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CEO Forum features executives from 10 coatings companies offering their insights on the state of the industry.
March 12, 2021
By: Kerry Pianoforte
Editor, Coatings World
Coatings World’s 2021 CEO Forum features executives from 10 coatings companies offering their insights on the state of the industry. This year’s forum includes CEOs from leading coatings companies from the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific. The participants are John Falder, CEO, HMG Paints; Michael H. McGarry, chairman and CEO, PPG Industries; Lars Petersson, president and CEO, Hempel Group; Abhijit Roy, CEO, Berger Paints; Christophe Sabas, CEO, Beckers Group; Frank Sullivan, CEO, RPM; Masaaki Tanaka, chairman, president & CEO, Nippon Paint and Thierry Vanlancker, CEO, AkzoNobel, Armodios Yannidis, CEO, Vitex S.A., and Robert Bryant, CEO, Axalta. CW: How did the market for paints and coatings fare overall in 2020? Falder: The UK paints and coatings market was extremely turbulent during 2020 due to the COVID pandemic. With the various stages of lockdowns, we saw fluctuations in market demand and also in the capacity of our suppliers. Additionally, with the looming Brexit, planning and preparation for 2021 had an impact on the purchase of raw materials and sales especially towards the end of 2020 which saw HMG have its best-ever December. The UK industrial coatings market was subdued throughout the year but the Decorative market saw growth with the nation being required to stay at home. McGarry: The coronavirus pandemic has affected the coatings industry overall and PPG’s global business in many ways. At the onset of the pandemic, with almost all countries sheltering in place for an extended period, travel slowed and as a result dampened demand in several coatings end-use markets, including aerospace, automotive refinish and automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). On the other hand, we saw an increase in demand in 2020 in other markets, including our packaging coatings business, which benefited from pantry stocking, and our architectural coatings business. As much of the world continued to spend more time at home, homeowners have taken a closer look at their spaces, evaluating how they function and how it makes them feel. Between creating a home office to changing the wall color in a bedroom, PPG has seen a surge in DIY paint demand. The pandemic has also impacted the way customers purchase paint, with a growing number of homeowners and pro painters purchasing paint and home improvement supplies online for delivery or in-store pickup. Petersson: With the COVID-19 pandemic, everything came to a halt in the first quarter of 2020. We started seeing infrastructure projects being postponed or canceled, which led to a general decline in the coatings industry globally. Overall, the marine market had a strong year. This was primarily driven by dry dockings, with a relatively strong demand for repair and maintenance as well as scrubber installation. The newbuild market, however, struggled with low-order books, but we see signs of soft recovery in the years to come. The decorative paints segment was fairly buoyant, driven by particularly strong demand in the Do-It-Yourself market. Roy: The pandemic of 2020 presented a unique set of challenges to the paints and coatings industry in India. It was May by the time markets could gradually start emerging from the country-wide lockdown. Domestic consumer confidence that was initially quite low due to hygiene considerations recovered fairly quickly by July. Other sectors like automotive, industrial and protective coatings have been slower off the block as was expected. As far as Berger is concerned we reported good results in July to September and a much better result in October to December period with record top-line and bottom-line growth. Raw material prices have been hardening of late and most players in the industry are evaluating the wisdom of a price increase. Sabas: I am proud that despite the COVID-19 restrictions, we have been able to provide the same level of service quality and have not experienced many problems. Like other companies, Beckers was impacted across the globe in 2020. In Q1 and Q2 2020 our business decreased, but then improved in Q3 and Q4. We are not yet at pre-COVID results but overall, 2020 was a satisfactory year. Another characteristic of 2020 was travel restrictions, which continue to this day. While the business was back to a satisfactory level at the end of 2020, the pandemic is still impacting us as we cannot travel as much as we would like. All in all, the whole supply chain – from our suppliers to our customers – has been resilient and working together and supporting each other. It is easy to say this now in hindsight, but during the toughest months in March and April 2020, it was not immediately obvious how to maintain stable product delivery. The pandemic forced us to implement a new remote working policy, and we discovered that we could make it work well. I don’t think we will ever return to pre-pandemic levels of traveling. 