伊士曼化學 (EMN) 2019 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Eastman Chemical Company Second Quarter 2019 Conference Call. This call is being broadcast live on the Eastman's website, www.eastman.com. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded.

大家好，歡迎參加伊士曼化學公司2019年第二季電話會議。這場電話會議正在伊士曼網站 www.eastman.com 上現場直播。提醒一下，今天的會議正在錄製中。

We will now turn the call over to Mr. Greg Riddle of Eastman Chemical Company Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

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, Ebony, 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 Jake LaRoe, Manager, Investor Relations.

好的。謝謝你，Ebony，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) 和投資者關係經理傑克·拉羅 (Jake LaRoe)。

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 second quarter 2019 financial results news release, during this call and in the accompanying slides and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Form 10-K filed for 2018, the Form 10-Q for first quarter 2019 and the Form 10-Q to be filed for second quarter 2019.

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 2019 年第二季度財務業績新聞稿、本次電話會議及隨附幻燈片以及我們向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件中詳細說明，包括 2018 年提交的 10-K 表、2019 年第一季度的 10-Q 表和即將提交的 2019-Q 表的 10-Q 表和即將提交的 2019-Q 表。

Second, earnings referenced in this presentation exclude certain noncore and unusual items and interim period earnings use an adjusted forecasted tax rate. 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 second quarter 2019 financial results news release, which can be found on our website, www.eastman.com in the Investor section. Projections of future earnings exclude any noncore, unusual or nonrecurring items.

其次，本報告中提到的收益不包括某些非核心和非常規項目，且中期收益使用調整後的預測稅率。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 2019 年第二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。

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

說完這些，我會把電話轉給馬克。

Thanks, Greg, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin on Page 3. I'll start with the strategic highlights from the second quarter. We continued on our path of solid sequential earnings growth after challenging fourth quarter of 2008 (sic) [2018] and start to this year.

謝謝，格雷格，大家早安。我將從第 3 頁開始。我將從第二季的戰略亮點開始。在經歷了 2008 年第四季 [原文如此] [2018] 和今年年初的挑戰之後，我們繼續保持穩健的連續獲利成長之路。

Adjusted EBIT increased 11% sequentially in the face of continued global uncertainty and weak underlying demand in many of our end markets. From our perspective, the uncertainty around trade began in the fourth quarter of last year and was escalated in May, and has resulted in a challenging global macroeconomic environment, which we're continuing to work through. Despite these challenges, we're still on track for greater than $400 million of new business revenue closes from innovation in 2019, with a 27% growth in the second quarter year-over-year.

面對持續的全球不確定性和許多終端市場疲軟的潛在需求，調整後的息稅前利潤季增 11%。從我們的角度來看，貿易不確定性始於去年第四季度，並在五月加劇，導致全球宏觀經濟環境充滿挑戰，我們正在繼續努力應對。儘管面臨這些挑戰，我們仍有望在 2019 年透過創新實現超過 4 億美元的新業務收入，第二季年增 27%。

I've been on the road globally with many of our customers recently and their focus and strong engagement with us on innovation has never been higher, especially on sustainability, which is encouraging in this environment. Leading the charge in innovation and market development is Advanced Materials, which posted excellent sequential growth in the second quarter. The sequential growth was delivered by specialty plastics led by Tritan.

最近，我和許多客戶在全球各地出差，他們對創新的關注度和積極參與度從未如此高，尤其是在永續性方面，這在目前的環境下令人鼓舞。先進材料公司在創新和市場開發方面處於領先地位，其第二季度實現了出色的連續成長。這一連續增長是由 Tritan 主導的特種塑料推動的。

We also offset the underlying decline in the auto market with strong growth in premium products like our paint protection film, premium auto interlayers as well as strong growth in architectural interlayers. These products, among others, show the resiliency of our innovation model that offset general macroeconomic weakness.

我們也透過漆面保護膜、高端汽車夾層等高端產品的強勁成長以及建築夾層的強勁成長抵消了汽車市場的潛在下滑。這些產品以及其他產品都體現了我們的創新模式的彈性，可以抵消整體宏觀經濟的疲軟。

I should note that we're also making great progress on innovation initiatives in Additives & Functional Products with commercial orders confirming the value on what we do. That said, we're in a much earlier stage of development in AFP than in AM.

我應該指出，我們在添加劑和功能產品方面的創新舉措也取得了巨大進展，商業訂單證實了我們所做工作的價值。也就是說，AFP 的發展階段比 AM 的早得多。

As we discussed before, we're aggressively managing costs in this challenging business environment. Overall, we're reducing costs by $120 million, that includes $80 million in offsets of inflation. In addition, in this environment, we have another $40 million in cost actions that we took in April that will mostly impact the second half of the year, which we're on track to deliver.

正如我們之前討論過的，我們正在這個充滿挑戰的商業環境中積極管理成本。總體而言，我們將削減 1.2 億美元的成本，其中包括 8,000 萬美元的通貨膨脹抵銷費用。此外，在這種環境下，我們在 4 月採取了另外 4000 萬美元的成本行動，這將主要影響今年下半年，我們正在按計劃實現這一目標。

Consistent with our strategy to remain disciplined on capital deployment, we recently completed a small bolt-on acquisition of INACSA, a Spanish cellulosic yarn company that will accelerate the growth for our textiles innovation products like Naia. We're excited to have the INACSA team as part of Eastman, and the integration is off to a great start.

秉承我們在資本配置方面保持嚴謹的策略，我們最近完成了對西班牙纖維素紗線公司 INACSA 的小型附加收購，這將加速我們的 Naia 等紡織創新產品的成長。我們很高興 INACSA 團隊成為 Eastman 的一部分，並且整合工作已經有了良好的開端。

Lastly, we returned $423 million to stockholders in the first 6 months of 2019 through a combination of share repurchases and an increase in dividend. This included $125 million of share repurchases in the second quarter.

最後，我們在 2019 年上半年透過股票回購和增加股利等方式向股東返還了 4.23 億美元。其中包括第二季 1.25 億美元的股票回購。

Before I turn over to Curt for a review of the corporate and segment performance in the quarter, I'd like to add how proud I am of our employees around the world who continue to execute our strategy, while also aggressively managing costs in this challenging environment. Curt?

在請 Curt 回顧本季的公司和部門業績之前，我想補充一點，我為我們遍布全球的員工感到自豪，他們繼續執行我們的策略，同時在這個充滿挑戰的環境中積極管理成本。柯特？

Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. I'll start on Slide 4 with a review of our corporate results. And I'll begin with a sequential comparison where our second quarter revenue declined slightly and adjusted EBIT increased 11%. The increase in earnings was driven by a strong sequential volume and mix growth in Advanced Materials and continued cost management across the company. On a corporate basis, EBIT increased 170 basis points sequentially with the margin increase in all segments except Chemical Intermediates.

謝謝，馬克，大家早安。我將從幻燈片 4 開始回顧我們的公司業績。我先進行一個連續的比較，我們的第二季收入略有下降，調整後的息稅前利潤增加了 11%。收益的成長得益於先進材料業務的強勁連續銷售和產品組合成長以及整個公司持續的成本管理。從公司層級來看，息稅前利潤較上季成長 170 個基點，除化學中間體外所有業務部門的利潤率均有所提高。

Turning next to the year-over-year comparison. Revenue and earnings decreased as macroeconomic uncertainty and the slower demand in some of our key end markets in China and Europe, both of which we believe are primarily related to global trade issues, negatively impacted volume and mix. The decrease was also attributed to an unfavorable shift in foreign currency exchange rates and a decline in spreads for some chemical intermediate products.

接下來進行同比比較。由於宏觀經濟的不確定性以及中國和歐洲一些主要終端市場的需求放緩（我們認為這主要與全球貿易問題有關），收入和收益下降，對銷售和產品組合產生了負面影響。下降也歸因於外匯匯率的不利變動以及一些化學中間產品價差的下降。

Before I get to the segments, I'll give you our macroeconomic assumptions for the remainder of the year, which have changed. We are now expecting current challenging global market conditions to continue, driven by uncertainty around trade issues. And just to be clear, we are not expecting underlying macroeconomic conditions to improve or deteriorate from what we experienced in the second quarter. We do believe that inventory destocking is mostly behind us and therefore, our specialty volumes will grow but will be modestly offset by higher shutdown schedule in second half of '19 impacting volumes in Chemical Intermediates. And we are expecting oil prices and the related raw materials to remain around current levels, which will benefit -- be a benefit to second half as we -- as those lower costs flow through inventory.

在介紹各個部分之前，我將先給出我們對今年剩餘時間的宏觀經濟假設，這些假設已經改變了。我們預計，受貿易問題的不確定性影響，當前全球市場狀況仍將持續嚴峻。需要明確的是，我們並不認為潛在的宏觀經濟狀況會比第二季有所改善或惡化。我們確實相信庫存去庫存化基本上已經過去，因此，我們的特種產品產量將會增長，但 2019 年下半年更高的停產計劃將對化學中間體的產量產生一定影響，從而略微抵消這一增長。我們預計油價和相關原材料將保持在當前水準附近，這將有利於下半年，因為較低的成本將流向庫存。

Turning now to Slide 5 and Advanced Materials, where significant progress on innovation and market development is positioning us to be resilient despite the challenging global economy. Starting with the sequential comparison. Volume and mix increased 7% due to an easing of customer destocking, particularly with specialty plastic product lines, such as Tritan and continued great progress on innovation and market development.

現在轉到幻燈片 5 和先進材料，儘管全球經濟充滿挑戰，但在創新和市場開發方面取得的重大進展使我們保持了韌性。從順序比較開始。由於客戶去庫存減少，尤其是 Tritan 等特種塑膠產品線以及創新和市場開發方面持續取得巨大進展，銷量和產品組合增長了 7%。

Adjusted EBIT increased 42% sequentially, roughly 2/3 of the increase driven by improved volume and mix and the remainder from a combination of improved spreads as lower cost paraxylene is beginning to flow through and cost management. And the EBIT margin increased 530 basis points sequentially given these factors plus improved fixed cost leverage.

調整後的息稅前利潤環比增長 42%，其中約 2/3 的增幅得益於銷量和產品組合的改善，其餘部分則得益於低成本對二甲苯開始流通，利差有所改善以及成本管理。受這些因素影響，加上固定成本槓桿率提高，息稅前利潤率較上季成長 530 個基點。

Turning to the year-over-year comparison. Revenue declined due to lower sales volume and stronger dollar. While we had strong volume growth sequentially as destocking slowed, we still haven't reached our year ago volume levels due to the weakness in global demand related to the trade issues. One market, in particular, that has been under pressure is transportation, which represents about 1/3 of the revenue for this segment. Despite this exposure, EBIT increased as improved mix due to strong growth of premium products, including paint protection film and acoustic and architectural interlayers more than offset the lower volume and the impact of the stronger dollar.

