Dow (DOW) Q3 2026 earnings call transcript

Good morning. Thank you for joining today. The accompanying slides are provided through this webcast and posted on our website. I'm Andrew Riker, Dow's Investor Relations Vice President. Leading today's call are Karen S. Carter, Chief Executive Officer, and Jeff Tate, Chief Financial Officer. Please note our comments contain forward-looking statements and are subject to the related cautionary statement contained in the earnings news release and slides. Please refer to our public filings for further information about principal risk and uncertainties. unless otherwise specified all financials where applicable exclude significant items. We will also refer to non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure and other associated disclosures are contained in the earnings news release that is posted on our website.

On slide two is our agenda for today. Karen and Jeff will begin with a review of our third quarter performance and the progress we're making through our self-help actions. We'll cover the near-term operating environment and fourth quarter outlook, as well as details about how our priorities are building a more competitive DAO. Throughout the discussion, you'll hear a consistent theme. We're acting decisively on levers we control to strengthen earnings, cash generation, and long-term value creation. And as always, we'll ensure ample time near the end for your questions.

With that, let me turn it over to Karen, starting on slide three.

Thank you, Andrew. Our solid third-quarter performance reflects the discipline and focus of Team DAO as we build a stronger company while navigating a dynamic market environment. We continue to partner with customers in attractive growth markets while also improving productivity and strengthening cash generation. And our collective self-help measures, which include the completion of our $1 billion 2025 cost savings program, the beginning of our previously announced European asset shutdowns, and our transformation, are all delivering tangible results. In the third quarter, that execution translated into meaningful progress and strong performance in many areas of our portfolio.

Net sales were up 13% year over year with growth in every operating segment. Operating EBITDA was more than $1.5 billion as pricing actions and self-help measures more than offset higher raw material and logistics costs to drive year over year growth. Together, our actions and the results they are delivering help reinforce Dow's earnings power. They strengthen our financial position while also enabling us to build a more competitive company for the long term.

Transform to Outperform continues to deliver benefits ahead of our initial schedule. And we remain on track to achieve approximately $700 million in growth and productivity improvements this year. We also completed significant planned maintenance during the third quarter, which will support stronger production and earnings performance heading into the fourth quarter and beyond. And we are optimizing our working capital and actively prioritizing debt reduction with excess cash. This reinforces our continued focus on financial discipline and operational execution.

Next, turning to the portfolio, let me highlight the greatest areas of strength. First, in the packaging and specialty plastics segment, we're maintaining higher pricing for polyethylene and functional polymers in all regions, and we delivered sequential volume gains. In the industrial intermediates and infrastructure segment, increased demand for energy applications and AI infrastructure is supporting improved pricing and margins. And we are seeing growth in the performance materials and coding segment driven by consumer electronics and home care applications. This quarter, we also saw volume gains in Europe, as well as in Latin America and the United States and Canada, all while the macro conditions remained dynamic.

Moving forward, our focus remains on improving shareholder returns through self-help actions, better cash generation, and a stronger balance sheet. With that, Jeff will share a more granular look at the quarter and our near-term outlook.

Thank you, Karen. Starting with our packaging and specialty plastic segment on slide four, net sales were $5.8 billion of 18% versus the year ago period. Operating EBIT was approximately $585 million, which represents an increase of more than $385 million compared with the same period last year. This was primarily driven by higher polyethylene prices, improved integrated margins, and benefits from our self-help initiatives. The packaging and specialty plastics business delivered higher net sales driven by polyethylene and functional polymer price gains in all regions.

Polyethylene prices rebounded in the second half of the quarter, supported by elevated fee stock costs. And demand remained resilient, as evidenced by year-over-year volume growth, excluding supply constraints related to the Middle East conflict. Polyethylene volumes were notably strong in pipe applications. led by gains in infrastructure-related applications in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India. Higher net sales in the hydrocarbons and energy business were driven by increased pricing. We also saw increased olefins volumes after restarting our lowest-cost, most flexible cracker, interneusin, following an idling due to planned maintenance. As a result of having this asset back online, we delivered record LPG consumption in Europe in the third quarter, capitalizing on fee stock dynamics.

Next, I'll turn to slide five, which outlines the strong year-over-year earnings improvement in our industrial, intermediates, and infrastructure segment. Net sales were $3.1 billion of 8% versus the year ago period, driven by a 16% increase in local price. This reflects gains across both businesses and all regions. Operating EBIT improved to $176 million, reflecting an increase of $223 million versus the same quarter last year. This was driven by higher margins and benefits from our self-help initiatives.

