DuPont de Nemours, Inc. Common Stock 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Please go ahead. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for DuPont's second quarter 2026 financial results conference call.

Joining me today are Lori Koch, Chief Executive Officer, and Antonella Franzen, Chief Financial Officer. We have prepared slides to supplement our remarks, which are posted on DuPont's website under the Investor Relations tab and through the webcast link. Please read the forward-looking statement disclaimer contained in the slides. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements regarding our expectations or predictions about the future. Because these statements are based on current assumptions and factors that involve risks and uncertainties, our actual performance and results may differ materially from our forward-looking statements. Our Form 10-K, as updated by our current and periodic reports, includes detailed discussion of principal risks and uncertainties which may cause such differences.

Unless otherwise specified, all historical financial measures presented today are on a continuing operations basis and exclude significant items. We will also refer to other non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure is included in our press release and presentation materials and has been posted to DuPont's Investor Relations website. As a reminder, on the basis of presentation, our share and per share information has been retroactively adjusted for the reverse stock split that was completed in June 2026. I'll now turn the call over to Lori, who will begin on slide three.

Good morning, and thanks everyone for joining our call. Earlier today, we reported our second quarter financial results, which again exceeded our previously communicated guidance. Through our ongoing focus on excellence and productivity, we delivered organic sales growth of 4%, 80 basis points of margin expansion, double-digit adjusted EPS growth, and robust free cash flow conversion in the quarter. As a result of our second quarter performance, we are again raising our full year 2026 financial guidance for organic sales growth, operating EBITDA and adjusted EPS. We expect our free cash flow conversion to be ahead of our 90% target. Additionally, we announced that in the third quarter, we expect to launch a $250 million share repurchase, which highlights our continued focus on driving a disciplined capital allocation model.

We also completed the previously communicated reverse stock split, which aimed to align our key performance metrics with those of our industrial peer set. In addition, effective in July, our GICS code classification has been changed to industrial, an important milestone that recognizes the significant transformation of DuPont over the past several years. This new classification better reflects our industrial portfolio and the long-term value creation opportunities we see ahead. Moving to slide four. We continue to make strong progress advancing our strategic priorities through a more robust and disciplined business system with a clear focus on organic growth, accountability, execution, and continuous improvement across the company. The objective is straightforward: reinforce the operating culture required to deliver sustainable performance while building repeatable capabilities that drive growth, margin expansion, and shareholder value over time. What is important is that these are not isolated initiatives.

Innovation, commercial excellence, operational excellence, and 80/20 are increasingly connected through one operating system that helps us prioritize the highest value opportunities, execute with greater rigor, and scale what works across the organization. Innovation excellence remains central to our value prop for both customers and shareholders. Our pipeline continues to deliver new wins across high growth and emerging applications through differentiated products and application development. We are using the business system to sharpen the focus of our innovation pipeline, improve how we manage differentiated opportunities, and support the continued expansion of our AI-ready labs initiative, leading to faster development cycles and a more robust front-end pipeline. You can see that in the quality and relevance of launches coming through the pipeline. In water, we launched an integrated end-to-end solution for direct lithium extraction, including membranes and ion exchange resins designed to improve lithium recovery and purity.

In healthcare, we continue the expansion of our Liveo portfolio to better serve the high growth biopharma market In Diversified Industrials, we are bringing forward new solutions for electric vehicles and battery energy storage systems.

Commercially, we are putting more rigor and scale behind growth. We have continued to see improvement in overall order trends, and we are rapidly scaling sales plays using AI to accelerate our impact. Here we are moving from process deployment to operating discipline, and the early demand generation momentum is encouraging. We have won about 150 opportunities, which represents a nearly 30% win rate. This sits firmly ahead of our historical percentage as well as above industry benchmarks. Overall, we are building a more systemic commercial engine, clear targeting stronger data quality, accelerated demand generation, and more disciplined execution from opportunity creation through conversion, leading to a strong pipeline. OpEx continues to be a key driver of value creation at DuPont.

We are building a more disciplined operating culture that is translating into measurable improvements across productivity, quality, customer delivery, and cost. In the quarter, we delivered a more than 100 basis point improvement in OTIF and net productivity, with a continued reduction in cost of poor quality. Looking ahead, we see additional opportunities through both AI and automation, where early pilots in reliability, maintenance, and quality are identifying significant improvement potential. Ultimately, OpEx is not simply a cost initiative. It's a growth enabler that improves customer experience, strengthens margins, and enhances our competitive position over time. Lastly, our 80/20 work is increasing focus and simplifying complexity across the organization. We are developing a much clearer understanding of where value is created, concentrating resources behind those opportunities, and simplifying activities that consume resources without generating comparable returns.

I noted earlier that we began by piloting the approach in four of our Diversified Industrials businesses. This work has identified meaningful opportunities to create value, which we have already begun to execute. The examples are clear. The team identified an opportunity to reallocate commercial, tech service, and marketing resources towards geographies and market segments with the greatest growth potential, while simplifying the approach to smaller markets through stronger channel partnerships. Additionally, the team identified productivity initiatives to reduce manufacturing complexity, better sequence production, and focus on the highest value product families to improve yield, asset utilization, and capacity within the existing footprint. The common thread across all of this work is focus, discipline, and repeatability.

We are advancing innovation in the markets where our application expertise is most differentiated, strengthening commercial execution with data, AI, and more targeted sales plays, improving operational performance through Kaizen, productivity, quality, and OTIF, and using 80/20 to simplify and concentrate resources where they create the most value. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Antonella to cover the financials and outlook in more detail.

Thanks, Laurie. Good morning, everyone. Strong execution and market-driven growth in the second quarter delivered results ahead of our financial guidance. Organic growth and a continued focus on productivity drove solid operating EBITDA leverage, meaningful margin expansion, and robust free cash flow generation in the quarter. Consistent with our first quarter call, I will provide comments on our results versus the prior year pro forma, which adjusts for our post-separation corporate costs, interest expense, and income tax rate. This is consistent with the methodology and financial metrics that we provided at our 2025 Investor Day. In addition, all share and per share amounts have been retroactively adjusted as a result of the reverse stock split. Beginning with our second quarter financial highlights on slide five. Net sales of $1.8 billion were up 4% versus the year ago period on 4% organic sales growth.

Topline growth was broad-based, led by continued strength in healthcare, aerospace, and industrial water and semiconductor markets. In addition, we saw year-over-year growth in our building technologies business on strength in residential and non-residential end markets. From a segment view, during the quarter, organic sales grew 4% in Healthcare & Water Technologies and 3% in Diversified Industrials. Second quarter operating EBITDA of $448 million increased 8% versus the year-ago period on organic sales growth and productivity. This resulted in operating EBITDA margin of 24.6% in the quarter, an increase of 80 basis points year-over-year, including a 30 basis point headwind from price-cost dynamics. Turning to cash flow, we delivered transaction-adjusted free cash flow of $326 million and related conversion of 127%, underpinned by earnings growth and networking capital productivity.