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F500 2021-219-PPG Industries

With operations in nearly 70 countries around the world, PPG is a global supplier of paints, coatings, and specialty materials.

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The Pittsburgh-based company makes paint, protective and decorative coatings, glass, silica products, and other materials, and operates in nearly 70 countries. PPG saw profits and revenues dip last year, bumping it four spots lower on our ranking.

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Founded in 1883, PPG is the world’s second-largest coatings producer and a top player in nearly every end market it serves, including auto manufacturing, aerospace, and refinishing. It manufactures and distributes paints, coatings, and specialty materials through three segments: Global Architectural Coatings, Performance Coatings, and Industrial Coatings. It's divested several divisons in recent years, including its silicas products business and its U.S. and Canada architectural coatings business in 2024. After the divestments, the paints and coatings giant still operates in more than 70 countries.

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PPG Industries (PPG): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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PPG Industries

ppg industries

Good morning. My name is Warren, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the fourth quarter and full year 2025 PPG Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. To allow everyone an opportunity to ask a question, the company requests that each analyst ask only one question. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Alex Lopez, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Warren, and good morning, everyone. This is Alex Lopez. We appreciate your continued interest in PPG, and welcome you to our fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Joining me today from PPG are Tim Knavish, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Vince Morales, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our comments relate to the financial information released after U.S. equity markets closed on Tuesday, January 27, 2026. We have posted detailed commentary and the accompanying presentation slides on the investor center of our website, ppg.com. Following management's perspective on the company's results, we will move to a Q&A session. Both the prepared commentary and discussions during this call may contain forward-looking statements reflecting the company's current view of future events and their potential effect on PPG's operating and financial performance. These statements involve uncertainties and risks, which may cause actual results to differ.

The company is under no obligation to provide subsequent updates to these forward-looking statements. The presentation also contains certain non-GAAP financial measures. The company has provided in the appendix of the presentation materials, which are available on our website, reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. For additional information, please refer to PPG's filings with the SEC. Now, let me introduce PPG Chairman and CEO, Tim Knavish.

Thanks, Alex. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. I'll start off by providing some highlights on Q4 and full year 2025, and then I'll move on to our 2026 guidance. I'm pleased to report that 2025 was a year of solid commercial, operational, innovation, and financial performance for PPG. The year also demonstrated the strength and resilience of our diversified portfolio, as well as the dedication of our PPG global team. Despite a very mixed and dynamic macroeconomic environment throughout the year, we delivered consistent organic growth, both volume and price, capping the year off with our strongest organic growth of over 3% in the quarter.

We also continued our legacy of driving structural cost improvements through our self-help actions and maintained our heritage of strong cash flow generation and disciplined cash deployment, including returning cash to our shareholders. For the full year, net sales totaled $15.9 billion, with 2% organic growth, which was driven by a combination of higher selling prices and volume gains across our segments. Our adjusted earnings per share came in at $7.58, underscoring our ability to maintain solid profitability in a dynamic environment. Our cash from operations totaled $1.9 billion, up about $500 million year-over-year, supporting a robust free cash flow yield of 5%. This strong cash performance enabled us to return $1.4 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.

Our segment EBITDA margin for the year was a healthy 19%, reflecting ongoing operational efficiency and cost discipline. I'm pleased that we have delivered on our organic growth commitment, with sales volume and selling price growth resulting in a full year increase of 2% in organic sales, which outpaced the estimated market decline of -0.2%. This is the result of our productivity solutions for our customers, as well as the share gains in our core technologies. Now, turning to the fourth quarter, we further accelerated our growth momentum. Net sales were $3.9 billion, up 5% year-over-year, with 3% organic growth driven by positive sales volume growth across all regions. We achieved record Aerospace coatings, sales, and earnings, led by strong demand for our technology-advanced products.

Automotive OEM net sales increased 6%, well outpacing the industry, driven by share gains and customer mix. Architectural Coatings in Latin America delivered high single-digit organic sales growth, aided by the sequential quarterly recovery of project-related sales and continued strong retail performance. We delivered positive sales volume growth in all regions, with Asia Pacific leading the pack, achieving mid-single-digit percentage, followed by low single-digit percentage in U.S., Latin America, and Europe. Our segment EBITDA margin for the quarter was 18%, reflecting solid execution despite some macro headwinds that impacted certain end markets. Adjusted EPS for the quarter was $1.51, as the improved organic growth and improved operational performance were more than offset by higher interest costs and increased corporate expenses.