轉向同比比較。由於銷售量下降和美元走強，收入下降。儘管隨著去庫存速度放緩，我們的銷售量連續強勁成長，但由於貿易問題導致全球需求疲軟，我們仍未達到去年同期的銷售水準。尤其承受壓力的一個市場是運輸業，它佔該領域收入的約三分之一。儘管存在這種風險，但由於優質產品（包括漆面保護膜、隔音和建築夾層）的強勁增長，產品組合得到改善，息稅前利潤有所增加，這足以抵消銷量下降和美元走強的影響。

Advanced Materials also did nice job holding onto prices and managing their costs. The EBIT margin year-over-year was up 110 basis points. Looking ahead, we expect earnings in the second half of the year to be higher than the first half for a few reasons: first, lower cost raw materials are set to flow through in the back half of the year; second, while we don't project underlying demand fundamentals to improve in the second half of the year, destocking looks like it is mostly behind us and is, therefore, no longer expected to be a headwind; and third, we expect to realize lower costs from the actions we have taken. When we put it all together, we expect Advanced Materials' EBIT to be up mid-single digits for the year, which would be an outstanding results in this environment.

先進材料公司在控制價格和管理成本方面也做得很好。息稅前利潤率年增110個基點。展望未來，我們預計下半年盈利將高於上半年，原因如下：首先，成本較低的原材料將在下半年流入；其次，雖然我們預計下半年基本需求基本面不會改善，但去庫存似乎已基本過去，因此不再會成為阻力；第三，我們預計已採取的行動將降低成本。綜合考慮所有因素，我們預計先進材料公司的息稅前利潤今年將增長中等個位數，在當前環境下這將是一個出色的成績。

Turning next to Additives & Functional Products on Slide 6. Adjusted EBIT was solid at $147 million, relatively flat from the first quarter as we saw stability in volume mix with a modest decline in prices offset by cost actions. Year-over-year revenue declined due to lower volume and mix as well as lower selling prices and an unfavorable currency. The volume and mix decline was about 2/3 unit volume and 1/3 mix. Volume growth in Care Chemicals and architectural coatings was more than offset by declines in adhesives and tires and some consumer discretionary markets. In particular, China and Europe have slowed due to the anxiety caused by global trade issues, particularly the U.S.-China dispute. At the same time, we believe destocking that began in the fourth quarter continued through the second quarter. As we look forward, we believe that destocking should mostly be behind us, so volume should improve in second half of '19.

接下來是投影片 6 上的添加劑和功能產品。調整後的息稅前利潤穩定在 1.47 億美元，與第一季相比基本持平，因為我們看到銷售組合保持穩定，價格略有下降，但被成本行動所抵消。由於銷量和產品組合下降、銷售價格下降和貨幣不利，同比收入有所下降。體積和混合物的下降約為單位體積的 2/3 和混合物的 1/3。護理化學品和建築塗料銷售的成長被黏合劑、輪胎和一些非必需消費品市場的下滑所抵消。尤其是中國和歐洲，由於全球貿易問題（尤其是中美爭端）引發的擔憂而成長放緩。同時，我們認為第四季開始的去庫存化將持續到第二季​​。展望未來，我們相信去庫存化進程基本上已經結束，因此 2019 年下半年的產量應該會有所改善。

Mix was unfavorable, primarily due to lower sales of high-value cellulosic additives into the auto OEM markets in China and Europe compared to the prior year, which quite honestly was a tough comp. Pricing was somewhat lower with the largest contributor being cost pass-through contracts in Care Chemicals and a few other products, with the remainder due to competitive rivalry in adhesives and tire additives.

混合情況不佳，主要是因為與前一年相比，高價值纖維素添加劑在中國和歐洲汽車原始設備製造商市場的銷售量下降，坦白說，這是一場艱難的競爭。定價略低，其中最大的貢獻者是護理化學品和其他一些產品的成本轉嫁合同，其餘部分則歸因於粘合劑和輪胎添加劑方面的競爭。

And the impact of swine fever in China increased competitive rivalry in the Animal Nutrition business in the second quarter. EBIT declined year-over-year due to the lower volume and mix as well as the stronger dollar, partially offset by continued cost management.

而中國豬瘟的影響則加劇了第二季動物營養業務的競爭。由於銷售和產品組合下降以及美元走強，息稅前利潤同比下降，但持續的成本管理部分抵消了這一影響。

Spreads were similar to last year as lower raw material costs were offset by price declines. With spread stable, the entirety of the margin decline in AFP is due to lower asset utilization related to sluggish demand. Looking forward, given our economic assumptions, we expect EBIT in the second half of the year to increase slightly versus the first half due to higher volume as we believe the destocking is mostly behind us.

由於原材料成本的下降被價格的下降所抵消，利差與去年相似。在利差穩定的情況下，AFP 的利潤率下降全部是由於需求低迷導致的資產利用率下降。展望未來，根據我們的經濟假設，我們預計下半年息稅前利潤將較上半年略有增加，原因是我們認為去庫存化基本上已經結束，從而導致銷量增加。

On Slide 7, I'll move to Chemical Intermediates. Year-over-year revenue decreased, primarily due to lower selling prices for both olefins and acetyl products resulting from raw material price declines and increased competitive activity. As the trade dispute continues to drag out, competitors in China are getting increasingly aggressive and are starting to try to place volume outside of Asia, particularly in Europe, causing additional competitive rivalry. In addition, sales revenue was impacted by lower functional amines product sales volume attributed to weakened demand in agricultural end markets, due in part to wet weather in North America.

在第 7 張投影片上，我將轉到化學中間體。收入較去年同期下降，主要原因是原物料價格下跌和競爭加劇導致烯烴和乙醯基產品銷售價格下降。隨著貿易爭端持續拖延，中國的競爭對手變得越來越激進，並開始試圖將銷售轉移到亞洲以外，特別是歐洲，引發了進一步的競爭。此外，由於北美潮濕天氣導致農業終端市場需求減弱，功能胺產品銷售下降，也影響了銷售收入。

EBIT decreased slightly as lower spreads were mostly offset by lower costs. These lower costs included: the supplier operational disruptions in the second quarter of 2018, not recurring this year; lower plant maintenance cost in the quarter; and continued cost management.

息稅前利潤 (EBIT) 略有下降，因為較低的利差大部分被較低的成本所抵消。這些降低的成本包括：2018 年第二季供應商營運中斷，今年不會再發生；本季工廠維護成本降低；以及持續的成本管理。

Looking to the back half of the year, we are seeing spreads in acetyls and glycol stabilizing at second quarter levels, and we expect to carry this run rate into the remainder of the year. And consistent with our corporate guidance, we are not projecting an improvement in underlying demand in the back half. Stabilized but lower spreads, coupled with higher shutdown schedule in the second half of the year compared to the first, led us to expect that EBIT in the second half will be lower than the first half.

展望下半年，我們看到乙醯和乙二醇的價差穩定在第二季的水平，我們預計這一運行率將持續到今年剩餘時間。與我們的公司指導一致，我們預計下半年潛在需求不會改善。利差穩定但較低，加上下半年停產計畫較上半年增加，導致我們預期下半年息稅前利潤將低於上半年。

Finishing up the segment reviews on Slide 8 with Fibers. Starting with the sequential comparison, sales revenue was flat, while adjusted EBIT increased $9 million or 21%. The sequential increase was due primarily to cost management and slightly higher tow sales. And I'd add that the EBIT margin increased 420 basis points sequentially to 24%. Year-over-year sales revenue decreased, primarily due to lower acetate tow sales volume attributed to weaker -- weakened market demand resulting from global trade-related pressures and general market decline. In addition, demand in 2018 was unusually high in the first half of the year due to trade issues and multinational customers' buying patterns.

使用 Fibers 完成投影片 8 上的片段評論。從連續比較來看，銷售收入持平，而調整後的息稅前利潤增加了 900 萬美元，增幅為 21%。環比成長主要歸因於成本管理和拖車銷售略有成長。我還要補充一點，息稅前利潤率較上季成長 420 個基點，達到 24%。銷售收入較去年同期下降，主要由於全球貿易壓力和整體市場下滑導致市場需求減弱，導致醋酸絲束銷售下降。此外，由於貿易問題和跨國客戶的購買模式，2018年上半年的需求異常高。

EBIT decreased due to lower acetate tow sales volume, partially offset by lower raw material cost and continued cost management. As we move into the second half of the year, we expect earnings improvement compared to the first half for a few reasons: first, we continue to make progress qualifying tow at our Korean facility with CNTC, and as a result, we expect improved Chinese demand for the remainder of the year; second, the overall textile market was soft in the first half due to general macro uncertainty, resulting in destocking for some of the traditional end market applications. We see signs that the dynamic is improving in the second half and we'll continue to benefit from greater than 25% growth in our textiles innovation initiatives.

息稅前利潤下降是由於醋酸纖維絲束銷售下降，但原物料成本下降和持續的成本管理部分抵消了這種影響。隨著我們進入下半年，我們預計盈利將比上半年有所改善，原因如下：首先，我們與中國煙草總公司在韓國工廠的牽引認證方面繼續取得進展，因此，我們預計今年剩餘時間內中國的需求將會改善；其次，由於宏觀經濟的不確定性，上半年整體紡織市場疲軟，導致一些傳統市場應用的庫存減少。我們看到了下半年情況正在好轉的跡象，我們將繼續受益於紡織品創新計劃超過 25% 的成長。

And finally, we continue to aggressively manage costs in this business. Putting it all together, including the promised improvement in the second half, we expect Fibers' adjusted EBIT to be in the $200 million to $200 million range for full year of '19.

最後，我們持續積極管理該業務的成本。綜合考慮所有因素，包括承諾的下半年改善，我們預計 Fibers 2019 年全年調整後的息稅前利潤將在 2 億至 3 億美元之間。

Finally, on Slide 9, I'll cover some financial highlights. First of all, let me just correct, the EBIT for Fibers will be to $200 million to $210 million range. Thank you.

最後，在第 9 張投影片上，我將介紹一些財務亮點。首先，讓我修正一下，Fibers 的息稅前利潤將在 2 億至 2.1 億美元之間。謝謝。

Finally, on Slide 9, I'll cover some financial highlights. We plan to continue our track record of solid free cash flow conversion and expect to generate free cash flow approaching $1.1 billion in 2019. Despite lower projected net income, we remain confident in our ability to generate solid free cash flow through a variety of levers, including aggressive working capital management. Consistent with our capital deployment, we have remained disciplined in our allocation of cash, including returning $423 million to stockholders in the first 6 months of '19. We're excited about the value creation from our recent 2 bolt-on acquisitions: first in the first quarter; and the last one, that Mark mentioned, here in July and continue to look forward to value-creating opportunities.

最後，在第 9 張投影片上，我將介紹一些財務亮點。我們計劃繼續保持穩健的自由現金流轉換記錄，預計 2019 年將產生接近 11 億美元的自由現金流。儘管預期淨收入較低，但我們仍然相信我們有能力透過各種手段（包括積極的營運資本管理）產生穩定的自由現金流。與我們的資本部署一致，我們在現金分配方面保持紀律，包括在 2019 年的前 6 個月向股東返還 4.23 億美元。我們對最近兩次附加收購所創造的價值感到非常興奮：第一次是在第一季；最後一次是馬克提到的，在七月份，我們將繼續期待創造價值的機會。

Consistent with previous expectations, we'll delever as needed to keep our solid investment grade credit rating likely in the $250 million to $300 million range this year. For corporate other, consistent with our run rate in the first half, we expect the full year to be around $60 million. And finally, we continue to expect our full year projected tax rate to be between 16% and 17%.

