With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

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F500-2021-388-Westlake Chemical

The international company manufactures and supplies plastic and chemical products used in packaging, medical care, and sanitation, among other industries.

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F500-2020-391-Westlake-Chemical

Houston-based Westlake is a global manufacturer and supplier of petrochemicals, polymers, and fabricated building products.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

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This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Westlake is a global manufacturer of petrochemicals and products used in the housing and construction, packaging, and health care industries. It focuses on two main segments: performance and essential materials (PEM) and housing and infrastructure products (HIP). The PEM segment produces materials such as polyethylene, PVC, and epoxy resins, which are used in various industries including packaging, automotive, and construction. The HIP segment offers products like residential siding, trim, roofing, and PVC pipes, catering to housing and infrastructure markets.

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Westlake (WLK): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Westlake

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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Westlake Corporation fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, you will be invited to participate in a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this conference is being recorded today, February 24, 2026. I would now like to turn the call over to today's host, Jeff Holy, Westlake's Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Amber. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Westlake Corporation conference call to discuss our fourth quarter and full year results for 2025. I'm joined today by Albert Chao, our Executive Chairman, Jean-Marc Gilson, our President and CEO, Steve Bender, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and other members of our management team. During the call, we will refer to our two reporting segments, Housing and Infrastructure Products, which we refer to as HIP or Products, and Performance and Essential Materials, which we refer to as PEM or Materials. Today's conference call will begin with Jean-Marc, who will open with a few comments regarding Westlake's performance. Steve will then discuss our financial and operating results, after which Jean-Marc will add a few concluding comments, and we'll open the call up to questions.

During the fourth quarter of 2025, we wrote off inventory and accrued expenses totaling $495 million, related to the decision to shut one styrene and three chlorovinyl facilities in North America and our epoxy facility in Pernis, Netherlands, in PEM. We also recognized $16 million of accrued expenses within our HIP footprint optimization actions and the sale of a compounding business. We refer to these expense items, which in aggregate were $511 million, as the identified items in our earnings release and on this conference call. References to income from operations, EBITDA, net income, and earnings per share on this call exclude the financial impact of the identified items. As such, comments made on this call will be in regard to our underlying business results using non-GAAP financial measures.

A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures is provided in our earnings release, which is available in the investor relations section of our website. Today, management is going to discuss certain topics that will contain forward-looking information that is based on management's beliefs, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to management. These forward-looking statements suggest predictions or expectations and thus are subject to risks or uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in Westlake's SEC filings. We encourage you to learn more about these factors by reviewing these SEC filings, which are also available on our investor relations website. This morning, Westlake issued a press release with details of our fourth quarter and full year results. This document is available in the press release section of our website at westlake.com.

We have also included an earnings presentation, which can be found in the investor relations section on our website. A replay of today's call will be available beginning today, two hours following the conclusion of this call. This replay may be accessed via Westlake's website. Please note that information reported on this call speaks only as of today, February twenty-fourth, 2026, and therefore you are advised that time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the time of any replay. Finally, I would advise you that this conference call is being broadcast live through an internet webcast system that can be accessed on our webpage at westlake.com. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Jean-Marc Gilson. Jean-Marc?

Thank you, Jeff. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2025 results. Our fourth quarter EBITDA of $196 million is net of $511 million of identified items that reflect our announced plan to restructure the businesses and reset our cost position to address the persistent macroeconomic challenges and volatility in trade policies we are experiencing. Despite continued industry pressures, we have taken decisive action to strengthen our global manufacturing footprint, and we continue to deliver on our commercial commitments while executing our three-pillar strategy, which we expect to contribute $600 million of growth earnings improvement in 2026, while maintaining a focus on our long-term strategy of value creation.

