Ecovyst Inc. (NYSE:ECVT) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call November 1, 2022 11:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Gene Shiels – Director of Investor Relations
Kurt Bitting – Chief Executive Officer and Director
Mike Feehan – Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
John McNulty – BMO Capital Markets
David Begleiter – Deutsche Bank
Aleksey Yefremov – KeyBanc Capital Markets
Angel Castillo – Morgan Stanley
Patrick Cunningham – Citi
Laurence Alexander – Jefferies
David Silver – CL King
Operator
Good morning. My name is Katie, and I will be your conference operator today. Welcome to the Ecovyst Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call and Webcast. Please note today’s call is being recorded and should run approximately one hour. [Operator Instructions] After the speakers’ remarks there will be a question-and-answer period. [Operator Instructions]
I would now like to turn the call over to Gene Shiels, Director of Investor Relations. Please go aehad.
Gene Shiels
Thank you, Katie. Good morning, and welcome to the Ecovyst third quarter 2022 earnings call. With me on the call this morning are Kurt Bitting, Ecovyst’s Chief Executive Officer; and Mike Feehan, Ecovyst’s Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we’ll take your questions.
Please note that some of the information shared today is forward-looking information, including information about the company’s financial and operating performance, strategies, our anticipated end use demand trends and our 2022 financial outlook. This information is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results and the implementation of the company’s plans to vary materially. Any forward-looking information shared today speaks only as of this date. These risks are discussed in the company’s filings with the SEC.
Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures mentioned on today’s call with their corresponding GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and in presentation materials posted in the Investors Section of our website at ecovyst.com.
Now I’d like to turn the call over to Kurt. Kurt?
Kurt Bitting
Thank you, Gene, and good morning. Ecovyst delivered strong financial results for the third quarter of 2022, reflecting continued growth in sales and building upon the favorable results we delivered in the first half of this year. As a key supplier of products and services to industries that provide energy and materials to essential segments of the economy, Ecovyst has continued to benefit this year from favorable demand trends across the breadth of our portfolio.
In addition, we believe Ecovyst remains well positioned to leverage key sustainability trends and to benefit from projected growth and demand for low-carbon technologies in the years to come. For our Ecoservices business, high utilization rates in the U.S. refining industry, more stringent fuel standards and increasing demand for premium gasoline continue to drive volume growth for our regeneration services. Those regeneration services are vital to our refining customers production of alkylate, the critical component in the formulation of higher octane and cleaner fuels.
Ecovyst is has a leading share position for regeneration services in the U.S. with long-standing relationships with blue chip customers, who rely upon Ecovyst as their sole provider of regeneration services. Our assets are well situated to service both the Gulf Coast market, where two-thirds of U.S. refining capacity is located in West Coast markets where alkylate plays an important role in the production of CARBOB the regulated blend for California gasoline.
With four facilities in the Gulf Coast and two in California, our customers value our production redundancy as it ensures operational integrity for their highly profitable Appalachian units. Strong Regeneration volume growth was a significant contributor to the robust year-over-year results for our Ecoservices business in the third quarter. We also continue to see strong demand for virgin sulfuric acid across a variety of applications, including mining, production of engineered plastics, led acid batteries and semiconductors.
In the third quarter, our Catalyst Technologies business benefited from higher sales of polyethylene catalysts, driven by positive global polyethylene demand. We also saw increased sales of niche custom catalysts for petrochemical applications. With continued favorability in demand trends, Ecovyst’s third quarter sales, including our 50% share in the ZI joint venture, were up 30%, and adjusted EBITDA was up 9%, compared to the third quarter of 2021.
I’ll note here that on a year-to-date basis, Ecovyst’s sales are up nearly 45% and adjusted EBITDA is up 26%, compared to the first nine months of 2021, with the increase primarily representing organic growth. While inflation is a reality in today’s environment, we have continued to benefit from structural margin support in our Ecoservices business by contractual pass-through mechanisms for variable costs.
For sulfur, the pass-through is dollar-for-dollar, while costs for other variable inputs such as natural gas, transportation, labor and certain plant costs are passed-through on an index basis. While we do not have these contractual pass-throughs in our Catalyst Technologies business, we have undertaken targeted price actions as a means to offset increases to variable costs. As a result, we were able to significantly mitigate the adverse impact of inflation in the quarter. In fact, during the third quarter, we continued to see unit margin expansion in our Ecoservices business.
