Cabot Corp Reports Third Quarter Fiscal 2023 Results

Diluted earnings per share (“EPS”) of $1.43 and Adjusted EPS of $1.42

Cabot Corporation (NYSE: CBT) today announced results for its third quarter of fiscal year 2023.

Key Highlights

• Third quarter Diluted EPS of $1.43; Adjusted EPS of $1.42
• Record Reinforcement Materials segment EBIT in the third fiscal quarter of $132 million, up 17% year-over-year
• Strong Cash Flows from Operations of $243 million supported return of $38 million in the quarter to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases
• Liquidity remains strong at approximately $1.3 billion; Net Debt to EBITDA of 1.7 times as of June 30, 2023
• Year to date effective and operating tax rate increased from 25% to 28%; third quarter impact of $0.17 on adjusted EPS

Sean Keohane, Cabot President and Chief Executive Officer, commented on the quarter: “Despite a weak demand environment and an increase in our operating tax rate, adjusted EPS was up 7% sequentially in the third quarter. Reinforcement Materials delivered record EBIT of $132 million driven by year-over-year improvement in pricing and product mix from our calendar year 2023 customer agreements, despite volume declines across all regions. As we communicated in June, the market environment remained challenging for Performance Chemicals during the quarter as demand across all product lines, excluding battery materials, continued to be weak and the pace of recovery in China remained slow.”

Keohane continued, “During the third quarter, we delivered strong operating cash flow of $243 million and we returned cash to our shareholders with $23 million of dividends and $15 million of share repurchases. Our balance sheet remains solid with Net Debt to EBITDA at 1.7x and liquidity of $1.3 billion.”

Financial Detail

For the third quarter of fiscal 2023, net income attributable to Cabot Corporation was $82 million ($1.43 per diluted common share). Net income reflects an after-tax per share benefit from certain items of $0.01. Adjusted EPS for the third quarter of fiscal 2023 was $1.42 per share.

Segment Results

Reinforcement Materials – Third quarter fiscal 2023 EBIT in Reinforcement Materials increased by $19 million compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2022. The increase in EBIT was principally driven by improved unit margins from better pricing and product mix in our calendar year 2023 customer agreements, partially offset by lower volumes. Lower volumes were experienced across all regions driven by lower replacement tire demand.

Global and regional volume changes for Reinforcement Materials for the third quarter of fiscal 2023 as compared to the same quarter of the prior year are set forth in the table below:

Performance Chemicals – Third quarter fiscal 2023 EBIT in Performance Chemicals decreased by $31 million compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2022 primarily due to a decrease in volumes and a less favorable product mix in our specialty carbons and battery materials product lines. Lower volumes were driven by continued softness in key end markets, with the most significant volume decline in our fumed metal oxides product line. While overall segment volumes declined 9% year-over-year, we delivered 50% volume growth in products sold to battery materials applications.

Cash Performance – The Company ended the third quarter of fiscal 2023 with a cash balance of $220 million. During the third quarter of fiscal 2023, cash flows from operating activities were a source of $243 million. Capital expenditures for the third quarter of fiscal 2023 were $80 million. Additional uses of cash during the third quarter included $23 million for the payment of dividends and $15 million for share repurchases.

Taxes – During the third quarter of fiscal 2023, the Company recorded a tax expense of $41 million, with an effective tax rate of 32%. The operating tax rate for the third quarter of 2023 was 33%, which reflected non-GAAP tax adjustments of $2 million, and included a catch-up of expense for the first half of the fiscal year. The effective and operating tax rate for the nine months ended June 30, 2023 was 28% and our expectation for the operating tax rate for fiscal year 2023 is now between 27% and 29% The increase in our expected operating tax rate was driven by a change in the geographic mix of earnings anticipated for fiscal year 2023.

Outlook

Commenting on the fourth quarter and fiscal year outlook for the Company, Keohane said, “While volumes in Reinforcement Materials are expected to remain relatively consistent sequentially except for some seasonal decline in Europe, we continue to expect strong year over year EBIT growth driven by the pricing and product mix benefits in our calendar year 2023 customer agreements. In the Performance Chemicals segment, we anticipate relatively stable volumes sequentially across the larger product lines and moderate, sequential volume improvement in our battery materials and inkjet growth vectors. We anticipate pricing pressures in the EV value chain in China will impact battery materials results in the near-term and expect EBITDA results in fiscal 2023 to be below our previously communicated forecast range. Overall for the company, we expect adjusted earnings per share for the fourth fiscal quarter to be in the range of $1.40 to $1.55, which would bring our full year range between $5.13 to $5.28. ”

Keohane continued, “Despite the challenges brought on by the weak macro-economic environment, we are delivering strong operating cash flow and remain focused on reducing costs and driving disciplined commercial execution. While the current economic environment is weaker than we expected at the beginning of our fiscal year, I am pleased with how the Cabot team is responding to this challenging environment and I believe the expected fourth quarter adjusted earnings per share exit rate range will set us up well as we look to fiscal 2024.”