Westlake's cost-saving measures gained significant traction across every business in 2025, we delivered over $170 million of structural cost reductions. Looking at our fourth quarter results, HIP performed well while experiencing the typical seasonal decline in sales volume and earnings and the added impact of lower construction activity in the fourth quarter. The year-over-year decline in sales reflected lower new housing construction activity in North America. That decline was partially offset by solid municipal pipe sales volumes as we benefited from the growth in infrastructure spending in cities across North America. Turning to PEM, the fourth quarter was a continuation of the trends that we witnessed throughout 2025, with results reflecting a decline in volume and price, with margin compressions across our product portfolio as we serve the stable global industrial and manufacturing base.

As we discussed in December, global overcapacity in certain products created downward pressure on the sales price for many of PEM's products, leading to a sharp decline in PEM's profitability compared to historical levels. These pricing pressures continued in the fourth quarter, with a further 5% decline in PEM's average sales prices compared to the third quarter of 2025. Our three-pillar strategy, which I outlined in December, is expected to contribute a $600 million improvement in earnings in 2026. Let me summarize each of these pillars, as significant steps have already been taken to drive this earnings performance strategy forward. First, we have taken decisive actions to close higher cost PEM assets that largely sold products into low-priced export markets.

We closed an epoxy manufacturing site in Pernis, the Netherlands, a non-integrated PVC plant in China, three North American chlorovinyl assets, a styrene asset, and three HIP fabrication sites. These actions contributed to a 6% reduction in our head count and an even more significant reduction in our contractor workforce in 2025. Having now shuttered all of these assets, we expect to see an improvement in earnings of $200 million in 2026 from footprint optimization. Second, we have redoubled our efforts to address reliability in plant operation. Thus, we expect to deliver a $200 million year-over-year EBITDA improvement from better plant reliability in 2026. Third, building on the successful structural cost reduction efforts achieved in 2025, we have implemented an additional structural company-wide cost reduction program that we expect will deliver $200 million in 2026.

These decisive steps and the commitment to deliver improved financial performance through these self-help actions will deliver better utilized assets and an improved cost structure to compete in a global marketplace. I would like now to turn our call over to Steve to provide more detail on our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025. Before I do that, I would like to make an additional comment. As you may have seen in the 8-K we issued yesterday, our colleague and long-serving Chief Financial Officer, Steve Bender, has informed us that he plans to retire later this year, once his replacement has been appointed and appropriate transition has occurred. We are tremendously grateful for the countless contributions that Steve has made to the company over the years.

He joined Westlake in 2005, not long after the company's 2004 initial public offering, and he has been instrumental to the significant growth in the company that the company enjoyed since then. Steve will be with me on several more earnings call in 2026. This is not yet a goodbye. Nonetheless, we wanted to take this moment to express our gratitude to Steve. Now, let's turn to the fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results. Steve?

Thank you, Jean-Marc, for those comments. Thank you very much, good morning, everyone. As a reminder, my comments regarding income from operations, EBITDA, net income, and earnings per share all exclude the financial impact of the identified items. Westlake reported a net loss of $33 million or a loss of $0.25 per share in the fourth quarter on sales of $2.5 billion. The net loss in the fourth quarter of 2025 was $5 million lower than the third quarter of 2025, primarily due to lower average sales prices and lower sales volumes. For the fourth quarter of 2025, our utilization of the FIFO method of accounting resulted in an unfavorable pre-tax impact of $2 million, compared to what earnings would have been if we reported on the LIFO method.

This is only an estimate and has not been audited. We delivered an additional $60 million of cost reductions in the fourth quarter, thereby achieving the $170 million of total cost reductions in 2025 and accomplishing our 2025 target of structural cost reductions. For the full year of 2025, we reported a net loss of $116 million and EBITDA of $1.1 billion. Compared to our 2024 results, 2025 sales of $11.2 billion declined 8%. The lower full year of 2025 sales were the result of a 5% decline in sales volume, driven primarily by PVC resin and epoxy resin, and a 3% decline in average sales price, driven primarily by pipe and fittings and PVC resin.