The third quarter of 2022 was also another quarter of strong cash generation for Ecovyst. With open market share repurchases and in conjunction with the secondary offering in early August, we repurchased an aggregate of $65 million worth of stock during the quarter, yet we were able to maintain our net debt leverage ratio of 2.8 times, underscoring our conviction that Ecovyst cash generation capability continues to provide for significant capital allocation flexibility.
In our second quarter earnings call in late July, we shared with you our belief that we remain on track to deliver solid year-over-year growth in financial results. Given our conviction in the strength and stability of our business, at that time we increased our full-year guidance range for adjusted EBITDA to $265 million to $275 million.
As we move into the fourth quarter, I am pleased to say that the positive momentum in our business has continued. Based upon our current outlook for the balance of the year, we expect that our full-year 2022 adjusted EBITDA will land at the high-end of our $265 million to $275 million guidance range.
Now let’s turn to slide five for more detail on our expectations for near-term demand trends. Within our Ecoservices business, we believe the outlook for our Regeneration Services and for virgin sulfuric acid demand remains favorable. While electric vehicle penetration will no doubt increase over the next few years, we believe conventional fuel demand will remain strong, supported by the sheer number of conventional cars and trucks in use today.
High refinery utilization, growth in premium gasoline, which requires a higher proportion of alkylate, as well as increasing fuel economy standards are expected to continue to drive alkylate demand. Additionally, export demand for refined products remains strong. And with access to crude supplies and the lowest cost of energy, U.S. refineries remain in a favored position to serve the growing export demand.
We also believe future expectations for greener infrastructure and electrification, as well as continued growth in other industrial applications will drive further demand for virgin sulfuric acid. Growth in low-carbon technologies, including electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels will require increased production of metals and minerals with sulfuric acid utilized in the leaching process to extract materials such as copper and borates from the mined rock. And if expectations for expansion of these low-carbon technologies are to be met, demand for sulfuric acid will undoubtedly increase.
Turning to the balance of our Ecoservices business, while collectively less than 10% of consolidated revenue, we believe our Catalyst Activation segment, the Chem32 business that we acquired last year and our Waste Treatment businesses are positioned for attractive growth. Chem32 provides ex-situ activation for catalysts, including catalysts used in renewable fuels applications. Ex-situ activation provides for faster start-up from turnarounds, averting lengthy on-site activation processes.
The business is extremely scalable, and we expect to benefit from continued expansion in renewable fuel production. We also expect further growth in our Waste Treatment business. With our favorable Gulf Coast locations, our incineration of specific chemical waste streams provides our customers with a preferred alternative to long-distance trucking of liquid waste and disposable via deep well injection. With a more environmentally friendly process than other alternatives, the waste streams are incinerated in our furnaces and Ecovyst benefits from the inherent energy in the waste streams, reducing external natural gas requirements.
For our Catalyst Technologies business, sales of our silica catalysts have continued to grow along with global polyethylene production. While polyethylene demand is expected to slow modestly, as we have noted, our sales in the polyethylene production have been higher than the industry growth rate as the sales of our customized catalyst solutions have benefit from a differential win rate on new capacity expansions.
Likewise, the near-term demand outlook for sales of zeolite catalyst through our ZI joint venture also remains positive. We expect high refinery utilization and global fuel demand will continue to support sales of hydrocracking catalysts. While there is still a significant backlog of heavy-duty diesel vehicle orders, due to production constraints and the global chip shortage, sales of zeolite catalysts for emission control applications are expected to benefit.
Lastly, we expect growth in renewable fuel capacity, including the future adoption of sustainable aviation fuel, will continue to drive growth for our zeolite catalyst.
With that, I will turn the call over to Mike Feehan for a review of third quarter financial results.
Mike Feehan
Thanks, Kurt. During the third quarter, Ecovyst continued to benefit from favorable demand trends. Total sales, including our 50% interest in the Zeolyst joint venture were $260 million, up $60 million or 30%, compared to the third quarter of 2021.
The increase was primarily driven by higher average selling prices, including the pass-through of higher sulfur costs, as well as the higher demand for Regeneration Services in our Ecoservices business and higher catalyst sales into polyethylene and niche custom applications within Catalyst Technologies.
Higher pricing in the third quarter includes the pass-through of $28 million of higher sulfur costs, as well as the contractual index pass-through of other variable costs, including natural gas and freight, principally in our Ecoservices business. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2022 was $75 million up 9%, compared to the third quarter of 2021 with an associated margin of 29%.
