伊士曼化學 (EMN) 2017 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Eastman Chemical Company Third Quarter 2017 Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. This call is being broadcast live on the Eastman's website, www.eastman.com. We will now turn the call over to Mr. Greg Riddle of Eastman Chemical Company, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

大家好，歡迎參加伊士曼化學公司 2017 年第三季電話會議。今天的會議正在錄製中。這場電話會議正在伊士曼網站 www.eastman.com 上現場直播。現在我們將電話轉給伊士曼化學公司投資者關係部的 Greg Riddle 先生。先生，請繼續。

Okay. Thank you, Sylvia, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. On the call with me today are: Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO; Curt Espeland, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Louis Reavis, manager, Investor Relations.

好的。謝謝你，西爾維亞，大家早安，謝謝你們加入我們。今天與我一起參加電話會議的有：董事會主席兼首席執行官馬克·科斯塔 (Mark Costa)、執行副總裁兼首席財務官科特·埃斯佩蘭 (Curt Espeland) 和投資者關係經理路易斯·裡維斯 (Louis Reavis)。

Before we begin, I'll cover 2 items. First, during this presentation, you will hear certain forward-looking statements concerning our plans and expectations. Actual events or results could differ materially. Certain factors related to future expectations are or will be detailed in the company's third quarter 2017 financial results news release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Form 10-Q filed for second quarter 2017 and the Form 10-Q to be filed for third quarter 2017.

在我們開始之前，我將介紹兩件事。首先，在本次演示中，您將聽到有關我們的計劃和期望的一些前瞻性陳述。實際事件或結果可能有重大差異。與未來預期相關的某些因素已在或將在公司 2017 年第三季財務業績新聞稿和我們向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件中詳細說明，包括 2017 年第二季提交的 10-Q 表和即將於 2017 年第三季提交的 10-Q 表。

Second, earnings referenced in this presentation exclude certain non-core items. In addition, third quarter and first 9 months 2017 earnings per share use an adjusted provision for income taxes. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and other associated disclosures, including a description of the excluded and adjusted items, are available in the third quarter 2017 financial results news release, which can be found on our website, www.eastman.com in the Investors section. Projections of future earnings exclude any non-core, unusual or nonrecurring items and assume that the adjusted tax rate for the first 9 months 2017 will be the actual rate for the projected period.

其次，本簡報中所引用的收益不包括某些非核心項目。此外，2017 年第三季和前 9 個月每股盈餘使用了調整後的所得稅準備金。與最直接可比較的 GAAP 財務指標及其他相關披露的對賬，包括排除項目和調整項目的描述，均可在 2017 年第三季度財務業績新聞稿中找到，該新聞稿可在我們的網站 www.eastman.com 的“投資者”部分找到。未來收益預測不包括任何非核心、不尋常或非經常性項目，並假設 2017 年前 9 個月的調整後稅率將是預測期間的實際稅率。

With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark.

說完這些，我會把電話轉給馬克。

Good morning, everyone. I'll start on Slide 3. We continue to make great progress in executing our strategy with strong third quarter operating results. Our results demonstrate the strength of our specialty portfolio with continued volume growth of premium products in Additives & Functional Products and Advanced Materials.

大家早安。我將從幻燈片 3 開始。我們在執行策略方面持續取得巨大進展，第三季的經營業績強勁。我們的業績證明了我們專業產品組合的實力，添加劑和功能產品以及先進材料的優質產品產量持續成長。

As I said many times before, we are creating our own growth through innovation and leadership in specialty markets. Through the first 9 months, we delivered over 7% volume growth in our specialty businesses, which is 3x the underlying market growth. In a few moments, I'll share examples of just a few of the ways we're winning with customers through innovation and our enhanced commercial capabilities.

正如我之前多次說過的，我們正在透過在專業市場的創新和領導來創造自己的成長。在前 9 個月，我們的專業業務銷售成長超過 7%，是基礎市場成長的 3 倍。稍後我將分享一些我們透過創新和增強的商業能力贏得客戶青睞的方法。

Our key growth metric for new business close continues to improve. We are tracking higher than our 2% target at closer to $300 million, which is incredibly impressive when you think about it being predominantly in AFP and AM. Capacity expansions for specialty businesses remain on track, which will support our continued strong growth moving forward. In addition to the specialty volume growth, we continue to do a great job implementing price increases to offset higher raw material costs. As a result, our corporate operating margin increased both sequentially and year-over-year.

我們新業務成交的關鍵成長指標持續改善。我們正追蹤接近 3 億美元的數據，高於我們 2% 的目標，當你想到它主要在 AFP 和 AM 時，這是非常令人印象深刻的。特種業務的產能擴張仍在按計劃進行，這將支持我們未來繼續保持強勁成長。除了特種產品銷售的成長之外，我們也持續大力實施漲價，以抵銷原材料成本的上漲。因此，我們的企業營業利潤率較上季和年成長。

Our cash engine continues to generate impressive free cash flow as we remain on track to deliver approximately $1 billion of free cash flow in 2017, enabling an increasing dividend, deleveraging and an accelerating rate of share repurchases. During the first 9 months of 2017, we returned approximately $500 million to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. These results are clear proof points that we are continuing to execute on our strategy for innovating throughout our enterprise, to pricing discipline, to returning cash to stockholders.

我們的現金引擎持續產生令人印象深刻的自由現金流，我們仍有望在 2017 年實現約 10 億美元的自由現金流，從而實現股息增加、去槓桿化和股票回購速度加快。2017 年前 9 個月，我們透過股票回購和股利向股東返還了約 5 億美元。這些結果清楚證明，我們將繼續在整個企業範圍內執行創新策略，包括定價紀律和向股東返還現金。

Moving to Slide 4. Hurricane Harvey and Irma had a devastating impact on millions of people, including some of our employees in Texas City. I'm very proud of how the Eastman team came together at a personal level to help their fellow employees through volunteer relief efforts, supplies and personal donations. Our impacted employees have a long road to recovery. And the generosity showed will go a long way towards helping them get back on their feet. I'm also proud of our employees for their very hard work to minimize the impact of the hurricanes on our sites and operations in the Gulf region and most important on our customers. We took precautionary measures to protect our assets. And thankfully, our sites did not sustain significant impact.

轉到投影片 4。颶風哈維和颶風伊爾瑪對數百萬人造成了毀滅性的影響，其中包括我們在德州城的一些員工。我為伊士曼團隊團結一致，透過志願救援、物資和個人捐款來幫助他們的同事感到非常自豪。我們受影響的員工還有很長的康復之路要走。而所表現出的慷慨將大大幫助他們重新站起來。我也為我們的員工感到自豪，他們辛勤工作，盡量減少颶風對我們在墨西哥灣地區的工廠和業務以及最重要的客戶的影響。我們採取了預防措施來保護我們的資產。值得慶幸的是，我們的網站沒有受到重大影響。

As the hurricanes have severely disrupted the supply chains across the South, our biggest challenges have been working to procure raw materials and getting products to our customers. Where we were backward integrated to readily available raw materials, such as propane and ethane, we remain reliable. Where we needed intermediates, such as paraxylene, and had to rely on others, we faced some challenges. Our ability to avoid disruption and supply our customers is a testament to our competitive advantage through scale and vertical integration. Overall, we anticipate the net impact of these events to be relatively neutral. The headwinds in the AM from paraxylene challenges and performance films' regional sales in Florida and Texas are largely offset by third quarter tailwinds in our intermediates.

由於颶風嚴重擾亂了整個南方的供應鏈，我們面臨的最大挑戰是採購原材料並將產品送到客戶手中。在我們向後整合了丙烷和乙烷等易得原料的地方，我們仍然值得信賴。當我們需要對二甲苯等中間體並且必須依賴其他中間體時，我們面臨一些挑戰。我們避免中斷並為客戶提供服務的能力證明了我們透過規模和垂直整合所獲得的競爭優勢。總體而言，我們預期這些事件的淨影響相對中性。上午市場對對二甲苯的挑戰以及佛羅裡達州和德克薩斯州高性能薄膜區域銷售的不利因素在很大程度上被我們中間體第三季度的順風所抵消。

On Slide 5, we continue to drive growth from heritage Eastman and from our acquisitions. One revenue synergy story from our Taminco acquisition is our accelerated growth in animal nutrition. We have delivered double-digit growth in this space from 3 levers. The combined offer of Eastman and Taminco products in this space is more compelling. We have increased our collective commercial execution capability. And we are winning due to our superior reliability compared to our competitors.

在幻燈片 5 中，我們繼續透過傳統 Eastman 和收購來推動成長。我們收購 Taminco 帶來的一個收入綜效是動物營養業務的加速成長。我們從三個層面實現了該領域兩位數的成長。伊士曼和 Taminco 在該領域的聯合產品更具吸引力。我們提高了集體商業執行能力。與競爭對手相比，我們憑藉更出色的可靠性贏得了勝利。

Another innovation success that we have that's very encouraging is in our coatings and inks business with Tetrashield for can packaging. The transition away from BPA-containing can coatings for food and beverages is accelerating due to combination of new regulations, such as Prop 65 in California, and evolving consumer demands. Eastman has leveraged technology originally developed for Tritan polyesters into the Tetrashield brand of BPA-free metal packaging coatings. In recent line trials with our customers, Eastman's solutions provides a superior combination of corrosion protection and flexibility, critical to this application. The products have recently received regulatory approvals and are qualified by our first customers, who expect food protected by Tetrashield-based coatings to be on the store shelves in 2018.

我們取得的另一項令人振奮的創新成功是我們在塗料和油墨業務方面與 Tetrashield 合作，用於罐頭包裝。由於加州 65 號提案等新法規以及不斷變化的消費者需求，食品和飲料罐頭塗料不再使用含 BPA 的現象正在加速。伊士曼將最初為 Tritan 聚酯開發的技術應用於不含 BPA 的金屬包裝塗料 Tetrashield 品牌。在最近與客戶進行的生產線試驗中，伊士曼的解決方案提供了卓越的防腐保護和靈活性的組合，這對該應用至關重要。該產品最近已獲得監管部門的批准，並經過了我們首批客戶的認可，他們預計採用 Tetrashield 塗層保護的食品將於 2018 年上架銷售。

Finally, an update regarding our performance films platform. We launched some very creative and successful channel strategies in China and North America, which are the 2 largest markets for performance films. The result is double-digit growth through our auto dealers and our aftermarket stores. We are winning on how we take the products to market and our value proposition, which is more compelling than our competitors. This is a great illustration of how we dramatically improved and acquire business in commercial execution and delivered additional growth synergies with another acquisition in Commonwealth.

最後，關於我們的表演電影平台的更新。我們在中國和北美這兩個最大的表演電影市場推出了一些非常有創意且成功的通路策略。結果是我們的汽車經銷商和售後市場商店實現了兩位數的成長。我們成功的秘訣在於如何將產品推向市場以及我們的價值主張比我們的競爭對手更有吸引力。這很好地說明了我們如何在商業執行方面顯著改進和收購業務，並透過在 Commonwealth 的另一項收購實現了額外的成長協同效應。

These are just 3 examples of how we are winning through product innovation, commercial execution and integrated technology, proof of our ability to drive synergies and organic growth from acquisitions. With that, I'll turn it over to Curt.

這只是我們如何透過產品創新、商業執行和整合技術取得成功的三個例子，證明了我們有能力透過收購實現協同效應和有機成長。說完這些，我會把話題交給 Curt。

Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. Before I begin, I'll mention that all of our segment guidance provided today excludes the financial impact of the recent coal gasification incident as we're still working through the expected impacts of the event.

