Ashland (ASH) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Motley Fool Transcribing, The Motley Fool

Tue, February 3, 2026 astatine 10:44 AM CST 57 min read

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Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026 astatine 9 a.m. ET

• Chairman and Chief Executive Officer — Guillermo Novo

• Chief Financial Officer — William Whitaker

• Senior Vice President, Life Sciences — Alessandra Assis

• Senior Vice President, Personal Care & Household — James Minicucci

• Vice President, Specialty Additives — Dago Caceres

• VP and General Manager, Intermediates — Sandy Klugman

Guillermo Novo: Thanks, Sandy, and invited to everyone joining us. For today, I'm blessed to articulation this telephone from Shanghai, China. I statesman with our archetypal 4th highlights and however we are advancing our strategical priorities. Later successful the call, I'll instrumentality to stock immoderate of the latest innovation developments wherever we proceed to spot tremendous momentum and opportunities for differentiation. William volition reappraisal our fiscal results, operational execution, and outlook. Our concern portion leaders volition supply further penetration into show crossed their segments and markets. Please crook to Slide 5. Let's statesman with a reappraisal of the cardinal concern drivers for the archetypal quarter.

We delivered coagulated results portion navigating ongoing request softness successful coatings and constructions, supported by beardown execution and disciplined outgo actions. Life Science delivered steadfast maturation supported by resilient pharma request and momentum crossed our Innovate and Globalize pillars. Injectables, tablet coatings, and high-value cellulosic excipients each contributed to year-over-year growth. Innovation continued to fortify performance, with contributions from debased nitride cellulosics, precocious purity excipients, and respective caller merchandise introductions. Personal Care delivered unchangeable show with underlying request broadly steady. Biofunctional actives grew treble digits, and microbial extortion continued to summation stock arsenic our Globalize initiatives supported high-value applications. Softer volumes successful halfway hairsbreadth and tegument attraction chiefly reflected unplanned and isolated lawsuit works outages, facing muted demand.

Specialty Additives continued to with coatings and operation driving astir of the year-over-year decline. Coatings weakness was astir pronounced successful China and prime export markets, portion operation softness reflected broader marketplace conditions. Despite little volumes, outgo actions and HCC web benefits drove meaningful borderline expansion.

Sandy Klugman: Intermediate marketplace conditions were modestly softer, reflecting trough-like dynamics crossed BDO and its derivatives, which pressured captive BDO transportation pricing. The merchant concern was unchangeable with dependable measurement and humble pricing unit resulting successful level sales. Operationally, the squad continued to negociate done instrumentality replacement successful Calvert City portion delivering coagulated escaped currency flow. Although this contented impacted costs and pressured margins crossed the BPD chain, lawsuit proviso remained uninterrupted. The interaction we expected to beryllium contained wrong the archetypal 4th volition present widen into the 2nd quarter, arsenic commissioning of the caller portion revealed further instrumentality issues that are delaying the start-up. We expect completing indispensable fixes and bringing the portion online aboriginal successful the quarter.