On the next slide, I’ll highlight the components of our adjusted EBITDA expansion, compared to the third quarter of 2021. The increase in adjusted EBITDA was driven by nearly $7 million of contribution from higher sales volume, as well as higher average selling prices, including the $28 million pass-through of higher sulfur costs, which more than offset the increase in variable costs.
The $28 million average selling price increase associated with the sulfur pass-through does not impact adjusted EBITDA, but does inflate the denominator in the adjusted EBITDA margin calculation. If you exclude the impact associated with the pass-through of higher sulfur costs, the adjusted EBITDA margin would have been 32.5% in the third quarter of 2022.
Turning to the next slide. Ecoservices posted another favorable quarter, with third quarter sales of $196 million, up $58 million or 42%, compared to the third quarter of 2021. Third quarter results were driven principally by higher contract pricing along with the increased demand for Regeneration Services supporting alkylation production. In addition, sales of virgin sulfuric acid were up modestly, compared to the third quarter of 2021, reflecting ongoing demand in industrial applications, including mining.
Third quarter adjusted EBITDA for Ecoservices was $64 million, up $12 million or nearly 24%, compared to the third quarter of 2021 on the higher sales volume and pricing covering increased operating costs, including sulfur, natural gas and freight. The adjusted EBITDA margin for Ecoservices was 32.8%, down 490 basis points, compared to the third quarter of last year. However, adjusting for the 690 basis point impact of the sulfur pass-through, adjusted EBITDA margin for Ecoservices would have been 40% for the quarter.
Turning to results for Catalyst Technologies on the next slide. Third quarter results for Catalyst Technologies reflects higher sales of polyethylene and niche custom catalysts, partially offset by lower sales of hydrocracking catalysts, largely a function of timing due to deferral of planned turnarounds as refiners seek to maximize profitability. We expect to see higher sales of hydrocracking catalysts in the fourth quarter.
Total sales for Catalyst Technologies was $64.6 million, up $2 million or 3%, compared to the third quarter of 2021. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA was $19 million, down $6 million, compared to the third quarter of 2021, with higher overall sales volume, offset by less favorable product sales mix and higher production costs within the quarter.
Moving to the highlights on leverage and liquidity. As we have previously discussed, our strong cash generation provides significant financial flexibility, supporting net leverage reduction, the funding of growth initiatives, as well as share repurchases. Our net leverage ratio was 2.8 times at September 30th, which was unchanged from the end of the second quarter, even with deploying nearly $65 million in cash for share repurchases in the third quarter.
Given our expectations for further cash generation in the fourth quarter and excluding any potential M&A or additional share repurchases, we continue to anticipate our leverage ratio to be in the mid-2 times by the end of the year. At the end of the third quarter, we had total liquidity of nearly $200 million, while down, compared to the $236 million at the end of the second quarter, this reflects the previously mentioned $65 million of cash used for share repurchases during the quarter.
We continue to believe our free cash flow generation capability and our liquidity position provides us with a significant amount of financial flexibility, allowing us to maintain a very balanced approach to capital allocation. Given our strong balance sheet with only one tranche of debt maturing in 2028, we can continue to invest in operational improvements and organic growth initiatives, while remaining positioned to evaluate accretive bolt-on acquisitions that have a clear strategic fit with our existing businesses. As we demonstrated in the third quarter, we can also participate in targeted share repurchases while continuing to prioritize net leverage reduction and growth initiatives.
During the quarter, we repurchased 1.1 million shares through open market purchases at an average price of $9.77 per share. In addition, we repurchased an additional 6.5 million shares in early August, supporting the secondary sale of stock by our private equity sponsor. As of quarter end, we still had $376 million remaining under the original $450 million share repurchase authorization.
Turning to our full-year 2022 outlook. As mentioned, we expect demand trends to remain relatively stable for the balance of the year. We believe high refinery utilization will continue to drive demand for alkylate and therefore, our Regeneration Services, and we expect demand for virgin sulfuric acid to also remain strong.
In Catalyst Technologies, our outlook for long-term demand trend is positive, driven by polyethylene demand, future growth in renewable, fuel and emission control applications. Overall, our outlook for the fourth quarter has not changed materially. We are lowering our full-year sales guidance down modestly to a range of $810 million to $830 million, solely a reflection of the pass-through impact of lower anticipated sulfur costs.
Based upon our favorable results for the first nine months and our expectations for the fourth quarter, we anticipate our full-year 2022 adjusted EBITDA may fall toward the high-end of our $265 million to $275 million range, and we continue to expect adjusted free cash flow generation of $115 million to $125 million for the year.
