"Orion" Q2 2026 Earnings Call - Working Capital Discipline Offsets Feedstock Surge, Lifting Free Cash Flow

Operator: Greetings, welcome to the Orion second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star 0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Mr. Chris Kapsch, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Chris Kapsch, Vice President of Investor Relations, Orion: Thank you, Stacy. Good morning, everyone. This is Chris Kapsch, VP of Investor Relations at Orion, welcome to our second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining the call are Corning Painter, Orion’s Chief Executive Officer, and Jon Puckett, our Chief Financial Officer. We issued our second quarter results after the markets closed yesterday. We have posted a slide presentation to the investor relations section of our website. We will be referencing this deck during the call. Before we begin, we are obligated to remind you that some of the comments made on today’s call are forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties described in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, our actual results may differ from those described during the call. All forward-looking statements are made as of today, August 6, 2026.

Orion is not obligated to update any forward-looking statements based on new circumstances or revised expectations. All non-GAAP financial measures discussed during this call are reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in the tables attached to our press release and the quarterly earnings deck. Any non-GAAP financial measures presented in these materials should not be considered as alternatives to financial measures required by GAAP. I will turn the call over to Corning.

Corning Painter, Chief Executive Officer, Orion: Good morning, thank you all for joining us. On the call today, I’ll start with a few highlights regarding our strong second quarter results. The Orion team executed extremely well in an extraordinary time, we remain keenly focused on the things that we control. I’ll discuss bigger picture trends in our business that supported our quarterly results, as well as some trade flow and regulatory considerations that we view as favorable looking forward. I’ll turn the call over to Jon Puckett for a more detailed review of our results before sharing some brief concluding remarks and shifting to Q&A. On slide three, Orion’s Adjusted EBITDA improved 26% sequentially to $58 million in the second quarter.

We’re particularly pleased with the results in our Specialty Segment, where responsiveness to demand strength, coupled with prompt pricing actions contributing to what is our best quarterly segment performance since early 2022. Specialty’s solid Q2 metrics exemplify this business’s attractiveness as well as its much greater potential. Robust volume gains were geographically broad-based and across end markets. Timely targeted pricing actions also helped preserve the segment’s profit, mitigating extreme feedstock cost volatility. Specialty’s excellent results, coupled with our Rubber Segment’s steady performance, enable us to reaffirm our full year Adjusted EBITDA guidance range, despite today’s macro uncertainty and limited order visibility into the second half. We are lifting our Free Cash Flow expectations for the full year, primarily thanks to tangible progress in working capital initiatives.

We now expect to generate slightly positive Free Cash Flow in 2026 at the midpoint of our guidance range, despite still operating through trough conditions. On slide four, we highlight our stepped-up execution and intense focus on the factors we can control. As ingrained in Orion’s culture, we always emphasize safety first. Our year-to-date safety performance has been exceptional, with only one injury across all our people, sites, and contractors, substantially better than chemical industry norms. I would like to thank the whole Orion team, but particularly those who work at our production sites for your commitment to safety. These results reflect a high degree of operating discipline. Let’s keep it up. We are also encouraged by our continued progress on plant reliability.

Supported by operational excellence programs, combined with prioritizing our maintenance CapEx on the most impactful projects, we are tracking towards our third consecutive year of improved plant reliability. In recent years, we have also worked to diversify our raw material supply options and production recipes, this has paid off in supply chain flexibility. Our working capital initiatives are yielding measurable benefits. Structurally lower inventories, enabled partly by progress in reliability and better forecast accuracy, along with improved payment terms, have been the most impactful levers. Meanwhile, cost initiatives, including headcount, procurement, and efficiency programs, are delivering, we remain on track for an annualized gross benefit of $20 million. On slide five, we discuss recent trends. Overall, our business continues to exhibit resilience despite oil price volatility and considerable global uncertainty. Underpinning demand strength during Q2 was customer preference for more de-risked local supply chains.

This favors our business model and footprint. A bit more color on the Specialty Segment’s performance here. In our western regions, the recent top-line strength reflects broad end market participation beyond restocking activity. Demand for products serving coatings as well as wiring cable markets, such as infrastructure, were particularly healthy. Moreover, our customers continue to express how their demand for our products reflects genuine orders from their customers. Pricing actions, meanwhile, have been effective in helping to protect profit. For our Rubber Business, tire-related demand in key geographic regions has been generally stable, local tire production rates remain below historical norms. Despite that, the North American spot market was strong in the quarter and exceeded our capacity to accept incremental orders in some instances.

