Element Solutions Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Element Solutions (NYSE:ESI) reported third-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

This transcript is brought to you by Benzinga APIs. For real-time access to our entire catalog, please visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/ for a consultation.

View the webcast at https://events.q4inc.com/attendee/705163823

Summary

Element Solutions delivered a record quarter with strong execution across commercial and operational initiatives, leading to a significant increase in full-year guidance.

The company terminated its proposed transaction with Solstice, refocusing on standalone growth and committing to strategic investments in entrepreneurship and operational excellence.

The Electronics segment showed robust growth, with a 24% increase in semiconductor business sales and overall double-digit organic sales growth.

The company is accelerating investments in high-growth areas such as Cuprion and thermal interface materials, supported by customer demand in AI infrastructure and advanced electronics.

Management highlighted a positive outlook, raising adjusted EBITDA guidance to $720 million for the full year and projecting over 20% adjusted EPS growth despite some seasonal softness expected in Q4.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Results conference call. After today’s prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star-one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star-one again. I will now turn the call over to Varun Gokarn, Vice President of Strategy and Integration.

Varun Gokarn (Vice President, Strategy and Integration)

Good morning and thank you for participating in our third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me today are our CEO, Ben Glicklich, and CFO, Carey Dorman. In accordance with Regulation FD, we are webcasting this conference call. A replay will be made available in the Investors section of the company’s website. During today’s call, we will make certain forward-looking statements that reflect our current views about the company’s future performance and financial results. These statements are based on assumptions and expectations of future events which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the earnings release, supplemental slides, and most recent SEC filings on our website for a discussion of material risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from our expectations and predictions.

Today’s materials also include financial information that has not been prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Please refer to the earnings release and supplemental slides for definitions and reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP financial measures. It is now my pleasure to introduce our CEO, Ben Glicklich.

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you, Varun, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining. Element Solutions delivered yet another record quarter as we continue to benefit from favorable positions in our end markets, strong execution against our commercial and operational initiatives, and the results of thoughtful, disciplined capital allocation. Before discussing the quarter’s performance, let me recap our decision to mutually terminate the proposed transaction with Solstice at the end of August. Our North Star at Element Solutions has always been serving our customers and shareholder value creation, and following the announcement of this proposed transaction, we had constructive discussions with our investors and gained valuable insights into how they’d like us to pursue that North Star.

Feedback is a gift and we were fortunate to receive it. We work for our shareholders and we value their input. While we stand behind the strategic and financial merits of the Solstice transaction, it became clear that our shareholders valued the standalone trajectory that we articulated in our May Investor Day. They wanted our team to deliver on our plan. They discounted alternatives which introduced complexity and execution risk. The feedback we received was a vote of confidence from our shareholders—confidence in management, appreciation for the unique culture we’ve deliberately developed, and enthusiasm for the portfolio of businesses we’ve built—attributes that together outweigh the benefits of enhanced scale or synergy capture. So going forward, we’re doubling down on the culture of entrepreneurship, operational excellence, and prudent capital allocation that has brought us our historical success.

We’re committed to continue investing behind our businesses both organically and through bolt-on M&A. Our electronics segment this year is on pace to deliver the same amount of adjusted EBITDA that our entire company generated last year. We are increasingly a critical enabler in the electronics ecosystem, and becoming even more so as we introduce and acquire new capabilities to keep up with the rapid pace in our markets. We must evolve, and we’re working to accelerate our development cycle time, deepen our technical engagements with key customers, and capitalize on the many opportunities afforded by the breadth of our portfolio.

Our confidence in an independent path forward is reinforced by yet another consecutive record quarter and corresponding significant increase in our full-year guidance announced today. Our third quarter results were outstanding. Organic growth remained robust in electronics, and the specialties business navigated challenges related to materials inflation and uneven demand dynamics. Our results were again enhanced by strong contributions from recent acquisitions, which position us well in attractive new market adjacencies that are seeing robust growth.

