Earnings call transcript: Trinseo SA Q2 2025 earnings miss, stock tumbles

Trinseo SA reported a significant earnings miss for the second quarter of 2025, with an actual EPS of -$2.12 compared to the forecasted -$1.52, marking a 39.47% negative surprise. Revenue, however, came in slightly above expectations at $784 million against a forecast of $765 million. In response to these results, Trinseo’s stock plummeted 19.02% to $2.11 in after-hours trading, nearing its 52-week low of $2.16. According to InvestingPro data, the company’s market capitalization has shrunk to just $73.6 million, with the stock down nearly 50% year-to-date. InvestingPro analysis suggests the stock is currently undervalued relative to its Fair Value.

Key Takeaways

• Trinseo’s Q2 EPS fell short of expectations by 39.47%.
• Revenue slightly exceeded forecasts at $784 million.
• Stock dropped 19.02% following earnings release.
• Adjusted EBITDA for Q2 was $42 million, below guidance.
• Significant market challenges noted in demand and geopolitical factors.

Company Performance

Trinseo’s performance in Q2 2025 was marked by a substantial decline in earnings, with Adjusted EBITDA reaching only $42 million, falling short of prior guidance. The company reported a 13% drop in volumes for the first half of the year compared to the previous year, reflecting broader market challenges. The firm remains focused on innovation, particularly in battery binders and recycled plastics, which showed notable growth despite the overall downturn.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $784 million, slightly above the forecast of $765 million.
• Earnings per share: -$2.12, below the forecast of -$1.52.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $42 million, below company guidance.
• Free cash flow: Negative $3 million.
• Total liquidity: $399 million at the end of Q2.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Trinseo’s Q2 EPS of -$2.12 fell significantly short of the forecasted -$1.52, resulting in a 39.47% negative surprise. This contrasts with a moderate revenue beat, as the company reported $784 million against a forecast of $765 million, a 2.48% positive surprise. The magnitude of the earnings miss highlights ongoing operational and market challenges.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings release, Trinseo’s stock price fell sharply by 19.02%, closing at $2.11, close to its 52-week low of $2.02. This significant drop reflects investor disappointment with the earnings miss and ongoing concerns about market conditions and future profitability.

Outlook & Guidance

Trinseo maintains its full-year 2025 Adjusted EBITDA guidance at approximately $200 million, despite current challenges. The company projects potential EBITDA improvements driven by volume increases and strategic initiatives. Looking forward, Trinseo anticipates several triggers that could enhance demand, including trade certainty and potential interest rate cuts.

Executive Commentary

CEO Frank Bozich highlighted the potential for substantial EBITDA improvement with a 10% volume increase, equating to an additional $100 million. He also noted the aging infrastructure of China’s chemical industry, which could present opportunities for Trinseo’s innovative products.

Risks and Challenges

• Weak demand across key markets, including automotive and paper industries.
• Trade uncertainties and geopolitical tensions impacting consumer confidence.
• Potential regulatory changes within the chemical industry.
• Competitive pressures from global players and market saturation.
• Macroeconomic factors such as interest rates and currency fluctuations.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts focused on Trinseo’s visibility into future demand and the impact of trade policies. Questions also addressed the company’s strategic initiatives and potential benefits from regulatory changes and interest rate adjustments.

Full transcript - Trinseo SA (TSE) Q2 2025:

Amy, Conference Call Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Trinseo Second Quarter twenty twenty five Financial Results Conference Call. We welcome the Trinseo management team, Frank Bozich, President and CEO David Stasey, Executive Vice President and CFO and Bea Van Kessel, Senior Vice President, Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. Today’s conference call will include brief remarks by the management team followed by a question and answer session. The company distributed its press release along with its presentation slides after the close of market on Wednesday, August 6. These documents are posted on the company’s Investor Relations website and furnished on a Form K-eight filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

I will now turn the call over to Vee Van Kessel. Please go ahead.

