Avient Corp Aktie

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Avient Corporation webcast to discuss the company's second quarter 2026 results. My name is Michelle, and I will be your operator for today. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Patrick Davis from Avient's Investor Relations team. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning to everyone joining us on the call today. Before we begin, we would 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're based on management's expectation 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-K or any applicable amendments for the complete discussion of these factors and 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 in the Investor Relations section of the Avient website, where the company describes the non-GAAP measures and provides a reconciliation for historical non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures.

A replay of this 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.

On the call today is our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Ashish Khandpur; and Joe Di Salvo, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer.

I will now hand the call over to Ashish to begin.

Thank you, Patrick, and good morning, everyone. I want to begin by acknowledging the hard work of the entire Avient team and thank them for delivering a strong quarter, which was a story of successful execution, managing inflation and navigating supply chain disruptions. Our team continues to perform with discipline, poise and determination under a very dynamic and volatile environment.

In the second quarter, our team delivered $0.96 of adjusted EPS, $0.09 ahead of expectations, driven by better-than-expected volume growth. Organic sales grew 4.3% with double-digit increase in adjusted EBITDA year-over-year. By remaining close to our customers, we delivered profitable growth across the portfolio. Market share gains, new product innovations and pricing actions contributed to positive organic sales, including volume growth in both business segments.

Asia was a particular standout, growing organic sales 18% over the prior year quarter, driven by secular tailwinds in electronics and high-performance computing as well as new business gains in functional additives. Both business segments showed double-digit organic growth in Asia.

Operating leverage from revenue growth, combined with our continued focus on company-wide productivity initiatives, drove Q2 adjusted EBITDA margins to a record 18.3%, an expansion of 110 basis points year-over-year. These results contributed to 20% adjusted EPS growth year-over-year, validating the success of our strategy while also demonstrating the consistency of our team's operational execution.

Strong cash flow generation in the quarter enabled debt paydown of $50 million as we continue to prioritize strengthening our balance sheet.

Our first half results shown on the right-hand side of the slide, reflect the compounding power of our business model, where 1.2% organic sales growth and 70 basis points of margin expansion generated 4.7% adjusted EBITDA growth and 9.1% adjusted EPS growth, excluding the impact of foreign currency translation. The underlying demand environment continues to vary by end market, but our strategy and execution are enabling us to outperform those conditions in many areas.

Let me walk through the trends we are seeing across our businesses. Packaging, our largest end market, representing 23% of company sales, grew double digits in the second quarter. Along with solid pricing execution, we continue to see growth from innovation and new business wins. We are seeing strong customer interest in our non-PFAS polymer processing aids for personal health and beauty and food packaging applications as well as continued growth in electronics. Given the strength of our project pipeline, we expect our packaging business to keep the growth momentum in the second half of the year.

In consumer, demand trends are stabilizing. Sales grew mid-single digits in the second quarter, driven by the U.S. and Asia and for both consumer discretionary and staples submarkets. At the same time, our global key account prioritization and focus on winning business with large local Asia customers continue to create share gains and business growth for us. We expect growth to continue in the second half, supported by improving market demand, ongoing share gains and favorable comparisons as the year progresses.

As we mentioned last quarter, demand in Defense remains healthy, supported by a strong project pipeline spanning both the United States and Europe. After a slower start in the year in the first quarter, activity picked up in the second quarter, where our defense business grew even against a strong comparison of 19% growth in the second quarter of 2025. We expect this business to grow mid- to high-single digits for the year.

Building and construction continued its strong performance in the second quarter with double-digit growth driven by share wins and new business development. This business is benefiting from data center and broader infrastructure investment trends as well as new application development by our teams for composite lightweighting for residential markets. We expect the strong momentum to continue in the second half of the year.

Our healthcare business grew double digits in each of the prior 2 years. As we highlighted in our last earnings call, we are seeing some rebalancing of inventory levels by our customers, especially for drug delivery and remote monitoring devices. While this dynamic weighed on first half results, the underlying demand and secular trends supporting growth remain intact. Our teams continue to build a strong project pipeline, working closely with leading pharmaceutical and medical device and equipment companies. We expect growth to return in the second half, led by demand strength, especially in the medical devices and equipment applications.

Industrial also improved in the second quarter, returning to modest growth led by strength in Asia. With more favorable comparisons ahead, we expect that growth momentum to continue through the balance of the year.

Transportation demand remains soft, reflecting lower vehicle production rates and weaker demand in marine applications. We do not expect this trend to change in the third quarter or perhaps for the entire second half of the year.

In energy and telecom, demand trends continue to improve, supporting our expectation for growth in second half of the year. Within telecom, we are seeing increasing activity tied to high-performance computing and electronic applications. Our energy business is expected to benefit from electrical infrastructure projects in the United States. We expect both energy and telecom to grow high single digits to double digits in the third quarter.

Overall, we are encouraged by the improving demand trends across much of our portfolio. Combined with continued execution of our strategy through focus on customers, innovation, commercial excellence and targeted share wins, these trends support our confidence in our updated full-year guidance. Importantly, much of our progress in first half was driven by factors within our control rather than being dependent on a broader macro recovery. That focus on execution has enabled us to deliver consistent improvements across the business despite a volatile operating environment.

As we update our outlook for the year, we also think it is important to step back and look at the broader picture since we adopted our new strategy beginning in early 2024. This slide highlights the financial outcomes our strategy has delivered over the past 3 years and the progress we have made in building a stronger, more resilient business at Avient. We have systematically expanded margins, grown earnings, generated strong cash flow and strengthened our balance sheet each year, all while continuing to invest in innovation and our prioritized growth vectors. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of our strategy, the compounding power of our business model and our ability to drive operational performance through actions within our control even amid volatile and uncertain market conditions.

A good example is Europe, where we have been executing a focused strategy to improve profitability by streamlining structure, reducing complexity, driving productivity and operational discipline and executing portfolio actions. As a result, EMEA adjusted EBITDA margins are expected to improve by more than 400 basis points from 2023 to 2026, reaching more than 18% with systematic improvement each year along the way. This brings the region's margins in line with the broader portfolio and demonstrates our ability to create value even in more challenging demand environments.

Importantly, these results are not driven by any single initiative. They reflect the combined impact of customer focus, innovation, portfolio management and targeted share gains with key accounts while collaborating across our 2 business segments to represent one Avient to our customers.

Innovation remains a critical component of our growth strategy, and we believe there remains substantial opportunity ahead as our commercialization and innovation capabilities continue to mature.

The next slide highlights how we are leveraging innovation and customer collaboration to capture attractive growth opportunities in high-value applications that intersect with important secular trends across our prioritized markets. We recently launched a new range of dielectric materials under our Preperm portfolio, specifically for humanoid robots and intelligent driving vehicles. Robots and autonomous cars are increasingly reliant on their radar systems to detect and respond quickly to their surroundings, other cars, pedestrians and objects.

Traditionally, radar housings or radomes have relied on glass-fiber-reinforced materials. However, these materials distort signals at higher frequencies, typical of these new and emerging applications and are susceptible to warpage during manufacturing, resulting in lower yields and higher production costs.

Preperm materials are designed to offer extremely low loss or signal distortion in higher electromagnetic frequencies and are preferred by robot and car radar manufacturers for enabling cleaner signal transmission at higher rates and low latency delays.

In addition to meeting and exceeding customer requirements on performance, Preperm materials also provide easier manufacturability with greater impact resistance, low warpage and laser assembly compatibility.

We are currently developing radome solutions for various humanoid robot and autonomous vehicle radar manufacturers, customizing properties to best fit their applications and easily adapting to their existing manufacturing processes. We continue to expand this materials platform for a variety of applications and manufacturing processes supporting this fast-growing area.

Now I would like to turn it over to Joe to cover our second quarter financial results and outlook.

Thank you, Ashish. The innovation example you just highlighted reflects how we are translating our capabilities into commercial wins for value creation across the portfolio. With that context, let me walk through our second quarter segment results.

Color, Additives and Inks delivered a strong quarter, generating 5% organic sales growth and 9% adjusted EBITDA growth, excluding the impact of foreign currency translation. Through innovation and targeted new business wins, we continue to expand our position with existing customers while capturing attractive new growth opportunities.

The team also delivered excellent commercial and operational execution, remaining highly responsive to customer needs while proactively managing inflationary pressures and supply chain challenges. As a result, the combination of volume-driven revenue growth, favorable mix, pricing execution and ongoing productivity initiatives generated meaningful operating leverage, expanding adjusted EBITDA margin 80 basis points to 21.7% and segment adjusted EBITDA of $125 million.

Specialty Engineered Materials delivered 3% organic sales growth in the quarter, driven by continued strength in high-performance computing, electronics and infrastructure-related applications, all of which are benefiting from attractive secular growth trends.

We also saw double-digit growth in consumer sales during the quarter, driven by stabilizing demand and new business wins with global OEMs in personal care and electronics. Defense also remained a contributor to growth, particularly in the U.S., where project activity improved following delays associated with the government shutdown earlier this year.

The combination of growth in these high-value applications contributing to favorable mix and productivity initiatives resulted in adjusted EBITDA of $76 million, an increase of 20% compared to the prior year. Margin expansion of 310 basis points also benefited from lapping of approximately $3 million of planned maintenance expense incurred in the second quarter of 2025. While that maintenance expense provided a meaningful benefit to the year-over-year margin comparison, underlying profitability trends remain healthy, and we expect continued margin expansion in the second half.

Turning to regional performance. I believe that the first to second quarter sequential trends provide the best indication of current business momentum. As many of you know, the first and second quarters are typically fairly comparable from a seasonal demand perspective. Against this backdrop, we delivered 8% sequential organic revenue growth globally. While pricing actions contributed to this performance, what is particularly encouraging is the growth in both Asia and United States exceeded the impact of pricing, indicating improving underlying demand and continued market share gains.

Asia grew 20% sequentially, while the United States and Canada increased 7% sequentially, driven by strength in both the CAI and SEM business segments. Europe and Latin America also delivered positive sequential growth of 3% and 12%, respectively.

With that as context, let me turn to our updated financial guidance for 2026. We are raising our full year guidance of adjusted EBITDA, EPS and free cash flow. We now expect adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $575 million to $603 million, adjusted EPS to be in the range of $3.10 to $3.25 per share and free cash flow to be in the range of $210 million to $230 million.

The updated outlook reflects our first half performance and the momentum we are carrying forward into the second half of the year. While our outlook incorporates continued macroeconomic uncertainty, including inflation and geopolitical developments, we remain confident in our ability to deliver within the guidance range based on our team's execution, customer engagement and current business momentum.

We also updated our capital expenditure outlook to a range of $120 million to $130 million compared to our prior expectation of $140 million. This change primarily reflects the timing of certain capital projects and does not change our commitment to investing in our prioritized growth portfolios. Even at the updated level, our capital expenditures are expected to be above the $107 million invested in 2025, driven by strategic growth investments.

In addition, our strong cash flow generation continues to support balance sheet improvement. During the second quarter, we repaid $50 million of debt, bringing our total debt reduction over the last 12 months to $200 million.

Looking ahead, for the full year of 2026, we expect to repay a total of $100 million to $150 million of debt, which is inclusive of the $50 million paid in the second quarter, supporting our expectation for net leverage to exit the year in the range of 2.2 to 2.4x.

Lastly, for the third quarter, we expect adjusted EPS of approximately $0.80 per share, representing growth of 14% versus the prior year quarter.

With that, we will now move to the Q&A portion of today's call.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank.

This is Emily Fusco on for Dave. Maybe just if you could, of the organic growth, how much was volume versus price and just kind of give some more color by segment.

Yes. So Emily, the growth was at 4.3% organic growth total and about 1/4 of that was volume and 3/4 was price. But I think the more important thing is as we go from Q2 to Q4, that ratio of volume to price goes to -- flip-flops to almost 70% volume and 30% price in Q4 and then Q3 is somewhere in between. So we are seeing good volume growth coming through. And obviously, as we said earlier in our second -- first quarter earnings call, we will be net price benefit every quarter, and that continues to be the case on the price side.

Got it. Okay. And on pricing, once raws come down or maybe return somewhere near pre-conflict level, how much of that price do you expect to retain?

Yes. I mean our teams have shown that we can keep the price longer and retain it. This happened after COVID situation, and we don't -- there's always some cases where the pricing plays a role in business negotiation, but we don't expect any material amount of price to go back, and we try to -- we will -- we have confidence we can maintain it. We do see still a lot of uncertainty and some RMs are still moving. And so things haven't really changed so much from a certainty point of view and our customers understand that. So we have pretty high confidence we can keep the price. Again, we work with our customers not to take any extra price, but also want to make sure that we are able to pass on any case of inflation that we are seeing through and hopefully do a little better than that.

And our next question is going to come from Frank Mitsch with Fermium Research.

Nice results. Ashish, given the order -- the magnitude of the upside that you posted here in the second quarter, a lot obviously went right since we spoke on May 7. I was wondering if you could let us know what the 2 or 3 biggest surprises that led to that big upside for the second quarter.

Yes, Frank, I mean, I think the biggest piece was the volume growth. If you remember, there was a question in our earnings call, which asked about Q2 volumes, and we were projecting between 1% to 2% volume negative in the quarter, and that turned out to be more like plus 1% positive, more or less. So essentially, that was the biggest reason that gave these results. The pricing came out exactly like our teams had projected and what we had thought we would execute. So not much surprises there. And FX was just a little bit favorable, but not as big as the volume part. So I think those were the 2 biggest things, if you say, volume and a little bit of FX.

Okay. Great. And on the volume side, did you get any sense -- or do you have any sense that the second quarter might have benefited from prebuy as pricing went up? Is there any sense that the underlying -- or do you believe that the demand you saw in the second quarter was underlying demand and no sense of any inventory building by your customers?

Yes, Frank, we don't think there was much prebuying and that -- we're pretty confident of that. If anything, it will be very miniscule, which is always within error bars, $2 million, $3 million or something like that. Hard to say that part. But at a big level, we are not seeing that. And actually, we just got our July results, and we started the quarter as we had projected and pretty strong actually. So I think we don't believe there was any prebuying or at least to the level that would influence any results going forward.

And the next question will come from Pete Osterland with Truist.