Polyurethanes and construction chemicals recorded higher sales, driven by stronger pricing in MDI and propylene oxide derivatives across Europe and the United States and Canada, reflecting constrained supply dynamics in the period. Additionally, volume and EBITDA growth in industrial solutions was fueled by robust demand for AI infrastructure and energy applications, where favorable trends continue to support the segment's momentum.

Moving to performance materials and coatings on slide six, we saw solid top line and EBITDA growth in the third quarter. Net sales were $2.3 billion, up 8% versus the same quarter last year. This included volume improvements in both businesses, which was led by downstream silicones. Operating EBIT was $154 million. The team delivered both price and volume gains, as well as benefits from our self-help initiatives, including cost savings associated with the second quarter shutdown of our Barry Siloxanes unit. Consumer solutions had double-digit sales and EBITDA growth in the Americas. This was largely driven by downstream silicone volume gains in all regions. And the coatings and performance monomers business delivered higher sales across all regions, led by price and volume gains in both acrylic monomers and architectural coatings.

So next, I'll move to slide seven. Here, we're providing a new view of how the benefits from our intentional actions are flowing through the P&L to ultimately strengthen Dow's underlying earnings power. We delivered a sequential improvement of more than $150 million in self-help benefits in the third quarter. This includes the various aloxane's unit shutdown, cost savings actions, and the growth and productivity benefits from our transformation. And while self-help is structurally improving Dow's underlying earnings base, the benefits in the third quarter were mainly offset by margin pressures, primarily in packaging and specialty plastics.

More specifically, while the situation in the Middle East drove significant second quarter price hikes and subsequent declines in July, we began to see signs of stabilization as the quarter progressed, including a price increase in September. Looking specifically at our transformation, we have already delivered approximately $450 million of year-to-date improvements, including approximately $250 million in the third quarter.

Importantly, and I want to really emphasize this, everyone at Dow owns self-help. It has become a part of our everyday mindset, and we remain focused on our commitment to implement approximately $1.3 billion in net benefits this year, as well as $1.3 billion in 2027. We are holding our teams accountable for maintaining this mindset, ensuring we continue to be relentless in driving growth, productivity, and efficiency, all to reinforce Dow's competitive advantages while also improving our earnings and our cash position.

Next on slide eight, I'll walk through some details that support our overall view that underlying demand is steady, while the macroeconomic environment remains challenging. We continue to see resilience in packaging globally, as well as electric vehicle growth in Asia and Europe. At the same time, higher interest rates and weaker consumer confidence continue to pressure demand for products tied to housing.

Across regions, Dow's footprint in the Americas remains advantaged, supported by our favorable feedstock position and continued high operating rates in the U. S. Gulf Coast. In Europe, persistently high energy costs continue to challenge industry economics, and broad-based petrochemical closures are accelerating. In Asia, demand remains mixed. Strength in electronics is helping offset softer consumer spending in real estate markets.

Lastly, in the Middle East, while oil supply concerns have eased from levels we saw earlier this year, risk to trade flows in energy markets remain elevated. as do freight and other transportation costs with increased pressure on tanker and diesel prices. Against this backdrop, slide nine provides details on our fourth quarter expectations, including both our market assumptions and the contributions we expect from the actions within our control. As we look ahead, there's still quite a bit of uncertainty in the market, including the situation in the Middle East that I just mentioned. Therefore, forecasting the quarter continues to be more challenging than usual. As always, we will monitor conditions closely and provide updates if external factors change meaningfully or affect our initial guidance.

For the fourth quarter, we expect EBITDA of approximately $1.5 billion. Recent polyethylene price gains should improve our margins. This builds on the momentum we saw late in the third quarter, and we expect those higher prices to take effect before the impact of increased raw material costs. We anticipate the seasonality that we typically see in the fourth quarter will be largely offset by more than $100 million of lower sequential turnaround spending.

Additionally, we expect to deliver approximately $100 million of sequential uplift from our self-help actions, including our transformation and ongoing benefits from the closure of our buried UK siloxanes units. In Europe, we expect energy costs to remain elevated as we head into the winter months. In addition, regional supply chains and logistics are still experiencing significant disruption, including the impacts from record low water levels on the Rhine River. These supply constraints are creating additional pricing opportunities for Dow, which should help offset some of the headwinds Looking briefly at our expectations for each segment and packaging and specialty plastics we anticipate global polyethylene integrated margins to improve by approximately two cents per pound compared to the third quarter That should offset normal year-end seasonality.