Bea Van Kessel, Senior Vice President, Corporate Finance and Investor Relations, Trinseo: Thank you, Amy, and hello, everyone. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After our brief remarks, instructions will follow to participate in the question and answer session. Our disclosure rules and cautionary notes on forward looking statements are noted on Slide two. During this presentation, we may make certain forward looking statements, including issuing guidance and describing our future expectations.

We must caution you that actual results could differ materially from what is discussed, described or implied in these statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to, risk factors set forth in Item 1A of our annual reports on Form 10 ks or in our other filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise its forward looking statements. Today’s presentation includes certain non GAAP financial measurements. A reconciliation of these measurements to corresponding GAAP measures is provided in our earnings release and in the appendix of our investor presentation.

A replay of the conference call and transcript will be archived on the company’s Investor Relations website shortly following the conference call. The replay will be available until 08/07/2026. Now I would like to turn the call over to Frank Bozich.

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: Thanks, Bea, and welcome to our second quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. Our core business results in the second quarter were slightly below the expectations we had due to weaker than expected demand across most applications and unfavorable net timing associated with falling feedstock prices. The seasonally higher volumes that we normally see in the second quarter were dampened by trade uncertainty after the April tariff announcements in The U. S. We experienced high order cancellations early in the quarter, which we believe was linked to increased geopolitical and trade uncertainty, but saw the magnitude of cancellations dropping significantly during the quarter.

In this environment, it’s critical that we remain intensely focused on two things, controlling the things we can control, which are fixed cost and working capital and cultivating our key growth and sustainability platforms. In 2025, we expect to realize $105,000,000 of EBITDA benefits from self help actions. Specifically, we expect to see $35,000,000 in fixed cost savings from previously announced restructuring initiatives, dollars 30,000,000 of mix improvement and commercial initiatives and $40,000,000 associated with our change in the polycarbonate business model. We expect these actions to offset most of the incremental demand weakness and margin degradation we’ve seen so far in 2025, resulting in roughly flat year over year adjusted EBITDA. On working capital, I’m very proud of the work our team has done over the past three years to drive structural improvement through systems and process processes.

Over this period, we’ve reduced working capital by $560,000,000 with about half of that coming from a seventeen day reduction in our cash conversion cycle. We’ve also made outstanding progress in our transformation strategy by driving growth in higher value applications. Recycled plastic containing products grew 7% in the first half of twenty twenty five and command previous premium margins. For binders, case and battery binders were two bright spots this quarter with year over year volume growth of 319% respectively. I’ll elaborate more on a relatively new battery binder technology later in the call.

I’m also pleased to report that we released our fifteenth annual sustainability and corporate social responsibility report. We continue to make progress on our 2030 sustainability goals as we remain committed to our investments in advancing recycling technology and sustainable product offerings. Before I turn the call over to Dave, I’d like to elaborate more on our new and unique battery binder platform. Trinseo opened its global battery application lab in Shanghai in 2017 and started selling our first generation high performance binders for lithium ion EV battery and energy storage solution applications in 2020. Our latex binder’s function in the lithium ion battery is to bind the anode active materials, which are predominantly graphite and silicon, into the current collector, which is a copper foil.

The polymer needs to provide strength, ionic conductivity, and formulation compatibility, while at the same time having the ability to withstand a harsh battery cell operational environment to ensure long battery life. To do this, it must resist mechanical, thermal, chemical, and electrochemical stress. Consequently, despite the binder typically accounting for less than 2% of the total battery cost, it holds a critical a highly critical role in enabling both strong battery performance and efficient battery manufacturing. This year, we’re launching our fourth generation Voltabond Anode Binder, which enables long lasting, fast charging and high energy density batteries. This advancement, as well as our global footprint with plants in each region, are key advantages we have to serve these applications.

Additionally, we have our first generation water soluble binder prototypes available for testing at key players after demonstrating strong performance in our own labs. Our volume compounded annual growth rate over the past five years has been 63%, and we expect this highly profitable platform to continue double digit growth over the next five years. For these reasons, Battery Binders represents one of our top strategic growth platforms. Now I’d like to turn the call over to Dave.

David Stasey, Executive Vice President and CFO, Trinseo: Thanks, Frank. We ended the second quarter with $42,000,000 adjusted EBITDA, which was below our guidance driven by a larger unfavorable impact from raw material timing, the lack of seasonal demand pickup that Frank spoke about earlier and lower equity affiliated earnings at Americas Styrenics. First half twenty twenty five volumes were 13% below prior year with the largest decreases coming in latex finders, paper and board applications, automotive applications in North America and Europe and polystyrene where we’ve passed on economic volumes. Of the volume decline we’ve seen in the first half, about two thirds is what we consider transactional volume, meaning it’s generally lower margin with spot based pricing and not formulated in nature. At the segment level, Engineered Materials adjusted EBITDA was 1,000,000 below prior year despite lower volumes sold into automotive and building and construction applications.

Lower volumes were offset by lower fixed cost and mix improvements from higher recycled content sales into consumer applications. Latex Binders adjusted EBITDA was $9,000,000 below prior year, mainly driven by lower volume in Europe and Asia as well as significant pricing pressure across all regions. This volume decline is most acute in paper and board applications in China where we’ve seen demand weaken considerably since the tariff announcements leading to temporary mill closures. On a positive note, our higher margin targeted growth platforms in case and battery binders continue to outperform the market. Lastly, Polymer Solutions adjusted EBITDA was $11,000,000 below prior year driven by lower volumes into building and construction and automotive applications and increased Asian imports into the European market.

We are therefore pleased to see that the European Commission recognizes the ABS dumping activity from both South Korea and Taiwan in their pre disclosure in July. Second quarter free cash flow was negative $3,000,000 in line with guidance, and we ended the second quarter with $399,000,000 of total liquidity. I’ll turn the call back over to Frank.

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: Thanks, Dave. As previously mentioned, we expect full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA of roughly $200,000,000 While the current demand level is disappointing, we believe there are five triggers for improvement of the demand environment. First, trade certainty in any form should improve consumer confidence and provide a landscape for new investments. Second, an enactment of the anticipated Federal Reserve interest rate cuts, which will lower our own interest expense and improve consumer confidence third, a resolution of the various military conflicts we see in Europe and The Middle East fourth, our positive regulatory reforms in the chemical space in China, which could result in the closure of older non competitive assets and reduced destructive industry pricing. And lastly, the stronger support for the EU chemical industry as outlined in the EU chemical industry action plan.

While each of these items are uncertain, we’re encouraged by the dialogue related to each of these that is being reported. So now we’re happy to take your questions.

Amy, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. The line is now open for questions. Your first question comes from the line of David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

David Begleiter, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Morning. Frank and Dave, you’ve done a good job in Europe closing some older non economic capacity in styrene and polycarbonate. Can you talk to your MMA production in Europe and why you haven’t taken similar action there given they’re also challenged economics? Thank you.

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: Yes, David. Thanks. Look, we continually evaluate each of our assets. You know, we prioritized the, you know, taking action where, you know, basic basically on three dimensions, you know, the speed of execution, the magnitude of the benefit, and the and and the cost to achieve. So we continue to look at various opportunities, and, you know, we’ll evaluate that asset appropriately.

And, you know, if we make the decision or work with our works councils, you know, we’ll come to a decision that’s appropriate.

David Begleiter, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Understood. I know I know it’s early for next year, but in terms of what’s in your control for next year versus what’s not, can you help us bridge some of the items that could help lead to maybe a higher EBITDA outcome in ’26? Thank you.

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: Yeah. So look at I mean, let me back up a little bit and give you some context for what we’re currently seeing. As we started 2025, our expectation was for demand levels that were similar to 2024, which we believe was low by historical standards with some pent up demand. However, the impact of trade uncertainty, in particular, has been an incremental headwind. So the resolution of any of the of trade uncertainty, you know, in whatever form that takes, as well as lower interest rates, we think unlocks demand and gets us back to a level that we expected and possibly greater.