Before I discuss the details of our segment results, I want to provide some high-level thoughts on the quarter and the year as a whole. Our HIP segment performed very well, and we were very pleased with the stability and resiliency of the portfolio businesses that we've assembled. At the same time, as we discussed in December, our PEM segment was impacted by global overcapacity, particularly in polyethylene and the core vinyls chain, that drove lower average sales, prices, and margins. As Jeanmark discussed, throughout 2025, we took the necessary actions to adjust to the changing global balance of supply and demand and to position our PEM segment for improved profitability in 2026 and beyond. Moving to the specifics of our segment performance, HIP sales in the fourth quarter declined 8% year-over-year, driven by a decrease in sales volumes.

The sales volume decline was mostly driven by PVC compounds and exterior building products, which were most exposed to lower residential construction activity and was only partially offset by the continued solid sales volume in pipe and fittings. HIP's EBITDA margin of 16% in the fourth quarter of 2025 was below the prior year period due to unfavorable changes in sales mix and some higher costs. Shifting focus to HIP's full year 2025 results, EBITDA of $839 million and EBITDA margin of 20% were in line with our guidance and expectations.

While HIP's 2025 sales and EBITDA were below the prior year, we're pleased with its ability to manage the slower new residential construction environment better than the overall industry, due to its broad geographical footprint and deep product offering that make it a supplier of choice for many large national home builders. HIP's resilient sales and EBITDA in 2025, also supported by strong customer adoption of our innovative PVC-O pipe, as well as continued solid demand growth for municipal pipe in general. Moving to PEM segment, fourth quarter EBITDA of $45 million decreased by $45 million from the third quarter of 2025.

The sequential decrease in EBITDA was the result of 5% lower average sales price, driven primarily by polyethylene and PVC resin, and a 2% lower sales volume due to seasonal customer inventory destocking, which was partially offset by a $27 million benefit from annuitizing certain pension obligations, among other small one-time items. PEM's fourth quarter EBITDA margin of 3% declined from 5% in the third quarter of 2025, driven by lower average sales price, which was partially offset by a $26 million benefit from sequential lower planned turnarounds and unplanned outages. Shifting focus to PEM's full year 2025 results, EBITDA of $267 million was lower than 2024 due to higher feedstock and energy cost, and an elevated level of planned and unplanned outages and lower global sales price.

Weak global industrial and manufacturing activity, combined with overseas capacity additions, created global overcapacity in certain materials in 2025. This global overcapacity drove lower average sales prices and margins in PEM, particularly for polyethylene and chlor-alkali and core vinyls. In response, we made the necessary decision in December to close three of our non-integrated and higher-cost North American core vinyl assets that sold into low-priced export markets. As we discussed in December, we expect these actions to provide an annual EBITDA benefit for PEM of approximately $100 million, starting in 2026, by reducing our exposure to the low-priced export market. Turning to the balance sheet and cash flows. As of December 31st, 2025, cash and securities were $2.9 billion, and total debt was $5.6 billion. Our balance sheet continues to be well-positioned with a 16-year average debt maturity life.

For the fourth quarter of 2025, net cash provided by operating activities was $225 million, while capital expenditures were $241 million. For the full year of 2025, we returned $335 million to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. We continue to look for opportunities to strategically deploy our balance sheet in order to continue to create long-term value for our shareholders. Turning our attention to 2026, let me address some of your modeling questions and provide some guidance for the year ahead. Our three-pillared strategy, which was outlined in December, is expected to contribute $600 million of improvement in earnings in 2026. Through these self-help structural actions, we are better positioned to serve our valued customers and navigate the current macro environment.

We have revamped our operating model and now have better-utilized assets and a lower cost structure to compete in the global marketplace with improved financial performance. Turning to our guidance for HIP, housing and industry consultants and a consensus of economists forecast that housing starts to range between 1.3 million and 1.4 million in 2026, and for home affordability, based on lower interest rates, to improve. We expect HIP to benefit in 2026 from the recent acquisition of ACI, with a now expanded compound product offering and strong customer relationships. The strong 2026 structural savings that we've initiated and the benefits from plan optimization actions taken in 2025.

