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good morning and welcome to the cient Technologies Corporation 2024 first quarter earnings conference call all participants will be in a listen only mode should you need assistance please signal conference specialist by pressing this the star key followed by zero after today's presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions to ask a question you may press star than one on your touchtone phone and to withdraw your question please press star than two please note this event is being recorded I would now like to turn the C over to Mr Steve rols please go ahead sir good morning welcome to cience earnings call for the first first quarter of 2024 I'm Steve rals senior vice president and Chief Financial Officer of sensient Technologies Corporation I am joined today by Paul Manning cian's chairman president and chief executive officer earlier today we released our 2024 first quarter results a copy of the release and our investor presentation is available on our website at san.com during our call today we will reference certain non-gaap Financial measures which remove the impact of currency movements cost of the company's portfolio optimization plan and other items as noted in the company's filings we believe the removal of these items provides investors with additional information to evaluate the company's performance and improves the comparability of results between reporting period periods this also reflects how management reviews and evaluates the company's operations and performance nonap Financial results should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information calculated in ance with gap a Reconciliation of non-gaap financial measures to the most directly comparable Gap Financial measures is available in our press release we encourage invest to review these reconciliations in connection with the comments we make today I would also like to remind everyone that comments made during this call including responses to your questions may include forward-looking statements our actual results May differ materially from those that may be expressed or implied due to a wide range of factors including those set forth in our SEC filings we urge you to read sensient previous SEC filings including our 10K and our forthcoming 10q for a description of additional factors that could potentially impact our financial results please keep these factors in mind when you analyze our comments today now we'll hear from Paul Manning thank you Steve good morning and good afternoon our first quarter results came in as expected and now with greater visibility on the year we are raising our full year guidance to Mid singled digigit local currency Revenue growth and mid singled digigit local currency adjusted ebit do growth cian's local currency Revenue increased by 4% in the first quarter this Revenue increase was mostly volume driven with pricing contributing about 1% the positive Trends we saw in customer order patterns in January continued throughout the quarter giving us much greater confidence that we will continue to grow volume revenue and operating profit for the year we're experiencing strong new sales winds across each of our groups and our sales pipelines remain robust we believe the impacts of destocking are now behind us for both flavor and color groups as we noted in our last call asia-pacific will continue to feel the impacts of destocking with certain larger multinational accounts in the second quarter and we anticipate this will be the last quarter of destocking for Asia pafic our Consolidated local currency adjusted ebit da was up 2% for the first quarter of 2024 as mentioned during our last call I expect operating leverage and margin Improvement across our groups as our volume improves and as raw material inflation subsides we therefore expect profit Improvement compared to the prior year to significantly strengthen as the year goes on now turning to the groups flavers and extracts group had a solid first quarter delivering 7% local currency Revenue growth and 6% local currency operating profit growth the group continues to benefit from its strong new sales win rate and it's focus on sales execution and customer service the group benefited from the particularly strong volume growth and its natural ingredients product line the group continues to be impacted by elevated costs in certain agricultural ingredients and raw materials primarily in the natural ingredients product line and base largely on inventory positions and crop Cycles these elevated costs will temper our operating leverage in the first half of the year but we are confident that the group will deliver on our ful year expectations furthermore based on greater visibility for the year I now expect the group to deliver at least mid single digit local currency Revenue growth in 2024 which is an improvement from our previous guidance of low to mid singled digigit local currency Revenue growth the color group's local currency Revenue was down low single digits in the first quarter as mentioned during our last call we anticipated the impacts of destocking to continue throughout the first quarter I'm happy to say that the headwinds of destocking for the Color Group are now behind us we are seeing an improvement in customer order patterns and the group is benefiting from it strong new