Now, looking at each of our segments, in the Global Architectural Coatings segment, fourth quarter net sales rose 8% to $951 million, with 2% organic growth. This was driven by Mexico's strong retail performance and sequential improvement in project-related spending, as well as favorable foreign currency translation. Project-related spending was weak in the first half of 2025, driven by uncertainties related to tariffs. However, in the second half of 2025, we experienced consistent recovery and expect this to extend into 2026, based on leading indicators and discussions with our customers. Architectural Coatings demand in Europe was mixed, low single-digit percentage decline, which was partially offset by favorable pricing. We have now delivered positive pricing for 39 consecutive quarters in this business.

Segment income increased 16%, driven by improved pricing and cost management, and EBITDA margins improved nearly 100 basis points. We expect positive organic sales and margin momentum to continue in the first quarter of 2026 in this business. The Performance Coatings segment delivered 5% net sales growth to $1.3 billion, led by double-digit organic growth in Aerospace and consistent gains in our Protective and Marine Coatings business, which now has delivered 11 consecutive quarters of volume growth. As expected, Automotive Refinish organic sales decreased by a high single-digit percentage as sales volumes were lower, reflecting customer order patterns, order patterns stemming from distributors more heavily weighting their purchases to the first half of 2025.

However, one closely watched data point in the industry is U.S. accident claims, and the December year-over-year claims were down only 2% compared to high single-digit or low double-digit declines throughout the year. As we communicated in our third quarter earnings call, the industry claims normalization and our 2025 distributor order patterns will result in a difficult sales comparison for PPG in the first half of 2026, but incremental volume growth during the second half of 2026. Segment EBITDA margin decreased, driven by the lower Automotive Refinish Coating sales and higher growth-related investment spending in Aerospace and Protective and Marine Coatings, partly offset by higher selling prices, and we expect margin contraction for the segment during the first half of 2026, with margin growth during the second half of the year.

As you know, our Aerospace business is an important growth engine for the company, and I want to take a moment to talk about the momentum in industry growth and the demand for our highly specialized qualified products. The business is equally weighted to OEM and aftermarket customers, with margins that are accretive to the overall reporting segment and has a strong presence in commercial, military, and general aviation. During our second quarter earnings call, we presented the significant expected Aerospace OEM growth, given the increased builds forecast for the next several years. In addition to the OEM growth, the forecast for higher aftermarket demand translates into sales growth CAGR of high single-digit percentage growth for the foreseeable future.

For PPG, this is a business that is more than just coatings, with the majority of the portfolio, portfolio being represented by transparencies, sealants and adhesives, and service and materials. For each one of these verticals, we compete with peers that do not have a strong presence in overlapping technologies. This makes our business very unique, with a much stronger segment presence than any traditional competitor in our space. Moving to the Industrial Coatings segment, fourth quarter net sales grew 3% to $1.6 billion, with organic growth fueled by share gains that led to 5% sales volume growth, well outpacing industry demand. As we realized, the full run rate benefit of share gains was strength in automotive OEM coatings and packaging coatings.

From a business unit perspective, our Automotive OEM business delivered a 6% increase in net sales, with growth above market as a result of our share gains. We expect to outgrow the market in the first quarter and for the full year in 2026 in this business. Organic sales for our Industrial Coatings business were flat, as sales volumes growth in Europe and Asia Pacific region offset lower index-based pricing. Packaging Coatings organic sales increased by a double-digit percentage year-over-year, growing significantly above industry rates. These results reflect the positive momentum in share gains led by Europe and the U.S. as a result of the technology shift favoring our sustainable product portfolio.

Segment EBITDA was up 6% year-over-year, and EBITDA margin improved by 30 basis points to 15.1%, reflecting the leverage from the organic sales growth, along with our manufacturing productivity and strong cost control actions. Now, looking ahead, we expect some softness in global industrial and automotive demand to impact organic sales and margins in the first quarter, 2026. Now, let me talk about our balance sheet and cash. Strong cash flow generation remains a key pillar of our strategy. As I said, our operating cash flow increased by over $500 million year-over-year to $1.9 billion in 2025. We returned $1.4 billion to shareholders through dividends of $630 million, and share repurchases of $790 million, which represents about 3% of our outstanding shares.

We ended the year with a strong cash balance of $2.2 billion and a net debt position of $5.1 billion, with $700 million of debt maturing in the first quarter of 2026, which we intend to pay from our current cash position. Our balance sheet is strong, which continues to provide us with financial flexibility, and we remain committed to using this strength and flexibility to drive shareholder value. Our capital expenditures for the year total approximately $780 million, reflecting our investment in growth initiatives, including expansions in Aerospace and Mexico, and our digital and AI capabilities. 2025 will represent the high-water mark of these growth investments, and we expect to sequentially pace back to our historical levels of approximately 3% of sales by 2027.

