Eastman Chemical Company announced its second-quarter 2024 financial results. The company has reported sales revenue of US$ 2,363 million in 2Q 2024 as compared to US$ 2,324 million in 2Q 2023, reflecting an increase of 2 per cent primarily due to 6 per cent higher sales volume/mix partially offset by 4 percent lower selling prices.

Higher sales volume/mix was driven by the end of customer inventory destocking across most end markets. This improvement was partially offset by weakness in the building and construction end market. Lower selling prices were due to lower raw material prices across all segments.

During 2Q 2024, adjusted EBIT stood at US$ 337 million as compared to US$ 323 million in 2Q 2023. Net cash provided by operating activities was US$ 367 million in 2Q 2024 as compared to US$ 410 million in 2Q 2023.

EBIT increased primarily due to higher sales volume/mix in Advanced Materials, partially offset by lower price-cost in Chemical Intermediates. 

“We delivered strong second-quarter results driven by topline growth and strong sequential margin improvement,” said Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO.

“We saw modest seasonal increases in our sales volume led by durables and automotive end markets. Underlying primary demand trends remained weak. Against this backdrop, the Eastman team remains focused on commercial and operational excellence. With customer inventory destocking largely complete and end-market demand stabilizing at lower levels, we will continue to focus on controllable items and leveraging our innovation-driven growth model to deliver growth above our underlying end markets. We also continue to advance our circular platform and demonstrate our leadership position in the circular economy. We continued to successfully serve our customers, demonstrated higher operating rates, and achieved an important milestone by introducing hard-to-recycle feedstocks into the Kingsport methanolysis facility, while we also worked through start-up issues.”

2024 Outlook

Commenting on the outlook for full-year 2024, Costa said, “We delivered solid results in the first half of the year despite a weak global economic environment. Through this year, we are benefiting from the end of destocking, as our volumes have reconnected to underlying demand. Consistent with our previous end-market expectations, we continue to see little evidence for end-market demand improvement in the second half of the year. In this context, we remain focused on leveraging our innovation-driven growth model to deliver growth above our end markets, especially in the circular economy. We also expect to benefit from continued pricing discipline, improved asset utilization, and disciplined cost management. We expect the benefit of earnings generated by our Kingsport methanolysis facility to be around a $50 million incremental EBITDA contribution. Taking these factors together, we expect 2024 EPS to be between $7.40 and $7.85 and for 2024 cash from operations to be approximately $1.4 billion. I remain confident in our ability to deliver earnings growth and strong cash flow going forward.”

The full-year 2024 projected adjusted diluted EPS and Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (“EBITDA”) exclude any non-core, unusual, or nonrecurring items. Our financial results forecasts do not include non-core items (such as mark-to-market pension and other postretirement benefit gain or loss, and asset impairments and restructuring charges) or any unusual or non-recurring items because we are unable to predict with reasonable certainty the financial impact of such items. These items are uncertain and depend on various factors, and we are unable to reconcile projected adjusted diluted EPS and EBITDA excluding non-core and any unusual or non-recurring items to reported GAAP diluted EPS or net earnings without unreasonable efforts.