Earnings call transcript: Avient Corp sees Q2 2025 growth amid market shifts

Avient Corporation reported a 5% increase in adjusted EPS to $0.80 for Q2 2025, alongside a modest 0.6% growth in organic sales. The company’s strategic focus on high-margin markets such as healthcare and defense has bolstered its performance despite global consumer market weaknesses. With a solid gross profit margin of 32% and revenue of $3.25 billion over the last twelve months, Avient continues to demonstrate financial resilience. The stock showed a 0.66% increase, closing at $31.04, with aftermarket trading indicating further upward movement.

Key Takeaways

• Avient’s adjusted EPS rose by 5% to $0.80 in Q2.
• Organic sales growth was 0.6% for the quarter.
• The healthcare sector saw a robust 17% growth.
• The company reduced its debt by $50 million in Q2.
• Stock price increased by 0.66% post-earnings release.

Company Performance

Avient Corporation continues to demonstrate resilience, achieving its fifth consecutive quarter of organic growth. The company’s strategic shift towards high-margin sectors, such as healthcare and defense, has been instrumental in counteracting the sluggishness in global consumer markets. Avient’s ability to innovate and adapt, as evidenced by a 50% increase in patent filings, underscores its commitment to evolving as a leader in material solutions.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: Modest growth with a 0.6% increase in organic sales.
• Earnings per share: Adjusted EPS grew by 5% to $0.80.
• Adjusted EBITDA margin: Expanded by 30 basis points to 17.2%.
• Debt Reduction: $50 million reduction in Q2, with plans to reduce total debt by $100-$200 million in 2025.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Avient’s stock closed at $31.04, marking a 0.66% increase. In aftermarket trading, the stock continued to rise by 0.35%. According to InvestingPro analysis, Avient appears undervalued at current levels, with analysts setting price targets between $37 and $51. The company has maintained dividend payments for 15 consecutive years, currently yielding 3.52%. This positive movement reflects investor confidence in the company’s strategic direction and its strong performance in key sectors.

Outlook & Guidance

Avient projects a Q3 adjusted EPS of $0.70, representing an expected 8% growth. The company maintains its full-year adjusted EPS guidance between $2.77 and $2.87, with anticipated low single-digit revenue changes in the second half. Avient aims to achieve $545-$560 million in adjusted EBITDA for the year. InvestingPro data reveals strong financial health metrics, with liquid assets exceeding short-term obligations and a healthy current ratio of 2.03. For deeper insights into Avient’s financial health and growth potential, including 6 additional exclusive ProTips, explore the comprehensive Pro Research Report available on InvestingPro.

Executive Commentary

CEO Dr. Ashish Khandpur emphasized the company’s transition from a specialty formulator to an innovator of material solutions, highlighting the strategic importance of the healthcare sector. CFO Jamie Beggs reiterated the company’s commitment to debt reduction, aiming to further pay down debt in the latter half of the year.

Risks and Challenges

• Global consumer market weakness could impact future sales.
• Raw material inflation is expected to persist at 1-2%.
• Structural reforms in China may pose challenges.
• Supply chain disruptions could affect operations.
• Competitive pressures in high-margin sectors may intensify.

Q&A

Analysts inquired about the absence of pre-buying activity and the impact of raw material inflation. The management addressed these concerns, noting that inflation is expected to remain manageable and that there was no significant pre-buying activity observed in Q2. The healthcare sector’s growth was attributed to strong demand in medical devices and drug delivery solutions, underscoring Avient’s strategic focus on high-growth areas.

Full transcript - Avient Corp (AVNT) Q2 2025:

Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, Avient Corporation: Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Avient Corporation’s webcast to discuss the company’s second quarter 2025 results. My name is Lateef and I will be your operator for today. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. We will have a question and answer session following the company’s prepared remarks. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the call over to Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you and good morning to everyone joining us on the call today. Before we begin, we’d like to remind you that statements made during this webcast may be considered forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Forward looking statements will give current expectations or forecasts of future events and are not guarantees of future performance. They are based on management’s expectations and involve a number of business risks and uncertainties, any of which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by the forward looking statements. We encourage you to review our most recent reports, including our 10-Q or any applicable amendments for a complete discussion of these factors or other risks that may affect our future results. During the discussion today, the company will use both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the presentation posted on the Investor Relations section of the Avient website where the company describes the non-GAAP measures and provides a reconciliation to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. A replay of the call will be available on our website.