與先前的預期一致，我們將根據需要降低槓桿率，以保持我們穩健的投資級信用評級，今年的評級可能在 2.5 億美元至 3 億美元之間。對於其他企業，與我們上半年的運作率一致，我們預計全年的營運金額約為 6,000 萬美元。最後，我們繼續預計全年預計稅率在 16% 至 17% 之間。

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

說完這些，我就把話題轉回給馬克。

Thanks, Curt. On Slide 10, I'll provide an update on our 2019 outlook. In the first half of the year, we've been challenged by weak macroeconomic environment, which began in the fourth quarter of 2018. We believe it's primarily caused by global trade tensions, including the U.S. and China trade dispute. Dispute was escalated in May and there are no signs of when it will be resolved. The impact has been significant destocking across supply chains as well as reduced demand, and we've seen this most prominently in China and Europe.

謝謝，Curt。在第 10 張投影片上，我將提供有關我們 2019 年展望的最新資訊。上半年，我們面臨著從2018年第四季開始的宏觀經濟環境疲軟的挑戰。我們認為這主要是由全球貿易緊張局勢引起的，包括美國和中國的貿易爭端。爭端在五月升級，目前尚無跡象顯示何時能夠解決。其影響是整個供應鏈的庫存大幅減少以及需求減少，我們在中國和歐洲看到的情況最為明顯。

In particular, we have seen a meaningful impact on consumer discretionary markets like autos and consumer durables, especially in China and Europe. We've also seen challenges in ag and animal nutrition end markets with weather and the swine flu in China. This is all much different than what we had expected in our last call in April, and I would add this dynamic environment has made order patterns more volatile and the outlook for the global demand more opaque. And we expect the lower volume will continue to negatively impact fixed cost leverage in the back half of the year. With that said, we're taking actions on what we can control to offset the impact of this environment. We continue to make significant progress driving growth in our new business revenue closes from innovation as we leverage our innovation-driven growth model. You're seeing how this works with the first half results of Advanced Materials and our expectations for the year in this business, which reflect a strong contribution for new business revenue closed from innovation to offset weakness in key end markets like autos. And I'm confident you'll see accelerating new business revenue growth in AFP that will add to their resiliency as we scale up their innovations in the future. In addition, we're aggressively managing costs in this business environment by taking out $120 million of cost to deliver a net $40 million reduction in costs.

特別是，我們看到汽車和耐用消費品等非必需消費品市場受到了重大影響，尤其是在中國和歐洲。我們也看到農業和動物營養終端市場因天氣和中國豬流感而面臨的挑戰。這與我們在四月上次電話會議上的預期大不相同，我想補充一點，這種動態環境使得訂單模式更加不穩定，全球需求前景更加不透明。我們預計，交易量下降將繼續對下半年的固定成本槓桿產生負面影響。話雖如此，我們正在採取我們能夠控制的行動來抵消這種環境的影響。我們利用創新驅動的成長模式，繼續在推動新業務收入成長方面取得重大進展。您可以看到這與先進材料上半年的業績以及我們對業務今年的預期如何，這反映了創新對新業務收入的強勁貢獻，以抵消汽車等主要終端市場的疲軟。我相信，隨著我們未來擴大創新規模，您將看到 AFP 的新業務收入加速成長，這將增強他們的彈性。此外，我們在這種商業環境中積極管理成本，透過削減 1.2 億美元的成本，實現淨成本削減 4,000 萬美元。

Finally, we're expecting lower costs raw materials to flow through into our results in the second half, improving spreads over last year in the specialty businesses. As we think about Q3, we have an unusually high shutdown schedule, potential for a limited amount of additional destocking and we can all recognize the exceptionally uncertain environment we live in today. So expect Q3 will be similar to Q2 in EPS and you'll not see the normal drop in Q4. When I put this all together, we expect our full year adjusted EPS to be in the range of $7.50 to $8 a share, and this includes a headwind of about $0.50 a share from currency and pension.

最後，我們預期原料成本的降低將影響我們下半年的業績，進而改善特種業務的利差。當我們考慮第三季時，我們有一個異常高的停工計劃，有限的額外去庫存潛力，我們都能夠意識到我們今天所處的環境極其不確定。因此，預計第三季的每股收益將與第二季相似，並且不會看到第四季的正常下降。綜合考慮所有這些因素，我們預計全年調整後的每股收益將在 7.50 美元至 8 美元之間，其中包括來自貨幣和養老金的每股約 0.50 美元的阻力。

On cash, we expect our free cash flow to approach $1.1 billion as we take actions to generate cash in this environment. Given the challenges we're facing, I've used solid results, and again a testament to the resiliency of our business model and the execution of our team. It's this robustness that gives me confidence in our future. Despite the exceptionally challenging environment, we're well positioned for long-term attractive earnings growth and sustainable value creation from our owners and all of our stakeholders.

就現金而言，隨著我們在這種環境下採取行動產生現金，我們預計我們的自由現金流將接近 11 億美元。考慮到我們所面臨的挑戰，我已經取得了可靠的成果，這再次證明了我們的商業模式的彈性和我們團隊的執行力。正是這種堅強讓我對我們的未來充滿信心。儘管環境極具挑戰性，但我們仍處於有利地位，能夠為我們的所有者和所有利益相關者實現長期可觀的盈利增長和可持續的價值創造。

Our results demonstrate that our innovation-driven growth model is delivering as we create our own growth through innovation and leadership in specialty markets. We continue to win with customers every day. And as I saw in my travels around the world recently, we have unparalleled engagement levels with our customers to innovate, a hallmark of what differentiates us.

我們的結果表明，透過專業市場的創新和領導，我們以創新為驅動的成長模式正在發揮作用。我們每天都在不斷贏得客戶的青睞。正如我最近在世界各地旅行時所看到的，我們與客戶的互動水平是無與倫比的，這是我們與眾不同的標誌。

Our focus on what we can control is working as we continue to reduce our cost to accelerate top line growth to the bottom line. And most important, we have the dedication and drive of people of Eastman who rides the challenge every day and prove that they won't -- they win no matter what the headwinds are. They're the figure-it-out team and the reason we're winning with so many customers today. In the end, it's our collective determination in the face of challenges that make me so confident in our future.

我們專注於我們能夠控制的事情，並且不斷降低成本以加速營收成長和利潤成長。最重要的是，我們擁有伊士曼員工的奉獻精神和幹勁，他們每天都在迎接挑戰，並證明無論面臨何種逆風，他們都會取得勝利。他們是一個敢於解決問題的團隊，也是我們今天贏得如此多客戶的原因。最終，正是我們面對挑戰時的集體決心讓我對我們的未來充滿信心。

With that, I'll turn it over to Greg.

說完這些，我就把麥克風交給格雷格。

Thank you, Mark. There are a lot of people on the line as usual this morning and we'd like to get to as many questions as possible, so I ask you to please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up.

謝謝你，馬克。今天早上像往常一樣有很多人在線，我們希望盡可能多地回答問題，所以我請您將問題限制在一個問題和一個後續問題上。

With that, Ebony, we are ready for questions.

好了，Ebony，我們已經準備好回答問題了。

(Operator Instructions) We will take our first question from Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley.

（操作員指示）我們將回答摩根士丹利的 Vincent Andrews 提出的第一個問題。

I guess, my question is just -- as we exit '19 and if we assume there's some trade resolution hypothetically for the start of 2020, should we envision a snapback in earnings? Sort of if '19 is a throwaway year and '20 goes back to the trend rate you're on before then? Or should we think about '19 being a new base off of which there will be some level of growth in 2020?

我想，我的問題是——當我們退出 2019 年時，如果我們假設在 2020 年初會有一些貿易解決方案，我們是否應該預見收益的回升？如果 19 年是一次性的年份，而 20 年又會回到之前的趨勢水平，那會怎麼樣？或者我們應該把 2019 年視為一個新的基礎，2020 年將在此基礎上實現一定程度的成長？

So first of all, I think it's a little hard to predict 2020 at this point. But to answer your question, the challenges that we have predominantly this year -- fourth quarter of last year as well as this year are a volume mix-based story. And it's important to emphasize the mix part of this too because a lot of the consumer discretionary markets that we sell to are very high-value additives. So if the trade war gets resolved or stimulus in China works despite a neutral trade situation that starts getting the business confidence and China confidence back up, that drives China growth back into gear, which also will improve European economy as well in a substantial way. You will get to snapback. You'll get not just volume recovery and primary demand, but restocking associated with people going back to more normal inventory levels compared to where they are now, which is exceptionally low. And it's a mirror image. The earnings on the volume mix side come back the same way they dropped this year. So you would get a very good recovery on that front on the volume mix side. We obviously have taken cost out and so you get the fixed cost leverage that comes with that as well as you go into next year. On spreads though, I would assume spreads stay relatively neutral because in recovering economy, raws will go up, we'll increase prices to keep up with raws like we did last year. So it will still be a volume mix story just on the other side.

首先，我認為現在預測 2020 年的情況有點困難。但要回答你的問題，我們今年（去年第四季以及今年）主要面臨的挑戰是基於數量組合的問題。強調混合部分也很重要，因為我們銷售的許多非必需消費品市場都是高價值的添加物。因此，如果貿易戰得到解決，或者中國的刺激措施在貿易形勢保持中性的情況下發揮作用，開始恢復商業信心和中國信心，這將推動中國經濟成長重新步入正軌，這也將大幅改善歐洲經濟。您將獲得快速回覆。您不僅會獲得產量恢復和主要需求，還會獲得與人們恢復到比現在更正常的庫存水準（目前庫存水準非常低）相關的補貨。它是一個鏡像。成交量組合方面的收益與今年的跌幅相同。因此，從成交量組合方面來看，你會獲得非常好的復甦。我們顯然已經削減了成本，因此，在進入明年之後，您還能獲得隨之而來的固定成本槓桿。不過，就價差而言，我認為價差將保持相對中性，因為在經濟復甦的情況下，原材料價格將會上漲，我們會提高價格以跟上原材料價格，就像去年一樣。因此，從另一方面來說，這仍將是一個音量混合的故事。

Okay. And Curt, if I could just ask you on the cash flow. Obviously, very strong performance year-to-date despite the earnings challenges. When you talk about improved working capital performance, should we be thinking that the work you're doing this year is going to lead to sustainably different or better working capital ratios that we can build into next year? Or is these just extraordinary efforts you're making this year given the challenging macro circumstances?

好的。還有 Curt，可以問你一下現金流的狀況嗎？顯然，儘管面臨獲利挑戰，但今年迄今的表現仍然非常強勁。當您談到改善營運資本績效時，我們是否應該認為您今年所做的工作將會帶來可持續的不同或更好的營運資本比率，以便我們可以在明年實現？或者這只是您今年在充滿挑戰的宏觀環境下所做的非凡努力？

Yes. Thanks, Vince. No, what you see right now is our free cash flow has been kind of running similar to last year. Again, we got a lot of talented people helping us manage cash flow across the company. What I'd say is on the working capital side, we'll be aggressive. Normally, we'd see working capital relief second half of the year. In addition, you're getting some benefits of the flow-through of low raw material value. So that's helping. And then we are taking some additional steps to address our working capital across different fronts, multiple fronts quite honestly. And so yes, I would expect that to improve some of our working capital statistics. And I would say, that's not an improvement this year, I think it's a multi-year effort as well that will help contribute to, again, a wonderful free cash flow story with our business, which following up on Mark's other question, we'd also expect our free cash flow to improve in that kind of environment as well. And so I love the free cash flow of this company that reflects the quality of our businesses and that free cash flow is coming to you for those that decided to own our stock and the free cash flow yield approaching 10%.