As a reminder, the fourth quarter tends to be seasonally lower for Ecoservices, due to customer and internal turnaround activity following the summer driving season, and we expect fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA for Ecoservices to be similar to the first quarter earlier this year.
In contrast, and as noted in our second quarter call, we expect strong fourth quarter results for Catalyst Technologies, with fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA higher than in the third quarter.
I’ll now hand the call back to Kurt for some closing remarks.
Kurt Bitting
Thank you, Mike. In summary, we are energized by the financial results we have delivered thus far in 2022. And I want to extend my gratitude to all Ecovyst employees for their dedication and their contributions to the success we have had this year. We firmly believe our year-to-date results demonstrate the true resilience and organic growth potential of Ecovyst business model.
Furthermore, our favorable results thus far in 2022 validate the decision to divest the Performance Chemicals and Performance Materials businesses, which enabled Ecovyst to focus on growing the high-quality uniquely positioned businesses that we have today. We have entered the fourth quarter with good business momentum in both our Ecoservices and our Catalyst Technologies businesses.
As a result for full-year 2022, we expect to deliver on the high-end of our guidance range for adjusted EBITDA. Looking forward into 2023, while the uncertain economic environment could result in some softening of demand, we still expect demand fundamentals across our end-use exposures to remain positive. We believe our leadership positions in growth markets, the nature of our long-standing customer relationships and in some cases, order backlog will all continue to provide for good near-term visibility.
With a net debt-to-leverage ratio of 2.8 times and in light of the cash generation capability we have, our balance sheet is in very strong shape. We expect to generate additional cash over the course of the fourth quarter, which will continue to provide us with the flexibility as we balance our capital allocation alternatives and continue to position Ecovyst to deliver exceptional value for our shareholders.
With that, we will ask the operator to open the line for questions.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from John McNulty with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open, please go ahead.
John McNulty
Yes, thanks a lot. Thanks for taking my questions. So I guess the first one would just be on the refining catalyst business in terms of some of the business that kind of got delayed or pushed out as the refiners postponed some of their turnarounds. Does that all get pushed into the fourth quarter? Or do you see that drag into 2023 as well? Because I know 2023 was looking like we were going to see a pretty good step up already. But I guess curious if that maybe even picks up higher.
Kurt Bitting
Hey, thanks, John. Yes, really nothing has fundamentally changed with the hydrocracking business, we’ve seen delays, as you mentioned, and this is really due to the historically high distillate cracks in the marketplace right now. And as you’ve probably seen the historically low inventories at distillate, so this is obviously encourage refineries to put off turnarounds and the catalyst change-outs to basically make more product for the marketplace.
But the other side of this is that when — with these high margins and the high demand for the product is when these refineries do take those outages, they’re going to look to install really high-yielding and high-performance catalysts like Zeolyst offers. So we did — as we did mention, fourth quarter will be stronger on hydrocracking, and we look at these types of things as they’re really delays. They’re not — that won’t go on a very long time, and it’s really due to just the demand for the product in the market right now.
John McNulty
Got it. Fair enough. And then when you think about the Ecoservices business as we start looking out to 2023, it seems like there’s, kind of, a lot of puts and takes. It seems like you may see more demand from the regeneration side as the economy is opening up and you see more and more driving. At the same time, like there is obviously concerns about the economy slowing down and so maybe there’s a negative impact on mining and industrial. So maybe can you walk us through how you guys are thinking about the puts and takes and maybe give us a little bit of an early peek at how you’re thinking about 2023?
Kurt Bitting
Yes. I mean we won’t — obviously, we’re not going to provide any guidance towards 2023. But if you look at just the underlying trends for — specifically for the Ecoservices business, high refinery utilization, above historic average of refinery crack spreads, the continued strong demand for alkylate and the octane and the clean gasoline component that it provides to the U.S. motor pool, strong exports of motor gasoline leaving the United States, which are our customers, particularly in the Gulf Coast, participate strongly in that. So that is all going to continue to benefit the Regeneration business.
As you look over to virgin sulfuric acid, I mean, the way I like to think of it is really virgin sulfuric acid is where the rubber meets the road on creating these green technologies and low-carbon technologies and the minerals and metals required for that clearly demands a lot of virgin sulfuric acid. The other sections of our virgin sulfuric acid business, I would say, more in the industrial and the materials side. A lot of that is concentrated towards in the Gulf Coast, where those customers, again, have enormous energy advantage and should continue to prosper in this environment.
John McNulty
Got it. Helpful, helpful color. Thanks very much.
Kurt Bitting
Thank you.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] We’ll go next to David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open, please go ahead.
David Begleiter
Thank you, Kurt. Just sticking on the virgin sulfuric acid business. In a recession, how has it performed historically in prior downturns?
Kurt Bitting
Yes. In prior downturns, it’s been stable. We have a — fortunately, I’ve been with the business really since 2006. So I’ve gone through the 2008 downturn and obviously, the 2020 downturn. And the business is very diverse. So obviously, sulfuric acid is the most widely used chemical in the world. Our particular portfolio business is diverse in terms of its exposure to industrial.
Again, mining as we — I think what may be different as we enter 2023, different from maybe past is really the mining segment continuing to remain strong. We don’t really see anything that’s going to deter future mining activity and the need for the green technology and low-carbon technologies that require those copious amounts of metals and minerals.
And again, on the industrial side, very diverse in terms of materials, to petrochemicals, to water treatment chemicals. A lot of our business, again, is concentrated in the Gulf Coast, which has an enormous energy advantage versus their competition worldwide.
David Begleiter
Very good. And just in our Catalyst Technologies, you mentioned higher production costs in Q3. Could you talk to those? And is that one of the reasons why Q4 is — looks like quite a bit stronger than Q3?
Kurt Bitting
Yes. Well, really for — on the Catalyst side, when you look at the what Q3 is, first of all, I guess on the Q2 call, we did say that Q3 was going to look a lot like Q2. So when you look at overall Catalyst performance, you had a few things going on there, right? The hydrocracking sales, which we talked about earlier that were delayed due to really the strength in the distillate production going on right now. There was a — from a comparative standpoint versus third quarter of 2021, the mix was slightly different.
And then really on the production cost side that we refer to as really intercompany shipment costs where we had some kind of one-time logistics bottlenecks that required us to do some freight expediting of raw materials in between plants.
David Begleiter
And can you quantify that impact in Q3? And is that for Q4?
David Begleiter
Yes. We don’t think the — for Q4, as we said, we expect Q4 to be stronger than Q3 in the Catalyst business. In terms of the production cost impact of those intercompany transfers, we see that moderating as the logistics supply chains are improving.
David Begleiter
Thank you very much.
Operator
Our next question comes from Aleksey Yefremov with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Aleksey Yefremov
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just to stay on the Catalyst side, I realize you will not be providing guidance for next year. But what’s your sense can Catalyst business grow next year grow EBITDA?
Kurt Bitting
Yes. Sure. So we expect there’s — again, there’s strong underlying growth trends in that Catalyst business. Clearly, diesel crack spreads and diesel inventories are expected to remain favorable going into next year, benefiting the hydrocracking segment. When you look over to some of the other sections of Catalyst Technologies on emission controls, clearly, as we’ve talked about before, there’s a backlog of heavy-duty diesel vehicles that has built up that will require emission controlled catalysts moving into 2023.
And we really see in our other segments of the Catalyst business firmness, when we talk about things like polyethylene in terms of this demand for things like film and sheeting continue to remain strong. So really, as we look going forward, we see really continued strength. And obviously, as we’ve highlighted before in previous calls, renewable fuels continues to be a tailwind for us is obviously higher distillate cracks encourages even more renewable fuels production and the construction of new renewable fuels plants.
Aleksey Yefremov
Thanks, Kurt. And on Ecoservices, you reported volume growth this quarter, was this primarily Regeneration or both markets?
Kurt Bitting
Yes, I can answer that one. That was primarily in the Regeneration Services side. That was the predominance of the volume growth. However, I would comment that virgin sulfuric acid was up modestly. Again, it was up continuing with the strong growth in the various end markets. So both sides were up, but more on the Regen side.
Aleksey Yefremov
Thanks. And last one, if I may, just on virgin markets. Do you see any signs of weaker demand trends? Obviously, there’s some seasonality. But beyond that is there any red flags in that market?
Kurt Bitting
Yes. I think the virgin sulfuric business isn’t so seasonal. The Regeneration is, and I think as we said before, as you enter the fourth and the first quarters on Regeneration refineries and ourselves, Ecoservices will typically take our maintenance during those times off the peak season times. On virgin sulfuric, it’s less so. It’s more really kind of steady demand.