Information to access the replay is listed in today’s press release which is available at avient.com in the Investor Relations section. Joining me today is our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Ashish Khandpur and Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Jamie Beggs. I will now hand the call over to Ashish to begin. Thank you Joe and good morning everyone. I am pleased to report second quarter organic sales growth of 0.6% in an uncertain macro environment where customers in most markets and regions are waiting for clarity on trade policy. Strong operational performance and cost controls help adjusted EPS to grow 5% to $0.80, slightly ahead of our guidance of $0.79. We also expanded margins on the bottom line with adjusted EBITDA of 17.2%. This 30 basis points of margin expansion was driven by favorable mix, productivity initiatives, and disciplined discretionary spending.

All things we continue to control tightly as we enter the second half of 2025. Market trends are not necessarily improving, and uncertainty still remains around trade policy. Q3 is expected to be a continuation of Q2. In this regard, our customers remain in a wait and see mode, with consumer markets in particular showing weakness across the globe. Thus far, we have been able to more than offset consumer weakness by strong demand in defense and healthcare, which remain as bright spots for our business overall. For the first half of the year, organic sales grew about 1%, and we expect a similar demand environment for the second half of the year. We had shared our operational playbook for the current low demand, high uncertainty environment on our last earnings call.

As a result of our actions from this playbook, we are well underway to realize approximately $40 million of benefits in 2025 versus last year. That is an increase of $10 million from our original estimate of $30 million that we communicated last quarter. These benefits come from a combination of sourcing, Lean Six Sigma, plant productivity initiatives, optimization of our manufacturing footprint, and discretionary spending control. We have already realized $17 million of benefits in the first half of 2025. The remaining $23 million will be realized in the second half, primarily from additional sourcing initiatives and further reductions in discretionary spending. These efforts more than offset both inflation, primarily from wages, and our investments in growth vectors that are critical for advancing our strategy. With respect to tariffs, any direct impact remains largely mitigated and consistent with what we discussed last quarter.

We primarily source raw materials and manufacture our products locally in the regions that we serve. Direct P&L impacts to date have been minimal because we can optimize our raw material purchases across regions, use our formulation expertise to identify material substitutions, and, where appropriate, proactively implement pricing actions. As we are on our journey to evolve Avient from a specialty formulator to an innovator of material solutions, I would like to highlight progress we continue to make along the way. The second quarter results mark the fifth consecutive quarter of organic growth for us. For the first half of 2025, we have grown sales and adjusted EPS by 1.2% and 4%, respectively, excluding the impact of foreign exchange. As a reminder, we grew 4% organically in fiscal year 2024.

On the bottom line, so far in the first half this year we have already expanded adjusted EBITDA margins by 20 basis points. We expect incremental year over year margin expansion in the second half and full year. Adjusted EBITDA margins should expand in excess of 30 basis points and this would be following 20 basis points of margin expansion we realized in 2024. Our strong cash position and consistent ability to generate cash through an uncertain macroeconomic backdrop allowed us to pay down $50 million of debt during the quarter. We are on track with the plan we communicated last quarter to reduce debt in total by $100 million to $200 million by year end. We are deleveraging the balance sheet while making investments in our businesses based on our prioritized portfolio, growth vector selections, and our strategic initiatives.

As you may recall, we made strategic structural changes to our R&D organization to a) share and transplant technologies from one business to another and b) to hybridize multiple technologies from the same or different businesses to create differentiated products and solutions for our customers. Although early, we seem to be getting good traction on these fronts, which is helping us innovate more purposefully and differently than in the past. Patent filings increased by 50% in 2024 versus 2020 to 2023, and in 2025 we are on pace to exceed year over year patent filings again. We are also collaborating on new launches with our customers, offering them unique and differentiated products.

Some examples include our low temperature chemical foaming agents for composite decking and flexible film packaging applications, where we use a proprietary blend to optimize the reaction point of the foaming activity with the melting point of the plastic resin. This results in consistent, high quality, lightweight materials with improved product performance that help our customers reduce their materials and energy usage while making their operations more productive. Another example from our engineered materials portfolio is our ability to create inherently lubricious characteristics in healthcare materials that promote patient comfort. Our patented technology delivers lower friction and enhanced processibility in polyurethane tubing, which is expected to have utility in a wide range of important healthcare applications including catheters, peristaltic pumps, CPAP machines, and potential extensions to biopharmaceutical manufacturing. A final example is our patent pending advanced flame retardant materials for enhanced fire safety.