We believe our rubber segment is set up for recovery based on several underlying trends like trade issues, the value of local-for-local business, and some apparent tightness in local supply and demand. As import levels and channel inventories continue to normalize, locally made tire selling should improve, foreshadowing higher local tire production rates, a positive for Orion. On slide six, we highlight several favorable trade flow and regulatory considerations, which we expect will also contribute to improving fundamentals. Early last month, the European Commission finalized anti-dumping duties on tire exports from China, ranging from 24%-45% on all but one exporter. The EU’s parallel anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese passenger car tires remains ongoing. Moreover, there is a precedent for the European Commission to impose anti-circumvention measures should evidence emerge that there are efforts to bypass import duties.

Given that Chinese imports into the EU dropped 75% from peak earlier this year when the anti-dumping duties were originally expected, this final action should reduce Chinese imports and support local EU tire production. Meanwhile, U.S. tire imports have been down versus prior year levels in each of the past four months. We continue to witness reshoring commitments, including at least three additional global players announcing their intent for significant capital investment in North America tire production facilities. We believe recently announced closures of old, higher-cost plants need to be considered against the context of tire manufacturers modernizing, expanding, and scaling their best production facilities. On balance, this is healthy for the industry. Meanwhile, we expect a variety of secular tire and technology trends will contribute to steady and improving carbon black.

These include the preference for larger tires, greater wear associated with EV adoption, the shift to all-season tires, and increasing standards around abrasion and durability in Europe. The confluence of these trends should translate into either higher carbon black content per unit or more frequent replacement cycles, or both.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, please stand by.

Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for your patience. One moment please.

Jon Puckett, Chief Financial Officer, Orion: Where? Okay.

Corning Painter, Chief Executive Officer, Orion: The adoption and the shift to all-season tires and increasing standards around abrasion and durability in Europe. The confluence of these trends should translate into either higher Carbon Black content per unit or more frequent tire replacement, or both, supporting our industry’s fundamentals. All considered, there are multiple of reasons to believe our Rubber segment’s footprint will remain essential, particularly given the absence of new Western Carbon Black production facilities. These dynamics underscore the durable nature of our business and our local-for-local value proposition. Jon, over to you.

Jon Puckett, Chief Financial Officer, Orion: Thank you, Corning. Slide seven covers our second quarter results at a high level. Adjusted EBITDA was $58 million, down 15% versus the prior year, primarily due to lower Rubber segment annual pricing agreements, despite 5% higher year-over-year Specialty volumes. Adjusted EBITDA improved 26% sequentially, with pricing actions in response to oil price volatility and improved product mix contributing favorably. Specialty was the star performer in our second quarter, with Adjusted EBITDA of $39 million, increasing 96% compared to the prior year period. The 5% year-over-year volume increase in Specialty included nearly 10% growth in EMEA and the Americas. Increased earnings were also driven by pricing actions and favorable mix. Rubber segment Adjusted EBITDA of $19 million was 61% lower year-over-year, but was consistent on a sequential basis. As mentioned, the 2026 contractual price agreements were the main driver of the year-over-year decline.

Also contributing were customer mix and the absorption impact as we reduced inventory levels and improved cash flow. We’re really proud of generating positive free cash flow during the quarter, especially given the surge in oil-derived feedstock costs. Our working capital initiatives, particularly in inventory and accounts payable, contributed to our success and generated $4 million of cash in the second quarter. CapEx declined $11 million from the first quarter, also contributing to the $2 million of free cash flow. On slide eight, we get more granular on Specialty quarterly adjusted EBITDA, which was the highest in four years. The near doubling of adjusted EBITDA was driven by 5% higher volumes, nimble and proactive pricing actions, and favorable product mix. Demand strength in Specialty was broad-based and across almost every key end market we serve. Sales into the general polymer end market were healthy.

For example, engineered plastics growth was mid-single digit. Outside the general polymer space, we achieved double-digit gains with our higher value solutions into coatings, wire and cable, packaging, and battery markets. Our success in coatings was particularly notable given the recent softness in global OEM build rates. Above-market growth reflects demand for our best-in-class products, supported by our recent expansion projects. Beyond automotive OE, sales of our coating solutions into marine, protective, and industrial markets all performed well. Double-digit growth in wire and cable reflects the success of our newer conductive grades, supporting underlying energy and infrastructure market expansion. Slide nine summarizes our Q2 Rubber segment results. Adjusted EBITDA declined sharply year-over-year as expected, but was consistent on a sequential basis.

