Avient Q2 2025 Earnings Report

Avient EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.80
• Consensus EPS: $0.78
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.02
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.76

Avient Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $866.50 million
• Expected Revenue: $852.98 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$13.52 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +1.90%

Avient Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q2 2025
• Date: 8/1/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Friday, August 1, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 8:00AM ET

Avient (NYSE:AVNT) operates as a formulator of material solutions in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, South America, and Asia. It operates in two segments, Color, Additives and Inks; and Specialty Engineered Materials. The Color, Additives and Inks segment offers custom color and additive concentrates in solid and liquid form for thermoplastics, dispersions for thermosets, and specialty inks; custom-formulated liquid system, such as polyester, vinyl, natural rubber and latex, polyurethane, and silicone; and proprietary inks. Its products are used in medical and pharmaceutical devices, food packaging, personal care and cosmetics, transportation, building products, wire and cable, recreational and athletic apparel, construction and filtration, outdoor furniture, healthcare, textiles and appliances, and industrial markets. The Specialty Engineered Materials segment provides specialty polymer formulations, services, and solutions for designers, assemblers, and processors of thermoplastic materials. It sells its products through direct sales personnel, distributors, and commissioned sales agents. The company was formerly known as PolyOne Corporation and changed its name to Avient Corporation in June 2020. Avient Corporation was founded in 1885 and is headquartered in Avon Lake, Ohio.

Avient Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Q2 organic sales grew 0.6%, adjusted EPS increased 5% to $0.80, and adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 30bps to 17.2%, with defense and healthcare demand offsetting consumer weakness.
• Positive Sentiment: Operational playbook now targets $40 million in full-year savings—up $10 million—driven by sourcing, Lean Six Sigma, plant productivity, footprint optimization and discretionary spending control.
• Neutral Sentiment: Direct tariff impacts remain minimal as Avient sources and manufactures locally, leverages formulation expertise for material substitutions and applies targeted pricing actions.
• Positive Sentiment: Innovation momentum continued with the fifth straight quarter of organic growth, a 50% jump in patent filings year-over-year and launches of new products in foaming agents, healthcare tubing and advanced flame retardants.
• Positive Sentiment: Avient generated strong cash flow, repaid $50 million of debt in Q2, and remains on track to cut debt by $100–200 million, with projected free cash flow of $190–210 million and approximately $110 million in CapEx.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Avient Corporation's webcast to discuss the company's second quarter twenty twenty five results. My name is Latisse and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. We will have a question and answer session following the company's prepared remarks. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes.

[Operator]

I would now like to turn the call over to Joe DeSalvo, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Giuseppe Di Salvo, VP of Investor Relations & Treasurer at Avient]

Thank you, and good morning to everyone joining us on the call today. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that statements made during this webcast may be considered forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward looking statements will give current expectations or forecasts of future events and are not guarantees of future performance. They are based on management's expectations and involve a number of business risks and uncertainties, any of which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by the forward looking statements. We encourage you to review our most recent reports, including our 10 Q or any applicable amendments for a complete discussion of these factors or other risks that may affect our future results.

[Giuseppe Di Salvo, VP of Investor Relations & Treasurer at Avient]

During the discussion today, the company will use both GAAP and non GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the presentation posted on the Investor Relations section of the Aviant website where the company describes the non GAAP measures and provides a reconciliation to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. A replay of the call will be available on our website. Information to access the replay is listed in today's press release, which is available at avient.com in the Investor Relations section. Joining me today is our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Doctor.

[Giuseppe Di Salvo, VP of Investor Relations & Treasurer at Avient]

Ashish Kanpur and Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Jamie Beggs. I will now hand the call over to Ashish to begin.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

Thank you, Joe, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to report second quarter organic sales growth of 0.6% in an uncertain macro environment, where customers in most markets and regions are waiting for clarity on trade policy. Strong operational performance and cost controls help adjusted EPS to grow 5% to zero eight zero dollars slightly ahead of our guidance of $0.79 We also expanded margins on the bottom line with adjusted EBITDA of 17.2%. This 30 basis points of margin expansion was driven by favorable mix, productivity initiatives and disciplined discretionary spending, all things we continue to control tightly. As we enter the 2025, market trends are not necessarily improving and uncertainty still remains around trade policy.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