是的。謝謝，文斯。不，您現在看到的是我們的自由現金流與去年類似。再次，我們有很多才華橫溢的人才幫助我們管理整個公司的現金流。我想說的是，在營運資金方面，我們會積極主動。通常情況下，我們會在下半年看到營運資金的緩解。此外，您還可以從低原材料價值的流通中獲得一些好處。這很有幫助。然後，我們正在採取一些額外措施來解決不同方面、坦白說是多個方面的營運資金問題。是的，我希望這會改善我們的一些營運資金統計數據。我想說，這不是今年的進步，我認為這也是多年的努力，這將有助於為我們的業務帶來美好的自由現金流，正如馬克的另一個問題所述，我們也希望我們的自由現金流在這種環境下也能有所改善。因此，我喜歡這家公司的自由現金流，它反映了我們業務的質量，對於決定持有我們股票的人來說，自由現金流正在流向你們，自由現金流收益率接近 10%。

Yes. I would just add on that -- on the Curt's comment on the 2020, not only you get the earnings back when the demand recovers and the cash comes with it, you also pull inventory down in that environment. So it could be quite strong.

是的。我只想補充一點——關於 Curt 對 2020 年的評論，當需求恢復並且現金隨之而來時，你不僅可以收回收益，還可以在這種環境下降低庫存。所以它可能相當強大。

We'll take our next question from Jeff Zekauskas with JPMorgan.

我們將回答摩根大通的 Jeff Zekauskas 提出的下一個問題。

Your sales were down in the United States in the second quarter year-over-year. Why was that? What's shrinking in the U.S. and what's growing?

你們第二季在美國的銷售額年減。為什麼呢？美國哪些東西在萎縮，哪些東西在成長？

Sure, Jeff. The principal driver of the drop in revenue in the U.S. is pricing in Chemical Intermediates. So you have to remember that unlike many other companies out there, the predominance of our Chemical Intermediates business is located in North America. So a vast majority of that revenue and the price decline is reflected there. So we don't -- the good news is we also don't face the much more competitive dynamics in Asia or Europe for those kind of products where the prices are even much lower than where we are today. So that's part of the story. And then demand is just a bit off with some destocking and careful behavior like -- as well as things like the wet weather in ag that's driven that revenue down with the planting season being curtailed.

當然，傑夫。美國收入下降的主要原因是化學中間體的定價。因此，您必須記住，與許多其他公司不同，我們的化學中間體業務主要位於北美。因此，絕大部分收入和價格下降都反映在那裡。因此，好消息是，我們也不會面臨亞洲或歐洲那樣激烈的競爭態勢，因為這些產品的價格比我們現在的價格低得多。這就是故事的一部分。然後，由於去庫存和謹慎行為等原因，需求略有下降——以及農業領域的潮濕天氣等因素導致種植季節縮短，從而導致收入下降。

Okay. And secondly, perhaps I missed it in your discussion. So far, fibrous demand this year is down 11% roughly in volume terms? What's behind that? And is -- was that your outlook at the beginning of the year?

好的。其次，也許我在您的討論中忽略了這一點。到目前為止，今年的纖維需求量大約下降了 11%？這背後有什麼原因？這是您年初時的展望嗎？

The outlook was for the first half to be challenged on volume relative to the second half, so that was our outlook. This is playing out as we expected. It's really about timing of orders on 2 fronts, Jeff. So on the customer buying patterns of the big multinationals, 2018 first half was just exceptionally high relative to second half of last year. There just tends to be chunkiness in how they order and that's what was the pattern last year. And then on top of that, you had some trade-related issues as well that drove some prebuy in Q2, not in China, but in some other countries worried about trade that prebought around trade uncertainty. And then you had, of course, good orders in China in the first half of the year for tow imports that dropped pretty significantly as we went into the second half. So it's all a timing issue. So what you'll see is we had these 2, the first half drop and then the second half will be some improvement over last year.

預計上半年在產量方面將面臨比下半年更大的挑戰，這就是我們的預期。這一切正如我們所預期的。這實際上與兩個方面的訂單時機有關，傑夫。因此，就大型跨國企業的客戶購買模式而言，2018 年上半年相對於去年下半年而言異常高漲。他們的訂購方式往往比較粗獷，去年的情況也是如此。除此之外，還存在一些與貿易相關的問題，導致第二季度出現了一些預購，不僅是在中國，而且是在其他一些擔心貿易不確定性而進行預購的國家。當然，今年上半年中國拖車進口訂單不錯，但進入下半年，進口訂單大幅下降。所以這完全是時間問題。所以你會看到我們有這兩個，上半年下降，下半年會比去年有所改善。

Next question will come from David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank.

下一個問題將由德意志銀行的 David Begleiter 提出。

Mark, in AF&P given the challenged results in the first half of the year and full year, any concerns that this business may not be as special as perhaps you thought it might be?

馬克，鑑於 AF&P 上半年和全年的業績都面臨挑戰，您是否擔心這項業務可能不像您想像的那麼特別？

I was guessing that question might come this morning. No, I'm not concerned about the specialty nature of this business. So just to start off with the fact that in Q2, which is obviously a challenging quarter for us, we had 25% EBITDA margins, which, I think, demonstrate very high-quality earnings. But much more importantly, you got to decompose the story into its components to really understand what's going on. So first of all, the price side of the equation, which, I think, is the bigger test than the volume question around the specialty nature of business, I think we're actually doing quite well on managing price here. So when we look at a price decline of 3%, half of that, as we told you, is cost pass-through contracts, predominantly in Care Chemicals and then a few other products. So the spreads are absolutely stable, and we're driving good volume growth in those product areas, but there's so much volatility in raws on those specific products. We neutralized that volatility with the CPT.

我猜這個問題可能會在今天早上出現。不，我並不關心這個業務的專業性。首先，第二季度對我們來說顯然是一個充滿挑戰的季度，我們的 EBITDA 利潤率達到了 25%，我認為這表明我們的獲利品質非常高。但更重要的是，你必須將故事分解成各個組成部分才能真正理解正在發生的事情。因此，首先，我認為，價格方面的問題比圍繞業務專業的數量問題更具考驗，我認為我們在價格管理方面實際上做得很好。因此，當我們看到 3% 的價格下降時，正如我們所說的，其中一半是成本轉嫁合同，主要涉及護理化學品，然後是其他一些產品。因此，價差絕對穩定，而且我們正在推動這些產品領域的銷售量良好成長，但這些特定產品的原料波動性很大。我們利用 CPT 來中和這種波動。

The other half is competitive pressure. So talking about a 1.5% decline here year-over-year due to some competitive factors. And in that, there's really sort of 3 stories, but the underlying story is the same at a high level in all 3. So you've got some pressure in insoluble sulfur and tires, you have some pressure in adhesive resins and a few animal nutrition products. And if you look at the last decade, we've always had tremendous growth in China, leading the world in growth. And as you look at these product areas, we're running out of capacity in all of them and because demand was so strong globally that we added capacity to serve growth in these areas and our competitors did too. So you certainly have this capacity being added in the last year to support growth because the markets were tight. At the same time for the first time in the last decade, we've had a big drop in demand in China. So you have a competitive situation. But the good news about all 3 of those things is there's strong underlying growth. There's a long-term belief that China is going to grow as a market beyond what's going on here in the short term.

另一半是競爭壓力。因此，由於一些競爭因素，這裡的銷售額比去年同期下降了 1.5%。其中，實際上有 3 個故事，但從總體上看，這 3 個故事的底層故事是相同的。因此，不溶性硫磺和輪胎面臨一些壓力，而黏合劑樹脂和一些動物營養產品也面臨一些壓力。如果你回顧過去十年，你會發現中國一直保持著驚人的成長勢頭，引領著世界的成長。當您查看這些產品領域時，我們會發現我們在所有這些領域的產能都已用完，並且由於全球需求非常強勁，因此我們增加了產能以滿足這些領域的成長，我們的競爭對手也是如此。因此，由於市場緊張，去年肯定會增加產能來支持成長。與此同時，中國的需求在過去十年中首次出現大幅下降。所以你們處於一個競爭的局面。但這三件事的好消息是，潛在的成長勢頭強勁。人們長期以來堅信，中國市場的成長速度將超越短期內的發展速度。

And importantly and key to our strategy, unlike our competitors in these specific areas, is that we have innovation strategies to extend and add more differentiation and growth to these businesses. So in all 3, we've launched a new Crystex Cure Pro product that demonstrates far superior mixing efficiency to our competitors, product trials going on everywhere, getting orders, but it's early. Same thing in adhesives, very strong underlying market growth in hygiene and other products that will absorb the capacity over time, but a hit in packaging, tapes, labels right now creating some demand space. But more importantly, we're adding a new no-odor, no-volatile organic product. That is a significant differentiator. There's very high demand that will be online by the end of this year. Same thing on nutrition. We're moving from just selling the organic assets into formulated products and have tremendous growth there.

重要的是，與這些特定領域的競爭對手不同，我們的策略的關鍵在於，我們擁有創新策略，可以擴展這些業務並為其增加更多差異化和成長。因此，在這三款產品中，我們都推出了一款新的 Crystex Cure Pro 產品，其混合效率遠遠優於我們的競爭對手，產品試驗正在各地進行，並獲得訂單，但現在還為時過早。黏合劑的情況也一樣，衛生產品和其他產品的潛在市場成長非常強勁，隨著時間的推移，這些產品將吸收產能，但目前包裝、膠帶、標籤受到衝擊，創造了一些需求空間。但更重要的是，我們正在添加一種新的無味、無揮發性的有機產品。這是一個顯著的差異因素。需求量非常大，預計今年底前將上線。營養方面也是一樣。我們從僅僅銷售有機資產轉向銷售配方產品，並且取得了巨大的成長。

So while the timing is not great, if this has happened -- this trade war happened 2 years from now into the future, it looked more like AM. These products would all be in market, having a lot more traction, helping offset some of the underlying demand problem. So net, spreads are flat. We don't have spread compression in this segment, it's -- but some of the raw material tailwind has been offset by some of these prices. The key here is the volume mix story. And as Curt mentioned, the volume parts, the unit volumes that are coming off principally because of the demand and then you've got the mix story with cellulosic additives and a few other high-margin additives. So it's a volume mix story, some negative fix cost leverage that comes with that and the -- and that's the entirety of the margin percentage story. So we don't think this is commoditizing.

因此，雖然時機不太好，但如果發生了這種情況——這場貿易戰發生在兩年後，看起來更像 AM。這些產品都會進入市場，具有更大的吸引力，有助於抵消一些潛在的需求問題。因此，淨利差是持平的。我們在這個領域沒有價差壓縮，但是部分原料的順風已經被部分價格所抵銷。這裡的關鍵是音量混合的故事。正如 Curt 所提到的，產量部分、單位產量的下降主要是因為需求，然後你就得到了纖維素添加劑和其他一些高利潤添加劑的混合故事。所以這是一個數量組合的故事，隨之而來的是一些負固定成本槓桿——這就是利潤率百分比的故事的全部。所以我們不認為這是商品化。

Very helpful. And Curt, just on the shutdown costs in Q3, could you quantify those versus Q2?

