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Peter Huntsman

Ivan, thank you very much. Just over two months ago, at our last earnings call, I started my comments by explaining why we did not give yearly guidance but rather focused on quarterly guidance. And that was just before the first week of April when Liberation Day liberated the New York Stock Exchange with some $3 trillion of value before reciprocal tariffs, 90-day positives, and 500%-plus tariff rates were put on most goods flowing between the world's two largest and interdependent economic systems, along with varying degrees of tariffs on just about every trade flow in the world.
Today, I'm not sure if we can tell you what's going to be happening between now and the end of the week in either the macro economy or our own petrochemical industry. I would assume that most CEOs who have already reported their numbers, if they were to report again today, would be changing their outlook. I want to see if we can take and make some sense as far as what we see is happening today and some of the longer-term implications for Huntsman that we see as of today.
Much of what we are seeing in our supply chains is a literal disconnect between orders and downstream demand. We see build rates for cars dropped low single-digit percentages. And by the time the supply chains move through OEMs and down to us, we are seeing double-digit drops in some order patterns.
It is not unlike what happens when someone taps the brakes on a fast-moving freeway and the car behind them applies greater pressure. Three or four cars further back, cars are literally skidding to a halt.
Now I do not see vehicle production, housing materials, airplanes, and power grid components dropping by double-digit margins. However, I am seeing in the past few weeks suppliers panic and in a world of great and changing uncertainties, lowering inventories, preserving working capital, and stopping supply chains, especially those moving overseas.
Will these conditions remain permanent? I think that is very highly unlikely. I would see a scenario not unlike 2020, when supply chains and inventories froze and the world stood in the state of paralysis as consumers, manufacturers, and suppliers try to make sense of the short term.
I see much, if not all, of the short-term supply and demand issues driven largely by the unknown and uncertain conditions likely being resolved in the next few months as trade deals get done, alternate supply lines and sources emerge and the dust from Liberation Day finally settles.
Other aspects of this will be longer lasting. North American MDI tariffs is a good example. This past year, nearly 400,000 tons were imported into the United States and the Americas market with about 75% of that coming from China. This represents between 20% and 25% of the total domestic demand for the entire year. Just in the month of January of this year, more than twice the amount of MDI that was imported a year ago was imported into the United States.
By the end of the quarter, in March, imports had dropped by 60% into the Americas and greater than 75% from China. And it appears that this drop will continue into the second quarter as only 1 kiloton of MDI from China came into the Americas in the first week of April. These tariffs seemingly are larger, longer term in nature, and I believe may have a greater impact on the Americas.
Huntsman produces virtually all of our Americas material in North America. We're in an ideal location to benefit from this. More specifically, during the latter part of the first quarter of this year, as shipments from China were canceled, there seem to be an oversupply of MDI on the Asian markets. Chinese MDI prices fell as did raw materials. However, in the past week, these prices have stabilized and have actually recovered by 10%.
Again, as we are well situated in our Chinese business as all of our MDI supply is domestically produced with an excellent team of local associates that operate this business. Again, how long will this last? No one knows. But orders seems to slowly be coming about in China and the Americas market. Europe, on the other hand, is still trying to figure out if they have or even want an industrial policy. More to come on that one, no doubt.
I do not see the impact of tariffs having a direct material impact on our Performance Products and Advanced Materials divisions. I can't clearly see what impact this will have on our customers' end markets such as power and aerospace. But things seem to be moving towards a slightly more confident place than they were just a week ago.
This past quarter, I told you that I thought we were seeing the bottom of MDI pricing, or better put, margins as we had seen announced price increases across the US, EU, and China. I continue to believe this, though there may be a bit choppiness in the numbers. The MDI markets may well be seeing better margin expansion from falling raw material prices than from rising MDI prices.
However, volumes will be of greatest importance. The present market uncertainties do not provide us or our customers confidence for longer-term inventory build and volume increase. We continue to be frustrated by the lack of a clear and realistic energy in European-wide industrial policy, which is needed to encourage investment by us and others in Europe.
We will continue to aggressively look at our cost and organizational structure and calibrate that to a shrinking industrial base as we see more companies struggling under the burden of high energy costs, taxes ,and regulation. In short, we will not be waiting for the market to turn in our favor, and we'll continue to take the steps necessary to have a value-creating business in Europe.
We also continue to look for opportunities around the world that may provide a chance to increase our product footprint. While we are careful to protect our balance sheet, we will continue to assess our assets and explore possible opportunities in the marketplace to create shareholder value faster than just waiting for a market recovery.
In short, we are focused on capitalizing on the short-term changes and volatility, aligning our cost to longer-term market realities and exploring various options to enhance our portfolio and create greater shareholder value.
With that, operator, we'll open the line up for any questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Kevin McCarthy, Vertical Research Partners.