Here, we leverage our glass fiber and resin capability to create an inherent inorganic flame barrier when exposed to high temperatures greater than 400 degrees Celsius. This product line was launched earlier this year at the International Builders Show, initially serving the building and construction and transportation markets with potential future expansion to other high value applications in different markets. Before I hand it over to Jamie Beggs to discuss the details of the quarter’s results and our updated guidance for the year, I wanted to provide a special thank you to our global teams.

They continue to persist and execute well with eyes and focus on delivering both short term quarterly results while doing the things to build for the mid and long term future that will make our businesses and capabilities stronger and more relevant to the changing world, and in turn we will be able to grow both our top line and bottom lines in a sustainable manner.

Dr. Ashish Khandpur, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avient Corporation: Thank you, Ashish, and good morning, everyone. Executing our strategy and playbook for the current environment enabled Avient’s success this quarter to deliver both sales and adjusted EPS growth while expanding our EBITDA margin. Looking at the Color, Additives & Inks segment, adjusted EBITDA grew 4% on 2% lower organic sales. Weaker demand in consumer, transportation, and building and construction markets more than offset strong growth in healthcare. Sales for packaging materials, the segment’s largest end market, were muted as growth in the U.S. and Canada, Asia, and Latin America regions were offset by lower demand in EMEA. Despite lower sales, this segment expanded EBITDA margins 100 basis points through favorable mix and cost improvement initiatives. This included ongoing manufacturing footprint optimization and streamlining the segment’s organizational structure to better serve our customers. Our Specialty Engineered Materials segment grew organic sales 6% driven by strong growth in defense and healthcare.

Healthcare grew double digits with continued demand. In our medical device equipment and supplies portfolios, defense returned to double-digit growth after the tough first quarter year-over-year comparison. In fact, our defense sales were a quarterly record supported by the recent new product innovations that we highlighted in our February earnings call. SEM’s EBITDA was down slightly versus prior year primarily due to planned maintenance. In our Avient Protective Materials business, the maintenance will primarily impact the second quarter, and we anticipate the SEM segment to deliver margin expansion in the second half of the year. Looking at regional performance, I’ll start with the U.S. and Canada where sales increased 1% year over year. This growth was led by healthcare, where we continue to win in medical devices and drug delivery applications as well as strength in defense.

This growth more than offset the impact of weaker demand in consumer, transportation, and building and construction markets. In EMEA, sales were down slightly versus the prior year while healthcare and defense sales were robust. Packaging sales, the region’s largest end market, accounting for 26% of the EMEA sales, did not experience the typical second quarter seasonal benefit. Asia delivered 3% organic growth, the fifth straight quarter of growth in the region. Strength was across most end markets, notably healthcare and transportation. Latin America grew 6%, marking its sixth consecutive quarter of growth, which is also notable considering it’s lapping a comparison where the region grew 19% in the second quarter last year. This consistent performance is attributable to our local team who is winning new business and gaining share with global OEMs in the packaging application space.

Turning to our guidance for the remainder of the year, we are narrowing our range. The new range reflects the mixed demand conditions we experienced through the first half of the year as well as anticipated demand levels for the second half. Beginning with Q3, we expect third quarter adjusted EPS of $0.70, which represents 8% growth over the prior year quarter. The earnings growth will be driven largely by higher margins from favorable mix and productivity initiatives. For the full year, we are narrowing the range for adjusted EBITDA to $545 million to $560 million and adjusted EPS to $2.77 to $2.87. This considers our positive performance to date and productivity gains that will have a larger benefit in the second half of the year.

This also assumes a year over year tailwind from foreign currencies of approximately $2 million in the second half, which compares to a $2 million headwind in the first half of the year. From a demand perspective, the low end of the range assumes a low single digit revenue decline year over year in the second half. The high end of the range assumes low single digit growth in the second half. As Ashish Khandpur mentioned earlier, we remain on track to reduce debt in total by $100 million to $200 million this year. Having already repaid $50 million in the second quarter, we still expect CapEx for the year of approximately $110 million and free cash flow to range from $190 million to $210 million. With that, Ashish and I will be happy to take any of your questions. Operator, please begin the Q and A session.

Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, Avient Corporation: As a reminder to ask a question, you will need to press Star 11 on your telephone to remove yourself from the queue. Please press Star 11 again. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Frank Mitsch of Fermium Research. Please go ahead, Frank. Hi guys, good morning.

Dr. Ashish Khandpur, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avient Corporation: It’s a question for Frank. My first question was around the tariffs. Do you guys see any pre-buying activity pulling some of sales from 3Q into 2Q? Just how are you guys thinking about pre-buying in general?

Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, Avient Corporation: This is Ashish. We don’t believe we have seen any pre buying in our business coming out of COVID. Customers have gotten very smart with respect to managing their inventory tightly, especially in uncertain demand environments, and that’s exactly what we are seeing now as well. Going forward, we expect the same. We have very little visibility to our sales because our customers expect fast turnaround as they’re managing the inventory very tightly. We are still looking at 20 to 30 days of order visibility. Based on what we can tell from everything, the order book and the trends that we have seen in Q3 so far as well, we don’t expect, we don’t see any pre buying kind of activity going on.

Dr. Ashish Khandpur, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avient Corporation: Aziza, maybe to add on, the majority of what we do is for local production in region. We think our exposure in that regard would also be more limited.

Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, Avient Corporation: Maybe others in the space.

Dr. Ashish Khandpur, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avient Corporation: Got it. Thank you for that. Jamie, I’m sorry if I missed it when you were talking about the outlook, but could you guys elaborate on what you guys are thinking on raws for the year? I know we were thinking maybe for the year 1 to 2% raw material inflation. Is there any update on that view? Yeah, that view is basically the same. We expect 1 to 2% inflation in the raw material basket. We have seen hydrocarbons come down slightly, but we have also seen some increases in pigments and flame retardants. As a reminder, about 35% of our raw material basket is from hydrocarbon. While we get a little bit of benefit, we have to make sure that the rest of the basket is not also increasing. No substantial change from what we provided in the last quarter update. Great. Thank you guys.

Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, Avient Corporation: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Sison of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, Michael. Hey guys, nice quarter for the second half. Just wanted to get a better feel of what your outlook for volume is. A lot of companies have sort of guided to a little bit of a difficult second half. Customers are destocking in some cases. I know you have a lot of good new product programs and such. Any thoughts on how your volumes should look in the second half would be great. Maybe Mike, I’ll take the opportunity to give a little bit more color across the markets and try to answer your question also in the process. If you think about our big two, consumer and packaging, that’s about 40% of our portfolio. H1 they are like consumer is down 4%, packaging is up 3%.

We expect that to be, in second half, kind of continuation of that scenario. The ending point is minus 2% to minus 3% for consumer and plus 2% to plus 3% for packaging. We think those two things offset each other more or less. Given packaging is a slightly bigger business for us, the growth drivers for us are healthcare, defense, and telecommunications. In the first half of the year, defense is up 5%, healthcare is up 14%, and telecommunications is up 7%. If you look at what we are expecting in H2, we kind of expect high single digit to double digit growth in those three segments in those three markets as well. We plan to finish that 20% of the portfolio in that high single digits to double digit range.

The remaining four markets, which is industrial, transportation, building and construction, and energy, are in that minus 1%, 0%, plus 1% kind of range and they kind of offset each other. We expect a flattish finish on that side. Overall, if you think about it, what’s driving our telegraph growth in second half, which is what we said in our call, is similar to our first half, is the three healthcare, defense, and telecommunication markets growing at high single digits to double digits. From a volume perspective specifically, we are expecting better volume in second half of the year, especially for the Specialty Engineered Materials (SEM) business. Color, Additives & Inks will be probably more similar to the first half of the year. On the SEM side, we expect even in second quarter, SEM had positive volume plus positive price mix.

I think that trend gets stronger as we move into the second half of the year.

Dr. Ashish Khandpur, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avient Corporation: Got it.

Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, Avient Corporation: As a quick follow up, I mean your portfolio is certainly looking more stable than others. I think your outlook for EBITDA is still up year over year where several are going to be down quite a bit. When you think about demand getting better, if ever, let’s hope it gets better. What type of leverage do you think you’ll get off that volume and EBITDA growth longer term? Obviously, demand is going to help us a lot. As you see right now, a lot of our EBITDA increase in our projections is driven also by productivity, which will continue to be part of the playbook going forward. If you think about our productivity of $40 million, that’s about 1.2% of sales. That’s something that we should expect year after year from a company like ours.

On the organic side, as our portfolio is changing to a better mix because of our growth vectors, which are more profitable, I expect that a higher leverage to the EBITDA margins is going to come down. Over time, as the volume grows, we expect the mix to get better and our EBITDA margins to get better from that as well.

Dr. Ashish Khandpur, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avient Corporation: Great, thank you.

Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, Avient Corporation: Thank you, Mike. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ghansham Punjabi, Baird, please. Go ahead, Ghansham. Thank you, operator. Good morning everybody. I guess just building on the last question, on the consumer weakness, can you just give us a sense as to how that has evolved as the year has unfolded? From a high-level standpoint, have the number of categories you sell into broadened as it relates to the weakness, or is it a shift geographically, or a combination of the two? Yeah, so Ghansham, I mean at a macro level for Avient, consumer was flat in first quarter and it is down 8% in second quarter. If you look at it specifically, consumer as a market, U.S. and Canada is our biggest consumer market, which was down double digits in both Q1 and Q2. That’s what’s driving the consumer results.

Essentially, we are seeing weakening of consumer because in first quarter, consumer was positive in remaining geographies except U.S. and Canada. In this quarter, apart from Latin America, we are seeing weakness in consumer in all other three geographies. Consumer is certainly getting worse from our customers, talking to our customers. We are seeing that in our numbers and that’s how we have projected in the second half of the year as well. We expect consumer to stay negative year over year and that’s built into our numbers. Okay, thanks for that. I’m sorry if I missed this, but did you quantify the impact of the maintenance on 2Q on an EBITDA basis for the SEM segment, and then just separately on the debt pay down target of $100 million, $200 million?

Why is that range so wide in context of your free cash flow generation for the year net of the dividend?

Dr. Ashish Khandpur, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avient Corporation: Hi Ghansham. From a planned maintenance perspective for APM, the impact within the quarter is around $3 million. Like Ashish mentioned earlier, we expect that to basically just impact Q2, and margins will continue when we get to the back half of the year for SEM. Regarding the debt pay down, I think it’s just us being a little bit conservative, ensuring that the macro environment plays out like we want it to. Our goal is to definitely continue to pay down debt in the back half of the year, but we’re also going to be cautious with our balance sheet and just ensure that cash does come in. We’re confident in that. That’s why we made the pay down in the second quarter of $50 million and expect more to come as we get to the back half.

Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, Avient Corporation: Okay, very helpful, Jamie. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kristen Owen of Oppenheimer and Company. Please go ahead. Kristen.

Dr. Ashish Khandpur, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avient Corporation: Hi, good morning. Thank you for the question. I wanted to follow up on the tariffs, but maybe from a slightly different angle. I understand that your tariff exposure is relatively limited, but with the uncertainty only increasing, I’m wondering if you’re seeing pressure from your customers to help absorb more of their tariff costs. I know Avient has been good at historically pricing for value, but I’m just wondering if that’s becoming any more difficult in this environment.

Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, Avient Corporation: Maybe I can take a stab at it. Jamie, if you want to add something, essentially, if you think about our RM bucket, overall, yes, the answer is yes. We are seeing pressure on the pricing and to lower pricing because of this increased tariffs coming. We are doing everything from working with our suppliers and for our customers to either qualify new materials or alternatives or try to bring down the cost somehow. In some cases we are not able to do that. If you look at it from an RM basket perspective, the commodity polymers, the polyethylenes and polypropylenes raw material side, we are not seeing much price increases on that front. Actually, there is excess capacity, so we are seeing a slight positive favorable price piece on that part.

The piece where we are seeing more pressure is on the pigment side as well as certain performance materials, both of which are about 15% each of our portfolio of our RM purchases. There we are seeing low to mid single digit kind of price increases in case of specifically flame retardants, which is a very specific material that goes into our wire and cable business. Other pieces as well, we are seeing significant increases because of supply constraints and there we are not able to offset those price increases working with our suppliers. We are passing that on to our customers. The price increase we are talking about is almost more than three times versus last year and more than six times versus the year prior. That is purely driven because that material largely comes out of China and there’s a tight supply situation there.