I just wanted to start with the margin growth in Engineered Materials. It looks like very high incrementals there, even excluding the maintenance impact you called out. So I was just wondering, could you give us a sense of how much of that margin growth was end market mix versus productivity versus pricing? And where do you see segment margins going from here?

Pete, thanks. This is Joe. Thanks for the question. So the planned maintenance that we talked about had about 100 basis points benefit for the quarter. So the remaining 200 basis points is split between price/mix favorability in the quarter as well as net productivity gains. As we kind of get into the back half of the year, what we've assumed or modeled out is that the segment will be -- will expand margins around 100 basis points in the second half.

Very helpful. And then I just wanted to ask, considering what looks like some moderation of expectations in certain growth vectors like healthcare, but then you've got strong momentum in data center infrastructure. I'm just trying to figure out, overall, how is your end market mix expected to impact margins in the second half and then maybe into next year?

Maybe I'll take that. I think, first of all, we expect margin growth for Avient for total company, but also within each of the 2 business segments. So you should see that. And in first half, we are, as a company, up 70 basis points margin year-over-year. So that's one data point. And we expect that we will finish positive margin in both the business segments in the end of the year.

With respect to the end market segment, just a little bit of flavor for you guys. We grew organic growth in 7 out of the 9 markets we play in, in Q2, and we expect 8 markets to grow in Q3. So we are seeing good demand coming from markets. It's volume-driven demand. As I said, our volumes will continue to increase as the quarters progress. So we are seeing momentum. But also some of our innovation and our share wins are part of that story as well. So it's the demand coming back, but also our teams winning new business and also the innovation part getting us into new areas, especially for these growth vectors that you mentioned.

So last year, we finished our growth vectors in high-single digits. And while the rest of the business was flat to low -- flat to slightly negative, and I think this year, again, we expect the growth vectors to outperform the business, especially on the volume side, we will see because we are getting into new business wins and new markets with these growth vectors. So we are pretty bullish with respect to our margin expansion story, but also growing the business on the top line and the bottom line.

And our next question will come from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies.

It's Dan Rizzo on for Laurence. So you did -- ROIC was up to 9.6%, which is great. I thought a few years ago, you guys gave ROIC target. I don't know if that's true or not, but if it's not or even if it is, is there a target of what you think you can get to if things keep going the way they're going?

Dan, it's Joe Di Salvo. We gave a target probably back in 2018, which would have been a much different portfolio at the time. So prior to the Clariant acquisition and the Avient Protective Materials acquisition and the divestiture of 2 segments. So that was quite a bit a while ago. We have not given a target. We've been reporting on it as is the focus of the company as we want to continue to expand it and grow that. After doing the 2 acquisitions in 2020 and 2022, that took a step backwards. And so we've been focused on expanding, and you see that consistent performance over the last few years.

Okay. Sorry, I just really dated myself. I didn't realize it was that long ago. But anyway, industrial was up, and you saw some volume improvement. I was wondering if that's more from new wins and just kind of more market penetration or if there's some restocking going on just after some softness. I guess my real question is how sustainable it is beyond maybe a quarter or 2?

Yes. So industrial was largely a story out of Asia for Q2. But as we go into Q3 and Q4, the comps become very favorable from last year. And so the growth that we are projecting is both comps related but also volume related. In Asia, specifically, we saw a lot of demand in 3D printer business and things like that, which are newer trends and also areas like smart glasses, which is, again, upcoming trends. Our team are winning new businesses in these areas.

But also as we look into the second half of the year, we are expecting Industrial to grow in United States as well. EMEA remains challenged still on the industrial side, but USAC is showing good growth in that area, and our teams are winning business there. So I think -- but the comps, for example, industrial was down 8% in Q3 of last year. So comps are very favorable, and that's the reason giving us confidence that year-over-year, we'll grow that business.

And our next question is going to come from Mike Harrison with Seaport Research.

Ashish, you called out the non-PFAS polymer processing aids as an important innovation in your packaging business. It sounds like you're getting some more commercial traction there. I'm just curious what portion of your customers are looking to move in this direction to remove PFAS? And are there any regions where there either currently is some regulatory push to make these changes or an expected regulatory change that would take PFAS out?

Yes. So Mike, in Europe, especially in August of 2026, the expectation or maybe it's mandatory now is that anything that is used in food packaging would have -- would be non-PFAS. There should not be any PFAS added to that thing. Inherently, there is always some PFAS because of -- it's hard to get out of everything, but that we are not adding any PFAS to the processing of the material and so on and so forth. So that's the regulation. And so that's driving our non-PFAS business, especially for flexible packaging for food contact.

But also we are seeing broader-based trend even when -- although it's not mandatory, but a lot of our -- especially multinational customers, multinational companies, which are doing global businesses, they are walking away or finding ways to get away from PFAS as much as they can ahead on their own. And so we are seeing non-PFAS getting traction. For example, we've highlighted an example last earnings call in personal beauty and healthcare business where it was being utilized in packaging some of the personal beauty products or personal care products. So not only food packaging, but also other forms of packaging depending on the standards set by the companies and regulation and nonregulation both driving the business.

With respect to the number of customers, we are in trials with a whole bunch of customers. These things and qualifications take a long time as we have been highlighting. And the change of this magnitude is not trivial. You have to run this material for months on their production line. And so it's a big investment from the customer's point of view as well, and they want to be sure. So it's -- but once you are in, then you are qualified and then you can keep getting -- keep retaining that business. The moat is stronger for switching. So we are gaining business with customers. It's a small business right now, a few million dollars this year, but it is our first brand-new business in this area, and we expect it to continue to grow because of the trends that I just mentioned.

All right. That's very helpful. And then I was just curious on the U.S. and Canada, you noted that organic sales were down 2% year-over-year. I assume the volumes were a little bit worse than that, but it sounds like maybe the sequential trends are improving. So can you help us understand -- I don't know if you can provide a look on kind of the May, June, July time frame. What kind of improvements are you seeing? And any color on what markets specifically are improving would be helpful.

Yes. So you're right, volumes were down more than 2% in U.S. It was like almost 4% volume down for USAC in Q2. But as we are looking into Q3 and Q4, we expect volumes to be in the mid-single-digit range positive. And I think -- so we -- obviously, the trend -- as you said, it has been a trend that has been improving, and we are already seeing those results in July come through. So we expect pretty healthy volume-driven growth in the United States and Canada in the second half of the year.

And our next question is going to come from Ghansham Panjabi with Baird.

Ashish, can you just give us a sense as to where you are in your pricing initiatives in context of the raw material spike earlier this year? And then specific to 2Q, how does that net out for price/cost in total? And the reason I'm asking is, obviously, EBITDA margin stepped up quite a bit at, what was it, 110 basis points in 2Q, and it was 20 basis points in 1Q. And I'm just curious as to whether the price/cost favorability was a big differential between the 2 quarters.

Yes. I mean you're right, Ghansham. I mean we gave the price increases around May -- around March time frame and our teams moved fast on it. And so we started seeing results of it. So Q2, we were net price positive already. And the growth, almost 3%, 3.5% came from price. So price was a significant -- as we said, 1/4 of the growth came from the volume and 3/4 came from the price.

As we go into Q3, we will see higher inflation play through the raw materials because of the timing of raw materials, but also higher price come through. So net-net, we would still be price positive in Q3 as well. And in Q4, the pricing effect will subside a little bit, but the volume part will take a bigger piece, as I mentioned earlier.

So overall, for each of the quarters, we expect it to be net price positive for each of the quarters that -- for this year. But the price volume mix changes with price being the dominant growth driver in Q2 to volume being the dominant growth driver in Q4.

Okay. That makes sense. Obviously, a very complex operating backdrop. And then going back to 4Q guidance, you're being very specific with 3Q guidance as you have -- as you were for 2Q as well. But it's a very wide range, at least on an implied basis for 4Q. What's underlying that? Is it just your inventory destocking, your view on volumes? What's driving that big range for 4Q?

Ghansham, this is Joe. Good question. So first of all, the Q3 guidance is an approximate $0.80. So I wouldn't say that that's locked in. It's based on our visibility for the quarter now. So we have the highest degree of confidence in this quarter out in front of us. But I'd still say there's a range associated with that approximate $0.80, plus or minus a few cents either way. And so I wouldn't put the entire $0.15 adjusted EPS range all in the fourth quarter for one point for starters, I guess.

And then the second thing is, as you get into the fourth quarter, we do have less visibility, as I said, for sales and the order book at that point. And you also have year-end seasonality with holidays and how things could play out, as well as the potential for narrowing or maybe normalizing of the net price benefit as we get into the fourth quarter. And so we're leaving ourselves a little bit of a range there to ensure we account for that.

And the next question comes from Abigail Eberts with Wells Fargo.

You called out data centers as a tailwind across both telco and building and construction. Can you give us a feel for the size of this opportunity for you?

Yes, Abigail, for us, the SEM or the actual addressable opportunity with our current portfolio that is it's close to $1 billion for the data center and electronics part. That's just from high-performance computing and electronics. And then there's another $1 billion that is from an infrastructure piece, which is wire and cable and other pipe and fittings kind of businesses where we sell some of our products.

So I think it's overall -- we like to see rather than breaking it as data center, we see this more of an electronics digital play, and it manifests everything from making the silicon chip to all the way to showing up in data centers in servers. So across that value chain, it's about $2 billion directly addressable opportunity for us.

Our business is right now close to -- this year, we'll finish close to $100 million. We just started focusing in this area, but it's growing very fast. So for example, we have doubled our electronics business over the last 3 years. And this year, the electronics part is expected to finish close to $60 million. So we expect similar kind of doubling in the next 2 to 3 years, but also assuming that those kinds of growth rates of the industry is sustained.

As you -- I know there's a lot of CapEx being put into this area, but we are a little bit behind in the value chain, further back up in the value chain. So we don't see that whole pie of trillions of dollars of CapEx being put into data centers. But we are trying to get a big piece of -- as big a piece of that as possible. And we are also trying to make our portfolio more relevant for that area, and we'll continue to grow more portfolio either organically or inorganically in that area in the future.

And our last question will come from Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley.

This is Turner on for Vincent. Joe, you mentioned SEM should expand margins by 100 basis points in the second half. Is this half-over-half or year-over-year? And do you mind talking a little bit more about underlying assumptions between price/cost mix shift between different applications or end markets and volume leverage?

Yes. Thanks, Turner. So the 100 basis points is year-over-year is what I was referring to for the SEM segment. And it's going to be primarily driven from mix as well as some of the productivity benefits that we've been executing over the last 1.5 years or 2 years. And so if you look at their demand trends in the defense business, the defense was up low-single digits here in the first half of the year, but lapping tough comps where defense grew strong double digits last year.

As we get into the back half of the year, we'll see a little greater growth year-over-year from defense as well as the continued momentum we talked about with electronics and high-performance computing, which are also higher-margin parts of the portfolio. So favorable mix and productivity benefits will continue to help the margin expansion trend, but at a lower degree, as I mentioned, about 100 basis points for the segment in the back half.

Awesome. And as a follow-up, you all have previously said net leverage below 2.5x opens the door to buybacks and potentially M&A. Now that you're guiding to 2.2 to 2.4x, how are you thinking about the go-forward capital deployment between further debt paydown, buybacks or acquisitions?

Yes. So Vincent (sic) [ Turner ], I mean, as you mentioned rightfully, we have been prioritizing debt reduction and strengthening our balance sheet, and we are getting close to the target range that we wanted that, and especially in this high interest rate environment. And so also our ROIC is getting in the right direction -- moving in the right direction, we have fair confidence we can continue to improve that.

So that apart, we have been making organic growth investments. As you know, in our growth portfolio, we have been paying dividends, which have been priorities as well. And now I think as we get closer to our target leverage, we have more optionality and flexibility. We can continue to pay debt. We can buy our stock if we think it is undervalued. But we can also -- we have started thinking and looking at what we could add to our portfolio to become more relevant, especially to drive more growth and margin expansion.

So all those 3 things become options right now based on where we are in our journey and how the business has gotten healthier, and we'll continue to do that. So at this point, I would just say that everything is on the table. We have started processes on all things, but nothing imminent that you can model right now.

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Avient Corporation's webcast to discuss the company's first quarter 2026 results. My name is Michelle, and I'll be your operator for today. [Operator Instructions] 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 proceed.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone, to joining us on the call today.

Before we begin, I'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're 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-K or any applicable amendments, for a complete discussion of these factors and 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 for historical non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures.

A replay of this 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 of the website.

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. Before I get into my business-related comments, I want to highlight the recent CFO leadership change we announced last week. Jamie Beggs has decided to leave Avient effective June 1 to pursue an opportunity outside of the company. I would like to extend my thanks to Jamie for her 6 years of contributions and service to Avient and wish her the best in her new role.

I am also very pleased to have Joe Di Salvo take on the CFO role, who many of you know very well. I have had the chance to work closely with Joe for about 2.5 years now and have established a strong and trusting relationship with him.

Joe brings with him 25 years of financial experience, including nearly 15 years at Avient. He has established strong relationships within the company and with the investment community. His deep financial experience and consistent delivery of results make him well suited to lead our financial organization. I look forward to continuing to work closely with Joe to deliver value to all our stakeholders.

Coming to the quarterly results now. In the first quarter, our teams delivered $0.83 of adjusted EPS, modestly ahead of our expectations, demonstrating disciplined execution in a complex operating environment. Our focus on cash and debt reduction in 2025 also contributed favorably to our first quarter EPS growth.

Sales were generally in line with expectations and market demand was a continuation of Q4, especially in Color, Additives and Inks, the larger of our 2 business segments. Demand remained subdued in January and February with a notable pickup in March as customers accelerated purchasing to mitigate potential supply disruptions and inflation pressures related to the conflict in the Middle East.

Importantly, our continued focus on productivity and cost control more than offset wage inflation and incentive resets, expanding adjusted EBITDA margins by 20 basis points.

One of the highlights of Q1 was that we started seeing some strength in our biggest end market of packaging, which contributes about 23% of our company revenues. Packaging finished up low single digits against strong comparisons of around 7% growth that we experienced in Q1 2025. We will talk more about packaging later in this presentation when we discuss our end markets in further detail.

