Tronox Holdings Q4 2025 Earnings Call - Pricing Inflection and Cost Cuts Put 2026 Free Cash Flow on Track

Conference Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Tronox Holdings Q4 2025 earnings call. I note that all participants are in the listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. Also, note that this call is being recorded on Thursday, February 19, 2026. I would like to turn the conference over to Jennifer Guenther, Chief Sustainability Officer, Head of Investor Relations and External Affairs. Please go ahead.

Jennifer Guenther, Chief Sustainability Officer, Head of Investor Relations and External Affairs, Tronox Holdings: Thank you, and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2025 conference call and webcast. Turning to slide 2, on our call today are John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, and John Srivisal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We will be using slides as we move through today’s call. You can access the presentation on our website at investor.tronox.com. Moving to slide 3. A friendly reminder that comments made on this call and the information provided in our presentation and on our website include certain statements that are forward-looking and subject to various risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to, the specific factors summarized in our SEC filings. This information represents our best judgment based on what we know today. However, actual results may vary based on these risks and uncertainties. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.

During the conference call, we will refer to certain non-U.S. GAAP financial terms that we use in the management of our business and believe are useful to investors in evaluating the company’s performance. Reconciliations to their nearest U.S. GAAP terms are provided in our earnings release and in the appendix of the accompanying presentation. Additionally, please note that all financial comparisons made during the call are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to John Romano. John?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Thanks, Jennifer, and good morning, everyone. We’ll begin this morning on slide 4 with some key messages from the quarter and the full year. Tronox delivered a stronger finish to 2025 than anticipated by remaining focused on the things we can control and influence. Safety continues to be one of our core values and remains our number one priority across the company. In a year marked by challenges, volatility, and inevitable distractions, maintaining that focus has never been more important. Despite that environment, I’m pleased to report that in 2025, we delivered our best safety performance in more than a decade, achieving our lowest overall injury rate for the period. This is a reflection of our team’s discipline, diligence, and unwavering commitment to keeping one another safe.

From a financial perspective, we concluded the year with stronger volumes than anticipated and executed on actions to drive cash flow and improve our long-term cost position. TiO2 volumes in the fourth quarter reached their highest point of the year, a pattern that was previously only observed during the COVID period in 2020. This notable trend underscores how anti-dumping duties have positively influenced the relative markets. Our gains in India and other protected regions show increased market share and suggest a structural change in the global TiO2 trade flows. As anticipated, TiO2 prices were lower in the quarter, and mix was an incremental headwind due to higher sales in Asia. However, we are now implementing price increases that are beginning to show results in the first quarter.

Early indications show positive momentum, and with a shift toward higher price regions, market dynamics are gradually moving in a favorable direction. Zircon volumes concluded the year positively, supported by customers restocking and resuming normal buying patterns. Zircon pricing was a headwind in the quarter, compounded by unfavorable mix. That being said, we’ve announced price increases and are optimistic that they will be implemented in the second quarter. From an operational standpoint, we maintained a disciplined approach to cash preservation and inventory management. While certain measures impacted EBITDA for the quarter, they reinforced working capital discipline, resulting in $53 million of free cash flow, a notable achievement given the challenging environment. We also executed on an opportunistic $400 million senior secured note offering in September, proactively increasing liquidity.

In addition, we took the necessary actions on our footprint to position the business for the long term, including announcing the closures of two of our pigment plants. The decision to close the Fuzhou plant in China, as announced last month, was driven by prolonged market downturn, weak domestic demand, overcapacity, and unsustainable pricing levels in China. Combined with the Bhilai closure, which we announced in March of last year, these actions streamline our footprint and improve our cost structure over the long term while ensuring we can continue to reliably serve customers through a more efficient global network. We thank our Bhilai and Fuzhou teams for their unwavering commitment to safety and their contributions as they have made to Tronox over the years. Transitioning to our sustainable cost improvement program, we continued to make significant progress.

We exited 2025 with more than $90 million of run rate savings, three times our original target, and we remained on pace for the high end of our $125 million-$175 million run rate target at the exit of 2026. We’re now tracking more than 2,000 initiatives. More than 500 of them are already delivering savings, and another 250 are moving through the planning and execution stage. The largest benefits came from fixed cost reductions, including the work with action across labor, contractors, and outside services, along with SG&A reductions that came in ahead of plan. These savings are helping us offset a number of headwinds this year and continue to structurally lower our costs for the long term. We also reached key milestones on our mining projects in South Africa last year.

We commenced mining at Fairbreeze and began the commissioning of East OFS. We also advanced our rare earth strategy with the announcement in December of the conditional, non-binding financing with EFA and EXIM Bank for the building out of a cracking and leaching facility in Australia… We are progressing our work on definitive feasibility study and continue to evaluate adding refining capacity to the value chain. As we look ahead, we’re cautiously optimistic, and that optimism is grounded in facts and execution. Market dynamics are starting to change. TiO2 prices are improving as a result of price increase announcements that are starting to take effect in the first quarter, and we expect favorable mix benefit from selling more into higher price regions. At the same time, our actions on inventory, cost, and portfolio rationalization are designed to counterbalance near-term headwinds and support cash generation.

As pricing and costs improve from actions already underway, I expect free cash flow to be positive in 2026. Taken together, these developments position us for a step change in earnings power as market fundamentals continue to improve. I’ll speak to 2026 in more detail later in the call, but for now, I’ll turn the call over to John for a review of our financials from 2025 in more detail. John?

John Srivisal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tronox Holdings: Thank you, John. Turning to slide 5. For the full year 2025, we generated revenue of $2.9 billion. The year-over-year decline was driven by unfavorable pricing and mix, and lower volumes in both TiO2 and zircon. Loss from operations was $253 million, and net loss attributable to Tronox was $470 million. These results include $233 million of restructuring and other charges, net of taxes, primarily related to the closures of Botlek and Fuzhou. While our loss before tax was $458 million, our tax expense was $15 million, primarily driven by not recognizing tax benefits in jurisdictions with losses. Adjusted diluted earnings per share was a loss of $1.50. Adjusted EBITDA was $336 million, and our adjusted EBITDA margin was 11.6%.