2020 also changed how we look at our own people in terms of management. It reinforced our belief in trusting people. We do not have a single bad example where it didn’t work. Now we have to take care of those people in our team who, a year later, are beginning to feel isolated in remote settings. For them we are focusing on creating team experiences via digital media. For example, each week we invite team members working on a project to come together to chat about anything, except business. Sullivan: Like most industries, paints and coatings businesses were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020. Our Consumer Group experienced unprecedented demand as consumers completed more DIY home improvement projects while spending more time at home during the pandemic. In industrial markets, some businesses were deemed essential while others experienced moderate disruption. Overall, our industrial businesses fared better in the U.S., where construction was generally deemed an essential industry and continued to operate with moderate disruption versus certain international markets, where construction was not considered essential and resulted in sales declines. In response to the economic downturn created by the pandemic, we quickly took proactive measures to accelerate our MAP to Growth operating improvement program’s cost- reduction initiatives. Tanaka: In 2020, paints and coatings production in Japan was weak. Total production was approximately 921,100 tons, a decrease of 16.4% from 2019. On the other hand, DIY sales in Japan at home improvement stores increased by about 10% YoY in 2020, based on sales from January to November, which shows signs of improvement. In the automotive coatings market, automobile production in Japan decreased by 16% YoY to 7.71 million units but production in China recovered almost to the prior-year level at around 25.22 million units (Source: Nippon Paint Holdings’ financial results presentation material for FY2020). We estimate that automobile demand will recover after bottoming out in 2020. However, the recovery of automobile production is projected to be moderate. According to automobile production data released by IHS, worldwide automobile production is forecast to be 83 million units in 2021, 87 million units in 2022, and 90 million units in 2023. China decorative paints market since the lockdowns were lifted, new construction projects recovered, and the demand for repainting existing houses was robust from July 2020 onwards. Vanlancker: Our 2020 results demonstrate structural performance improvement from the first phase of our transformation. Despite COVID-19 headwinds, we rose to the challenge and delivered our 15 by 20 promise, achieving 15% return on sales and more than 20% return on investment. We continued to look after our customers and everyone at AkzoNobel deserves enormous credit for their passion and commitment, especially in such a challenging year. We’ve now achieved organic growth for two quarters in a row and announced acquisitions including Titan Paints in Spain and New Nautical Coatings in the US. We transformed our systems and processes and expanded our industry-leading Paint the Future innovation ecosystem. We’ve also accelerated our People. Planet. Paint. approach to sustainability and been recognized by key benchmarks as the leader in the paints and coatings industry. What’s really exciting is that we’re literally only half-way through our transformation to reclaim our position as the reference in the industry. Our new Grow & Deliver strategy represents the second stage of our journey – which began in 2017 – to double the profit of AkzoNobel. Yannidis: Vitex is primarily active in South East Europe, with architectural coatings and construction solutions. Demand was constantly affected by the measures taken against the pandemic, creating deep valleys but also high peaks. The fluctuations strained the supply chain while raw materials unavailability and logistics’ hurdles created a very challenging situation especially for companies like ours that implemented hygienic standards of very high level. At the end of the year, Vitex recorded sales growth of 8%, EBITDA of 16% and higher liquidity. Bryant: 2020 was a tumultuous year for everyone because of the pandemic. The coatings market saw early impacts from China during the first quarter followed by a dramatic drop in the second quarter as several of our end markets began to feel the effects of the pandemic. At the lowest point, our Refinish business dropped to around 50% in Q2, which aligned with the dramatic reduction in time that people were spending on vehicles. We were pleased to see stronger than anticipated recovery beginning in the summer that carried through the lockdowns in mid-November. Outside of the Transportation Coatings segment, the impact to the Performance Coatings segment was less severe with almost complete recovery by the end of Q4.
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