Kevin McCarthy

Peter, I appreciate your description regarding what I would call a bullwhip effect. It strikes me that one of the things that might be a little bit different today is inventory levels are generally leaner than they were a few years ago. So I was wondering if you could speak to that. Where are you seeing the most pronounced bullwhip effect or volume reductions? And where do you think there might be pockets of inventory more elevated or leaner, would be my first question.

Peter Huntsman

Yeah. Kevin, thank you very much. Excellent question because that really strikes at the heart of the here and the now. I mean if we are seeing a bullwhip effect, I will say that I'm not trying to contradict the guidance that we've given in the second quarter. As I sit here today and look at that guidance in the second quarter, I firmly believe in that.
But by the end of the second quarter, we may well be seeing an inflow of orders that may have a material change on that outlook. Again, I think it's important that we give you the clearest view that we have as of today and what we're seeing today.
But as I look at what I would say are order patterns versus reality, reality being how many cars are actually being built, how many cars are actually being sold. And there's no doubt that there is a low single-digit movement in the number of cars that are being produced. There are some builders that are slowing production down in Mexico, for example.
But in the overall scheme of what we're seeing in the automotive industry, it's not more than just a few percentage points drop in production as we sit here today. We're seeing raw materials in some applications, not across the board, but in some applications drop as much as 15% to 20% downward just in the last week or two.
Now again, how much of this is inventory fluctuation? How much of this is just setting something in place? But there is a massive disconnect as far as what's being ordered and what's being produced. I don't believe that there's a lot of inventory sitting in the auto supply chain. I would say the same thing applies to aerospace. I look at the number of planes that are being built versus a number of planes that are being delivered. Again, those are two completely different numbers.
And then the supply chain as far as how many fuselages, wings and so forth, tail sections, that are being built. This is one of the best end markets in our entire business is aerospace. You think with the customer base largely built on the back of two companies that have multiyear back orders, that you would see one of the most consistent and reliable supply chains in any of our end use markets.
So I think on a yearly basis, it all looks quite flat. On a quarterly basis, there's quite a bit of volatility. On a monthly basis, it's all over the place. And so as I look at the auto, as I look at aerospace, I would even say the same applies to the downstream construction materials. I look at the number of homes that are being built and the number of homes that are being sold, and I compare that with products that are going to various applications, whether it's installation or appliances and so forth, and you see much greater volatility.
So Kevin, I'm sorry, long-winded answer, but I think it probably gets [too hard] what a lot of people out there are really thinking. How do you match today's drop-off in demand with the reality of what's actually being consumed in the broader market? The simple fact doesn't matter.
The only parallel I've seen in the last 15, 20-plus years is really 2020, when we saw a very, very rapid sudden drop-off in COVID and subsequently we saw, in your words, this bullwhip effect that came back in the latter part of 2020 and went all the way up to '21.

Kevin McCarthy

And then as a follow-up, would you have a guess as to how much the total company volume might have been down, if it was down, in the month of April, and how the order books are shaping up for May?

Peter Huntsman

Yeah. I'd want to look a little bit more closely at that. I think when you'd be looking across the board at all of the businesses, January and February for us would have been -- what I would say, would be months that we're on target and were meeting expectations. We really saw a great deal of volatility around those orders in the month of March and going into April. And as I say, it's -- obviously, we're in the very early part of May.
Not a great deal of visibility right now. But it seems like the dust is gradually starting to settle. So a lot of metaphors in there without giving you exact numbers, and I don't have the exact numbers on the volume of the pricing. But as we look into the second quarter, our single largest variable in the second quarter is going to be around what actually happens with volumes, order pounds, and prices.
And I will just say that I'm not aware of any large customers that we have lost during this time period as well. I say that because I believe that what we're seeing is a lot of -- other people are probably seeing the same thing.

Operator

Patrick Cunningham, Citi.

Patrick Cunningham

The trade uncertainty is clearly overwhelming everything, but one of the goals is to increase US manufacturing and maybe you'll get some tailwinds for housing and infrastructure. How do you view the growth potential longer term if the policies work as intended? And how would you further reposition your asset footprint if we live in this protectionist world?

Peter Huntsman

Well, I'm not sure that as we look at our asset footprint I continue to see some vague question marks around Europe. But if you -- okay, I'm probably oversimplifying things. If you look at a more protectionist view in China and the more protectionist view in America, and China certainly started five, six years ago increasing their industrial capacity, domesticating their industrial capacity and so forth and becoming less reliant on imports, largely doing what the US is today.
The vast majority of what we sell, the vast majority of where we make money is in domestically produced product both in North America and in Asia. So I don't see us having to change our footprint, if you will, manufacturing or otherwise, to try to calibrate around where things seemingly are going. Now again, that may have an impact on our downstream demand on some of our products and so forth.
But I think that we're in a pretty good position ourselves. You did mention the construction markets. And I would think that the single biggest issue probably certainly longer term, even more so than tariffs, I think tariffs will recalibrate and we'll be able to work our way through tariffs.
The single biggest impact that we see between now and the end of the year on our earnings would be an improvement and a pickup in the North American residential and commercial construction.