Looking ahead, I'm encouraged by our organic growth momentum and what we will achieve in 2026. We anticipate that demand in Europe and global industrial end-use markets will remain challenged. However, despite the macroeconomic environment, we expect sales volume growth will be driven by Aerospace, Architectural Coatings in Mexico, and about $100 million of share gains in the Industrial Coatings segment that will be realized in 2026, including $50 million of carryover share gains announced last year. We expect overall price for the company to be positive, with strength from our Performance Coatings and Architectural Coatings segments, which will partially offset by modest contraction in the Industrial Coatings segment. This will result in organic sales growth in the range of flat to positive low single-digit percentage.

Raw material basket remains favorable to coatings producers, and we are consolidating our supplier base, which will help us offset the impacts of already enacted tariffs, resulting in expected overall flat raw material costs for the year. Finally, during 2026, we expect growing benefits from operational and excellence programs, reducing our costs by another $50 million. This, combined with the leverage from acceleration and volume growth, is expected to drive earnings per share growth that at the midpoint of our guidance represents a mid-single-digit percentage increase. We expect earnings per share to be flat to growth of low single-digit percentage during the first half of the year and increasing to high single-digit percentage in the second half of the year.

In closing, I'm excited about the increasing momentum we have demonstrating during the fourth quarter that allows us to start 2026 on strong footing. We are laser-focused on executing our enterprise growth strategy, which emphasizes high-margin business growth, strong cash flow generation, disciplined capital allocation, and operational excellence. Our portfolio pruning, completed in 2024, enables us to more effectively win with our customers and drive shareholder value. Additionally, we are investing in customer innovation, including digital and AI capabilities, to maintain our technology leadership in coatings, sealants, specialty materials, and productivity solutions for our customers. As always, we remain disciplined with our cash deployment to drive shareholder value. We're confident in our strategy and the strength of our business model to deliver sustainable long-term growth.

Thank you to our PPG team around the world who make it happen and deliver on our purpose every day. We appreciate your continued confidence in PPG. I look forward to discussing our results and outlook in more detail during today's call. Warren, please open the line for questions.

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Chris Parkinson with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Most of us would still call the macro, you know, muted or even meager, and yet your organic growth, you know, with maybe one exception, has been pretty solid across a lot of the kind of the substrates or the facets you've been focusing on the last few years. You know, could you just add a little bit of insight on what you saw in the fourth quarter and how you're thinking about, you know, everything in 2026 in terms of breaking that growth down? Was the macro actually slightly better than you anticipated? Is it all share gain? Is it new product introductions? If you could kind of just break that down and how, you know, that breakdown would actually lead you to think about your 2026 guidance, that'd be particularly helpful. Thank you.

Yeah. Hey, Chris. I guess the high-level answer, and I'll get into some details for you here. The high-level answer is, well, the macro is not better than we expected. And to your questions about, is our growth based on macro? Share gain or, or technology introductions, the answer is yes, yes, and yes. So the spaces where we're seeing macro help, you know, Aerospace, right? That continues to crush it for us. The sequential improvement in Mexico, that helps us. And, you know, I'd say still a pretty strong, robust PMC market. When you look across the rest of our businesses, and those businesses, if you think about Automotive OEM, you know, S&P has Q1 down. The rest of the year, call it flat-ish. But we're committed to outperforming that, and we will, we will, we will grow.

Packaging industry is very mixed bag, and we're crushing it there with multiple quarters of double-digit, and that's largely share gain. And I will tell you largely Europe, where we're doing quite well, quite well there. You know, if you look at the other businesses, architectural Europe, still flat-ish. Industrial or general industrial, which, as you know, is the catch-all, it's you know, some segments are up, some are down. Overall, I'd still call it pretty flat. So really, there's a few markets where we're getting macro help. Most of our businesses, we're getting share gain help. And to the technology question, a lot of the share that we're gaining in packaging is technology-driven.

A lot of the share that we're gaining in Refinish, even though the, you know, the destocking is covering this right now, a lot of the share gain is driven by the productivity tools that we launched. So it's really a combination of all three, but high level, I don't think anything has changed significantly with our view of the macro.

Your next question comes from the line of Aleksey Yefremov with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Good morning. Thanks for providing all the color on end markets. I was hoping you could just give us some details on total volumes and price for organic growth in 2026.