Activity accelerated across our supply chain in support of the ongoing AI infrastructure buildout. Technical requirements in data center hardware and other high-performance electronics continue to increase, which has driven our offering of critical enabling solutions across thermal management, power density, and advanced packaging applications, to name a few. We’re seeing volume growth in the highest-value categories across our end markets—from leading-edge semi and high-end circuit board fabs to device assemblers—and a strong pull for innovation to enable greater levels of device performance and manufacturing yield. This dynamic has led to four straight quarters of double-digit organic sales growth and meaningful ex-metal margin expansion in our electronics business. Our profitable growth has allowed us to increase investment in people, technology, and plants, which we expect will reinforce ESI’s role in critical emerging applications.

Our customers are investing heavily to build capacity ahead of surging demand. We, in turn, have built and continue to build additional manufacturing capacity for several high-growth product lines, including incremental production capability for engineered preform and critical thermal interface products, as well as local laboratory footprints for electronics in India and Southeast Asia. Where investment in Southeast Asia was intended to de-risk geopolitical concerns two years ago, it’s now become much-needed additional capacity for our customers.

Meanwhile, our business in China remains very strong, growing 30% in the quarter. We’ve also made substantial investments and financial commitments to scale manufacturing of our Cuprion active copper products focused on solving several emerging customer pain points around thermal management, power delivery, and plating copper on challenging substrates. Our development partners are exceptionally enthusiastic about this offering, and they’re progressing towards high-volume manufacturing themselves—progress evidenced by the two customer qualification milestones we achieved in the third quarter.

These qualifications from two leading technology providers to the data center ecosystem support our strong conviction in the market opportunity for active copper and our ability to establish incumbency with this exciting technology. Beyond these investments in organic growth, we continue to reap the fruits of our inorganic strategy. The integrations of Micromax and EFC are going well, and both businesses contributed meaningful adjusted EBITDA growth in the quarter. Our formula of operational excellence and prudent capital allocation drove a 22% increase in adjusted EPS this quarter. Beyond M&A, when we see compelling value in our own shares, we can act opportunistically given our substantial existing share repurchase authorization.

We did so this quarter, reflecting our confidence in the business. From here, Carey will now take you through our third quarter business results in more detail.

Carey Dorman (President, Enterprise Operations and Chief Financial Officer)

Thanks, Ben, and good morning, everyone. On slide three you can see a summary of our third quarter financial results. We delivered record quarterly revenue, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS. Organic net sales grew 13% and constant currency adjusted EBITDA increased 29% year over year. Electronics organic net sales growth of 18% was once again broad based. Each of the segment’s verticals grew organically by double digits, led by our semiconductor business which grew 24% in the quarter.

Adjusted EBITDA margins excluding pass-through metals improved 50 basis points year over year to 28.2% this quarter. The year-on-year improvement was primarily driven by product mix within the electronics segment, where organic growth in higher value product lines drove solid underlying incremental margins in the upper end of our 30% to 40% target range, as well as strong performance from Micromax. Softer margins in the specialty segment were the result of an equipment failure that shut down a large offshore customer, impacting sales in the energy solutions business, as well as price-cost timing in industrial solutions.

We expect these dynamics to abate through year end and into 2027. Both segments also saw margins impacted by higher allocations, primarily from above-target incentive compensation accruals. On slide 4 we have additional detail on organic net sales growth in electronics. Demand remained particularly strong across semiconductor packaging, advanced PCB chemistries, engineered assembly materials supporting data centers and power electronics. Reflecting the strength in our markets, industry forecasts for PCB volume growth in 2026 have increased over the course of the year from around 6% in December to over 10% today. This is an acceleration from 2025 and we continue to outperform the market.

Semiconductor Solutions organic net sales grew 24% with improved order patterns for power electronics products and growing momentum in thermal interface materials for high power consumption applications such as AI GPUs and CPUs. Demand also continues to be strong for advanced packaging solutions from Asian OSATs participating in the market. Revenue growth in this business was magnified this quarter by the year-over-year increase in precious metals prices.

Our Assembly Solutions business grew 16% organically. Demand was strong for high reliability solder pastes in Asia which are benefiting from growth in AI power supply and for preform products for data center applications. Engineered preform products such as TRU Height spacers that control thermal warpage on larger chip assemblies continue to gain traction in leading edge applications, driving acceleration in our capacity expansion plans for next year.

Circuitry Solutions grew 16% organically, benefiting from continued demand for board metallization solutions tied to AI infrastructure and high performance computing. We’ve supported customers as they add capacity and are seeing traction with technologies that are critical to increasingly complex, high layer-count architectures. Micromax contributed nearly $140 million to reported sales in the quarter, roughly two thirds of which is related to metals.