Patrick Cunningham

Understood. Very helpful. And could you provide an update on the spray foam business? Has this business seen a similar disconnect in downstream demand versus your orders? And do you expect any sort of further pressure on this market just given homebuilders are under pressure at this point?

Peter Huntsman

Yeah. So bottom line is, as you think about the spray foam business, that's going to both be in new homes, which has slowed, and home remodeling, taking out a second mortgage or whatever and add a higher interest rate and remodeling your home. That industry has obviously slowed as well. So yeah, we would see that impact in both areas.

Philip Lister

And Patrick, you'll have seen that we announced the closure of our Boisbury, Canada facility for spray. We're consolidating everything down in Arlington in Texas, and that's just rightsizing our footprint to ensure we've got the cost base right.

Operator

Jeff Zekauskas, JPMorgan.

Jeffrey Zekauskas

Can you talk about pricing in MDI in North America? It seems that the major producers went out with meaningful price increases. What happened and what continues to happen?

Peter Huntsman

Well, look, we are still out there pushing price increases and so forth. I'm not going to speak on behalf of our competitors. I'll let them speak for themselves and whatever decisions they're trying to make. Jeff, the objective of our price increases was to expand margins. And if we can do that by maintaining a price and being able to take advantage of falling raw material prices, we'll certainly do that.
I would say that I think that we are in a worse position today than we were two months ago when it comes to those prices being implemented due solely because of the lack of volume, the lack of demand that we're seeing in the market.
Conversely, I would expect that as you see tariffs fully in effect in North America, perhaps even in China, and as you see volumes recover to a more normalized area, you'll see an opportunity for those price increases to be more meaningfully implemented across the board.

Jeffrey Zekauskas

Okay. And then for Phil, I think inventories went up $100 million roughly sequentially. Is that mostly because your demand was less than you expected and you need to move your operating rates down? And do you have any estimates for whether working capital will be a benefit or a [use] this year?

Philip Lister

Yeah. Jeff, it came in about where we expected. As a reminder, we've got a number of turnarounds around the world, particularly the large one that we had in Rotterdam, where we had to build for that. We've got some more minor ones during the second quarter in Geismar, in Caojing, China, as well as the turnaround at our Conroe, Texas facility. So I expect us to build. Those numbers will come down in the second quarter.
And you're right, there's some calibration there towards a lower or, let's call it, an uncertain demand environment. But we'll have our inventories back down at the end of the second quarter. For the full year, I think we articulated we still expect to have an improvement on our cash conversion cycle. We improved on that last year, and we expect a further improvement on that for this year in terms of whether it be a source or a use.
Selfishly, I hope there's a use. I hope there's a booming economy by the fourth quarter, and fourth quarter activity is much higher in the fourth quarter this year versus the fourth-quarter last year. But our focus, honestly, is on what we can control and ensuring our cash conversion cycle is appropriately managed.

Operator

Josh Spector, UBS.

Joshua Spector

Good morning. I wanted to ask two things. First, on the trade balances for MDI. I mean, at least on the data that we have through February, it looks like there's been a tick up in Germany imports into the US. So as China backs out, do you see a scenario where Europe fills in that gap? Or do US assets move up much more to fill that?
I don't know if that's internal transfers of a competitor or something else going on or something with the market. And then second, just with your US pricing where you have spread pass-throughs or benzene pass-throughs, how do those contracts renegotiate? What's your ability to increase those spreads separate from the price increases?