Q3 is expected to be a continuation of Q2 in this regard. Our customers remain in a wait and see mode, with consumer markets in particular showing weakness across the globe. Thus far, we have been able to more than offset consumer weakness by strong demand in defense and healthcare, which remain as bright spots for our business. Overall, for the first half of the year, organic sales grew about 1%, and we expect a similar demand environment for the second half of the year. We had shared our operational playbook for the current low demand, high uncertainty environment on our last earnings call.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

As a result of our actions from this playbook, we are well underway to realize approximately $40,000,000 of benefits in 2025 versus last year. That is an increase of $10,000,000 from our original estimate of $30,000,000 that we communicated last quarter. These benefits come from a combination of sourcing, Lean Six Sigma, plant productivity initiatives, optimization of our manufacturing footprint, and discretionary spending control. We have already realized $17,000,000 of benefits in the 2025. The remaining $23,000,000 will be realized in the second half, primarily from additional sourcing initiatives and further reductions in discretionary spending.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

These efforts more than offset both inflation, primarily from wages, and our investments in growth vectors that are critical for advancing our strategy. With respect to tariffs, any direct impact remains largely mitigated and consistent with what we discussed last quarter. We primarily source raw materials and manufacture our products locally in the regions that we serve. Direct P and L impacts to date have been minimal, because we can optimize our raw material purchases across regions, use our formulation expertise to identify material substitutions, and where appropriate, proactively implement pricing actions. As we are on our journey to evolve Avian from a specialty formulator to an innovator of material solutions, I would like to highlight progress we continue to make along the way.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

The second quarter results marked the fifth consecutive quarter of organic growth for us. For the 2025, we have grown sales and adjusted EPS by one point two percent and four percent respectively, excluding the impact of foreign exchange. As a reminder, we grew 4% organically in fiscal year twenty twenty four. On the bottom line, so far in the first half this year, we have already expanded adjusted EBITDA margins by 20 basis points. We expect incremental year over year margin expansion in the second half and full year adjusted EBITDA margins should expand in excess of 30 basis points.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

And this would be following 20 basis points of margin expansion we realized in 2024. Our strong cash position and consistent ability to generate cash through an uncertain macroeconomic backdrop, allowed us to pay down $50,000,000 of debt during the quarter. We are on track with the plan we communicated last quarter to reduce debt in total by 100,000,000 to $200,000,000 by year end. We are deleveraging the balance sheet, while making investments in our businesses based on our prioritized portfolio, growth vector selections, and our strategic initiatives. As you may recall, we made strategic structural changes to our R and D organization to A, share and transplant technologies from one business to another, and B, to hybridize multiple technologies from the same or different businesses to create differentiated products and solutions for our customers.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

Although early, we seem to be getting good traction on these fronts, which is helping us innovate more purposefully and differently than in the past. Patent filings increased by 50% in 2024 versus 2023. And in 2025, we are on pace to exceed year over year patent filings again. We are also collaborating on new launches with our customers, offering them unique and differentiated products. Some examples include, our low temperature chemical foaming agents for composite decking and flexible film packaging applications, where we use a proprietary blend to optimize the reaction point of the foaming activity with the melting point of the plastic resin.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

This results in consistent high quality lightweight materials with improved product performance that help our customers reduce their materials and energy usage, while making their operations more productive. Another example from our engineered materials portfolio is our ability to create inherently lubricious characteristics in healthcare materials that promote patient comfort. Our patented technology delivers lower friction and enhanced processability in polyurethane tubing, which is expected to have utility in a wide range of important healthcare applications, including catheters, peristaltic pumps, CPAP machines, and potential extensions to biopharmaceutical manufacturing. A final example is our patent pending advanced flame retardant materials for enhanced fire safety. Here, we leverage our glass fiber and resin capability to create an inherent inorganic flame barrier when exposed to high temperatures greater than 400 degrees Celsius.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

This product line was launched earlier this year at the International Builders' Show, initially serving the building and construction and transportation markets with potential future expansion to other high value applications in different markets. Before I hand it over to Jamie to discuss the details of the quarter's results and our updated guidance for the year, I wanted to provide a special thank you to our global teams. They continue to persist and execute well, with eyes and focus on delivering both short term quarterly results, while doing the things to build for the mid and long term future that will make our businesses and capabilities stronger and more relevant to the changing world. And in turn, we will be able to grow both our top line and bottom line in a sustainable manner.