sales wins and exceptional customer service I expect the volume picture will continue to improve sequentially throughout 2024 I now expect the Color Group to deliver mid single digigit local currency Revenue growth in 2024 which is up from our previous guidance of low to mid single digit local currency Revenue growth the Asia Pacific group reported 4% local currency Revenue growth in the first quarter group experience good growth in most regions as mentioned in Prior calls the group continues to be impacted by certain larger multinational customers which has produced some volatile swings in order patterns and results we believe this pattern will come to an end at the end of the second quarter overall the group is well positioned for growth and I continue to expect the group to deliver mid- singled digigit Revenue growth in 2024 the portfolio optimization plan that we initiated in the fourth quarter of 2023 is progressing as expected our plan is designed to rightsize our cost base and to optimize our organizational structure with a focus on driving improved productivity in certain businesses and functions in both the color and flavor groups once fully implemented by the end of 2025 we expect that will generate annual cost Savings of approximately $8 to10 million including the cost incurred in the fourth quarter of 2023 and first quarter of 2024 we continue to expect to incur pre-tax charges of approximately $40 million of which approximately 30 million will be non-cash to date we have incurred approximately $30 million of portfolio optimization expense we are carefully managing this process to ensure we continue to meet customers needs that to minimizes the disruption to the business we also continue to focus on strategically managing our inventory positions we reduced our inventory by $30 million in the first quarter and we expect continued improvement in our inventory throughout the remainder of the year we will use our improving cash flow to reduce our debt and interest expense as we communicated we expect a much improved Financial picture in 2024 including sales volume growth local currency Revenue growth and local Curren cury adjusted EIT dog growth we now expect to deliver on a Consolidated basis mid singled digit local currency revenue and mid singled digigit local currency adjusted ebit dog growth in 2024 we previously expected low to mid single digit local currency growth in both revenue and adjusted evit do continue to expect our local currency adjusted EPS to grow at a low to mid single digit rate in 2024 over all we have proven that our strategy supports solid growth across each of our businesses and our product portfolio is robust we are focused on the lever we can control to grow our business these include our focus on sales execution our strong customer service and our Innovative product offering overall I'm very excited about our opportunities within each of our groups and remain optimistic about 2024 and the future of our business now before I turn it over to Steve I just wanted to to thank Steve for his 27 years of service to sensient I should note that that is a gap number uh Steve would tell you on a adjusted basis non-gaap that felt more like about 102 years so as you know though Steve will be retiring at the end of June and this is actually his last conference call so I've worked very closely with Steve for at least nine years a little bit more than that too as a CFO and his other Financial leadership roles within the company so Steve we'd like to thank you and all your hard work for Sensi on behalf of the board and everyone here we wish you luck in retirement you'll have to let us know what you're doing so now for the last time Steve will provide additional details on the quarter thank you Paul in my comments this morning I will be explaining the differences between our Gap results and our adjusted results the adjusted results for 2024 remove the cost of the portfolio optimization plan we believe that the removal of these costs produces a more clear picture to investors of the company's performance this also reflects how management reviews the company's operations and performance denian operating income was 49.4 million in the first quarter of 2024 compared to 50.8 million of income in the comparable period last year operating income in the first quarter of 2024 includes 2.8 million which is approximately 6 cents per share of portfolio optimization costs excluding the cost of the portfolio optimization plan adjusted operating income was 52.2 million in the first quarter of 2024 compared to 50.8 million in the prior year period the company's Consolidated adjusted tax rate was 26.1% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to 24.9% in the comparable period of 2023 local currency adjusted iida was up 2.2% in the first quarter of 2024 foreign currency translation was not material to EPS cash flow from operations was 15 million in the first quarter of 2024 Capital expenditures were 11 million in the first quarter of 2024 we expect our Capital expenditures to be around 65 million for the year our net debt to credit adjusted IA is 2.6 overall our balance sheet remains well positioned for future Investments regarding our 2024 guidance we now expect our 2024 local currency revenue and local currency adjusted eatat to be up mid single digits in 2024 this is an increase from our previous guidance which had called for a low to mid singled digigit growth rate in 2024 for both local currency revenue and local currency adjusted EIT do grad we still expect our interest expense to be uh to increase this year compared to our 2023 full year interest expense and we continue to expect our 2024 full year adjusted tax rate to be in the range of 24 to 25% as a result we continue to expect our local currency adjusted EPS to be up low to mid single digits in 202 4 and considering our Gap earnings per share in 2024 we continue to expect approximately 15 cents of portfolio optimization costs we continue to expect our Gap EPS in 2024 to be to be between $2.80 and $2.90 compared to our 2023 Gap EPS of $221 to reiterate Paul's comments he mentioned the elevated agricultural cost impacting our flavors and extracts segment as well as the order patterns impacting our Asia Pacific segment these factors will impact the pattern of sequential quarterly results but we are confident that each segment will deliver to our expectations for the year thank you for participating in our call today we will now open the call for questions thank you we will now begin the question and answer session to ask a question question you may press star than one on your touchone phone and to withdraw your question please press star than two and at this time we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster and the first question will come from gansam pinjabi with beard please go ahead hi good morning Paul good morning Steve hey this is this is actually Matt creger uh sitting for gum um Steve I'm not going to try to match uh Paul's GYN level uh send off there but um congratulations on your on your pending retirement thanks um you know I just wanted to touch on operating leverage flow through for the flavors and extract segment here a little bit um you know just trying to dig into why it wasn't you know more significant given the you know the the the strong volume growth um compared to expectations I know you mentioned higher agriculture and Agricultural and raw material costs um but can you talk in a little more detail about what those were you know how big was that headwind on a year-over-year basis and how would you expect that to progress moving forward what's that what does that headwind for the year look like okay so um Matt I think as we look at I'll kind of give you an overview for for each of the groups but let let's start with flavors to to go directly to your question so yeah flavors had six s% Revenue growth most of that was volume we noted it was only very moderately say 1% price so therefore there was a big volume move a lot of that volume majority of that volume was Sni but there was volume and other Pockets around the the balance of the flavor group but principally it was an Sni story so they had an absolutely spectacular Revenue quarter in Sni lots of new wins um lots of good activity there in principally Savory related Foods uh the comparison for Sni was was was not as difficult so so certainly that had some benefit to us as well now where the leverage kind of comes into play here right so for six or s% Revenue you you'd sort of start to see something a little bit better than mid single on profit and and you will as we get into the latter part of the year um but in the context of q1 a lot of that selling was on these crops that had been grown in a previous crop year so all those things we heard about with energy and water and fertilizers and Agriculture and land and and labor all those things were built into that crop and so that's the one we're selling right now now the good news is the next crop comes in later this year and the cost situation on that is is much improved we won't know precisely how much but the but Trends are are quite positive because last crop one was was probably among the most expensive we've ever seen period and so I would tell you that that was largely the story on operating leverage in the flavor group as we kind of go into Q2 you you you'll see a little bit more of that you know you'll see very nice Revenue growth again I'm feeling confident about that but you won't quite see that operating leverage in flavors yet you'll start to see the operating Leverage and flavors in the back half of the year as the traditional flavors continues to accelerate and as we uh start selling the new crop at the lower cost position so uh yeah when you draw it up volume growth should generate operating profit leverage and and it will for the year but in any one quarter we could be contending with you know the more expensive inventory going over to the Color Group you know I kind of mentioned on the last call that you given how much you you hold inventory so there's there's generally a lag between when you start seeing uh operating leverage from your volume growth and that tends to be about a quarter to two quarters depending on the business unit here so you see colors was down in q1 low singled digigit Revenue low singled digigit profit that's actually a positive sign because we we had been as you saw in 2023 for that low singled digigit Revenue even minus mid single digit Revenue we were seeing well into the minus double digits on operating profit so you're seeing the inflection point now in q1 so therefore as we get into say Q2 and beyond for the color group I think you'll start to see that leverage very very nicely play out um in the color group so I think you'll be very very happy with with how that progresses it'll progress a bit faster than color but that's principally just based on on this inventory component uh associated with the agricultural products uh so I think big picture as the year kind of normalizes and it is normalizing you're going to start to see that more traditional mid singled digigit High singled digit mid single digit Revenue leading to high singled digigit ebit dog growth and and we're very very confident that that we'll be at that type of of pace as the year moves on here great that's um that's very helpful and then um you know just switching over to Natural ingredients specifically that growth has ramped significantly higher to start the year and really has since the the middle of last year um can you talk about what's driving this pickup and growth and and how sustainable that growth rate is um for 2024 in the segment um you know were there any specific conversions or legislative changes that that are benefiting the naturals portfolio to drive that you know pick up and growth nothing on the regulatory side uh this is a a business where you know when you have the crop you can sell it and so we made comments over the last year or two that we want to continue to invest in that inventory because there is no substitute on the market and so when you have it you can sell it and then when you can sell it you can have an outsize quarter like the one we did so I think number one we had a very good inventory position number two we we had a very aggressive sales effort we we have new leadership in that business and they're doing exceedingly well on the sales side uh so that's another Factor uh I would tell you as I mentioned earlier the the they had a little bit of an easier comp that that explains maybe a portion of that uh for sure in the business but I I think ultimately that rate will normalize as the year goes on I I would see that as more of a oneoff rather than a a sustained uh Trend in that business and and so we would still expect them to have very solid growth of the year the kind of growth we saw in q1 think of that as as more of a uh a statistical anomaly rather than a a rather new steady state got it that makes a lot of sense that's really helpful I'll I'll turn it over okay thanks Matt the next question will come from Nicole Kang with BMP xain please go ahead hi everyone um questions and Hi and um I sort of echo my congratulations and best wishes to see as well um on the guidance on the EPS side I was wondering if you could explain a little bit or clarify what your expectations are in terms of Interest cost do you still expect this plus three million year on year that you talked about previously it's just trying to understand why there's limited sort of drop through on your EPS guide relative to the upgrade on the E Nea level Maybe the first one sure so on you know on the EPS guidance um you hit it on the on the head it's really the the interest expense and then we'll have a slightly higher tax rate this year as well and that that's the only reason why that guide was not increased um last quarter we did say about three million more on interest expense um and when you look at the in interest rate environment there seems to be less appetite for interest rate Cuts so if that's the casee it could be a little bit elevated above the 3 million um it could be a little bit more towards four um is the way we see it but you know as Paul mentioned we've got opportunities in uh inventory and cash flow and so as we bring down leverage which will be our um you know our priority um we could make up for some of that um in terms of the interest expense got it and then um the flavors and extracts side I wanted to ask a little bit more about actually the flavors bit um you know whilst it sort of improved sequentially it seems like you're lagging a bit some of the bigger um fnf players who've reported so far can you help us understand um the discrepancy and perhaps explain a little bit um some of the Dynamics of what happened in flavors in ky1 yeah well I guess to to the you know any 91 day period any number of things could happen across a segment or a customer group or that customer's inventory position or or LA so I wouldn't take too much away from from 91 days I think as you look at the year for us we we do expect mid single digit growth most of that being volume um you know as you reflect back on the last number of years I think you could see that the volume growth and and sensing it was was quite robust and so I I think again it's it's one quarter it's not indicative of anything in my opinion uh we we continue to do exceed exceedingly well on the new wind front and in fact uh new winds continue to be quite robust in the first quarter so I think it's just really more of a timing thing than anything else all right and then um on the input cost side um you mentioned in the or you sort of talked in the release about higher inputs and I was wondering um whether there's been any change in terms of your outlook on input cost for this year versus how you were thinking a couple of months ago perhaps you could talk a little bit about what you're seeing and um you talked about I think low single digit pricing do you think this will be enough to sort of cover input cost inflation this