Earnings Labs

Graphic Packaging Holding Company (GPK)

Q3 2009 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 5, 2009

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Rachael and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Graphic Packaging Holding Company third quarter 2009 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks there will be a question-and-answer period. (Operator Instructions) At this time, I would like to turn the conference call over to Kevin Crum, Assistant Treasurer of Graphic Packaging; sir you may begin.

Kevin Crum

Management

Thanks Rachael. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Graphic Packaging Holding Company’s third quarter 2009 earnings call. Commenting on results this morning are David Scheible, the company’s President and CEO; and Dan Blount, Senior Vice President and CFO. I would like to remind everyone that statements of our expectations in this call constitute forward looking statements as defined in a Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements including, but not limited to statements relating to debt reduction targets, capital spending, fourth quarter cash flows, declines in raw material and commodity prices and the expected effect on the company’s results improvements in working capital, increases in sales volumes, the availability of the alternative fuel tax credit, additional Synergies from the Altivity transaction, consumer purchasing trends, pension contributions and the performance of our multi-wall bag business are based on currently available information and are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the company’s present expectations. These risks and uncertainty include but are not limited to the company’s substantial amount of debt, inflation of and volatility in raw material an energy costs, volatility in the credit and securities markets, cut backs in consumer spending that could affect demand for the company’s products, continuing pressure for lower cost products in the company’s ability to implement its business strategies, including productivity initiatives and cost reduction plans and the impact of regulatory and litigation matters, including those that affect the availability of the alternative fuel tax credit and the company’s net operating loss offsets to income taxes. Undue reliance should not be placed on such forward looking statements, as such statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and the company undertakes no obligation to update such statements. Additional information regarding these and other risks is contained in the company’s periodic filings with the SEC. David, I’ll turn it over to you.

David Scheible

Management

Thanks Kevin. We are pleased with our solid third quarter financial results and overall strategic positioning of the business. Since our merger last year we’ve been able to drive meaningful improvement our profitability, our margins and our cash flow per debt reduction. In the third quarter we generated $147 million in operating cash flow and our pro forma adjusted EBITDA margins increased to 14.7% from 11.5% in third quarter last year. As a result, the adjusted earnings per share improved to $0.03 from a loss $0.02 last year through September we have reduced net debt by approximately $220 million and revised our full net debt reduction target to $326million. That includes alternative tax credits of $126 million. We continue to generate strong bottom line results as part of challenging macro environment, which is a present sale. Total sales in the quarter increased of 1% sequentially from second quarter of this year, but declined 8.1% year-over-year from the third quarter last year. When excluding the two divested mills post merger. Looking at our sales decline does not really tell the whole story given the differences in our Paperboard Packaging business and multi-wall bag specialty business segment for really are two stories. We saw double digit declines in our multi-wall bag in specialty business and that seems to hide a healthier story underneath in our core food and beverage folding carton Packaging business. If you look at folding carton trends, consumers are trending towards eating and drinking at home and that supports our center of the aisle mix in food multi-pack take home packages in both food and beverage. Folding carton sales increased 0.3% from second and decreased 3.4% year-over-year from the third quarter last year. Roughly half of this decline was due to our exiting sum of the end use markets…

Dan Blount

Management

Thanks, David. Good morning, everyone. As David mentioned, third quarter results are solid. As they show continued improvement in our operating margins and continued strengthening of our balance sheet. In going through the detail today, I will start with cash flow, balance sheet and liquidity metrics, and then move to the income statement. The only pro forma adjustments included in my discussion will be to adjust both sales and EBITDA in the prior year to exclude the two mills that were divested as part of the combination with Altivity. This will provide you with an accurate year-over-year comparison. A reconciliation table detailing the pro forma, non-GAAP numbers is posted on our website. In the third quarter, net cash from operations was $147 million. This amount includes $46 million of alternative fuel tax credits. Excluding the credits, operating cash flow was $101 million, which is a $74 million increase over the prior year. This strong increase is principally driven by integration and continued improvement cost reduction initiatives and reduction of working capital levels. Through September, operating cash flow was $322 million. This amount includes $97 million of alternative fuel tax credits. Excluding the tax credits, nine month operating cash flow improved by $182 million over the same period last year. Generating strong free cash flow remains one of our top priorities and in 2009, not including the fuel tax credit. We expect to generate cash flow available for debt reduction of approximately $200 million. Capital expenditures were $30 million in the quarter and $96 million for the nine months. This compares to $43 million and $126 million in the comparable periods last year. The reduction in CapEx results from the completion of the majority of the investment and production assets, and SAP systems required to generate synergies from the Altivity combination.…