Thus, based on our current view of demand and prices, we expect 2026 revenue in our HIP segment to be between $4.4 billion and $4.6 billion, with an EBITDA margin of 19%-21%. For 2026, we expect a $100 million year-over-year reduction in our capital expenditures to approximately $900 million, similar to our depreciation run rate. For the full year of 2026, we expect our effective tax rate to be approximately 17%. We also expect cash interest expense to be approximately $215 million. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Jean-Marc to provide the current outlook of our business. Jean-Marc?

Thank you, Steve. 2026 represents an inflection point. Following the actions we have taken to optimize our manufacturing footprint, streamline our cost position, and operate our assets to serve our customers. We have positioned Westlake for a stronger, more resilient, and profitable future as we navigate the challenging macroenvironment with our three-pillar action plan, together with our long-term strategy and our investment discipline. Turning to our outlook for demand, we expect a rebound from the seasonal lows of the fourth quarter. We are also seeing signs of improvement in global industrial and manufacturing activity to start the year. The January U.S. ISM reading of 53 was the first month in expansionary territory in a year, and the average 30-year mortgage rate sits at 6.2% today, down from 7% a year ago, which improves the affordability of new houses.

Overall, some signs of improvement in the markets, which has us cautiously optimistic that we will see sales volume growth in each of our segments in 2026. Sustainability and environmental stewardship remain critical to our mission at Westlake. Having established a target to reduce our carbon emissions intensity by 20% by the year 2030. I'm happy to report that in November, we released our 2024 sustainability report, which showed that we achieved our emissions reduction goal six years early. Before I open the call to your questions, I want to close by highlighting Westlake's foundational strengths, which continue to serve us well. These strengths include: a diversified and complementary portfolio of businesses, our vertically integrated business model, our globally advantaged feedstock and energy position in the U.S., and our investment-grade rated balance sheet with $2.9 billion of cash and securities.

We have streamlined our operating model and have reset our cost structure. As we navigate the cycle in PEM, we have a more competitive business that is positioned to grow more efficiently with our customers. The expected steady improvement in housing construction will provide HIP the ability to continue to capitalize on its very broad and deep product offering to grow our business and to create value for our shareholders. We remain focused on execution, cost discipline, and value-driven growth. Thank you very much for listening to our earnings call. I will now turn the call over to Jeff.

Thank you, Jean-Marc. Before we begin taking questions, I'd like to remind listeners that our earnings presentation, which provides additional clarity into our results, is available on our website, and a replay of this teleconference will be available 2 hours after the call has ended. We'll provide that information again at the end of the call. Amber, we will now take questions.

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from David Begleiter of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning. Jean-Marc and Steve, can you go back to the PEM business in Q4 and break down the beat versus what you announced back in mid-December of roughly $90 million? Thank you.

Yeah. David, thank you very much for the question. As you could see, when we compare the results in PEM quarter-over-quarter, we did identify specifically some annuitization of some pension benefits. You can see that we also shuttered some of these assets in the fourth quarter. The three core vinyl plants had actually been down during the entire fourth quarter. The losses that we saw accruing during that period no longer were accruing. When I think about this, we had a volume reduction of only about 2% and a price reduction really in PVC and in polyethylene.

The beat was really attributable to beginning to take the proactive steps in our three-pillar initiative by removing the losses that we saw accruing from those sales in that low-priced market and begin to take some of those cost reduction initiatives at the tail end of 2025.

Very clear. Just on polyethylene in February, what are your expectations around your announced price increases and potential realization? Thank you.

Well, as we think about 2026, you know, we have seen some improvement in demand and some improvement in price action, but remember, we also had some adjustments at the end of the year of 2025. The announced increase in polyethylene price that we saw in January of about $0.05 really begins to offset some of the non-market adjustment, which is a market adjustment at the end of last year. We've made further announcements in price actions for February. We'll see how February plays through, but we have another price announcement also on the table for February.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Patrick Cunningham of Citi. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. I'm curious on your outlook for chlorovinyls and PVC chain in 2026. It seems, you know, maybe cautiously optimistic, you know, with some demand pull-through into the HIP business, but, you know, still dealing with some structural supply issues. How would you frame the supply and demand outlook and the sort of direction for price and margin in 2026?