非常有幫助。Curt，關於第三季的停工成本，您能否將其與第二季進行比較？

Yes. What I'd say just in general shutdown costs as a whole, they're only modestly higher year-over-year, but the trend of the shutdown costs are different. Where in the last couple of years, we've had higher shutdown costs in second quarter and fourth quarter. This year, it's more going to be in third quarter and fourth quarter. So the sequential year-over-year impact on third quarter is going to be just over $30 million higher shutdown costs third quarter of this year compared to third quarter of last year. Now what that means is you won't have -- last couple of years, you'd had more headwind from third quarter going into fourth quarter, where this year, the shutdown costs will be roughly the same third quarter and fourth quarter.

是的。我想說的是，整體而言，停工成本僅比去年同期略高，但停工成本的趨勢有所不同。過去幾年，第二季和第四季的停工成本較高。今年，這種情況更多地出現在第三季和第四季。因此，與去年第三季相比，今年第三季的停工成本將比去年第三季高出 3,000 多萬美元。這意味著你不會——過去幾年，從第三季到第四季你會遇到更多阻力，而今年，停工成本將與第三季和第四季大致相同。

We'll take our next question from Aleksey Yefremov with Nomura Instinet.

我們將回答野村證券的阿列克謝·葉夫列莫夫 (Aleksey Yefremov) 提出的下一個問題。

In tire additives market, could you describe what's happening with demand there? And also, could you tell us whether pricing continues to come down or has stabilized after recent declines?

在輪胎添加劑市場，您能描述一下那裡的需求狀況嗎？另外，您能否告訴我們價格在最近下跌之後是否繼續下降或已經穩定下來？

So on the demand side, this is actually predates the Trump initiated China-U. S. trade dispute. There was a number of antidumping duties put in place by Europe and the U.S. on truck tires that dramatically constrained where the Chinese tire producers could sell their products, backing up a lot of that production into China, helped multinationals and we've benefited from that in North America and Europe, but obviously China is a huge tire production market and that got very competitive when those companies didn't have any market access. And the market has been growing really fast. So not only did tire companies add a lot of capacity to support this growth that they were expecting that did not materialize, we have some competitors who are also adding capacity to sort of serve that growth. So I mean that really is the story on the demand side. And overall, market is obviously down. The truck tire market is off with lower commercial activity. The OEM production market is off. But it's important to remember that 75% of tires are replacement as opposed to new production, but it's still connected to commercial activity and we are highly levered to commercial activity and our product that we sell, our largest product, insoluble sulfur, so when that comes off, you're going to feel that demand hit.

因此從需求面來看，這其實早於川普發起的中美貿易戰。貿易爭端。歐洲和美國對卡車輪胎徵收了一系列反傾銷稅，這極大地限制了中國輪胎生產商的產品銷售範圍，導致大量輪胎生產轉移到中國，這對跨國公司有利，北美和歐洲的跨國公司也從中受益，但顯然中國是一個巨大的輪胎生產市場，當這些公司沒有任何市場准入時，競爭非常激烈。而且市場成長非常快。因此，不僅輪胎公司增加了大量產能來支持他們預期但未實現的成長，我們的一些競爭對手也在增加產能來滿足這種成長。所以我的意思是這確實是需求方面的故事。整體而言，市場明顯低迷。由於商業活動減少，卡車輪胎市場陷入低迷。OEM生產市場已經關閉。但重要的是要記住，75％的輪胎是替換品，而不是新產品，但它仍然與商業活動相關，並且我們高度依賴商業活動和我們銷售的產品，我們最大的產品，不溶性硫磺，所以當它停止時，你會感受到需求的打擊。

On the price side. I think prices have come off due to that competitive dynamics we described and it appears to have stabilized in the second quarter from what we can see demand is going to improve as we work through this destocking as we go into the back half of the year.

在價格方面。我認為價格已經下降，因為我們描述的競爭動態，而且從我們可以看到的情況來看，第二季價格已經穩定下來，隨著我們進入下半年去庫存工作，需求將會改善。

And as a follow-up on amines, you mentioned a few challenges with demand. How is your inventory in amines? And how is the inventory across the industry?

作為對胺的後續關注，您提到了一些需求上的挑戰。您的胺類庫存怎麼樣？整個產業的庫存如何？

I can't speak to the industry. I would say what you have across many of our businesses, whether it's amines or others, we kind of got our production planning for an improvement for the second half of the year versus the first. And so now we're just adjusting operating rates where some areas weren't as strong, including amines, where you didn't have that seasonal improvement in demand as much as we had hoped given the weather. But we're managing our inventory in operations as we adjust to demand as we do across all our portfolio.

我無法代表該行業發言。我想說的是，在我們的許多業務中，無論是胺類還是其他產品，我們都制定了生產計劃，希望下半年的生產情況比上半年有所改善。因此，現在我們只是調整一些不太強勁領域的營運率，包括胺類產品，由於天氣原因，這些領域的需求並沒有像我們所希望的那樣出現季節性改善。但我們正在管理營運中的庫存，因為我們會根據需求進行調整，就像我們對所有產品組合所做的那樣。

Moving next to Duffy Fischer with Barclays.

接下來是巴克萊銀行的達菲‧菲舍爾 (Duffy Fischer)。

First question just around the cost-cutting program. You had the net $40 million in kind of before things got worse than you expected. Should we expect another major program in the back half of the year or early next year if these conditions continue?

第一個問題是關於削減成本計劃的。在情況變得比你預期的更糟之前，你已經獲得了 4000 萬美元的淨收入。如果這些情況持續下去，我們是否應該期待在今年下半年或明年年初推出另一個重大專案？

So as we look at our cost structure, obviously, we saw some uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment back in April when we took additional actions to cut costs and $40 million is on top of the $80 million to offset inflation is a pretty aggressive program. We don't think there is another step of additional costs that we're going to take in this current economic environment that's substantial. I mean we're obviously going to manage costs aggressively wherever we can, but we have a tremendous amount of growth where we have an innovation. We have tremendous engagement in customers that we have to serve. We have to maintain and run our plants reliably in this environment, and I think we're getting to that point. And we have one of the lowest cost this year in R&D as a percentage of sales in the industry for the kind of innovation we're doing, we're in the bottom quartile. So I think we've always run our company very efficiently. Now obviously, if we go into a bigger, more significant drop in demand due to global recession kind of environment, we will have additional actions we can take in cutting costs because we have a good amount of variable cost in our large integrated plants and how we run them with over time and contractors.

因此，當我們審視我們的成本結構時，顯然，我們在 4 月就看到了宏觀經濟環境中的一些不確定性，當時我們採取了額外措施來削減成本，在 8000 萬美元的基礎上再增加 4000 萬美元來抵消通貨膨脹，這是一個相當激進的計劃。我們認為，在目前的經濟環境下，我們不會再採取任何額外的成本措施。我的意思是，我們顯然會盡可能地積極管理成本，但我們在創新方面卻實現了巨大的成長。我們與我們必須服務的客戶有著極大的互動。我們必須在這種環境下可靠地維護和運行我們的工廠，我認為我們正在達到這一點。今年，就我們所做的創新而言，我們的研發成本佔銷售額的比例是業內最低的之一，處於最低四分位數。所以我認為我們公司營運一直非常有效率。現在顯然，如果由於全球經濟衰退之類的環境而導致需求大幅下降，我們將採取額外措施來削減成本，因為我們的大型綜合工廠以及我們如何與承包商一起運營這些工廠，有大量的可變成本。

And then just on your commentary that Q3 looks like Q2, so right at $2 a share. And then to get to the midpoint of your annual guidance, that would be about $2 a share then in the fourth quarter, which is up almost 45% year-on-year. Can you either walk from Q3 into Q4, how you keep things flat? Or Q4 over Q4, how would you improve it 40%? Why does fourth quarter look so much different than it has historically?

然後根據您的評論，第三季看起來與第二季相似，因此每股價格正好為 2 美元。然後，為了達到年度指引的中點，那將是第四季每股約 2 美元，比去年同期成長近 45%。您能否從 Q3 進入 Q4，如何保持平穩？或者 Q4 與 Q4 相比，您如何將其提高 40%？為什麼第四季與歷史上有如此大的不同？

Yes. It first starts with why is Q3 so different and then I think it's easier to talk about Q4. So in Q3, we do expect improvement to be sequentially strong from Q2 to Q3, but it's been offset to -- due to the higher shutdown schedule. Normally high shutdowns in Q2 and Q4. This year, it's just different where we have our largest cracker that we're taking down and a bunch of other shutdowns that we're doing in Q3. So you've got this headwind from Q2 to Q3. And on a year-over-year basis, as Curt noted, about $30 million difference versus last year in Q3 due to that shutdown schedule. Now we're taking overall cost down just to be clear. It's just a timing issue about when costs show up and you have these period costs with the shutdown in Q3.

是的。首先要討論的是為什麼 Q3 如此不同，然後我認為討論 Q4 會更容易。因此，在第三季度，我們確實預計第二季到第三季的改善會比較強勁，但由於停工計畫較多，這種改善已被抵銷。通常第二季和第四季的停機率較高。今年的情況有所不同，我們最大的裂解裝置將關閉，我們將在第三季關閉一系列其他裝置。因此，從第二季度到第三季度，您遇到了這種逆風。正如 Curt 所指出的，與去年同期相比，由於停工計劃，第三季的差額與去年同期相比約為 3,000 萬美元。現在，為了清楚起見，我們正在降低整體成本。這只是一個關於成本何時出現的時間問題，並且由於第三季的停工，這些期間成本就會出現。

So as you go to Q4, you would normally have this headwind, it was roughly $30 million last year from Q3 to Q4 that knocks earnings down sequentially Q3 to Q4. You're not going to have that this year. So that's part of the explanation. You don't have that headwind.

因此，當你進入第四季時，你通常會遇到這種逆風，去年從第三季到第四季大約有 3000 萬美元，這導致第三季到第四季的收益連續下降。今年你不會再有這樣的事了。這就是部分解釋。你沒有遇到逆風。

Second, Q4, I think, is not going to be your typical Q4. You've got innovation and market development, that's continuing to drive growth and create growth, which is great. That will help have volume be better. You have companies that are already destocked to some degree. There will still be volume lower in Q4 versus Q3 due to seasonal patterns, but probably not as much destocking as normal. You've got cost flowing through on raw materials. And because volume hasn't been as strong, taking longer for that to flow through, but it will certainly start showing up in Q4 as we look at it as well as the manufacturing cost reductions flowing through, and we're LIFO accounting shop to keep in mind. So you have all these dynamics playing on that will allow Q4 to be quite good. And if you're comparing it specifically to last year, you got to remember that last year is a really easy comp. It was extremely -- not only did you have the $30 million headwind in shutdowns from Q3 to Q4 last year, you had dramatic reduction in plant rates to adjust to the destocking and volume drops last year and high cost raws flowing through last year versus this year of low cost raws flowing through. So all that combines together to give us confidence about how we're guiding.