Sure. Let me do the easy one first, and that's pricing. You should expect to see a positive price in virtually all of the protective businesses... I'm sorry, performance businesses and the architectural businesses. You know, you heard me even our most challenged region for architectural in Europe, we've gotten price 39 straight quarters. I don't see us breaking that streak. And of course, our position, our strength in Mexico, we'll capture price there. So you'll see price there. Refinish, Aerospace, to a lesser degree, PMC. So those two segments will definitely have positive price. Now, in industrial segments, I would call it flat-ish, but we do have two slight negatives. We still do have a little bit of index pricing carryover.

Automotive, frankly, automotive in China, we see some low single-digit price declines, frankly, that are offset by lower raw materials than we expected in China. But all in, you'll see, you know, performance and architectural offset a little bit of decline in industrial. You know, volume-wise, we're on a pretty good trend. You'll continue to see volume growth in Aerospace, PMC, packaging, modest volume growth in architectural. You'll see volume growth in auto OEM. Frankly, you know, we've had two quarters in a row of beating market there, and we're optimistic about doing that throughout 2026. And that's driven by share gains.

Then, you know, as we move through the year, I think you'll start to see some more in general industrial, where some of the share gain wins that we've had will actually come to launch. So thank you for the question, Aleksey.

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners. Your line is open.

Yes, thank you, and good morning. Tim, it was nice to see you finish up the year at +3% on organic sales growth. If I look at the EBITDA line, though, it was relatively flat, and so I was wondering if you could walk us through your thoughts on operating leverage. It seems though, as though raw materials are pretty benign, and you've been, you know, taking costs out of the company as per your restructuring. And so, maybe why did EBITDA not grow more in the quarter? And more, more importantly, how do you see that trending as 2026 progresses?

Yeah. Hey, Kevin. There's several contributors, but the one that by far drives that math is the Refinish destocking. As you know, that Refinish is one of our higher-margin businesses. So when it's down, you've got destocking. I think we were down double digits in Q3, high single digits in Q4. That just... It overwhelms the positivity of the other businesses' organic growth, just given its margin profile. So what you should expect to see there, unfortunately, you'll see some of that in Q1 and Q2. I think you'll see it sequentially get better as the other businesses kick it in more.... and more pricing kicks in, more of our cost out and productivity kick in.

But really where you'll see that flip is once we get back to the normal buyer buying patterns, which will be the second half of the year.

Yeah, Kevin, let me. This is Vince. Just let me remind everybody, our segment earnings did grow in the fourth quarter, so they were up about $20 million year-over-year.

Your next question comes from the line of Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Thank you and good morning. I wanted to dig in a little bit more on Refinish. If I think of some of the metrics that have been discussed over the last couple of calls, I think third quarter claims were down mid-single digits, but Q2 claims are back down high singles. So you noted, Tim, that December was only down 2%. And I believe in the answer to Kevin's question, you're still anticipating, you know, the sort of second half recovery and normalization of customer shipments. So could you just help us tie all that together with sort of the latest update and what you're hearing from customers as well as and not just... And how you're interpreting all that claims data?

Yeah, thanks, Vincent. And if you don't mind, I'm gonna take a rather holistic answer here and try to answer all the Refinish questions here, because I want to make sure we leave time to get to everything in the portfolio here. So I'm gonna answer maybe your question and more when it comes to Refinish. So the headline I'd say is there's nothing, nothing that indicates a huge change for us versus what we told you at the end of Q3, relative to the industry and to our trajectory. However, we are seeing what I would call some reinforcing green shoots as we move through the quarter. Okay, so you know, we're still very confident in our best-in-class productivity solutions to grow share, and that's happening.

We have market share momentum, that's happening largely in the U.S., but also across Europe. It. You know, this is and will be a very good business for PPG as we work through this transitory kind of period, you know, just given the strength of our position versus others. I will also add that there is clearly industry anxiety out there, partly driven by the pressure that body shops have been on for the last 18 months, but also driven by consolidations, divestitures in this industry. And what all of those anxieties play to our strength, one, because the strength of our productivity offering, but second, because of the certainty of continuity that we provide.

Insurance rate spikes were really the key driver to this disproportionate drop in claims over the last year and a half or so, okay? And that led to multi- or leading to multi-quarter destocking in our channel. I mentioned last time how it ties to our rebate structure, et cetera. And we said at the last quarter, we expect normalization of buying patterns from our distributors in the second half of 2026. And normal, I'll remind everybody, would be kind of low double-digit claims down, and that's very good. Normal is very good for PPG because our track record for decades shows that at that kind of level, we can put up record after record because of the strength of our, of our offering.