Well, I think, Patrick, as you look at the price action that we've seen so far is indicative of some restocking that's going on. I would say that we remain cautiously optimistic. We've seen some, as I mentioned, some price action, you know, in PVC res, and we've seen some improvement in price, but we're still not fully recovered from the end-of-the-year price adjustments that we saw in PVC. We've seen an announcement also in February. And we've also noticed that inventory is, as I say, a restocking by some of our, some of our customers. I'd say we're still very cautious in terms of how we look out through the year, because I don't have that long-term availability of visibility.

I can only see out several months, but I think the early signs that we see in pricing initiatives in PVC and in caustic signal that we see some improvement in restocking, but it's hard to know whether this will play through the entire quarter, and for that matter, the entire year. You know, we've also seen. I'd also note that with the actions that we've seen in terms of a export market, export market prices have started to trend higher, and I think attributable to some of the reduction of duty drawback that certain markets like China are providing. It's going to affect in April, but the actions taken already suggest that prices have moved up in export market pricing.

Understood. Very helpful. Maybe just some clarification on the HIP guidance. I'm assuming that includes three-quarters of ACI. You have a slightly lower margin guide. Is the bulk of that coming from the dilutive margin impact there, or are there any other mixed impacts we should be monitoring?

No, it's really not an impact of ACI. We closed that in January. I do expect that it'll be a contributor all year long. I would say, Patrick, it's really looking at the numbers that we've guided to 1.3 million-1.4 million starts in 2026, similar to 2025, and just recognizing that as we work through the starts numbers this year, that product mix can have an impact on the overall margin that we see in the HIP business. We still remain, to say, cautiously optimistic about the contributions that HIP will make this year in 2026.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Duffy Fischer of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Yeah, good morning, guys. First question.

-just on the $600 million of cost help this year? How does that play through the year? If you could kind of walk quarter by quarter, how do we add up to that $600 for the year?

Good question, Duffy. As we've taken the actions in 25, some of these savings that we achieved in 25 were attributable to the actions that we took in 25, and those will continue to play through for the year through 2026. Those actions that we've taken cover things such as logistics, procurement, a variety of other initiatives to really drive reductions in cost, which we think will be structural in nature. We think that as we think about the ratable benefit that we expect to see, we do expect to see that ratable benefit of cost reductions to play through the year.

Of course, we've shuttered those assets at the end of the year for that second pillar. Certainly those operations are down, no longer exposed as heavily we were to that low-priced export market. I do expect those also to be coming through the course of 2026. The third pillar is reliability, and of course, we have to earn that each and every day. We're very confident we've made significant investments in our plants, significant training of our people. 2024 and 2025 were years of very elevated levels of planned turnarounds, and therefore, associated with some of those planned turnarounds were the unplanned outages as we brought those plants up or attempted to. 2026 will be a year with far fewer planned turnarounds. We do have a high expectation that we'll be able to deliver on that third pillar of reliability.

Fair enough. At the midpoint of your HIP guidance, you're basically $60 million better on EBITDA than you were last year. Again, how does that portend for kind of each quarter? Are there still some quarters where you may be down year-over-year, even if you hit the midpoint, or maybe first half, second half, just to kind of help us get the shape for the HIP earnings this year?

Duffy, good question. The 4th quarter and the 1st quarter of each year tend to be, excuse me, tend to be weaker quarters just seasonally. I mean, those who are in the Midwest or Northeast have seen the heavy snowfall in the winter season play through. As we think about it slows down demand and the construction activity. The 4th quarter and the 1st quarter of each year tend to be a slower period of activity, but nevertheless, Q2 and Q3 tend to be much stronger. That same cycle that we see play through in 25 should be similar in terms of the shape of the curve, if you think about it, in 2026.