謝謝，馬克，大家早安。在開始之前，我要提一下，我們今天提供的所有分部指導均不包括最近煤氣化事件的財務影響，因為我們仍在研究該事件的預期影響。

With that, I'll start with our third quarter corporate results on Slide 6. Sales revenue grew as increases in Additives & Functional Products, Advanced Materials and Chemical Intermediates more than offset a decline in Fibers. We continue to do a nice job of driving volume growth in our more specialty product lines. And we executed well on the pricing front as we realized further positive pricing momentum in the quarter.

首先，我將從投影片 6 上的第三季公司業績開始介紹。由於添加劑和功能產品、先進材料和化學中間體的增長超過了纖維的下降，因此銷售收入有所增長。我們持續出色地推動更專業產品線的銷售成長。我們在定價方面表現良好，因為我們在本季度實現了進一步積極的定價動能。

Excluding Fibers, third quarter volume growth was 6% while pricing was up 3%. Operating earnings grew as increases in Additives & Functional Products and Chemical Intermediates more than offset a decline in Fibers. Our operating margin expanded both sequentially and year-over-year as we made good progress offsetting a substantial headwind from higher raw material costs, a very impressive result when you consider the headwinds in Fibers.

不包括纖維，第三季銷量成長 6%，價格上漲 3%。由於添加劑和功能產品以及化學中間體的成長抵消了纖維的下降，營業收入有所增長。由於我們在抵消原材料成本上漲帶來的巨大阻力方面取得了良好進展，我們的營業利潤率環比和同比均有所擴大，考慮到纖維業務的阻力，這是一個非常令人印象深刻的結果。

Overall, earnings per share increased year-over-year by 18%, reflected solid operating earnings as well as actions we have taken to deliver earnings per share growth. These positive results reflect our continued focus on executing our strategy and taking actions to deliver earnings per share growth in what remains a slow growth environment.

總體而言，每股收益年增 18%，反映了穩健的營業收益以及我們為實現每股收益成長所採取的行動。這些積極的結果反映了我們繼續專注於執行我們的策略，並採取行動在仍然緩慢的成長環境中實現每股收益成長。

Moving next to segment results and starting with Advanced Materials on Slide 7. We delivered approximately 5% earnings growth through the first 9 months of the year. For the quarter, sales revenue increased due to improved product mix from higher sales volume of premium products, which was somewhat offset by the hurricanes and capacity constraints. Operating earnings were unchanged compared to record earnings achieved in the year-ago period. Sequentially, our operating margin expanded 100 basis points to approximately 22%. We are pleased with our third quarter 2017 performance, especially given the tough year-over-year comp.

接下來是分部業績，從投影片 7 上的先進材料開始。今年前 9 個月，我們的獲利成長了約 5%。本季度，銷售收入增加是由於優質產品銷售增加，產品組合改善，但颶風和產能限制在一定程度上抵消了這一影響。與去年同期創下的紀錄收益相比，營業收益並沒有改變。我們的營業利益率連續擴大 100 個基點，達到約 22%。我們對 2017 年第三季的業績感到滿意，尤其是考慮到同比業績的嚴峻形勢。

Overall, these solid results continue Advanced Materials' track record of success and demonstrate the strength of this business in an environment of volatile raw materials and reflects the high-level returns, given the investments that we have made. Our full year outlook has not changed, and we continue to expect strong business performance as Advanced Materials execute its strategy of mid-single-digit volume growth, mix improvement and fixed cost leverage. We continue to deliver compelling proof of our ability to drive growth through innovation even in a slow growth macro environment.

總體而言，這些穩健的業績延續了先進材料的成功記錄，證明了該業務在原材料波動環境中的實力，並反映了我們所做的投資帶來的高水準回報。我們對全年的展望沒有改變，隨著先進材料公司實施其中位數銷售成長、產品組合改善和固定成本槓桿策略，我們繼續期待強勁的業務表現。即使在成長緩慢的宏觀環境下，我們也繼續提供令人信服的證據，證明我們有能力透過創新推動成長。

Now to Additives & Functional Products on Slide 8, which had an outstanding quarter. Sales revenue increased 18% primarily due to higher sales volume throughout the segment. For example, this impressive growth came from multiple sources. Our improved commercial execution and heat transfer fluids led to a number of wins in the solar energy market. And the timing of these orders landed mostly in the third quarter. There was strong growth in animal nutrition, as Mark already discussed, and strong growth in tire additives due to innovation in our tire resins and superior operational reliability.

現在就來看看幻燈片 8 上的添加劑和功能產品，本季表現非常出色。銷售收入成長 18%，主要由於整個部門的銷售量增加。例如，這令人印象深刻的成長來自多個來源。我們改進的商業執行和傳熱流體在太陽能市場取得了許多勝利。而這些訂單的落地時間大多是第三季。正如馬克已經討論過的，動物營養業務實現了強勁增長，而由於輪胎樹脂的創新和卓越的操作可靠性，輪胎添加劑業務也實現了強勁增長。

We also made progress in improving our pricing on the strength of our value proposition to our customers. Operating earnings increased both year-over-year and sequentially primarily due to higher sales volumes. Sequentially, we expanded our operating margin 100 basis points to 21%.

我們也憑藉對客戶的價值主張在改善定價方面取得了進展。由於銷售量增加，營業利潤年比及季均成長。我們的營業利益率連續提高 100 個基點，達到 21%。

Looking at full year 2017. We now expect greater than mid-single-digit sales volume growth, which would be about 3 to 4x end market growth. This volume growth reflects innovation and market development initiatives in this segment, including fluid solar projects, care chemicals and tire resins. And we made great progress in offsetting input cost increases with higher selling prices. All-in, Additives & Functional Products is well positioned to deliver strong earnings growth for the year.

展望2017年全年。我們現在預計銷售量將實現高於中等個位數的成長，這大約是終端市場成長的 3 到 4 倍。這一銷售成長反映了該領域的創新和市場開發舉措，包括流體太陽能專案、護理化學品和輪胎樹脂。我們在透過提高銷售價格來抵銷投入成本增加方面取得了巨大進展。All-in、添加劑和功能產品業務已做好準備，今年實現強勁的獲利成長。

Now to Chemical Intermediates on Slide 9. Sales revenue increased due to higher selling prices attributed to higher raw material prices and continued improvement in competitive conditions. Operating earnings increased primarily due to higher selling prices, lower commodity hedge levels and lower operating costs, partially offset by higher raw material and energy costs.

現在就來看看投影片 9 上的化學中間體。由於原物料價格上漲和競爭條件持續改善導致銷售價格上漲，銷售收入增加。營業利潤的成長主要由於銷售價格上漲、商品對沖水準降低和營運成本降低，但原材料和能源成本的上漲部分抵消了這一成長。

Looking at the full year of '17. Chemical Intermediates team continues to do a good job of recovering from a trough in 2016 as we continue to increase prices to offset higher raw material costs, benefit from lower commodity hedge costs and reduced manufacturing costs, of which Chemical Intermediates receives the largest share. These actions will help to mitigate the anticipated headwind from higher input costs and weakness in ethylene margins during the fourth quarter. Sequentially, we expect a decline in earnings due to normal seasonality, including lower volumes, higher shutdown costs and higher raw material costs.

展望 2017 年全年。化學中間體團隊在2016年繼續表現良好，從低谷中復甦，我們繼續提高價格以抵消原材料成本的上漲，受益於商品對沖成本的降低以及製造成本的降低，其中化學中間體佔據了最大的份額。這些措施將有助於緩解第四季投入成本上升和乙烯利潤率下降帶來的預期阻力。隨後，我們預期收益將因正常的季節性因素而下降，包括產量下降、停工成本上升和原物料成本上升。

I'll finish up the segment review with Fibers on Slide 10. Sales revenue decreased primarily due to lower selling prices, particularly for acetate tow, due to lower industry capacity utilization rates. Additionally, acetate tow sales volume for the third quarter is flat year-over-year as some volume anticipated for fourth quarter was realized in the third quarter due to timing of customer shipments. We continue to make great progress on growing our acetate yarn business with double-digit growth in third quarter. Operating earnings declined due to lower selling prices, partially offset by lower operating costs. Additionally, in the quarter, we benefited from increased intermediates capacity utilization.

我將在第 10 張幻燈片上完成關於 Fibers 的片段回顧。銷售收入下降主要是因為行業產能利用率較低導致銷售價格下降，尤其是醋酸絲束的銷售價格下降。此外，由於客戶出貨時間的原因，醋酸絲束的銷售量在第三季已經實現，因此第三季的銷售量與去年同期持平。我們的醋酸紗業務持續取得巨大進展，第三季實現了兩位數的成長。由於銷售價格下降，營業利潤有所下降，但營業成本下降部分抵銷了這種影響。此外，本季我們受惠於中間體產能利用率的提高。

Looking forward, we continue to expect that acetate tow volume outside of China will be about flat for the full year relative to last year and that earnings for the segment will be down a little more than 25%. As previously discussed, this includes an expectation for second half earnings to be stronger than first half. We are taking all actions within our control to provide stability for this business moving forward and believe we are on track.

展望未來，我們仍預期中國以外地區的醋酸纖維絲束產量將全年與去年持平，而該部門的收益將下降 25% 多一點。如前所述，這包括預期下半年獲利將強於上半年。我們正在採取一切力所能及的行動，為這項業務的未來發展提供穩定性，並相信我們正走在正軌上。

On Slide 11, I'll transition to an overview of our cash flow and other financial highlights. We continue to do an excellent job of generating cash with operating cash flow over $1 billion. Capital expenditures year-to-date totaled $438 million. We now expect our full year capital expenditures to be approximately $600 million, slightly higher than our previous projection. I would note that our strong revenue growth in the second half of the year and the operational incident introduced several variables that will have an impact on free cash flow. Having said that, we are working hard to deliver approximately $1 billion of free cash flow for the year.

在第 11 張投影片上，我將概述我們的現金流量和其他財務亮點。我們繼續出色地完成現金創造工作，營運現金流超過 10 億美元。今年迄今的資本支出總額為 4.38 億美元。我們現在預計全年資本支出約為 6 億美元，略高於我們先前的預測。我想指出的是，我們下半年強勁的收入成長和營運事件引入了幾個將對自由現金流產生影響的變數。話雖如此，我們正在努力實現今年約 10 億美元的自由現金流。

Looking at the balance sheet. We continue to expect to use $350 million of our free cash flow to reduce debt this year, which will mostly occur in the fourth quarter. Additionally, we remain committed to returning cash to stockholders. Through the first 9 months, we returned $498 million through $223 million in dividends and $275 million in share repurchases. Our third quarter effective tax rate was 20%, consistent with our expectation that our full year effective tax rate will also be approximately 20%. As a whole, I'm pleased with our earnings and cash flow performance so far this year.

查看資產負債表。我們仍然預計今年將使用 3.5 億美元的自由現金流來減少債務，這主要將發生在第四季。此外，我們仍致力於向股東返還現金。在前 9 個月，我們透過 2.23 億美元的股息和 2.75 億美元的股票回購返還了 4.98 億美元。我們第三季的有效稅率為 20%，與我們對全年有效稅率約為 20% 的預期一致。總體而言，我對今年迄今的獲利和現金流表現感到滿意。

And with that, I'll turn it back over to Mark.