Now, if you look at our guide, I'll remind you too, everybody, that we had a very strong first half of 2025, combined with a pretty weak second half of 2025. So when you combine that with what we're saying now, which is, okay, destocking for two quarters, sales volume and EBIT growth in Q3 and Q4, that really explains a lot of the, you know, the EPS difference between the first half of the year and the second half of the year. So that's kind of the fundamentals. Now, updates. Everything we're seeing and hearing from our customers since we last spoke is playing out as expected. Distributors are destocking as we expected. Body shops are starting to see the beginning signs of normalization as we expected, and thus we reinforced our guide today.

The few points of reinforcement and green shoots, because of two things, strength of our productivity offering and the anxieties in the marketplace that I mentioned, we're winning a lot of share. You saw one public announcement yesterday, but a lot of other ones happening that are not publicly announced and are more to come. Second, insurance premiums are normalizing. Okay, so kind of the catalyst for this whole cycle is beginning to normalize. We continue to reinforce the strength of our productivity offering. Two things we did just this quarter, we launched the next chapter of digital tools for the body shops, you know, beyond MoonWalk, beyond LINQ, beyond VisualizID. We launched a new digital tool called Mix'n'Shake, which drives further body shop productivity savings, and that's being well received.

We also launched our first AI-formulated product in Refinish to, again, to help body shops be more productive. So the industry is playing out as we expected. We're winning share with our solutions. It reinforces our guide to destocking in first half, normalized order patterns in the second half. Two other things that happened, notably in December. You did see the -2% claims, one data point. I get, I, I get that, but you got to start somewhere. So let's watch that closely, closely as we move through the first half of 2026. And we did start to see what we call fill-in orders from our distributors, okay?

So this multi-quarter destocking, you know, you can only destock so far before you've got to supply the body shops, and that's when you start seeing fill-in orders, and we did start to see those in December. So another reinforcing sign. So all that added up, we expect a muted first half for continued destocking. Second half, return to sales and EBIT growth for Refinish and a more normalized distributor buying pattern. So, you know, just one other thing, more for the segment and to speak to the strength of our portfolio. Despite a challenging back half of the year in one of our best margin businesses, you know, the Performance Coatings segment still put up a record sales year and record earnings year for the full year in 2025.

So the strength of our portfolio just just really comes through there when things like PMC, Aerospace, and Traffic can offset this transitory period of Refinish. So, hope I answered your question and more on Refinish. It's playing out as we expected, and obviously, more data points to come as we move through Q1 and Q2.

Your next question comes from the line of David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning. Tim, on Aerospace, can you tell us what the growth, the sales growth was in 2025? And are you at all capacity constrained in 2026 ahead of the new supply capacity coming on next year?

Yeah, we... Thanks, David. The growth rate for 2025 was double-digit. By the way, it was 20 double-digit in 2024 as well. So we expect continued growth. You're starting to lap double-digit on top of double-digit. Denominators are getting bigger. By the way, this business is almost the same size as Refinish now, so the denominator's getting bigger and bigger as you start lapping multiple double-digits. So we're guiding high single digits for, you know, 2026, I think, for Aerospace. We are capacity constrained, no doubt about it. But that's why our CapEx has been above our historical norm for the last couple of years. Round numbers, I approved about $120 million of CapEx last year that I would call incremental Aerospace, debottlenecking, CapEx, CapEx expansions.

We've also brought in a number of consultants to help us just with debottlenecking on the expense side, and that's why you see some of the margin challenges that I think Kevin asked about. And in addition to that 120 or so, we announced $380 million new factory. That'll take about two years to bring online for the sealants and coating side of the business, and we're working on some other capacity expansions. I can't get ahead of my board here, but you know, we're not done. This business will be growing likely for the rest of my career, and hopefully, that's longer than Mr. Morales' career here. But so we see that coming for as far as our forecasts go.

Your next question comes from the line of John Roberts with Mizuho. Your line is open.

Thanks, and congrats on a long career, Vince, and best wishes.

Could you talk a little bit more about the depth of the AI reformulation activity going on? You launched the first product in Refinish, and how broad is this across the industry? Does PPG have a differentiated position, or are the consultants sort of bringing AI to all the coatings companies?

Yeah. Hey, John. We're super excited about this. There are things in AI that consultants are bringing to everybody, and I would say that's more kind of back office, customer service, you know, the, you know, finance transaction processing. That, those are things that are kind of table stakes that everybody's doing. Formulation AI, this is internally developed, working with a few partners, but it's organically, internally developed, and we believe it's a differentiator. Now, I'm guessing our competitors are out there trying to work on it and catch up, but we, we, we believe we're definitely out front here. We've launched, commercialized a Refinish clear coat that optimizes performance of the end, end coating, as well as productivity in the body shop for our customers. We launched that. It was the first product fully developed using AI, but it's not based on anything public.

