Cabot Corp Reports Second Quarter Fiscal 2022 Results

Cabot Corporation (NYSE: CBT) today announced results for its second quarter of fiscal year 2022.

Key Highlights

• Record segment EBIT results for the fiscal quarter in both Reinforcement Materials and Performance Chemicals driving a 42% increase in Diluted EPS and a 22% increase in Adjusted EPS year-over-year
• Key win in Battery Materials with sales of conductive carbon additive blends to a top five battery producer
• Completed the divestiture of the Purification Solutions business
• Returned $36 million in the quarter to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases
• Achieved the highest EcoVadis rating of platinum for our ESG performance for the second consecutive year

“We achieved a record Adjusted EPS during the second quarter, with exceptional execution across our businesses. Reinforcement Materials delivered EBIT of over $100 million driven by price increases in our annual customer agreements, and Performance Chemicals realized the benefit from timely price increases across all regions. We achieved these results while navigating global supply chain disruptions and inflationary pressures,” said Cabot President and Chief Executive Officer, Sean Keohane.

Keohane continued, “We made progress against our strategic initiatives, including the divestiture of our Purification Solutions business. We also continued to build momentum in Battery Materials with strong volume growth and key customer wins. In addition, we returned cash to our shareholders with $21 million of dividends and $15 million of share repurchases in the quarter. Our balance sheet remained strong with approximately $1.2 billion of liquidity and a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 1.8 times as of March 31, 2022.”

Financial Detail

For the second quarter of fiscal 2022, net income attributable to Cabot Corporation was $107 million ($1.84 per diluted common share). Net income reflects an after-tax per share benefit from certain items of $0.15. Adjusted EPS for the second quarter of fiscal 2022 was $1.69 per share.

Segment Results

Reinforcement Materials – Second quarter fiscal 2022 EBIT in Reinforcement Materials increased by $12 million compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2021. The increase in EBIT was principally driven by improved unit margins from higher pricing in our calendar year 2022 customer agreements and higher volumes across all regions, partially offset by higher costs associated with utilities and maintenance.

Global and regional volume changes for Reinforcement Materials for the second quarter of fiscal 2022 as compared to the same quarter of the prior year are set forth in the table below:

Performance Chemicals – Second quarter fiscal 2022 EBIT in Performance Chemicals increased by $12 million compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2021 primarily due to higher unit margins partially offset by higher fixed costs to support our growth vectors. Higher margins were driven by price increases and product mix in both the specialty carbons and fumed metal oxides product lines. Volumes increased by 1% in the Performance Additives business, including robust growth in products sold to battery materials applications, and decreased 17% in the Formulated Solutions business due to continued outage at our Belgian specialty compounds plant.

Cash Performance – The Company ended the second quarter of fiscal 2022 with a cash balance of $215 million. During the second quarter of fiscal 2022, cash flows from operating activities were a source of $10 million. Capital expenditures for the second quarter of fiscal 2022 were $41 million. Additional uses of cash during the second quarter included $21 million for the payment of dividends and $15 million for share repurchases.

Taxes – During the second quarter of fiscal 2022, the Company recorded a tax expense of $36 million with an effective tax rate of 24%. The operating tax rate was 27%, which reflected $2 million of non-GAAP tax adjustments. We expect our operating tax rate for fiscal 2022 to be in the range of 26% to 27%.

Outlook

Commenting on the outlook for the Company, Keohane said, “We are very pleased with the results for the first half of our fiscal year, and we feel good about the underlying demand and the strength of our businesses. While there is still uncertainty around the geopolitical environment and pandemic-related restrictions, we believe we are well positioned to deliver record adjusted earnings per share for the fiscal year. Given the year-to-date results and our expectations for the second half of fiscal 2022, we are increasing our adjusted earnings per share outlook for the fiscal year by $0.30 at the midpoint to a new range of $5.80 to $6.20.”

Keohane continued, “I am excited about the strong fundamentals of our businesses and the performance momentum we have demonstrated as we execute against our Creating for Tomorrow strategy. Our ability to deliver exceptional results in both segments reflects the strength of our portfolio, the agility and strong execution of our teams and the value customers place on Cabot’s product offerings. Looking forward, I believe these factors and our growth investments position us well for fiscal 2022 and the coming years.”

Earnings Call

The Company will host a conference call with industry analysts at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, May 3, 2022. The call can be accessed through Cabot’s investor relations website at http://investor.cabot-corp.com

About Cabot Corporation

Cabot Corporation (NYSE: CBT) is a global specialty chemicals and performance materials company, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The company is a leading provider of rubber and specialty carbons, inkjet colorants, masterbatches and conductive compounds, fumed silica, and aerogel. For more information on Cabot, please visit the company’s website at: http://www.cabotcorp.com. The Company encourages investors and potential investors to consult the Cabot website regularly.

Forward-Looking Statements – This earnings release contains forward-looking statements. All statements that address expectations or projections about the future, including with respect to our expectations for our performance in fiscal year 2022, including our expectations for adjusted earnings per share and the strength of demand, discretionary free cash flow and the return of capital to shareholders and pricing, the factors that we expect will impact our results of operations, and our expected operating tax rate for fiscal 2022 are forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties, potentially inaccurate assumptions, and other factors, some of which are beyond our control and difficult to predict. If known or unknown risks materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove inaccurate, our actual results could differ materially from past results and from those expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, disruption to our operations from the COVID-19 pandemic, competition from other specialty chemical companies; safety, health and environmental requirements or liabilities; volatility in the price of energy and raw materials; a significant adverse change in a customer relationship; failure to achieve growth expectations from new products, new applications and technology developments; unanticipated delays in, or increased cost of site development projects; negative or uncertain worldwide or regional economic conditions and market opportunities, including from trade relations or global health matters; and fluctuations in foreign currency exchange and interest rates. These factors are discussed more fully in the reports we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), particularly under the heading “Risk Factors” in our annual report on Form 10-K for our fiscal year ended September 30, 2021, filed with the SEC at www.sec.gov. We assume no obligation to provide revisions to any forward-looking statements should circumstances change, except as otherwise required by securities and other applicable laws.

Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures

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

Management believes these non-GAAP measures provide investors with greater transparency to the information used by Cabot management in its financial and operational decision-making, allow investors to see Cabot’s results through the eyes of management, and better enable Cabot’s investors to understand Cabot’s operating performance and financial condition.

Adjusted EPS. In calculating Adjusted EPS, we exclude from our net income (loss) attributable to Cabot Corporation items of expense and income that management does not consider representative of the Company’s business operations. Accordingly, reporting earnings on an adjusted basis supplements the GAAP measure of performance and provides additional information related to the underlying performance of the business. For example, certain of the items we exclude are items that we are required by GAAP to recognize in one period that relate to activities extending over several periods or relate to single events that management considers to be unusual and infrequent, although not necessarily non-recurring. We refer to these items as “certain items.” Management believes excluding these items facilitates operating performance comparisons from period to period by eliminating differences caused by the existence and timing of certain expense and income items that would not otherwise be apparent on a GAAP basis and evaluates the Company’s operating performance without the impact of these costs or benefits. Management also uses Adjusted EPS as a key measure in evaluating management performance for incentive compensation purposes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Explanation of Terms Used

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

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