In addition, we expect lower turnaround spending and self-help to provide sequential tailwinds. In our two other segments, we anticipate a typical seasonal slowdown in building and construction activity to reduce earnings in the period. Taken together, our intentional actions help to support a roughly flat sequential outlook.

With that, I'll turn the call back over to Karen to talk more about our self-help and our near-term priorities.

Thanks, Jeff. Above all, our focus is on building a more competitive DAO that delivers improved long-term value. That comes down to three priorities. Winning with customers in attractive growth markets, strengthening our portfolio's competitiveness, and maintaining a balanced approach to capital allocation. And importantly, our self-help commitments underpin all three. I'll start with our progress on transform to outperform on slide 11.

Then we'll walk through how these priorities guide our growth investments, portfolio decisions, and financial discipline. Dow's transformation is contributing significant gains as part of our overall approach to continued self-help. These efforts are effectively resetting our cost structure and establishing a more targeted approach to sustained growth. As I mentioned earlier, we expect to deliver approximately $700 million this year, which is higher than our initial projections.

Let me highlight a few timely examples of where this work is having an impact. As the way we work continues to evolve, so do our expectations for where and how work gets done. We are enabling faster decision making and putting the right roles in the right areas of the company. This includes the reduction of approximately 4,500 Dow rolls. To date, we have implemented approximately 70% of those reductions, and we expect to substantially complete this phase of the transformation by year end. At the same time, we are driving productivity improvements of approximately $150 million in benefits in the second half of this year. of this year. This includes deploying a repeatable site transformation playbook at our largest sites, which remains focused on maintenance productivity, energy efficiency, and asset utilization.

For example, recent improvements at one U. S. Gulf Coast site helped to cracker achieve durable, record-high production, which ultimately adds low-cost capacity and strengthens supply reliability for downstream customers. On the growth side, we are establishing platforms and teams that bring DAO's technologies and expertise together around attractive end markets like AI infrastructure and mobility. By pairing DAO's materials science expertise, technical service, and digital tools with customers' own innovation goals, the platforms move us from supplier to partner. This helps customers innovate better and faster while earning DAO higher value and more stable growth. And we are using data more efficiently to ensure stronger commercial pipeline discipline.

As a result, our teams have earlier visibility into customer opportunities and stronger insights, allowing us to quickly prioritize the opportunities that have higher value potential. This also helps us decide sooner which opportunities not to pursue, allowing us to focus Dow's resources where we are best positioned to win. These are just a few examples, and we remain committed to advancing all of our self-help measures to deliver material improvements in the near term.

We're doing so while also executing on each of our priorities, beginning with focused growth and innovation on slide 12. Dow's downstream silicone's business illustrates our approach well. We are investing in applications and projects that serve fast-growing markets. Many of the incremental growth investments we have made in silicone specifically are expected to pay back in two to three years. For example, our closed-loop liquid cooling systems and advanced thermal fluids are serving markets that are growing at double-digit rates. Our technologies are helping to solve important challenges for hyperscale servers, and our thermal interface materials and engineered silicones are used in semiconductor packaging and power electronics.

In mobility, the opportunities for Dow are driven by a growing EV market in Europe and Asia, as well as the amount of silicone used in each vehicle. EVs contain approximately three times as much silicone as a traditional internal combustion model. And Dow materials are used in critical applications that protect cameras and sensors, as well as support battery pack assembly and thermal management. When it comes to how we think about growth and innovation, the bottom line is this. DAO teams are advancing from expanded customer development capabilities to new production capacity in key markets, and we are doing so with a clear focus on capital discipline and faster payback projects.

Turning to slide 13, we're strengthening the competitiveness of Dow's portfolio by intentionally shifting our investments toward differentiated applications and advantage production while also exiting higher cost upstream capacity. And while this particular slide doesn't provide a completeness, I'd like to share some key examples.

First, we're improving the cost position of our manufacturing footprint. We restarted our lowest cost and most flexible cracker in Europe in the second quarter, while also completing the shutdown of our higher cost energy intensive berry siloxanes unit in the United Kingdom. Both actions contributed to improved third quarter earnings. At the same time, we're investing in downstream applications where our differentiation matters to customers. More specifically, our poly-7 polyethylene unit in the U. S. Gulf Coast supports specialty packaging, as well as health and hygiene applications where demand remains resilient.