It's based on scraping all of our internal formulations that we've developed over 100 years and optimizing. So that is commercialized. Beyond that, we've launched another 50 products already, where they were existing products in the marketplace, that we've used AI to optimize, both from a product performance standpoint and a cost to PPG standpoint. 50 products already since we made that first announcement. Going forward, we'll continue to both optimize existing formulations, but we've got development projects like we did in our Refinish across virtually all of our businesses, so more to come there. And hope you, hope you hear a little kick in my step on this one, John, because I'm pretty, pretty excited, not only about where we are, but where we're going.

Hey, John, this is Vince. Let me add a little here. The precursor to this was really the scraping of the data that Tim described. So we were fortunate a couple of years ago. We digitized a lot of our data, so that we think that puts us in maybe the pole position, certainly in the front row in the industry, because that activity was very time-consuming, and we did it a couple of years ago. That allowed us to now take advantage of that digitized data.

Your next question comes from the line of John McNulty with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Yeah, thanks for taking my question. So Tim, over the last couple of years, you've dialed back investment in inorganic growth. You've really focused internally, and it seems like it's delivered. You've gotten share gains, you know, like you were saying, from technology, from service, the whole nine yards, and it seems like you're able to outpace your markets right now. I guess, as we look forward, just given the strength of the balance sheet, the strength of the cash flows, is that still pretty much the main focus, where, look, inorganic growth really isn't necessary for PPG going forward, and you keep focusing on the internal opportunities? Or have you played a lot of that out, and now that you're in a stronger position, do you start looking maybe a little bit more aggressively at acquisitions?

I guess, how should we be thinking about that?

So, hey, John, great question. So, they're both important to us. But the tip of the spear, as I always say, continues to be building this organic growth and margin engine because I believe in many, if not most of the cases, we can deliver better shareholder returns by making those investments in organic, organic growth, organic productivity, organic cost out, et cetera. Now, we still will do acquisitions, either bolt-ons or someday transformational. We still believe that the industry needs some consolidation, and we're supporters of that. We still believe there are acquisitions that will add value to PPG's customers and shareholders, that can be tuck-ins from a technology standpoint or reinforce our position somewhere. But I would say that it's organic first. We still look at every opportunity.

We put it through a filter of: Is it the right asset that's consistent with our enterprise growth strategy, where it gives us a strong number one or number two, or reinforces a strong number one or number two? Is it the right asset? Is it the right time, given everything else that we have going on, so that we can ensure that we can not fall back in the trap where we had this—we had built this excellent inorganic muscle, but not an excellent organic muscle. So is it the right time that we can still do, do both, if you will? And most importantly, is it the right price?

You know, especially given where our depressed or undervalued stock price is, when you do the mathematics and say, "Well, okay, it's organic first, then on some of these inorganics, man, I'm better off buying shares." So I wanna make sure everybody recognizes that all of those are on the table: organic investment, inorganic investment, share repos, but we run them through this filter to make sure that all of our decisions are maximizing shareholder value.

Your next question comes from the line of Matthew DeYoe with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Yeah. Good morning, everyone, and, you know, and also echo John's comments, Vince, and congrats on the, on the career and the retirement. I wanted to walk through some of the corporate cost inflation and bucket some of this stuff out across potential sources. I mean, you're not the only coatings company to talk about healthcare inflation, and I get that, but where is that coming in? And kind of related, does it make sense to align compensation fully to organic growth if there isn't commensurate EBITDA accretion? Because, you know, it's helping the top line, but it also seems to exacerbate the headwinds from some of the other unabsorbed fixed costs.

Yeah. Matt, I'll take this first, then, and I'll let my short-timer CFO here take it from there. The leading answer here is medical claims in Q4. Vince will explain it. We're a pay-as-you-go company. They exceeded our expectations. The second piece is incentive comp. Now, you gotta remember, some of that's a year-over-year comp issue, right? 'Cause we were drawn down our incentive comp accruals in Q4 of last year because of overall performance. And in this year, we were-- we had done the same, but then we came in stronger in Q4, much stronger in Q4, on two of our three metrics that guide our incentive payout, or short-term incentive payout. It's an important point, the short term versus long term. I'll get to that in a second.