We do expect, you know, again, a cautiously optimistic outlook for HIP, and the guidance we have for starts is similar to those in 2025.

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

Yeah, good morning. I wanted to just ask on HIP, where you guys continue to talk about, I think, relatively strong growth in the infrastructure segment around pipe and fittings. The infrastructure sub-segment sales are actually down more than the housing product segment, both year-on-year and sequentially. Does that mean that the composites business is down much more, or what am I missing between that more positive commentary and the segment results?

Good question, the answer is that a lot of that municipal pipe actually goes into neighborhoods and subdivisions, which actually are not in that subsegment. There are sales not only to cities and counties and states, but also into major developers who may be developing those neighborhoods and those subdivisions with infrastructure, pipe and fittings. It's really a mix between those two subsegments within the HIP segment. We are seeing really continued strong growth in the volume in that side of the business. When I think of and speak to municipal pipe, it isn't always necessarily in the infrastructure subsegment, 'cause some of that is in the housing subsegment related to nationwide builders who are building out infrastructure in their neighborhoods and subdivisions.

Okay, thanks. No, that's helpful. Maybe actually a similar point to what Duffy was asking. If I look at the cost savings, is any of that being attributed to HIP? If EBITDA's up $60 million at the midpoint, you're doing an acquisition, is the organic up? Is there cost savings? Is there something else we're missing in the moving parts there?

Yeah, you know, as we think about the pillar that we talked about of cost reduction, yes, the HIP side of the business does have a meaningful contribution in that cost savings initiative. As we look forward, they and all the other functions are also contributing. There is a meaningful contribution, in that pillar, that HIP is making. I do expect them to continue to make those contributions in 2026.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Frank Mitsch of Fermium Research. Your line is open.

Thank you, and let me echo Jean-Marc's appreciation for your job, Steve. It's been a pleasure working with you. Of course, we'll work with you, I guess, on another one or two calls. Steve, in 2025, Westlake registered negative free cash flow. I was wondering what your expectations are in terms of free cash flow for 2026.

Yeah, good question, Frank. Our objective really is to generate, you know, strong results to drive, you know, strong cash flows. You know, as you can see, a lot of the self-help that we have with these three-pillars is really focused, and the predominance really is on the PEM side of the business. You can see that our capital expenditure plan for 2026 is also $100 million lower than we had in 2025. Our real focus is really to drive free cash flow for the entire business as we go forward. While we have no real visibility beyond the next several months from our order book, I would say our real objective really is to drive real cost savings, improvement and reliability, and really make this business really a cash flow positive generating business.

As you know, we don't give necessarily direct guidance on a lot of those metrics, but that is clearly our objective.

Okay, terrific. I was wondering if you guys could opine on the news the other day. You know, following the Supreme Court decision on tariffs, the administration came out and said it was looking at it, putting emergency tariffs on several items, including plastic pipes. I'm curious if you could offer some comments there as to the necessity there and what expectations you might have in terms of tariff benefits, et cetera.

Yeah, Frank, good question again. I would say that our materials are all subject to the USMCA rules, guidelines. Therefore, the impact to tariffs has really been de minimis, really immaterial.

Okay, great. The fact that they called out plastic pipes-

... you know, among, I think, six or seven items. Is there something going on there where the domestic plastic pipe industry needs tariff protection?

Frank, I would say that what we've seen is saw throughout the course of 2025, and frankly, in the previous administration, that the current administration has really used the USMCA treaty as a way to make sure that those items that were embodied in that treaty are not hit with additional tariffs. That is our expectation.

Thank you. Our next question is from John Roberts of Mizuho. Your line is open.

Thanks as well, Steve, and also welcome Bob Patel to the board. OxyChem is a large competitor. Do you see any changes in how they compete after the change in ownership a couple months ago?

Okay, your competitor cited weakness in domestic merchant chlorine. Did you see that weakness as well, and what's the near-term outlook for domestic merchant chlorine?