The business continues to perform well ahead of plan and is growing revenue and adjusted EBITDA significantly. We remain very pleased with these results, as well as the response from customers and the progress of the integration. Now turning to our specialty segment, Industrial Solutions grew 3% organically in the quarter due primarily to price increases tied to raw material cost inflation. Global volumes are roughly flat with some modest pickup in automotive in both Asia and Europe, while other industrial end markets remain soft. This business has been restructuring aspects of its go-to-market and supply chain strategy over the last year, and we remain focused on strong operational execution and high quality offerings that meet the evolving needs of customers.

Our Offshore Solutions business declined 13% organically, primarily impacted by certain project delays and the aforementioned equipment failure at a large customer. We expect this situation will improve in the coming months, as that customer site has already come back online. Overall market conditions and pricing dynamics remain favorable for this business. Looking forward, we are also excited to announce that we won business on our first, and the industry’s first, deep offshore carbon capture installation.

This account is a small contributor today and a truly nascent market, but may have a bright future. Finally, EFC Gases and Advanced Materials contributed 23 million to revenue this quarter, a 45% sequential improvement from last quarter and a 19% increase year on year. Demand within EFC’s core semi manufacturing, satellite and electrical infrastructure applications ecosystem is strong, albeit lumpier than many of our other businesses, and the team executed nicely this quarter with new business wins at healthy margins that are above segment averages.

We continue to see EFC growing wallet share with existing semiconductor and space customers and winning new qualifications in both. We broke ground on a new facility for this business in Texas late in Q3, which demonstrates our expectation of future growth. Slide 5 addresses cash flow and the balance sheet. Adjusted free cash flow for the quarter was 135 million, a material sequential and year-over-year increase. This result reflects disciplined inventory management despite increased volumes and continued metals price volatility. Our cash flow generation is typically more second-half weighted and we expect a similar seasonality this year. Q4 cash flows should also be strong but are unlikely to match Q3 as we ramp certain capital projects and build stock for several capacity expansions and footprint optimization efforts.

We invested 30 million into CapEx this quarter, bringing the year-to-date investment to 83 million. As we discussed, we are accelerating investment in high value product areas such as Cuprion and thermal interface materials for hyperscalers, while at the same time moving forward on existing plant consolidation projects in our Industrial Solutions supply chain. We now expect CapEx for the year of roughly 110 million, which still constitutes less than 3% of expected full year sales.

These projects are tied to major customer technology roadmaps and come with attractive paybacks that should support long-term earnings growth. Turning to the balance sheet, our net leverage ratio at the end of the quarter was 2.7 times on a pro forma basis including full contributions for Micromax and EFC. We allocated almost 60 million of capital to shareholder returns in the quarter between our dividend and our opportunistic repurchase of roughly 1.1 million shares. As we entered 2026, we committed to leverage below three times by year end and we are already there. Despite ramping capex and buybacks, we have capacity to continue to deploy capital should attractive opportunities become available.

And with that I will turn the call back to Ben. Thank you.

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Carrie, Q3 was a great quarter. Our team didn’t lose focus despite the noise around the terminated Solstice transaction. We maintained our high standards for execution and performance throughout. We emerged better positioned strategically and with greater clarity and conviction in our path forward. Each of our businesses has identified opportunities and built strategies to deliver substantial profit growth through investments in people and capabilities over a multi-year timeframe. We pride ourselves on customer centricity and on this front we’re seeing the benefits of persistent investments in technical service capabilities, technology roadmap exchanges and a focus on customer pain points where we can improve product performance or customer productivity and yields.

Underlying demand in the high-end electronics market remains strong and the incumbent positions we’ve established in the fastest growing, highest value niches of these markets should continue to serve us well. As a result, we’re raising our adjusted EBITDA guidance to approximately 720 million for the full year. Our implied fourth quarter results assume a continuation of AI-driven electronics investment, normal seasonality and continued sequential acceleration in EFC performance.

Our guidance translates to 2026 adjusted EPS growth of north of 20% on a full year basis based on current exchange rates and stable metal prices. We have a wealth of opportunities in front of us and we want to move faster with increased focus and urgency. To accomplish this, we must keep pushing decision rights deeper into the organization to improve customer responsiveness and direct our investment to the right commercial resources. In that context, we’re evolving our organizational structure in the electronics segment to further decentralize by forming more autonomous business units aligned with our customers, all of which will still operate under the strong MacDermid Alpha brand.