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

Thank you, Ashish, and good morning, everyone. Executing our strategy and playbook for the current environment enabled Avient's success this quarter to deliver both sales and adjusted EPS growth, while expanding our EBITDA margin. Looking at the Color Additives and Inks segment, adjusted EBITDA grew 4% on 2% lower organic sales. Weaker demand in consumer, transportation, building and construction markets more than offset strong growth in healthcare. Sales for Packaging Materials, the segment's largest end market, were muted as growth in The U.

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

S. And Canada, Asia, and Latin America regions were offset by lower demand in EMEA. Despite lower sales, the segment expanded EBITDA margins 100 basis points through favorable mix and cost improvement initiatives. This included ongoing plant footprint optimization and streamlining the segment's organizational structure to better serve our customers. Our Specialty Engineered Materials segment grew organic sales 6%, driven by strong growth in Defense and Healthcare.

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

Healthcare grew double digits with continued demand in our medical device equipment and supplies portfolios. Defense returned to double digit growth after the tough first quarter year over year comparison. In fact, our defense sales were a quarterly record, supported by the recent new product innovations that we highlighted in our February earnings call. SEM's EBITDA was down slightly versus prior year, primarily due to planned maintenance in our Aviant Protective Materials business. The maintenance will primarily impact the second quarter and we anticipate the SEM segment to deliver margin expansion in the second half of the year.

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

Looking at regional performance, I'll start with The U. S. And Canada, where sales increased 1% year over year. This growth was led by Healthcare, where we continue to win in medical devices and drug delivery applications, as well as strength in defense. This growth more than offset the impact of weaker demand in consumer, transportation, and building and construction markets.

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

In EMEA, sales were down slightly versus the prior year. While Healthcare and Defense sales were robust, Packaging sales, the region's largest end market, accounting for 26% of the EMEA sales, did not experience the typical second quarter seasonal benefit. Asia delivered 3% organic growth, the fifth straight quarter of growth in the region. Strength was across most end markets, notably healthcare and transportation. Latin America grew 6%, marking its sixth consecutive quarter of growth, which is also notable considering it's lapping a comparison where the region grew 19% in the second quarter last year.

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

This consistent performance is attributable to our local team who is winning new business and gaining share with global OEMs in the packaging application space. Turning to our guidance for the remainder of the year, we are nearing our range. The new range reflects the mixed demand conditions we experienced through the first half of the year, as well as anticipated demand levels for the second half. Beginning with Q3, we expect third quarter adjusted EPS of $0.70 which represents 8% growth over the prior year quarter. The earnings growth will be driven largely by higher margins from favorable mix and productivity initiatives.

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

For the full year, we are nearing the range for adjusted EBITDA to $545,000,000 to $560,000,000 and adjusted EPS to $2.77 to $2.87 This considers our positive performance to date and productivity gains that will have a larger benefit in the second half of the year. This also assumes a year over year tailwind from foreign currencies of approximately $2,000,000 in the second half, which compares to a 2,000,000 headwind in the first half of the year. From a demand perspective, the low end of the range assumes a low single digit revenue decline year over year in the second half. The high end of the range assumes low single digit growth in the second half. As Ashish mentioned earlier, we remain on track to reduce debt in total by $100,000,000 to $200,000,000 this year, having already repaid $50,000,000 in the second quarter.

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

We still expect CapEx for the year of approximately $110,000,000 and free cash flow to range from 190,000,000 to $210,000,000 With that, Ashish and I will be happy to take any of your questions. Operator, please begin the Q and A session.

[Operator]

As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press 11 on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, please press 11 again. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please stand by while we compile the Q and A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Frank Mitsch of Fermion Research. Please go ahead, Frank.

[Aziza Gazieva, Vice President at Fermium Research]

Hi, guys. Good morning. This is Iza on for Frank. My first question was around the tariffs. Do you guys see any pre buying activity, pulling some of sales from 2Q from 3Q into 2Q?

[Aziza Gazieva, Vice President at Fermium Research]

And just how are you guys thinking about pre buying in general?