Peter Huntsman

Yeah. On the first part of that question, yeah, I would think that if somebody is bringing in product from Europe today, I can't imagine why they would be doing that. I mean, as I look at our own manufacturing costs, we're in excess of $100-a-ton higher cost in Europe. And then on top of that, you have to pay what I think is a 6% to 8% duty or tariff. And then on top of that, you have to pay working capital, you have to pay transportation. So you're talking there probably of $400 to $500 a ton difference between Europe and the US.
So if somebody's shipping product in from Europe into the US for economic benefit, I find it really tough to understand why somebody would be doing that, but short of an operating offset, and you've got contractual obligations that you have to meet on a take-or-pay or something. So no, I do not see Europe backfilling Asian material that otherwise would be coming to the US.
It has not been competitive to do that for at least the last three or four years. And I don't foresee in the future, given the energy costs and so forth in Europe, the freight costs and tariffs and so forth, I don't see how that could possibly make sense on a longer-term basis.
Yeah. On our pass-through pricing, remind you that just under about 50% of our overall North American volume is on some form or another of pass-through. So I think it's kind of -- I'm not going to say it's standard in the industry, but there are some segments that have longer-term commitments to customers and so forth where they favor that and others that do not.
Typically, those contracts, I'm not going to speak to all of them because they all vary contract to contract. But typically, you have anywhere from a three, six months, what I would call, a pit stop, where you can pull off on the contracts and you can readjust the portion of that contract that is not related to raw materials that I would call would be a margin expansion, or you can just choose to get out of the contract altogether.
But again, that's going to vary customer to customer, term to term. But you typically, every couple of months, you'll have a pit stop. So again, if you see a dollar drop in benzene that happened, let's hypothetically say today, I would say that you probably have anywhere from a 30- to 45-day time period of where your existing inventory is going to have to be worked through the system.
You've got benzene that if that price were to drop today -- you got Benzene that you bought yesterday, benzene that's on the water and shipment to your clients, you've got benzene in the form of nitrobenzene, crude MDI, finished inventory, all that's priced at a more expensive inventory.
So the impact of that dollar cheaper benzene as of today is not going to be felt for some time. And then when it is, you'll instantaneously feel it on that 50%. Again, that's a much higher percentage than what you see in Europe or in Asia, in the US market. At 50%, you would feel that instantaneously.
And then the other 50%, you would see that probably over a three to six, maybe in a very few contracts as much as long as a nine-month term contract in that. So that last 50% would be tailing off there. So again, I'd like to be able to say if you see a dollar drop today, you're going to see the benefit today.
Conversely, when prices go up, we're not going to fully see the impact of that taking effect. And when prices go up and people are panicking so forth, we usually -- it gives us that amount of time inversely to be able to respond to the market and to be able to calibrate our production, our costs and so forth. So it works in the opposite when prices are going up.

Operator

Aleksey Yefremov, KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Aleksey Yefremov

Peter, to continue with this line of questioning, can Chinese exporters shift to moving MDI to Canada and Mexico? And would your customers be able to ship their consumption to those two countries?

Peter Huntsman

Well, not if they become the 51st and 52nd state. Okay, I'm just kidding. No, that's -- look, there's obviously going to be -- there would be an advantage, I assume. Each of those countries have their own independent trade tariffs and so forth that are going to be put into place.
There have been some recent rather public MDI consumers that have taken MDI-finished product in the form of building materials and other products, I don't want to get customer or company specific, that have brought that over the border and have been fined and under investigation for trying to avert duties that way.
So again, when you look at what you produce in Canada, you're going to have to be consuming that in Canada as well. You bring a finished product into the United States on every single application. But on most of the applications, you're going to have to be paying a duty on that proportion of MDI.

Aleksey Yefremov

Makes sense. And I wanted to ask you about the dividend. Can you share anything about how the Board thinks on this topic? Is the dividend something you're really determined to keep at this level? Or is there a good argument to sderisk the balance sheet and adjust it since free cash flow has been weaker for a while?

Peter Huntsman

I think if you look in the past -- in our company's past all through COVID, and even through the economic recession going back 15 years ago, the dividend has been something that this company has always held to be something very close to sacred. We, as a management team, I mean, as we look beyond just the cash generation of the company itself, we look at the $75 million we've collected so far to date from Praxair legal settlement, from our SLIC dividend from other initiatives that we'll have between now and the end of the year.
We feel very confident that we will continue to generate the amount of cash necessary, that we have a strong enough balance sheet and we certainly have confidence in the future as to where the company is going to maintain the dividend. So at this time, that certainly is not a question that we're grappling with.

Philip Lister

Yeah. I mean, we recognize yields are high right now, Aleksey. They always are in trough conditions. As Peter indicates, we've got $1.3 billion of liquidity. Our debt maturities are '29, '31 and '34. So we're managing the cash slide appropriately.

Operator

Mike Harrison, Seaport Research Partners.

Michael Harrison

Peter, along with all the tariff-related uncertainty, you guys had a turnaround going on at Rotterdam that, I think, bled into the second quarter, too. The unplanned outage at the maleic facility in Germany, it sounds like there was a fire at an automotive customer facility. Can you quantify the impact of those disruptions to EBITDA in Q1?
And then Phil mentioned some more planned turnarounds for Q2. How much headwind is baked into the EBITDA guidance from those planned, I guess, disruptions or turnarounds?

Peter Huntsman

Yeah. I would say Rotterdam as we've guided and I think on our previous call, we talked about a $15 million hit in the first half, $5 million in the first quarter, $10 million in the second quarter. I think we continue to stand by that, though we are literally -- in the course of the next few days here, we are literally going through a startup of our lines as we speak.
And equally as important is our lines aligns with our customers and suppliers who are also starting up their facilities. So Rotterdam is a particularly tricky one because we can only run as far and as fast as our customers do on this whole thing.
As far as the fire is concerned, yeah, that's probably around a $3 million hit. Again, we didn't have anything to do with the fire, but it did impact some of the order flows coming from our Advanced Materials going into, I think, it's particularly into the EV applications.