Geopolitical events in the Middle East have increased volatility in market conditions and customer purchasing behavior as customers work to secure supply and manage inflation. I have personally visited many of our customers in Asia and EMEA, where the immediate supply chain disruptions are most pronounced. I can confidently say that our teams are doing an outstanding job to manage the situation proactively and are staying focused on and close to our customers.

We are leveraging our global supply chain and material science capabilities to secure raw materials, qualify alternatives where we can and have been implementing price actions where needed, to offset inflation. This approach is consistent with our proven playbook, which enabled us to remain net price positive during the post-pandemic disruptions of 2021, 2022 and again, during the tariff-driven volatility in 2025.

In fact, we remain net price positive in each and every quarter during these volatile and uncertain periods and expect the same to be the case this year as we confront another extended period of elevated uncertainty.

For the second quarter, we have secured supply for the vast majority of our raw materials. While availability remains constrained for select items, our teams are actively working with suppliers and seeking alternatives to minimize any impact, which we expect to be immaterial for Q2.

We also expect organic sales growth in both business segments and margin expansion for the total company in second quarter, while we continue to invest in the growth vectors in alignment with our strategy. Overall, our teams are well prepared to handle the changing business conditions with agility and staying focused on customers.

Execution over the last 9 quarters has been exceptional, and I believe our people are our competitive advantage in these turbulent times.

While first half performance is tracking modestly ahead of our expectations, uncertainty around the second half remains elevated. As a result, we are currently not changing our full year guidance. We are prepared for a range of outcomes and are making decisions to proactively manage the business with what we can influence. Accordingly, we will continue to execute our productivity initiatives as well as control spending and headcount, adjusting on an ongoing basis as the business conditions warrant.

Turning to our end market trends. Packaging, our largest end market, continues to demonstrate resilience, supported by new share gains, especially in food and beverage applications and also by new product innovations. This includes brand-new growth driven by non-PFAS Polymer Processing Aids used in personal health and beauty applications, and low-outgassing and anti-static materials used in films and tapes for electronics packaging applications.

As a result, we expect mid- to high single-digit growth in packaging in the second quarter, led by EMEA, our largest packaging market, where we also have favorable comparisons versus the second quarter of 2025. Consumer sales declined in the first quarter. In the second quarter, we expect a return to low single-digit growth, primarily driven by favorable comparisons following the demand slowdown that began in the second quarter of 2025.

Healthcare growth was low single digit in the first quarter, reflecting tough double-digit growth comparisons from Q1 2025 and also some customer inventory rebalancing in the drug delivery space. Importantly, this market has delivered consistent growth over the past 9 quarters with double-digit growth in each of the 2 years, 2024 and 2025.

As we lap strong growth in the first half of 2025, we expect second quarter growth to be similar to the first quarter. Defense sales were flat in the first quarter caused by lumpiness and timing of orders delivery in this business. For Q2, we expect defense sales to grow sequentially over Q1 and also year-over-year versus a very strong Q2 2025, where defense had grown almost 20%.

We see continued demand momentum in this business with healthy project pipelines and deep customer engagements in the United States and Europe. Building and Construction was another bright spot, where sales grew each of the 3 months of the first quarter and finished up mid-single digits. The growth in the quarter was primarily driven by share gains in the commercial and data center infrastructure build applications. We expect the trend to continue in the second quarter.

Demand in industrial, transportation and energy market continues to be slow, with sales declining mid-single digits or so in each of these end markets in Q1. This trend is expected to continue into Q2, but with magnitude of decline being more modest. We have been highlighting our innovations in these calls on a fairly regular basis now to provide a flavor of how our strategic pillar of innovation is taking shape in the company and building momentum for sales growth and margin expansion.

Even as we manage market volatility and deliver on our business performance each quarter, our strategy of prioritizing growth vectors tied to secular trends continues to create opportunities for innovation and new business creation at scale. Today, I will highlight how our teams are solving problems in the electronics and high-performance computing space, which is one of our prioritized growth vectors.

As AI and high-performance computing applications grow and pervade several industries, the demand for advanced semiconductors and efficient data centers continues to increase. We are supporting the AI and high-performance computing infrastructure build-out across 3 critical areas, bringing our technologies to industry leaders in this space.

First, Avient's unique material solutions offer excellent microenvironment control in semiconductor fabs and are used in wafer handling applications such as front opening universal pods and carrier tapes for transporting bare die and package chips. Our materials are designed to specifications of our customers while meeting stringent requirements of outgassing, electrostatic dissipation and ultra-clean processing.

Second, in data center servers, increased demand in processing power requires connectors and other components to operate at higher temperatures and be packed into a smaller footprint, a challenge that is hard to address with traditional polymers. Our custom design solutions for advanced connectors and optical fiber components offer very high signal fidelity in order to maximize data throughput in AI server interconnects.

Third, every data center needs thousands of miles of cabling, both for managing signal and power. With increasing power and density requirements, operators require cable solutions to be compact, quickly dissipate heat in high-density racks for safe operation and meet stringent fire codes. Our materials offer thin wall insulation that meet and exceed these needs as well as enable high-speed manufacturing of cables.

Our electronics and high-performance computing solutions have been growing rapidly over the last couple of years, and we expect this momentum to continue in 2026 and beyond. This growth vector is expected to finish greater than $40 million in sales this year, adding about $10 million in sales just in 2026 itself and doubling in sales in the last 3 years. Our teams continue to build and work on expanding the pipeline of projects and customers in this space.

I will now hand the call over to Jamie to add some additional color on our first quarter results and 2026 financial guidance.

Thank you, Ashish, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with the first quarter performance of our Color, Additives and Inks segment. Continued strength in health care and stable packaging demand was more than offset by subdued demand in consumer, transportation and industrial end markets, which led to a 3% decline in organic sales during the quarter.

EBITDA margins improved 40 basis points as pricing and productivity initiatives more than offset the impact of wage inflation and lower organic sales. Specialty Engineered Materials organic sales were flat as share gains in commercial building and construction applications primarily offset lower sales in consumer, transportation and industrial end markets. Healthcare was impacted by inventory rebalancing related to supply chain movements as well as lapping strong double-digit growth in Q1 of the prior year.

Defense sales were flat due to timing of customer orders and following several quarters of high single-digit to low double-digit growth. EBITDA margins declined 40 basis points, primarily due to unfavorable mix in the quarter, while productivity initiatives offset the impact of wage inflation. Both businesses demonstrated strong execution to deliver the first quarter results while proactively addressing anticipated changes in raw material cost, supply availability and pricing.

Moving to the regions. Overall demand trends were generally consistent with the year-over-year fourth quarter comparisons with a few distinct call-outs. U.S./Canada sales benefited from positive growth in building and construction share gains as well as stable demand in consumer and packaging end markets. This was more than offset by timing of defense orders, primarily associated with the delay of spending from recent government shutdowns and slow transportation demand related to domestic automotive production. Overall sales declined 3% for the region during the quarter.

EMEA organic sales were down 2% year-over-year, primarily due to consumer, industrial and transportation sales. Transportation was impacted by lower light vehicle production and demand for high-performance fibers used in marine applications. These declines more than offset strong growth in defense sales and momentum in the health care for the region.

Asia grew 2%, driven by strength in packaging and telecommunications. In addition, secular growth in electronics and high-performance computing as well as functional additives continues to unlock new opportunities for our materials portfolio. This has helped offset weak consumer demand, particularly in textile applications.

Latin America sales declined 6%, lapping 17% growth in the first quarter last year. Business in the region primarily serves consumer and packaging end markets where consumers remain cautious amid macro uncertainty.

As Ashish mentioned, our current performance expectations for the first half of the year are trending slightly better than expected. With that said, the outlook for the second half is less certain. Therefore, we are maintaining our full year guidance of adjusted EBITDA of $555 million to $585 million, which reflects 2% to 7% growth over the prior year. Adjusted EPS of $2.93 to $3.17, which reflects 4% to 12% growth over the prior year. This range includes our second quarter adjusted EPS outlook of $0.89.

Despite expected supply chain constraints and inflationary pressures in the second quarter, our teams have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to navigate volatility through disciplined execution. By staying closely aligned with customers, actively managing raw material sourcing and pricing and maintaining a strong focus on productivity, we remain well positioned to offset inflation and grow earnings in 2026. We also expect to generate more than $200 million of free cash flow this year, strengthening an already solid balance sheet and increasing our financial flexibility.

I'll now turn it back over to Ashish for some concluding comments.

Thank you, Jamie. Before opening it up for questions, I would like to acknowledge the hard work done by the Avient team during the quarter and thank our people for their disciplined execution and strong focus on serving our customers with passion and agility. I'm extremely proud and fortunate to be part of such a great team.

With that, we will now open the line for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Frank Mitsch with Fermium Research LLC.

Let me offer a double congrats to both Jamie and Joe. Ashish and I obviously wish you the best, and obviously, we'll be staying in close touch. Ashish, I wanted to delve into the raws versus price a little bit more. And I appreciate your comments with respect to net positive price in each quarter as we progress through the year.

What are you actually seeing in terms of raw material inflation? I understand that 2Q is somewhat muted because you've already got it in stock. But if you could give us some more color as to what you're seeing on the raw side and what your expectations are on the price side?

Yes. So Frank, basically, if you look at our raw materials and put them in 2 different buckets, one is hydrocarbons, that's where we are seeing most of our price increases. Overall ranges vary from 20% to 60% with TPE is more in the 20% to 30% range and polyethylene, polypropylenes in the -- or 20% to 60% range depending on the region you are in. So that's on the hydrocarbon side.

And the second bucket is basically our specialty materials and minerals like Performance Additives and things like TiO2, for example. And there, the increase is more in the high single digit kind of a range. Basically, that's where we are seeing the price year-over-year increases.

Then on energy, we are hedged for 2026 more or less. So not -- it's a small component anyway from -- less than 2% of our company sales. So not much impact in 2026. But even in 2027, since it's a small number, it will not matter a whole lot. We can take care of that through our price increases if needed. And then the other part is freight, where we are seeing almost close to 20% kind of increases. So that's what we are seeing from an inflation perspective.

And then obviously, as I said, our teams have moved pretty aggressively in Q1 itself. Giving price increases are -- is not our preferred way of doing things. We first try to see if we can work with our customers and secure RMs from other places or qualify new materials. But if that doesn't work, then we are -- we have to move with the price increases. And the teams have moved fast.

And as I mentioned in my commentary, we expect every quarter to be net price benefit based on how we have moved. So we try to stay ahead of inflation. So overall, I think for total, at a company level, if you think about for raw materials, we expect price to be in the mid-single digits averaged over our entire raw material basket. So that gives you some flavor of what we are looking at.

Terrific. That's very helpful. And Jamie, one last one for old time sakes. Obviously, you indicated positive free cash flow for 2026. Working capital was a significant use here in the first quarter. How do you think about working capital as we progress through the year?

Yes. From an overall perspective, we typically range between 13% and 14% of the working capital as a percentage of sales. And so as you do your modeling, that's what I would assume from an organic perspective. Q1 typically is a pretty big draw. That's just normal seasonality based on sales increases from a sequential basis Q4 to Q1. So no significant changes in our normal full year run rate on that. Just Q1 is more seasonal -- yes, seasonal.

Our next question comes from Michael Sison with Wells Fargo.

Good start to the year and congrats to Jamie and Joe as well. I guess the first question, in terms of the positive sales -- organic sales growth you see in 2Q, how much of that is coming from volume? And it feels like volumes were down in the first quarter. You talked about a lot of end markets doing pretty well here in terms of share gains and stuff. So just kind of want to get a feel for that as we head into 2Q and the second half?

Yes, Mike, volumes were down about 2% in Q1, and I think we expect similar kind of range for Q2 as well. Most of the organic growth will be driven by price in Q2. So -- but overall, for the -- overall for the quarter, we will see basically a positive organic local currency growth, for the first half, I mean, and obviously, for second quarter, as we mentioned in our commentary.

Second half, of course, we are expecting much higher volume growth as well. And that's largely because of the comp effect, that last year, second half was down 2% versus first half, which was up 1% or so. So we have some comp tailwinds in the second half, but also we are seeing some markets getting real positive demand, as I highlighted, packaging specifically and parts of consumer also coming back in certain areas of the world.

So there is some uncertainty in second half. But overall, we feel like some of our markets are getting back in traction. And our teams are winning share and also our -- some of our new product innovation is kicking in, which is going to help us in the second half of the year as well.

Got it. And then in the prior set of inflation, maybe a little bit prior before your time, during Winter Storm Uri, Avient was able to sort of stay ahead of raw material inflation as well. Why do you think that's the case then? Maybe Jamie has a bit more perspective on that. But then going forward, the -- most folks feel it's difficult to do that. So what is it within the organization of the business that allows you to be able to do that, particularly in this time of pretty steep inflation?

Yes. Maybe I can take a quick stab at it and then if Jamie wants to add based on the history. I think the point is that what we try to do is differentiate ourselves from commodity resin manufacturers and chemical players. And that is where we differentiate with respect to taking pricing and staying ahead. So the customers are willing to pay for the service we provide, the speed with which we work with them to qualify new materials and solve their problems as well as our business model of serving them across the globe, but with a very local service and local touch model. I think all those things work in our benefit. And so we see that pricing for us is more value-driven because we create value for the customer and not just commodity pricing driven. I think that's my answer, but maybe Jamie can add it.

No, I think that's excellent. And the other piece of it is less than 5% of our agreements are indexed. So we have the ability on a PO-by-PO basis to actually manage pricing as needed. And so that also allows us to be ahead of the game, and that's what we've seen back in '21 and '22.

We're always able to stay ahead of that raw material inflation despite that also being a very volatile increase, pretty fast. So the team has been doing a great job executing that very familiar playbook. I think in Q2, like Ashish mentioned, you'll see some positive price there, hopefully to stay ahead of where we're at with the inflation.

Our next question comes from Ghansham Panjabi with Baird.

First off, congrats to Jamie and Joe as well. I wish you both the very best in your new roles from our team. I guess going back to the volume assumptions for 2026, you give us a view on the first half. There's a lot of distortions as it relates to prebuying, et cetera, and comparisons from a year ago, et cetera.

So how are you thinking about the full year from a volumetric standpoint? I know you seem very confident on pricing, but is there any element of macroeconomic deterioration that you're factoring in as it relates to your guidance?