And our alkoxylation investments in the United States and Europe support growth in our industrial solutions business, which serves home care, pharmaceutical, and energy markets. In silicones, we're expanding capabilities across the U. S. , China, and Japan to serve electronics and mobility markets, including engineered silicone and silicone rubber capacity expansions. Our asset actions include both closures and prudent growth investments.

Taken together, they form one integrated portfolio strategy. We have completed a number of key actions and expect to advance more through next year. Next, Jeff will discuss our third priority, balanced capital allocation, and the actions we are taking to strengthen Dow's financial position for the long term.

Thank you, Karen. On slide 14, our approach to financial discipline remains consistent, with a clear focus on maintaining both strength and flexibility. We are prioritizing debt reduction with excess cash while also taking actions to release working capital and maintain ample liquidity.

Let me start with the balance sheet. We have approximately $14 billion of liquidity and no substantive debt maturities until 2029, providing significant financial flexibility. And we are actively directing excess cash toward deleveraging. This year, we repurchased approximately $300 million of debt in the third quarter, with plans for an additional approximately $200 million in the fourth quarter. Together with the March 2027 euro bond maturity, these combined actions are expected to retire approximately $1.4 billion of debt.

And as Karen mentioned at the top of the call, we are making prudent operating tradeoffs to improve working capital and have already released more than $400 million of cash in the third quarter, keeping us on track for a more than $500 million cash release in the second half of this year. As we close out the year, our focus will remain on continuing to strengthen our balance sheet. We have consistently taken decisive and prudent actions to preserve DAO's financial flexibility and will continue to do so through every phase of the cycle.

With that, Karen will share some closing remarks before we open the call for questions.

Thanks, Jeff. Slide 15 brings these priorities back together to show how we are building a more competitive DAO that is positioned to deliver long-term value for our shareholders, our customers, and our people. We continue to operate through a dynamic period. The geopolitical and macro conditions remain volatile, and demand signals are mixed. This is not unique to DAO. Through focused growth and innovation, we are directing capital and resources toward fast-growing markets and stronger commercial execution in areas where we can sharpen our competitive edge and solve more with our customers. And we are making our portfolio more competitive by investing in advantaged businesses, differentiated technologies, and low-cost assets, while also moving decisively where we no longer have a clear path to sustainably compete and win.

Our focus areas around capital allocation are straightforward. Strengthen the balance sheet, improve cash flow, and preserve financial flexibility so that we can act as conditions and opportunities evolve. These priorities, backed by the expertise and execution of TeamDAO, are how we will build a stronger, more competitive company today and over the long term. So now we will use the rest of the time we have today to address your questions.

Andrew, please get us started.

Thank you, Karen. Now let's move on to your questions. I would like to remind you that our forward-looking statements apply to both our prepared remarks and the following Q&A. Operator, please provide the Q&A instructions.

Thanks, Asam, for the question. Good to hear from you. Let me talk about the two cent per pound global integrated margin improvement first. So that assumes that the September price increase is averaged throughout the quarter. And you're absolutely right. We have additional nominations on the table and we believe that the market dynamics that we're currently facing, you know, we'll get those into the books. I mean, you think about the higher feedstock. So I'm not just talking about oil, but NAFTA. We're seeing ethane a bit on the rise as well. And so if we're able to achieve the seven cents that we have on the table for October and the five cents in November, that will provide an upside to our fourth quarter guide.

And that's going to also depend on how far the feedstock costs rise. So if if we are able to get all of that and get additional margin, think about that upside in the range of 200 million dollars. So one cent per pound price increase is about 50 million dollars per quarter Let me go to the second part of your question And then Jeff if you have any other comments that you want to make Listen we are planning to end the year with momentum We came out of the third quarter with momentum You know we think about September getting the five cents, but also ACC data, you know, DDI declined by more than five days, inventory declined by over 400 million pounds.

China's back in the market. And so from a Dow perspective, our sales grew double digits from a polyethylene perspective as we ended third quarter. We're getting more growth in the fourth quarter as well. Spot prices are also on the rise. So we expect that we're going to end the fourth quarter with momentum going into 2027. And that's also why our guide in fourth quarter is flat with the first quarter. So it's not just about polyethylene price and market dynamics, but the story is also about our self-help. So the reason that we have a guide of a flat to third quarter is because lower turnarounds, but also our self-help is going to offset the typical seasonality that we see.