Earnings Call

The Company will host a conference call with industry analysts at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, August 8, 2023. The call can be accessed through Cabot’s investor relations website at http://investor.cabot-corp.com

About Cabot Corporation

Cabot Corporation (NYSE: CBT) is a global specialty chemicals and performance materials company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The company is a leading provider of reinforcing carbons, specialty carbons, battery materials, engineered elastomer composites, inkjet colorants, masterbatches and conductive compounds, fumed metal oxides and aerogel. For more information on Cabot, please visit the company’s website at cabotcorp.com. The Company regularly posts important information on its website and encourages investors and potential investors to consult the Cabot website regularly.

Forward-Looking Statements – This earnings release contains forward-looking statements. All statements that address expectations or projections about the future, including with respect to our expectations for our performance in fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023, including our expectations for adjusted earnings per share for the fiscal year 2023, our expectations for volumes across our business in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023, and our expected operating tax rate for fiscal 2023, are forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties, potentially inaccurate assumptions, and other factors, some of which are beyond our control and difficult to predict. If known or unknown risks materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove inaccurate, our actual results could differ materially from past results and from those expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, disruption to our operations from the COVID-19 pandemic, industry capacity utilization and competition from other specialty chemical companies; safety, health and environmental requirements and related constraints imposed on our business; regulatory and financial risks related to climate change developments; volatility in the price and availability of energy and raw materials, including with respect to the Russian invasion of Ukraine; a significant adverse change in a customer relationship or the failure of a customer to perform its obligations under agreements with us; failure to achieve growth expectations from new products, applications and technology developments; failure to realize benefits from acquisitions, alliances, or joint ventures or achieve our portfolio management objectives; unanticipated delays in, or increased cost of site development projects; negative or uncertain worldwide or regional economic conditions and market opportunities, including from trade relations, global health matters or geo-political conflicts; litigation or legal proceedings; tax rates and fluctuations in foreign currency exchange and interest rates; and the accuracy of the assumptions we used in establishing reserves for our share of liability for respirator claims. These factors are discussed more fully in the reports we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), particularly under the heading “Risk Factors” in our annual report on Form 10-K for our fiscal year ended September 30, 2022, filed with the SEC at www.sec.gov. We assume no obligation to provide revisions to any forward-looking statements should circumstances change, except as otherwise required by securities and other applicable laws.

Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures

To supplement Cabot’s consolidated financial statements presented on a generally accepted accounting principle (“GAAP”) basis, the preceding discussion of our results and the accompanying financial tables report Adjusted EPS, Total Segment EBIT, Total Segment EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, our operating tax rate, Free Cash Flow and Discretionary Free Cash Flow, all of which are non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures are not computed in accordance with, or as an alternative to, GAAP, and the definitions of these measures may not be comparable to those used by other companies. Reconciliations of Adjusted EPS to net income (loss) per share attributable to Cabot Corporation, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure, Total Segment EBIT, Total Segment EBITDA, and Adjusted EBITDA to income (loss) from continuing operations before income taxes and equity in earnings of affiliated companies, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure of each such non-GAAP measure, operating tax rate to effective tax rate, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure and Free Cash Flow and Discretionary Free Cash Flow to Cash flow from operating activities, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure, are provided in the tables titled “Cabot Corporation Certain Items and Reconciliation of Adjusted EPS and Operating Tax Rate” and “Cabot Corporation Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures.”

Management believes these non-GAAP measures provide investors with greater transparency to the information used by Cabot management in its financial and operational decision-making, allow investors to see Cabot’s results through the eyes of management, and better enable Cabot’s investors to understand Cabot’s operating performance and financial condition. In addition, adjusted EPS and Discretionary Free Cash Flow are two of the financial measures used to determine payouts under the Company’s executive incentive compensation awards.