This morning, to support this evolution, we’re announcing an organizational change. Our electronics business units, in addition to our specialties businesses, will now report into Matt Liebowitz, who is assuming the role of Chief Operating Officer of Element Solutions. Matt’s been a key part of the team at Element Solutions for over a decade and will be a terrific partner to our business unit leaders. He has deep business knowledge and relationships, having helped build our portfolio in his role as head of Strategy and Corporate Development over the years, and is the right person to serve in this critical role as a thought partner and coach to our general managers. Rick Frick will become an advisor to ESI and our electronics businesses going forward and will continue to benefit from his expertise, experience and network. Carrie Dorman, who’s also been my partner here for over a decade, will become President of Element Solutions in addition to his role as CFO, with oversight of all of our business functions.

Matt, Carrie and I collectively will work with our business unit and functional leaders to ensure that they’re working towards the right long-term objectives, that they have the resources they need to win, and that they are held accountable to their goals. Our business units will have even greater autonomy. Our ethos has always been to empower our people to have a maximum impact and this is one step further in that direction. This autonomy will make us more nimble and that’s essential to keep up with the accelerating rate of change in our markets.

In electronics, we’ll continue to maintain our strong, unified brand and the ability to offer the breadth of our portfolio to our largest strategic accounts. Element’s success to date has been driven by repositioning our company and its resources, primarily our people, regularly to get ahead of the future needs of our markets. And today’s organizational change is another example of this. On the topic of people, I’m particularly proud of our team this quarter who navigated a noisy 90 days to deliver our best quarter ever. So for now, let me conclude once again by thanking all of our stakeholders for their continued support of Element Solutions and especially our team who continue to deliver exceptionally for our customers and shareholders. And with that, Operator, please open the line for questions.

OPERATOR

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow up. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press Star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q and A roster.

Your first question is from the line of Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners. Mike, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Mike Harrison (Analyst at Seaport Research Partners)

Hi, good morning. Congrats on the nice quarter.

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks, Mike. Good morning.

Mike Harrison (Analyst at Seaport Research Partners)

So the first question I have is on the circuitry solutions business. It really is looking like that business may be showing some acceleration. Was hoping you could give us a little more color on how you see the content opportunity expanding as you get into more multi-layer circuit boards compared to kind of your standard PCB applications? And just wondering, are there any factors that you see in the market right now that could slow down some of the growth that you’re seeing in that advanced circuit board opportunity?

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, sure thing. It’s a good observation. Our circuitry business is performing exceptionally well. That market overall is substantially outperforming expectations on a volume basis entering the year. As Carey said in the prepared remarks, expectations for circuit board volumes are about 6% growth in 2026 and the latest forecast has them bumping up against 10%. So overall that market is growing and that’s despite the fact that the consumer electronics market is quite soft at the moment. So all that growth and then some is coming from the data center market.

And those boards are the highest-end boards that are being produced today. Multi-layer, very complex, and we’ve got great capabilities to serve that market. And so our outperformance in circuitry is substantial, you know, more than 500 basis points relative to the expected market growth on a year-to-date basis. And that’s driven by our penetration of that technology. You know, based on really solid work by the team over the past several years, we expect that to continue.

Mike Harrison (Analyst at Seaport Research Partners)

All right. And it looks like your incremental margin this quarter was pretty strong. I think if we stripped out maybe some of the higher incentive comp. Just wondering if you can help us understand how sustainable the strength in incremental margin could be and maybe talk about some of the drivers that you see still playing out from a margin standpoint.

Carey Dorman (President, Enterprise Operations and Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, Mike, I think it’s a great call out. When you take out the incremental incentive comp accruals, which had an impact of more than 100 basis points across the business year over year, we saw really healthy incrementals in the mid-40s for the whole business and the 50s for the electronics business. There are a number of things that are playing into that, right. I think most importantly is where the growth is coming from. We’re continuing to see growth, particularly in electronics, in the higher-end parts of our business as we’re meeting specific customer needs and fewer and fewer of our ecosystem competitors can meet those needs.