So we should go into 2027 with that momentum. And we expect from an oil to gas ratio that it will remain constructive. And of course, we're going to continue to double down on our advantage feedstock capacity here in North America. Jeff, anything else you want to say about 2027?

Yeah, good morning, Hassan. The only other thing that I would add to 2027 is the fact that our self-help actions will be a key tailwind going into the new year. You heard in my prepared remarks, our expectation is that our tailwind purely on self-help will deliver about $1.3 billion in 2027. So that will be something that we can control as Team Dow that will be part of our bottom line value generation going from 26 to 2027.

Hi, Vincent. Thanks for the question. So you're right. U. S. methane prices have moved higher in recent weeks, and it's actually outpacing natural gas. That's driven by a few factors. First of all, you know, growing exports. You've got the new cracker capacity on the U. S. Gulf Coast preparing to start up. You know, that's another reason. But also you're saying that international crackers are leaning more heavily on ethane in their mix, given elevated oil prices. But I do want to highlight that even with that, current levels really do remain materially below the peaks that we saw back in 2022.

And also it's roughly in line with five year averages. So, you know, the market here remains really well supplied. You're seeing U. S. production of 3.3 million barrels per day. That's record. And inventories also still remain above historical norms. So our guide, our fourth quarter guide, contemplates that ethane will be in the mid to high 20 cents per gallon range. So that's marginally lower than where we sit today. Maybe just a rule of thumb. Every three cents per gallon of ethane translates to about one cent per pound of polyethylene price needed to cover that cost. And as you heard on my last answer, we have much larger price increases on the table for fourth quarter.

So that's the seven cent per pound in October and the five cent per pound in November. Maybe just another important point is global polyethylene prices, of course, are set by naphtha based production. And so with oil and naphtha still elevated, that oil to gas spread is going to remain constructive and it continues to sit well above prior year averages. So that makes, of course, EFAM the lowest cost fee stack in the world. And that's where, you know, the majority of our capacity sits. So it's an advantage for now.

Hi, good morning, Patrick. This is Jeff. I appreciate the question. So a couple of comments I would make there. First of all, the third quarter free cash flow performance, $1.1 billion was something that the team did an excellent job of really focusing on working capital discipline, for one. And this is one of the things that we did signal even coming out of our second quarter call that our anticipation around working capital is going to see a significant swing. So the sequential improvement that we saw from second quarter to third quarter purely on working capital was about $1.3 billion. dollars. So a really strong tailwind there from quarter to quarter. One of the things that we did make the commitment on in the second half of the year was at least a 500 million dollar release of working capital.

And so to deliver over 400 million of that in the third quarter puts us in a really good position to be able to meet that target by year end. As we go into 2027, as I mentioned earlier, you know, one of the things that we're definitely looking forward to in planning is around the self-help delivering the $1.3 billion. As we think about our cash conversion going into the next year, we're going to maintain that discipline around working capital, which should continue to give us a cash conversion rate that's going to be in the range of anywhere from, let's say, 70% to 80% as we go through next year, which will position us well to be able to support our capital allocation framework.

No, thanks. Abigail, it's good to hear you on the call this morning. No, we're we're moving forward with all of the polymers at the same time. So again, seven cents per pound in October, and then another five in November. Again, we're seeing spot prices go up around the world. We're also seeing spot prices go up on all of the polymers. And so, you know, that is our plan in terms of executing those price increases as we get into the fourth quarter.

Thanks, Jeff, for the question. Listen, I do want to highlight that as we enter 2027, to your point, $1.3 billion of earnings tailwinds are going to be firmly in our control. and that's largely driven by the self-help actions, as you mentioned. So that's 1.2 of incremental transform to outperform uplift in 2027, and then about another 100 million of incremental gains from our asset actions. And that includes both the shutdown of barisaloxanes in Europe, so the additional uplift from that, but then also the growing impact of our recent incremental growth investments. So that's alkoxylation capacity here in the U. S. , as well in Europe and Poly7. Maybe to your point, you know, global pricing dynamics are obviously not completely in our control, but we do see factors that could provide some support in 2027.