Yeah, as you know, we're a much smaller producer of domestic chlorine now with some of the actions, that we've taken in December. As we think about it, you know, our view is that the weakness in chlorine is driven. Excuse me. The weakness in chlorine we've seen is really attributable to some of the weakness that we've seen really in some of the vinyl side of the business. Of course, in the first quarter and the fourth quarter of the year, we also have a reduction in demand for water treatment and some of the precursors going into refrigerants. All of those speak to kind of the lesser pull on chlorine, whether it is construction materials, water treatment, or precursors to refrigerants.

It doesn't surprise that there is a slowdown in demand in fourth quarter and first quarter for those kind of materials.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jeffrey Zekauskas of JP Morgan. Your line is now open.

Thanks very much. You talked about $600 million in benefits from plant reliability and cost reduction, footprint changes. I was wondering, what's the EBITDA base that these benefits should come from? Last year, your EBITDA was $1,140. You know, should a rational agent add $600 million to the $1,140 and get, I don't know, $1,740? Because business deteriorated through the course of 2025, the EBITDA base is lower than the $600 million in costs should be added to? Could you give us an idea of how to put the two numbers together?

Yeah, Jeff, as you think about it, the actions that we've taken, in December, impacted four of the North American plants, and frankly, the full shuttering of the Pernis facility wasn't completed until really very tail end of 2025. When you think about the contributions of that first pillar of site optimization, we really get that full benefit starting in 2026. In terms of the cost initiatives, yes, we achieved $170 million of cost reductions that were structural in nature, but the guidance we've continued to provide for to 2026 is an additional $200 million on top of those achieved in 2025.

Of course, the reliability issues, as I mentioned earlier, again, 2025 was an incredibly busy year of planned outages and a number of unplanned outages around those outages as well. Given that our plan for 2026 is far fewer planned turnaround activity or maintenance activities, I do expect that we'll see those benefits accrue in this year as well. Back to your question, I think that you could think of a starting point when we took those actions at the plants as a way to build that, build that math.

Okay. When you think about your opportunities in PVC volume in 2026, do you think you'll grow more in the export market or more in the domestic market? Do you think the growth rates will be comparable? How do you assess the volume opportunities in PVC for 2026?

Jeff, when you think about the vinyl demand that we see, it's really going into largely building products of one sort or the other, whether it is in pipe, fitting, siding, trim, and/or other applications. That's more than 50, closer to 65% of the overall vinyl resin demand. As you can see, our outlook for HIP is reflective really of a year of construction activities similar to 2025. We've seen a really thin level of inventories being carried by our customers all throughout 2025 because prices continued to trend lower. The restocking that we've seen in the first part of this year is reflective of some of the demand pull that we've seen in a rebuilding of those inventories. We've been able to nominate prices in vinyl.

As we look forward, we are again, cautiously optimistic as we see the demand pull on PVC resin going in the construction materials and some of the other compounded materials that we sell through our compounds businesses.

Can you comment on the opportunities in PEM and PVC?

Yeah. In PEM, I, again, you know, we're selling a significant portion of our resin into our own HIP segment. Certainly, I think given our lower cost structure that we've achieved through these rationalization actions that we've taken in the plants, through our cost reductions, we think we have a much better cost structure, and certainly be looking to initiate sales initiatives with many of those customers going forward domestically. Given the fact that we've pulled back from exports through those actions that we took in December, I do expect our exposure to export volumes will be greatly diminished.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Hassan Ahmed of Alembic Global Advisors. Your line is open.

Morning, Steve and Jean-Marc. Steve, you know, I know a bit premature, but great working with you over the years and wishing you all the best, for your retirement.

Now, a quick question around. I know a lot was discussed around HIP segments, EBITDA guidance, but just wanted to switch over to the sales guidance. I know you guys, you know, are talking about a return to sort of more normalized, longer term, sort of sales growth in 2026 or 5%-7%. Even though, you know, if I heard you correctly, you're assuming similar housing starts in 2026 to 2025. You know, sort of, flipping through the presentation, it seems a chunk of that growth you're expecting coming from the ACI acquisition as well as product innovations. I'm just trying to understand the significance of, you know, both those innovations as well as the ACI contribution to that growth.