Adjusted EPS. In calculating Adjusted EPS, we exclude from our net income (loss) attributable to Cabot Corporation items of expense and income that management does not consider representative of the Company’s business operations. We refer to these items as “certain items.” Management believes excluding these items facilitates operating performance comparisons from period to period by eliminating differences caused by the existence and timing of certain expense and income items that would not otherwise be apparent on a GAAP basis and an evaluation of the Company’s operating performance without the impact of these costs or benefits.

The items of income and expense that we exclude from our calculations of Adjusted EPS but that are included in our GAAP net income (loss) per share, as applicable in a particular reporting period, include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Asset impairment charges, which primarily include charges associated with an impairment of goodwill, other long-lived assets or assets held for sale.
• Charges related to the divestiture of our Purification Solutions business, which include accelerated costs associated with the change in control and employee incentive compensation.
• Legal and environmental reserves and matters, which consist of costs or benefits for matters typically related to former businesses or that are otherwise incurred outside of the ordinary course of business.
• Global restructuring activities, which include costs or benefits associated with cost reduction initiatives or plant closures and are primarily related to (i) employee termination costs, (ii) asset impairment charges associated with restructuring actions, (iii) costs to close facilities, including environmental costs and contract termination penalties, and (iv) gains realized on the sale of land or equipment associated with restructured plants or locations.
• Acquisition and integration-related charges, which include transaction costs, redundant costs incurred during the period of integration, and costs associated with transitioning certain management and business processes to Cabot’s processes.
• Gains (losses) on sale of a business.
• Gain associated with the bargain purchase of a business.
• Gains realized on the sale of land.

Cabot does not provide an expected GAAP EPS range or reconciliation of the Adjusted EPS range with an expected GAAP EPS range because, without unreasonable effort, we are unable to predict with reasonable certainty the matters we would allocate to “certain items,” including unusual gains and losses, costs associated with future restructurings, acquisition-related expenses and litigation outcomes. These items are uncertain, depend on various factors, and could have a material impact on GAAP EPS in future periods.

Total Segment EBIT. Total segment EBIT reflects the sum of EBIT from our two reportable segments. In calculating Total segment EBIT we exclude from our income (loss) from continuing operations before income taxes and equity in earnings of affiliated companies, certain items and items that, because they are not controlled by the business segments and primarily benefit corporate objectives, are not allocated to our business segments, such as interest expense and other corporate costs, which include unallocated corporate overhead expenses such as certain corporate salaries and headquarter expenses, plus costs related to corporate projects and initiatives.

Total Segment EBITDA. Total Segment EBITDA is equal to Total Segment EBIT (as defined above), but further adjusted for depreciation and amortization.

Adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA reflects Total Segment EBITDA and is further adjusted for unallocated corporate costs, which include unallocated corporate overhead expenses such as certain corporate salaries and headquarter expenses, plus costs related to corporate projects and initiatives.

Free Cash Flow. To calculate “Free Cash Flow” we deduct Additions to property, plant and equipment from cash flow from operating activities.

Discretionary Free Cash Flow. To calculate “Discretionary Free Cash Flow” we deduct sustaining and compliance capital expenditures and changes in Net Working Capital from cash flow from operating activities.

Operating Tax Rate. Our “operating tax rate” is calculated based upon management's forecast of the annual operating tax rate for the fiscal year applied to adjusted pre-tax earnings. The operating tax rate excludes income tax (expense) benefit on certain items, discrete tax items and, on a quarterly basis the timing of losses in certain jurisdictions. The income tax (expense) benefit on certain items is determined using the applicable rates in the taxing jurisdictions in which the certain items occurred and includes both current and deferred income tax (expense) benefit based on the nature of the certain items. Discrete tax items include, but are not limited to, changes in valuation allowance, uncertain tax positions, and other tax items, such as the tax impact of legislative changes. Management believes that this non-GAAP financial measure is useful supplemental information because it helps our investors compare our tax rate year to year on a consistent basis and to understand what our tax rate on current operations would be without the impact of these items.

Cabot does not provide a forward-looking reconciliation of the operating tax rate range with an effective tax rate range because, without unreasonable effort, we are unable to predict with reasonable certainty the matters we would allocate to “certain items,” including unusual gains and losses, costs associated with future restructurings, acquisition-related expenses and litigation outcomes. These items are uncertain, depend on various factors, and could have a material impact on the effective tax rate in future periods.

Explanation of Terms Used

Product Mix. The term “product mix” refers to the mix of types and grade of products sold or the mix of geographic regions where products are sold, and the positive or negative impact this has on the revenue or profitability of the business or segment.

Net Working Capital. The term “net working capital” includes accounts receivable, inventory and accounts payable and accrued expenses.