Yes, Ghansham. So from a total year perspective, when we started the year, of course, we had price/mix as close to neutral and -- or maybe slightly positive and then mostly growth driven by volume. And I think that story has flipped now based on what has happened recently. And so we are expecting slightly positive volume for the total year and more low single-digit kind of increase driven by price and mix.

So I think that's our midpoint assumption in our guidance on the sales. So overall, still positive volume for the year, but maybe less than 1% and price/mix low single digits for total organic sales to be in that low single digit to mid-single digit range.

Okay. And then in terms of the comments on packaging, and it sounds like you're a little bit more optimistic as it relates to the trend line, especially 2Q onwards, as you highlighted, do you actually sense any sort of underlying improvement in that end market? Or is it just a function of your net wins and so on and so forth that's driving that optimism?

Yes. As I tried to highlight in the end market dynamics, packaging is -- part of it is we are seeing some demand coming back. Europe, especially, we know we are getting some demand back, which is our biggest market. Also, U.S. has been pretty resilient in Q4 and then now again in Q1. So packaging was up for us in Asia, plus 8% and U.S. plus 1% or so this quarter. So -- and Europe is turning around. We could see it turn around.

And -- so I think overall, packaging is looking quite good. But apart from the demand part, we are also seeing our teams really going and getting share. And we highlighted some of that. And especially in Asia, we are winning share with local beverage makers. There's a big trend around sugar-free tea and other beverages that is taking place in China with respect to healthy eating habits.

And our teams have -- are beginning to grab a lot of share in that market, both from color perspective, but also cap liners and things from the SCM model. So we are gaining share in those kinds of things. And then new product innovation. We talked about non-PFAS Polymer Processing Ads (sic) [ Aids ] used in health and beauty applications. And that is also something that is creating brand-new growth. So apart from the market demand, we are gaining share.

There's a share gain perspective. There is a perspective from new products. And then on top of that, pricing is going in. So most of the sources of growth vectors are kicking in, in packaging at the same time. And obviously, we haven't done much M&A. So that's not a growth vector for us right now. But you get my point that we are kicking packaging on all those different fronts.

Our next question comes from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies.

It's Dan Rizzo on for Laurence. Just to get back for the pricing thing for a second. Two things. One, when you raise prices and because of the value add and because of your differentiated products, do you generally keep the prices? Or is there sometimes concessions when things like this end?

So generally, we have shown that we can -- if you go back to 2021, 2022 time, we were able to stay ahead of the inflation curve by giving prices much faster and then keeping the price higher when the RM inflation comes down. And I think our teams have proven on both sides of that, that they can manage that part pretty well. Obviously, there are things case by case and with customers and regions which are very specific.

So if you look at what happened in March when the war started, especially in Europe, for example, the price disruption was very high and things were changing daily, on a daily basis. And in those cases, we had to pass on certain surcharges to our customers, and then we reconcile with some of those customers as things become more clear and things stabilize. So most of the times, it's price increases. But in things when it was moving so fast, we didn't want to be behind the inflation curve.

So we agreed with our customers to pass on the surcharges and come back to it later in case the prices didn't stick. And that's, again, very specific case of when the volatility is very high. We have to -- we don't have enough time to collect data on the price impact and you have to move. So overall, I would say our teams do a pretty good job of staying [indiscernible] longer.

That's helpful. And then just one follow-up on that. Back in 2021, '22 and just other surges in pricing, did you lose any volumes because you rose prices? Did people, I don't know, just trade down to less differentiated products? Is that a phenomenon that happens from time to time?

Yes, I don't have the history there. But obviously, part of the things that the team has been doing is to improve profitability and do portfolio as part of our strategy. And so we are not afraid to price more aggressively in cases where it doesn't make -- the portfolio is very commoditized and doesn't make sense for us to serve in cases. So it's part of our portfolio decisions and those volumes we can forego without any -- it's a no-regrets decision for us.

But typically, as I said earlier, because of the value that we create for our customers, it is not an issue for us and the customers are happy to work with us. This is not a onetime thing. Our customers know that this is another one of those cases where times are tough. And if you stick with them, you work with them, solve their problems, they trust you.

And then they -- even if they have to pay you a little bit extra price -- because they know that next time there is a crisis, we will be still there to help them out. And this is a trust that we have built with our customers over the years, and that's an important part. That is not just a mathematical equation.

Our next question comes from David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank.

This is Emily Fusco on for Dave Begleiter and congrats to both Jamie and Joe. Just curious back on to raising prices kind of at what point does this inflation flow through to the consumer and maybe start to impact demand? Are you seeing anything there or anything towards the back half?

So it's a really interesting question. Pretty much all economists are probably working on that part. So I'm going to be very speculative, which -- I think that prices are probably flowing through to the consumer. Yesterday, Whirlpool announced their earnings, and you saw that the consumer is hurting right now and staying away from big ticket items like appliances. And -- so inflation is really hitting on bigger ticket items. We hear a lot about gas prices as well, similar story.

So at some point, if it doesn't -- if this thing doesn't get resolved, of course, it's going to flow through. It's already flowing through in my mind. And so I think second half is where -- if you ask us from our business perspective, the 2 biggest question marks in my mind are the consumer business and the industrial business. And both of them are dependent on oil prices, but also the general inflation that is happening. And that's the variability really in our range.

If we hit the low end of the range or our midpoint of the range or the high end, depends on those 2 businesses, consumer and industrial. And that's the reason -- Your question is an excellent one, Emily. Only time will tell how much consumer hurts over time because of this inflationary...

Our next question comes from Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners.

Let me add my congratulations to Joe and Jamie. Ashish, we appreciate the slide that you provided that shows a little more color on your exposure in electronics and high-performance computing. It seems like you're kind of in the early stages of tapping into that.

And just hoping that you could give us some more detail on how you see your competitive advantage and how you win in that space? And as you look out over the next 2 to 3 years, what are the -- what do you think the biggest product lines or applications are going to be just based on where they are today and where the growth rates are trending?

Yes. So Mike, you're right. It's a new focus area -- newer focus area for us. As we've said, the teams were playing and dabbling in that area a couple of years ago or before that. But it was not a concentrated focus with respect to secular trends and going after that. And it's an area, obviously, that has been moving very fast and digital in general is something that is continuing to become more and more part of our life. And so we focused really on that area. We put a specific team around that.

And then we want to tap into this whole digital thing across the value chain, so all the way from semiconductor manufacturing to packaging of chips to making servers to getting into the data center and in between electrification, too, which is part of our advanced composites program for electrification. So we have actually thought it through, and we are playing across the value chain through our different growth vectors, and they all kind of come together and address this whole thing.

With respect to competitive advantage, I would say that in electronics world, speed and solving the customer problem are your fastest advantage versus technology necessarily. And I used to run the business at -- electronics business at 3M, and we also brought Dave Schneider, who used to run in his previous role electronics business for the same reason because we wanted to go deeper in this area and build this business faster.

And so both -- we are not married to any particular materials. We don't make materials in that space, but we can choose from any material that is available and design an appropriate solution for our customers with high speed, and that is our competitive advantage. If you ask me, we have been filing more and more patents, as I have highlighted before. So as we develop more expertise and depth in that area, we will become more differentiated as well.

But part of it is to just finding out, getting deeper into the area, start intersecting the road maps of our customers' products and understanding what is required to win there is where -- in this initial phase is where we have spent our time. And you can see the business growth has come pretty well.

I think I answered pretty much all your questions, what other areas. I think you could think about it, wafer packaging -- wafer transportation, carrier tapes for chip packaging, high-speed connectors for interconnect on board, backplane in servers as well as if you look -- fast forward that electromagnetic shielding materials, powerhousing, flame retardants, though all those parts of the portfolio can still go in there as well as wire and cable business, which is our traditional core business, that is -- as we highlighted, is -- has an opportunity to grow here because the data center capacity is expected to triple in the next 5 years or so.

So I think there is a lot of opportunity here for our teams. I think that what we wanted to highlight today was that, a, we have started thinking about these markets at scale. And we are not product -- we are not thinking things from a product perspective, but we are seeing where the markets are going and how can we become a bigger part of the market as a full Avient and also create $30 million, $40 million, $50 million of opportunities in this space.

And this is not the only one, by the way. If you look at what we have been doing in defense, we have added $60 million over the last 2 years. In health care, we have added $40 million over the last 2 years. So this is not new. It's just that we have been talking about it, but it's beginning to come together and now I've become more comfortable to put it in a summary form for you guys.

No, that's very helpful. And then just in terms of the productivity improvements and the cost discipline, it was good to see margin up even though your volumes were down a little bit, and you mentioned that incentive comp is also higher. Can you just talk a little bit about where you see costs and productivity going from here, I think specifically on SG&A, maybe give us a sense of how much higher SG&A costs could end up this year? And I understand you're trying to manage it, but how much flexibility do you feel like you have in terms of the cost front?

So there's -- maybe, Mike, just as a reminder, we do have around $20 million of productivity that's carried over from the prior year, which definitely helped within the quarter. But we're always looking at productivity. It's a muscle that Avient has. And as we look forward and depending on where the environment, the macro grows, we do have some additional levers to potentially look at further cost reductions.

As a reminder, we kind of think about cost reductions in 4 primary buckets. One, we always are looking at our sourcing capabilities and ability to combine raw materials and so on. Another area would be our footprint optimization. We're always taking a look at how do we best serve our customers and what footprint we need to be able to do that.

We also have really nice manufacturing programs with productivity and LSS type programs. And then lastly, and which has been an important piece is the SG&A factors that you're sort of bringing up here. We have done a lot of streamlining over the past 2 years with Ashish onboarding, with taking structure out, and that primarily is to serve our customer more seamlessly across the board. And we always have the ability to take a look harder at that as we progress through 2026.

So I would expect that productivity will still become a major factor in terms of how we manage our profitability going forward, one, because it's a muscle, and two, I do think there's some other opportunities. But with that, Joe or Ashish, anything else?

Yes. I mean I can add. I mean, I think this whole area of digital opens up a lot of capability for us to take out more cost and more structure out of the company. Obviously, that's something that we have been doing in the last 2 years and we'll continue to do, as Jamie mentioned.

And so I think last year, we drove $40 million of productivity. This year, there was some carryover from that. And in addition to that, we'll drive enough to offset wage inflation, which is close to $30 million. And we also have a plan B in case we need to pull the trigger and things get a little worse on the market side, then we move to plan B and drive even more productivity.

Our next question comes from Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley.

Congrats to Joe and Jamie. This is Turner on for Vincent. So it would be great to get more color on the packaging end market. Can you break down the drivers of the mid-single-digit to high single-digit growth expectations you mentioned for the second quarter between volume and price and perhaps speak to some of the underlying growth of the market or what you're seeing from share gains?

Yes. I mean, I can take a stab at it. I will not break it down for volume on this thing, but I can tell you that it's both volume and price driven, as I mentioned in a previous question. So we are seeing market demand, which is creating the volume. Packaging has been a robust market for us. Even last year, it grew 1%, and I think if you look at it in Q1, it grew a very strong comp of 7% versus last year quarter 1, 2025.

So I think it has been a very resilient and robust market for us. And where we are seeing -- we are seeing in Europe, for sure, demand come back. U.S., we have won share, especially in caps and closure part of the business. And in Europe, we are -- there is -- the beverage season is coming back. We are winning share there as well.

And then I mentioned Asia earlier with respect to our teams winning share with the food trend that is going on there with respect to healthy eating, and we are winning the share there. There is also a PCR support -- postconsumer recycling program that is in Asia taking a big momentum, especially in health and beauty space. And that's another part that we have been winning significant amount of share.

So apart from market demand, which we are seeing pick up as -- because of seasonality, but also otherwise, robust markets like U.S., there is also -- by the way, there is a little bit of tailwind we are getting with this FIFA World Cup where the promotions are going on and there is promotions being done in Asia and -- as well as in Latin America that we are seeing promotional activity that -- in the packaging space that we are part of.

So I think all those things are creating volume for us, but also I mentioned share gains as well as pricing that we have been giving because of the inflation that we are seeing. So I hope that helps you put a picture together. Packaging is pretty robust for us. We tried to highlight that in our prepared comments. It's getting -- so that's where it gives us confidence of mid-single digits to high single digits. Also, the comps in Q2 are -- packaging was flat last year for us in Q2. And so I think the comps are more benign versus Q1. So that will help as well.

Absolutely. I appreciate the thoughts there. Do you mind providing also more color around the low single-digit price mix assumption that you mentioned for the year? I'm wondering any thoughts about the cadence it ramps up as we go through the year and likewise, how it trends relative to what you expect from raw materials?

Turner, this is Joe. Yes, I think that's going to ramp with how the underlying input costs ramp up. So we started raising prices with the underlying cost going up in raw materials in April, and we'll see how the year plays out, but you'll see it ramp up over the next few months and depending how the back half plays with underlying cost and our price/mix would follow. So that's probably how you should think about it.

And our last question comes from Kristen Owen with Oppenheimer & Company.

Let me be the last to express my congratulations then to Jamie and Joe, Jamie, in particular, I appreciate the last 6 years, the help you've provided. So then I just wanted to ask here about some of the comments about maybe some pull-through that you started to see in March. It sounds like you actually have some pretty good visibility here into Q2. How much of that down to organic volume assumption? Are you baking in anything for pull forward on demand or any sort of stocking just to ensure that customers have that availability?

So Kristen, I mean, Q1, in March, probably we saw less than $5 million of pull-in because of customers trying to secure their supply chains. We mentioned defense orders moved out, and that was about the same amount for us more or less. So that kind of was a wash from an in and out perspective. Overall, I think Q2 we will see probably more impact of price increases and by pre buy-in. I think that is going to be more pronounced in Q2.

We are monitoring very closely our customer order patterns to make sure that, try to answer what you just asked, how much is it true demand versus buying just to procure and keep the materials. And so I think at this point in time, there is going to -- it's hard to call out that how much of it is going to impact Q3. But there is going to be some amount at least, and that's why if you look at our guidance, we are not raising our range, although we are slightly better in first half because of that reason.

We don't know how much of that is, and -- so we have put that in our model and modeled Q2 -- Q3 and Q4 to be a little bit more -- we gave it a haircut based on that we might be pulling in some into Q2.