David Scheible

Management

Thanks, Dan. Strategically we continue to like the positioning as the largest holding current supplier of food and beverage in the United States. The integration plans have improved our footprint. They’ve improved efficiency of our operations, our ability to bring new industry leading products to compete globally, both on price and innovation. The defensive nature of our core food and beverage business makes it less acceptable to fluctuations in the economy, and this business continues to perform well in very difficult economic environment. While we remain cautiously optimistic that volumes have bottomed out, and we are moving in the right direction, we believe the improvement in volumes will likely be slowing gradual. Heading into the holiday season, consumer product manufacturers remain pretty cautious with their special and promotional items. As the economy gradually improves, we would expect to see our sales in the multi-wall bag and specialty business to accelerate more rapidly than our folding carton and packaging business. Thank you and I’ll turn it over to the operator.

Questions and Answers

Management

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Bruce Klein - Credit Suisse.

Bruce Klein - Credit Suisse

Analyst

Could you touch on just the contract pricing, if there’s a lot of in the near future and sort of I know old history was sort of done a lot of cost price or cost input formulated adjustments and I think the new policy you were able to achieve some cost recovery and sort of how that is going?

David Scheible

Management

First the current contract that we had almost all of them have some sort of escalator or de-escalator clause, depending upon costs or board price movement in the market place. You’ve certainly seen that in pricing this year. This quarter, while pricing was down a little bit, it was almost all open market board pricing. Carton pricing was actually up in the quarter and that’s a reflection of flow through from 2008 cost. In 2010, I will expect the carton pricing to drop some because it will reflect the lower board prices that we’ve seen this year or input costs that have dropped down. So I mean that is the up and down, that’s why we have had such a strong focus on continuous improvement in synergy acceleration because clearly to improve our margins we’re going to need to do that in 2010.

Bruce Klein - Credit Suisse

Analyst

Folding carton volume trends? I didn’t catch what it was in the third quarter and what your thoughts are going forward?

David Scheible

Management

Yes so, in folding carton volumes in beverage we’re actually up a little bit in the quarter and consumer food business we’re down in the quarter about 4% or something like that, I think Dan said

Dan Blount

Management

Yes, 3.4%.

David Scheible

Management

3.4%. It was interesting because what I said is that in our core SKUs we actually saw improvement, versus third quarter last year. Third quarter last year was a pretty strong quarter in volume in the food business. There was at that point in time we still hadn’t completely sort of figured out where the crisis was and there was still a lot of product going in the fourth quarter is when you really started to see consumers cut back, but cereal is up, the dry food was up, macaroni and cheese, those kinds of products, Pop-Tarts and were all up. What we did not see this quarter, that we traditionally see, between 1.5% of our business is really promotional activity. Third quarter is when back-to-school happens. We generally see new SKUs or extensions on SKUs. We saw really none of that for the most part, a lot of our new product activity was substituting other products or taking corrugated or flexible share, but really on a pure new product launch relative to SKU expansion, very little of that. That affected the volume in the third quarter as well

Bruce Klein - Credit Suisse

Analyst

When the economy recovers more earnestly, you expect any reason that wouldn’t continue?

David Scheible

Management

I would expect, it’s traditionally it’s been a lot of SKU improvement in promotional. I cannot see any reason why we wouldn’t expect our customers to continue to do that. I mean, we’re even starting to see some new product launches in the private label business because that business has grown and we have a good share in that business and so you’re starting to see some of those guys do some promotional activity as well. I think everybody’s pretty cautious about what’s going on. I mean, I love the equity and capital markets because they seem buoyant, but back in the heartland, where we’re making products and selling products, I will tell you, I think it’s sort of moving sideways or at least that’s the feel in our business.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) At this time there are no further questions, or there any closing remarks?

Dan Blount

Management

No. Not at this time. Thank you, Rachael.

David Scheible

Management

Alright see you next quarter.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for joining the Graphic Packaging third quarter 2009 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect.