Celanese Corporation, a global chemical and specialty materials company, reported second quarter 2024 U.S. GAAP diluted earnings per share of US$ 1.42 and adjusted earnings per share of US$ 2.38. The company generated net sales of US$ 2.7 billion in the quarter, an increase of 2 per cent from the prior quarter, reflecting a sequential increase in volume of 4 per cent and sequential decrease in pricing of 2 per cent. The company reported a net sales of US$ 2.8 billion in the quarter ended June 30, 2023.

Operating profit for the quarter ended June 30, 2024 stood at US$ 250 million as compared to US$ 335 million for the quarter ended June 3, 2023.

Celanese continued to focus on execution of its controllable action plan, including driving volume growth through the project pipeline model, lowering costs through reduction of capacity in high-cost locations, and improving business efficiency through the integration of the acquired Mobility & Materials (M&M) businesses into a single SAP ERP system. These actions were especially impactful during a quarter that presented significant external headwinds.

Among these headwinds were a series of outages and curtailments from multiple suppliers that led to the Company's declaration of force majeure for acetic acid and VAM sold in the Western Hemisphere, as well as persistent poor demand conditions across many of the company's end-markets.

Against the backdrop of these headwinds, the results reflect meaningful realization of business improvements from the execution of the Company's action plans. Celanese reported second quarter operating profit of $250 million, adjusted EBIT of $451 million, and operating EBITDA of $632 million at margins of 9, 17, and 24 percent, respectively.

The difference between U.S. GAAP diluted earnings per share and adjusted earnings per share in the second quarter was primarily due to certain Items totaling US$ 102 million.

"In the second quarter, we delivered a double-digit sequential expansion of adjusted EBIT in spite of some of the most severe external challenges we've faced in many years," said Lori Ryerkerk, chair and chief executive officer. "The prolonged weak demand environment we have continued to experience over the past several quarters was compounded by multiple supplier failures that led us to declare force majeure for acetic acid and VAM sold in the Western Hemisphere. In this environment, we stayed focused on delivering on our action plan, which resulted in the highest ever contribution from the Engineered Materials business in our history. This highlights the importance of our execution focus, and I thank our teams for their resilience and agility to achieve these results."

Outlook

"We are encouraged to see the tangible realization of our value creation initiatives in our second quarter results, and we are confident that those benefits will continue through the year," said Lori Ryerkerk. "Given the continued lack of evidence of meaningful demand recovery and the increasing pricing pressure from this low demand environment, our focus will remain on what we can control to deliver a sustainable earnings lift for Celanese. We expect the third quarter will bring an easing of the effects of the force majeure, and further improvements to our business driven by our action plans. Because of our foundational value creation initiatives, I am confident we will continue to deliver improved earnings performance in the third quarter and through the remainder of the year."