說完這些，我會把話題交還給馬克。

Thanks, Curt. On Slide 12, I'll discuss our outlook for 2017. We continue to benefit from our specialty businesses, which we expect will deliver mid-single-digit volume growth, which is about 3x the growth rate of the underlying markets. To deliver this, we are leveraging innovation and market development initiatives to drive growth and attract (inaudible). And we're delivering revenue synergies through launching new products and improvements in the commercial business execution capabilities of our acquired businesses.

謝謝，Curt。在第 12 張投影片上，我將討論我們對 2017 年的展望。我們繼續受益於我們的專業業務，我們預計該業務將實現中等個位數的銷售成長，約為基礎市場成長率的 3 倍。為了實現這一目標，我們正在利用創新和市場開發計劃來推動成長和吸引（聽不清楚）。我們透過推出新產品和提高所收購企業的商業業務執行能力來實現收入綜效。

We're also benefiting from our specialty position across the entire mix of AM and AFP. And we are realizing a lot of benefits from the superior reliability we're providing to our customers, especially as competitors in China are being shut down with the Chinese enforcing environmental law. We've also taken action to reduce our cost in a disciplined way, which has allowed us to strategically invest in the long-term growth and further improve our cost structure. And we're benefiting from a reduction in commodity hedge costs.

我們也受益於我們在整個 AM 和 AFP 組合中的專業地位。我們為客戶提供的卓越可靠性為我們帶來了許多好處，尤其是在中國加強環境法以關閉其競爭對手的情況下。我們也採取了有紀律的行動來降低成本，這使我們能夠策略性地投資於長期成長並進一步改善我們的成本結構。我們也受惠於商品對沖成本的降低。

We have improved the quality of our balance sheet, reducing interest costs and have made further progress on optimizing our business structures so that our effective tax rate this year is expected to be slightly lower than last year. Finally, disciplined capital allocation continues to contribute to growth, including decelerating our share repurchase in 2017 compared with '16. All these actions are helping offset the challenges we continue to face, including uncertain global GDP, more-than-normal volatility in raw material prices and ethylene prices and the challenges we face in Fibers.

我們提高了資產負債表的質量，降低了利息成本，並在優化業務結構方面取得了進一步的進展，因此預計今年的有效稅率將略低於去年。最後，嚴格的資本配置持續促進成長，包括與 2016 年相比，2017 年我們的股票回購速度有所減緩。所有這些行動都有助於抵消我們繼續面臨的挑戰，包括不確定的全球 GDP、原材料價格和乙烯價格的超常波動以及我們在纖維領域面臨的挑戰。

Putting this all together, our expectations for 2017 EPS growth have improved. And we are increasing our full year guidance to be solidly at the high end of the 10% to 12% range, excluding the financial impact of the coal gasification incident. And we remain committed to our $1 billion of free cash flow, which is one of the most compelling in the industry, especially when you consider we are investing in long-term growth at the same time.

綜合以上因素，我們對 2017 年每股盈餘成長的預期有所改善。我們將全年業績預期提高至 10% 至 12% 的高端（不包括煤氣化事件的財務影響）。我們仍然致力於實現 10 億美元的自由現金流，這是業內最引人注目的自由現金流之一，尤其是當你考慮到我們同時在投資長期成長時。

Next, on Slide 13. As you know, in early October, we had an operational incident in the coal gasification area of our Kingsport site. First, I want to compliment the extraordinary professionalism and safety-first focus of our operations team. There were no serious injuries and no impact to the environment. This was a significant event and we were very proud of the actions of our team.

接下來，請看投影片 13。如您所知，十月初，我們金斯波特工廠的煤氣化區發生了一起運營事故。首先，我要讚揚我們營運團隊非凡的專業和安全第一的理念。這次事故未造成嚴重人員傷亡，也沒有對環境造成影響。這是一件意義重大的事件，我們為團隊的行為感到非常自豪。

Second, our response to this incident is a superb example of how we both deliver superior reliability for our customers and work to minimize the financial impact that this incident had on earnings. Our teams have worked tirelessly, and we've made excellent progress repairing the facility and implementing alternate processes to maintain operations of downstream derivative facilities of coal gasification. Based on what we know today, we expect the coal gasification area to be operable by the end of the fourth quarter. This, along with our mitigating actions, is expected to enable full production of acetyl chemicals and derivatives. And we expect normal operations of the coal gasification area to resume in early 2018.

其次，我們對此事件的反應是一個極好的例子，說明我們如何既為客戶提供卓越的可靠性，又努力將這一事件對收益的財務影響降至最低。我們的團隊不懈努力，在修復設施和實施替代流程以維持煤氣化下游衍生設施的運作方面取得了出色進展。根據我們目前掌握的信息，我們預計煤氣化區將於第四季末投入營運。預計這項措施與我們的緩解措施將使乙醯化學品及其衍生物的全面生產成為可能。我們預計煤氣化區將於 2018 年初恢復正常運作。

Third, this is an impressive timeline to get back up. And it's due to the significant advantages we have in scale and integration at our Tennessee site, which is one of the largest integrated chemical facilities in the United States. For example, our integrated production systems across the 4 segments are enabling complex choices we've made across the site, which was essential in avoiding a site-wide shut down at the time of the disruption and running all of the operations after it. Our significant scale enables us to have dedicated experts in large-scale fabrication and engineering resources to repair the facility rapidly. These resources are also enabling us to bring online backup capacity at the site and from sources around the world. Our scale in supply chain and procurement is also playing a critical role in sourcing material and balancing the needs with customers.

第三，這是一個令人印象深刻的恢復時間表。這是因為我們在田納西州的工廠在規模和整合方面具有顯著優勢，它是美國最大的綜合化工設施之一。例如，我們涵蓋 4 個部門的整合生產系統使我們能夠在整個站點做出複雜的選擇，這對於避免在發生中斷時整個站點關閉以及在中斷之後運行所有操作至關重要。我們龐大的規模使我們擁有專門從事大型製造和工程資源的專家來快速修復設施。這些資源還使我們能夠在網站和來自世界各地的來源提供線上備份容量。我們的供應鏈和採購規模在採購材料和平衡客戶需求方面也發揮關鍵作用。

We also deeply appreciate the support from skilled colleagues outside of Tennessee and the many contractors who are helping accomplish repairs in 3 months in what might take other companies 12 months. While the company continues to assess the financial impact of this incident, the net impact is expected to reduce operating earnings between $50 million and $100 million with approximately $100 million in costs in the fourth quarter of 2017, partially offset by the insurance recovery expected in the first half of 2018. Regarding how the financial impact will flow across the segments, our acetyls and cellulosic stream is complicated in how it's intertwined across the segments and will take us some time to work through the flows across the segments. Directionally, you should expect impact to be greater in Fibers and CI than in AFP and AM.

我們也非常感謝田納西州以外的技術熟練的同事和許多承包商的支持，他們幫助我們在 3 個月內完成維修，而其他公司可能需要 12 個月。公司仍在評估這起事故的財務影響，預計淨影響將使營業利潤減少 5,000 萬至 1 億美元，2017 年第四季的成本約為 1 億美元，但預計 2018 年上半年的保險賠償將部分抵消這一影響。至於財務影響將如何在各個部門之間流動，我們的乙醯基和纖維素流在各個部門之間交織的方式很複雜，我們需要一些時間來解決各部門之間的流動問題。從方向上看，您應該預期 Fibers 和 CI 的影響會比 AFP 和 AM 更大。

On Slide 14, let me summarize where we are. We have a strong portfolio of specialty businesses from which we expect to deliver approximately 70% of our earnings. We are continuing to create our own growth through accelerating innovation, improving commercial execution across our businesses and improving our product mix. We are committed to using every lever we have in this uncertain environment. And we're returning a very strong free cash flow to stockholders.

在第 14 張投影片上，讓我總結一下我們現在的狀況。我們擁有強大的專業業務組合，預計這些業務將為我們帶來約 70% 的收益。我們將繼續透過加速創新、提高整個業務的商業執行力和改善產品組合來創造自身的成長。我們致力於在這個不確定的環境中利用我們所擁有的一切手段。我們正在向股東返還非常強勁的自由現金流。

I also want to take another moment to say how proud I am of all the Eastman employees. In building a long-term innovation-driven growth company, it is extremely hard to cut cost aggressively at the same time. I deeply appreciate how everyone is driving for cost improvements and fighting for each and every revenue dollar. And if those challenges were not enough, our teams are doing a brilliant job of managing through the significant challenges of the coal gas incident and the hurricanes to keep us on track to deliver compelling top and bottom line growth.

我還想花一點時間來表達我對所有伊士曼員工的自豪。在打造一家長期創新驅動成長的公司時，同時大幅削減成本是極為困難的。我深深感謝大家為改善成本而努力，為每一分收入奮鬥。如果這些挑戰還不夠的話，我們的團隊正在出色地應對煤氣事件和颶風帶來的重大挑戰，以確保我們能夠實現令人矚目的營收和利潤成長。

All of us at Eastman are committed to delivering both short-term earnings growth and building a company that will also deliver growth in the long term. We'll talk more about our outlook for 2018 on our fourth quarter call in January. But I believe it's important now for you to understand why we are confident about delivering strong earnings growth and strong free cash flow in 2018.

伊士曼全體員工都致力於短期獲利成長，並打造一家能夠實現長期成長的公司。我們將在一月份的第四季電話會議上進一步討論對 2018 年的展望。但我認為現在重要的是讓您了解我們為何有信心在 2018 年實現強勁的盈利增長和強勁的自由現金流。

Lastly, this morning, we are announcing that we will host an Investor Day in New York the morning of Tuesday, February 6. During this day, we will discuss how innovation and market development initiatives have contributed to our growth, and as we've been investing in these areas, will continue to do so; how we generate significant organic growth, volume and earnings over the last several years; and then how we have added to this with attractive acquisitions; how integration scale is critical in driving top line growth and superior margins for the company; and then how we expect to continue to add to our EPS growth through allocation of our very strong free cash flow. We'll be sending out the more details shortly. I hope you'll be able to join us.

最後，今天上午，我們宣布將於2月6日星期二上午在紐約舉辦投資者日活動。當天，我們將討論創新和市場開發計劃如何促進我們的成長，以及我們一直在這些領域投資，並將繼續這樣做；我們如何在過去幾年中實現顯著的有機增長、銷量和收益；我們如何通過具有吸引力的收購來進一步提升業績；整合規模如何對推動公司盈利增長和卓越利潤率至關重要；以及我們如何期望通過分配非常強勁的自由現金流來繼續增長每股收益的增長。我們將很快發送更多詳細資訊。我希望你能加入我們。

And with that, I'll turn it back to Greg.

說完這些，我就把話題轉回給格雷格。

Thanks, Mark. We've got a lot of people on the line this morning, and we'd like to get to as many questions as possible. (Operator Instructions) With that, Sylvia, we are ready for questions.

謝謝，馬克。今天早上有很多人在線，我們希望回答盡可能多的問題。（操作員指示）西爾維亞，我們已經準備好回答問題了。

(Operator Instructions) We'll take our first person from the queue, Vincent Andrews from Morgan Stanley.

（操作員指示）我們將從隊列中選取第一位人員，摩根士丹利的 Vincent Andrews。

Mark, as we look into '18, there's a lot of sentiment out there in the broader investment community at least that the macro economy is improving and that underlying markets have some momentum in them going into '18. I recognize your points about the fact that you're growing well in excess of the markets. But I'm just wondering as you look across your various segments, maybe excluding Fibers and CI to a lesser extent, are you seeing underlying trends improve? And do you think -- I know you have macro sort of as a headwind in the slide deck. But do you think we're getting to the point where maybe it's not going to be a headwind anymore?