其次，我認為第四季不會是典型的第四季。你們擁有創新和市場開發，這將繼續推動成長並創造成長，這很好。這將有助於提高音量。有些公司已經在一定程度上去庫存了。由於季節性因素，第四季的庫存量仍將低於第三季度，但去庫存化程度可能不會像正常情況那麼高。您的成本已流向原料。而且由於交易量不那麼強勁，需要更長的時間才能流出，但隨著我們觀察它以及製造成本的降低，它肯定會在第四季度開始顯現，我們要牢記後進先出會計原則。因此，所有這些動態都會讓第四季表現得相當不錯。如果你將它與去年進行比較，你必須記住，去年的比較真的很容易。這是極其嚴重的——去年，不僅從第三季到第四季停產，損失了 3000 萬美元，而且為了適應去年的去庫存和產量下降，工廠開工率也大幅下降，而且去年流入的原材料成本較高，而今年流入的原材料成本較低。所有這些結合在一起，讓我們對我們的指導方式充滿信心。

And if I could just add, the sequential impact of those shutdown impacts second quarter and third is roughly $20 million compared to that $30 million year-over-year period.

補充一下，停工對第二季和第三季的連續影響約為 2,000 萬美元，而去年同期的影響為 3,000 萬美元。

We'll take our next call from Jim Sheehan with SunTrust.

我們將接聽 SunTrust 的 Jim Sheehan 的下一個電話。

So longer term, I think you've planned for innovation led -- the innovation-led business model to lift your gross margins higher than they are today. Where are your gross margins per unit tracking? And how do you plan to improve that metric over the next 12 months?

因此，從長遠來看，我認為您已經計劃採用創新主導的商業模式來提高您的毛利率，使其高於現在的水平。您的單位毛利率是多少？您計劃如何在未來 12 個月內提高該指標？

Well, you can see we -- at our Innovation Day, we talked about a growing EBITDA margin. We're probably a couple of percentage points below that. Part of that is going to be that volume mix because we're not getting all the specialty business sales that we promised back at our Innovation Day and that's just because of the macroeconomic environment. So I still believe we can get back to those margins that we talked about at our Innovation Day across our portfolio. A part of that is, again, getting those specialty sales back to where we think they're going to be and that was to one of the earlier comments today getting -- baking back to what more robust economy would support. And then on top of it, it's the fixed cost leverage to get across the portfolio because with Mark, we've added some areas of new capacity. We have room to grow into those and then just we have an environment where it's kind of sluggish. But once we get back on track in those specialty areas, you're going to love the fixed cost leverage we're going to get in both Advanced Materials and Additives & Functional Products.

嗯，你可以看到，在我們的創新日，我們談到了不斷增長的 EBITDA 利潤率。我們可能比這個數字低了幾個百分點。部分原因在於銷售組合，因為我們沒有實現在創新日承諾的所有專業業務銷售額，而這只是因為宏觀經濟環境。因此，我仍然相信，我們可以恢復到我們在創新日上討論的整個投資組合的利潤率。其中一部分是，再次讓這些專業銷售回到我們認為的水平，這是今天早些時候的評論之一 - 回到更強勁的經濟將支持什麼。最重要的是，它是跨投資組合的固定成本槓桿，因為有了馬克，我們增加了一些新的產能領域。我們有成長的空間，但我們所處的環境卻有些遲緩。但一旦我們在這些專業領域重回正軌，您就會喜歡我們在先進材料和添加劑及功能產品中獲得的固定成本槓桿。

Yes. I just want to add, mix is an incredibly powerful tool in the center and heart of our strategy. So as we're growing high-margin products through innovation above segment and the company average in AM and AFP, you just get a powerful lift in your margin, and you see that in how AM recovered from Q1 to Q2 and how it's going to deliver earnings growth for the full year. But unfortunately, if you have a demand contraction like AFP has right now, you're going to feel that mix hit. I mean -- and really in Q2, it was really substantial that cellulose additives that we sell and a few of these other additives that go into automotive market are very high value. And so we really felt that mix hit to this year. And last year, Curt mentioned, it was a tough comp. Last year, it wasn't just demand that was good, we also had some prebuy associated with sort of trade fear in China and some restocking with the coal gas event in Q2. So it was really tough comp for that specific area inside AFP versus last year.

是的。我只想補充一點，混合是我們策略的核心和核心中非常強大的工具。因此，當我們透過創新開發出高於細分市場和 AM 和 AFP 公司平均水平的高利潤產品時，您的利潤率就會得到大幅提升，您可以從 AM 從第一季到第二季度的復甦以及它將如何實現全年盈利增長中看到這一點。但不幸的是，如果您遇到像法新社現在這樣的需求萎縮，您就會感受到這種混合衝擊。我的意思是——實際上在第二季度，我們銷售的纖維素添加劑和進入汽車市場的其他一些添加劑的價值非常高。因此，我們確實感覺到這種混合在今年大受歡迎。柯特提到，去年的比賽非常艱難。去年，不僅需求良好，我們還有一些與中國貿易恐慌相關的預購，以及第二季煤氣事件相關的一些補貨。因此，與去年相比，AFP 內部特定區域的競爭確實很激烈。

Great. And then in adhesive resins, you've been talking about competitive pressure in that market for quite some time. When do you expect to see some easing in the general market conditions? And also, when do you expect your low VOC product to start gaining traction and we start seeing better numbers in that business?

偉大的。然後在黏合劑樹脂方面，您已經談論該市場的競爭壓力很長一段時間了。您預計什麼時候整體市場狀況會有所緩和？另外，您預計您的低 VOC 產品何時會開始受到關注，我們何時會開始看到該業務的表現較好？

And so I think 2019 is the year where things are bottoming out. It's a little hard to call the quarter on it, but prices have stabilized. The demand situation is great in hygiene, which continues to drive growth and absorb capacity. But a few of the other markets that are more packaging, tapes, labels, things like that, it's obviously more caught up in the macro environment and demand is off, which will obviously I think stabilize and get better as we move forward. So I think it's playing out this year.

因此我認為 2019 年是情況觸底的一年。雖然很難預測季度表現，但價格已經穩定下來。衛生領域的需求情況很好，持續推動成長並吸收產能。但其他一些涉及包裝、膠帶、標籤等產品的市場顯然更多地受到宏觀環境的影響，需求下降，我認為隨著我們向前發展，這種情況顯然會穩定下來並變得更好。所以我認為今年就會有結果。

When it comes to the innovation products, there are 2 sets of innovation products. Directly in resins, we have this load or low volatile product that has been verified by our customers to be the best in the market. We're getting all the trials going on now, plants being modified to be able to make it. The good news is, it's just a modification of existing asset, we don't have to build a new plant. So we'll be online selling that product next year and that will really help.

在創新產品方面，共有2套創新產品。直接在樹脂中，我們有這種負載或低揮發性產品，該產品已被我們的客戶證實是市場上最好的。我們現在正在進行所有試驗，並對工廠進行改造以便能夠實現這一目標。好消息是，這只是對現有資產的改造，我們不必建造新工廠。因此我們明年將在網上銷售該產品，這將非常有幫助。

We also have great success in polyolefin. So we make and sell amorphous polyolefins for this market, having great growth and that's a new area for us that we haven't been in and we're really getting a lot of adoption on some new products there that dramatically improved the hot-melt adhesives for hygiene and some other application. So several avenues of growth to stabilize and grow that business while we work through this new capacity in the market.

我們在聚烯烴領域也取得了巨大的成功。因此，我們為這個市場生產和銷售無定形聚烯烴，該市場增長迅速，這對我們來說是一個從未涉足的新領域，我們確實在那裡獲得了大量採用的一些新產品，極大地改善了衛生和其他應用領域的熱熔膠。因此，當我們努力開拓市場新容量時，有多種成長途徑可以穩定和發展該業務。

We'll take our next question from P.J. Juvekar with Citi.

我們將回答花旗銀行的 P.J. Juvekar 提出的下一個問題。

So you mentioned that due to the weakness in China, producers there are getting more aggressive and placing product in Europe. Can you talk about what products or what chains is this occurring in? Is that a long-term trend you see? Or is this something near term, short term because of weakness in China?

所以您提到，由於中國市場的疲軟，那裡的生產商變得更加積極，並將產品投放到歐洲。您能談談哪些產品或哪些鏈條上發生了這種情況嗎？您認為這是長期趨勢嗎？或者這只是近期的事情，由於中國經濟的疲軟而導致的短期現象？

So the example, I think, would be adhesives, where you see some of that capacity in Asia getting placed in Europe that was intended to support growth in China. So that will be an example. Animal nutrition will be the other example, where you have a bunch of capacity that was added in China to serve animal nutrition. And with the swine population being decimated in China, people are looking for another home for that. None of these actually create long-term concern for us, P.J., because, obviously, the Chinese have to eat and so they're going to grow more pigs and absorb that capacity again. And same thing is true about hygiene growth and everything else and adhesives, as that demand recovers, it will start absorbing it back into China. Then that applies to the rest of the story. We've just never been through -- the industry has never been through a story where China is the problem and they've been the source of growth to absorb capacity being added in Asia as well as other markets and now they're not, so that just creates a different dynamic.

因此，我認為以黏合劑為例，你會看到亞洲的部分產能被轉移到歐洲，旨在支持中國的成長。這就是一個例子。另一個例子是動物營養，中國增加了大量產能來滿足動物營養需求。隨著中國生豬數量銳減，人們正在為它們尋找新的家園。P.J.，這些實際上不會給我們帶來長期的擔憂，因為顯然中國人需要吃飯，所以他們會飼養更多的豬並再次吸收這些產能。同樣的情況也發生在衛生用品、其他產品和黏合劑的成長上，隨著需求的恢復，中國將開始吸收這些需求。這適用於故事的其餘部分。我們從來沒有經歷過——這個行業從來沒有經歷過中國成為問題的故事，他們一直是成長的源泉，吸收了亞洲和其他市場新增的產能，但現在他們卻不是了，所以這只會產生不同的動態。

Fair enough. And then a quick question for Curt. Curt, you talked about doing bolt-on M&A like you did in the first half. Has there been any change in valuations of deals you're looking at given the downturn? And would you say that would you look at deals more abroad given you're more of a heavy footprint in the U.S.?

很公平。然後向 Curt 提一個簡單的問題。科特，你談到了像上半年那樣進行附加併購。鑑於經濟低迷，您所考慮的交易估值有任何變化嗎？鑑於您在美國的業務範圍較大，您是否會更多地考慮海外交易？

Yes, thanks for the question. Now we're excited about, again, the bolt-ons we completed so far this year, good businesses, great people, nice synergies, all the things we look for in acquisitions. We continue to have an active pipeline. I wouldn't say our activity is increasing because multiples coming down because we've always been a disciplined party. Maybe it is a contributing factor we're able to get deals done more, but the businesses we've been talking to had reasonable valuation expectations. And so to the extent the market is more conducive to reasonable multiples, we'll continue to increase our activity.

是的，謝謝你的提問。現在，我們再次對今年迄今完成的附加任務感到興奮，優秀的業務、優秀的人才、良好的協同效應，以及我們在收購中尋找的一切。我們繼續擁有活躍的管道。我不會說我們的活動正在增加，因為倍數正在下降，因為我們一直是一個紀律嚴明的政黨。這也許是我們能夠達成更多交易的一個因素，但我們一直在談論的企業都有合理的估值預期。因此，只要市場更有利於實現合理的倍數，我們就會繼續增加我們的活動。

When I think about the rest of this year just to kind of level set that, we'll continue to be active. I mentioned some amount of acquisitions we can do, roughly $100 million this year, it's possible. But right now, we have nothing imminent in our portfolio on acquisitions, but we're still working -- actively work in our pipeline and we'll continue to be disciplined as you've seen over the years with our acquisition strategy.