Free cash flow for the year was a use of $281 million, including $341 million of capital expenditures. Since we covered our key fourth quarter figures in the January 26 pre-release, I won’t spend time on the financial overview, but will instead move to the next slide to review the highlights on our commercial performance. As John mentioned, volumes were stronger than anticipated across both TiO2 and zircon, partially offset by continued pricing and mixed headwinds. Sequentially, TiO2 revenues increased 5%, driven by a 9% increase in volumes, partially offset by a 4% decline in price, including mix. Volumes exceeded our guidance of up 3%-5%, reflecting continued market share gains in India, Latin America, and the Middle East, supported by anti-dumping measures. North America and Europe were lower, consistent with normal fourth quarter demand patterns.

Pricing was in line with expectations, down 2%, and mix accounted for an additional 2% headwind, primarily due to stronger growth in regions with lower margins and seasonally lower demand in our higher-margin markets. Zircon revenues increased 32% sequentially, driven by a 42% increase in volumes. This exceeded our guidance of 15%-20%. Zircon price was down 7% quarter to quarter, or 10% total, including mix. Revenue from other products increased 10% compared to the prior year, mainly driven by higher pig iron volumes. Sequentially, revenue from other products decreased 17% due to higher sales of heavy mineral concentrate tailings in the third quarter. Turning to the next slide, I will now review our operating performance for the quarter.

Our adjusted EBITDA, $57 million, represented a 56% decline year-on-year as a result of unfavorable pricing, including mix, higher production costs and higher freight costs, partially offset by the increase in sales volumes, exchange rate tailwinds, and SG&A savings. Year-on-year production costs were higher by $39 million as a result of actions taken to improve cash generation. These actions were deliberate and temporary. Bringing forward maintenance, lower pigment and mining operating rates, idling assets, and additional downtime at Stellenbosch drove unfavorable fixed cost absorption and higher idle and LCM charges. These were partially offset by savings from our cost improvement program, as John outlined earlier. Sequentially, adjusted EBITDA declined 23%. Unfavorable pricing, including mix, was partially offset by improved production costs, favorable sales volumes, and lower freight costs. Turning to the next slide.

We ended the year with total debt of $3.2 billion and net debt of $3 billion. Our weighted average interest rate in Q4 was approximately 6%, and we maintained swaps such that approximately 77% of our interest rates are fixed through 2028. Importantly, our next significant debt maturity is not until 2029. We do not have any financial covenants on our term loans or bonds. We have one springing financial covenant on our U.S. revolver that we do not expect to trigger. Liquidity as of December 31st increased to $674 million, including $199 million in cash and cash equivalents that are well distributed across the globe, that we are able to move around with little to no frictional cost.

Working capital was a use of approximately $26 million for the year, excluding $76 million of restructuring payments related to the closure of our Botlek site. Fourth quarter working capital was a source of $133 million, excluding $19 million of restructuring payments, exceeding our expectations. This was driven by targeted working capital initiatives, including reducing inventory levels. This discipline around working capital will continue into 2026. Our capital expenditures totaled $341 million for the year, with approximately 60% allocated to maintenance and safety, and 40% almost exclusively dedicated to the mining extensions in South Africa to sustain our integrated cost advantage. We returned $48 million to shareholders in the form of dividends paid in 2025.

As a reminder, Q1 is typically a seasonal use of cash due to timing of payments and the seasonal build of working capital. However, I remain confident in our ability to generate positive free cash flow for the full year 2026... With that, I’ll hand it back to John to review our capital allocation priorities. John?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Thanks, John. Turning to slide 9. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged and focused on cash generation. We continue investing to maintain our assets, our vertical integration, and projects critical to furthering our strategy, including rare earths. With Fairbreeze and East OFS mining spend largely behind us, we’re able to reduce our capital expenditures further in 2026. While we have some catch-up capital from delayed projects in 2025, we expect CapEx to be approximately $260 million in the year. We continue to focus on preserving liquidity, and we have plenty of liquidity to manage the business and endure market fluctuations. As the market recovers, we will resume debt paydown, targeting long-term net leverage of less than 3 times.

We will do that the same way we navigated this downturn, by staying focused on what we can control and influence, reinforcing the business through cost reduction and cash improvement actions. While prioritizing cash has been a near-term trade-off to EBITDA, these actions strengthen the foundation of the company. With that, I’d like to turn to our 2026 guidance and walk through the cash assumptions that will drive performance this year. Turning to slide 10. For the first quarter of 2026, we expect TiO2 volumes to be relatively flat sequentially on the back of a very strong fourth quarter. We’re experiencing growth in all regions with the exception of Asia, predominantly influenced by India, our second-largest market.

This is due to customers shifting a portion of their volumes back to China following the temporary halt of the collection of duties in late December, following a court ruling. We expect this to be a short-term event, as we believe there will be a favorable resolution on duties in the coming weeks, which would shift volumes back to local and Western suppliers, including Tronox. We also expect TiO2 pricing to be up approximately 2%-4% sequentially. We’re reflecting the price increases that went into effect at the beginning of the year and the continued shift in mix towards higher-value regions. We expect zircon volumes to mirror the solid performance we had in the fourth quarter. Zircon pricing has stabilized in Q1, and we are optimistic that the price increases we’ve announced for Q2 will be implemented.

As we stated earlier, we are focused on generating cash while balancing the impact to EBITDA. We made decisions to keep the West Mine down and one of our furnaces down longer than originally planned, and we also dialed back some production in Australia on the mining side of our business. These decisions reduced near-term EBITDA, but they’re focused on our goal of improving working capital and generating positive free cash flow. We are also managing FX volatility on the Australian dollar and South African rand. At the current rates, this translates to a $10 million headwind in Q1 versus Q4 average rates, which has been factored into our guide. As we’ve done in the past, we are actively evaluating opportunities to utilize financial hedges to manage that volatility.