馬克，當我們展望 2018 年時，我們發現，至少在更廣泛的投資界，許多人認為宏觀經濟正在改善，並且基礎市場在 2018 年具有一定的發展勢頭。我認同你的觀點，你們的成長速度遠超過市場。但我只是想知道，當您縱觀各個細分市場時，也許在較小程度上排除了光纖和 CI，您是否看到潛在趨勢有所改善？您是否認為——我知道您在幻燈片中將宏觀視為一種阻力。但您是否認為我們即將到達一個不再是逆風的階段？

Thanks for the question. Certainly, we're proud of how we're creating our own growth and growing much faster than the underlying markets in our specialty businesses this year. And we would certainly expect to do the same next year. As far as improving macroeconomic conditions, I can't say we're seeing much of that yet. Europe, I would still describe as solid but not exactly exciting growth. Europe is showing some signs of recovery. Asia is growing a bit faster than the rest of the world. And we are seeing some benefits beyond innovation growth, which we've been very focused on, to benefiting from supply disruptions that's given us some additional volume growth, especially as the Chinese have enforced environmental law. It's impacted the competitors that we face there, proving the value of our reliability to our customers. And we're picking up some share as a result of that. But I wouldn't call that macro.

謝謝你的提問。當然，我們為今年我們自身的成長以及我們專業業務的成長速度遠遠超過基礎市場而感到自豪。我們當然希望明年也能這樣做。就宏觀經濟狀況的改善而言，我還不能說我們已經看到了很大進展。我認為歐洲仍將保持穩健的成長，但並不十分令人興奮。歐洲正在出現一些復甦跡象。亞洲的成長速度比世界其他地區略快一些。除了我們一直非常關注的創新成長之外，我們還看到了一些好處，從供應中斷中受益，這給我們帶來了一些額外的銷售成長，特別是在中國實施環境法之後。它影響了我們在那裡面臨的競爭對手，向我們的客戶證明了我們的可靠性的價值。因此，我們的市佔率有所提升。但我不會將其稱為宏。

Okay. And then just a question in AM -- or I noticed you've got 3% price in AFP and then price was flat in AM. Is there a reason why you do better on pricing in one of the segments versus the other?

好的。然後只是上午的一個問題 - 或者我注意到你在 AFP 上有 3% 的價格，然後上午的價格保持不變。你們在某個細分市場的定價比其他細分市場的定價更好，這有什麼原因嗎？

So first of all, the raw material dynamics are quite different in the 2 different segments. And the strategies are also a little bit different. So in AFP, you've seen a much bigger increase in raw materials that go into that segment. And the pricing has been more aggressive in covering those increases. So that's part of the dynamic, where the raw materials have been more flattish with just a slight increase in AM. So we feel good about the pricing that we're getting in AFP. We feel that we're making good progress in covering our raw material costs. We're extremely excited about the volume growth that we saw in that segment in the third quarter, building to a strong second half of the year as we had forecasted earlier in the year. And 180 basis points of margin improvement sequentially there is testament about how we're driving the business forward. In AM, we had 100 basis point improvement in margins as we went sequentially from second to third quarter. So we feel good about how we're managing our margins. You have to remember that the interlayer business has annual contracts. There's no pricing changes in that business once you set those contracts in place from last fall. And so we are getting some price-up in the copoly business as we would expect with the market and making some other choices in some other businesses. So overall, we feel good about it. It's on track.

首先，兩個不同領域的原材料動態有很大不同。而且策略也有些不同。因此，在 AFP，您會看到用於該領域的原物料價格大幅成長。為了彌補這些成長，定價也變得更加激進。因此，這是動態的一部分，其中原材料更加平穩，而 AM 僅略有增加。因此，我們對 AFP 的定價感到滿意。我們感覺我們在覆蓋原材料成本方面取得了良好的進展。我們對第三季該領域的銷售成長感到非常興奮，正如我們今年稍早預測的那樣，下半年將表現強勁。利潤率連續 180 個基點提高，證明了我們如何推動業務向前發展。在 AM 領域，從第二季到第三季度，我們的利潤率連續提高了 100 個基點。因此，我們對我們的利潤管理方式感到滿意。你要記住，夾層業務是有年度合約的。一旦從去年秋季開始簽訂這些合同，該業務的定價就不會改變。因此，正如我們預期的市場情況一樣，我們在共聚業務上實現了價格上漲，並在其他一些業務上做出了其他選擇。總體而言，我們對此感覺良好。一切進展順利。

And now we'll take our next person from the queue, Bob Koort from Goldman Sachs.

現在我們請下一位發言者，來自高盛的鮑伯‧庫爾特 (Bob Koort)。

This is Gavin on for Bob. And I was wondering if you could drill down a little deeper on the point for Chinese production curtailment and the view of the sustainability of that trend. And then for the follow-up, can you give us any more color on the expectation for the propane hedge to roll off in 2018, if you can quantify that?

我是加文 (Gavin)，代替鮑伯 (Bob)。我想知道您是否可以更深入地探討中國減產的問題以及這一趨勢的可持續性。然後接下來，您能否給我們更多關於 2018 年丙烷對沖預期的信息，如果您可以量化的話？

So on the Chinese front, the Chinese government has had environmental laws in the books for a long time. And we're very encouraged to see that they're enforcing these laws and improving the quality of operations in China for the benefit of the environment of China and the planet as well as creating a more level competitive playing field. And so there's a number of companies that are not in chemical parks, who are facing stricter enforcement. And they have the choice to either shut down in many cases or move to a chemical park. So as we're seeing it, a number of places, companies are sort of being curtailed in production or being totally shut down, some of which will move to a chemical park at some point, some may not. There's no way to predict that. But we certainly see this benefit continuing into 2018 as it's played out so far this year.

就中國而言，中國政府早已製定了環境法。我們非常高興地看到，他們正在執行這些法律，提高在中國的營運質量，以造福中國和地球的環境，並創造更公平的競爭環境。因此，許多不在化工園區的公司也面臨更嚴格的執法。在很多情況下，他們可以選擇關閉或遷往化工園區。因此，正如我們所看到的，許多地方的公司都在削減產量或完全關閉，其中一些公司將在某個時候遷入化工園區，而有些則可能不會。沒有辦法預測這一點。但我們肯定會看到這種好處會持續到 2018 年，因為今年到目前為止它已經顯現出來了。

This is Curt. On the hedge, let me just cover '17 and we'll talk about '18 impact. Year-to-date, the benefit of the commodity hedges rolling off is about $90 million year-over-year. That was $30 million in the third quarter. Now keep in mind, that benefit is still being offset by a lower commodity -- lower currency hedges. And that was roughly year-to-date, $20 million. So if propane stays where it is today, the impact for 2017 over '16 will probably in that $0.50 to $0.60 range. But the offset in impact of lower currency hedges is also a little different. And that's probably now more like $0.15 to $0.20. So the net impact is going to be roughly $0.40 to $0.45 on a year-over-year basis, pretty similar to what we've talked before. As you go into 2018, if propane and the euro kind of stay where they are today, the impact of hedging is no longer going to be a material part of our story going into 2018, when you're analyzing our year-over-year operating results.

這是 Curt。在對沖方面，我先介紹一下 2017 年的情況，然後再討論 2018 年的影響。今年迄今，商品對沖收益較去年同期增加約 9,000 萬美元。第三季為 3 千萬美元。現在請記住，這種好處仍然被較低的商品價格——較低的貨幣對沖所抵消。今年迄今為止，這一數字約為 2,000 萬美元。因此，如果丙烷價格維持在目前的水平，那麼 2017 年對 20​​16 年的影響可能就在 0.50 美元到 0.60 美元的範圍內。但較低貨幣對沖的影響的抵銷也略有不同。現在可能更像是 0.15 美元到 0.20 美元。因此，淨影響將比去年同期增加約 0.40 美元到 0.45 美元，與我們之前討論的非常相似。進入 2018 年，如果丙烷和歐元保持目前的水平，那麼在分析我們的同比經營業績時，對沖的影響將不再是我們 2018 年業績的重要組成部分。

And now we'll take our next person from the queue, P.J. Juvekar from Citi.

現在我們將從隊列中選出下一位發言者，來自花旗銀行的 P.J. Juvekar。

This is Eric Petrie on for P.J. In Advanced Materials, you talked about strong double-digit growth in performance films. What other volume trends are you seeing in specialty plastics and interlayers as overall growth slowed to 1%?

我是 Eric Petrie，為您在《先進材料》雜誌的 P.J. 節目中介紹性能薄膜的強勁兩位數增長。當整體成長放緩至 1% 時，您在特殊塑膠和夾層方面還看到了哪些其他銷售趨勢？

So we continue to see strong volume growth in our premium products. So in acoustics and heads-up display interlayers, we're also seeing double-digit growth. The Tritan growth is still solid but constrained a little bit by capacity constraints. That's why we're building this new Tritan expansion is to position ourselves for growth. And last year was an incredibly strong quarter in Tritan for a year-over-year comp. So overall, we see the things that have been driving the mix upgrade and the growth in this segment continuing. We saw some slower growth in some of our traditional copolyesters, which is of no concern. We see it improving as we go into the fourth quarter. And we also took an impact on some of our sales in performance films in Florida and Texas, where the hurricanes had an impact. And those are our 2 largest states in the U.S. for these auto film sales. So overall, we feel great about the quarter and the improvement in the earnings. And we feel very much on track for strong year-over-year earnings growth in the fourth quarter.

因此，我們的優質產品銷售量持續強勁成長。因此，在聲學和平視顯示器夾層領域，我們也看到了兩位數的成長。Tritan 的成長依然穩健，但受到產能限制的一點限制。這就是我們建造新的 Tritan 擴建項目的原因，旨在為增長做好準備。與去年同期相比，Tritan 去年一個季度的業績表現異常強勁。因此，總體而言，我們看到推動該領域產品組合升級和成長的因素仍在持續。我們發現一些傳統共聚酯的成長速度有所放緩，但這並不令人擔憂。隨著進入第四季度，我們看到情況有所改善。颶風也對我們在佛羅裡達州和德克薩斯州的部分錶演電影的銷售產生了影響。這兩個州是美國汽車膜銷售量最大的兩個州。因此總體而言，我們對本季和獲利的成長感到非常滿意。我們非常有信心，第四季的獲利將實現強勁的年成長。

Okay. And as a follow-up, in AFP, you still have volumes up strongly, 14%. Is that sustainable going forward? Or did you see some customers building inventories? And then any outliers in terms of product line, like coatings or adhesive resins?