當我考慮今年剩餘的時間時，只是為了確定這一點，我們將繼續保持活躍。我提到了我們可以進行的一些收購，今年大約 1 億美元，這是可能的。但目前，我們的投資組合中沒有任何即將進行的收購，但我們仍在努力 - 積極開展我們的工作，並且我們將繼續嚴格遵守我們的收購策略，正如您多年來所看到的那樣。

We'll take our next question from Frank Mitsch with Fermium Research.

我們將回答 Fermium Research 的 Frank Mitsch 提出的下一個問題。

Eastman started to see a return in rush orders in the May and early June time frame, which kind of indicated that business was getting a bit better and there was no inventory at the customer levels and EPS growth for 2019 was very much still on the table. So I'm curious what have you specifically seen since the mid-June till today time frame to take any EPS growth off the table?

伊士曼在 5 月和 6 月初開始看到緊急訂單的回升，這表明業務正在好轉，客戶層面沒有庫存，2019 年每股收益成長仍然有望實現。所以我很好奇，從 6 月中旬到今天的時間範圍內，您具體看到了什麼，導致每股盈餘無法成長？

Sure, Frank. Yes, it's obviously been a pretty dynamic time and predicting demand and orders has been tricky for a while now. In the second quarter, we were on track up through the first week of June with demand. The trends we saw that we thought we're in the range that we gave you in April. And then in the last 2 weeks of June, we just saw a dramatic slowdown in the -- relative to what should have been a normal order pattern in June leading up to the G20 Meeting. So from what I can figure out, people got very nervous about what's going to happen in that meeting and they also decided to start managing inventory down and reducing their orders given that risk. And we actually saw the exact same thing in the last 2 weeks of February, headed up to the March 1 deadline when people were worried about the U.S. tariff. So I think there's this sort of push-pull kind of thing around economic uncertainty that's driving some behavior, and so that was part of it. There's no question that we saw there was more risk on the table after the May escalation in the trade war. And that risk, as you got through G20 got confirmed, that there was no end in sight about this trade war, now at a higher level of tariffs and more disagreement than less certainly from where we saw the world in April on how this was going to get settled.

當然，弗蘭克。是的，這顯然是一個非常動態的時期，預測需求和訂單已經變得很棘手了。在第二季度，截至六月第一周，我們的需求一直保持正常成長。我們看到的趨勢是，我們認為我們在四月給出的範圍內。然後在 6 月的最後兩週，我們看到訂單量急劇放緩——相對於 20 國集團會議召開前 6 月的正常訂單模式。因此，據我了解，人們對會議上將要發生的事情感到非常緊張，考慮到這種風險，他們也決定開始管理庫存並減少訂單。事實上，我們在 2 月的最後兩週也看到了同樣的事情，當時正值 3 月 1 日截止日期，人們擔心美國的關稅。所以我認為，圍繞經濟不確定性的這種推拉因素正在推動某些行為，所以這是其中的一部分。毫無疑問，我們看到，五月貿易戰升級後，風險進一步增加。隨著 G20 峰會的召開，這一風險得到了證實，這場貿易戰看不到盡頭，目前關稅水平更高，各方對於如何解決這一問題的意見分歧也更大，這一點與我們 4 月份看到的情況相比不那麼確定。

So as you looked at that, we had a step back and revise our macroeconomic assumptions. I think everyone in April thought and through beginning of May at least that the economy was going to get better in the back half of the year, trade war is going to sort of settle, certainly not escalate. And now we're just in different world. Well, I don't think that's true, and I think many of our peers and other people and the macro data support that, there's not a lot of signs of economic recovery coming in the second half. So we had to revise our assumption down on that. And it's not just about China. When you think about that, Europe is highly dependent on trade to China and there's other factors obviously going on in Europe. So that economy has slowed down. That's led to a lot of destocking and expectation, lower demand, automotive and other consumer discretionary markets taking the primary hit as people are cautious.

因此，當你看到這一點時，我們退後一步並修改我們的宏觀經濟假設。我認為，至少在四月份，到五月初，每個人都認為下半年經濟將會好轉，貿易戰將會平息，肯定不會升級。現在我們只是身處在不同的世界。嗯，我不認為這是真的，而且我認為我們的許多同行和其他人以及宏觀數據都支持這一點，下半年經濟復甦的跡象並不多。因此，我們不得不降低對此的假設。這不僅與中國有關。想想看，歐洲高度依賴與中國的貿易，歐洲顯然還有其他因素。因此經濟已經放緩。這導致大量去庫存和預期，需求下降，由於人們持謹慎態度，汽車和其他非必需消費品市場受到主要打擊。

I mean, reality is if you look at the last 3 quarters, you can say we're in an industrial recession now. Industrial production is down. Even in AFP, as I look at the demand story there, 1/3 of it's mix and the other part being unit volume, we're not really losing much share, maybe 1% of that 8% is about share loss in these competitive stories I was just telling. Demand is down even in AFP. If you look at all of our peers who have industrial exposed, we're in a negative demand situation. So that's the kind of environment we now have to adjust to, and we thought it would stabilize and get better and we revised our assumption. Now obviously, if the economy gets better, so are our results, but that's what we're operating under and then you've got some additional things like this ag and animal nutrition story as well. So that's really sort of what drove our reduction combined with spreads being a little bit more challenged in CI than we had expected that we will expect to sort of continue at this level going forward. We don't think it will get worse, but we don't see why it would get better.

我的意思是，現實情況是，如果你看看過去三個季度，你會發現我們現在正處於工業衰退之中。工業生產下降。即使在 AFP，當我查看那裡的需求情況時，它的 1/3 是產品組合，另一部分是單位數量，我們實際上並沒有失去太多的份額，也許那 8% 中的 1% 是關於我剛才講的這些競爭情況中的份額損失。連法新社的需求也下降了。如果你看看我們所有有工業業務的同行，你會發現我們正處於負需求的境地。這就是我們現在必須適應的環境，我們認為它會穩定下來並變得更好，所以我們修改了我們的假設。現在顯然，如果經濟好轉，我們的業績也會好轉，但這就是我們的經營狀況，然後你還會得到一些額外的事情，例如這個農業和動物營養故事。因此，這實際上是促使我們減少利差的原因，再加上 CI 中的利差比我們預期的要大一些，我們預計未來利差將繼續保持在這個水平。我們認為情況不會變得更糟，但我們也不明白為什麼情況會變得更好。

That's very helpful, Mark. And then Curt, the company has been doing a nice job and it's $125 million per quarter pace on share buybacks. Are there any factors that might influence either up or down? Or should we really anticipate Eastman continuing on that pace?

這非常有幫助，馬克。然後是 Curt，公司一直做得很好，每季的股票回購金額為 1.25 億美元。是否存在可能影響上漲或下跌的因素？或者我們真的應該預期伊士曼會繼續保持這樣的速度嗎？

As we know the capital allocation is dedicated -- committed to a lot of different areas, one of those is also debt we pay down, that $250 million to $300 million level. Share repurchases will be pretty disciplined. The only thing that could adjust it if we do an acquisition that will take -- come out of that share repurchase bucket. So you can do the math of that, Frank, and we typically do a pretty average -- dollar average approach throughout the year.

我們知道，資本配置是專門的——用於許多不同的領域，其中之一也是我們償還的債務，即 2.5 億至 3 億美元的水平。股票回購將會非常嚴格。如果我們進行收購，唯一可以調整的就是從股票回購池中拿出資金。所以你可以算一下，弗蘭克，我們通常採用相當平均的方法——全年採用平均美元數額的方法。

Our next question will come from John Roberts with UBS.

我們的下一個問題來自瑞銀的約翰羅伯茲。

I think I saw some IHS data that said cigarette demand in China was up 6% to 7% year-to-date. I guess, people maybe smoke a little bit more in a weaker economic or in more uncertain environment. So do you think that's correct? And maybe could you reconcile that to your -- the outlook for your business?

我想我看到一些 IHS 數據，稱今年迄今為止中國的香菸需求增加了 6% 至 7%。我想，在經濟較弱或環境較不確定的情況下，人們吸煙可能會多一些。那麼您認為這是正確的嗎？也許您能將其與您的業務前景相協調嗎？

Sure. So as you know, since 2014 and now, there's been a dramatic drop in the amount of imports into China and we do have a JV in China, it's running full and making good profits to the story and the demand you're talking about. But the import -- the total imports into China now are just incredibly low in total compared to where we were. So the growth that you're talking about is being served by plants owned by CNTC in China. And then on top of it with the trade war, we're not seeing that benefit in the last 3 quarters because the CNTC chose not to buy from plants in the U.S. Now we'll get some of that demand back and benefit from some of the story you're talking about as we get the Korea plant qualified into the back half of this year, but that's really sort of the difference.

當然。所以如您所知，自 2014 年至今，中國的進口量急劇下降，我們在中國確實有一家合資企業，該合資企業運作良好，為您談論的故事和需求帶來了豐厚的利潤。但與以前相比，現在中國的進口總量低得令人難以置信。所以，您所說的成長是由中國菸草總公司在中國擁有的工廠實現的。再加上貿易戰，我們在過去三個季度沒有看到這種好處，因為中國菸草總公司選擇不從美國工廠購買。現在，隨著韓國工廠在今年下半年獲得資格，我們將恢復部分需求，並從您所說的一些故事中受益，但這確實是一種區別。

Moving next to Mike Sison with KeyBanc.

接下來是 Mike Sison 和 KeyBanc。

Mark, if you think about the earnings reduction from April, it's about $1.10 from FX, a little bit from the shutdown, how much volume do you need to get in the businesses to sort of recoup the rest at some point in time?

馬克，如果你考慮到 4 月份的收益減少，外匯損失約為 1.10 美元，停工損失很小，你需要在業務中獲得多少交易量才能在某個時間點收回剩餘的損失？

So our current guidance assumes, as Curt indicated, that there's going to be some modest improvement in demand, principally because destocking is not occurring anymore as a way specialties can grow. Obviously, we'll not be selling a bunch of Chemical Intermediates products. We're just not producing because of the larger shutdown, so that sort of nets the corporate volume down to being more modest. So that's embedded in our guidance and what we expect. And that's really by far the largest driver in the change of our guidance from April to now is this revision on the volume mix expectation going forward, combined with a bit lower spreads in CI and this currency headwind.