Philip Lister

Yeah. And on maleic, I think you're aware, Mike, that the margins are incredibly thin in European maleic given the demand that we see there and given imports into China. So that's a negligible impact. It does have a large impact when you look at year-on-year growth numbers where it looks quite dramatic. But PP was down 16%, but once you strip out the European side of the business, it was down more like 3% to 4% overall.

Peter Huntsman

Yeah. Virtually all that was European on a single site. Yeah.

Michael Harrison

All right. And then the Geismar and China, and I think you mentioned another facility for Q2, are those pretty modest in terms of impact for Q2?

Philip Lister

Yeah, relatively small, Mike. You should focus on the Rotterdam and the Rotterdam impact for us.

Peter Huntsman

Yeah. The impact on the others will largely be around the movement in stock and inventory, which Phil already addressed.

Operator

Michael Sison, Wells Fargo.

Michael Sison

Peter, some of the consultants see a pretty good increase in MDI margins sequentially in 2Q versus 1Q driven by pricing. What are your thoughts in terms of industry profitability heading into 2Q?

Peter Huntsman

Well, again, if I take a snapshot of today, as I said earlier in my comments, it's around volume. Again, as I look at pricing, we're -- Europe where -- prices is matching raw materials. As I look at the US, I think that we have an opportunity to expand margin if we're able to maintain our price or slightly increase our price, hopefully, get it up even further and take advantage of falling raw material prices.
Asia, again, I've talked about the fall off that we saw going into the second quarter. It's been a whopping eight days now that we've celebrated the price has either not been falling or gradually been coming up. So I'll continue to take that one day at a time.
But I want to emphasize that we're eight days into either a dead cat bounce or -- sorry, might have just offended a bunch of cat lovers out there -- dead cat bounce or it might be something that the product that was destined for North America that was being put on ships early in the first quarter, it was taken off ships and put back into the Chinese market. That product has been adequately absorbed into the Chinese market. And the Chinese markets are now better balanced.
So we look at a price going from $18,500 per ton, down to about $14,200, today sitting at like $15,200. Again, that's a lot of volatility. But the prices to where we were a month ago or so has been pretty stable for the last couple of months and it's been fairly healthy given where we are in the other parts of the world. So I think Asia continues to be -- it will be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of weeks on pricing.

Michael Sison

Got it. And then I understand that it's difficult to take a look beyond 2Q, but what do you think you need to see or want to see to have a better second half in terms of earnings versus the first half? And if the US economy goes into a recession, albeit it seems like we've been in a chemical recession for quite some time, what happens? What do you think you need to do to keep earnings at these levels?

Peter Huntsman

Well, I certainly would like to see earnings improve materially from these levels. And again, as we look at the single biggest variable in the second quarter, as we look at -- and around where we had hoped second quarter would be versus where we see second quarter today, the biggest single variable that we see is around volume and pricing.
And that's going to be, in my opinion, not 100%, but largely a function of certainty. And if you see certainty in the market and if people have an idea as to where tariffs are going and where supply chains are moving and that entire impact, you'll see volumes recover. And I believe that as you start seeing more and more trade deals get completed, that certainty slowly recovers back into the market.
I hope that by the end of the quarter that we'll be surprised at the improvement in volume. But that volume does have to improve. And I believe that it will eventually improve, just simply because there's a massive disconnect, as I've said, between what consumers, what people are using, what they're buying, what they're spending on and what we're supplying into those markets. There's just not that much excess inventory in the system.

Operator

Arun Viswanathan, RBC Capital Markets.

Arun Viswanathan

I guess I had a question about the guidance. So it looks like your first half now is -- will be coming in around 150 or in that range. And if you were to annualize it and adding some seasonality, you get to like a 350 range, which is I think, quite a bit below what we started the year expecting. So obviously, Peter, you went through a lot of the potential pullback amongst your customers and then the potential positive bullwhip effects that can follow that.
But am I thinking about your level of confidence in EBITDA for the year in the right way? I just don't want to get ahead of our skis here just given all that uncertainty out there.

Peter Huntsman

Yeah. Personally, Arun, yes, we're doing very well. Thank you for your comments. Personally, I would hope that we certainly finish the second half of the year better than the first half of the year. I think that the guidance that we gave in the first quarter call, we purposely avoided giving yearly direction just because it was so hazy then.
And I think it is far hazier today than it was then. I hate to say that given the fact that we're three months further into the year. So I mean, I want to hope for the second half, but I can't sit here and say that we've seen a bunch of orders that are going to give us a great deal of confidence. So I probably would just avoid trying to tell you where we're going to end the year.
My personal opinion (technical difficulty) it's true. I think inventories are low. I think demand is a backlog of demand and housing and a lot of the products we produce, the build-out of aerospace and the recovery of it, the build-out of our electrical grid, the components and so forth going into that.
The expansion that we're going to continue to see in technologies and EVs and so forth, these all would tell you that there's going to be a growth in demand and there's going to be a (technical difficulty)
Operator, any more questions?