I do expect that ACI will be a very nice contributor. It brings a broader portfolio offering, rather than just adding to our existing PVC portfolio that we had. Brings an expanded portfolio in silicone and cross-linked polyethylene. It'll be a nice contributor. I would also say the innovations that we've seen in products such as our PVC-O plant, which will be starting up at the end of this year, such as other product innovations in our Westlake Royal exterior businesses, we think will continue to be a nice driver in not only the revenue growth, but also margin growth. This product innovation is certainly a huge element within the HIP side of the business, and it continues to have us be selected as supplier of choice by many of the nationwide builders.

That innovation remains very much key and central to the growth as we see in HIP, so that the long-term guidance that you highlighted is very much as we see it, still on track.

Understood. Very helpful. As a follow-up, I know, you know, you guys have been busy sort of optimizing the footprint and the like, and obviously $200 million of incremental EBITDA coming from that. If we step back a second and, you know, you guys take a look at the broader portfolio, I mean, obviously, you know, you're getting deeper and deeper into building products. As you take a look at the ethylene, polyethylene side, you know, it seems, you know, fairly oversupplied. You know, if rationalization doesn't happen, it'll remain that way for a while. I'm just trying to understand, you know, from a portfolio perspective, do you guys still see, you know, a role for that part of the portfolio? Would you potentially consider divesting that at some stage?

Again, our focus, as you know as well, is to really be focused on value creation. As I think about opportunity sets in both the PEM side and the HIP side, the answer is, where we see the strength really continuing to play through and the fact that we've continued to underbuild in North America, we think that the opportunities to deploy capital on the HIP side of the business probably have the nearest term return potential. That does not mean that we would not invest in a valued opportunity on the PEM side of the business. It really is just where is the best investment opportunity for that dollar, be it in HIP or in PEM. Our focus remains very much value-oriented in driving really long-term value creation.

If that takes us into PEM or into HIP, and we see that opportunity, that's where the funds will be deployed. Given where we are in the various business cycles, I would say the predominance of the opportunities near term would probably be in HIP. That doesn't mean there couldn't be some opportunities on the PEM side. In other words, we continue to watch both.

Our next question comes from Aleksey Yefremov of KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Thanks. Good morning, guys. This is Ryan on for Alexi. I just wanted to ask the first question. In the deck, you mentioned competitive market pressures in pipe and fittings. I was just curious if maybe you could provide maybe some more color there. You know, how much was pricing down for pipe and fittings versus the broader HIP segment with flat pricing year-on-year?

Yeah. As we think about, you know, the pipes and fittings business, it remains a really, a very good business. Certainly with some of the slowdown in construction activity, we've continued to make inroads from a volume perspective. Naturally, with some of the pressures on affordability and some of the slowdown in construction activity, there is gonna have to be some pressure on pricing... We do believe that we're at a point where we are, our product innovation, and I've mentioned PBCO earlier. Our product innovation, we think, allows us to really continue to penetrate that market with innovative products, which bring really solid margins to the business.

While there's always the ebb and flow in each region across the country in terms of volume and pricing, so it's hard to give you a direct pricing number because it varies by region across the country. I would say that the innovative products that we're bringing forth, specifically in our Pipe and fittings business, continue to drive really long-term good value there. I just want to remind you that we're really the only player in the U.S. markets that provides both the integrated solution of fittings and pipe, and I would add engineering. We're able to sit down with a customer and say, "We can engineer the project for you. We can deliver the pipe and deliver the fittings." There is an integrated value of providing the service as well as the products to provide an integrated solution to a customer.

I would say that we continue to see real good innovation in that business, and I expect to see future PBCO plants continuing to be built and grow that market space.

Westlake (WLK) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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