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

Yes, Azita, this is Ashish. We don't believe we have seen any pre buying in our business. You know, coming out of COVID, customers have gotten very smart with respect to managing their inventory tightly, especially in uncertain demand environments, and that's exactly what we are seeing now as well. Going forward, we expect the same. We have very little visibility to our sales because our orders because our customers expect fast turnaround and as they're managing the inventory very tightly.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

We are still looking at twenty to thirty days of order visibility. But based on what we can tell from everything, the order book and the trends that we have seen in Q3 so far as well, we don't see any pre buying kind of activity going on.

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

Aziza, maybe to add on, the majority of what we do is for local production region, so we think our exposure in that regard would also be more limited than maybe others in the space.

[Aziza Gazieva, Vice President at Fermium Research]

Got it. You for that. Jamie, I'm sorry if I missed it when you were talking about the outlook, but could you guys elaborate on what you guys are thinking on raws for the year? I know we were thinking maybe for the year 1% to 2% raw material inflation. Is there any update on that view?

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

Yeah, that view is basically the same. We expect one to 2% inflation in the raw material basket. We have seen hydrocarbons come down slightly, but we also seen some increases in pigments and flame retardants. And as a reminder, 35% of our raw material basket is from hydrocarbon. So, while we get a little bit of benefit, we have to make sure that the rest of the baskets not also increasing.

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

So, no substantial change from what we provided in the last quarter update.

[Aziza Gazieva, Vice President at Fermium Research]

Great. Thank you, guys.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

Thank you.

[Operator]

You. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Sison of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, Michael.

[Michael Sison, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

Hey, guys. Nice quarter. For for the second half, just wanted to to to get a better feel of what your outlook for volume is. A lot of companies have, sort of guided to a little bit of a difficult second half. Customers are destocking in some cases.

[Michael Sison, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

So I know you have a lot of good new product programs and such. So just any thoughts on how your volumes should look in the second half would be great.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

Yeah, maybe, Mike, I'll take the opportunity to give a little bit more color across the markets and try to answer your question also in the process. So, you know, if you think about our big two consumer and packaging, you know, that's about 40% of our portfolio. You know, H1, are like consumer is down 4%, packaging is up 3%. And we expect that to be, you know, in second half, kind of continuation of that scenario so that the ending point is, you know, minus 2% to minus 3% for consumer and plus 2% to plus 3% for packaging. So we think those two things offset each other more or less, given packaging is a slightly bigger business for us.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

Then the growth drivers for us are, you know, healthcare, defense, and telecommunications. And those, you know, in the first half of the year, defense is up 5%, healthcare is up 14%, and telecommunications is up 7%. And if you look at what we're expecting in H2, we kind of expect, you know, high single digits to double digit growth in those three segments, in those three markets as well. So we plan to finish that 20% of the portfolio in that high single digits to double digit range. And then the remaining four markets, which is industrial, transportation, building and construction, and energy, are in that minus one, zero plus one kind of range, and they kind of offset each other.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

We expect a flattish finish on that side. So overall, I think, you know, you think about it, what's driving our telegraphed growth in second half, which is what we said in our call is similar to our first half, the three healthcare, defense and telecommunication markets, growing at high single digits to double digits. From a volume perspective, specifically, I think we are expecting better volume in second half of the year, especially for the SEM business. Color will be probably more similar to the first half of the year. But on the SEM side, we expect, you know, even in second quarter, SEM had positive volume, plus positive price mix.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

And I think that trend gets stronger as we move into the second half of the year.

[Michael Sison, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

Got it. And then as a quick follow-up, I mean, your portfolio is certainly looking more stable than others. I think your outlook for EBITDA is still up year over year where several are going to be down quite a bit. When you think about demand getting better, if ever, let's hope it gets better. What type of leverage do you think you'll get off that volume and EBITDA growth longer term?

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

So, obviously, demand is going to help us a lot. As you see right now, a lot of our EBITDA increase in our projections is driven also by productivity, which will continue to be part of the playbook going forward. If you think about our productivity of $40,000,000 that's about 1.2% of sales. So that's something that we should expect year after year from a company like ours. And so on the organic side, as our portfolio is changing to a better mix, because of our growth vectors, which are more profitable, I expect that a higher leverage to the EBITDA margins is going to come down.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

So over time, as the volume grows, we expect the mix to get better and our EBITDA margins to get better from that as well.

[Michael Sison, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

Great, thank you.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

Thank you, Mike.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ghansham Panjabi of Baird. Please go ahead, Ghansham.