好的。並且作為後續報道，在法新社，交易量仍強勁成長，達到 14%。這種發展趨勢可持續嗎？或者您看到一些客戶正在建立庫存？那麼產品線方面是否有異常值，例如塗料或黏合劑樹脂？

Sure. So we're very excited about the very strong 14% volume growth in the quarter. And it really came through a number of factors. First of all, we are seeing good, strong volume growth across the segments. I wouldn't call it inventory building at all. It's just good, strong growth. There are a few areas where we had exceptionally high growth. As Curt mentioned, we had a number of wins in the solar fills. So these are projects you win 2 to 3 years ago in the engineering and construction phase of the big solar concentrating facility. And when they finally bring the facility online, you get a big order to fill that plant with the heat transfer fluid. And it's a little hard call the timing of those fills. And we thought it would be spread more between third and fourth quarter. And a lot of that really came into the third quarter. So that's part of the story. Another part of the story is just great commercial execution in revenue synergy with Taminco, combining our products with their products, improving the commercial team there, really driving hard for results and seeing very strong growth in animal nutrition. And I'd also mention personal care as well has benefited from those activities. And the third is tire resins, where innovation is driving a lot of growth with our customers. And this environmental enforcement in China has also benefited us in some share relative to competitors there. So those 3 were big drivers. We still expect good -- pretty strong volume growth year-over-year in the fourth quarter. As we go to '18, a number of those drivers will moderate that were driving a lot of this exceptional growth. But we still see a way to deliver mid-single-digit volume growth next year as we sort of concentrate and consolidate some of these wins we have this year.

當然。因此，我們對本季 14% 的強勁銷售成長感到非常興奮。這確實是由多種因素造成的。首先，我們看到各個細分市場的銷售量都呈現良好、強勁的成長動能。我根本不會稱之為庫存建設。這只是良好、強勁的成長。在某些領域，我們的成長速度異常快。正如 Curt 所提到的，我們在太陽能填充方面取得了許多勝利。所以這些是你在2到3年前在大型太陽能聚光設施的工程和建設階段贏得的項目。當他們最終將設施投入使用時，您會收到一份大訂單，要求向該工廠注入傳熱流體。並且很難確定這些填充的時間。我們認為它會在第三季和第四季之間進一步蔓延。其中很多確實發生在第三季。這就是故事的一部分。故事的另一部分是與 Taminco 實現收入協同的出色商業執行，將我們的產品與他們的產品相結合，改善那裡的商業團隊，真正努力推動成果並實現動物營養的強勁增長。我還要提到個人護理也受益於這些活動。第三是輪胎樹脂，該領域的創新正在推動我們的客戶實現巨大的成長。而且，中國的環境執法也使我們相對於那裡的競爭對手受益不少。所以這三者是重要的驅動因素。我們仍然預計第四季度銷量將同比大幅增長。隨著我們進入2018年，推動這一異常增長的許多驅動因素將會減弱。但我們仍然看到了明年實現中等個位數銷售成長的可能性，因為我們集中精力並鞏固了今年取得的一些勝利。

And now we'll take our next person from the queue, Alex Yefremov from Nomura Instinet.

現在我們將從隊列中選出下一位發言者，來自 Nomura Instinet 的 Alex Yefremov。

Curt, the guidance says that you're now currently solidly at the high end of the range at about 12%. Does this leave room to exceed that high end? Is this a fair read that you feel fairly optimistic that it could be above the high end?

科特，指引指出，目前您的收益率穩居該範圍的高端，約為 12%。這是否還有超越高端的空間？這是一個合理的解讀嗎？您是否對它能夠超越高端感到相當樂觀？

No, when we used solidly, that's on purpose. And we think we're solidly at that high end of that range for 2017. And that's kind of what we're expecting. And recall, that's before the impact of the operational incident.

不，當我們使用 solidly 時，那是故意的。我們認為，2017 年我們的業績將穩居該範圍的高端。這正是我們所期待的。回想一下，那是在營運事故影響之前。

And one thing I'll note is we'll do our best now as well as in the fourth quarter call to make sure you understand how we've delivered attractive earnings growth consistent with our guidance pre-event and then what the event caused. So you can really see the strength of what we're doing net of this sort of onetime event.

我要指出的一點是，我們現在以及在第四季度電話會議上都會盡最大努力，確保你們了解我們如何實現了與事件前指導一致的有吸引力的盈利增長，以及該事件造成的後果。因此，你確實可以看到，透過這種一次性活動，我們所做的事情的力量。

And I guess as a follow-up to this, could you help us build the bridge from third quarter to the fourth quarter? What are the biggest sort of areas where things are decelerating in terms of margin or volume or maybe some are improving?

我想作為後續問題，您能幫助我們搭建從第三季到第四季的橋樑嗎？就利潤率或銷量而言，哪些領域下降最快，或哪些領域有所改善？

Yes, first of all, I want to emphasize that we just raised our guidance, that we're feeling better on the full year basis. Obviously, we had an extraordinary third quarter and we still expect a very good fourth quarter. When you think about third to fourth quarter sequentially, there's always normal seasonality, where volumes drop off across most of our businesses. That happens every year. So there's that, that you should all have in your forecast as normal. As we look at the dynamics across the 4 segments, we expect earnings growth in 3 of the 4 segments. And we expect strong earnings growth in AM and AFP with Fibers having a sort of meaningful drop from third quarter to fourth quarter. As Curt mentioned in our prepared remarks, the Fibers business is a bit chunky in how customer orders can come in sometimes. We also had some exceptionally high asset utilization in the third quarter on our acetyls that benefited Fibers that won't repeat in the fourth quarter. And so when you see that come off, you should really be thinking about Fibers on a second half basis for the quality of the earnings of this business, which is going to be better than the first half, and a testament to an improvement and stabilization of this business. So overall, I think when you do that math, you can sort of walk through how the quarter comes out. But strong growth year-over-year in volumes for AM and AFP is expected in the fourth quarter. Chemical Intermediates will come off, as Curt noted in his remarks, and still being better year-over-year.

是的，首先，我想強調的是，我們剛剛提高了我們的預期，從全年來看，我們感覺更好了。顯然，我們度過了一個非凡的第三季度，我們仍然期待一個非常好的第四季。當你連續考慮第三季到第四季時，總是會出現正常的季節性，我們大多數的業務的銷售量都會下降。每年都會發生這樣的事。因此，這就是你們在正常預測中應該看到的內容。當我們觀察這四個細分市場的動態時，我們預期其中三個細分市場的獲利將會成長。我們預計 AM 和 AFP 的獲利將強勁成長，而 Fibers 的獲利將從第三季到第四季大幅下降。正如 Curt 在我們準備好的發言中提到的那樣，纖維業務​​在客戶訂單的獲取方面有時會有些不平衡。我們在第三季對乙醯基的資產利用率也非常高，這對纖維業務有利，但第四季不會重複這種情況。因此，當您看到這種情況發生時，您真的應該考慮 Fibers 下半年的盈利質量，它將比上半年更好，並證明該業務的改善和穩定。所以總的來說，我認為當你做這個計算時，你就可以大致了解這個季度的結果。但預計第四季 AM 和 AFP 的銷量將較去年同期強勁成長。正如 Curt 在評論中指出的那樣，化學中間體將會出現成長，並且比去年同比會更好。

And now we'll take our next person from the queue, Laurence Alexander from Jefferies.

現在我們將從隊列中選出下一位發言者，來自 Jefferies 的 Laurence Alexander。

This is Dan Rizzo on for Laurence. You mentioned some different new products, like Tetrashield in animal nutrition segment, doing well and growing at double digits. I was wondering if you could quantify what that means in terms of revenue. Is it very meaningfully yet? Or is it still kind of in the early stages?

丹·里佐 (Dan Rizzo) 代替勞倫斯。您提到了一些不同的新產品，例如動物營養領域的 Tetrashield，表現良好並且實現了兩位數的成長。我想知道您是否可以量化這對收入意味著什麼。是不是非常有意義呢？或者它仍處於早期階段？

Well, Tetrashield is in the early stages. It's a great story of how we take complex technologies. Tritan and Tetrashield are an integration of polyester acetyl and olefin chemistry to create a very unique product (inaudible) Tritan. And it turns out incredible performance in the coatings market relative to what's available out there. We've talked a lot about automotive, where we've already had some wins and building some momentum, but it's still at low volumes. The can packaging area is just going commercial, as I mentioned. It has the ability to have much faster volume growth rate, given the pressures for getting BPA coatings out of the cans. And we believe our solution with Tetrashield is superior to all the other non-BPA solutions in the market. So we could actually see some meaningful growth over the next couple of years. But it takes a while to get spec-ed in and build that volume growth.

嗯，Tetrashield 還處於早期階段。這是一個關於我們如何運用複雜科技的精彩故事。Tritan 和 Tetrashield 是聚酯乙醯和烯烴化學的結合，創造出一個非常獨特的產品（聽不清楚）Tritan。與市場上現有的產品相比，它在塗料市場上的表現令人難以置信。我們已經談論了很多關於汽車領域的事情，在這個領域我們已經取得了一些勝利並積累了一些發展勢頭，但銷量仍然很低。正如我所提到的，罐頭包裝領域正在走向商業化。考慮到從罐頭中去除 BPA 塗層的壓力，它能夠實現更快的體積增長率。我們相信，我們採用 Tetrashield 的解決方案優於市場上所有其他非 BPA 解決方案。因此，我們實際上可以在未來幾年看到一些有意義的成長。但實現規格化並實現產量成長需要一段時間。

And if I could add, these are just components across all the different innovation programs that are contributing to our new business closes. And that's why we think we're going to be adding 2% to our company revenue off these innovation programs. And I can tell you I'm excited about us telling that story on February 6.

而我可以補充的是，這些只是有助於我們新業務完成的所有不同創新計劃的組成部分。這就是為什麼我們認為這些創新項目將為我們的公司增加 2% 的收入。我可以告訴你們，我很高興我們能在 2 月 6 日講述這個故事。

And then just in terms of the (inaudible) with innovation, I think in the past, we've talked about just different uses for fiber or acetate tow and innovation there. I was just wondering if you could provide color on where we are with that kind of program or process.

然後就（聽不清楚）創新而言，我想在過去，我們討論過纖維或醋酸絲束的不同用途及其創新。我只是想知道您是否可以介紹一下我們在這種計劃或流程方面的情況。

Yes, great progress on that front as well. We're already seeing strong growth in our acetate yarn business with double-digit growth this year versus last year. Our latest acetate yarn, Naia, which is an improved version of what we've had in the market for a while, is getting great interest. We're getting commercial orders and very excited about the momentum we're building in that space. And those are -- that business has had decent margins. We also are making some great progress in a few other applications that we're very close to getting the commercial orders on and should have them done by Investor Day. And we'll tell you more about those applications when we get there. But I think we're making great progress on filling the assets. And I would note that this is a great example of the strength of our diversity and scale. With the great specialty capability we have in application development and the fundamental work we're always doing in cellulosics in AM and AFP, we're able to shift those resources onto this project a couple of years ago, 3 years ago, I guess now, with a priority to sort of find new applications, accelerate growth. And it's just amazing to see the progress and a real testament to the strength of having a diverse portfolio.

是的，這方面也取得了很大進展。我們的醋酸纖維紗線業務已經呈現強勁成長勢頭，與去年相比，今年實現了兩位數的成長。我們最新的醋酸纖維紗線 Naia 是我們之前在市場上推出的產品的改進版，引起了人們的極大興趣。我們正在獲得商業訂單，並且對我們在該領域建立的勢頭感到非常興奮。這些都是——該業務擁有可觀的利潤率。我們還在其他一些應用程式上取得了一些重大進展，我們非常接近獲得商業訂單，並且應該在投資者日之前完成。當我們到達那裡時，我們會告訴您有關這些應用程式的更多資訊。但我認為我們在填補資產方面取得了巨大進展。我想指出，這是我們多元化和規模優勢的一個很好的例子。憑藉我們在應用開發方面的強大專業能力以及我們在 AM 和 AFP 纖維素領域一直從事的基​​礎工作，我們能夠在幾年前、三年前（我想現在）將這些資源轉移到這個項目上，優先考慮尋找新的應用，加速增長。看到這樣的進步真是令人驚嘆，這真正證明了多元化投資組合的實力。

And now we'll take our next person from the queue, Jeff Zekauskas from JPMorgan.

現在我們請下一位發言者，他是摩根大通的 Jeff Zekauskas。

I'm interested in how you calculate the $50 million to $100 million hit from the coal gasification incident. Is it the case that this is a nonrecurring item for management compensation? Or is it a recurring item? And so if it's a recurring item, are there reversals of management compensation in the fourth quarter that have to do with your actual earnings being diminished? How much is maintenance cost? Is all of this factored in? And are there extra capital costs outside of the $50 million to $100 million that you're speaking of?

我感興趣的是您如何計算煤氣化事件造成的 5000 萬至 1 億美元的損失。這是否是管理階層薪酬的非經常性項目？或者它是一個重複項目？那麼，如果這是經常性項目，第四季度的管理薪酬逆轉是否與實際收益減少有關？維護費用是多少？所有這些都考慮進去了嗎？除了您所說的 5,000 萬到 1 億美元之外，還有其他資本成本嗎？

So Jeff, there's a variety of questions in there, but let me try to address them as best I can. First of all, when we think about the nature of the operating cost, you need to really think about this kind of 3 areas of impact. First is just higher operating costs being offset by our business interruption insurance. So we do anticipate higher operating costs, which is due to a lower utilization rate, higher raw material costs, et cetera. And we'll be working with our insurance partner. But these costs should be generally covered with our business interruption policy after we meet our $75 million deductible. The second bucket of cost is the cost to repair and replace the damaged property, plant and equipment, which is going to be also we'll be working with our insurance partner but should be generally covered by our property insurance after a $5 million deductible. And then finally, in the quarter, fourth quarter, we have to be mindful of some accounting nuances that could be triggered because of this event and some of the impact of utilization rates and reduction of inventories. And so as an example, and I kind of kid myself, I actually say this, but we might have a LIFO decrement because of this event. And that may result in a charge in the fourth quarter. So again, when we put all these various complexities together from a timing standpoint, we're still analyzing what's going to get hung up on the balance sheet, what flows to the income statement, et cetera. But our best estimate right now is that we'll have roughly $100 million cost impact on the fourth quarter. And then that we'll see that partially offset with an insurance recovery in 2008 -- 2018, sorry. And when I think about 2018, I know it will probably be a net positive insurance recovery over a cost. It's just hard to say whether that will be a material number or not as we look at it.

傑夫，這裡面有各種各樣的問題，但讓我盡我所能來解答它們。首先，當我們思考營運成本的本質時，您需要真正考慮這 3 個影響領域。首先，我們的業務中斷保險可以抵銷更高的營運成本。因此，我們確實預期營運成本會增加，這是由於利用率較低、原材料成本較高等原因造成的。我們將與我們的保險合作夥伴合作。但在我們達到 7500 萬美元的免賠額後，這些費用通常應該由我們的業務中斷保險承擔。第二部分成本是修復和更換受損財產、廠房和設備的成本，這也將由我們與保險合作夥伴共同承擔，但在扣除 500 萬美元的免賠額後，一般應由我們的財產保險承擔。最後，在第四季度，我們必須注意由於這一事件可能引發的一些會計細微差別以及利用率和庫存減少的一些影響。舉個例子，我有點自欺欺人，我實際上是這麼說的，但是由於這個事件，我們可能會出現後進先出法的減少。這可能會導致第四季度產生費用。因此，當我們從時間角度將所有這些複雜因素放在一起時，我們仍然在分析哪些內容會出現在資產負債表上，哪些內容會流入損益表，等等。但我們目前的最佳估計是，第四季的成本影響約為 1 億美元。然後，我們將看到，2008 年至 2018 年的保險復甦將部分抵消這一影響，抱歉。當我想到 2018 年時，我知道保險淨收益很可能超過成本。只是從我們的角度來看，很難說這是否是一個實質的數字。

Jeff, when it comes to impact on compensation, as a management team, we'll take the hit for these costs. It will be included in our calculations. The thing I would like to focus though and just go back to sort of the story of this event, it's obviously very serious. We take it very seriously and we're going to learn from it. But I'm just incredibly proud about how the teams have come together to sort of bring this plant back up in an incredibly short time frame and make sure that our customers are being protected as best as we possibly can through all this, where we're going to have a very limited sales impact. When I talked about complex collaboration across the 4 segments, I just want to share a few examples around sort of what we've been doing. The choices that we have to make are incredibly complicated. You can imagine the Atlanta air traffic control systems managing all the needs of all the different airlines. We're making a complex set of choices daily on how to balance production and steam and power across 80 operating units that are associate acetyls at our Tennessee site out of the 120 units we have at the site. And normal times we run this site, greater than 95% utilization. There's just no room for error. And when you have a massive disruption at the front of the system, like a massive storm, you need incredible collaboration. And unlike the airlines, fortunately, we're not canceling flights downstream for coal gas operations. It's just a true testament of how we run a complex integrated site. And when we talk about scale and expertise and engineering and construction, I wanted to also highlight a couple of examples. At this site, we have such scale we can afford to have a state-of-the-art large fabrication facility. It's what we call the big shop. We lost a pipe bridge in this explosion. And we've built on-site and commissioned a replacement of it, has over a 5-mile -- 1 mile of pipe in 5 days, which is just incredible. We had drones flying in the damaged facility the day after the incident, identifying the damaged equipment. And within 2 days of the event, we were fabricating in the big shop replacement parts. And we couldn't even get into the building for another 1.5 weeks. So on top of it moving quickly, we have over 500 employees and contractors working on repairing the facility. It looks like an ant hill over there. And we can only do that because of the scale of our site, with the flex we can do with our resources. We have busloads of mechanics even driving up from Texas, pitching in to help on this situation. Other companies just couldn't do this. They'd have to go to outside engineering support or other people's fabrication shops, unless they had our scale. The bottom line, the point of all of this is we review reliability as exceptionally important for our customers, where we're someone we can always count on. And in addition to all these repairs, we have backup facilities in anhydride, where we're bringing those up in record time. We set new production records on our largest anhydride site at 20% above historical performance and brought that site from what was already operating at a low level to running 360% faster in 2 weeks. So great set of examples, I could go on for another hour and I'm going to cut myself off. But we do take this seriously. We're not happy about it. But I'm really proud of what we've done. And it's a real testament to the value, scale and integration.

傑夫，說到對薪資的影響，作為管理團隊，我們將承擔這些成本的打擊。它將被納入我們的計算中。我想重點談談這次事件的故事，它顯然非常嚴重。我們對此非常重視，並將從中學習。但我感到非常自豪的是，團隊齊心協力，在極短的時間內恢復了工廠的生產，並確保我們的客戶在這次事故中得到盡可能好的保護，而這次事故對銷售的影響將非常有限。當我談到四個部門之間的複雜合作時，我只想分享一些我們一直在做的事情的例子。我們必須做出的選擇極為複雜。你可以想像亞特蘭大空中交通管制系統管理著所有不同航空公司的需求。我們每天都要做出一系列複雜的選擇，如何平衡田納西工廠 120 個乙醯基相關運作裝置的 80 個運作裝置的生產、蒸汽和電力。我們正常運作這個站點的時候，利用率超過 95%。根本沒有任何出錯的餘地。當系統前端出現大規模中斷（例如大風暴）時，您需要高度協作。幸運的是，與航空公司不同的是，我們不會取消下游瓦斯作業的航班。這只是我們如何運行複雜綜合站點的真實證明。當我們談論規模、專業知識、工程和建築時，我還想強調幾個例子。在這個工廠，我們的規模足夠大，可以建造最先進的大型製造設施。這就是我們所說的大商店。我們在這次爆炸中失去了一座管橋。我們在現場建造並委託更換了管道，在 5 天內鋪設了超過 5 英里（1 英里）長的管道，這真是令人難以置信。事件發生後的第二天，我們派遣無人機飛入受損設施，辨識受損的設備。活動結束後的兩天內，我們就在大型車間製造替換零件。我們甚至還要等待一個半星期才能進入大樓。因此，除了快速行動之外，我們還有超過 500 名員工和承包商致力於修復設施。那邊看起來就像一個蟻丘。我們之所以能做到這一點，是因為我們站點的規模以及我們能夠靈活利用的資源。我們甚至派出大批機械師從德州趕來，幫助解決這個問題。其他公司根本做不到這一點。除非他們擁有我們的規模，否則他們必須尋求外部工程支援或其他人的製造車間。歸根結底，所有這一切的重點是，我們認為可靠性對我們的客戶來說極為重要，我們是我們可以永遠信賴的人。除了這些維修之外，我們在酸酐廠還有備用設施，我們可以在創紀錄的時間內將這些設施恢復運作。我們最大的酸酐工廠創造了新的生產記錄，比歷史性能高出 20%，並且該工廠的運行速度在 2 週內從原來的低水平提升到了 360%。如此棒的例子，我還可以繼續講一個小時，然後就此打住。但我們確實非常重視這一點。我們對此很不高興。但我對我們所做的一切感到非常自豪。這真正證明了其價值、規模和整合。

Okay. So it sounds like that free cash flow then for the year will be somewhere between $900 million and $1 billion, depending on the cost of all of this. It also sounds like that when you start 2018, you're not going to be fully up and running. That is there will be some penalty in the first quarter. And I want to know if those are true. And can you say what actually happened? What caused the explosion?

好的。因此聽起來，今年的自由現金流將在 9 億美元至 10 億美元之間，具體取決於所有這些的成本。這聽起來就像當你開始 2018 年時，你不會完全啟動並運行。也就是說第一節會有一些懲罰。我想知道這些是否屬實。你能說出究竟發生了什麼事嗎？爆炸原因是什麼？

So let me talk about the cash flows, Jeff. Still a lot of moving parts, so it's tough to call the exact timing of cash flows at this point on the operational incident. But for fourth quarter, we are assuming to be -- that it will be somewhat neutral as the cash impact of higher operating costs is being offset by further declines in the inventory beyond what we normally do. So again, while there's these various moving parts, we're working hard to still deliver $1 billion in free cash flow. And I think it will be more towards that $1 billion quite honestly, Jeff, than that $900 million you threw out there. And even if we were going to need to rebuild that inventory in 2018, I'm also confident we're going to grow free cash flow in 2018, given the quality of our portfolio and the discipline of our cash by the Eastman team. On first quarter, again it's hard to predict the earnings impact again of some cost that will continue in '18 versus the insurance recovery. But when I look at it today, it still will be -- the insurance recovery will exceed the additional operating cost that we still may have lingering into next year in that first half of the year. So I still see this as a net positive impact on '18 versus the negative impact you're seeing in the fourth quarter.