year yeah so let me start off and then I'll let Steve add what what he would like to there I think the general picture on input costs is they're moving in the direction that's more favorable to to us and our profit um as you then liquidate your inventory you start to enjoy that benefit to your to your operating profit so I think you know the General State of Affairs is things remain elevated in many categories uh they're not Rising uh there are a couple of exceptions but there's always a couple exceptions in any given year um but I think the big picture is stable declining in some uh so I think we'll start to see those benefits continue through the p&l you know I did mention that the one big one on the agricultural side that Improvement we anticipate in in the back half of the year for sure because that's driving a lot of the leverage impact and flavors but I think yeah the overall story is that our price should capture what we need to capture here and um and continue to help our our customers to to promote their own businesses so yeah I think that that we feel good about the the pricing that we got um so Steve I don't know if you want to add anything to the mix there I would just say that yeah there's not been a any big change in our Outlook or EXP expectations as as Paul said we're seeing an approving picture across a lot of the spend um the one thing that we you know we've mentioned a couple times now is just when you're dealing with these agricultural products there can be there can be a leg um and so that's the only thing I would I would add but I think in general the um the picture is improving great thanks so much okay thank you again if you have a question please press star then one our next question will come from David green with bald Haven please go ahead hi everyone hey David David hey congratulations Stephen thank you well um I I guess just a question around um margins um and you talked about an expectation for an ongoing sequential Improvement in volume and just to sort of qualify that so I'm assuming that also means by definition we should imp we should expect improving sequential um performance in margins as well yeah I think that's right I think uh the year plays out as I described uh earlier I think you would start to see that and in color a bit sooner than flavors but in flavors you would see that as well uh we're optimistic that colors begin to knock back on the door 20% we're very we're quite close here in q1 uh but Asia will remain very very profitable and and of course uh flavors as the most uplift opportunity and so yes is the short answer to your question right many thanks um and then uh just thinking I just sort of wanted to ask specifically on on win rates and obviously you've talked about sort of very high levels are there any specific areas where um it's been in particular where it's been particularly strong well we've got a pretty broad-based portfolio so we we generally enjoy success in a lot of different areas um I would tell you that the the win rates have have grown very nicely in personal care so this is a market that was hit particularly hard during Co particularly our business which was one of strong focus on makeup so we're seeing a lot of nice winds there and we're seeing an improvement in the win rates in in those businesses on the personal care side we continue to enjoy very nice win rates in our natural color business we we are the largest food color company in the world and so we continue to have very strong and very good access to those types of uh customers who are converting and so that's backed up by a very very strong Innovation program that is a very technically driven conversion program and then of course in flavors we we enjoy uh very very good win rates across a lot of the local and regionals and and I think as we continue to expand and uh raise our Spectre in the market we we continue to have uh improved access to to some of the larger accounts as well segment wise you know you look at the launch activity in q1 around the world this is an interesting question that that folks are are sort of looking at like hey what's going to happen here right because there's a lot of macroeconomic factors and uh what's going to happen in the market and and so I I think we've seen a little bit of a mixed bag overall launches were down globally in q1 so what our customers would be launching um most notably in certain segments like frozen desserts and and the like you can see a quite a reduction there um but I would tell you that the the the winds that we're seeing are pretty broad-based and a lot of the differen is whether or not it's to a multi National to a local or Regional to a branded or a generic the generic Market is actually you know we we talk about volume being flat in North America and Europe the generic volume is actually up um and it's up pretty decently in at least in North America for example q1 they're up almost three and a half% on volume where generic brands where whereas the Branded guys were down one or two% uh in terms of uh of volume so yeah our our winds tend to be in in a lot of places but but I would say that certainly Sni had a lot of winds in the Savory Foods areas dressings and dips and sauces and things of that nature uh we saw a lot of good activity in beverage we saw a lot of good activity in natural colors for uh baked goods so pretty