[Ghansham Panjabi, Senior Research Analyst at Baird]

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everybody. I guess just building on the last question on the consumer weakness, can you just give us a sense as to how that has evolved as the years unfolded? You know, from a high level standpoint, have the number of categories you sell into broaden as it relates to the weakness, or is it a shift geographically or a combination of the two?

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

Yeah, so Ghansham, I mean, a macro level for AVN, consumer was flat in first quarter, and it is down 8% in second quarter. And if you look at it specifically consumer as a market, United States, Canada is our biggest consumer market, which was down double digits in both Q1 and Q2. So that's what's driving the consumer results. But essentially, we are seeing weakening on consumer, because in first quarter, was positive in remaining geographies except United States and Canada. But in this quarter, you know, apart from Latin America, we are seeing weakness in consumer in all other three geographies.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

So consumer is certainly getting worse from our customers, talking to our customers, and we are seeing that in our numbers. And that's how we have projected in the second half of the year as well. We expect consumer to stay negative year over year. And that's built into our numbers.

[Ghansham Panjabi, Senior Research Analyst at Baird]

Okay, thanks for that. And then I'm sorry if I missed this, but did you quantify the impact of the maintenance on 2Q on an EBITDA basis for the SEM segment? And then just separately, on the debt pay down target of $100 to $200,000,000 why is that range so wide in context of your free cash flow generation for the year net of the dividend?

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

Hi, Ghansham. So, from a planned maintenance perspective for APM, the impact within the quarter is around $3,000,000. And like Ashish mentioned earlier, we expect that to basically just impact Q2 and margins will continue to expand when we get to the back half of the year for SEM. Regarding the debt pay down, I think it's just us being a little bit conservative of ensuring that the macro environment plays out like we want to. And so, our goal is to definitely continue to pay down debt in the back half of the year, but we're also gonna be cautious with our balance sheet and just ensure that that cash does come in.

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

We're confident in that. That's why we made the pay down in the second quarter of $50,000,000 and expect more to come as we get to the back half.

[Ghansham Panjabi, Senior Research Analyst at Baird]

Okay, very helpful, Jamie. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kristen Owen of Oppenheimer and Company. Please go ahead, Kristen.

[Kristen Owen, Executive Director & Senior Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Hi, good morning. Thank you for the question. So wanted to follow-up on the tariffs, but maybe from a slightly different angle. I understand that your tariff exposure is relatively limited. But with the uncertainty only increasing, I'm wondering if you're seeing pressure from your customers to help absorb more of their tariff costs.

[Kristen Owen, Executive Director & Senior Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

I know Avient has been good at historically pricing for value, but I'm just wondering if that's becoming any more difficult in this environment.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

So maybe I can take a stab at it, then Jamie, if you want to add something. Essentially, if you think about our RM bucket, so overall, yes, the answer is yes. We are seeing pressure on the pricing to lower pricing because of these increased tariffs coming. And we are doing everything from working with our suppliers and for our customers to either qualify new materials or alternatives or try to bring down the cost somehow. In some cases, we are not able to do that.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

If you look at from an RM basket perspective, know, the commodity polymers, the polyethylene and polypropylene raw material side, we are not seeing much price increases on that front. Actually, there's excess capacity, so we are seeing a slight positive favorable price piece on that part. The piece where we are seeing more pressure is on the pigment side, as well as certain performance materials, both of which are about 15% each of our portfolio of our RM purchases. And there we are seeing, you know, low to mid single digit kind of price increases. In case of specifically flame retardants, which is a very specific material that goes into our wire and cable business, but other pieces as well, we are seeing significant increases because of supply constraints.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

And there, we are not able to offset that, those price increases working with our suppliers, and so we are passing that on to our customers. And there the price increase we are talking about is almost more than three times versus last year and more than six times versus the year prior. And that's purely driven because that material largely comes out of China and there's a tight supply situation there. So in most cases, we are trying to work very closely with our suppliers and customers to keep the pricing same. We are, however, not able to take care of everything, you know, by doing the substitutions.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

And in cases where we are not able to do that, we are able to pass on the price to our customers.

[Kristen Owen, Executive Director & Senior Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

That's really helpful. Thank you for that. And then this is for Jamie. It's a little bit in the weeds, but just following up on the balance sheet piece of this. You guys took out a new revolver in the quarter.