That is sustainable from our perspective. On the specialty side of the business, we are working hard in an environment where volumes are relatively muted to make the business better. And even on that business, when you take off this comp accrual and some of the one-time or sort of transitory impacts from material inflation, we’re seeing underlying margin expansion there too. So we guided at Investor Day to 30% to 40% incrementals. We’re seeing better than that now. But I think in that high end of that range is something that we expect to see continue into next year.

Mike Harrison (Analyst at Seaport Research Partners)

All right, thanks very much.

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks, Mike.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of John McNulty with BMO Capital Markets. John, your line is open. Please go ahead.

John McNulty (Analyst at BMO Capital Markets)

Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations to Carrie and Matt on what looks like a nice solid step for them. And I guess my first question is to that. I guess what precipitated the change? You know, you had an investor day early this year. Obviously nothing had changed at that point. Is it the pace of the growth is just that much more robust where you feel you need to kind of make these kind of changes? Is it more about, you know, is it just a follow up to the Solstice kind of change or shift, like, I guess help us to think about what’s driving that and the timing for it right now.

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

So the evolution in our electronics business has been one of standing up best practices which required a really strong central pillar of the business, adding new capabilities. And we brought in a great set of leaders on a functional basis to help us build those capabilities and standard processes. But we’re a dynamic organization. Our electronics business has more than doubled over the past several years. We have those best practices ingrained in the business and the autonomy that we’re driving into the discrete business units will allow for them to move faster, which is what our customers are asking for from us and from the supply chain. And so this structural change will, you know, turn, you know, the analogy of, you know, the tanker to the speedboat.

So I don’t think we ever were a tanker, but we’re breaking into smaller, faster, more nimble speedboats on a business unit perspective, more customer aligned without sacrificing those best practices, without sacrificing the strength of our brand. And so this is a logical step as the business has scaled and in response to customer feedback across the supply chain to partner with them and move faster.

John McNulty (Analyst at BMO Capital Markets)

Got it. Okay. No, that’s helpful color. And then maybe just speaking to the cash flow and balance sheet. So, you know, really solid 3Q results or numbers and I understand maybe the cadence, we won’t see quite as much in 4Q, but the balance sheet’s kind of back to, you know, even below your kind of year-end target. So when you think about cash uses going forward, I know in the past you’ve kind of liked to add on bolt-ons, you know, roughly two per year. Kind of seems to be the cadence.

At the same time, your valuation’s come in under a reasonable amount of pressure over the last, whatever, three to six months, I guess. How do you think about the prioritization of cash use now given the cleaner balance sheet? And should we assume it’s kind of business as usual, or do we maybe shift away a little bit temporarily from the M and A side and maybe a little bit more into the buybacks? I guess. Can you help us to think about that?

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

We’ve always been opportunistic around capital allocation, whether that’s buying our own shares or outbound M and A. We’re in a really strong position from a portfolio perspective that there’s nothing we need to own, but we’ve got a great, a great footprint and brand where the things we add, if they’re quality enhancing, we only add quality enhancing businesses, are better inside of our business than outside. And so our framework for capital allocation is unchanged today.

You saw, you know, we were on the front foot buying shares in the third quarter. Our balance sheet is healthier than we expected it to be at this point in the year given the earnings trajectory. And so we’re on the offensive.

John McNulty (Analyst at BMO Capital Markets)

Great. Thanks very much for the color.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Josh Specter with UBS. Josh, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Josh Specter (Analyst at UBS)

Yeah, hey, good morning, guys. I wanted to ask on Kuprion, just it seemed like some of your incremental capex is targeted there. Can you talk about what you’re accelerating and just remind us kind of the milestones and timelines on some of your expansions the next couple years, please?

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, absolutely. So Kuprion is a great story, as evidenced by the two qualification milestones achieved in the third quarter. So those are two customers, really high-tech, leading-edge customers, who have qualified active copper for their high-volume manufacturing. And so that’s the precursor to the revenue ramp that we expect next year. Our first site is producing in Fremont, California. Our second site is underway in Connecticut and the plans for the third site are also underway.

And so the supply chain is not quite caught up to where we see demand going. But we will be in a position, you know, call it late 2027, early 2028. We’ll have multiple sites supplying multiple customers who are very eager to integrate active copper into their manufacturing processes. It is on track with what we had committed to, maybe even ahead. When you think about the medium-term horizon, this business has tremendous potential and is going to be contributing material EBITDA when we get into 2028 for sure.

