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Text: Before we begin, I'll cover two items.
Actual events or results could differ materially.
Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and other associated disclosures, including a description of the excluded and adjusted items, are available in the first quarter 2021 financial results news release, which is available on our website.
We're off with an excellent start to 2021, and I'm proud of the many accomplishments we've achieved in just a few short months.
We've been building momentum, and the strong operational execution of our teams is paying off as the global economy improves.
There are several highlights I want to cover.
First, strong demand from the end of 2020 continued through the first quarter.
In many markets, demand is returning to or exceeding 2019 levels.
We reported 20% higher adjusted earnings per share over '19 and 5% over a very strong first quarter last year before we felt the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Consistent with our track record of strong free cash flow, we also delivered record free cash flow of $125 million in the first quarter, which was up substantially from a very strong performance a year ago.
We achieved these solid results despite operational logistical headwinds from winter storm Uri.
I'm incredibly proud of our team in Texas who took proactive steps ahead of the storm to avoid a hard shutdown to any of our assets.
Then they worked tirelessly to repair and restart our facilities, which helped ensure supply for our customers.
We had half of our Texas manufacturing facility operational within one week of the storm, and we were more than 95% operational within three weeks.
Moving to other highlights, we've made significant progress with our circular economy efforts, which I'll talk more about in a moment.
And our progress hasn't gone unnoticed with Barron's adding Eastman to its list of the 100 Most Sustainable Companies for 2021, a true honor for us.
And we issued our inclusion and diversity report, which you can find on our website.
At Eastman, we take our environmental, social and governance commitment seriously, and transparency is of the utmost importance.
We also continue to allocate our capital with returns to stockholders in mind.
To that end, we recently completed a small bolt-on acquisition of 3F Feed & Food, a leading animal health and nutrition company with accelerated growth in the animal nutrition business.
And finally, we think the favorable trends in the economy, coupled with our innovation investments and continued disciplined cost management sets us up for strong earnings per share and free cash flow growth this year and next.
On our January call, we gave you an update on the progress we're making to become a leader in the circular economy.
We announced that we're building one of the world's largest plastic-to-plastic molecular recycling facilities at our site in Kingsport, Tennessee.
Since then, we've broken ground on the facility and continue to target mechanical completion by the end of '22.
Even more impressive is the amount of momentum we're building with customers in many different markets around the world.
The demand for our new branded products include Eastman Tritan Renew, Eastman Cristal Renew, is strong.
At this point, demand for our specialty products and the circular economy offerings has been better than we anticipated.
And specific to the new facility we announced, we're ahead of schedule in terms of customer demand for the capacity.
We have a robust pipeline for additional announcements throughout the year and look forward to sharing those with you.
Turning to our outlook.
As we entered the second quarter with strong demand and mix momentum, we also expect to benefit from cost discipline, including lower operating costs from our operational transformation program.
However, there are specific headwinds we face, including maintenance turnaround, supplier reliability and some slowdown in auto production.
In addition, we have price increases that are continuing to catch up to higher raw material, energy and distribution costs in some products.
Despite these headwinds, we expect a sequential increase in EPS, with second quarter adjusted earnings per share expected to be at or above second quarter of 2018 adjusted earnings per share of $2.22.
Moving the full year, we expect strong market growth and product mix improvement to continue.
Our innovation-driven growth model will enable us to grow faster than the underlying market recovery, and we expect a number of markets will be rebuilding inventory.
We also expect much of the capacity constraints, supplier reliability and logistics headwinds to lessen alongside a potential moderation in tight commodity markets.
We expect to continue to benefit from about $100 million of full year tailwind for improved capacity utilization compared to last year when we aggressively managed inventory well below the decline in demand with our focus on cash.
And we're on track to keep our cost structure flat compared with 2020 and well below 2019 and '18 levels.
We, therefore, expect adjusted earnings per share will be about -- be between $8.25 and $8.75 for the full year of '21.
On cash, we expect free cash flow to approach $1.1 billion, which is consistent with our expectations for stronger adjusted EBITDA.
We expect 2021 will be our fifth consecutive year of free cash flow greater than $1 billion, and we will work to grow free cash flow from here.
Putting it all together.
These outstanding results remind me about what gives Eastman this incredible resiliency and strategic advantage.
First and foremost, it's the people at Eastman who continue to persevere and help us win as we saw in Uri and a time of crisis, and this is what we see every day from this good team.
And as I reflect on how we position our company through the global trade disruptions of 2019 and then COVID in '20, I feel confident in our ability to grow earnings per share and cash off this new level of earnings.
Despite a challenging macroeconomic backdrop over the last several years, we have not sacrificed our efforts to innovate and invest in our specialty portfolio and expect those investments to continue to pay off as we finish off '21 and move into '22.
In the meantime, we'll continue to focus on what we can control and remain committed to long-term attractive earnings growth and sustainable value creation for our owners and all our stakeholders.

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now expect 2021 adjusted earnings per share to be between $8.25 and $8.75.
expect 2021 free cash flow to approach $1.1 billion.

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