So and remember, 10% volume increase for us is about a $100,000,000 of EBITDA improvement. And, you know, I’ll go back to what I’ve said on previous calls. We believe even last year that there’s been pent up demand in building and construction and automotive both in Europe and North America where we have a significant exposure. You know, if we think about housing, I won’t I I believe the number off the top of my head is there’s 6,000,000 unit shortfall versus household formation over the past decade. And the automotive industry, the car park right now is at historic age.

So we think that that, you know, interest rates and tariff certainty get us back to reasonable, you know, prior at least prior year demand levels and sort stimulate demand, you know, recovery from the pent up demand that’s out there.

Amy, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Blair with TPH. Your line is now open.

Matthew Blair, Analyst, TPH: Great. Thank you and good morning. I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about the Amsty business. We understand there were some polystyrene outages in Q2. How much of a headwind was that to last quarter?

And then are there some repair costs in q three? And if so, how much of a headwind will that be to the q three number?

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: So there was a mechanical outage in one of the styrene assets in Amstad last quarter, and it had approximately a $5,000,000 impact. And there will be increased repair costs in the coming quarter that’s reflected in the current forecast or current outlook.

David Stasey, Executive Vice President and CFO, Trinseo: Yes. Matthew, think Frank’s great. Yes. Is that a $5,000,000 impact to us, to add to the equity income we recognized from Einstein in the second quarter? I mean, forward to the back half of the year, there will be an impact to the and by the way, it was a styrene plant.

It was not polystyrene. There will be a similar impact, I would say, to the third quarter. So I would expect I would expect the progression of Amsty’s earnings to us over the back half of the year, you know, q three to be a similar number to q two, and then higher in the fourth quarter as as we expect, you know, better operational reliability.

Matthew Blair, Analyst, TPH: Sounds good. And then, regarding your 2025 full year guidance, the implied figure for the back half of the year, does that incorporate any of the net timing headwinds in Q2 being reversed?

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: No. It does not.

David Stasey, Executive Vice President and CFO, Trinseo: So what Matthew, it’s it’s you know, for us, timing is is is fairly hard to predict. I mean, it’s it’s really you know, it’s a function of what happens, you know, largely to styrene prices, frankly, over the over the next six months. So it’s hard to predict. But standing here today, the guidance we’ve given assumes flat net timing for the back half of the year.

Amy, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Frank Mitsch with Fermium Research. Your line is now open.

Frank Mitsch, Analyst, Fermium Research: Hey, good morning. Frank, I was intrigued by your comments that the pace of cancellations due to the trade issues was slowing down as you progressed through the quarter. I was wondering if you could elaborate that on that. And if that’s the case, I mean, should we not start to see the pace of business match underlying demand here in the third quarter?

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: I think what we saw I guess what I read into what we saw happening in q two was that the order book that we began the quarter with reflected a normal seasonal uptick in demand. And that because of the you know, as a result of the trade announcements in early April, it was uptick was taken off the table. So I think that’s how I read what we saw occurred during the quarter.

Frank Mitsch, Analyst, Fermium Research: You don’t anticipate that that those pent up orders flowing through in 3Q?

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: The well, as I said, if we see trade certainty and these in the improvements in interest rates or any of the five factors that we mentioned, we believe that’s a trigger for an improvement in demand and, you know, and a recovery of that those lost orders. But, again, I don’t it’s impossible to predict sitting here today, it’s impossible to predict the timing for that or the certain have any certainty for when that would occur. But, yes, I believe that would be a trigger.

Frank Mitsch, Analyst, Fermium Research: Okay. Terrific. And yes, and interesting comments regarding battery technology. On the latex finder side, roughly how much is the battery business of that segment today? And I believe, David, you also mentioned that there was significant pricing pressure in latex in 2Q.

Actually, was positive price in 1Q, but you had flipped a negative price in 2Q. Any elaboration or any color on that would be helpful.

