Three Price Increases, One Million Dollars

If you buy titanium dioxide, three increase letters have crossed your desk since December.

Chemours put a global TiO2 increase into effect on December 1, a second on April 1 as an explicit continuation of the first, and a third on June 1. Tronox ran its own alongside them, and its second-quarter release says the pricing moved "as previously announced increases were implemented across our markets."

Nobody is disputing that they landed. Chemours realized approximately 5% on price year to date.

Tronox realized 5% sequentially on average selling price including mix.

So ask the question the increase letter never answers.

Chemours' Titanium Technologies segment sold $661 million of pigment in the second quarter against $657 million a year earlier, and earned $48 million of adjusted EBITDA against $47 million.

One million dollars.

Six quarters, and the margin is still single digit

The chart below runs adjusted EBITDA margin by quarter for the two Western producers that publish one, from the start of last year through this week's releases.

Tronox reports a company total, pigment plus zircon plus feedstock, and Chemours reports Titanium Technologies as a segment, so the levels are not strictly comparable. The shapes are.

Chemours went 8%, 7%, 4%, 4%, 3%, then 7%. Six quarters and three increases to get back to where the segment sat before the first letter went out.

Tronox went 15.2% down to 7.8%, then 8.2%, then 8.4%. The two quarters in which the increases were actually implemented moved it 60 basis points.

That is the whole recovery. Everything else in the pigment file this year is volume.