Lower 2026 contractual pricing, unfavorable customer mix, and an absorption impact associated with internal inventory actions that were intentional were the primary contributors to the lower year-on-year performance. Tire production rates remain below historical norms in our key regions. Tire sell-through rates are above build rates, and imported tires are trending lower. We expect channel inventories will decline and support local tire manufacturing. One interesting note for the quarter, despite the overall year-on-year volume decline, there were signs of tightness in the North American carbon black market as we saw strong spot demand during the quarter in Rubber. Spot market strength was such that we could not satisfy all the requests from our customers. To be clear, consistent with our closing of several reactor lines last year, it is not our intent to hold capacity to back up competitors, domestic or otherwise. Let’s move to slide 10.

Thanks largely to tangible progress from ongoing initiatives, working capital was a $4 million source of cash in the second quarter, despite oil being up about 29% on average from Q1 to Q2. Let me put this into perspective. Based on our sensitivities, unmitigated, this increase in average oil-based feedstocks would have been a headwind of about $60 million in the second quarter. Our actions around reducing inventory levels and increasing vendor payment terms more than offset this working capital headwind. This is a meaningful accomplishment that the whole team at Orion S.A. contributed to. Corning and I congratulate them on the outcome of their efforts. We will continue to take actions like these to drive free cash flow. Cash flow from operations was $27 million, and CapEx declined $11 million sequentially to $25 million, resulting in free cash flow of $2 million in Q2.

Net debt at quarter end was $961 million, down modestly from Q1 levels, with a net debt to Adjusted EBITDA ratio of 4.4 times, comfortably below our credit agreement leverage ratios. Finally, we ended the quarter with liquidity of $178 million. With that, I’ll hand the call back to Corning.

Corning Painter, Chief Executive Officer, Orion: Thanks, Jon. Slide 11 provides a revised outlook and sensitivity. Despite continued global turmoil, we’re reaffirming our full-year Adjusted EBITDA guidance of $170 million to $210 million, which we raised last quarter. This guidance reflects our typical seasonality. Beyond that, we’re lifting our Free Cash Flow outlook range, which is now $5 million of Free Cash Flow at the midpoint. This assumes crude oil prices averaging $80 per barrel in the second half of 2026, in line with recent industry forecasts. The $43 million full-year improvement in Free Cash Flow is a function of the progress we have made with working capital levers, which help diminish the headwind associated with higher oil-driven feedstock costs. Our rule of thumb sensitivities are on the right side of the slide and have been performing as expected, even in these testing times. Let me conclude with a few thoughts on slide 12.

The operating backdrop remains volatile, but it also creates opportunity for Orion to be entrepreneurial, to find and close on new opportunities, and to demonstrate the resilience and durable nature of our business. Local-for-local is a smart, low risk sourcing strategy, and our commercial strategy is to build enduring partnerships with growth-minded customers that value our footprint, proximity, reliability, and dependability. At the same time, our organizational mindset is laser focused on performance metrics that drive value, including continuous improvement in reliability, and especially in earnings and Free Cash Flow. We believe the actions we are taking today position Orion regardless of how the macro and geopolitical backdrops evolve. With that, Stacy, let’s open up the call for Q&A.

Operator: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Your first question comes from Josh Spector with UBS. Please go ahead.

Chris Perrella, Analyst, UBS: Hi. Good morning. It’s Chris Perrella on for Josh. Where are you guys in the contract negotiation process, what are the puts and takes there driving that? Then I have a follow-up on specialty.

Corning Painter, Chief Executive Officer, Orion: Sure. The negotiations have started off with some customers. I’d say typical pattern in terms of sequencing of who’s in, who’s not. There’s a limit to what I can say because it’s competitively set up, competitively sensitive what goes on. I’d say the setup this year is a little bit better in terms of the imports, the regulatory actions, the tightness we saw on spot, that kind of thing. I’d say the other thing is customers have experienced this year the value of reliability.

Chris Perrella, Analyst, UBS: I appreciate that. On specialty, with demand, is there a headwind in the third quarter from higher raw material costs? Can you discuss more the outlook for specialty in the third quarter, please?