So polyethylene market dynamics have momentum going into fourth quarter, as I mentioned, higher oil baseline, you know, you know, our view is that there's going to continue to be a risk premium on the price of oil going forward. And so, you know, I'm not, I'm not going to call a 2027 number here. But what I can tell you is that we're going to continue to navigate the market with disciplined execution and double down on our self-help that we're committed to delivering next year as an additional EBITDA uplift.

Hi, good morning, Dave. This is Jeff. You know, for us right now, we're continuing to work through the $1.3 billion as we go through the transform to outperform again, which is the key driver of that tailwind that we anticipate from 26 to 27. One of the things that we're really, really pleased about is that it is impacting every function, every business, and every geography across the enterprise. And as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, the self-help ownership and accountability is something that we have from a cultural perspective. So we have a great level of confidence in the 1.3 billion for 2027. As we get into the early part of next year, we'll have more details to share around the breakdown of that as we move forward here.

But at an enterprise level, the 1.3 is the tailwind.

And David, maybe just to tack on to that, you should think about it probably in 50% and PNSP and 25% and the other two is how I would categorize it today.

Good morning, Matt. This is Jeff. I'll take that question. You know, for us, first of all, on the overall SART, you know, we continue to be very pleased with the progress we're making on our SART as percent of revenue versus best-in-class peers. I mean, right now we're at 5% of revenue versus best-in-class peer median of 12%. So we're top quartile overall on our cost structure from that perspective. If you look at quarter over quarter, so sequentially, our SART was actually down 130 million dollars excluding one-time significant items. A lot of that is reflected in our transformation savings as well as to your point the performance-based compensation adjustment as well.

We expect our cost savings to continue to build through the remainder of this year as well as through 2027 as we continue to change how we're working across the operating model that spending will be lower not only in our SART line items but also in our cost of goods. So you know obviously being a manufacturing company, over 80% of the headcount savings that we expect to get from our transformation will come from not only manufacturing, but those support functions such as supply chain, procurement, and about 15% of those headcount savings will actually come out of SARD, which we're starting to see reflected net-net.

Yeah, thanks, Frank, for the question. I think our message is the same as we shared on the call last quarter. We remain really engaged with Ramco Jim is leading that negotiation team in his new role as exec chair We been really clear I think on the last call that we established a financial boundary around Sadara and we're working diligently to identify the best long-term solution. Obviously, we've already made progress on two really important fronts. In the first quarter, as you know, we suspended further recognition of Sadara equity losses, and then we also limited our funding commitment to about $1.3 billion, and that continues to come down. So we should think about that at $100 million a year as we move that down.

So that's where we are. And again, those negotiations continue. What I would say about the assets there is that they are running, not all of them, some of them are running at reduced rates, as you can imagine, for the obvious reasons.

So on Alberta, I mean, we are squarely in the middle of execution our focus remains on on completing that project uh you know not only on time but also on on budget um so we are about 45 of the way through uh you know there's a lot of long time long lead time equipment that's already on the site and most of the rest has been ordered um we're gonna move into the really the peak of construction as we get into 2027 um so there We'll move from about 3,000 that are on site today to about 6,000 that will be on site next year. And so we're maintaining that really sharp emphasis on execution discipline, holding ourselves accountable to the timeline with that first phase later to come up at the end of 2029 and then the second phase coming up in 2030.

You know, we're really confident at this point in the project on both the timeline and the budget because it's really grounded and tangible progress that we've already made. And of course, we're leveraging the learnings from other projects that we've completed in recent history. In terms of a partner, listen, we are very open to all value creating options as we go forward. I think I've mentioned that before. But what's really important is that it clears the hurdle on returns and that it clears the hurdle on value creation.

And so what I would say is that, you know, right now what the team is working on doing and is prepared to do is to move the project over the goal line, you know, as ourselves. But we remain open to any options that that are available.

Sure. Thanks for the question. So I'll start, with Equate. So of course that's our JV that is in Kuwait. And so we do have assets that are up and running there, but they remain constrained. So there we have one cracker running at full rates and several derivative units are idled due to storage limitations. You asked about the JV that's in Thailand. So one cracker was restarted and it's recovering due to feedstock availability before and then we have a planned turnaround for the second cracker that is there. And I already mentioned from a SIDAR perspective, it's partially restarted with a cracker and polyethylene plastic trains that are online, but the liquids remain down and that's really in part due to the logistics constraints that persist.