Operator

John Roberts, Mizuho Securities.

John Roberts

Are you seeing uniform weakness across composite wood versus automotive versus insulation? Or is there some differentiation there? And then secondly, during 2020, a lot of the small spray foam customers got stimulus, at least to keep them going. Do you think they'd survive this correction right now?

Peter Huntsman

Yeah, I've got no idea as to what our competition will be doing in spray foam. I've not heard or seen any talk, legislation or anything around any stimulus that would be directed towards a particular segment of any of our customer bases. So I'd be surprised to see that. Yeah. And as we look at the difference between OSB, insulation, automotive, I think that there's just a general trend right now of uncertainty.
And that uncertainty right now just has people bringing down inventories, bringing down orders on the short-term, preserving capital, strengthening their balance sheet, doing those emergency steps that you see in moments and times of uncertainty until there's greater certainty. So I'm not sure that it's all necessarily tied industry to industry as much as it is just the general sentiment of the industry.

Operator

Frank Mitsch, Fermium Research.

Frank Mitsch

Congrats to Tony Hankins on his pending retirement. It was a pleasure to work with him. And by the way, I'm not sure if it was just me, but in the last 5 minutes or so, the conference call has been coming in and out. Perhaps it was just my phone.
But Peter, I appreciate the reference to COVID in terms of the paralysis that we're seeing now. But as I took a look back at COVID, and really, it was just one quarter. It was the second quarter of '20 that was very poor. The first quarter and third quarter of '20, you posted very strong results. And here we are, it looks like the second quarter is the third quarter of really poor results.
I mean is this systematic? Or you believe that it's episodic in that we're going to get out of it and you're going to go back to posting kind of $200 million-type EBITDA quarters? What gives you confidence that this is not a systemic decline in your business lines?

Peter Huntsman

What gives me confidence is the disconnect between -- if our sales were down, the automotive were down 10% and their sales were down the whole value chain was going down 10%. I'd say this is systematic. I'd say this is probably longer term, we ought to be getting ready for it. I'm simply not seeing that. And as I talk to customers and I talk to Board members and I talk to people that are involved in the auto, into the aerospace, and even into the homebuilders, I don't get that indication.
Frank, I'm not going to sit here and say that I've talked to everybody, and I can retroactively reflect everybody's sentiment in this. But I do believe that I've only seen this disconnect between the panic and orders that we've seen today and that which we've seen previously.
I would also just note that COVID -- we saw a lumpiness of the impact of COVID. There's no doubt, North America was certainly a second quarter phenomenon. I think it happened a little bit later than that in Europe, the impact on the European P&L. And it happened previous to that on the Chinese P&L. And the Chinese P&L also spilled again a second time in the latter part of 2020.
So I don't want to get technical, the comparisons between COVID and where we are today. I will just say the only comparison that I was trying to make was more just around the couple of months that we saw a disconnect between inventory, customer demand, and pull-through of the ultimate supply chains.

Frank Mitsch

Okay. Understood. And can you provide an update on the maleic facility in Europe? It seems like a couple of things happened there. One, you're looking to make a decision on it, I think, by midyear. But then you also had an unplanned outage. What's going on there? How should we think about that?

Peter Huntsman

Well, I would think about it that we think that by the middle part of this year that we will be in a position to announce a permanent decision as it pertains to that asset. And Europe continues to be flooded with maleic coming in from China and coming in indirectly from Russia via Turkey. And it also continues to be flooded not just with maleic but also downstream UPR materials as well.
So it's getting hit in multiple areas. And so in addition to our operating issues that we have in Germany, certainly are seeing headwinds in just the overall demand in the margin erosion that we see in maleic in Europe.

Operator

Salvador Tiano, Bank of America.

Salvator Tiano

So firstly, on MDI, I wanted to ask how are you so far in Q1 or in Q2 managing your MDI system, specific your upstream MDI plants given the reduced demand? And specifically on Geismar, I remember a little bit over a year ago, you brought online or you restarted the smaller of the units there. So is this something that you may have to stop using again? Or are you still producing in Q1?

Peter Huntsman

No. I would say that if anything, we're hoping to see greater capacity utilization. We brought Line 1 down in Q1 in part because obviously of low margins and in part because we believe that there was a lot of uncompetitive material being imported into the United States and that was having -- into the Americas market and that was having an impact on it.
So with tariffs that are in place, with the change of imports and so forth that we're seeing, if anything, I see the demand ought to be picking up for domestically produced MDI. Our downstream system houses in the US, I'd remind you that we don't have too many in the US. We produce polyols, and that's a raw material that's going into our spray foam and our other polyols business. That continues to be a great business for us.
We're consolidating -- I would say that our HBS business, it's a separate business. We look at internally, we try to run it as competitively as we can integrate with the rest of our business. In some regards, I look at that as a downstream systems business as well. And we're obviously consolidating that operation, making sure that our costs are aligned with the market realities.
In Europe, we've continued to -- we've announced the closure of our Deggendorf, Germany, and the reduction of some of our other sites and facilities around Europe. And we'll continue to look at our overall footprint there. So yeah, we'll continue to look at our costs. We'll continue to look at the overall structural demand and profitability of our entire chain.
But this year, I think that even if we remain in somewhat sluggish economic environment, the opportunity to increase domestically produced MDI in North America will likely improve through the year.