Josh Specter (Analyst at UBS)

Thanks for that, Ben. If I could just ask quickly just on EFC, I mean, I think you noticed some sequential acceleration and growth was pretty strong there in the quarter. What’s driving that?

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

It’s a lumpier business than some of our others just given you get big orders tied to certain satellite launches. The core businesses around semiconductor and electrical infrastructure are also growing really nicely. So the cadence of earnings is something we’re still wrapping our hands around. But the growth in this business that we expected is delivering and the outlook is probably better, frankly, based on the pipeline we’ve seen, and we’re adding capacity there as well.

And so that’s a contributor to capex in 2026 and into 2027 in response to really strong customer pull.

Josh Specter (Analyst at UBS)

Okay, thank you.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of John Roberts with Mizuho. John, your line is open. Please go ahead.

John Roberts

Thanks and congratulations on the promotions. More work, same pay. During the quarter, well, actually the temperatures of these latest chips are starting to warp some of the plastic circuit boards. During the quarter, Corning was discussing glass cores potentially replacing some of the plastic. I think one of your competitors announced some product lines for plating circuitry on glass. Could you talk a little bit about that opportunity and how Element Solutions is positioned?

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, it’s a good call out. Again, the pace of innovation in the supply chain is accelerating and folks are working with new materials and we’re at the table providing solutions to enable those new materials. So our circuitry portfolio has very solid solutions for plating on glass, through-glass vias, and active copper is also, you know, one of the leading candidates to solve that problem for the supply chain. It’s a big opportunity for us. We’re very, very well positioned across the wafer-level packaging and circuitry businesses.

John Roberts

Do you have a sense of when first introduction might be?

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

The idea of glass cores has been in the ether for several years and it’s been pushed out a few times. It does seem to be gaining traction based on our R and D projects and applications development projects. I’m not counting on it becoming a material volume driver, you know, in the near term, but over a medium-term horizon, call it three to five years out, I think it could be quite substantial.

John Roberts

Thank you.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Parkinson with Wolfe Research. Chris, please go ahead.

Chris Parkinson

Great. Thank you so much. Ben, can you just offer some insights in terms of kind of the year-end ’26 and into ’27 trajectories for the volume side of Micromax as well as semi? Obviously it seems like things have generally been trending better than expected throughout the year, but I’d love to get kind of your insights on how you’re thinking about the volume side of that versus, you know, the price or the product mix and especially like Micromax and just, you know, how you’re delineating all those details in terms of how you think about growth for the next six to nine months.

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, so thanks for the question. The first comment is really no diminution or erosion in demand. Clearly there’s some volatility in the capital markets and headlines, but from a commercial market industry perspective, we’ve seen no diminution over the past several months and Q4 is off to a solid start by and large, with the exception of metal price volatility. In all of our businesses, the growth has come from volume primarily, and with the exception also of Micromax where we’re seeing an uplift in higher value volume and a little bit of a diminution in lower volume, lower value volume that skews towards automotive applications. So it’s a volume story on the electronics side and everything but Micromax. And that’s what we would continue to expect through Q4. Really nothing, nothing material changing in terms of the demand drivers for these businesses.

So the M&A criteria is unchanged. We want to back our businesses’ point of emphasis in electronics, buying businesses that are better inside of our company than outside, meaning there’s some synergy, and make our company better, meaning they enhance the overall quality of the portfolio, they enhance our value proposition to our customers, they create opportunities for our people, and they enhance shareholder value. So we’re looking at electronics assets primarily. Those could be consolidating markets and those could be adding new capabilities that broaden our offering to our customers. Only high-quality businesses that really fit within what we do today. But you know, there aren’t an enormous number of such assets. We’re a great buyer of them and we’re in a good position to prosecute those transactions. Of course those opportunities don’t come around every day.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Dio with Bank of America. Matt, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Fabian Jimenez (Analyst at Bank of America)

Good morning, this is Fabian Jimenez on for Matt. Level setting on 4Q, the 720 million dollar EBITDA guide includes around 7 million of January Micromax contribution from before the close of the deal. So does your 4Q guide imply roughly 176 million versus the 183 we’re seeing consensus is reflecting? And also, with your customers still adding capacity, is this a step down in Micromax giving back on silver-driven pricing or just conservatism?