Partially offsetting these pressures are the savings from our sustainable cost improvement plan, which continues to gain traction and will build through the year. Taking all this into consideration, we expect Q1 2026 EBITDA to be in the range of $55 million-$65 million. Incorporated in our positive free cash flow guide for the year are the following assumptions on cash: net cash interest of approximately $185 million, net cash taxes of less than $10 million, capital expenditures of approximately $260 million, and we expect working capital to be a source of cash in excess of $100 million. Turning to slide 11. From a broader perspective, our first quarter guidance does not fully reflect the underlying earnings potential of our business.

In recent quarters, we’ve implemented several initiatives to enhance our cost structure, streamline operations, optimize mix, and enable improved pricing. As these measures are realized in our P&L, we will generate significant benefits and establish a solid foundation for earnings growth as the recovery progresses. We believe we are at an inflection point for both TiO2 and zircon price. Additionally, we’ve outlined a number of actions we’ve taken over the last year to prioritize cash generation that are temporarily reducing EBITDA. One notable example is how reduced asset utilization affects absorption. As these headwinds subside and as the market continues to recover, we will realize an improvement in our cost structure. As the most geographically diverse TiO2 producer, Tronox is well positioned to capitalize on the opportunity created by the rebalancing of the market, evidenced by the effective anti-dumping duties and supply rationalizations in the industry.

These factors establish the foundation for a meaningful step change in earnings potential. Turning to the next slide, I’ll provide a brief update on our rare earths initiative. We continued to advance our rare earth strategy during the quarter, reflecting our objective to move further downstream into separated rare earth oxides over time while maintaining capital discipline. We made meaningful progress toward a definitive feasibility study and are evaluating development pathways to prioritize returns and limit incremental leverage on our balance sheet. Concurrently, we are engaging widely with stakeholders, including potential customers, partners, and funding sources, to identify the most viable and responsible path forward. Our approach remains dedicated to generating long-term shareholder value and balancing strategic opportunities with prudent financial management. We believe that our rare earths present a promising growth platform for Tronox, leveraging our existing mining footprint and expertise in hydrometalurgical and chemical operations.

That will conclude the prepared remarks. I’ll now move to the Q&A portion of the call, so I’ll hand the call back over to the operator to facilitate. Operator?

Conference Operator: ... Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do have any questions at this time, please press star followed by one on your touch-tone phone. You will then hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. If you wish process, please press star followed by two. And if you’re on speakerphone, you will need to lift the handset first before pressing any keys. Please go ahead and press star one now if you have any questions. Thank you. First question will be from Josh Spector at UBS. Please go ahead.

Josh Spector, Analyst, UBS: Yeah. Hi, good morning, guys. So I wanted to ask, if I go through your free cash flow guidance, if to get to breakeven, you probably need about $350 million in EBITDA, roughly. I guess, one, is that how you’re thinking about it? And, two, just given where you’re starting in 1Q and some of the timing lags that it takes on some of the mining costs to flow through with the lower utilizations, how do you see yourself getting to that level from here?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah. So maybe, Josh, thanks for the question. I’ll start and I’ll let John add some color. So again, we provided a guide for the year. We haven’t provided guidance for the full year. You can get to that math. So we’re not providing a guide because there’s still lots of variables with regards to how we’re running the business. You know, our costs are gonna be large, a lot of our costs are gonna be dependent upon how long we keep the assets down. On the last call, I made reference that we were gonna keep our assets down and focus on cash until we got a couple of good quarters under our belt, and we felt confident that the recovery was underway. You know, we got another quarter, so we’re still progressing in that direction.

We have made some decisions to pull back on one of our furnaces a little bit longer. We’ve made some other decisions on mining. Again, we’re targeting $100 million free of working capital improvement, and, John, you can add some more color on that.

John Srivisal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, no, I think, you know, obviously, we from looking at where we got in Q1 to the rest of the year, we do see, obviously, our EBITDA expanding, to get to that positive free cash flow, if not, more significant than that. Some of it will be driven by earnings. As John mentioned, we do see, you know, the sustainable cost improvement program, which we’ve only seen, you know, about $10 million or so in 2025 hitting, but that was a run rate at the end of the year of $90 million, so we would expect to see that, benefit flow throughout the year.

Additionally, as you know, we did shut down Botlek and Fuzhou, and as we see our sites’ volumes even being flat, we’ll see that cost come through from a fixed cost leverage improvement throughout the year. And you know, obviously, we are focused on controlling our costs, you know, throughout the year as well. So we do see a path to higher earnings in the second half of the year. And obviously, a big driver of that is price. You know, as John mentioned, we are seeing an inflection point in both TiO2 and zircon Q1, Q2, so that will help us as we move across the year.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: And Josh, we referenced that, I think even in the last call. On the zircon side of the business, we had a lot of customers that were starting to get back to normal buying patterns, and we saw that, actually reflected in our sales, in the fourth quarter. We’re seeing that in the first quarter of this year. We talked about a price increase there that we have some confidence in. But both on zircon and on TiO2, to get a price increase in the first quarter is, I’d say, not normal. So we’re cautiously optimistic that the momentum we’re seeing on price is gonna continue to translate into additional momentum next year. The price increases on TiO2, we’ve announced everywhere. So globally, there’s been announcements made.

And again, the implementation on those increases will be different in every region, but you know, we feel pretty confident right now with cautious optimism that we’re starting to see that recovery that we talked about last quarter.

Josh Spector, Analyst, UBS: Great. And if I could just follow up quickly, just on the cost side. So sequentially in fourth quarter, your production costs were actually a slight positive. I think in your answer then, you talked about taking down some additional furnaces. I guess if we look at your production cost bridge into first quarter, is that a positive because of some of the cost actions, or is that a negative because of some of the mining actions? What, what should we expect there?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Let me make one quick comment, and then I’ll let John answer that. So we didn’t take down an additional furnace. We’ve made a decision to keep one of the furnaces down longer than what we had originally planned. So now we’re planning to keep that furnace down until mid-year. And again, we’ve taken some other actions on the mining side of the business. We pulled back some of our mining production in Australia. The West Mine in South Africa is now down. So I just want to be clear, it’s more mining, not necessarily on the smelting side. John?