Okay. Great. And Ashish, even in the last question, you responded to some of the share gains that you're seeing in packaging. But just if we broaden that out, can you build on where you're seeing share gains? How much of that is some of the innovation coming through in terms of new business wins? And how much of that is just you guys have proven that you're a reliable, scaled global supplier and maybe that's helping you gain some share over maybe some of the mom-and-pops or more local suppliers?

Yes. Consumer, the market demand is questionable. I think Q2 will be much better because of the comps. Consumer was down 8% last year. So consumer is probably -- whatever gains that we are going to see are going to be because of comps and as well as some of the share gains there. And packaging, I already went into a lot of details. I won't repeat that.

Defense, another big market for us, a lot of innovation going on there, and we are differentiated. Our most -- the third-generation fiber, as we understand currently, is the best-in-class that is out there. And so we believe that's all innovation and share gains because of innovation.

Health care, we have been winning a lot over the last 2 years. As I mentioned, we've created $40 million of net new growth in health care. A lot of customer innovation, working closely with key accounts, but also taking share from the market because of our innovation.

And then the last one I would just say is building and construction is another area where we have taken a lot of share, especially in Q1 itself in the United States, we've talked about, especially in our wire and cable business. we have shown the ability to win share in that market because of our right price value proposition as well as some innovation that is coming out of the pipeline.

Thank you. This concludes the question-and-answer session, and you may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Avient Corporation's webcast to discuss the company's fourth quarter and full year 2025 results. My name is Michelle, and I'll be your operator for today. [Operator Instructions] 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, Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone, to 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 expectation 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-K or any applicable amendments for a complete discussion of these factors and 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 of historical non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. A replay of this 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 on the call 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. Strong execution by our teams with favorable mix and management's tight cost control led to 80 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion and a strong 14% adjusted EPS growth for the fourth quarter. With this result, we expanded our adjusted EBITDA margins year-over-year in each of the 4 quarters of 2025. Organic sales in Q4 were down slightly at 0.8% and grew 1.9% as reported over the prior year due to favorable foreign exchange impact. As we had highlighted in our third quarter's earnings call, we continue to see strong momentum in defense, health care and telecom markets with business growing double digits in each.

In addition, packaging demand improved modestly, growing sales low single digits in the fourth quarter compared to being down low single digits in the third quarter. As expected, businesses in our other markets finished down versus the prior year. Moving to the right-hand side of the slide. For the full year 2025, sales were relatively flat year-over-year. Favorable product mix and our productivity initiatives led to 50 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion versus 2024, helping us achieve full year record high margins of 16.7%. Adjusted EBITDA finished at $545 million for 2025 with 3.5% year-over-year growth as reported.

Adjusted EPS grew 6%, helped by lower interest expense and favorable foreign currencies. Our team's highly disciplined cash management helped us generate $195 million of free cash flow, enabling us to reduce our outstanding debt by $150 million and end the year with a net leverage ratio of 2.6x. As you know, one of our key drivers to advance our strategy is innovation. Creating meaningful and differentiated products, especially in markets supported by secular trends, will not only help us grow faster, but also increase our profitability. Today, I would like to share some examples of recent innovations from our company. The first set of examples address the need and demand for non-PFAS products in applications currently using PFAS materials, which are facing stringent regulations, especially in the United States and Europe.

Our teams recently developed and commercialized GlideTech technology, which enables new non-PFAS and non-silicon lubricious materials for use in catheters, particularly those used in neurological and vascular applications. Our; portfolio contains formulations that are ISO 10993-5 and USP 87 compliant in standard grades. These products deliver exceptional coefficient of friction reduction, are compatible with all common sterilization methods and processable using conventional extrusion equipment. Another example in this space is non-PFAS polymer processing aids for polyolefin film used in packaging applications for personal care products. Here, we have innovated and launched a portfolio of products in 2025 and several other customer manufacturing qualifications are in progress currently.

We continue to gain more knowledge and experience in this new area, working closely with our customers and understanding the interplay between our innovative materials and their processes. The last example for today is a process innovation, where we can unlock additional Dyneema fiber making capacity with tailored material properties using our existing manufacturing equipment. As you may recall, demand for our products in defense grew double digits in 2024, followed by high single-digit growth in 2025. We expect this momentum to continue, supported by the announced increases in defense spending over the next few years, especially in the United States and Europe. Due to the success of our innovation, we will now be able to quickly unlock meaningful new capacity from our current manufacturing lines to support the anticipated growth in our defense growth vector.

In addition, we plan to deploy incremental capital over the next 2 years to further expand capacity and support the growth we foresee from our Dyneema-based businesses. Jamie will share more about these investments in her section. Before we get to 2026, I would like to take a moment to reflect on our performance over the last 2 years. As you know, in 2024, we evolved our company strategy to prioritize organic growth to be complemented by targeted M&A where it enhances our capabilities. We also sharpened our focus on profitability to deliver both top line growth and margin expansion. 2023 to 2025 marked the first period of time in nearly 20 years where there has been no impact on financials from acquisitions or divestitures, providing clean and noise-free data to compare performance.

I'm happy to report that over the last 2 years, our strategy has gained significant traction with our prioritized growth vectors delivering substantial growth with innovation beginning to show up in differentiated products and improved margins. Additionally, we continue to eliminate structural complexity and drive productivity to become a more agile and customer-focused organization. These actions have enabled us to deliver consistent improvements across our key financial metrics for the second consecutive year despite a volatile macro backdrop. Over the last 2 years, we have grown adjusted earnings per share by about 20% and expanded adjusted EBITDA margins by 70 basis points, 20 basis points in 2024 and an additional 50 basis points in 2025. As a result, ROIC has improved each year and is now up 90 basis points versus 2023.

Our strong free cash flow generation and disciplined capital deployment also allowed us to reduce debt, bringing net leverage down from 3.1x in 2023 to 2.6x in 2025. Importantly, we achieved these results while continuing to invest in the business, particularly in our prioritized growth vectors aligned with our strategy. As we move forward, we plan to continue advancing these value creation metrics as we have over the past 8 quarters. With increasing traction from our growth vectors and innovation pipeline, we expect to scale revenue and margin expansion with greater ease over time. Coming specifically to 2026, our premise is that macro environment will remain volatile, impacted by trade policies, geopolitics and moving supply chains. However, we are cautiously optimistic about 2026 being a better year than 2025 from a market demand perspective.

This is especially true for our Color, Additives and Inks or CAI business, which showed negative 2% organic growth in 2025. Last year, some of the biggest markets for the CAI business, namely consumer, industrial, building and construction and transportation saw anemic demand, while packaging was relatively flat. With 2026 showing stronger than 2025 U.S. GDP growth projections and several government initiatives in the United States like the new tax bill, focus on domestic manufacturing expansion and the potential for easing interest rates, demand in our relevant markets is expected to improve. This would be a welcome scenario for our customers and our business. But at the same time, we are also focused on driving productivity in the organization to ensure we continue to drive our earnings and margin expansion in case market demand does not improve.

We grew our Specialty Engineered Materials segment sales by 2% in 2025, excluding foreign currency impact, and we believe there are several secular macro trends in this business that will support organic sales growth again this year. Before I hand the call over to Jamie, who will provide additional color on our 2025 segment and regional performance as well as our guidance for 2026, I would like to thank the entire Avient team for their determination and outstanding efforts to successfully deliver in 2025. I have no doubt our team is up to the task to deliver an even stronger 2026. Jamie?

Thank you, Ashish, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with the fourth quarter performance of our Color, Additives and Inks segment. Continued strength in health care and improving packaging demand was not enough to offset demand conditions in consumer, industrial and building and construction, which led to a 3% decline in organic sales for the segment during the quarter. EBITDA margins declined 10 basis points as productivity initiatives helped mitigate the impact of inflation and reduced demand. Specialty Engineered Materials organic sales increased 3% as strong growth in defense, health care and telecommunications more than offset lower sales in energy, industrial and building and construction end markets.

Healthcare continues to deliver strong growth, supported by our innovative and specified materials for use in medical devices, equipment and supplies. Defense grew double digits in the quarter, driven by strong U.S. and European demand and supported by new innovation, including next-generation materials in our Dyneema line that we've highlighted in the past. Favorable mix and productivity contributed to 80 basis points of margin expansion, which combined with higher demand and positive FX resulted in 10% EBITDA growth. In the fourth quarter, U.S./Canada sales declined 1%, which is an improvement from the prior quarter's 5% year-over-year decline as we saw positive growth in packaging. This, combined with continued underlying strength in health care, defense and telecom demand, partially offset lower sales in the industrial, building and construction and energy markets.

Future policy changes and lower inflation could be positive factors that provide momentum to the region in 2026. Similar to the U.S., Canada, EMEA also performed slightly better than the third quarter, where organic sales only declined 2% on a year-over-year basis. Positive growth in the consumer end market, primarily driven by an increase in small and large appliances, along with continued momentum for defense and health care helped offset weaker industrial demand. Asia grew 3%, driven by strength in packaging and telecommunications. The secular trend of high-performance computing is creating new opportunities for our materials. This has helped offset weak consumer demand, particularly in textile applications. Latin America sales declined 5%, primarily due to softer consumer demand and a difficult year-over-year comparison where the region grew 14% in the fourth quarter last year.

Turning to full year 2025 results. We navigated an uncertain macro environment while delivering bottom line growth through customer focus, innovation, productivity and operational discipline. Full year CAI organic sales declined 2%. Steady growth in health care throughout 2025 helped offset softer demand in consumer, industrial, transportation and building and construction. Packaging remained relatively resilient, ending the year flat versus 2024. EBITDA margins expanded 50 basis points, benefiting from favorable mix and productivity tied to our plant footprint optimization as well as initiatives to streamline the organization, allowing us to serve our customers more efficiently. SEM organic sales grew 2%, driven by defense, health care and telecommunications, partially offset by subdued consumer, industrial and energy demand.

EBITDA margins declined 40 basis points, primarily reflecting planned maintenance in our Avient Protective Materials business completed in the second quarter of 2025 and strategic investments in our growth vectors in this business. Turning to our 2026 outlook. Our full year guidance reflects a balance between encouraging demand trends across our portfolio and continued macro uncertainty and volatility. As Ashish mentioned in his comments, we are cautiously optimistic that some of our end markets negatively impacted in 2025 will start to improve in the coming year, including consumer, industrial and building and construction.

Favorable government policies and easing interest rates, as an example, could spur consumer and housing demand as we progress through the upcoming year. With that being said, uncertainty remains with evolving global trade, labor market, GDP growth rates and foreign currency fluctuations. Accordingly, we are establishing full year guidance for adjusted EBITDA of $555 million to $585 million, which is up 2% to 7% year-over-year and as well as adjusted EPS of $2.93 to $3.17, which is up 4% to 12% over the prior year. This range includes our first quarter adjusted EPS outlook of $0.81. Productivity will again play a role in supporting earnings growth and margin expansion in 2026. We will see carryover benefits from initiatives executed in 2025, along with new actions that are now underway.

In addition, we will monitor demand conditions and are prepared to enact additional actions should the demand environment not improve. Regarding free cash flow, we expect another strong year of cash generation with an anticipated range of $200 million to $220 million for the full year. This assumes capital expenditures of $140 million, which is approximately $33 million more than 2025. This is driven primarily by the incremental investments to support growth in our defense business, as Ashish highlighted earlier today. As we demonstrated in 2024 and 2025, we have consistently moved the key value creation metrics in the right direction even in a tough macro environment. Our guidance for 2026 projects another year of adjusted EPS and adjusted EBITDA growth improved return on invested capital and a reduction in net leverage. Our strategy of catalyzing the core and building platforms of scale continues to bear fruit and create value for our shareholders. With that, we will now open the line for Q&A.

And our first question comes from Michael Sison with Wells Fargo.

Nice quarter and nice finish for the year. Ashish, you sort of mentioned that, that some of these markets will improve or could potentially improve this year. Are you seeing any sort of green shoots in some of those, the consumer, industrial, transportation and construction areas now? And then at the midpoint of your guidance, do you -- what type of improvement would you need to get to hit it?

Thanks, Mike, for the question. So part of the improvement that we are seeing in U.S., especially, we expect in Q1 for consumer and packaging to flip from negative to positive. Last year, packaging Q1 was pretty negative, down 10% in U.S. And so the comps are pretty favorable, and so that's going to help us. But in general, we are seeing better conditions than we were seeing before on the packaging side. As you saw that in Q4 itself, packaging was up 1% in the United States. So that's a good sign.

On the consumer side, it's still subdued, but probably getting a little bit better. Too early to say. There is a little bit noise in the system with the Asia situation with the Chinese New Year moving overall. And so we generally don't want to make too many assumptions with respect to January itself because there might be some pull-ins from February based on the China New Year situation. And so we'd like to see January and February together on that one. But overall, January came a little marginally better, I would say, definitely as well as we expected, marginally better. So that gives us some optimism at this point in time. But as I said, we are not reading too much into it because there might be a little bit noise in the data from Asia.

But overall, I think we are feeling that consumer and packaging should be at least turning positive in the first half of the year for sure and for United States, probably in first quarter. And then the other part of the question is on the guidance on midpoint. So on the low end of the range, we kind of expect that the consumer industrial and the building and construction markets will probably not improve. They stay as they are. In the midpoint, that assumes that there is a modest growth in all of there, probably low single-digit kind of growth and packaging also a little bit more modest growth. And then on the high end of the range is a little bit more robust growth. So what typically we would grow in a good year. So that's probably the range, and that captures our EBITDA ranges and our sales range and everything.

Got it. And then a quick follow-up. When you think about the last 2 years, you spent a lot of time on innovation, R&D and trying to get that -- your growth vectors to sort of get beefed up. So when you think about 2026, how much growth do you think you'll generate from those initiatives? And are there any particular product lines or end markets that is going to drive that?

Yes. So we've been trying to highlight some of our innovation in multiple earnings calls like these. And to get today, again, I highlighted a few new ones that did not exist a couple of years ago, so to say. So the idea is to tell the audience that, hey, we are moving ahead on this. Our intellectual property filings, for example, last year -- last 2 years, we've filed 50-plus patents, which includes patent filings -- initial patent filings, provisional patents as well as PCT filings. So that's 50-plus for both the years. And that compares to a number of 20-odd maybe a couple or 2 or 3 years ago. So you can see how much innovation is going on. That's an indirect measure.

