Celanese Corporation (CE) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) Q1 2023 Results Conference Call May 10, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Brandon Ayache - VP, IR

Lori Ryerkerk - CEO, Chairman of the Board

Scott Richardson - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Arun Viswanathan - RBC Capital Markets

Frank Mitsch - Fermium Research

Ghansham Panjabi - Baird

Hassan Ahmed - Alembic Global

Jaideep Pandya - On Field Investment Research

Jeff Zekauskas - JP Morgan

John Roberts - Credit Suisse

Josh Spector - UBS

Kevin McCarthy - Vertical Research Partners

Matthew DeYoe - Bank of America

Michael Leithead - Barclays

Michael Sison - Wells Fargo

Vincent Andrews - Morgan Stanley

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Celanese First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions].

At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Brandon Ayache, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Brandon Ayache

Thank you, Darryl. Welcome to the Celanese Corporation first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. My name is Brandon Ayache, Vice President of Investor Relations. And with me today on the call are Lori Ryerkerk, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer; and Scott Richardson, Chief Financial Officer. Celanese distributed its first quarter earnings release via Business Wire and posted prepared comments on our Investor Relations website yesterday afternoon.

As a reminder, we'll discuss non-GAAP financial measures today. You can find definitions of these measures as well as reconciliations to the comparable GAAP measures on our website.

Today's presentation will also include forward-looking statements. Please review the cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements, which can be found at the end of both the press release and prepared comments. Form 8-K reports containing all of these materials have also been submitted to the SEC.

Since we published our prepared comments yesterday, we'll go ahead and ask you, Darryl to open it up for questions.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first questions come from the line of Michael Leithead with Barclays.

Michael Leithead

First question, Lori, just high level on the full year EPS guide. You're doing about 450 of EPS in the first half, which implies about $7 in the second half. I assume synergies, Clear Lake, a few other things are helping in that back half. So I guess, is there a way to broadly characterize what you're assuming for market demand recovery in the second half versus, say, controllable actions?