John Srivisal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, no, but we, we do expect improvement in our operations from Q4 to Q1, a pretty significant improvement. As we mentioned, you know, Stellenbosch was down in Q4. It’s up, up and running pretty well in Q1, so we’ll see some benefit. And just overall, see more efficiencies and improvements throughout our portfolio. I think the one thing, if you’re looking at a Q4 to Q1 bridge item, we have, and we direct you to currency. So if you look at the average rates that were in Q4 versus Q1, as we mentioned, looking at spot rates, that’s about a $10 million hurt from us Q4 to Q1.

Josh Spector, Analyst, UBS: Okay, got it. Thank you both.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Next is from David at Deutsche Bank.

David, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Thank you. Good morning. John and John, just to go back to the prior question, looking at the two of the key bridge elements for this year, sustainable cost improvement and the, mining costs, what are the tailwinds, the actual tailwinds you’re expecting now in 2026 versus 2025 for those two bridge items for this year?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: ... Yes, so I’ll start on the continuous cost improvement program. Again, John kind of gave some indication on, you know, how much of that continuous cost improvement actually resulted in EBITDA in 2025. But the run rate that we have starting in the year is significantly higher than that. $90 million when our target was $25 million-$35 million initially. And again, we’ve got very good visibility into the projects that we’re working on to continue that work. A lot of it’s been fixed costs, but there’s a lot of work going on across the entire company, and we feel confident that this $125 million-$175 million target will be at the high end of that range. There are things that are continuing to, you know, I guess, be headwinds against that.

John talked about, you know, the work that we’re doing to actually offset some of the FX issues, right? So we will be looking at hedging, but right now that’s a headwind in the first quarter. There’s also, again, the cost associated with running the assets at lower rates that are a headwind. John, you want to add to that?

John Srivisal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah. No, I think if, David, if you recall, we did shut down Botlek in the first part of the year, in the first quarter, as well as Fuzhou, which we’ve announced early this year. But, you know, by bringing down those plants, obviously, you know, our chain is pretty leverageable and integrated, and so we were able to ramp up our other facilities. And so that’s providing a good cost improvement year-over-year from that fixed cost leverage.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: I’d say we made this comment last time, I think, on the call, when we start thinking about when does the industry typically start to get pricing leverage? Those two plants that are down, we’ve actually kept a lot of the customers from where we were selling them. So, you know, we’re north of 85% capacity utilization now, and normally when the industry gets there, I can’t speak to the industry, I can speak to where we are, you start to get leverage on price. So running our pigment business at lower rates—we’ve talked about what that impact is on EBITDA. It’s not as significant on the mining side, and the pigment business is running at much higher rates.

David, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Understood. And just on rare earths, I know there have been some meetings over the last few weeks on establishing maybe a framework for some pricing support in the US for these minerals, which would be what you need to move forward with refinery. What’s happened from your perspective, and what’s the potential for this pricing support going forward? Thank you.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, look, that was a, I think, a very, positive result, right? It’s not only the pricing support, but it’s the, the bill that was announced, so the strategic stockpiling. There’s still some work to be done on getting finalized on what that actually will look like, and that’ll come with time. But we’re also. I think, to be clear, we’re working in multiple jurisdictions on our rare earth opportunity. We’ve got assets in Australia and the U.S., so we’re working across a lot of, jurisdictions to try to come up with what is the best opportunity for Tronox. We’re engaging with partners. We’ve talked about EXIM and EFA around the potential financing that work we could have to fund the acid leaching cracking facility in Australia. But we’re making very good progress.

I am not at liberty to talk about who those partners are at this particular stage because we’ve got non-disclosure agreements, but we’re making good progress, we’re staffing up that group, and we do feel that this is an opportunity that we’re going to turn into another, I’d say, pillar of our strategy on the long term.

David, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Next question will be from Duffy Fisher at Goldman Sachs.

Duffy Fisher, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Yeah, good morning. You mentioned at the pigment level, your operating rates are north of 85%. What’s the plan on the mining operations this year? What operating rate do you think you’ll run at there? And then relative to the benefit that you get from purchasing, or you’ve always kind of talked about a couple of $100 there, how much lower will that be this year because of that lower operating rate in mining?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Sure. So I’ll start that one, Duffy. We’ve typically said $200-$400 a ton advantage of vertical integration on feedstock, and I’d say we’re on the lower end of that range right now. We have 4 furnaces in South Africa. We’re running 3. The SR kiln that we have in Australia, we’re continuing to run that at capacity. We’ve pulled back on our mining operations. Again, we don’t need as much ilmenite to feed 4 furnaces when we’re only running 3. So we will make the decision to start the West Mine back up, increase our capacity in Australia again, when we feel confident that the positive momentum that we’re seeing now turns into more of a solid recovery.

And, yeah, I would say that from the standpoint of where we are as far as vertical integration, I think the power of the vertical integration is still something that we believe in, but our objective this year is to generate free cash flow. All the actions that we’re taking right now are to bring our working capital down. You know, as the closer we get to capacity, on the TiO2 side, we’re going to need some of that feedstock, but right now, what we’re doing with the slag that we’re producing is drawing down the inventory. We’re drawing down the ilmenite inventory. We’re drawing down zircon inventory. And quite frankly, on the zircon side of the equation, our inventory is getting to the point where it’s tight.

So, you know, as we start to think about how we’re allocating volumes and we talk a little bit about price increase opportunities in zircon, a lot of that is being driven by the market, from our perspective, is starting to tighten up, and it’s gonna give us an opportunity to have more confidence in those price increases in Q2.