Carey Dorman (President, Enterprise Operations and Chief Financial Officer)

So yeah, just to be clear, that 175, 176 is a reasonable number to back into and in the slides as well, we typically see sequential softness seasonally from Q3 to Q4. So the last two years was around 10 to 15 million. This guide sequentially implies that same 15 million. There’s nothing that we’re seeing in terms of underlying demand. It’s really just, you know, operating days in some of the businesses that tend to shut down as we get to the holiday season and a little bit of conservatism. But I think there’s nothing structural from a demand perspective or assumptions around pricing in any of the businesses.

Fabian Jimenez (Analyst at Bank of America)

Thank you.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Pete Osterlund with Truist Securities. Pete, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Pete Osterlund (Analyst at Truist Securities)

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. So first I just wanted to ask about your outlook for electronics momentum to continue into 2020. I guess could you just give some more color on the visibility you have into next year? Is it supported by customer commitments or order patterns, new product ramps? And also just how broad is the strength you’re expecting outside of the AI infrastructure market?

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks for the question, Pete. We like to say that the world doesn’t change from December 31st to January 1st. Right? And so the trends that we see through Q4 should continue through Q1. And as we said earlier, we really see no evidence of an erosion or a diminution in demand over the past several weeks. The business is unit-driven and the demand driver for those units is more tangible or longer term today as we’ve seen this transition to B2B demand from B2C demand than it’s been in the past. Our customer order forecasts have only accelerated over the course of the year. Outlook for the industry from market research has only accelerated over the year.

And so, you know, it is more AI-driven than consumer-driven. Some of the weakness in consumer is driven by the strength in AI, bear in mind. But, you know, as we sit here today, the outlook, the capital plans remain robust into 2027.

Pete Osterlund (Analyst at Truist Securities)

Okay, great. And then just as a follow-up, wanted to ask on the specialties segment, just wanted to break down the organic growth you saw in industrial for the quarter. I guess first, how much would pricing have had to go up to fully offset the cost inflation you saw in the quarter? And then maybe if you could comment on what volume growth was in the quarter and what you’re expecting near term for demand in that business?

Carey Dorman (President, Enterprise Operations and Chief Financial Officer)

Sure. So first, on the price-cost dynamic there, we took pricing that drove about 3% or 3 to 4% of revenue growth. Volumes across the business were overall flat. I’ll talk about the mix of that in a second. That offset almost all of the price inflation. We saw maybe a million or two dollars of wiggle between cost and price that we should continue to pick up. So you just saw the percent impact on margin there as opposed to really profit dollars. When you think about volumes, you know, it’s a tale of two businesses, sort of two end markets and a regional mix. So automotive generally was slightly positive volumetrically, and you see that in the end market as well, where our general industrial construction markets were down more materially. And then again we saw some strength in the Asian business and some weakness in the European business. Those are trends that are sort of following the broader macros and we expect more of the same, frankly, into Q4.

Pete Osterlund (Analyst at Truist Securities)

Great, thanks very much.

OPERATOR

Your next question is from the line of John Tanwanten with CJS Securities. John, your line is open. Please go ahead.

John Tanwanten (Analyst at CJS Securities)

Hi, good morning and congrats on the nice quarter and outlook and it’s good to be working with you guys a little longer. John, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how you expect your performance to track against the data center end markets through the year end and into next year. I think earlier you mentioned, you know, you’ve been outperforming the volume growth in circuitry by 500 basis points or more. Does that spread remain consistent, you know, as you go forward or does it expand with new products and share gain, or does it contract in your opinion for any reason?

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Our guidance, or rather our long-term expectation, is for our business to outperform its end markets by a point or two. We’re outperforming that today. I’d like to think it’s sustainable, but, you know, for the sake of conservatism and not knowing where the sources of growth will be over the long term, I still think that 2% outperformance is a reasonable baseline for us to commit to. But insofar as the primary driver of growth in the near term is the data center market, given our position within these really high-end circuit boards, our outperformance should continue to outpace that target.

John Tanwanten (Analyst at CJS Securities)

Okay, great. Thank you. And then Carey, just if you could disclose how much your energy customer that had the outage in the quarter, how much did that impact the business and how does it impact the guidance this year and when do you expect the full recovery?