因此，正如 Curt 所指出的，我們目前的指導假設需求將會出現適度改善，主要是因為去庫存不再是專業產品成長的方式。顯然，我們不會銷售大量化學中間體產品。由於大規模停工，我們無法生產，因此公司產量會下降到比較適中。這已經融入我們的指導和預期中。而這確實是迄今為止我們從 4 月到現在的指導方針變化的最大驅動因素，即對未來交易量組合預期的修訂，加上 CI 的利差略低以及貨幣逆風。

I would also note that probably you're not going to get quite as much raw material tailwinds out of AFP, but that's a minor part of the story relative to volume mix part of it and that's the change in our outlook. It's something I'd emphasize on this and why I'm very confident about that moving forward is we just need the economy to get a bit better and confidence return where people get to normal inventory -- want to go back to normal inventory levels and we can get as a strong recovery in earnings at some point back to comments I made earlier. And that's, I think, a compelling position to be in where I would manage costs very aggressively. And Chemical Intermediates, that's in the specialties. In Chemical Intermediates, you have to get markets to get really tight again on -- for those spreads to come back because not only is demand off but supply has been out in a lot of those kind of products. So I feel really good about how specialties going to recover and I feel good about that 70% of our earnings, where Chemical Intermediates has now been reduced to much smaller percentage of our portfolio. And I'm also proud of the actions we've taken to mitigate some of the volatility with the RGP investment. So I even think Chemical Intermediates is performing relatively well to the market and how we both kept price reductions at a minimal level given our North American position, a great team execution as well as investments like RGP to reduce volatility.

我還要指出的是，你可能不會從 AFP 獲得那麼多的原材料順風，但相對於其中的數量組合部分來說，這只是故事的一小部分，這就是我們前景的變化。我想強調的是這一點，我之所以對未來充滿信心，是因為我們只需要經濟稍微好轉，信心恢復，人們的庫存恢復正常——希望恢復到正常的庫存水平，這樣我們的盈利在某個時候就能強勁復甦，回到我之前的評論。我認為，這是一個令人信服的立場，我會非常積極地管理成本。化學中間體屬於專業領域。在化學中間體領域，你必須讓市場再次變得緊張——以便價差回升，因為不僅需求下降，而且許多此類產品的供應也已經短缺。因此，我對特種產品的復甦感到非常滿意，並且我對我們 70% 的收益感到滿意，其中化學中間體現在在我們的產品組合中所佔的比例已經大大降低。我也對我們為減輕 RGP 投資波動而採取的措施感到自豪。因此，我甚至認為化學中間體在市場上的表現相對較好，而且考慮到我們在北美的地位、出色的團隊執行力以及 RGP 等減少波動的投資，我們都將價格降幅保持在最低水平。

Right. So as a quick follow-up then in AFP and AM, the -- is it fair to say the bulk of the volume that you need in the second half is kind of new products and to some degree within your control?

正確的。那麼，作為 AFP 和 AM 的快速跟進，是否可以說，下半年所需的大部分銷售是新產品，並且在某種程度上在您的控制範圍內？

It's in our control to some degree, which is -- no question innovation is driving a lot of growth especially in AM. As I mentioned, the innovation platforms are really exciting in AFP, but just at an earlier stage and that's why you see the difference between AM and AFP on sort of the demand story, but we'll get there over the next couple of years. And we are assuming destocking is playing its way out. I think it's a key macroeconomic assumption we're making. We're assuming some residual destock in Q3, but that is a key assumption about why demand gets better in the second half versus the first half.

在某種程度上，它是在我們的控制範圍內的，毫無疑問，創新正在推動大量的成長，尤其是在 AM 領域。正如我所提到的，AFP 的創新平台確實令人興奮，但還處於早期階段，這就是為什麼你會看到 AM 和 AFP 在需求方面存在差異，但我們將在未來幾年內實現這一目標。我們假設去庫存化正在逐步實現。我認為這是我們所做的一個關鍵宏觀經濟假設。我們假設第三季會出現一些剩餘的去庫存現象，但這是解釋為什麼下半年的需求會比上半年好轉的關鍵假設。

We'll take our next question from Bob Koort with Goldman Sachs.

我們將回答高盛的鮑伯‧庫爾特 (Bob Koort) 提出的下一個問題。

Just wondering if you can talk a little bit about the way you guys buy paraxylene and how that would flow through into the income statement? What the lag is until we actually see it on the cost of goods line?

只是想知道您是否可以談談您們購買對二甲苯的方式以及這將如何影響損益表？在我們真正看到商品成本線出現這項變更之前，需要多長時間？

If I think about the Advanced Materials segment specifically in specialty plastics, I think their inventory turns probably in that 5- to 6-month range. So the inventory turns are long just because of the supply chain that we have there, maybe 4 to 6 months is how I'd characterize the inventory turn and how long it takes for that lower paraxylene to show itself.

如果我考慮先進材料領域，特別是特種塑膠領域，我認為它們的庫存週轉率可能在 5 到 6 個月的範圍內。因此，庫存週轉時間很長只是因為我們在那裡的供應鏈，也許 4 到 6 個月就是我對庫存週轉時間的特徵以及較低對二甲苯顯現所需的時間。

Would that imply, Curt, that we'd see this nice decline in the last couple of months will show up probably in the fourth quarter, maybe early next year?

科特，這是否意味著，我們會看到過去幾個月出現的這種下降趨勢，可能會在第四季度，也許是明年年初出現？

I think that will be a good way. Just the only thing I'd add on top of -- just don't forget we're LIFO shop. But yes, I would take that kind of time period to see this kind of paraxylene flow-through and this business does a nice job getting pricing relative to its performance characteristics, and so that should help the margins of this business second half of this year and definitely going into next year.

我認為這是一個好方法。我只想補充一點——別忘了我們是後進先出 (LIFO) 商店。但是的，我會花那麼長的時間來觀察這種對二甲苯的流通情況，而且這項業務在根據其性能特徵進行定價方面做得很好，因此這應該有助於今年下半年以及明年該業務的利潤率。

Then on AM, I haven't heard you guys call out architectural interlayers that often. Could you give some scale or scope of how big that business is? And how those margins might stack up against the segment average?

然後在 AM 上，我沒聽到你們常常提到建築夾層。您能否說明一下該業務的規模或範圍？這些利潤率與細分市場平均相比如何？

Yes. Architecture was about half of the interlayer business inside Advanced Materials and it's been great. It's primarily commercial buildings predominantly in Europe, where the code drivers use of laminated glass and it's just been delivering strong growth last year and this year with the amount of commercial building activity there, it's -- and we have a lot of good premium products as well.

是的。建築業務約佔先進材料夾層業務的一半，而且業績非常好。它主要應用於歐洲的商業建築，那裡的法規驅動著夾層玻璃的使用，並且隨著那裡商業建築活動數量的增加，去年和今年夾層玻璃的使用量一直保持強勁增長，而且我們也有很多優質的產品。

We'll take our next question from Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners.

我們將回答 Vertical Research Partners 的 Kevin McCarthy 提出的下一個問題。

Mark, as you look broadly across the portfolio, are there examples of product lines where your July order books or your visibility into 3Q is materially better or worse than the average 2Q levels, any outliers on that front?

馬克，當您廣泛審視整個投資組合時，是否有產品線的例子表明您的 7 月份訂單或對第三季度的可見性明顯優於或差於第二季度的平均水平，這方面有任何異常值嗎？

So I mean, when I look at it, demand in July is holding up quite well across the company on the order books. We're seeing good growth and -- I should say stability relative to June and July. I've also learned my lesson at this point not to predict demand for the quarter based on order books in any one month because there's just too much volatility out there. But what I'd say overall is orders are holding up well.

所以我的意思是，當我看到它時，七月整個公司的訂單需求都保持得相當好。我們看到了良好的成長——應該說與六月和七月相比是穩定的。我也從中吸取了教訓，不要根據任何一個月的訂單來預測該季度的需求，因為那裡的波動性太大了。但我認為整體而言訂單情況良好。

Okay. And then second one, if I may, on Advanced Materials just to kind of follow up on the prior thread of discussion like you indicated back half better than the front half in terms of the earnings prospects there. If I look at the 5 years prior, the opposite has been true. And so I guess my question is, are there other factors besides the flow-through of lower paraxylene costs that are helping you in the back half in that business that you would call out?

好的。然後第二個問題，如果可以的話，是關於先進材料，只是為了跟進之前的討論，就像您指出的那樣，就盈利前景而言，後半部分比前半部分要好。如果我回顧一下前五年的情況，事實恰恰相反。所以我想我的問題是，除了較低的對二甲苯成本之外，還有其他因素可以幫助您實現業務的後半部分嗎？

So a couple of things, one, again, what you already mentioned the flow-through low raw materials. Also keep in mind, the fourth quarter last year was a pretty down year for that segment just because of the amount of destocking that occurred in the fourth quarter. And so that to me is a big factor as well and then the cost reduction activities will help benefit that businesses like, well, the rest of the segments.

所以有幾件事，第一，您又提到了流通低原料。還要記住，由於第四季度庫存減少，去年第四季度對於該領域來說是相當低迷的一年。所以對我來說這也是一個重要因素，而降低成本的活動將有助於使其他領域的企業受益。

Yes. The other key is there's a lot of destocking in the first half of this year that's not remotely normal. We believe this played itself out as we go into the back half and obviously that creates the distortion first half, back half.

是的。另一個關鍵因素是，今年上半年有大量庫存去化，根本不正常。我們相信，當我們進入後半段時，這種情況已經顯現出來，顯然這造成了上半場和後半場的扭曲。

Ebony, let's make the next question the last one, please.

埃博尼，請把下一個問題當作最後一個問題。

And we'll take our final question from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies.

我們將回答 Jefferies 的 Laurence Alexander 提出的最後一個問題。

Just quickly then, can you tie your comments on destocking to how you're thinking about the risk of extended customer shutdowns in either August or into year-end? And can you touch briefly on -- as we get back to the discussion about the snapback scenario whether your customers are giving feedback that they are concerned about a recurrence of trade wars and therefore tighter inventory policies even if this trade war is resolved?

那麼，您能否快速地將您對去庫存的評論與您對 8 月份或年底客戶停工延長的風險的看法聯繫起來？當我們回到關於反彈情景的討論時，您能否簡單談談，您的客戶是否反饋說，他們擔心貿易戰會再次發生，因此即使這場貿易戰得到解決，他們也會採取更嚴格的庫存政策？

Yes. So in general what I'd say is people have taken a very tight inventory strategy for the last 3 quarters. I mean we've been working things down pretty aggressively given the level of uncertainty that we face and there is a limit. Once you get inventories very low, you can't go any further than that, unless there is a fundamental step down in demand. So I think we have customers already live in sort of at very short order patterns and very tight inventory management.

是的。所以總的來說，我想說的是，過去三個季度人們採取了非常嚴格的庫存策略。我的意思是，考慮到我們面臨的不確定性程度，我們一直在積極地解決問題，但有一個限制。一旦庫存變得非常低，你就無法再進一步下降，除非需求出現根本下降。所以我認為我們的客戶已經適應了非常短的訂單模式和非常嚴格的庫存管理。

To your first question, Laurence, on the -- on extended shutdowns, I mean, that would be potential risk to our forecast if there was very significant shutdown of the auto industry that's not in our current forecast. That would push us to the lower end of our range as opposed to somewhere else.

勞倫斯，關於你的第一個問題，關於延長停工，我的意思是，如果汽車行業出現我們目前預測之外的大規模停工，這將對我們的預測構成潛在風險。這會將我們推向範圍的低端，而不是其他地方。

Okay. Thanks again, everyone, for joining us this morning. This call will be available on replay on our website this afternoon. We hope you have a great day.

好的。再次感謝大家今天早上加入我們。今天下午我們的網站將重播此通話。我們希望您度過愉快的一天。

Again, this does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

再次，今天的電話會議到此結束。感謝您的參與。您現在可以斷開連線。