From a financial perspective, if you take 2025, our growth vectors grew high single digits. So almost closer to 10% versus closer to 5%, I would say. And the rest of the businesses actually did not grow. And that gives you an idea of what's -- why we were still flat in a year that was so much demand where the demand was so low in most of our core markets. And the big idea is that, hey, with these growth vectors, we are really now trying to build businesses of scale in markets that are supported by secular trends and growing at rates much faster than GDP. And that seems to be taking hold. So maybe that's where I'll leave it.

Our next question comes from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies.

It's Dan Rizzo, on for Laurence. You kind of went through some end markets, but maybe I missed it, but you didn't mention transportation and the outlook for that. I don't know if I missed it, but what are we thinking there? Is it expected to improve at all?

Yes. So transportation for us, Laurence (sic) [Dan] was overall down minus 1% for the year. And it's a little bit of a regional story. We grew in EMEA, plus 1% versus the auto build was like minus 1% and we grew in Asia 5%, which was consistent with the builds in the Asia market. In United States, the market was down minus 1% for the year, but we were down minus 5%. And that's largely driven by the fact that we also have rail and commercial vehicles in our transportation, which were down significantly in the United States. So versus -- in the auto business, we are doing fine with how the markets are doing, but the rail and the commercial vehicle piece brought us down a little bit.

As I look into the future, I think we are not -- we are watching transportation carefully. There was a lot of build that happened towards the last -- end of the last year in China, especially because of their structural reform that they are -- they call it supply side structural reform where they were going to put restrictions on export of EV vehicles starting January 1. So a lot of material got pushed out at the end of the year. So -- which we benefited from. And as I said, we grew 5% in Asia. But I think Q1 probably will be softer based on that. And then for the total year, flattish to low single digit is my projection.

And then you kind of talked about not doing any divestitures or acquisitions in the last 2 years. I was wondering, I mean, obviously, your focus is on organic and internal growth, but I was wondering if that's kind of what we should expect going forward that I mean, there's not a lot out there. We're focusing on our business -- what our thoughts are there?

So one of the things that we are trying to do, Laurence (sic) [Dan] Is build a few muscles of innovation and commercialization. And that has been going well for the last 2 years. You can see the teams getting better every day with customer focus and key account management and then innovating from the market inside. And then understanding the value chains in these growth vectors, which some of them are quite new to us is very important. So before we put in any acquisitions, which we think at some point, we will do, probably not this year, maybe something after that when we also have a better balance sheet situation than where we are today. But by that time, we expect to understand the value chains in our growth areas much better. And then M&A would probably be something to complement or augment our strategy of organic growth versus stand-alone M&A in a brand-new area.

Our next question comes from Frank Mitsch with Fermium Research.

Nice end to the year. If I could just follow up on that last question. It looks like you ended the year at a better net debt to EBITDA than perhaps was considered at the beginning of the year. And so you offered your thoughts, Ashish, on M&A. I'm curious as to what your thoughts are with respect to debt paydown versus buybacks.

Yes. So thanks, Frank. One of the things that we have obviously been prioritizing is paying down the debt, as you mentioned. I think, as I said, the next 12 months, no M&A. So most of the cash probably will still go on paying towards more debt. We would like to make that situation stronger than -- so we expect to finish the year lower than 2.5x for sure, if not better than that. And I think that at that point, we'll have more flexibility of buyback versus debt reduction situation and also looking at M&A at that point in time would make sense. But I would say that in the near term, you can expect us to keep paying the debt versus buyback. That would be my strategy on deployment of the cash.

Okay. Understood. Understood. I appreciate the color with respect to the patent filings. I'm curious if we could ask it another way in terms of a vitality index in terms of products introduced over the last 4 or 5 years and how you track that and where that stands today?

So I do track that internally, Frank, but that -- for me, that number is not as critical. And I come from a company, as you know, where these vitality index were talked about a lot. I think it's a good internal measure for us to keep tracking to see the health of the organization and the creativity of the organization is in play. But for me, it's really -- you could have a couple of products that are big and are creating a lot of value. And so I think for us, it's more important what is creating growth. And obviously, we have to do a lot of product development for replacement because the market needs that.

But really, as we are bringing our strategy into this growth mode through growth vectors, especially in these new areas, I think the focus is to net new growth creation for us. That's how we measure it. Our NPVI or new product vitality index is pretty healthy. It's internally, but I don't intend to speak about it. I mean it's -- but the difference is that most of that NPVI has been based on replacement products versus products that create new growth. And I'm trying to flip that around and say, okay, we need products that the customers need replacement on an ongoing basis, which is a very important part of our core business. But we now need to also create products which are going to create brand-new growth for this company. And that's what some of the products I keep highlighting in some of our slides. These products did not exist a couple of years ago, and they're creating brand-new growth for us.

That's very helpful. I'm looking forward to any other metrics that you might be able to catch that transformation from replacement versus new growth down the line, so we get a better handle on it.

Our next question comes from Aleksey Yefremov with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

This is Brian on for Aleksey. I just wanted to go back, I think you guys talked about some more productivity gains and maybe some cost cuts. I think there's some carryover from '25, but you guys also mentioned some new actions. So maybe if you could kind of help us understand in terms of dollar-wise, how much is embedded in the guide for this year? How much is carryover from '25? And how much are these new actions? And what exactly are these actions that you guys are taking?

Brian, thanks for the question. Our productivity initiatives really center around 4 to 5 major programs. That includes sourcing savings, taking a look at our footprint and optimizing it, Lean Six Sigma programs as well as simplifying our structure. And so we accomplished a little over $40 million of net productivity from last year. We expect about half of that to basically continue on into 2026 based on when those actions were initiated.

And as we take a look at guidance for the full year for 2026, it really is a lever that we will continue to take a look at depending on demand will need to go. We're a big believer that we need to invest in the underlying growth of the business. And so you want to be a little bit cautious about cutting too deep on certain things. And so as we look at how demand evolves, we'll take a look at that productivity initiatives. But like we said in the commentary earlier today, we really are taking a harder look at how demand will end up playing out. Our net inflation for the year is around $30 million. So that's at a baseline. There could be more depending on how the year evolves.

Okay. Great. That's very helpful. And then I just wanted to ask, in terms of the kind of regional performance, I mean, Asia obviously stands out, right? It's the only region that grew organically in the fourth quarter. So I just want to understand maybe what's driving that. Is that largely the exposure you have kind of on the semi front in packaging? Or is it something else?

Yes. So Asia has been -- actually, Q4 has been a good story because Q3 Asia was negative 1% for us. And Q4, we flipped it positive and plus 3%. And that's largely coming from GCA, which also flipped from minus 1% to plus 4.5%. And if you look into GCA, both packaging went in the right direction. I just visited our Asia team in January. I was there, and I was very pleasantly surprised to see how much market share they are gaining in a market that is not growing, especially in the food and beverage area.

And so that brought us pretty healthy on the packaging side from negative to slightly positive in GCA, which helped a lot because packaging is the biggest market there. It's about 33% of Asia -- of GCA. And then the other part is that in high-performance computing, which Jamie mentioned in her remarks, we have been growing quite well in that secular trend and materials that are used in semiconductor chip packaging and wafer packaging have been growing at double digits for us, which was also the case in Q4, which really helped Asia as well. So those were the 2 main reasons.

Our next question comes from Kristen Owen with Oppenheimer & Company.

I wanted to pick up the thread, Jamie, on the EBITDA margin expansion. I mean, you guys have done a really nice job of continuing to grow that margin in a tough environment. But as we look back to, say, 2024 Investor Day, you had this target out there of 20% EBITDA. If we were to revisit that target against the work that you've done on productivity since those targets were laid out, how do you think about the buckets of opportunity that you have to move further towards that 20% EBITDA margin target?

Thanks for the question, Kristen. So when we laid out in the Investor Day, we were sitting around a little over 16% EBITDA margins. Our goal is to get above 20% EBITDA margins. And how we looked at how that would evolve over time would be about half of it be related to operating leverage, another 1/4 of that related to moving up the value chain in terms of mix and then also another quarter from productivity. Obviously, the last couple of years has been more focused on the mix dynamic and the productivity dynamic. And in fact, if you take a look at the 50 basis points of expansion that we accomplished in 2025, there wasn't any operating leverage just based on -- as you can see, our organic sales were basically flat for the year.

But we did have quite a bit of price mix and productivity, I would say, about half and half between those 2. So as we look forward and we look at the opportunity to continue to expand margin, obviously, price/mix will to be a lever. We are very focused on productivity, especially in, I would say, a low demand environment. And I think you're going to see a pretty big uplift once the market starts to, I would say, stabilize in some of our core markets such as consumer and building construction and industrial. I think that would really boost that up. But as I look forward to 2026, I think the majority of it at this juncture, we're counting on the expansion coming from those 2 other areas.

That's super helpful. And maybe double-clicking on sort of that macro piece. What catalyzes color here? I mean you've talked about some of the big macro pieces. But is there anything from a portfolio standpoint, things like maybe the PFAS replacement products that we should be thinking about sort of driving that market outgrowth in Color going forward?

Yes, Kristen, I think the big opportunities for color are in the area of functional additives and PFAS is one example of that, but same things can be extended to certain kinds of flame retardants, also can be extended into foaming agents, which are used in building and construction materials. And all those things are -- that functional additives is about close to $0.5 billion business for us. So it's sizable in color. It's not insignificant. And if we can grow that fast based on, again, adapting to some of these secular trends and our growth vectors, we feel that we have a good story, and that's what we are pursuing.

Great. And if you don't mind, if I could sneak one more in, just double-click on the defense investment. Like are you currently demand constrained and that's what's driving the additional CapEx? That's my last question.

No, I think we are not demand constrained, and we are driving as much as we can. Obviously, this business is lumpy and sometimes shifts between quarters as we have highlighted several times before. But defense has grown double digits, 14% in 2024 and 8% in 2025. We again expect a strong year from this business, continue to see strength there and actually are making capacity investments, innovation for -- debottlenecking the capacity right now, as we highlighted today in one of the examples, which is already underway and then making some more CapEx investments that Jamie mentioned for $33 million, which will bring additional capacity in 2028.

So this business takes a while because it's very process intensive and needs a lot of equipment. And so it does take time. So we are -- when we look into the future, we still see this business growing quite well over the next several years. And so we are making investment decisions now so that we are ready when the capacity continues to grow.

Our next question comes from Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners.

Congrats on a nice finish to the year. I was hoping just to ask another question there on the Dyneema process that you talked about and some of the changes you're making there. Can you give some more color on what exactly you're changing?

You kind of categorized it as a debottlenecking, but it also sounds like you've added some additional capabilities to really tailor some of those products to specific customer requirements or specific applications. And then beyond that, are you able to share how much additional capacity you're going to be able to get as a result of that change? And also, what does that mean for the margin performance of that Dyneema business just from the debottlenecking and changes that you're making to process [indiscernible]?

Yes, there's many questions there, Mike. And I'll probably start with saying that I cannot disclose anything about the process. It's a trade secret because we don't -- in process innovation, it's very hard to file and then police patents. So I just kept trade secrets as pretty standard, and that's what we have done here as well. So all I can tell you is that the whole idea is you have to make -- these fibers are made at a certain tenacity, which gives the strength to the fiber and that tenacity value is achieved. The slower you spin the fiber, the more crystallization can happen to the fiber, which can give it higher tenacity and so on and so forth.

So typically, when you make high-performance fibers, you're slowing down your speed of the equipment significantly if you want to increase tenacity. And I think our teams have figured out ways how to not slow it down and continue to ramp it up at a fast rate. So I think that's as much as I can tell on the process innovation side. It is a slight modification of the equipment, but also process modification, and the team has worked on it diligently for more than a year to get us here. So it's significant. It does give us enough capacity to buy time until 2028 when our new capacity would be needed.

And I think clearly, we were not expecting defense to grow like it has been growing. We were thinking more like mid-single digit kind of growth, and it has been growing double digits or high single digits. So this debottlenecking is really helping us get there without compromising and without not being able to serve our customers on time, while in the meantime, we are making these new investments so that we are ready -- and also when we run out of capacity.

All right. That's helpful. And then on the health care business, I'm just curious, a number of these GLP-1 drugs appear to be shifting from a weekly injection with an injector pen that I think you guys are involved with to either a monthly injection or even an oral dosage. So can you just talk a little bit about your drug delivery product line within health care and whether you expect to see any impact from kind of the evolution of how those GLP-1 drugs are administered?

Yes. So drug delivery for us is a couple of things. What you mentioned on GLP pens and that's one part of it. The other part of it is basically things that are remote devices, which are used for delivering drugs and glucose monitoring and so on and so forth. That's also part of health care. But just from a GLP perspective, it's too early for us to say that we believe and our customers believe that there is a market for both oral and injector pens at this point in time.

The injectors are also being utilized for other applications, not just for weight reduction. And so the market overall growth is expanding and is continued to be robust. That's the signal we get from our customers. And so we are going with that premise at this point in time. And both in drug delivery devices, remote monitoring devices as well as injector pen kind of devices, we seem to be doing quite well and expect that to continue at least for 2026.

Our next question comes from David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank.

This is Emily Fusco on for Dave Begleiter. What are your expectations for pricing in CAI and Specialty for 2026?

So Emily, when we think about pricing, we're obviously always doing value pricing. And so when we take a look at -- we take a look at both price and mix as we move forward. And as we've mentioned from what occurred back in 2025, we've had a lot of success in health care and in defense. That has driven a lot of our price/mix dynamic in '25. We expect that to continue as we think about 2026. Other pricing initiatives that people think about as what's going on with the raw materials. We've proven through, I would say, at least the 5 years, 6 years that I've been here that, that doesn't really seem -- doesn't really -- it could enable us to be able to capture some margin expansion.

We always are on top of it in terms of making sure that it's not destructed the margin based on where raw materials are. So in our bridges, we just normally -- like I mentioned with Kristen's comment, we do expect some margin expansion in 2026 based on price mix, and that really is a function of where we're selling our products, not because there's specific pricing initiatives going on other than our normal monitoring of where raw materials are and making sure that we're value pricing our products as they're created and differentiated from what is else in the market.

Our next question comes from Ghansham Panjabi with Robert W. Baird.