pretty broad-based I don't think there's any one particular category that's outpacing other categories right now I would although I would tell you frozen desserts is perhaps a little bit slow at the moment from a launch activity standpoint and so we we would largely mirror what you're seeing in the market from that standpoint right and just I I can't quite remember in terms of thinking about sort of margin and mix within the specific segments can you could you just remind me within So within color specifically the margins in personal care sort of broadly speaking versus the margins in food and farmer you know in in that segment the the margins are in a fairly U narrow band I would say we earn similar margins across a lot of the different product lines there and then then then obviously natural ingredients higher margin than flavors and extracts now that you know that that depends on the crop year in this case it's a bit lower but ordinarily long term yeah it' be it'd be probably right around the average EIT D margin for the group and then I guess just a sort of final question around uh cash flow which improved um this quarter um I guess sort of referencing back to your expectations for improving uh volume and margins that that that is there anything that any reason why that doesn't drop through to um better cash as well on a sequential basis no I I think we expect good cash flow this year we expect continued Improvement you know we we were up in the first quarter first quarter traditionally is not a the strongest quarter anyway so but we do expect continued Improvement and if we see costs improve which we expect you know that that will you know that will that will be additive to uh cash flow as well because we'll be spending Less on the on the new inventory and then finally you know our our Capital expenditures are going to be lower this year so we should have good free cash flow this year yeah and we're David I think I've mentioned this before uh we're we're we're still fat on inventory so we we have more work to do there q1 there was a nice movement about $30 million of reduction so I'm not going to predict to you precisely how much inventory comes out in Q2 three and four but but there should be an ongoing trend of lowering our inventory levels uh which well very very strong source of cash for the year we expect great many thanks okay thanks David the next question will come from Joan Lim with BMP parabus exing please go ahead hello um just question from me uh have you seen any changes in your competitive landscape for colors because um one of your Pierce uh was actually talking about the importance of colors at their invested day so just interested to see to hear if there's been any changes well we um you know we have good competitors in color and we we're very mindful of uh of where they are and we want to beat them and so um no I don't think there's any particularly different Trend um that that I would note you know there's certainly a lot of activity around the world with natural color conversions uh but I would put our portfolio against anybody's in the world and in terms of the ability to make new products and Innovative products I put that against anybody's in the world okay that's helpful it's just it's also a good Trend I suppose more comp competition and more interest in natural colors yeah for sure we we we see different conversion rates in different parts of the world so we we still think uh outside of Europe uh these are this is still at sort of an earlier stage of the transition so yeah there's a very nice long-term runway for growth there on the backs of natural color conversions for sure and then of course more notably on new products that contain natural colors um actually just a followup um what are the growth rates so on natural color conversions in uh Emerging Markets yeah that's a good question it's a complex question so the easy way to answer that is they're probably low to mid maybe mid in some regions now when when you look at natural colors often times what distorts numbers are things like caramel colors and titanium dioxide which tend to be very very high volume contributors to natural colors um but they're not necessarily the highest value with the world of natural colors so things that we sell would be substantially dwarfed by things like caramel and titanium dioxide that's why we don't traditionally talk about our market share of natural colors because quite frankly there's a whole chunk of the market that I have absolutely zero interest in and so when you factor out those types of of of products yeah you could see perhaps even a little bit of a better growth rate than that in Emerging Markets Asia Pacific specifically Latin America the growth rates are as we see it not as strong as you would see in a place in in certain parts of Asia Pacific uh or or Africa for that matter in the Middle East um so I I think as you look over to North America um and still parts of Europe the growth rates can can continue to be quite good as well okay that's very helpful thank you okay thank you there are no further questions at this time I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks please go ahead okay if there are no further questions that will conclude our call so thank you very much everyone for joining the call today the conference is now concluded you may now disconnect