the impairment of the investment that we have in the joint venture.

I hope I can just squeeze in a quick one here. But sulfur prices are rising. And you've talked about this from a couple of angles, and I apologize. But if you could just clarify, what is the lead or lag on passing through meaningful increases in sulfur costs? In other words, is that part of maybe the sluggishness in the first quarter results that you'll recoup by the second quarter? Or should we just ignore the pretty significant sequential rise in sulfur costs here?

I think just the sulfur costs actually demonstrate what we're talking about in terms of the refining turnaround. So the reason sulfur costs generally rise is less sulfur coming out of refineries. So that's the one of the reasons a lot of customer refining turnaround activity here in the first half of the year. So that's one reason that sulfur prices have risen that. And I think there's an improved outlook for agricultural purposes as well. So the prices did jump here in the first quarter, as you pointed out.

In terms of the lag, we do pass it through mostly in the same quarter, although there is some lag there, I wouldn't say that's a really material drag on our first quarter numbers. Most of it, again, has to go back into lower volumes from us because of lower activity from our customers due to their turnarounds, but nothing in terms of -- we don't see a significant deterioration in any of the facets of the business in terms of regeneration still looks good. Virgin sulfuric acid, we think we'll have a solid year, particularly in the second half as some of these new customers start up.

It appears we have no further questions at this time. I'll turn the program back to the speakers for any additional or closing remarks.

I would say with no further questions, we appreciate everybody's interest and thoughtful questions, and we'll conclude the call.

Thank you. This does conclude the Ecovyst Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Call and Webcast. Thank you for your participation and you may disconnect at any time.