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Celanese [NYSE:CE], the Irving, Texas-based provider of engineered polymers and acetyl products, is looking to make notable bolt-on acquisitions next year, COO Scott Sutton said.

On the 3Q18 earnings call held 19 October, Deutsche Bank’s David Begleiter noted the recent agreement to buy Next Polymers and asked how the M&A pipeline is looking for this year and next.

“We still have a healthy pipeline, particularly in Engineered Materials, and there's good opportunity to do some meaningful bolt-ons next year,” the COO replied.

Later on the call, RBC analyst Arun Viswanathan asked about cash deployment for the next three years and how it will be split between buybacks and acquisitions. CEO Mark Rohr said the company has earmarked USD 1bn for buybacks and the same for acquisitions over the time period. He added that while Celanese hadn’t reached that level in terms of acquisitions this year, it has some attractive potential opportunities coming next year.

Asked if these figures could increase based upon the company’s ability to generate more than USD 3bn over three years, Rohr replied affirmatively, noting that it would continue to be opportunistic.

Celanese announced earlier this month its agreement to buy India-based engineering thermoplastics compounders company Next Polymers. No financial terms were disclosed.

In the 3Q18 earnings press release on 18 October, COO Sutton said the Next Polymers deal would more than double Celanese’s current business in India. He noted that the company’s M&A strategy is influenced by insights gained from its opportunity pipeline model, while studying project wins and losses enables it to see where additional polymers, regional presence or application capabilities are needed.

“We continue to have a number of potential M&A candidates in the pipeline to work with to further enhance our competitiveness and our competencies,” Sutton said in the press release.

Separately, on the 19 October earnings call, UBS’ John Roberts asked for an update on whether Celanese will replace the filter tow deal it previously attempted with Blackstone [NYSE:BX] with an alternative transaction.

“We're still working that,” CEO Rohr said. “It's not a lot of options out there. We haven't found one yet. I remain convinced… that there are opportunities for us to do things out there may be more structurally based around manufacturing, but we're working hard to try to find opportunities.”

Celanese said in March it had abandoned its proposed joint venture with Blackstone after being unable to reach an agreement with the European Commission to get Phase II clearance for their deal. The two companies announced in June 2017 their agreement to form a JV to create a global acetate tow supplier.

The remarks on last week’s call added to those made on the 1Q18 earnings held in April, when COO Sutton said the company had a “very big pipeline” of potential acquisition opportunities in its Engineered Materials business and was talking to 100 to 200 candidates over the course of 12 months.

Celanese is organized around two complementary cores: Materials Solutions and Acetyl Chain. In the former, it principally operates through two business segments: Advanced Engineered Materials and Consumer Specialties. Acetyl Chain includes the Industrial Specialties and Acetyl Intermediates business segments.

Celanese has been active on the M&A front over the past few years. It announced last year its agreement to buy Indiana-based Omni Plastics. While full financial details were not disclosed, Celanese said in its 2017 annual report that it used USD 158m of cash on hand and borrowings under its credit facility to fund the deal.

Celanese completed its purchase of Israel-based Nilit’s nylon compounding division in May 2017, while Italy-based thermoplastic compounder company SO.F.TER. was bought in 2016.

Celanese used Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher for the Omni deal, while ALRUD, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek and Kirkland & Ellis were used for the terminated Blackstone JV.

O'Melveny & Myers was used for the Nilit and SO.F.TER transactions, according to the Mergermarket M&A database.

Financial advisory is typically handled in-house on the buy side.

Celanese has a market capitalization of USD 13.4bn.