[Kristen Owen, Executive Director & Senior Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

And my impression when that came out was that, that revolver was perhaps a little bit misunderstood by the market, what the function of that was. Can you just provide a little bit of background on that instrument? What that does for your balance sheet? Thank you.

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

Yeah. Thanks, Kristin, for the question. So, basically converted our asset based loan to a cash flow revolver. And part of that was just an evolution of our debt profile. When we had our distribution business, we had a lot more, I would say, receivables and inventory to be able to secure the asset based loan.

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

And with that divestiture, it actually took down the total capacity that was available. So, in order to ensure that we had, I would say, adequate liquidity, cash flow revolver was a better option for us. And so, in essence, it actually did increase our available liquidity, which was to the same amount that the asset based loan would have been with the distribution business being in the business. So, the cost between those facilities are roughly the same. It was just a measure to ensure that we had the liquidity that's commiserate with the size and the exposure that Avian has.

[Kristen Owen, Executive Director & Senior Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Harrison of Seaport Research Partners. Your line is open, Mike.

[Mike Harrison, MD & Senior Chemicals Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

Hi, good morning. Ashish, I was wondering if we could dig in a little bit on the healthcare portion of your business. Maybe can you give us some color on what portions of that market you're seeing the best growth? And I'm also curious, you noted some new product introductions. How long does it take to qualify new materials in healthcare as opposed to maybe some of the less regulated markets that you serve?

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

Yeah, so thank you for the question, Mike. Several things. Overall trend for healthcare has been quite positive. For us last year, we grew 11%. Healthcare year over year, constant, all my numbers are constant dollars.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

So and then Q1, we grew 11% and Q2, we are at 17%. Yeah, 17%. So pretty strong trend in healthcare, we are seeing growth both in our SEM side of business, as well as the Color side of business in healthcare. If you think about it from a portfolio perspective, 80% of our portfolio in healthcare is in three specific markets, which are, you know, medical equipment or medical devices. So these could be things like continuous glucose monitoring kind of devices, CPAP machines or things like that.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

And the other two are medical supplies, so these would be catheters and tubings, for example. And then the third part is drug delivery, so these could be injector pens and inhalers, those kinds of things. So these three things constitute about 80% of our healthcare portfolio, and we have grown 20% plus in each three of these categories in Q2. So pretty strong momentum, And it's all connected to the macro trends you are seeing with respect to obesity drugs and continuous glucose monitoring kind of situation. So we feel like we're in good shape there.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

These are spec bin products. So we have good visibility, and the demand continues to be strong in these areas. With respect to specifically, obviously a lot of stuff in healthcare, since they're FDA regulated products, go through a longer cycle time on regulatory side and qualification. And so our teams have been working, in some cases, as much as for the last five, six years, to it's a continuous process, and we are always working with our customers on the next cycle of things that they are going to be launching, so that there's a pipeline that is in the process and going on. So that's how we manage this long cycle time or long regulatory qualification part of healthcare.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

But, you know, with respect to other materials in non healthcare, you know, qualification could be as short as a few months, but in regulatory cases, could be two to six years even.

[Mike Harrison, MD & Senior Chemicals Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

All right, very helpful. And then on your guidance slide here, noted one of your potential decelerators is a slowing in Asia led by China. Can you talk about the trends that you're seeing in key markets in China right now? I guess, what are some of the signals that you're watching for that may indicate a need for caution in the second half?

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

Yeah, I think there's two pieces. I mean, the color business in China is the one under a little bit pressure. And there's a, as you might have heard a little bit what's going on in China is the government is trying to get more optimized with respect to capacity. So the people are not cutting each other and creating unnecessary deflation in material. So the China government has come up with this thing called supplier structural reform policy that they're enforcing, and which is leading to consolidation of, for example, automotive EVs, which are excessive people making them in cars, making in China and things like that.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

And same things on the capacity side on raw materials as well. So this government policy is leading to tightening of credit, as well as number of days of payments that are required for people to pay their suppliers in China. And that is leading to a lot of businesses kind of either getting consolidated or shut down. And that obviously has an impact on business. So we have to watch that closely, what impact does it have as it is evolving through the economy.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

So I think that part of the business, we continue to monitor. We predict that in Q3 as well, we will continue to see those pressures in China. But offsetting that is some good stuff going on on the SEM side, where we are seeing a lot more growth happening on the high performance computing with all this artificial intelligence and things going on. And we are trying to gain more share in that part of the market so that we can offset any you know, downside on the color side from the SEM side in the high performance computing market.