In most cases we are trying to work very closely with our suppliers and customers to keep the pricing same. We are however not able to take care of everything by doing the substitutions. In cases where we are not able to do that, we are able to pass on the price to our customers.

Dr. Ashish Khandpur, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avient Corporation: That’s really helpful, thank you for that. This one’s for Jamie. It’s a little bit in the weeds, but just following up on the balance sheet piece of this, you guys took out a new revolver in the quarter and my impression when that came out was that revolver was perhaps a little bit misunderstood by the market. What the function of that was. Can you just provide a little bit of background on that instrument, what that does for your balance sheet?

Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, Avient Corporation: Thank you.

Dr. Ashish Khandpur, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avient Corporation: Yeah, thanks, Kristen, for the question. We basically converted our asset based loan to a cash flow revolver. Part of that was just an evolution of our debt profile. When we had our distribution business, we had a lot more, I would say, receivables and inventory to be able to secure the asset based loan. With that divestiture, it actually took down the total capacity that was available. In order to ensure that we had, I would say, adequate liquidity, cash flow revolver was a better option for us. In essence, it actually did increase our available liquidity, which was to the same amount that the asset based loan would have been with the distribution.

Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, Avient Corporation: Business being in the business.

Dr. Ashish Khandpur, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avient Corporation: The cost between those facilities are roughly the same. It was just a measure to ensure that we had the liquidity that’s commensurate with the size and the exposure that Avient has. Thank you very much.

Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, Avient Corporation: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Harrison of Seaport Global Securities. Your line is open. Mike, hi, good morning. Ashish, was wondering if we could dig in a little bit on the healthcare portion of your business and maybe can you give us some color on what portions of that market you’re seeing the best growth? I’m also curious, you noted some new product introductions. How long does it take to qualify new materials in healthcare as opposed to maybe some of the less regulated markets that you serve? Yeah. Thank you for the question, Mike. Several things. Overall trend for healthcare has been quite positive for us. Last year we grew 11% healthcare year over year, constant. All my numbers are constant dollars. In Q1 we grew 11% and Q2 we are at 17%. Yeah, 17%. Pretty strong trend in healthcare.

We are seeing growth both in our Specialty Engineered Materials side of business as well as the Color, Additives & Inks side of business in healthcare. If you think about it from a portfolio perspective, 80% of our portfolio in healthcare is in three specific markets, which are medical equipment or medical devices. These could be things like continuous glucose monitoring kind of devices or CPAP machines or things like that. The other two are medical supplies, so these would be catheters and tubings, for example. The third part is drug delivery, so these could be injector pens and inhalers, those kinds of things. These three things constitute about 80% of our healthcare portfolio. We have grown 20% plus in each three of these categories in Q2. Pretty strong momentum.

It’s all connected to the macro trends you are seeing with respect to obesity, drugs, and continuous glucose monitoring kind of situation. We feel like we are in good shape there. These are spec’d in products, so we have good visibility and the demand continues to be strong in these areas. With respect to specifically, obviously a lot of stuff in healthcare, since they’re FDA regulated products, go through a longer cycle time on regulatory side and qualification. Our teams have been working in some cases as much as for the last five, six years and continue to. It’s a continuous process and we are always working with our customers on the next cycle of things that they are going to be launching so that there’s a pipeline that is in the process and going on.

That’s how we manage this long cycle time or long regulatory qualification part of healthcare. With respect to other materials in non-healthcare, qualification could be as short as a few months, but in regulatory cases it could be two to six years even. Very helpful. On your guidance slide here, you noted one of your potential decelerators is a slowing in Asia led by China. Can you talk about the trends that you’re seeing in key markets in China right now? What are some of the signals that you’re watching for that may indicate a need for caution in the second half? I think there’s two pieces. The Color, Additives & Inks business in China is the one under a little bit of pressure.