Salvator Tiano

Great. Perfect. And I wanted to follow up on the PO/MTBE JV in China and if you can give a little bit more outlook now on what you expect for perhaps the next few quarters. And if there's any more clarity, I guess, on what would be the deal that you receive on 2026 based on what is happening right now in earnings.

Philip Lister

Yeah. So I mean, as we said, our equity dividends for '25 will be a lot lower than they were in '24. MTBE margins started to decline towards the back end of last year. And you can follow those margins via CMA via (technical difficulty) -- they're close to breakeven today as oil has come off, WTI is now below 60, Brent, down at about 60. So they're close to breakeven right now.
And that's why we've guided to where we have in the second quarter. And that second quarter ex the income will be about $20 million below where we were in the second quarter of last year. So there's a large bridge there, just on the ex income side.
How that plays out for the remainder of the year, I think it will be dictated by economic activity. certainty around tariffs, where oil heads overall. MTBE has had a long history of being low margin and then being able to turn around to higher margins. So we're not in the position today to guide how our dividends are going to look in '26 over '25. That's an extremely volatile product in market.

Operator

Matthew Blair, TPH.

Matthew Blair

Can I ask a question on the debt picture here? So you took care of some notes in the first quarter. I think you stand around 4 times net levered on an LTM basis. If we look at that more on an annualized first half basis, you're around 5.5 times net leverage. Do you need to reduce debt? Or are you still comfortable with where you're at?

Peter Huntsman

Well, I'm certainly not comfortable with the margins that are being earned in the business. They ought to be higher, and I believe that they will be getting higher. And I think we're taking a snapshot of time as to where our debt levels are at what I would think right now would be -- certainly a low as we leave the first quarter going into the second quarter and would hope for some improvement there.
But no, I think as we look at our longer-term debt levels on a normalized EBITDA basis, we continue to be in a position where I believe we have a very strong balance sheet.

Philip Lister

If you look, we've got bond maturities '29, '31, and '34. And $1.5 billion of net debt for this portfolio and over a cycle is a good number to be at. We're obviously a trough economics now, well aware of that. Our liquidity, as I've said, is $1.3 billion is also ample. And we'll do all the relevant things that you'd expect to adequately protect the balance sheet.
But that longer maturity profile that we have on bonds is helpful.

Matthew Blair

Sounds good. And then I think the prepared comments mentioned that your construction volumes for your overall business were down 6% quarter-over-quarter in Q1, which seems like an unusual counter-seasonal move. Was that weakness coming more from commercial or more from the residential side?

Peter Huntsman

I believe that was mostly from the residential side of the business. And I would think that a lot of that, again, had to do more with the buying patterns rather than the demand patterns on the construction side.

Philip Lister

Yeah. Normally, you do actually expect a slight decline when you move from Q4 to Q1. We look at it relatively simply in that in Q4, you have December as a low month; whereas in quarter 1, you have January and February as low months, particularly with Chinese New Year. So that's the way to think about that sequential movement when it comes to construction globally.

Operator

David Begleiter, Deutsche Bank.

Emily Flusco

This is Emily Fusco on for Dave Begleiter. You announced the doubling of your cost savings to $100 million. Do you have any early preview of where these savings will be coming from?

Peter Huntsman

Well, very good question. We'll be giving more details about this. I don't like announcing cost savings until we literally have it down to exact numbers and details and so forth. We feel very confident that we're heading there exactly where that is, will be located and so forth. I think I gave some indications about having to calibrate our cost structure to the market realities, particularly in Europe. But I think we'll be giving more light and more color on that as the quarter progresses.

Operator

Hassan Ahmed, Alembic Global.

Hassan Ahmed

Peter and Phil, apologies if someone has asked this question previously. My line was cutting in and out. Just wanted to revisit some of the commentary around MDI. Specifically, you talked about 20% to 25% of US MDI demand being met via exports from China. I mean, look, I completely understand that it's highly unpredictable what the future of these tariffs will be.
But I mean, when I sit there and think about the impact of tariffs and above and beyond that, more specifically for MDI, the whole antidumping investigation that's going on, I think it's obviously fair to assume that Chinese product in a tariff world and an antidumping world, there will be duties on that product.
So am I missing something? Because it just seems beyond some of these very near-term trends of loading up on sort of Chinese exports into the US market and the issues caused by that in the near term, I mean, beyond the near term, the setup actually seems highly favorable if you're producing product in the US. Am I thinking about this the right way?