那麼，傑夫，讓我來談談現金流。由於仍有許多活動部件，因此目前很難確定營運事件中現金流的確切時間。但對於第四季度，我們假設它會有些中性，因為更高的營運成本對現金的影響被庫存進一步下降（超出我們通常的水平）所抵消。因此，儘管有這些不同的活動部件，我們仍在努力實現 10 億美元的自由現金流。傑夫，說實話，我認為我們更應該關注的是那 10 億美元，而不是你扔出來的 9 億美元。即使我們需要在 2018 年重建庫存，考慮到我們投資組合的品質和伊士曼團隊對現金的紀律，我也相信我們將在 2018 年增加自由現金流。在第一季度，我們仍然很難預測 2018 年一些成本將持續對保險復甦的獲利影響。但當我今天看它時，它仍然會 - 保險恢復將超過我們可能在明年上半年仍會持續的額外運營成本。因此，我仍然認為這對 2018 年產生了淨正面影響，而不是第四季所看到的負面影響。

Yes, two things I want to emphasize on this question, Jeff, is, one, we are going to extraordinary efforts in preventing any disruption to customers downstream at the coal gasification operation. So with the backup facilities I have, with the resources of alternative raw materials we can access around the planet, we brought those assets back up and operating, combined with the inventory we had in hand to make sure we're serving all of our customers from the event through the fourth quarter and into next year. So the sales disruption is going to be primarily related to acetyls, which is a very small percentage of our revenue inside CI. So that's point one. Point two is we're still in the process of investigating and understanding the incident and what caused it and how we make sure it doesn't happen again. So we're not going to comment on that at this point. But you can rest assured that we're doing that.

是的，傑夫，在這個問題上我想強調兩點：第一，我們將盡最大努力防止煤氣化作業下游客戶受到任何干擾。因此，利用我擁有的備用設施以及我們可以在全球範圍內獲取的替代原材料資源，我們恢復了這些資產並開始運營，再加上我們手頭的庫存，以確保從活動開始到第四季度乃至明年，我們都能為所有客戶提供服務。因此，銷售中斷主要與乙醯基有關，這只占我們 CI 內部收入的一小部分。這是第一點。第二點是我們仍在調查和了解事件及其原因，以及如何確保此類事件不再發生。因此我們目前不打算對此發表評論。但您可以放心，我們正在這樣做。

And now we'll next take our next person from the queue, Frank Mitsch from Wells Fargo Securities.

現在我們接下來請出下一位發言者，富國證券公司的弗蘭克‧米奇 (Frank Mitsch)。

Curt, when you mentioned -- when you were asked the question about solidly at the high end of the 10% to 12%, obviously in my opinion, you're not going to use that comment with it. To me, that was a euphemism that you're going to need to meet or exceed that 12%. But regardless, you're going to be down about $50 million to $100 million because of Kingsport, which begs the question, Mark, you said during the call that you expect strong EPS growth in 2018. And given the fact that you're going to be negatively impacted by $50 million to $100 million in Q4, which will retard the actual EPS growth in 2017, what basis were you using that strong EPS growth, off of the basis of let's pretend Kingsport didn't happen and that 12%, you'd be comping strong EPS growth off of a 12%-plus EPS growth or a lower level? I was just trying to understand that.

科特，當你提到——當你被問到關於 10% 到 12% 的高位穩定增長的問題時，顯然在我看來，你不會用這個評論。對我來說，這是一種委婉的說法，即你需要達到或超過 12%。但無論如何，由於金斯波特的原因，你的損失將達到 5000 萬到 1 億美元，這就引出了一個問題，馬克，你在電話會議上說過，你預計 2018 年每股收益將強勁增長。鑑於你們將在第四季度受到 5000 萬至 1 億美元的負面影響，這將抑制 2017 年的實際每股收益增長，那麼，在假設金斯波特事件沒有發生的情況下，你們是基於什麼得出強勁的每股收益增長的呢？ 12% 以上的每股盈餘成長還是更低的水平？我只是想理解這一點。

Yes, Frank, that goes back to a comment I made a moment ago. We want to make sure we're really clear about the strength and value we're creating in earnings growth and cash flow this year as well as how we're building on that for next year. So my outlook comments are pre-event. So like you just noted, our guidance suggests around 12% growth this year. And our earnings growth being strong is on top of that number. It is not taking the event as a special benefit to get to that number. So we're still on track as we look at next year. And consistent with the outlooks we've had in the past, nothing has changed about delivering that 8% to 12% growth in what we've been talking about for the year. It comes from strong growth in the specialties, sort of continuing to have that mid-single-digit growth rate in volume sort of 2x the underlying markets, mix upgrade within it driving a lot of growth. Next year, we expect Fibers to be stable to this year. So not having that headwind, maybe we'll have a little upside in Fibers with all the new application growth that we're pursuing. As always, we're going to continue to manage costs aggressively and continue to be focused on capital allocation for our shareholders, so continuing and increasing dividend and share repurchase. That should accelerate as we go into next year, so all our good drivers for growth pre-event on top of what we do this year. They will be offset by some higher costs. We have a very large shutdown coming in Texas next year. We have the growth investments we're making. We have so many innovation platforms taking off right now. We're ramping up resources to support that growth and the customer trials and sales efforts that go with it. And of course, we're going to have the fixed cost associated with the 3 large specialty capacity additions we've done in PVB, Crystex and Tritan. And then we're assuming on the macro uncertainties, we're assuming sort of stable oil and the raw materials that go with it, stable currency to where we are now. And we're assuming GDP sort of growth around this year's levels. But those are all sort of assumptions. And we know there's a lot of uncertainty. So that's all sort of before the incident. And then we'll work through the math to make sure it's clear to you about the impact that the incident had on earnings this fourth quarter as well as how it will impact next year.

是的，弗蘭克，這又回到了我剛才的評論。我們希望確保我們真正清楚今年我們在獲利成長和現金流方面創造的優勢和價值，以及明年我們將如何在此基礎上再接再厲。所以我的展望評論是事件發生之前的評論。正如您剛才所說，我們的預期是今年的成長率為 12% 左右。我們的獲利成長強勁，這是該數字之上的。達到這個數字並不是將這次活動視為一項特殊福利。因此，展望明年，我們的工作仍處於正軌上。與我們過去的展望一致，實現今年我們一直在談論的 8% 至 12% 的成長目標沒有任何改變。它源自於專業領域的強勁成長，繼續保持中等個位數的銷售成長率，相當於基礎市場的 2 倍，其中的組合升級推動了大量成長。明年，我們預計纖維產量將與今年持平。因此，如果沒有這種逆風，隨著我們所追求的所有新應用的增長，也許我們在 Fibers 方面會有一些優勢。像往常一樣，我們將繼續積極管理成本，並繼續專注於為股東配置資本，從而繼續增加股利和股票回購。隨著我們進入明年，這一進程將會加速，因此，除了今年所做的努力之外，我們所有的良好成長動力都將在明年之前實現。它們將被一些更高的成本所抵消。明年德州將出現大規模停工。我們正在進行成長投資。我們現在有許多創新平台正在興起。我們正在增加資源來支援這種成長以及隨之而來的客戶試用和銷售努力。當然，我們將承擔與 PVB、Crystex 和 Tritan 等 3 個大型專業產能增加相關的固定成本。然後我們假設宏觀不確定性，我們假設石油和隨之而來的原材料保持穩定，貨幣保持穩定。我們預計 GDP 成長率將與今年的水準差不多。但這些都是假設。我們知道存在著許多不確定性。這些都是事件發生之前發生的事情。然後，我們將透過計算來確保您清楚了解該事件對第四季度收益的影響以及對明年的影響。

And Frank, just to make sure that we clarify anything in the marketplace, the impact of the event on operating costs and the recovery of insurance will be included in our published results. What Mark is going to -- what we're going to do is you would expect he's going to do. We're going to be as transparent as we can so that you can actually see what the impact of the underlying business is doing despite those costs and insurance recoveries. And you'll see that growth rate that Mark is talking about.

弗蘭克，為了確保我們澄清市場上的任何情況，該事件對營運成本和保險恢復的影響將包含在我們公佈的結果中。馬克將要做的事——我們將要做的事正是你所期望的。我們將盡可能保持透明，以便您能夠真正看到，儘管存在這些成本和保險賠償，基礎業務仍然會產生什麼影響。您會看到馬克所說的成長率。

That's extremely helpful. I guess I thought you poo-poo’ed a little bit the business in Europe. Sales in Europe were up, I think, 21% year-over-year. Some of that is going to be currency. But can you talk a little bit about what the pace of business that you're seeing over in that part of the world and how sustainable that might be?

這非常有幫助。我猜你對歐洲的業務有點不屑一顧。我認為歐洲的銷售額比去年同期成長了 21%。其中一些將會是貨幣。但是，您能否稍微談談您所看到的該地區的商業發展速度以及這種速度的可持續性？

Yes. To be clear, I was just commenting on what I think is the macroeconomic conditions in Europe. We are actually driving a lot of growth in Europe well above the macro. And it was an outstanding performance for the region. Most of the solar fills that I talked about occurred in the Middle East. So that was part of the driver for -- we say Europe, Middle East and Africa as a region, so you have to remember it's all of that. And so part of it was solar fills. Part of it was that great commercial execution I talked about in Taminco in driving personal care and animal nutrition growth, a lot of that occurred in Europe as well as a lot of the share growth we had in tires was also occurring in Europe. And we had a mix benefit in tow favor Europe as well, where we had more tow there and some less tow in other places. So all that sort of came together to give Europe a lot of strength. The macro is fine there and automotive growth has been reasonably good as a tailwind in Europe for us. But I wouldn't say we see a very strong improvement yet.

是的。需要明確的是，我只是在評論我認為的歐洲宏觀經濟狀況。事實上，我們正​​在推動歐洲經濟大幅成長，遠高於宏觀經濟水準。這對該地區來說是一個出色的表現。我談到的大多數太陽能填充都發生在中東。所以這是驅動因素的一部分——我們說歐洲、中東和非洲是一個地區，所以你必須記住這就是全部。其中一部分是太陽能填充。部分原因是我在 Taminco 談到的推動個人護理和動物營養成長的出色商業執行力，其中許多發生在歐洲，而且我們在輪胎領域的許多份額增長也發生在歐洲。我們在歐洲的拖車業務也呈現出混合優勢，我們在歐洲的拖車業務較多，而在其他地方的拖車業務則較少。所有這些因素共同作用，賦予了歐洲巨大的力量。那裡的宏觀經濟狀況良好，汽車產業的成長對我們來說也相當不錯，這是順風。但我不會說我們已經看到了非常強勁的改善。

And we will take our next person, John Roberts from UBS.

我們的下一位來賓是來自瑞銀集團的約翰羅伯茲 (John Roberts)。

I assume you're keeping the derivative units running in Kingsport by importing acetic acid into the facility. Do you pay market price for that? Are you able to swap to be able to get that and then you'll return the swaps later on?

我假設您通過將乙酸進口到工廠來保持金斯波特衍生裝置的運作。您支付的是市價嗎？您是否能夠透過交換來獲得該物品，然後稍後再歸還交換物品？

Well, first of all, most of our derivative units are running on acetic anhydride. So acid is something we can convert into anhydride with some of our facilities. So we are bringing a lot of acid into the site to make acetic anhydride. And so we are doing everything we can to sort of keep all the downstream derivative units running, which we will be able to do and meet customer needs.

嗯，首先，我們的大多數衍生裝置都是使用乙酸酐運行的。因此，我們可以利用一些設施將酸轉化為酸酐。因此，我們將大量酸引入現場來製造乙酸酐。因此，我們正在竭盡全力保持所有下游衍生單位的運轉，我們將能夠做到這一點並滿足客戶的需求。

And the cost is going to be what the market will bear. I mean, there's things we're having to do. There's logistics (inaudible) we're bringing in. And that's all been factored into the estimates I provided.

而成本則由市場來承擔。我的意思是，我們必須做些什麼。我們正在引入物流（聽不清楚）。這些都已計入我提供的估算中。

Okay. And I apologize, I jumped on a little bit late. But did anyone ask the obligatory question for an update on the Longview monetization strategy?

