Earnings Labs

Clearwater Paper Corporation (CLW)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Apr 22, 2015

$14.83

+1.44%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+1.89%

1 Week

+1.98%

1 Month

-4.00%

vs S&P

-5.12%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to Clearwater Paper Corporation’s first quarter 2015 earnings conference call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded today, April 22, 2015. I would now like to turn the call over to Ms. Robin Yim, Vice President, Investor Relations of Clearwater Paper. Please go ahead.

Robin Yim

Management

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Clearwater Paper’s first quarter 2015 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Linda Massman, president and chief executive officer, and John Hertz, chief financial officer. Financial results for the first quarter were released shortly after today’s market close. You will find a presentation of supplemental information including an updated outlook slide providing the company’s current expectations and estimates as to certain costs, pricing shipment, production, and other factors for the second quarter of 2015 posted on the investor relations page of our website at clearwaterpaper.com. Additionally, we will be providing certain non-GAAP information in this afternoon’s discussion. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP information to comparable GAAP information is included in the press release or in the supplemental material provided on our website. I would like to remind you that this presentation contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates, assumptions, and projections that are subject to change and actual results may differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include those risks and uncertainties described from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2014. Any forward-looking statements are made only as of this date, and the company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. John Hertz will begin today’s call with a review of the financial results for the first quarter and Linda Massman will provide an overview of the business environment and our outlook for the second quarter of 2015. And then we will open up the call for the question-and-answer session. Now I’ll turn the call over to John.

John Hertz

Management

Thank you, Robin. Before I get to our first quarter 2015 results, I’d like to preface my comments by stating that throughout the rest of my remarks, I will be distinguishing between GAAP and non-GAAP or adjusted results. The adjusted results exclude certain charges and benefits that we believe are not indicative of our core operating performance. The reconciliation from GAAP to adjusted results is provided in the supplemental slides posted on our website. For the first quarter of 2015, those items netted to a $1.7 million cost and include $1.7 million in costs associated with our new Lewiston labor agreement, $600,000 of costs associated with the closed Long Island, New York facility, offset by $500,000 of benefit related to the mark-to-market adjustments to our outstanding directors’ common stock units. So with that, let’s get to our results. Our first quarter net sales came in at $434 million. That’s down 8.1% versus the fourth quarter. That’s on the high end of the outlook, down 8% to 10%, that we provided in our Q4 2014 earnings call. The decrease was mainly due to the sale of the specialty mills in Q4 of 2014. That was partially offset by a 10% increase in paperboard net sales versus Q4, due to better than expected sellthrough of consignment inventory and improved conditions at the West Coast shipping ports. Versus Q1 2014, net sales were down 10.5%, due primarily to the sale of the specialty mills. First quarter adjusted gross profit of $46 million or a 10.7% margin was down 250 basis points from the fourth quarter, resulting from $15 million of increased maintenance, primarily due to the major maintenance shutdown at the Lewiston, Idaho pulp and paperboard mill and a seasonal increase in payroll related taxes as well as increased profit dependent accruals. Partially…

Linda Massman

Management

Thanks, John. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. As John mentioned, the first quarter results were generally in line with our updated outlook for the quarter. Our consumer products business is generally performing better than previous quarters. However, as John mentioned, our sales volume remains impacted by a top five customer. So we have been, and are continuing to, address the volume reduction. Our sales team is working hard to gain back that lost volume. In addition, we have a strong pipeline of new business, which is heavily weighted in the Midwest and East regions, that they are accelerating to fill the gap. In our paperboard business, the bottlenecks at West Coast shipping ports began to clear midway through the first quarter and backlogs began to pick up as we moved through the quarter., however, not at the same pace as last year’s first quarter. At this time last year, I talked about our efforts to address the cost structure of our specialty tissue mills, and to bring focus on efficiently managing our logistics, transportation, and supply chain. At the end of 2014, we made the decision to sell the specialty mills and reallocate that capital into cost structure improvements on the retail side of the business. We believe the year over year near doubling of the consumer products division’s adjusted operating margin from 3% to 5.8% validates our decision to divest the specialty mills. Additionally, in the first quarter of 2015, we see evidence that the supply chain optimization work is improving the cost structure of our consumer business, as we saw $5 million of savings and transportation costs flow through Q1. We still have more to accomplish, but we are focused on the right priorities, and everyone in the company is engaged and invested in this effort.…

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions.] Our first question comes from the line of James Armstrong of Vertical Research Partners.

James Armstrong

Analyst

Thanks for all the detail in the slides today. My first question is on your TAD capacity, how much more mix shift can we expect, or is possible going forward? In other words, is there room for your mix to improve further?

Linda Massman

Management

I would say there’s probably going to be just incremental change in that, on a go forward basis, but you’ll see a continued ramp up in TAD a little bit.

James Armstrong

Analyst

And then switching gears, on the promotional activity from the branded players, do you see any focus or is it very broad-based? Can you give us a little more color about what’s happening on the promotional activity?

Linda Massman

Management

I would say it’s very similar to what we had been talking about during 2014. We saw it through virtually every quarter in 2014, and I would say so far in Q1 2015, it looks like we’re pretty much at similar levels to what we saw in the fourth quarter.

James Armstrong

Analyst

And then lastly, just a modeling question. Any reason corporate expense shouldn’t follow last year’s trend?

John Hertz

Management

As we get to the latter part of the year, we talked on our last call about, with the sale of specialty products, that there’s some stranded overhead that we’re going to address. And so when we get to the back half of the year, you would expect to see a little reduction.

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions.] And I’m showing no additional questions in the queue. I’d like to turn the conference back over to Ms. Linda Massman for any closing remarks.

Linda Massman

Management

Thank you. We remain excited about the prospects of our business and opportunities to increase operating efficiency across the company. We appreciate you joining us today and for your continued interest in Clearwater Paper. On a final note, we’ll be at the Goldman Sachs Basic Materials Conference on May 19, and presenting at the Macquarie Basic Materials Industrial Conference on June 9, both of which are in New York, and we hope to see you there.