So when you look at the end market drivers there, again, the Petrochemical, the Materials business remains strong. And I think that’s for us, being completely North American-based. Our customers are enjoying a very large energy advantage versus their global competition, which allows them to keep very high utilization rates. And again, on the mining segment, I mean, it’s clearly, all the tailwinds behind that sector are really going to be hard to kind of disrupt, right? When you think about all the investment, the government subsidies that are — even the recent inflation Reduction Act, which put a large amount of subsidies and tax credits into things like green infrastructure, as well as electric vehicles, which all are going to require really a lot of U.S. mining activities. So that’s very beneficial for the virgin asset segment.
Aleksey Yefremov
Very helpful. Thanks a lot.
Operator
We’ll go to next to Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Angel Castillo
Alright, thanks for taking my questions. First, I was just wondering if you could give us a little bit more color on the methyl methacrylate or MMA catalyst business. And what you’re seeing there in terms of orders as well as just overall demand, both fourth quarter and for 2023?
Kurt Bitting
Yes. Well, for methyl methacrylate, we tend to refer those as more in the niche or custom catalyst space in general. I think we mentioned that third quarter — as compared to third quarter 2021 was — the mix of that was different. So that was lighter this year than last year. And that’s primarily a timing. Those methyl methacrylate orders generally are — there’s not sales in every quarter, they generally can be a timing issue as those customers refill those units. But we believe the demand in that space remains strong. We have a really good and unique technology offering there with long-term relationships with those customers and are really specified into those units. So we feel that’s healthy going forward.
Angel Castillo
That’s helpful. Thank you. And then just in terms of capital allocation, you noted you did another $11 million of buybacks this quarter. And you talked about opportunities in terms of bolt-ons or further kind of investments. Could you just tell us, I guess, as you think about both the near-term and into next year? How you’re kind of thinking about both the buyback opportunity, given you have authorization to outstanding, as well as bolt-on opportunities in the pipeline that you see there, both from a time line perspective and in areas of potential interest or opportunities?
Kurt Bitting
Sure. Good question, so we look at the business’s cash generation, as well as its strong balance sheet really gives us, as I like to say, a very flexible and robust capital allocation strategy. So as we look at that strategy, clearly, growth is very important. So we have a rich pipeline of both organic and inorganic opportunities. And as we go forward, we’re going to use that cash generation and the balance sheet to fund that growth, where we can — and we’ve looked at — as we look at M&A opportunities, we’re clearly — our existing business is clearly in the energy environment. Things linked to green infrastructure trends, renewable fuels and really the production onshoring of a lot of materials that we see on right now. So as we evaluate opportunities going forward, we’re going to continue to look in those spaces.
In terms of the stock repurchases, listen we view the management teams very strongly viewed that our share price is undervalued. So we participated in both open market purchases, as well as alongside the secondary offering that happened in Catalyst. So we feel very strongly that where the stock is undervalued, we — the company has participated in those repurchases, as well as the management team. I’ll highlight, again, this quarter was another strong quarter for management personally buying shares as well.
Angel Castillo
Great, helpful. Thank you.
Operator
We’ll go next to P.J. Juvekar with Citi. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Patrick Cunningham
Hi, this is Patrick Cunningham on for P.J. Good morning. We’ve started to see some inventory destocking in polyethylene and producers are cutting utilization rates. How do you — what are your expectations for polyethylene film and packaging demand? And do you expect this sort of recent destocking to near-term volume growth?
Kurt Bitting
Sure. So our polyethylene sales were up in the third quarter. You have seen and we’ve read the same thing where you’ve seen some, I would say, more inventory distortions on separate side of the supply chain as there’s been ongoing shipment and logistics issues in the industry. But we view things like film and sheet as remaining stable.
As we mentioned, our really highly customized catalysts that we were specified into really the world-class producers of polyethylene companies that are on the very low-end of the cost curve, due to their scale and their location and their cost of energy. So our customer base is generally maintained a very high utilization. So we feel pretty good about polyethylene going forward.
Patrick Cunningham
Great, and how are you thinking about the potential benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act? Are there any, sort of, growth investments that become more incrementally attractive, whether it’d be catalyst for renewable fuels or something in plastics recycling? How are you positioning yourself given that — the bill?
Kurt Bitting
Yes. I mean, reviewing the Inflation Reduction Act, it really supports several aspects of the business. First, there is tax credits and loans for green infrastructure. So as I mentioned before, that’s really where the virgin acid segment plays a vital role and the production of those metals in minerals that are going to be required to produce things like wind turbines, solar panels, et cetera. The Act also extends the credits for renewable fuels and introduces a new credit for sustainable aviation fuel, which is kind of the next generation of renewable fuels. And that we expect really sustainable aviation fuel to really start being adopted heavily around mid-decade.