Ashish, just going back to the fourth quarter as it relates to the strategic growth vectors you've outlined in the past and so on and so forth, how did that portion of the portfolio grow on a core sales basis in the fourth quarter relative to where you came in on a consolidated basis, which was roughly down 1%?

Growth vector growth versus the rest of the portfolio...

In fourth quarter specifically?

Yes -- or you give it to us for the year.

Yes, for the year, maybe it's better for me to talk about the year versus quarter because these growth vectors are launched in different parts of the year. So it's kind of an unfavorable -- so as I mentioned, growth vectors grew high single digits for us. And high single digits for growth vectors versus less than 1% or low single-digit kind of decline in the rest of the business.

Okay. And then as it relates to core sales for the following year for 2026, did you break that out by segment? I'm not sure if I heard that.

No, we did not provide any specific guidance based on segments. We did provide a full year range on EBITDA as well as EPS. We gave a little bit of color between the segments in terms of some of the end markets and where we're seeing weaknesses. Maybe just to reiterate, from an SEM perspective as well as from a color perspective, we do expect things like health care continue to perform well. SEM also has exposure to defense, which is also something that we continue to take a look at. And we are looking to see how the evolution really comes about for consumer, industrial and building and construction, which will be a key driver for the Color segment.

We have time for one last question, and that question comes from Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley.

This is Turner Hinrichs on for Vincent. I was just wondering if you could provide a little bit more regional color on what your 2026 guide considers for growth by region, particularly in Europe and Asia, considering you all have talked a lot about growth drivers in the U.S. economy so far.

So Turner, we didn't give any specific guidance just like the question that Ghansham said based on segments, but really we're talking more about from an end market perspective. Obviously, there's a lot of geopolitical uncertainty, trade tariffs and other things going on as it impacts the U.S. in particular. And so those are the things that we're watching closely as well as whether or not the Fed will decrease rates and at what pace will they actually do that.

I know you mentioned Europe and Asia specifically. Those are -- as you can see from what happened in 2025 in Europe, we ended down 1%. At this juncture, we're expecting similar levels until we see some type of potential recovery in the Asia dynamic, as Ashish also mentioned during the commentary, we are seeing some really nice tailwinds in our packaging space, our telecommunications space. And we expect with the underlying GDP there, although maybe slightly lower than what it's been previously, it's still a growth part of the world. So I would expect to continue to see growth in that area.

Thank you. This concludes the question-and-answer session. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Avient Corporation's webcast to discuss the company's third quarter 2025 results. My name is Dede, and I will be your operator for today. [Operator Instructions] 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 proceed.

Thank you, and good morning, 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 have current expectations or forecasts of future events and are not guarantees of future performance. They're based on management's expectation 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 Form 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 reviews 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 this call will be available on our website. Information to access the replay is provided in today's press release, which is also available at avient.com in the Investor Relations section.

Joining me today is our Chairman 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 third quarter adjusted EPS of $0.70, in line with our guidance despite slightly weaker-than-anticipated sales. The subdued market demand in several of our key markets, affected revenue growth compared against our strongest quarter in 2024, where we had realized 8.5% organic revenue growth in the third quarter last year. Our focus on increased productivity, cost containment and portfolio prioritization helped expand adjusted EBITDA margin 60 basis points to 16.5%.

This offset the slightly lower sales compared to the prior year third quarter to still grow adjusted earnings year-over-year. Strong operational performance resulted in adjusted EPS growth of 7.7% as reported and 4.5%, excluding the impact of foreign currency translation. On a year-to-date basis, through the third quarter, our team's ability to execute in a tough and uncertain macro environment has resulted in 4.1% adjusted EPS growth on flat year-over-year sales. This earnings growth is attributable to favorable mix from consistent innovation-driven growth in health care and defense portfolios as well as our ongoing productivity initiatives which has year-to-date enable 40 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion compared to last year.

In our last 2 earnings calls, we have referenced our operational playbook for the current low demand, high uncertainty environment, which is primarily to focus on our customers and what we can influence in particular, efficiency gains. As a result, we are on track to realize approximately $40 million of productivity benefits in 2025 versus last year. These benefits come from a combination of initiatives in sourcing, Lean Six Sigma, operations productivity, plant footprint optimization and tight SG&A and discretionary spending control. Our team's execution has more than offset inflation, primarily from wages as well as our investments in growth vectors that are critical for advancing our strategy.

Additionally, we have been able to convert our profits into robust generation of cash, which is helping us to strengthen our balance sheet. General market conditions remain largely unchanged from August when we reported our second quarter results. This includes an uncertain global macro environment where customers in most markets and regions are waiting for clarity on trade policies, Geopolitics is fast reshaping global businesses and supply chains and the war in Europe continues.

While the general market conditions are consistent with what we saw in the second quarter, there have been changes in certain end markets that affect customer demand. We want to provide some context around how things are playing out in our markets especially versus our previous expectations. Consumer and Packaging, which are our 2 largest markets remain subdued in the third quarter. Packaging demand was lower than anticipated, especially in EMEA, our largest packaging market. Consumer sales were down high single digits in the third quarter. Notably, the weakness in consumer demand was broad-based globally. Following a weak Q2, we had expected continued negative growth in Q3, but the customer demand was weaker than what we had anticipated in Asia where our consumer sales ended being down double digits for the quarter.

Having said that, we did see some encouraging trends for our global consumer business in September. And while it is too early to call if it is inflecting to growth, we do expect year-over-year consumer sales performance to be better in the fourth quarter.

Industrial and Building & Constructions have been in negative demand territory and we don't see signs of a significant recovery in the fourth quarter. Energy, while a small percentage of the total company sales was down much more than anticipated in Q3. The U.S. government's pause of Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding to utilities in early 2025 has not fully resumed impacting both grid modernization and green energy projects.

Moreover, additional and changing tariffs, higher interest rates as well as shortage of long lead time critical components for grid infrastructure is causing project delays and/or changes. Our customers remain hopeful that this is a temporary situation and believe that the inventory levels at both utilities and distributors are once again in a healthy state. However, as a matter of caution, we have now modeled continued weak Q4 demand for our energy markets. We experienced some growth in transportation, driven by incremental light vehicle production and an increase in demand for our Dyneema materials used in marine applications.

In the fourth quarter, we expect flat to modest growth for this end market. As expected, defense, health care and telecommunications remained resilient in Q3 with high single-digit growth in all 3 markets. We expect these markets to continue to do well in Q4. Overall, for Q4, we expect growth in our Color, Additives and Inks business to be under pressure due to the subdued market demand for packaging and consumer applications while our Specialty Engineered Materials business is expected to grow, supported by customer demand and growth of some of our recently launched innovative products in health care and defense markets.

Though we remain cautiously optimistic that end market demand will improve in the near future, there continue to be many unknowns and uncertainties surrounding our macro. Accordingly, we are proactively working on an action plan in the event that the slow or no growth period ensues for an extended period. This includes additional productivity actions and organizational complexity reduction so we can continue to grow our margins and earnings.

I'll now hand the call to Jamie to cover our third quarter segment and regional performance as well as provide some color on our updated guidance.

Thank you, Ashish, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin with the performance of our Color, Additives and Inks segment. Continued strength in health care was not enough to offset demand conditions in consumer, packaging and building and construction which led to a 4% decline in organic sales for the segment in the third quarter. Despite lower top line results, the segment expanded EBITDA margins 20 basis points through favorable mix and cost improvement initiatives. This included ongoing plant footprint optimization and streamlining the segment's organizational structure, which has not only reduced costs, but is also allowing us to serve our customers more efficiently.

Organic sales for the Specialty Engineered Materials segment were down 1%, excluding FX, as strong growth in defense and health care largely offset lower sales in consumer, energy and industrial end markets. Health care continues to deliver growing high single digits due to our innovative and specified materials for use in medical devices, equipment and supplies. Defense also grew high single digits, supported by strong demand in the U.S. and Europe, underpinned by increased law enforcement and military spending. We are also benefiting from new product innovations in our Dyneema line which provides next-level performance through our recently launched next-generation materials.

Favorable mix and productivity initiatives also resulted in margin expansion in SEM, which was up 50 basis points compared to prior year. This margin expansion led to modest EBITDA growth despite slightly lower sales on a constant currency basis.

Looking at regional performance. U.S., Canada and EMEA sales decreased 5% and 3%, respectively, versus the prior year quarter. Trade policy uncertainty, inflation and higher interest rates, particularly in the U.S. have weighed on Consumer, Packaging, Industrial, Energy and Building and Construction markets, which account for approximately 65% of sales in these regions. In Asia, sales were down 1%, primarily due to consumer. Nearly offsetting this was growth in packaging, healthcare and telecommunications. The enhanced focus on high-performance computing and semiconductor manufacturing in Asia is creating new opportunities for our materials and we continue to see robust growth in this area, supported by secular trends.

And lastly, Latin America grew revenue 1%. Though a modest increase, this marks the seventh consecutive quarter of growth and lastly comparison where the region grew 27% in the third quarter last year. Credit for the region's consistent performance goes out to our local team who is winning new business and gaining share.

Turning to our guidance for the remainder of the year. We are narrowing our range to account for the third quarter results, the end market dynamics that Ashish shared earlier and current customer order patterns. For the fourth quarter, we expect year-over-year sales performance to be slightly better than what we experienced in the third quarter. Strong growth in defense, health care and telecommunications expected to continue while sales in other key end markets will be flat to slightly down versus the prior year quarter. We are also acknowledging that there is added uncertainty related to the U.S. federal government shutdown and how that may affect demand in the U.S.

Overall, we expect organic sales will likely be flat to down low single digits in the fourth quarter, but still with the potential for low single-digit growth depending on the timing of certain defense orders as well as the restart of certain energy projects in the U.S. Accordingly, our updated adjusted EBITDA range for the year is now $540 million to $550 million. Lower interest expense from paying down debt and a favorable tax benefit in the third quarter are offsetting the slightly lower adjusted EBITDA range, allowing us to maintain our previous adjusted EPS guidance range of $2.77 to $2.87.

For the full year, adjusted EPS growth will be driven by higher margins from favorable mix and productivity initiatives as well as lower interest expense. We expect to reduce debt in total by $150 million this year, having already repaid $100 million year-to-date. We have made no changes to our expected capital expenditures forecast for the year of approximately $110 million, and we anticipate free cash flow will range from $190 million to $210 million, also unchanged.

I'll now turn the call back over to Ashish for some closing comments.

Thank you, Jamie. Thus far, 2025 has been characterized by trade wars, shifting supply chains, labor market challenges, weak consumer sentiment and most recently, a U.S. government shutdown, all of which have negatively impacted demand. But amidst all of that, our teams have navigated the challenging operating environment and delivered positive earnings growth.

I would like to thank the Avient team for their tireless and focused efforts on serving our customers and executing with discipline. With that, we would be happy to take any of your questions. Operator, please begin the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Michael Sison of Wells Fargo.

Nice quarter. I know it's a little bit early, but when you think about 2026, Ashish and most companies that have reported have suggested sort of similar difficult slow conditions heading into the first half. What do you think your growth algorithm for next year on just -- could be if this environment persists?

Yes. Thanks, Mike, for the question. Obviously, the uncertainty is continuing and not much clarity has happened. So although we are hoping for the best, we are also preparing for Plan B, which is in case things don't turn around. And we'll provide more details on our guidance in the next fall. But just from where we are sitting and based on the business segment, I think if the market conditions persist like this then, the consumer business, the CAI business not consumer, the CAI business will probably continue to face headwinds, while we have good growth coming from SEM based on some new product launches and some innovation and growth vectors kick in there.

So overall, it's going to be a mixed bag between the 2 segments. But I think we should be still able to grow in an environment where assuming that those things don't change much. Of course, as we telecasted in the presentation, if things get worse because of the enhanced shutdown or consumer sentiment deteriorates further then we have additional productivity and plans in place that we will enact as things go in this quarter and early first quarter of next year.

Got it. And then as a follow-up, it sounds like your innovation, new product momentum is gaining some traction. You might see some growth there in the fourth quarter in Consumer, which is great. How much momentum do you have heading into 2026? Is there sort of a base level of growth you're going to see from those initiatives next year?

Yes. I mean I just want to say that growth vectors in our strategy, we highlighted the growth vectors are our primary sources of growth creation. And that's exactly what we are seeing right now. I mean, actually, if you look at our portfolio, growth vectors have grown much, much higher than the GDP and actually creating most of the growth for the company. The rest of the portfolio without the growth vectors is actually in the negative territory. So they are carrying a lot of lifting right now with respect to growth, and we expect that to continue next year, especially as more new products come to innovation next year in the market. But there are smaller -- the growth vectors are smaller component of the total portfolio, less than 20%. And so the rest of the 80% of the portfolio needs to get some tailwinds from the market for us to grow consistently.

But I think we are really making a lot of progress in that area. And I have to remind this audience that the growth vectors are both in our core as well as in new platforms of scale that we are building around secular trends. So as you are seeing this year, our health care and defense, those are what are growth vectors that we had highlighted and those are growing very well.

And then we might highlight some more growth vectors going into the new year, especially around some of the trends that you're seeing around artificial intelligence and data center inputs that are happening. And as a material player, we want to play in that market in a better way. And we have been doing that in the background, but we have not telecasted that. So we'll provide more feedback on that as well in the future.

And our next question comes from Frank Mitsch of Fermium Research.

Nice result in a difficult period. Just curious, on Slide 8, the geographic sales changes, the EMEA depiction had always been a tool up field and windmills. And now you're showing a German castle. Are you signaling a new initiative to expand into Germany with that change? Is that how we should be assessing that?

We just thought that we would be bored of the windmills and -- but no, Frank, it's just a choice of a picture. So nothing related to that, don't read too much into that.

Okay. The discussion of the government shutdown, are you seeing any changes with respect to defense order patterns, you did indicate something with the Inflation Reduction Act or what have you. But what are you seeing on the defense side of things potentially being impacted by the government shutdown?

Not a lot right now, Frank. I mean, our orders for defense remain robust. And actually, we expect demand to continue both in United States as well as in Europe because of the things that have been happening in the world. So right now, we don't expect much issue from the U.S. government shutdown. However, if the shutdown continues for a very long time, maybe into Q1 or something then at some point in time, our products have to go through inspections and clearances by certain third-party and government agencies.