Duffy Fisher, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Great, thanks. And then maybe just two quick ones on cash flow. If you get to your positive free cash flow this year, how would that look first half versus second half? I’m assuming you’ll eat capital, you know, or working capital in the first half and be free cash flow negative and then release it in the second half. But roughly how big a delta will that be, Q1 to Q2? And then what’s the run rate spend on the rare earths project currently?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, so if you look at our working capital and free cash flow progression across the quarters, we expect this year, Q1 to be roughly the size and scope of, you know, what we have done in the past several years, so pretty significant use of it. And then we do claw back, you know, going across the year. And so, you know, significant use, most of the use, if not all of the use in Q1, and then free cash flow positive for the rest of the year.

Duffy Fisher, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: And then on the rare earths, I mean, again, you look at our capital projection for this year, $260 million, which is significantly lower than it was last year. There is not a lot of CapEx at this particular stage that’s in that forecast. So again, we’re looking at a variety of different funding sources for that. We’re working on the definitive feasibility study. We’ve added some people into that group to continue to progress that work forward. But as of right now, there’s not a significant amount of capital on that rare earth piece yet.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Great. Thank you, guys.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Next question is from Jeff Zekauskas at JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Jeff Zekauskas, Analyst, JP Morgan: Thanks very much. Can you remind us what the volume change was in TiO2 for the year for Tronox? Were you down about 2%? And in that context, did the global TiO2 industry contract a little bit in 2025? And if it did, by how much, in your opinion?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah. Thanks, Jeff. Your estimates on volumes Q 2024 to 2025 are pretty close, and I would say probably the market was somewhat similar to that. Again, it was, I’d say, maybe a little bit more of a tale of, you know, what happened in the first and second quarter versus what happened in the third and fourth quarter. And again, the fourth quarter, we saw a significant increase. I think we were targeting 3%-5% increase in volumes. We were up 9%. A significant amount of that was actually coming from volumes that came in Asia, predominantly in India. And a lot of that came from a shift in market share as a result of the anti-dumping duties. So we picked up volume in the Middle East, specifically in Saudi Arabia.

We picked up volume in Brazil, and we picked up volume in India. And I made reference on the call about, you know, the shift in the first quarter. So in the fourth quarter, they were... The, the duties were stayed, but they were still being collected. In the middle of December, a court ruling came which eliminated the requirement for those duties to be collected. So now you’ve got a shift of customers in India that are starting to buy more from China. We’re still selling in India, but the, the volume between Q4 and Q1 is down. But we would expect that the anti-dumping duties are going to be reinstated, and once that happens, we’ll see that shift back to, you know, local producers, Western producers, including Tronox.

Jeff Zekauskas, Analyst, JP Morgan: Okay. You’ve spoken of TiO2 prices as being at an inflection point, and, you know, when you look at the global coatings industry in Europe and China and the United States, it doesn’t seem as though there’s much volume growth. You know, maybe it’s up a tiny bit or down a tiny bit or flat. So what is it that makes us at an inflection point in TiO2, given a soft demand background?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Well, I think one thing you’ve got to reference is that since 2023, you’ve had 1.1 million tons of capacity go away. So any movement towards a regular buying pattern where people were driving down inventories created a significant shift. Then you’ve got the anti-dumping duties, which are also helping that. So I wouldn’t disagree with you that there hasn’t been a significant move in demand. A lot of this has been structural shifts based on a lot of the proactive work that we’ve been doing as an industry to try to get the business in a profitable place. That being said, when we look into the first quarter, we’re seeing volume growth in every region except Asia, specifically India, as I just mentioned, and we’re starting to see, you know, coating season, which is normalized.

And again, I made this point on the last call. If you think about the duty-affected areas at the peak of exports from China into those areas, so Europe, Brazil, India, and Saudi Arabia, that’s about 800,000 tons of exports from China. And again, I made this comment last time, use the US as a proxy when the Trump 301 tariffs went into place back in 2018. You know, 900,000 ton per year market, where only 20,000 tons of TiO2 is being exported from China. So I’m not assuming it’s gonna go to that, but if you think about. Let’s just say that there’s half of that volume, half of that eight hundred thousand dollars, 800,000 tons gets distributed to other suppliers.

It’s reasonable to assume that we would get at least 25% of that. That’s 100,000 tons, and at that rate, we’re sold out. We’re selling more than we’re making with our new footprint. And we’ve redistributed our products so that we can continue to service the customers that came out of Botlek. Probably not so much in China, because we exited that market because it just wasn’t profitable.

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Okay, great. Thank you very much.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Next question will be John McNulty at BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Hey, good morning. This is Caleb on for John. So I have a couple quick follow-ups. So the I think it was Josh’s question earlier on the production cost quarter-over-quarter. Do you expect that benefit to grow sequentially throughout the year? Or did I kind of, like, misconstrue what you were saying earlier?

John Srivisal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, I think it, so some of it related to, you know, some improvements in our operating sites, which were challenged in Q4, as we’ve mentioned, from a Stellenbosch perspective. So we do see our sites operating at a decent clip in Q1, so shouldn’t see a huge increase in from operating well or at higher rates. We are ramping up some plants a bit more, so you’ll see some of that. But a big driver is the sustainable cost improvement program that we’ll see get larger throughout the year.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: And so from Q4 to Q1, it had a lot to do with the higher costs rolling into, you know, our balance sheet from the outages that we had. But when you think about on a TiO2 basis, not gonna share our budget with you, but our costs were relatively flat throughout the year. With the forecast that we currently have with running our mining operations at lower rates in the first half of the year than we are in the second half of the year, if we start to ramp up in the second half of the year, costs will go down on the mining side of the business.