So, our short-term incentives are based on three metrics: organic growth, EPS growth, and cash flow. So on two of those three. We finished better than expected, so that increases the payout. But, a lot of that all came in Q4, so we had to catch up for the full year, right? So when you compare that to last year's comp, it looks like a big number. I wanna reinforce, though, we are not overpaying ourselves or our team because the total payout is still less than target. Now, another point, to your point about, you know, kinda how do you balance all these different metrics?

If you look at the grand total compensation for our executives, including myself, you know, the TSR payout, which is an important cofactor if you look through our proxy, you know, that is not paying out. We have not performed there. The other one is on our restricted shares. You know, we did not meet our EPS growth for that, payout. So some of our longer-term, payouts for the year will be significantly below target, but, that kinda just explains how and why you see that delta in the Q4.

Yeah, Matt, I'll just add, good summary by Tim. The prior year, again, we lowered our Q4 incentive comp, as we ended the year lower than we expected. When we came into the Q4 this year, a strong fourth quarter organic growth exceeded a strong cash flow, especially the latter part of December in receivables, welcomed, and our cash from ops was $500 million higher than the prior year. As Tim mentioned, we did not hit our EPS target, so we are not getting the target payout for that. Flipping back to the medical, we are a company that's pay-as-you-go.

As I talk to my peers in the industry, we do see folks, we think, pulling some medical expenses into 2025, ahead of some potential inflation in 2026. So our medical costs, year-over-year were up significantly in Q4, and particularly in December. So hopefully that answers some of the, some of the questions you had on corporate expenses.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Sisson with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. A couple quick questions. Architectural EMI, you know, that's a business that has struggled to grow. I mean, end markets, I understand. But, you know, you know, why, why is that a good business for y'all to keep longer term? And maybe what's the growth algorithm there? And maybe similar on Industrial Coatings. Again, I understand end markets have been tough, but, you know, how do you see those two businesses grow longer term? And then, and just curious if Vince is gonna take the Browns coaching job, 'cause I don't think anybody else wants it.

Let me answer that question first, Mike. I think that's a hopeless job, so I'm trying to retire, not go into a hopeless job.

I think he's already declined it officially, too. So, Mike, the two answers to the two businesses you asked about are very different. One is an ongoing macro issue, and that's architectural Europe. The other one is really kind of a tariff and, you know, timestamped issue, and that's general industrial. But let me talk about architectural Europe. It's been a depressed volume market for years, as has much of the European economy. Two years ago, I guess three years ago now, in 2023, which was depressed, we generated record earnings and record cash that goes all the way back to 2008. So even in depressed markets, we can generate good earnings and good cash, and we don't spend that cash within the business.

We use that cash to supplement what we're trying to do in some of our higher growth businesses. What's happened these last couple of years is, you know, the volume decline has, has been, you know, pretty pronounced. At this point last year, one of the things we missed, frankly, was we were, we were projecting some upside in the market. We are not projecting upside in the market this year. We're saying flat, flat-ish for the whole year. But we're not waiting. We're not sitting around waiting for this macro to improve. It still makes good money for us, but with the actions we've started to take and will take throughout the year, we'll see margin expansion, cash generation expansion out of this business as we move through 2026.

So it's not, you know, it's not our best growth business, certainly, but it can deliver, has delivered good earnings, good cash in a challenging macro.

Yeah, before Tim goes on to industrial, Mike, I just wanna remind everybody that, you know, this is a maintenance cycle business. We did have significant growth during COVID, so 2020, 2021, so the maintenance cycle clock reset. Typically, this is a 5- to 6-year maintenance window, so we're now getting to that fifth year, where repaint typically would occur. So some of the volume declines the past couple of years really have been because we pulled forward maintenance into those, into those COVID years.

Yeah, in industrial, very different. It's a bit more cyclical than you know. Probably our most cyclical business is auto. Second most would probably be our general industrial, because you're essentially painting big hunks of metal that get moved around the world. And so with the tariff uncertainty and what that's done, the confidence of some of our customers, that's been dialed back, and then what that's done, consumer affordability, you know, so some of those folks are struggling. But we do see sequential improvement in this business. What's interesting is we see really good sequential improvement in places like Europe and Latin America, largely driven by share gain. We see sequential improvement in things like heavy-duty equipment, not ag-related, but construction-related.

We see some sequential improvements in transportation and powder and in a broad category of general finishes. But we still see challenges in the U.S. market, and we still see challenges in a small part of what we do in China is exported to the U.S., about 10% of what we do in China, and think electronics and, kitchen and bakeware, those kind of things remain, you know, depressed a bit. So the industrial story is more of a timing one, and we are starting to see green shoots, we are starting to win share, and we'll start to launch those share wins in-- as we move through 2026.

