Quaker Chemical Corporation (KWR) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending December 31, 2024

February 25, 2025 8:30 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to Quaker Houghton Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the call over to Jeffrey Schnell, Vice President, Investor Relations. Mr. Schnell, you may begin.

Jeffrey Schnell

Thank you. Good morning. And welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. On the call today are Joe Berquist, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Tom Coler, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Robert Traub, our General Counsel. Our comments relate to the financial information released after the close of US markets yesterday, February 24, 2025. Our press release and accompanying slides can be found on our Investor Relations Web site. Both the prepared commentary and discussion during this call may contain forward-looking statements reflecting the company's current view of future events and their potential effect on Quaker Houghton's operating and financial performance. These statements involve uncertainties and risks, which may cause actual results to differ. The company is under no obligation to provide subsequent updates to these forward-looking statements. This presentation also contains certain non-GAAP financial measures and the company has provided reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure in the appendix of the presentation materials, which are available on our Web site. For additional information, please refer to our filings with the SEC. Now it's my pleasure to hand the call over to Joe.

Joe Berquist

Thank you, Jeff. And I'd like to welcome everyone to Quaker Houghton's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call. Quaker Houghton enters 2025 in a strong position. We made progress on our enterprise strategy last year despite some contraction across our end markets and regions. Our team delivered a solid performance due to the strength of our portfolio and our focused commitment to improve our customers' operations and productivity. We also continued to manage items within our control. We further improved our margin profile and generated strong operating cash flow. We have the right long term strategy, which will build our competitive advantage and drive value for our shareholders. I will say a few words about the quarter and provide comments about my vision for the path forward and the outlook for 2025. Then I will hand the call over to Tom to discuss our financials in more detail. Fourth quarter net sales were $444 million, 5% below the prior year or 3% lower on a constant currency basis. I'd like to highlight that while market conditions were persistently soft throughout the entirety of 2024, our ability to gain new pieces of business continued to contribute to our positive performance. Our volumes in the fourth quarter were consistent with the prior year due to market share gains despite an estimated low to mid single digit decline in the aggregate end markets we serve. We continue to outperform these difficult end markets.