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: Yeah. So I’m gonna give you a number. By memory, of the of our latex binders, case and battery represents approximately 20% of the volume of last year volume and but a significantly higher share of our margin. I believe that it because of the pressure that we’ve seen in paper and board this year, it’s a it’s a significantly higher portion this year, but I don’t have an exact figure, and we can we can get that to you. Your second question

David Stasey, Executive Vice President and CFO, Trinseo: yeah.

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: Maybe could you repeat it, Frank? Sorry.

Frank Mitsch, Analyst, Fermium Research: Yeah. It was a significant pricing pressure. You know, prices in in latex were up in 1Q and then obviously down in 6% in 2Q. David indicated significant pricing pressures, I was just curious if you could elaborate on where that’s coming from.

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: Yes. So well, what we saw you know, you can imagine a lot of our, latex goes into paperboard packaging. And in particular, in China with the, you know, the beginning of the of the tariff announcements, you know, you just look at the 35% reduction in container shipments out of China, those are mostly packaged goods. Right? So there was a significant reduction in demand in China in paper and board in q two as a result of that.

And, you know, as a consequence and mill closures. So as a consequence, a lot of the industry was scrambling to fill their to keep volumes and were very aggressive with price. And some of the some of that we declined to. A lot of that is transactional and transitory, and we chose not to participate in some of that volume, and that’s why we saw the volume decrease in the second quarter. But again, we believe that’s transactional and transitory activity that we can get back.

Hassan Hamad, Analyst, Albemarle Global: Thank you.

Amy, Conference Call Operator: All right. Thank you. And the next question comes from the line of Hassan Hamad with Albemarle Global. Your line is now open.

Hassan Hamad, Analyst, Albemarle Global: Good morning, Frank and Dave. Wanted to revisit and I obviously understand that it’s early days to give any 2026 guidance. But as I take a look at what you guys are guiding to for 2025, I mean it seems for the back half of the year, which typically is a seasonally weaker sort of period, you’d be at a quarterly run rate EBITDA of around $50,000,000 a quarter, right? So you annualize that and again obviously this is a seasonally weak period. So you’re at least at $200,000,000 in a well below normal demand environment, right?

Now let’s assume demand doesn’t really improve materially next year, but seasonality maybe kicks in further sort of benefit from your cost cutting drive and the like. So what’s sort of like the minimum sort of benchmark to think about? I mean, would you guys do at least $250,000,000 in that environment in EBITDA in 2026? And what would that mean at least for free cash flow next year?

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: Yes. Look, I think that we this goes back to the question that was I give the same answer I gave earlier You know, that we believe that right now, we’re seeing transitory headwinds that affect, you know, depressed demand in the business and and suppress it significantly from prior year, which was already low with pent up demand. So I believe that we will see a resolution of one or more of the five items that I mentioned, and that will have a significant impact on, you know, our end demand in most of our end markets. So, again, it’d very difficult. Again, I believe that we have significant leverage to the upside with volume, and that would come with some more certainty regarding trade interest rates and the various regulatory activities around the world.

Hassan, I’ll add a couple

David Stasey, Executive Vice President and CFO, Trinseo: of points related more to the key free cash flow side. We have a slide in our deck on slide 14 where we outline the cash flow components for 2025. If I bridge were these things to 2026, Restructuring cost of $55,000,000 that will be a much lower number in 2026 than $55,000,000 this year. The other is interest expense. Cash interest this year is 200,000,000 Clearly, since the last call we had, I think there’s been a bias.

There’s been a market consensus view that there’ll be, given the employment statistics, probably more rapid succession of rate cuts than we previously thought. And a 100 basis points of rate cuts is worth $19,000,000 a year to us. So, you know, I think I I think it’s obviously too early to put numbers on 2026. But certainly, I think the numbers that are listed on this page will be much lower than $365,000,000 of cash outflows next year.

Hassan Hamad, Analyst, Albemarle Global: That’s definitely very helpful. Now as a follow-up, I mean, obviously, all sort of fairly recent with regards to the whole sort of anti dumping sort of measures in the EU as it relates to ABS. But how do you see this playing out? How do you see sort of China the Chinese sort of reacting to it? And how does it all sort of drill down back to you guys?