Yes, we could have. And even if you look at our third quarter results, I know that the press release that we were down 1% volume year over year. That is in part because we were constrained on the capacity and the product that was coming out of the Middle East. But if you take that out just in PNSP alone, that business grew 2%. And so, yes, there was more demand out there to be had. And we were constrained by the amount of capacity. And I think that, you know, one of the proof points was in the September ACC data. and you see where we landed at the end of third quarter. Again, inventories declined, delivering the largest draw in over a year, but total sales, so domestic plus exports, rose in September.

They increased over 3% month over month. And that was the second highest month of the year, but also the third highest month on record. So I think that those are important proof points that there's more demand to be had. And if we had more capacity, we would have sold it.

Yeah, it's a good question, Kristen. Thank you for it. I mean, you know, overall markets, to your point, do remain soft. As you know, 40% of the NDI end market is around building and construction, and that continues to be the weakest and market for us across the company. And so our expectation is in fourth quarter, we do expect to move back to a longer market with a resolution of industry supply disruptions, but also the recent startup of new capacity here in North America. So, you know, the bottom line on MDI is that the market still remains challenging, mainly driven by the weak demand in building and construction and just a low demand environment overall for that segment, which is exacerbated by the new capacity additions.

And so longer term, we expect gradual operating rate improvement through 2030, but that's our view on fourth quarter right now.

So let me start with ethylene and polyethylene, you know, we do feel like and believe that operating rates today are in the low 80s. And so, and I think I've said this before, you know, we believe that we could get back to mid cycle rates by the end of the decade. And there's a couple of reasons for that. You know, based on even where we were before the conflict, you needed about 10% of capacity to come out in order to materially get back to mid cycle operating rates. Five to 6% of that has already been announced. And that includes our cracker in Europe. There's another about 8% that's being speculated. Most of all of that are in high cost regions.

And so Asia, as well as Europe, recently heard in the last couple of months that there's another million tons that's been confirmed to come out from Korea. And so you're seeing the rationalizations. And of course, we know that there's capacity that's coming online. But the other part of the story is that polyethylene continues to grow as a factor of GDP. So I would call industry operating rates on the ethylene side today in the low 80s. And again, we believe that we can get back to mid-cycle operating rates by the end of the decade, which also aligns, by the way, with the timing of our Alberta asset that, again, the first phase will come up in 2029.

On the siloxanes and the silicone side, you know, it's a bit of a tail of two cities. So upstream, you're absolutely right. China has added a significant amount of capacity. It's one of the reasons why we took out our high cost aloxane capacity in Barry, UK, in the second quarter of this year. Just as a reminder, that's going to add $60 million of EBITDA in the second half of the year alone. But it's really important to emphasize that downstream silicones continues to grow significantly, you know, directly aligned with the number of megatrends, you know, whether you're talking about electrification, but also obviously AI infrastructure. So we are seeing that, you know, most of our end markets and silicones are growing double digits.

And that's showing up not only on our order books, but also on the bottom line. And then I think I just talked about, you know, MDI, you know, one of the, of course, one of the key value chains where you're seeing overcapacity for sure being built in Europe. We've taken out both in, you know, PO in particular, we've taken out assets there as well. But again, working to right size our capacity across the entire portfolio with the profitable demand on particularly on the downstream. But we continue to see strength in ethylene and polyethylene in particular and in downstream silicones and a number of other ethylene derivatives.

No, we aren't seeing any logistics constraints coming out of the U. S. Gulf Coast. As a matter of fact, you know, operating rates there remain above 90 percent. I've highlighted the ACC data a couple of times on this call. And again, I think I think that's yet another proof point of both the feedstock advantage that we have here in North America and the fact that we are not seeing any any constraints there. Again, our order books are strong. We are seeing China's come back. You've seen about six cents week over week of spot prices go up, but spot prices are going up around the world. And that's why we have price increases on the table and believe that the current market dynamics will support us achieving those.

Thank you very much. And listen, Jeff and I both really appreciate all the questions that we got this morning. I just wanted to end the call with one key message for you to take away. And it's this. We are not standing still. The Dow team is not standing still. Obviously, the market remains incredibly volatile, but we have the right priorities and we have the momentum to see it through. Our collective actions are delivering really solid results. We saw them in the third quarter, and we firmly believe we're going to deliver that again in the fourth quarter.

And at the same time, we're focused on creating long-term value for our customers, for our shareholders, and for all of TeamDAO. So thank you for your continued interest in our company, and we appreciate you joining us today.