Circuits Assembly Online Magazine - Element Solutions Reports $352M in Q4 Electronics Sales

MIAMI – Element Solutions announced fourth quarter sales of $352 million for its Electronics segment, a 4% increase from the fourth quarter of 2022.

For the full year, the company's Electronics sales of $1.4 billion marked a 12.2% decrease from the previous year.

As a whole, the company reported sales of $2.33 billion in 2023, a decrease of 8% from 2022's total.

"Element Solutions demonstrated the resilience and quality of its businesses in a challenging 2023 for the electronics industry," said Benjamin Gliklich, president and CEO. "We delivered on our through-the-cycle commitment to outperform our end markets, preserve profitability and generate strong cash flow. Though sales and volumes declined, through proactive cost management and prudent pricing discipline, we saw no degradation in our margins. We seized the market dislocation to enhance our value proposition in the highest end of the electronics industry with two highly strategic acquisitions. We also grew free cash flow 12%. Overall, through organic and inorganic investment, we positioned the business to benefit disproportionately from a recovery in our core markets. Fourth quarter results demonstrate that recovery is underway. Our circuitry and semiconductor businesses returned to organic growth, and overall, we delivered adjusted EBITDA growth of 11%.

"We have solid grounding for optimism in 2024. Inventory in our supply chains has largely cleared, and customer order activity year-to-date has improved sequentially. Smartphone units are expected to grow this year, and the semiconductor market is recovering. Additionally, our gross margins have continued to expand as input pressure has eased. We expect adjusted EBITDA for this year of between $510 million and $530 million. This represents constant currency growth of between 8% and 12%, which is even more significant given the headwinds of reversing certain variable cost actions taken in 2023. This would be a new record in adjusted EBITDA for ESI, on a constant currency basis, despite the semiconductor and smartphone markets being forecast to remain below their previous peaks. We have growing evidence that the drivers of our market growth and our ability to outperform should be durable beyond 2024."