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Gotcha. Okay, thank you. That’s helpful. And then what exactly are you thinking for, like, the base case for U.S. and the Chinese housing markets for this year? It’s embedded in kind of your free cash flow guide for the year.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, look, it’s a great question, and I know a lot of the customers that we sell to are companies that you follow. I think a lot of it in the U.S. is gonna depend on interest rates. So, what I can say is that our volumes that we’re forecasting right now for the year do not assume a significant swing up on the construction side of the business. Volumes are being driven a lot by the activities that were put in place for the structural shift on anti-dumping. There is some growth. We’re seeing, you know, a seasonal improvement in Europe and in North America. This year is similar to what we saw last year in the first quarter. And last year in the first quarter, we had a pretty good bump up in our sales.

The reason it’s not bumping up this quarter is because we’re coming off of a very strong fourth quarter. So, you know, it’s, there’s been a lot of investment in Germany. Germany is spending a lot of time trying to figure out how they can reengage that economy. So we’re hopeful that the economy is gonna pick up, and we’ll see a swing in the construction market, but we’re not planning on that being a crutch to lean on all year long.

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Okay, that’s helpful. Thank you. I’ll turn it over.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Next question will be for Peter Osterland at Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets4: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. For TiO2, what are the dynamics around mix that you’re expecting in the first quarter? On a year-over-year basis, is mix expected to be a headwind, and what are the major drivers there? Thank you.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Well, Q4 to Q1 mix will be a tailwind on price. So as I mentioned, Asia was, we sold a lot more in Asia, and there’s some lower margin sales in Asia in the fourth quarter. India sales in the first quarter are down for reasons that I explained, and we’re seeing a seasonal build in Europe and in the U.S., which typically yields higher margins. So when I reference first quarter, we’re implementing price increases. We estimate those price increases to be 2%-4%. That’s a mix between actual price increases and the positive mix that we’re getting from selling into higher price markets.

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets4: Very helpful. Thank you. Just as a follow-up, on the potential for a higher Zircon pricing beginning in the second quarter, could you just size approximately the price increase that you’re targeting? And are you seeing market dynamics that are favorable enough to potentially support continued price recovery beyond the second quarter?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: So we’re negotiating with a lot of different customers. I can’t provide you with specifics on price, but I can say that I’ve got a high level of confidence based on what we’re seeing right now, that the increases that we’re working on for Q2 will start to be implemented. And if the market continues to be tight, and again, I made reference that our volumes or our inventory is getting lower. We had a strong fourth quarter. Again, first quarter is gonna be a mirror image of that. So I would expect that the industry is gonna continue to get tight. We’re also starting to see buying patterns from customers where they had destocked-...

They’re restocking, getting back to normal buying patterns, and we have seen. I think on the last call, I said we’d started to see some positives on the zircon side of the business everywhere except China. Now we’re starting to see some positive moves on the Chinese consumption. So it’s a bit early for me to give you an annual guide, but I have confidence that, you know, for lots of reasons, price momentum will continue beyond Q2. But that’s still a bit early to call that definitively.

John Srivisal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tronox Holdings: Great. Thanks a lot.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Next question will be from Frank Mitsch at Fernium Research. Please go ahead.

Frank Mitsch, Analyst, Fernium Research: Hey, good morning, John. Listen, I mean, when I see something like 13% volume growth at the same time, the price is down 8%, you know, my macro 101 suggests that, you know, there’s a price war breaking out, and people are using price to grab volumes. You know, you’ve been outlining why that’s not the case, but what are you seeing on behalf of the industry as a whole? You’re announcing price increases. It takes two to tango. Is there some resolve in the industry, you believe, and some price discipline, given that we’re at, you know, pretty low profitability levels? Any color there would be very helpful.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, it’s a great question, Frank. Thanks. Again, I can’t speak to everybody. What I can tell you is what I hear in the industry, and that’s everybody’s announcing price increases. So we aren’t on an island. And again, for us to be getting traction on prices, others need to be pushing. China has made some announcements. The question is, will they implement those price increases? There’s other things that are going on as well. I mean, we talk a lot about anti-dumping. I mean, there’s some activity going on to try to increase those duties in Europe. But the reality is profitability in the industry, when you look at, you know, for a fourth quarter, EBITDA announcements by the publicly traded companies, there, there wasn’t a lot of EBITDA there.

Now, I can’t presuppose what’s going to happen when other announcements happen, but I think the industry needs to get back to a profitable place. So part of it has to do with profitability, but at the end of the day, there has to be, to your point, it does take two to tango, and you can’t be on an island. I do believe that the industry is moving towards price increases. I can’t speak to exactly what that will look like, but I do think that, based on what we’re hearing, we’re not the only one announcing increases.

John Srivisal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tronox Holdings: I’d say-

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: All right

John Srivisal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tronox Holdings: ... one contributing factor that with respect to our Chinese competitors, is sulfur prices have gone up significantly. If you take a look at where they were since mid-2025, they’re up 70%. So they are facing a big headwind on raw material costs.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, that’s, I think it’s a good point ’cause it’s not just Chinese. It’s anybody that makes TiO2 on the sulfate base. So it’s all the European sulfate producers. And John made that point, it’s up 70% since July of last year. Since the beginning of 2025, it’s up 160%. And that’s not sustainable. It has a lot to do with the Ukraine-Russia war, but there’s lots of reasons why prices need to move. But the point you made is the most valid one, Frank, and that is, it all depends on, you know, how the competition work, and I can’t speak exactly to that other than we’re not the only one announcing increases.

Frank Mitsch, Analyst, Fernium Research: That’s, that’s very helpful color. And I appreciate the breakouts on slide 6 and 7 in terms of, in terms of what drove sales and what drove EBITDA. What jumped out at me was volumes, sequentially increasing $56 million on the top line, but $2 million, on the bottom line, sequentially. I was wondering if you could speak to the, you know, incremental margins, on, on, on volume growth and what your expectations are there.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Great question. And again, a lot of that has to do with a lot of the sales that we had or a lot of the sales growth we had in the fourth quarter. I would say the variance between the 3-5 guide that we had and the 9 that we actually achieved had a lot to do with where we sold it, and a lot of that was in Asia, and the significant portion of it was in India. Again, we’re still competing with the Chinese over there, so it had a lot to do with where we’re selling. So when we think about the volume shifting in the first quarter, it’s shifting away from those markets, and that’s why part of our margin improvement in the first quarter is being driven by mix, and that’s regional mix, in addition to price increases.