As you might have heard, what’s going on in China is the government is trying to get more optimized with respect to capacity so people are not cutting each other and creating unnecessary deflation in material. The China government has come up with this thing called supplier structural reform policy that they’re enforcing, which is leading to consolidation of, for example, automotive EVs, which are excessive, people making them in cars, making them in China, and things like that, and the same things on the capacity side on raw materials as well. This government policy is leading to tightening of credit as well as number of days of payments that are required for people to pay their suppliers in China. That is leading to a lot of businesses either getting consolidated or shut down. That obviously has an impact on business.

We have to watch that closely, what impact it has as it is evolving through the economy. That part of the business we continue to monitor. We predict that in Q3 as well we will continue to see those pressures in China. Offsetting that is some good stuff going on on the Specialty Engineered Materials (SEM) side, where we are seeing a lot more growth happening on the high performance computing with all this artificial intelligence and things going on. We are trying to gain more share in that part of the market so that we can offset any downside on the Color, Additives & Inks side from the SEM side in the high performance computing market. All right, thank you very much. Thank you. Our next question comes from Laurence Alexander of Jefferies. Please go ahead, Laurence.

Hey guys, just a question about some of what we talked about in healthcare and just the new products in general. I was wondering with those longer lead time products, if they have higher incremental margins or if margins in general, incremental margins for newer products are substantially higher than the older ones. Is it like 40% versus 30% or just how it kind of plays out? Yeah, Laurence, I think the answer is yes. That’s one of the main reasons why when we presented our strategy at the investor day, we identified healthcare as one of our growth vectors, specifically the drug delivery part and also the medical part, the core part of it. Obviously, it’s a sticky business. Once you get specified, you kind of keep the business as long as that version of that device or that material is there.

It’s a business that is also, if you maintain good quality and good service to the customer, apart from the regulatory approval, it’s a competitive advantage for us because we do that very well in Avient. Then overall margins perspective, it is very accretive to our business and that’s also very nice for us. Have you ever quantified what the difference is for new products? I mean, is it 10% higher or 1,000 basis points higher or how should we think about it just in terms of modeling as new products become more prevalent? Yeah, I mean, I think overall our intention of developing new products is to have margin accretive products. I won’t talk percentages here, but that’s exactly how we are going to improve our margins, both by innovation and then also charging the value that we create for the customer through margin expansion.

For me, I think that’s the primary reason why we feel, apart from that and operational leverage, why we think our margins will continue to expand. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next question comes from Vincent Andrews of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Vincent. Hi, this is Turner Hendrickson for Vincent. I was wondering if you could provide a little bit more context for durability of some of the growth vectors between, you know, healthcare, defense and telecom, for instance. Like, are there some, you know, like reasons to believe that the healthcare outgrowth, which has been really fantastic as you all described, is going to continue over the near to medium term or how can you provide some context so that we can get a better handle on the go forward outlook for these growth drivers?

Dr. Ashish Khandpur, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avient Corporation: Hi Turner, as we look at the underlying applications that we sell into healthcare, those things would be, for instance, respiratory care, glucose monitoring devices, drug delivery, labware, catheters, syringes, and so on. All of those particular sub markets within there provide, I would say, a long-term growth potential. While I can’t promise it will be growing double digits every single year, this has been a good growth opportunity. Based on some of the innovative platforms that Ashish Khandpur mentioned earlier, we do feel that there is a strong growth potential that will continue into the foreseeable future.

Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, Avient Corporation: Great, great to hear. One other one unrelated, so margins are down roughly 220 bps year over year in SEM. If I remember the $3 million of maintenance that you all mentioned in the second quarter, can you provide a little bit more color on either mix or spreads in that segment or what’s driving just the margin reduction on a normalized basis, just so we can get a better sense for where margin should be in the second half in particular?

Dr. Ashish Khandpur, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avient Corporation: Yeah, from a margin perspective, the majority of the decrease on a year-over-year basis is because of the planned maintenance. We also had some higher cost inventory that flowed through that also compressed margins to some degree. As we look into the back half of the year, we do expect margin expansion. In fact, as I look forward, it will be likely to be closer to 100 basis points on a year-over-year basis. When we get to the second half of the year, obviously for the full year that may be tamped down because of the Q2 planned maintenance, but we do expect that to, like I said, continue to expand because we don’t have these one-timers that happened in Q2.

Joe Di Salvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, Avient Corporation: Great. Thanks so much. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude Avient Corporation’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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