And then finally, the clean vehicle development of the Act, again, encourages those vehicles to be made with the metals and minerals that are produced here in the U.S., which will be a tailwind for the mining sector and virgin acid. But in general, the Inflation Reduction Act is very, very positive for numerous segments of our business. You did mention the plastics recycling. So we, again — and we’ve talked about that before, we’re working with major plastics producers on catalyst technology that really enables the catalytic paralysis or catalytic recycling of plastics, and we expect that to really, kind of, be commercialized in a decade.
Patrick Cunningham
Great. Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Laurence Alexander
Good morning. Just two questions on cadence. One to follow up on the last question. When new renewable diesel capacity ramps up, is there an initial fill order for your product? Or is your sales to that facility going to be tied more to just their actual production run rates?
Kurt Bitting
Yes. So yes and yes. So we have — when you look at the — our renewable fuels exposure is really on two sides of the business, so starting on the Ecoservices side, the Chem32 Catalyst Activation business that we acquired last year. They are sulfiding the hydroprocessing side of that process. So those hydroprocessing catalysts when the units built requires it to be sulfided and then those catalysts end up being changed out every year to 18-months. So there’s kind of a repeat — natural repeat business that goes through that.
On the Catalyst Technology side, we’re making zeolite catalysts that are used in the dewaxing side of that process. Those are more for the initial fields and then the change out rate on those is a little bit longer multiyear change out rate, so we kind of play on both sides. We’re one — we — on the initial fill, both businesses do benefit, but then there’s the intermittent change out that occur anywhere from now 10 months to 18 months on the Ecoservices side and a couple of years on the Catalyst Technology side.
Laurence Alexander
Okay. No, that’s very helpful. And then when you look at the scale of the investments that have been proposed already in the renewable diesel area, do you have enough capacity to serve that by flexing and shifting capacity over from other end markets? Or do you need to undertake an investment cycle? And if you do, when do you need to do that to be ready for the customers?
Kurt Bitting
Yes. So on the Catalyst Activation side for renewables when we purchased the Chem32 business, one of the things that was attractive about that business was its scalability. So we are actively scoping and looking at ways to scale that up to meet that growing demand, especially as new renewable units are built will require not only new builds, but then the recharge those bills and meeting that demand.
And on the renewable side for the Catalyst Technologies business for the zeolite catalysts, clearly, we have capacity in that sector that we can flex between our emission controls production. So some of those assets are fungible between both so — as demand grows or we need to create capacity for one or the other, we can flex between the products.
Laurence Alexander
Okay, great. And then separately on the heavy-duty diesel side, what’s your — will you see a downturn in volumes at the same time as production of the vehicles? Or do you — once the backlogs are worked off? Or will you see a slowdown before the backlogs are kind of finished? I mean, just what’s your place in the inventory cycle?
Kurt Bitting
Yes. I mean we’ve seen — that business is obviously has gone through supply chain disruptions, particularly on the chip side, but we have seen customers that are starting to — were starting to stock up an order in anticipation of working that backlog down. I think the backlog is pretty much was created over a two year period. So we think that’s got kind of a longer tail to it.
And then once we come to, kind of, the end of that and more of a normalization there are new — both Europe and the U.S. are considering new regulations, which will require even more stringent emission controls, which will eventually require more DLI catalysts for those emission control. So we kind of view it as if we’re looking more long-term-ish working off of that backlog over the next couple of years, because it will take us a while to do that. And then after that, additional demand really coming from new regulations.
Laurence Alexander
Great, got it. Okay, great. Thank you.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] We’ll go next to David Silver with CL King. Your line is open, please go ahead.
David Silver
Okay, thank you. I have a couple of questions. I’ll apologize in advance, I did have to step away at one or two points here. I have a couple of questions to start on the sulfur side. So first, I just was hoping you could refresh my memory on the mechanism for sulfur cost pass-throughs. In other words, we’ve seen a steep runup earlier this year and now a pretty steep decline in the price of sulfur? Is the pass-through mechanism kind of seamless? Or are there leads and lags that may impact your reported quarterly results? I mean how seamless would that pass-through mechanism be?
Kurt Bitting
Yes. Thanks for the question, David. I think the — it’s not perfectly seamless, there are small lags both from what we purchase from our suppliers may lag with the current market prices. And then obviously, our — the contractual mechanism point of that may lag a little bit, but it’s nothing very material. We always are — have been pretty good with closely overlapping the sulfur costs with what our actual pricing is to our customers. So it’s really not a big what we call sour spot or sweet spot out there where you’re on one side or the other. .