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: Yeah. I well, look, there’s a lot of uncertainty with regard to that, but I know that the EU Commission, outlined a chemical industry action plan that includes, you know, some protectionism and also an antidumping protection to ensure that there is fair competition with imports into Europe. So we’re we’re encouraged by that. You know, we’re waiting to see how that takes place. But, you know and and at the same time, what you see happening in China, the regulatory discussions in China related to the the anti involution policy there, which would rationalize, you know, the noncompetitive or older nonintegrated assets in China, you know, again, make us optimistic that that will be addressed.

And I wanna spend a second on this because, you know, there’s some discussion about it. But 21 the statistics that I’ve seen is that 21% of the Chinese chemical industry capacity is older than 15 years old. Now those assets, you know, would be the ones that would be most likely subject to the anti involution policies. And if that capacity comes off the table, it would help the the industry broadly, not only in China, but in the rest of the world. The other thing I do wanna point out is that, you know, the while there’s uncertainty with regard to the trade policies and the tariff policies with the you know, that have been introduced in The US, You know, on balance, we would benefit from, you know, tariffs because we produce locally.

And the and in particular, we are we understand that the US government or, you know, the policymakers are focused on transshipment of Chinese product into Mexico that would be compounded and then brought into The US as USMCA compliant. Now if if that is addressed, that’s a significant upside for not only us, but everybody in the in the chemical industry. So those are, you know, I think there’s a lot of it’s too early to tell, but the discussions and the ideas that are being floated are very encouraging.

Hassan Hamad, Analyst, Albemarle Global: Fine. Thank you so much.

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: Thank you.

Amy, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. And your final question comes from the line of Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Dan Rizwan, Analyst, Jefferies: Good morning. It’s Dan Rizwan for Laurence. So I was just wondering with the guidance you give for 2025 and why now you’re finally giving you’re giving yearly guidance, but you’re kind of not giving Q3 guidance. I mean, visibility improved or just by the change in in policy from from last quarter?

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: Yeah. I think it’s it’s simply, you know, it’s been a a very dynamic and volatile environment from a policy standpoint that’s affected the industry. And, you know, at this point in time, we we’ve seen what those impacts that were in q two. We you know, I would say, starting q three, we see it in a similar, you know, sort of a similar market dynamic that we had in q two. So we believe absent certainty around any of those five things that we can anticipate a similar environment to q two for the remainder of the year.

But clearly, we expect that resolution of any of those five items will change that to the positive?

David Stasey, Executive Vice President and CFO, Trinseo: I think from a policy perspective, you’re right. We gave quarterly guidance earlier in the year because we had limited visibility. I don’t think anything has really changed, frankly, on our visibility. We still have the same limited visibility, but we chose to give annual guidance just because of where we are in the year. I mean, we’re kind of approaching two thirds of the way through the year, and we thought it was appropriate to give annual versus quarterly guidance.

That’s really the only reason why.

Dan Rizwan, Analyst, Jefferies: Thank you. That’s helpful. And then just a little more granular. With like corporate costs, I think it’s running roughly 20,000,000 to $25,000,000 a quarter. Is that kind of how we should think about it over the long term given all the kind of moves you made, the cost you’ve taken out that that seems to be a decent run rate or will it be a little more volatile than that?

Frank Bozich, President and CEO, Trinseo: No. I think the current run rate is we’re at our current run rate reflects the actions that we’ve taken to date and that would be that’s appropriate to use in our forecast.

David Stasey, Executive Vice President and CFO, Trinseo: And just one other just minor point on that. Due to kind of the accounting treatment of stock compensation, our Q1 corporate costs are always going to be higher than the other three quarters of the year. You can talk to we’ve mentioned that in prior calls, but I just want to make sure you’re aware of that. So the kind of annualizing the first half of the year probably is is not a good approach.

Dan Rizwan, Analyst, Jefferies: All right. Thank you very much.

Amy, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. This does conclude today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.

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