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Zekauskas with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Thanks very much. Your Performance Coatings revenue expectation for 2026 is flat to up low single digits, and in that segment, you've got Aerospace and you've got Auto Refinish. If Aerospace grows at a high single-digit rate, in order to meet that guidance, Refinish has to contract at a high single-digit rate or a mid- to high-single-digit rate? Is that the correct conclusion to draw? And for Vince, how many shares did you buy back this quarter, and what did you spend?

Hey, Jeff, I'll take the first one. I don't think we're seeing that much of a decline, more like low to mid, low to mid for Refinish in the first half. If you think sequentially, what did we see in Q3, Q4? We saw double digit, then we saw a high single digit. So I'd say you ought to say that slope continued towards normalization as we move through the quarter. You know, remember, I mean, Traffic's quite small there, but we also have a nice PMC business in there that's, well, that's not small, that'll contribute to some of the grand total of what we guided to for the year.

Yeah, Jeff, for us, from a share repurchase perspective, we bought just under 980,000 shares at an average price of about $102. And we spent, as we said in the press release, around $100 million in the fourth quarter.

Your next question comes from the line of Ghansham Panjabi with Robert W. Baird. Your line is open.

Thanks, operator. Good morning, everybody.

Vince, congrats from our team as well. Wish you the best in retirement. You know, I guess-

Yeah, I understand. Just an early congratulations.

On the raw material side, you know, as it relates to guidance, can you just give us a bit more color as to the constituents, as you think about, you know, some of the major ones, the TiO2, petros, et cetera. Looks like you've gotten flat for the year and also flat for the first quarter, but some of the spot markets were weaker into the fourth quarter of 2025. So just curious as to which categories may be inflating as well. Thanks.

Yeah. You know, so first, Ghansham, and a public service announcement for everybody. This is not Vince's last earnings call, and I don't want Vince to think it's his last earnings call. He's still got, he's still got six more months of work to do here. So, but thank you for the kind words, and we'll have lots of kind words as we get closer to his actual, actual date. But Ghansham, high level, it's still a very long, favorable to us, supply-demand balance. So across the board, that generally means good pricing for us. But what offsets that, a couple of things. I put them in three categories. Epoxies are up a bit because of tariffs, right?

And that's included in our guide, and you know that obviously affects more the industrial businesses, so it doesn't affect deco companies, 'cause most deco products do not have epoxy. So when you compare to what others might say, the epoxy is one. The second one is pigments, but let's not put TiO2 in that. I'd say more the specialty pigments. We are seeing some inflation there, driven by tariffs, 'cause those things come from all over the world, okay? And the other category that's up is metal packaging, and everybody knows what's happening on the, you know, aluminum and steel tariffs. Those are really the only categories that I can think of that are up in our guide. TiO2 is still pretty soft, just given the supply-demand. We've been doing some supplier consolidation.

We've been, you know, working volume commitment deals for pricing. So that one, that one is still pretty soft. You know what oil's doing, so that drives solvents to be. And then across the board, everything else is still in a very long situation. Add it all together, and we come up with flat, flat for Q1, flat for the year.

Yeah, and I'll just remind everybody what we said at the outset. You know, we do have targeted pricing that we institute either in the back half of 2025 or we'll institute in 2026, including in Q1. So we do expect higher pricing for 2026.

Your next question comes from the line of Josh Spector with UBS. Your line is open.

Yeah. Hi, good morning. I just wanted to ask on Mexico, I don't know if there's a way you can maybe index your volumes for where you are today in fourth quarter versus a year ago, 'cause obviously there's some easy comps in first half with all the Liberation Day disruptions. But it seems like the fourth quarter performance might say you're even above where you were coming into last year. So can you help us square that away a little bit? It'd be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, I'll let me give a high level, and then I'll let Vince give the details 'cause he's doing the math in his head here. So we definitely finished pretty strong in Mexico, and if you look kind of sequentially at how we moved through the year, we're down call mid-single digits in Q1, up low single digits Q2, up mid-single digits Q3, up high single digits Q4. Now, where that puts us relative to year-end 2024, I'll give that to Vince.

Yeah, Josh, if you look at the fourth quarter as a standalone basis, and again, there's two parts of our Mexican business. There's the retail or consumer segment. There's also the project segment. The retail segment has continued to grow. The project segment's the one that had contracted the most in the first half of the year. Fourth quarter over fourth quarter, just on the volume basis, we're right around mid-single digits higher. Again, some of that's recovery. And we expect again in the first quarter a good volume based on an easier comp.

Your next question comes from the line of Laurent Favre with BNP. Your line is open.

PPG Industries (PPG) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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