Carey Dorman (President, Enterprise Operations and Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, so a few million dollar impact in the quarter. As we mentioned again in prepared remarks, that customer is already back online and working through product that they had of ours. So we expect to resume selling to that customer most likely in Q4. And so you should see the full recovery of that by Q1 of next year.

John Tanwanten (Analyst at CJS Securities)

Got it. And that, zooming in, was EBITDA or revenue?

Carey Dorman (President, Enterprise Operations and Chief Financial Officer)

That’s a revenue impact.

John Tanwanten (Analyst at CJS Securities)

Understood. Thank you guys.

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks, John.

OPERATOR

Your next question is from the line of Alexei Yefremov with Barclays Bank. Alexei, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Alexei Yefremov (Analyst at Barclays)

Thanks. Good morning everyone. I apologize for long-winded questions. It’s more big picture maybe for you, Ben. Your growth has clearly inflected this year, but it seems like there is also a lot of investment on the part of your customers into advanced packaging and another PCB capacity, etc. So how should we think about where you are in that growth cycle? Are we still very early and the major inflection is still ahead? Are we in the middle of it?

What do you think?

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, it’s a good question. The pace of innovation is accelerating. We’re benefiting from a ramp in customer capacity which we expect to continue. Leading-edge technologies are still representing a rather small percentage of overall volume and that’s where the investment is going, and we should participate disproportionately in those leading-edge applications. The law of large numbers also begins to apply and so our growth rate, you know, if it maintains at levels that we’ve seen this year, is adding far more dollars, simply put. So I think if we can sustain this level of growth, in order to sustain this level of growth, we’ll need to see the capacity investments that we are seeing persist for several years. And the roadmaps from our customers are supporting that. If anything, they’re supporting incremental investment relative to what they’ve invested to date.

So we’re incredibly optimistic. The outlook for this business has only gotten better since our May investor day.

Alexei Yefremov (Analyst at Barclays)

Thanks, Ben and Tommy. A follow-up. I’m not sure if you already talked about your advanced packaging growth rate. If you could just give us some pointers there. And also, how did your HDI server board business grow this quarter?

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, so advanced packaging sales sit in both our circuitry business and our semi business, and sales into those applications certainly exceeded the overall growth rate for those businesses in the quarter. And then the HDI market, that’s what I was talking about—these really high-end circuit boards that are serving data center applications. And again, if you think about the consumer electronics market being down year over year and our circuitry business being up 16%, you can extrapolate that, you know, we’re seeing north of 20% growth in those applications.

Alexei Yefremov (Analyst at Barclays)

Thanks a lot, Ben.

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Sure thing.

OPERATOR

Your next question is from the line of Lawrence Alexander with Jefferies. Lawrence, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Lawrence Alexander (Analyst at Jefferies)

So, good morning. I just wanted to flesh out one of the comments you made earlier about the pipeline you’re seeing in terms of investments from your customers and visibility. When you look out to 2028, do you see any factors that would make 2028 a more difficult year than 2027? It sounds like you’ll actually have a net acceleration as an initial bias based on both your investments and what your customers are giving you into their project timelines.

But can you just give your initial thoughts on that?

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, it’s a fair observation based on the order patterns, or rather the industry forecast and fab capacity. Right? And so if that capital is invested, the business should continue to accelerate into 2028 for us. That’s enhanced by Cuprion, which should be, you know, a much, much bigger business by then. On the other hand, we’re unit-driven. And as we saw this year, order forecasts change. This year, they changed for the better. There’s reason to believe that can continue,

Carey Dorman (President, Enterprise Operations and Chief Financial Officer)

But we’ve seen that change in the past. So I’m not, I’m not prepared today to talk to 2028 demand. I’m comfortable outlining strength exiting 2026 and well into 2027. That outlook is much more firm and very solid.

OPERATOR

This concludes our question and answer period at this time. I will now turn the call back to CEO Ben Glicklich for closing remarks.

Ben Glicklich (Chief Executive Officer)

Excellent. Thank you and thanks to everybody for joining. We look forward to seeing you on the road in the days and weeks to come.

OPERATOR

This concludes today’s call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company’s SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants’ and analysts’ statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.