Michael Doss
Analyst · Mark Connelly with Stephens. Your line is now open
Yeah, thanks, Mark. I understand the question, and that's a historical way that we've got to that level in terms of the lag on pricing pass-through, particularly for integrated suppliers for ourselves. We obviously actively work that issue whenever we're in contractual negotiations, and we'll continue to do so. Having said that, as you know, we don't play to an empty chair there. We have competitors. And so our ability to impact that is a function of negotiations that we have with our customers. But it's certainly on our list and something that we are actively working to improve the lag time there to get it tighter to win the pricing and/or the inflation in the case the cost models actually flows through. In regards to your second part of the question around risk as it relates to the pricing. Most of our pricing is contractually driven and we have multiyear arrangements and contracts that provide for the pass-through that on the way up as it is on the way down as it started in mid-2016. So we're going to be actively implementing those price increases on all three grades on the contracts we have and on new business that we're going after, and expect to achieve the vast majority of those increases. Having said that, as you know, raising prices is never an easy process, and we expect to - this will be no difference. So that's where our commercial teams are focused and we'll continue to keep you post that on how that goes as we go through the year. I guess, one thing I might add that might provide a little context to that, that might be helpful here is the actual backlog and production data from the APA [ph] I think tells an interesting story. When you look at unbleached kraft paperboard through the first quarter of this year, it's up 56,200 tons year-over-year. SBS is essentially flat, of course, that's on a 1.3 million ton base for the quarter. And CRB is down ironically enough 56,200 tons. And that's all being done with two less mills, one that we closed down in Santa Clara and one that our competitors closed down on CRB side. So essentially there has been some shifting of where the substrates are manufactured in our case, when we drove the majority of that into more CUK grades. If you figure, Santa Clara generated a little over 130,000 tons a year, we're over a half of that shift. And of course, that gets into a substrate that from inflation standpoint tends to be more stable, given the wood baskets that we're in, and where we operate. So we think in some ways, that's helping us, and that markets are actually fairly positive right now, and operating backlogs are up, because there is less mills producing those tons.