David Silver
Okay, thanks. And then a question about your virgin sulfuric acid production capability, so I mean, you’ve cited that as a source of stronger growth for a number of quarters now. Where are you on your own capacity utilization for the virgin product? And in particular, can you just remind me, but is it possible or practical to debottleneck your sulfuric acid unit? Or is it the case where you’d really have to go greenfield, which I recall at worldscale can be pretty expensive? Thanks.
Kurt Bitting
Yes. I would say the utilization on the assets both on regeneration and virgin acid not just with us, but really in the whole industry is high. And you’ve probably seen that if you’ve read about demand for virgin acid has obviously been very strong to support some of the fundamentals we spoke about earlier. But we’re constantly innovating in the Ecoservices business and working on debottlenecking projects.
We had mentioned some in the past quarters where we’ve installed new logistics capabilities, particularly at the Houston site, where we installed pretty much doubled our rail shipment capability. We’ve gone back and are actually adding to that right now. We’ve added rail capacity to the Martinez plant this year. We’ve got several other projects that are really targeted towards virgin acid in the Southern California and Midwest plant where we can actually increase the amount of sulfur throughput that we can have in the furnaces.
So there is things out there that we’re constantly working on to incrementally debottleneck the units. A lot of it is — we’re replacing pieces of equipment with larger pieces of equipment or larger pumping capability that just allows us to produce more virgin sulfuric acid, which has allowed us to really keep pace with the growing market demand.
David Silver
Okay, great. And then one last one on the sulfuric acid, but I have read an article recently linking very strong demand for sulfuric acid with lithium production in particular. And apart from the trajectory of global lithium production, is there anything especially unique about the processing or the extraction of lithium going on that would lead to an unusually high intensity of sulfuric acid consumption in that end market? So apart from the production growth level, but is the process itself, especially intensively — an intensive user of sulfuric acid?
Kurt Bitting
Yes. I think it really gets back to — it really gets back to just the ore content, right? So you have projects that you’re trying to drive smaller amounts of minerals out of a larger amount of rock, I think, for the lithium. So you’re just requiring more sulfuric acid. We’ve seen everything from upwards of 20 tons of sulfuric acid per ton of lithium carbonate produced. On the copper side, that’s lower, where it’s 3 tons to 5 tons of sulfur per ton of copper produced.
But one of the things that is now going on and I would say the metals industry is metal prices have become so favorable and metals demand high for these green infrastructure projects where we’re seeing mines go back and go after, I’d say, they call leach piles, things ores that have already been processed that have residual metals and minerals on them, and they’ll go and re-leach them with even more amounts of sulfuric acid to try to drive out as much metal as they possibly can, so that’s led to even higher demand of sulfuric acid.
David Silver
Okay. And then last question would be about your share buyback activity, and this would be along the lines of how you decide where to direct, kind of, incremental buyback activity. So I did look at the final prospectus from August on the secondary offering by your major stockholder. And then you indicated above and beyond that, you chose to purchase, I think, 1.1 million shares in the open market here.
And when I think about kind of the optimal way — might be optimal way to conduct that. I’m just scratching my head, but you are able to get a discount, I guess, off of the market when you go in one direction and you’re purchasing at full market, give or take, in the other direction. And I’m just wondering from the point of view of stability of the share price and return on your buyback dollars, how do you think about negotiating directly with a major shareholder versus going out in the open market to conduct those buybacks? Thank you.
Mike Feehan
Yes. David, it’s Mike. So the open market purchases were done prior to the purchase with the secondary, right? So that was really an extension of what we had done at the end of the second quarter that bled into the beginning of the third quarter. And again, we look at that really for academically when your stock price is trading a lot lower than our expectations are.
And as Kurt mentioned, we believe that the stock is undervalued, so it made sense to execute those open market purchases. And then when we executed on the stock buyback as part of the August secondary, those were not necessarily negotiated, but they were just in conjunction with the price that was executed under the secondary. So again, it was, as you could see, at a lower price, but it was part of the structure.
And the ones that were done in the open market were under the 10b5-1 that was in place at the time, but hopefully, that helps clarify. But we’re always looking for a prudent execution to increase shareholder value for those share repurchases.
David Silver
That’s very clear. Thank you very much.
Operator
We have no further questions in the queue at this time. This does conclude the Ecovyst third quarter 2022 earnings call and webcast. Thank you for your participation and you may disconnect at any time.
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