Frank Mitsch, Analyst, Fernium Research: Terrific. Thanks so much.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Thank you, Frank.

Conference Operator: Next question will be from Vincent Andrews at Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets2: Good morning, this is Justin Pellegrino on for Vincent. I was just hoping you could describe the next process and kind of the anti-dumping duty story here. Now, what’s the approach to take share from other Western suppliers for share that had originally been ceded to the Chinese? And then are there any other markets that you’re watching for potential anti-dumping duty measures in the future? Thank you.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, I’ll start with the last question, and I would say anywhere where there’s TiO2 production, there’s probably work underway to look at anti-dumping. I can’t go into any specifics, but, you know, this is a shifting tide. And as I mentioned before, in Asia, China’s largely saturated that market, but there’s other areas where TiO2 is produced, and, you know, there’s work underway in every one of those regions on anti-dumping. Could you restate your first part of the question again, so I make sure I answered it?

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets2: Yeah, absolutely. I was just kind of curious, you know, as we’ve seen these anti-dumping duties put in place, you know, now that they’re largely in place... You know, what’s the approach to take share from other Western suppliers that was originally share that was ceded to the Chinese? You know, is it largely a price dynamic, or are there other competitive actions that you can take to try and gain share?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: From other Western suppliers, I would say the majority of what we’re doing with anti-dumping is actually taking share from China. So again, when we think about our marketing plan, there’s areas that are strategic for us, and we’ll continue to grow in those markets. But anti-dumping is largely going to be a structural shift where we’re taking share that we basically lost to China as they were dumping. Not to say that we don’t compete with all the other Western suppliers, we do, but anti-dumping isn’t really driving an opportunity for us to go out and do anything other than recapture share that the Chinese actually had taken based off of very low dumping prices.

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets2: Okay. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Next question-

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Will be from Roger Spitz, Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets5: Thank you very much, and good morning. Maybe you said it and I missed it, but if you exclude for TiO2 price for Q4 on a year-over-year basis or sequential basis, if you exclude the regional mix, which was an adverse mix, what was TiO2 pricing? Was it essentially flat?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: It was down 2%, and that was we forecasted.

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets5: Okay.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah. The other 2%-

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets5: Okay

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: ... was mix.

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets5: Okay. And the Stellenbosch downtime, did you provide an EBITDA impact in Q4 from that?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: About $11 million.

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets5: Got it. And lastly, for me, have you or can you say what is the total fixed cost savings of having shut Botlek and Fuzhou on an annual basis?

John Srivisal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, so, you know, as we’ve for Botlek perspective, we’ve mentioned that, you know, longer term, our fixed cost leverage would be about $30 million of savings, and then Fuzhou would be about $15 million dollar savings.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Just to be clear, maybe on that Stellenbosch comment, that outage is behind us.

Caleb, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets5: Yes, got it. Thank you very much for your time.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Next question will be from John Roberts at Mizuho. Please go ahead. Please go ahead, Mr. Roberts.

John Roberts, Analyst, Mizuho: Sorry, I was on mute. Should we think about normal seasonal sequential volumes after the March quarter? You know, it’s obviously been pretty volatile and unusual seasonality in the last couple of quarters, but is that so? In your mind, kind of when we normalize again?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, I would say even in the fourth quarter, when you look—I mean, the first quarter, when we think about seasonal volumes, and I made a reference that you look at Europe and North America, the Q4 to Q1 growth is pretty similar to what we’re seeing, what we saw last year, and that was an uptick. And we’re forecasting normal seasonal growth. Now, to the extent we see, you know, more of a pickup in demand and it’s not just a structural shift, then you could get a bit of a higher bump on that. But I think a lot of that’s gonna depend on the housing market and what happens with interest rates. But short answer is yes, we’d see more of a normal shift in seasonal demand.

John Roberts, Analyst, Mizuho: Could you share any updated thoughts on the proposed China acquisition of the idled U.K. TiO2 plant?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: I can tell you that, you know, there’s a lot of work going on there. There was an article that came out earlier this week. CMA is obviously investigating that. I think on the last call, we said that it’s not a slam dunk, that still a work in progress, and I can’t give you clear visibility on what’s gonna happen there. But there’s a lot of, let’s say, activity going on around that acquisition, and there’s been no decision on how that’s gonna be concluded yet.

John Roberts, Analyst, Mizuho: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Next question comes from Aaron Rosenthal at JP Morgan Chase. Please go ahead.

Aaron Rosenthal, Analyst, JP Morgan Chase: Hey, good morning. Thanks for the call. Is your definition of cash flows being referenced both on the call and in the slides, you know, defined as cash from ops plus CapEx, or is there an adjusted cash flow definition that we should think about? And, on that same front, what are your expected cash restructuring charges this year?

John Srivisal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah. No, that’s correct. It’s free cash flow after... It’s basically before the dividend and other debt movements. And then from a restructuring charge perspective, we, you know, the mass majority of the Botlek restructuring charges were hit in 2025. So we do see a significant reduction, just about $6 million left there. And then China, you know, we expect about $15 million or so restructuring charges related to that. So overall, over a $50 million improvement on a cash basis year-over-year.

Aaron Rosenthal, Analyst, JP Morgan Chase: Okay, great. And then just looking at liquidity and thinking about the cash flow bridge. So 1Q cash burn, that makes sense, 2Q, maybe flattish, and then an implied 2H, you know, cash generation. But as you think about effective liquidity, you know, pro forma at 3/31 or into the second quarter, it seems like it’s gonna be very light, and with very little margin of error. Are you entertaining any additional sources of liquidity in the near term? Equity is up a lot-

John Srivisal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, so-

Aaron Rosenthal, Analyst, JP Morgan Chase: Secured, secured bonds are par. The market loves chem. It seems like right now would be a very opportunistic time.