And at that point, it would start affecting the outflow from us. We don't expect change in orders or the demand part, but these products cannot be sometimes delivered until they are cleared by these agencies. So if the agencies are closed, that might create some issues. But for now, in Q4, we don't expect any of that to happen.

Okay. Great. I don't think that, that will happen either. I don't think it's going to spend that long. And then lastly, the range that you offered on EPS, you gave us a point range for 3Q and then we have a $0.10 range on 4Q. Can you speak to what gets you to the low end and what gets you to the high end of that EPS range?

Yes. So Frank, I'll take that one. So from a high range perspective, part of this goes into the lumpiness that we sometimes see in defense. And to the high end of that, if we're able to close on some of those orders and get them into Q4, that could definitely be a catalyst to get on the higher end. Ashish also mentioned these energy projects, which we have seen some delays. We've been in close contact with several of our key partners and a customer perspective. And they're optimistic that we may be able to see some of those projects come into the Q4. We're not counting on it at this juncture just because of the slowdown in the U.S. and there's a little bit of volatility there. But there are 2 items that I think could push us on the upper end of that range.

From a downside perspective, if we see continued weakness in consumer and packaging which are our 2 largest markets. There is some uncertainty there. We do have some favorable comparisons in Q4 versus Q3. So we don't anticipate there to be any significant deterioration. If anything, we think things will get better on a year-over-year comparison. But obviously, we're living in a very uncertain macro environment. So we want to be a little bit cautious and that's why the range for Q4 is represented as such in what we provided out in the earnings release.

And our next question comes from Aleksey Yefremov of KeyBanc Capital Markets.

I wanted to ask you about the level of inventories at your customers. Do you have any insight into whether they're still reducing inventories or they're happy with their level of inventories? Or perhaps if that level is too high or too low?

Yes. So maybe I'll break it down for the 2 different kinds of business segments. For the Color business, our customers have -- they have started ordering smaller lots and more frequently because we have been -- we can serve them on a short cycle time period. So there is no need for them in this whole dynamic emerge during the COVID times. And so I think that pattern continues. Our customers count on us for delivering on a short notice and don't carry much inventory. And then we are in the same situation. So we don't have much visibility with this Color customers for typically for 2 to 3 weeks -- beyond 2 to 3 weeks. And from what we can say there is not any inventory sitting in the channel or with the customers.

With respect to the SEM business, that's mostly a spec-in business although we do have a bit of a business that goes through distribution. And really, there is not an issue of inventory there. The only inventory that we were worried about is because of this energy demand that we signal that the energy projects were put on pause and for a while, the customers who are carrying because these are big projects and our customers have started building inventory. And when the projects were paused then the inventory destocking took some time. Based on our current knowledge and talks with our customers, they are getting back to normal levels of inventory both at their own level, distributor level as well as the utility level. But -- and we have started seeing some orders trickle in from energy side, but we are not counting on them to come in Q4. Our expectation is most of that action will take place in Q1, the orders to come back to us. And so overall, I would say inventory is pretty healthy now in SEM side as well.

And I've seen some headlines about just consumer companies noting a little bit of an uptick of consumer demand in China. I know you have some business that's China for China. What are you seeing on the ground there?

Yes. I think what we are seeing is that we are seeing more demand coming from local China OEMs versus for export. If you think about our consumer businesses in China, the consumer discretionary is the bigger part of it and most of it gets exported out, which is in textiles and apparel materials and also small appliances are the other part of it. But I think most of it is apparel, about 40% or so is apparel. And that was down double digits in Q3 for us there.

So really, China was not exporting much outside. And a lot of that material goes to Europe, but some to United States as well. So China was not exporting a whole lot in Q3 in terms of clothing and textile-related stuff. But we do continue to win share on the flip side with the local OEMs. And so I think to answer your question in a succinct way, we are seeing demand from the local OEMs, but not from the global OEMs who are playing in China.

And our next question comes from Graham Panjabi of Baird.

This is actually Josh Vesely on for Ghansham. Maybe the first one just on Slide 4. You mentioned consumer showing some signs of recovery in September. Can you just help us reconcile those comments relative what you're hearing in the news and what you're seeing throughout reports through 3Q, just about sequentially weaker consumer. What's specifically driving that for you guys? And is that any particular region that you're seeing that? Or is it more broad-based?

Yes. So maybe I'll paint the picture this way. Let me start by saying that consumer last year so Q3 of 2024, we were up 11%. So the comps were extremely tough for us as we were walking into this quarter for consumer. And so when we go through -- and then when I come to this year, and I go month by month. So in July, for example, our consumer was down minus 14% year-over-year. In August, it was down minus 8%. And in September, it was plus 1%. So we could see the sequentially our results getting better compared to last year. And it's largely coming from 2 things. One was comps because the comps were getting better versus every month.

And then the second part was that we did see an uptick in our consumer staples business. Consumer for us is 2/3 discretionary and 1/3 staples. And we did start seeing uptick on the staple side, especially on the SEM part of the business. As we go into Q4, comps get really better. So consumer goals went from plus 11% to plus 4% in 2024. So Q4 was 4% growth. So that's a much better comp than against 11%.

But on top of that, we are seeing -- there is some -- even in the discretionary side of business, especially in SEM where we are going to -- where we had a bad year because of another specific reason and that this year, it's just getting normal demand from that perspective. So we do have a little bit of a tailwind from a certain business on the SEM side, which is causing consumers to get split positive beyond the comps getting easier. So that's the commentary I can give. And as I telecasted, it's hard to say whether it's true demand or it's just a comps thing because the comps were so dramatic. But we do believe that some of the consumer part, especially the staples is coming back and some of the parts of discretionary is coming back as well for us.

Okay. Great. That's super helpful. And then maybe a question for Jamie on capital allocation. You talked about paying down $150 million in debt this year. It looks like your balance sheet is roughly 2.8x net debt-to-EBITDA current. Just given the year-to-date share performance, is there any preference or opinion from you guys just in terms of being a little aggressive in the near term just when it comes to share repurchases. Any thoughts there would be great.

Yes, Josh, that's a great question. I will tell you, if our leverage is in a better spot, closer to 2.5x, we'd be buying back shares. We do believe our multiple is at a historic low based on the quality of the portfolio changes that we made today. But we also be cautious that this is an uncertain macro environment and a lot of our major investors really want to ensure that our balance sheet is strengthened as we continue to see this macro uncertainty. We do expect to get to 2.5x probably back half of 2026 at this juncture. And once you see that, if our stock price still hasn't recovered from the standpoint, I imagine we'll have some conversations on what's the best capital allocation to make sure that we're returning value back to our shareholders.

And our next question comes from Vincent Andrews of Morgan Stanley.

Just wondering if you could talk a little bit more on the packaging side and just help us understand sort of what the rate of change is in the various end markets within there. And if you're seeing any signs of life in certain areas versus incremental challenges and others?

Yes. So Vincent, let me just start by saying that year-to-date packaging is plus 1% for us. So it's low single digits positive. And now having said that, let me just tell you what happened in Q3 and so on and so forth going into Q4, what we are seeing. So we saw a negative high single-digit growth so degrowth of packaging in both United States and specifically, EMEA, which is our biggest packaging market. But also packaging was negative in Latin America. So the food and beverage industry there utilizes quite a bit of our packaging and that was negative as well. So 3 out of the 4 geographies were negative on packaging. The only geography that was positive was in Asia and part of that was that our team is getting some business there on local food and beverage, but also part of it is our packaging systems that go into semiconductor and wafer packaging and all that.

So it's not traditional consumer packaging, so to say. So I think overall speaking, that we saw a positive growth in positive high single-digit growth in Asia, but negative everywhere else. When I go into Q4, I think the big piece is that we are seeing some business gains on packaging in the United States. At least EMEA will continue to be a little bit weak for us. But Latin America, because it's summertime there will be in Q4, we generally have a seasonality of positive food and beverage there. And so that's what's baked into our numbers, and we would -- we expect to grow positive on Latin America side.

No, go ahead, Ashish -- sorry.

I was going to say in Asia, we continue to see positive packaging driven by the semiconductor trend.

Okay. And maybe, Jamie, just remind us what's the minimum level of cash you need to hold versus where you are now?

That range is around $350 million. I think we ended the quarter, Joe, at about $450 million. Yes. And maybe as a reminder, we do generate quite a bit of cash in the fourth quarter mainly as a lot of our cash uses happened in the first half of the year. And then with working capital coming down as sales come back from seasonality, we do expect to have quite a bit of cash generation. So going into the fourth quarter, as we kind of telecasted in our comments earlier is that we do expect to pay down another $50 million within the quarter, and that's going to be reflected once we get to the year-end cash balances.

And our next question comes from Michael Harrison of Seaport Research Partners.

Was hoping that we could address a couple of questions that I had in packaging. First of all, is there any sense that you might be losing some market share either to competitors or to paper or other types of packaging, why don't you go ahead on that?

Yes. We don't think so. Our teams doesn't think so. And as I said, overall, when we compare ourselves to some of our competitors seems like we are printing better numbers. Also, we have pretty good insights with our converters and suppliers on the other side and these suppliers supply to most of our competition as well. So we believe that this is real slowdown. And both consumer and packaging, if you look so broad-based down across the globe, it's really a reflection of all the uncertainty that the globe is facing and the consumer sentiment across the globe is bad. And that's what it reflects, Mike. I don't think it's a matter of losing share. I think if anything, we might be gaining share in certain places.

All right. That's very helpful. And then you had previously been optimistic or at least expected that you could see some growth in packaging as a result of more recycled content starting to drive greater consumption of Color and Additives. I was wondering if you could give an update on what you're seeing with that trend? Are your big CPG customers still committed to increasing the amount of recycled content? Or have they stepped back from some of those goals?

So Mike, I think that phenomena still very much exists both in Europe and Latin America. We are seeing our customers to continue on that front. I think in the United States, it has taken a little bit of a backseat, but it was never a big piece here. But I think that trend continues. And we are seeing supply chains moving from Europe to Latin America. Originally, some of that recycled content was being supplied from Europe to Latin America for their local packaging and now the supply chains are moving into Latin America. So our job in this case is to make sure that we don't lose businesses as they move across the ocean. And that we continue to qualify ourselves as the right partner for our customers. But no, we are not seeing any change outside the United States on that front.

And our next question comes from Laurence Alexander of Jefferies.

There's been a flurry of announcements of new reshoring capacity in the U.S. around appliances and durable goods. Can you give us a sense for how much visibility that might give you for demand in the back half of '26, '27, like when you think that will start to have an impact?

And secondly, can you give a characterization of what you're seeing in terms of competitive intensity in both the color side and the engineered materials from regional players or emerging market players. I mean are they -- is the competitive intensity intensifying given the weak demand environment?

Yes. So maybe I'll take the second one first. And from a competitive perspective, yes, I mean, there is, as you know, quite a bit of overcapacity, especially on the color side of business. And especially if you think about it from Chinese competition in different parts of the world. And that has been always there. Our strategy has been always focused on rather than just providing a commodity, providing a solution working with the customer all the way from the design stage of the product to then helping them pick the right thing and then qualifying it for them. So it's not just selling a commodity to them. It is working with them all the way from inception to finally, the product is launched and then serving them globally with great quality and service on time.

And I think that's what our customers pay us for that's where our positioning is. We don't chase commodity business, which is where most of this competition is coming in. Having said that, competition is getting aggressive and we have to deal with that, and we are dealing with that. Our teams are doing a good job. As you probably saw, Laurence, our price/mix is still positive, and we are still expanding margins on the color side of our business as well. So -- and we have done that 3 quarters in a row. So Q1, Q2, Q3 there has been margin expansion in that business. So the teams are doing a great job passing on the price and still not losing to competition because of the value that we bring to the customer.

With respect to competition on the SEM side, I would say that the fact that our businesses are growing there, and the only reason SEM didn't do as well as we thought it would do in Q3 was because of this energy dynamics that we highlighted. There is pretty much I mean, the competition is there, but there is no direct competition to some of the new innovations that we have launched out of our personal protection business in Dyneema lines. And that's a true differentiator, and we feel that because of that, we can keep winning share and be relevant in the market for times to come.

So our innovation is kicking in on the SEM side, and we are beginning to differentiate our product lines, and that's how we are dealing with competition there.

Now with respect to the appliance question, sorry, I'm going a little long here. We do work with the global appliance makers all across the globe. And as supply chains shift from 1 region to another, it's hard for us to say whether it's going to create additional volume for us because for all -- pretty much all big appliance makers, we are already spec'd in. And so for us, in that case, the option would be to more make sure that we don't lose that business as it moves. So that's all I can share at this point, Laurence.

And our last question comes from David Begleiter of Deutsche Bank.

Ashish, looking at 2026, can you discuss what's in your control such as productivity and what headwinds you might face from either wage inflation or other costs impacting you?

Yes. I mean it's a similar story like this year with flat sales and growth, we still drove EPS growth of -- if you look at our range, it's 3% to 8%. So I mean I think that's a great example of what this team can do under stressed conditions. And I think we will obviously make sure that we are if the demand doesn't come, as I said earlier, I think we still believe that on the SEM side of our business, there is enough growth there to drive some growth on the top line, and that will help us bring more on the bottom line. So that's one thing we can influence, commercialize our innovation quickly and to scale on that side of the business because the demand is there.

And in certain markets, how much can we supply will also depict how well we do. So that's something that we influence and our teams are working on that side. On the other side of our business, where the demands are not great we are driving productivity and structure reduction and also footprint optimization. And we have done that this year, and we'll continue to do that going into the next year. Either way, I mean that just has to happen anyways. And if demand really falls off the cliff, then we have another plan to go deeper into that playbook.

And just lastly, as you move through Q4, are you seeing or expecting to see below normal seasonality?

We've just seen 1 month of Q4, and it has really come actually a tad bit better than what we had thought, but it's too early to say because in our business, things can shift around quickly. But October clicked pretty okay based on what -- where we were expecting it, and as I said, a tad bit better. So I don't see -- I think that the comps are favorable for us, and that's going to help us. So year-over-year, it's going to be a better situation, but also seasonality in certain areas, kicks in Latin America, I mentioned earlier, but not a whole lot change, I think comps and then just executing in the current environment. And we are winning some share in packaging in the United States, as I said earlier so that would help. But no, nothing unusual.

This concludes the question-and-answer session and also our conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.