Eastman Chemical sees Q3 adjusted EPS around $1.25, consensus $1.91

Commenting on the outlook for full-year 2025, Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO said: “As we have entered the second half of the year, we are encountering a global macroeconomic environment that remains challenging. Customer caution is intensifying due to a changing tariff landscape and weak underlying demand. With this, we are taking decisive actions to control costs, manage working capital, and drive our circular economy platform forward in a disciplined manner. Considering the wide range of potential outcomes due to increased tariff levels and related uncertainty, the company is maintaining its approach of providing quarterly adjusted earnings per share guidance. We are expecting a decline in volume due to trade dispute impacts and normal seasonality. In this context, we are increasing our focus on generating cash. We are executing plans to reduce inventory by greater than $200 million below current levels. This reduction of inventory will come with a $75 million to $100 million asset utilization headwind to earnings in the back half of the year, with around $50 million in the third quarter. Partially offsetting these headwinds is an expected increase in Chemical Intermediates earnings after an unplanned outage in the second quarter. We also expect to benefit from the continued ramp-up of our cost-reduction initiatives and increased revenue from our Kingsport methanolysis facility. When putting these factors together, we project third-quarter adjusted earnings per share to be around $1.25.”