John Srivisal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, so we’ve ended the year with $674 million of liquidity. So we believe that is a strong and sufficient amount of liquidity to lever or to manage through any cycle. We’ve said in the past that, you know, we can operate as low as $200 million or so of liquidity. We like to go into Q1 with over $300 million, as, you know, that is the biggest use for us. So we’re more than double the position of even being comfortable at the, you know, at a reasonable range.

So, we’re just focused on running the business, managing, you know, pulling levers that we can, but, you know, as we expect to generate significant amount of free cash flow in the rest of the year after Q1, we think we’re in a solid position.

Aaron Rosenthal, Analyst, JP Morgan Chase: Great. If I could just sneak maybe one more in. I think beyond the, you know, the primary cash flow revolver, there’s a handful of other smaller facilities. I think there’s one that was up for renewal. I think it was maybe $50 or $60 million in 2026. Is the expectation that you are going to renew and extend that?

John Srivisal, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yes, we normally get those renewed every year. We have a couple facilities in the U.K. and Saudi that we get renewed.

Aaron Rosenthal, Analyst, JP Morgan Chase: Great. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Next question will be from Hassan Ahmed at Alembic Global. Please go ahead.

Hassan Ahmed, Analyst, Alembic Global: Morning, John. John, obviously, a lot of comments made about volume growth in 2026 year-on-year, and then obviously, you know, expecting a positive titanium dioxide sort of pricing inflection. So just wanted to sort of bring all of those factors together and, you know, seek some clarification. Look, I mean, my understanding is, and correct me if I’m wrong, that you guys obviously had a very strong Q4 volume-wise, right? So, you know, even if the market does not demand-wise grow that much, you know, this year, just you know, for Tronox in particular, you know, the sort of market share gains from anti-dumping and the like should put you in a very decent position to show meaningful volume growth year-on-year. So, first part of that question is, is that fair to assume?

With, you know. And then, you know, obviously, restocking and maybe growth in the market would just be gravy from a volume perspective. And then, you know, alongside that, on the pricing side of things, you know, it just seems that towards the end of last year, pricing got a bit sloppy. You know, you had a bankruptcy out in England. You know, there was this chatter about, you know, inventory being sold at below market pricing and the like. So a combination of maybe the absence of that and a lot of folks not making EBITDA, you know, you know, is that really what’s driving your confidence in terms of getting pricing in Q1 and beyond?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, thanks, Hassan. I think, I’ll start with the first part of your question, and you’re exactly right. We’re not forecasting a tremendous amount of demand growth. This has a lot to do with the restructuring of the business. And again, I made that reference, if you know we only get if China keeps half the exports that they were exporting at the peak, and we get 25% of that 400,000, it’s 100,000 tons for us, and, you know, very quickly, we’re sold out. To the extent market demand improves, then that’s going to be additional volume for us. So we’re not banking on a significant recovery, although, as I mentioned last quarter, the market will recover. I can’t specify exactly, but we’re starting to see seasonal trends that will lend itself towards supporting that.

So I agree with everything you said from a demand perspective. On the pricing side of the equation, I would agree with you as well. You know, there were, there were a lot of reasons why pricing should not have gone down in the fourth quarter. It did. We’re starting to not only announce increases, we’re implementing them in the first quarter. And, you know, kind of going back off the question Frank had earlier, you can’t do that if you’re on an island. I tell you, you know, if we’re the only one raising pricing and there’s a, a supply-demand that’s out of balance, then it’s hard to do that. So I would agree with that. And again, you start to think about the recovery.

The recovery is going to be an inflection that will be a bit different because there is a lot of Western supply that’s just not there anymore because it’s permanently closed. Every single Western supplier has closed plants. We’ve closed, too, and one supplier doesn’t even exist anymore, and it wasn’t like, you know, they weren’t a good supplier. So I would agree with everything that you said. If the market picks up and interest rates start to move and housing moves in the right direction, that’ll only be a catalyst for higher pricing.

Hassan Ahmed, Analyst, Alembic Global: Very helpful. As a follow-up, obviously, you know, everything pointing towards, you know, 2026 certainly being a better year than 2025, and, you know, hopefully, you know, things cycling up thereafter. I mean, you know, with that said, where do we stand in terms of rationalization? I know you talked about it in prior calls, even on this call, that 1.1 million ton figure of sort of capacity shut down since 2023. You know, are you—I mean, with this sort of improving backdrop, I mean, what are your thoughts about further rationalizations, particularly as they pertain to China? You know, I keep sort of thinking through, you know, at least 20 facilities in China being less than 50,000 tons.

How does the whole sort of anti-involution thing play in and further rationalization happen if indeed the environment is getting a bit better?

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Yeah, it’s another good question. You know, the closure of our Fuzhou plant was not an easy decision, and it wasn’t as if it was, you know, low on the profitability wheel in China. We don’t get subsidized, but, you know, it’s a great question. I would have thought capacity would have closed already, and to the extent these anti-dumping initiatives continue to expand, as we believe they will, outside the regions they’re already implemented in, you’re gonna have to see some kind of rationalization. And again, is it going to be in China? Will it be outside of China? I think there could be a mixture of both. I can’t tell you how long sulfur prices are gonna be up, but that is a significant headwind in the industry right now. Price is up in 12 months, almost 160%.

That’s not sustainable. It takes about 1.3 tons of sulfur to make a ton of pigment. So you do the math, it’s a lot of money. So I would expect if the market continues to recover quickly, maybe you won’t see as much. If it takes a bit longer to recover, you might see more rationalization. And China is still kind of an unknown. I would have expected more capacity to come out already.

Hassan Ahmed, Analyst, Alembic Global: Very helpful, John. Thank you so much.

John Romano, Chief Executive Officer, Tronox Holdings: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the question and answer portion, as well as our conference call for today. We would like to thank you for attending and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Enjoy the rest of your day.