好的。我很抱歉，我來得有點晚。但是，有沒有人問過關於 Longview 貨幣化策略更新這個必問問題？

John, you're the lucky winner today. So just to give you an update, divesting our excess ethylene position, as I've said before, is still one of the main priorities for us as well as potentially some of our commodity ethylene product lines. Again, as we talked before, the vast majority of our olefins volatility is from this ethylene position. So we're really working hard to try to get something done. We continue to have a number of engaged parties. And we're working diligently to see if we can get this transaction completed. As I also mentioned before, we're exploring different options, which could include sale, joint venture or other types of structures. So this, combined with kind of the continued challenging market conditions, has made this process take much longer that I would prefer.

約翰，你是今天的幸運贏家。因此，我只是想向您提供最新情況，正如我之前所說，剝離我們過剩的乙烯地位仍然是我們的主要優先事項之一，也可能是我們的一些商品乙烯產品線的主要優先事項之一。再一次，正如我們之前所討論的，我們的烯烴波動性絕大部分來自於乙烯的位置。所以我們確實在努力嘗試完成一些事情。我們繼續擁有多位訂婚者。我們正在努力工作，看看是否能夠完成這筆交易。正如我之前提到的，我們正在探索不同的選擇，其中可能包括出售、合資或其他類型的結構。因此，再加上持續的市場挑戰，這個過程花費的時間比我希望的要長得多。

And to be clear though, we are committed to getting this ethylene volatility out of the portfolio. And so we're going to get this done.

但需要明確的是，我們致力於將乙烯波動性從投資組合中剔除。所以我們要完成這件事。

So now we take our next person from the queue, David Begleiter from Deutsche Bank.

現在我們從隊列中選出下一位發言者，德意志銀行的 David Begleiter。

Mark, on your 2018 guidance, when you say strong earnings growth, is that similar to what we did in '17, i.e., up at that – up roughly 10% to 12%?

馬克，關於您在 2018 年的預測中所說的強勁盈利增長，這是否與我們 2017 年的情況相似，即上漲約 10% 至 12%？

David, it's a little early to get into the specifics on the bridge of '17 to '18 and where we would be in that range. 12% is phenomenal growth this year. Some of it is being driven by some exceptional volume like solar fluid sales, for example, that won't repeat in '18 but will repeat in '19. We have another big slug coming in '19. So there's certain dynamics on that side. The upper half of the range, I don't know if that's likely at this stage from what we know. We'll have to see how it all comes together and give you a lot more detail in January. I mean, you have to give us a bit of a break on this one, where we have so much going on right now. We're spending most of our time making sure we deal with the events, deliver great results and cash flow in the fourth quarter and position ourselves well for growth next year.

大衛，現在談論 2017 年到 2018 年之間的具體情況以及我們在這個範圍內的情況還為時過早。今年12%的成長是驚人的。其中一些是受到一些特殊銷售的推動，例如太陽能液體銷售，這在 2018 年不會重複，但會在 2019 年重複。19 年我們又將迎來一次大災難。因此，這方面存在著一定的動態。就我們目前所知，我不知道該範圍的上半部是否有可能實現。我們將觀察一切進展如何，並在一月份向您提供更多詳細資訊。我的意思是，你必須讓我們稍微休息一下，因為我們現在有太多事情要做。我們花了大部分時間來確保我們能夠應對各種事件，在第四季度取得優異的業績和現金流，並為明年的成長做好準備。

No, very good. And Curt, just on the Q4 free cash, to make your $1 billion target, you need to have a pretty big Q4. Is that just from a release of working capital from the film finished goods? And do you have enough visibility to say where it they will come from specifically?

不，非常好。而 Curt，僅就第四季的自由現金而言，為了實現 10 億美元的目標，您需要有一個相當大的第四季業績。這只是電影成品釋出的營運資金嗎？您是否有足夠的了解來了解它們具體來自哪裡？

Sure. Well, again in the fourth quarter, it is typically our large cash-generating quarter as we do release working capital due to seasonality in the businesses. I also mentioned that the operational incident we actually think will be cash-neutral as we'll actually be reducing inventory that will offset some of the operating costs. Maybe another way to look at it is maybe let's just compare fourth quarter '16 to what we're kind of expecting now. If you look at fourth quarter of '16, we generated $289 million of free cash flow if you adjust for that $150 million of accelerated pension or in essence ignore it. If you also look at our CapEx, it's roughly going to be $600 million. If you look at that seasonally compared to '16, we're actually expecting $90 million roughly of lower capital expenditures in the fourth quarter of '17. So when you do that math, all we need to generate free cash flow above last year's fourth quarter, either in working capital or other operating cash flow, is about $50 million to achieve that $1 billion cash flow. So that's how I look at it. We do have good visibility. There is some sensitivities that we're managing through. But our goal is to work towards that $1 billion of free cash flow and grow it further in 2019.

當然。嗯，第四季通常是我們現金產生量較大的季度，因為我們確實會根據業務的季節性釋放營運資金。我還提到，我們實際上認為營運事件對現金的影響是中性的，因為我們實際上會減少庫存，從而抵消部分營運成本。也許另一種看待這個問題的方式是，讓我們將 2016 年第四季與我們現在的預期進行比較。如果你看一下 2016 年第四季度，如果你調整那 1.5 億美元的加速退休金或從本質上忽略它，我們產生了 2.89 億美元的自由現金流。如果你也看看我們的資本支出，它大約是 6 億美元。如果與 2016 年相比按季節來看，我們實際上預計 2017 年第四季的資本支出將減少約 9,000 萬美元。因此，當你進行計算時，我們需要產生的自由現金流高於去年第四季度，無論是營運資金還是其他營運現金流，大約需要 5,000 萬美元才能達到 10 億美元的現金流。這就是我的看法。我們的能見度確實很好。我們正在處理一些敏感問題。但我們的目標是努力實現 10 億美元的自由現金流，並在 2019 年進一步成長。

So the last question is coming from Kevin McCarthy from Vertical Research Partners.

最後一個問題來自 Vertical Research Partners 的 Kevin McCarthy。

Have you begun to receive propylene from enterprise's PDH unit? Or when would you expect that to happen? And given the surge in propylene, is there perhaps a greater benefit than we might have thought earlier this year?

你們已經開始從企業的PDH裝置接收丙烯了嗎？或者您預計什麼時候會發生這種情況？鑑於丙烯產量的激增，其帶來的益處是否可能比我們今年稍早想像的還要大？

Kevin, we're not exactly sure when the enterprise unit will come up and be effective. You'd have to ask them. But we certainly are expecting to have that asset supplying us as we go into next year at some point. The benefits to us are going to be somewhat limited in the current conditions where propylene prices are at this point relative to where we were originally.

凱文，我們不太確定企業部門何時能夠成立並發揮作用。你得問他們。但我們確實期望在進入明年的某個時候該資產能夠為我們提供供給。在目前丙烯價格相對於原先水準的情況下，我們所獲得的利益將會受到一定限制。

Okay. And then as a follow-up, can you comment on your utilization levels in Tritan and your plans to expand capacity in 2018? And can we assume, for example, that the incident at Kingsport has no bearing on that timeline?

好的。然後作為後續問題，您能否評論一下 Tritan 的利用率水準以及 2018 年擴大產能的計畫？例如，我們能否假設金斯波特事件與該時間線無關？

Yes, the incident in Kingsport has no impact on bringing the Tritan capacity up online, which we expect to do as we move, finish the fourth quarter to the first quarter. And the utilization at the moment is very high. We have tremendous growth and interest in that product. We're trying to support all of our customers and their desire to grow with us. That's why we made such a significant investment in doubling that capacity. So we're feeling good about that business.

是的，金斯波特事件對 Tritan 產能上線沒有影響，我們預計在第四季結束至第一季期間將實現這一目標。而且目前的利用率非常高。我們對該產品有著巨大的成長和興趣。我們正在盡力支持所有客戶並滿足他們與我們共同成長的願望。這就是我們投入如此大筆資金來將產能翻倍的原因。所以我們對這項業務感到很滿意。

Just to wrap up as we close the call out, just want to put in a little bit of a commercial break for Investor Day. We're really excited about the track record we've been building and excited about what we can offer as we go forward in growing the company. And we think we've actually set up a great track record, and we'll share a lot of more of this with you as we get to the Investor Day. But if you look at the past 3 years or go back to '14, we've delivered tremendous organic growth and value from our acquisitions. If you back out sort of the macro headwinds of oil, currency and Fibers, you'd see that we'd be about $10 a share this year, which would be 16% CAGR versus 2010, when we started this transformation, as well as 12% CAGR against 2014. So we'll share a lot more with how that works, how you can see the organic growth and the value of the acquisitions in our portfolio. We're really proud of how we've managed our portfolio aggressively well ahead of the current trend, divesting about $3.5 billion of our revenue, almost half of it when you go back to sort of when we did it and adding some great specialty businesses. And we'll walk you through how we've developed a very compelling organic growth engine that has 3 components to it around deep market connect, world-class technology platforms and application development capability that welds it together and the role of scale and integration plays and making that all happen. So I think it's going to be an exciting day. We're really looking forward to sort of walking you through all the details, so you can really better understand the growth we've delivered in the past. And to be clear, our results are what they are. The only reason I bring up this sort of macro adjustment is so that you can understand, as these headwinds stabilize going forward, our ability to drive growth as we move forward. But we're looking forward to it. Thank you.

在我們結束通話之前，我們想為投資者日插入一點商業廣告。我們對於我們一直以來所取得的成績感到非常興奮，也對我們在公司發展過程中所能提供的幫助感到非常興奮。我們認為我們實際上已經建立了良好的業績記錄，當投資者日到來時，我們將與您分享更多相關資訊。但如果回顧過去 3 年或 2014 年，我們透過收購實現了巨大的有機成長和價值。如果排除石油、貨幣和纖維等宏觀不利因素，您會發現今年我們的股價約為每股 10 美元，與我們開始轉型的 2010 年相比，複合年增長率為 16%，與 2014 年相比，複合年增長率為 12%。因此，我們將分享更多有關其運作方式的信息，以及如何讓您看到我們投資組合中的有機成長和收購的價值。我們非常自豪於我們能夠領先於當前趨勢，積極地管理我們的投資組合，剝離了約 35 億美元的收入，如果回想起來，幾乎是當時的一半，並增加了一些優秀的專業業務。我們將向您介紹我們如何開發一個非常引人注目的有機成長引擎，它由三個組成部分組成，分別是深度市場聯繫、世界一流的技術平台和應用程式開發能力，這些組成部分將規模和整合發揮重要作用，並使這一切成為現實。所以我認為這將會是令人興奮的一天。我們非常期待向您介紹所有細節，以便您可以更好地了解我們過去所取得的成長。需要明確的是，我們的結果就是如此。我提出這種宏觀調整的唯一原因是為了讓你們了解，隨著這些不利因素逐漸穩定下來，我們推動經濟成長的能力將會不斷增強。但我們對此充滿期待。謝謝。

Sylvia, that concludes our remarks.

西爾維亞，我們的演講到此結束。

Thank you, sir. So ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today's Eastman Chemical Company Third Quarter 2017 Conference Call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

謝謝您，先生。女士們、先生們，今天的伊士曼化學公司 2017 年第三季電話會議就到此結束。感謝您的參與。您現在可以斷開連線。