[Mike Harrison, MD & Senior Chemicals Analyst at Seaport Research Partners]

All right, thank you very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Lawrence Alexander of Jefferies. Please go ahead, Lawrence.

[Laurence Alexander, Equity Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

Hey, guys. Just a question about some of what you talked about in health care and just the new products in general. I was wondering with those longer lead time products, if they have higher incremental margins or if margins in general incremental margins for newer products are substantially higher than the older ones? Is it like 40% versus 30%? Or just how it kind of plays out?

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

Yeah, Lawrence, I think the answer is yes. And that's one of the main reasons why when we presented our strategy at the Investor Day, we identified healthcare as one of our growth vectors, you know, specifically the drug delivery part and also the medical part, the core part of it. And obviously, it's sticky business. Once you get specified, you know, you kind of keep the business as long as that version of that device or that material is there. It's a business that is also, if you maintain good quality and good service to the customer, apart from the regulatory approval, it's a competitive advantage for us because we do that very well in Avient.

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

And then overall margins perspective, it is very accretive to our business and that's also very nice for us.

[Laurence Alexander, Equity Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

Have you ever quantified what the difference is for new products? I mean, is it 10% higher or 10,000 basis points higher? Or how should we think about it just in terms of modeling as new products become more prevalent?

[Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman at Avient]

Yes. I mean, I think overall, our intention of developing new products is to have margin accretive products. So I won't talk percentages here, but that's exactly how we are going to improve our margins, both by innovation and then also charging, you know, the value that we create for the customer through margin expansion. So for me, I mean, I think that's the primary reason why we feel apart from that and operational leverage, why we think our margins will continue to expand.

[Laurence Alexander, Equity Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

All right, thank you very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Vincent Andrews of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, Vincent.

[Turner Hinrichs, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Hi, this is Turner Henrichs on for Vincent. I was wondering if you could provide a little bit more context for durability of some of the growth vectors between healthcare, defense and telecom? For instance, like are there some like reasons to believe that the healthcare outgrowth, which has been really fantastic as you all described, is going to continue over the near to medium term? Or like how can you provide some context so that we can get a better handle on the go forward outlook for these growth drivers?

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

Hi, Turner. As we look at the underlying applications that we sell into healthcare, those things would be, for instance, respiratory care, glucose monitoring devices, drug delivery, labware, catheters, syringes, and so on. All of those particular sub markets within there do provide, I would say, a long term growth potential. So, while I can't promise it will be growing double digits every single year, this has been a good growth opportunity based on of the innovative platforms that Ashish mentioned earlier. We do feel that there is a strong growth potential that will continue into the foreseeable future.

[Turner Hinrichs, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Great. Great to hear. One other one unrelated. So margins are down roughly two twenty bps year over year in SEM. If I remove the $3,000,000 of maintenance that you all mentioned in the second quarter.

[Turner Hinrichs, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Can you provide a little bit more color on either mix or spreads in that segment or like what's driving just the margin reduction like on a normalized basis, just so we can get a better sense for where margin should be in the second half in particular?

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

Yes. From a margin perspective, the majority of the decrease on a year over year basis is because of the planned maintenance. We also had some higher cost inventory that flew through that also compressed margins to some degree. As we look into the back half of the year, we do expect margin expansion. In fact, look as forward, it would be likely to be closer to 100 basis points on a year over year basis, and when we get to the second half of the year.

[Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO at Avient]

Obviously, for the full year, that may be tamped down because of the Q2 plan maintenance, but we do expect that to, like I said, continue to expand because we don't have these one timers that happened in Q2.

[Turner Hinrichs, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Great. Thanks so much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude AVN Corporation's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Giuseppe Di Salvo, VP of Investor Relations & Treasurer
• Ashish Khandpur, President, CEO & Chairman
• Jamie Beggs, SVP & CFO

Analysts

• Aziza Gazieva, Vice President at Fermium Research
• Michael Sison, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities
• Ghansham Panjabi, Senior Research Analyst at Baird
• Kristen Owen, Executive Director & Senior Analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.
• Mike Harrison, MD & Senior Chemicals Analyst at Seaport Research Partners
• Laurence Alexander, Equity Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group
• Turner Hinrichs, Analyst at Morgan Stanley