Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call November 5, 2024 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Bill Cunningham - VP, IR
Lori Ryerkerk - Chairman and CEO
Scott Richardson - COO
Chuck Kyrish - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Vincent Andrews - Morgan Stanley
Mike Leithead - Barclays
Michael Sison - Wells Fargo
Jeff Zekauskas - JP Morgan
Ghansham Panjabi - Baird
Josh Spector - UBS
Arun Viswanathan - RBC Capital Markets
David Begleiter - Deutsche Bank
Aleksey Yefremov - KeyBanc Capital Markets
Patrick Cunningham - Citibank
Kevin McCarthy - Vertical Research Partners
Hassan Ahmed - Alembic Global
Matthew Blair - Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Company
John Roberts - Mizuho Securities
Salvator Tiano - Bank of America

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Celanese Corporation Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the opening remarks [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Bill Cunningham

Thank you. Welcome to the Celanese Corporation third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. My name is Bill Cunningham, Vice President of Investor Relations. With me on the call today are Lori Ryerkerk, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer; Scott Richardson, Chief Operating Officer; and Chuck Kyrish, Chief Financial Officer. Celanese distributed its third quarter earnings release via Business Wire and posted prepared comments on our Investor Relations Web site 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 Web site. 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 the prepared comments. Form 8-K reports containing all these materials have also been submitted to the SEC. Before we open it for questions, I'd like to turn the call over to Lori Ryerkerk for some opening remarks.

Lori Ryerkerk

Thank you, Bill. And good morning, everyone. As Bill said, before we get started with questions today, I wanted to take a moment to emphasize a few key points. First, it is clear from our prepared comments that our results for Q3 were disappointing and the outlook for Q4 and into 2025 is below both our expectations and our goals. Despite the many actions that we've taken to continue to deliver value, the benefit from these measures has been increasingly offset by the broad and persistent macroeconomic headwinds. Given this dynamic, we intend to temporarily reduce our quarterly dividend beginning in the first quarter of 2025. While we recognize the importance of the dividend to our shareholders, we've carefully considered a variety of options and we have determined that this is the most prudent and cost effective measure to support our deleveraging efforts at this time. We will look forward to accelerating the return of capital to shareholders once we have progressed our deleveraging efforts. To further help us navigate this challenging environment, we have identified and will take additional bold actions to strengthen earnings and cash generation. We have a strong track record of delivery and operational excellence and are confident that we are taking the right actions. For example, we are significantly slowing production to match demand in Q4 and implementing further cost reductions, particularly in SG&A. We hold ourselves to a high standard and the steps that we are taking are driving durable improvements for the company as we build an increasingly disciplined cross structure and better position the business to drive long term growth.