Peter Huntsman

Hassan, well, very good question. Thank you very much. I think that you are. So a couple of things. I don't want to go down a rabbit hole here, but I want to make sure that we clarify what's long term and what short term. First of all, when we talk about a 20% to 25% supply going to the market, that's for the Americas. That's for North, South United States, just for the Americas, right? When you talk about in the United States, that number would even be higher than that 20%.
So when you think about tariffs and where they are, think about where we were at the beginning of the year, which was what I would call the 301 tariffs. These were tariffs that were put in place in the first Trump administration, they were maintained through the Biden administration. The reason I bring that up is I would consider these to be longer-term tariffs. These are about 31.5% tariffs that were in place.
In addition to that, I'll then put a second bucket of what I would call the Trump tariffs. Those are the tariffs that were put in place over the course of the last 30 to 60 days. Now I may be a little bit off on these tariffs because they seemingly have changed back and forth a little bit.
But those today are around 145%. The reason I put those in the second bucket is, they came rather suddenly. And all of a sudden, you might see Xi Jinping and Trump emerge from a trade summit or something like that and say they're gone. I'm not expecting that to happen. But again, they came suddenly, they can lead just a suddenly. And so I would say that's a Trump's tariffs around 145% added to the 31%. It gets you just over the 175%.
There's also an antidumping case. It's quite separate and apart from what I would call the Trump tariffs, and this is around the ITC and the Commerce Department. And as I think about those cases on -- in March of this year, the ITC ruled that there was a reasonable indication that there's been an impact on domestic industry supply balances, profitability, so on and so forth from Chinese imports.
The Commerce Department is now conducting a preliminary investigation, and that's supposed to be done by around the middle of September of this year. Assuming that they ruled favorably in that investigation, that will then go to a Commerce and ITC.
The International Trade Commission will conduct a final investigation to determine the dumping and the amount. And that will probably be adjudicated sometime final decision sometime around February with a final rule putt in place on March of next year. That could be anywhere from 3% to 500%.
The reason I put that in a third bucket is that's quite apart from any sentiment that the President may or may not have for any negotiations that we has with somebody. That's an ITC and the Commerce Department ruling. And if that's put into effect, those go for a period of five years before they are revisited.
So you have, again, the pre-Trump tariffs, 31%. The Trump arbitrary -- I don't want to say arbitrary, I'm sure a lot of logic and thought went into it, the Trump arbitrary tariff of 145% that I would say could come and go. And then there's this antidumping case, it could be anywhere from 3% to 500%. Again, that could be put into place and could be put into place on a long-term basis for multiple years.
So yes, I think that to answer your question -- I'm not going to sit here and say that I claim to know the impact of all that because it's all happening as we speak. But I think you'd have to be pretty naive to think that if those were all implemented or if any two of those three were implemented, that, that would not have an impact on the North American marketplace.
And I think that my comments earlier about having to shut down part of our production, when you reopen that production, demand comes back. You're hiring more people. You're hiring -- you're spending more domestically, you're producing more domestically, you're paying higher taxes domestically, and you see the impact of that.
So yeah, that is all playing out in real time, Hassan, and I greatly apologize for a long-winded answer.

Hassan Ahmed

No worries at all. And as a quick follow-up, obviously, uncertainty in -- I mean, if I were a Chinese polyurethane producer facing these headwinds, I guess, I would probably be thinking about maybe some rationalization. And adding to those walls, I mean, of course, China imports around 40% to 50% of their LPG needs, propane in particular, from the US, right? And obviously, on the surface, it seems that those are going to be tariffed as well.
And if you take a look at the last couple of years, China has more than doubled its PDH capacity, right? So all of a sudden, in that tariffed world, I'd like to think that-- maybe there will be some shuttering of those PDH units because they'll become highly uneconomic, right, which, in theory, will impact propylene supply and which, in theory, could impact PO and all urethane economics.
So I mean, again, is that the right way of thinking about it? And are you seeing any indications of rationalization on the back of all of these headwinds?

Peter Huntsman

Yeah. It's an excellent point, Hassan, and very well thought through. I think that as you look at these, they're each going to be treated differently. I look at the NGLs that are being imported into China from the US and to what degree those are -- are tariffs coming or going into China.
I noticed this last week, that China dropped its tariff on ethane, a vital raw material for gas cracking into ethylene and polyethylene. So yes, you're already starting to see backwards movement in certain areas and certain products that are being freed up, if you will. But there will be a great deal of, I think, of change coming in the next quarter or two. I don't think it's going to play out in the next couple of years. I think it can play in the next quarter or two. And what exactly international producers decide to do is purely up in the air.
Operator, I think if we have any more questions, we'll take that. But I know we'll be on the top of the hour, and I think it's pretty crowded day with calls right now.

Operator

We have no other questions at this time. So at this point, I will conclude our Q&A session and our call. We thank you for your interest and your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.