Corning Painter, Chief Executive Officer, Orion: Sure. Seasonally, we typically see specialty a little bit weaker in the third quarter. Europe’s an important business for us, we have some seasonal impacts there with the holiday season in that timeframe. We don’t have huge visibility, Chris, to customer forecasts very far out. You get them, there isn’t a lot of confidence in them, I’d say. Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything super changing in the outlook from our customers at this point.

Chris Perrella, Analyst, UBS: Thank you.

Operator: Next question, Saurabh Jadhav with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Saurabh Jadhav, Analyst, Mizuho: Hi. Good morning. It was a nice uplift in gross profit pattern in specialties. How much of that improvement will you be able to hold into Q3? Is the mix improvement going to continue in Q3 as well?

Corning Painter, Chief Executive Officer, Orion: Sure. The biggest factors for us there were really volume and mix. On those areas, it really depends then, okay, there’s always some ups and downs in one quarter to another, and again, there isn’t a lot of visibility around that. There’s probably some gain we got on timing and pricing and so forth, which I wouldn’t expect to continue. In the third quarter, let me say, September’s almost always the biggest month, and it’s just hard to speak with great certainty on how that’s going to play out right now. You have our guidance.

Saurabh Jadhav, Analyst, Mizuho: Got it. Are you going to continue the favorable payment terms into the next two quarters as well?

Corning Painter, Chief Executive Officer, Orion: I think we’re holding on to those terms. That’s a value that we created in this timeframe, and I see us holding on to that just going forward, period. That’s how we emerge from this stronger than before.

Saurabh Jadhav, Analyst, Mizuho: Thank you.

Operator: Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad.

Corning Painter, Chief Executive Officer, Orion: Stacy, let’s go ahead and wrap up. Let me say to everyone, I appreciate everybody’s time and your interest in Orion. I’m sorry. We do have another questions come in. Let’s go ahead and take that.

Operator: Sure. John Roberts with Mizuho, please go ahead.

John Roberts, Analyst, Mizuho: Thank you. Just a couple of quick follow-ups here. You’re assuming $80 a barrel Brent average in the second half of 2026. Would you say your Specialty Black pricing is consistent with that level of oil?

Corning Painter, Chief Executive Officer, Orion: Keep in mind that we have some formula pricing in Specialty. Of course, there’s a certain lag in how that works through our P&L. The majority of it is more or less open pricing. When we’ve done our pricing actions on it, some of it was surcharge and reflected that, but there’s also a fair amount of base pricing that we went in with, which we would expect to maintain through this. I think on the formula part, that’s really looked to try to basically just be neutral in the overall performance. That’s why we kind of stressed that in our script. Again, the big drivers for us was more volume and mix in the quarter.

John Roberts, Analyst, Mizuho: Would you say the feedstock market for Carbon Black relative to other petroleum liquids is generally more tight or less tight? Like jet fuel and diesel seem to be the tightest. Is Carbon Black Oil at the other end of the spectrum, or how would you characterize it?

Corning Painter, Chief Executive Officer, Orion: Well, the good thing about our industry and the flexibility efforts we’ve made on different kind of sourcing, storage containment, supply chains, and all that, is just to have greater flexibility across all of them. We do sometimes use a middle distillate, which would be impacted by those kind of areas, but we’re able to try to move things around to mitigate those costs. By and large, though, we have not had to interrupt, and we don’t see ourselves interrupting our production based on CBO supply issues.

John Roberts, Analyst, Mizuho: Thank you.

Operator: We have a follow-up from Josh Spector with UBS. Please go ahead.

Chris Perrella, Analyst, UBS: Hi. Yes, it’s Chris on again. Just a question on EU emissions credits. Could you talk about the timing and impact on the P&L and the cash flow in the second half of the year?

Corning Painter, Chief Executive Officer, Orion: Right. It’s a great question, Chris. This timing has moved several times. We now believe that we will be coming out in the third quarter. You’ll see there’s been a lot of energy in Europe about what adjustments and so forth they would make to that. Our best estimate on that is included in our current guidance.

Chris Perrella, Analyst, UBS: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. I would like to turn the floor over to Corning for closing remarks.

Corning Painter, Chief Executive Officer, Orion: Thank you all for being with us today. Thank you, Stacy, for helping us through the little glitch we had here. We appreciate your time. We look forward to engaging with many of you next week at the Mizuho Industrials & Chemicals Conference, as well as the UBS and Jefferies investor conferences following Labor Day. We’ll be out and about and look forward to meeting with as many of you as possible. Thanks very much and have a good rest of your day.

Operator: This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.