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O-I Glass, Inc. (OI)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 9, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Keith, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the O-I's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2015 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, we will have a question-and-answer session. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to David Johnson, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

David Johnson - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Keith. Welcome, everyone, to O-I's fourth quarter and 2015 year-end earnings conference call. Our discussion today will be led by Andres Lopez, our CEO; and I'm also pleased to introduce our new Chief Financial Officer, Jan Bertsch. Today, we will discuss key business developments, review fourth quarter and full year financial results for 2015, and we'll highlight our high-level expectations for 2016. Following our prepared remarks, we'll host a Q&A session. Presentation materials for this earnings call are available on the company's website at o-i.com. Please review the Safe Harbor comments and disclosure of our use of non-GAAP financial measures included in those materials. Unless otherwise noted, the financial results we are presenting today relate to adjusted earnings, which excludes certain items that management considers not representative of ongoing operations. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP earnings can be found in our earnings press release and in the Appendix to this presentation. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Andres.

Andres Alberto Lopez - Chief Executive Officer

Management

Thank you, Dave, and good morning. I'm pleased to report that our fourth quarter 2015 results were in line with our expectations. We delivered earnings and cash flow that were on target, while moving aggressively to integrate the operations of the recently completed acquisition of Vitro's food and beverage business in Latin America. In the fourth quarter, we also took steps to begin the process of positioning the company for real, strategic change, which included the final steps in building out our senior leadership team. These efforts took place against a backdrop of ongoing macroeconomic and currency headwinds. While our global leadership team appreciates the efforts our team members around the global have made to achieve these results, we are still not satisfied with the overall level of performance and know that we as an organization can do much better. That is our focus as we begin 2016. The good news is we closed out 2015 on solid footing. North America delivered a strong operational performance on the heels of some additional investments in the third quarter. Our Asia Pacific operations performed very well, driven by stronger sales in Australia in the second half of the year. Europe underperformed for the year. Prices were lower partially due to concessions for long-term contracts with the strategic customers and also due to competitive pricing dynamics in Southern Europe. Europe was also impacted by lower manufacturing productivity across the footprint. Importantly, we have made – we have already begun to take actions and we saw some initial signs of stabilization exiting the year. Lastly, Latin America was up in the fourth quarter, primarily due to the appreciation that the legacy business turned in fairly solid quarterly performance in light of tough macro conditions in Brazil. It's also worth mentioning that we are very…

Andres Alberto Lopez - Chief Executive Officer

Management

I'd like to conclude by saying how eager I am to lead this company through such an exciting period of change. We are truly starting anew. Throughout my long career at O-I, I have instituted a great deal of change, so I know we have the ability to transform this business. We have started by getting the right leaders in place; leaders who have the required expertise and are focused on creating a high-performance culture. We have already began implementing our strategic plans to fully stabilize the business and then to achieve best-in-class performance across our entire global asset base. We know we have a lot of work ahead of us and look forward to sharing our vision for the future with you at our Investor Day on March 1 in New York City. And now, we will open the lines for your questions.

Operator

Operator

Our first question comes from the line of George Staphos from Bank of America. Your line is open.

George Leon Staphos - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America. Your line is open

Hi, guys. Just trying to stay to the one question limit that you've placed, so I'll come back. I want to actually go into asbestos. So, as I understand it, you now have visibility to look out four years and the charge you're taking is $225 million. If I divide that by four years, I wind up with a loss per year something north of $50 million. If I look at last year's charge, which was $135 million for three years, it equates to something more like $40 million, $45 million. So, help me reconcile that, if my methodology is correct, with your view that there's been no change in underlying trend in asbestos. Thank you. Jan A. Bertsch - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Hi, George, it's Jan. I think maybe the way that you should look at this – I mean, clearly, we don't have any estimate past the four years. So, what we're saying is that, for 2015, the accrual was $225 million. For simplicity, we said just look at that on average would be $112 million a year, but you have seen the decline over time. So if you interpolate that, it's probably a better scenario than taking a simple average number. So, it's two years. I mean, it's two years not one year, correct? So, we put a third year and a fourth year in front of you and the trend would be going downward is our expectation.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Lars Kjellberg from Credit Suisse. Your line is open.

Lars F. Kjellberg - Credit Suisse Securities Europe Ltd.

Analyst · Lars Kjellberg from Credit Suisse. Your line is open

Thank you. I just have a question on your volumes. I mean, last year, you had a steady progression of your volume from significantly negative starting point and ended up with a positive year-on-year in the legacy business. That was based on various contracts that you had in place. Can you share with us if you have a similar visibility as you roll out contracts or win contracts in 2016 versus 2015 or do you just see a general market growth that you would participate in?

Andres Alberto Lopez - Chief Executive Officer

Management

Thank you, Lars. Most of the activities securing long-term contracts took place in 2014 and some of it in 2015. As we go into 2016, our expectation is that we're going to see a slight growth in volume in North America and Europe. We are expecting also positive volume in Asia Pacific because of a long-term contract that is kicking in through the year, as well as a better than before demand in the wine segment. The demand in Latin America will be slightly down because we are facing this situation with the economic downturn in Brazil, which is partially offset by the strong demand in the Andean countries.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Tyler Langton from JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Tyler J. Langton - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Tyler Langton from JPMorgan. Your line is open

Yeah. Good morning. Thanks. Andres, could you just talk about, I guess, what you think are some of the biggest risks hitting your EPS and free cash flow guidance for the year? I think in the release, I mean, you seemed to call it European pricing and Brazil as a risk, but I just want to see if there's any other factors added to the upside or downside.

Andres Alberto Lopez - Chief Executive Officer

Management

Well, when we look at the European pricing, the situation over there is, I will say, a bit better if you compare year-on-year. Now, the trends overall, they continue. So, the pressure continues. It will be a better situation comparing 2016 with 2015 that we lived through in 2015 comparing with 2014 that that situation still continues. Overall, we see a very good momentum in all the initiatives that we're putting in place. And we don't have at this point in time enough visibility to know the magnitude of the impact and the timing of that impact because all of this is just ramping up, but we're very pleased with the traction we're gaining and the momentum that is building. So, we tend to see more of a positive scenario. When we look at Mexico, the performance is quite strong and the acquisition overall is very strong when we include O-I PS and Bolivia. We've had this business for five months now and every one of those months have been quite a very pleasant surprise when we look at the actual results we're getting of this operation. Again, because we are in the transition and we are still integrating processes and systems, we don't have enough visibility to reflect what the performance is going to be in the upside for that operation over the year, but we will as soon as we continue evolving in our integration. Jan A. Bertsch - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: And we continue to look for synergies, of course, with the new acquisition, and even if those synergies mean that we change the basic O-I way of doing business because we found some very good business practices in the company as well.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Debbie Jones from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Debbie A. Jones - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Debbie Jones from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open

Hi. Good morning. I think in the past, you guys have talked about a combination of CapEx and restructuring in the range of about $450 million per year. I was just wondering how to think about that going forward with the Vitro acquisition? And then, if I could ask also how should we think about the CBI investment going forward as well? Jan A. Bertsch - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Okay, Debbie, I think from a year-over-year basis, you should think that CapEx and restructuring will be relatively flat. I mean, last year, we had CapEx a little over $400 million, but restructuring was a little over $60 million. This year, we're going to see a different mix of that. So, we'll see more CapEx and less restructuring, but the total should be about the same. And for CBI, we're looking at about an $80 million investment this year. It's consistent with the totals that I think the company has talked about in the past. The portion this year should be about $80 million.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Scott Gaffner with Barclays. Your line is open.

Scott Louis Gaffner - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Scott Gaffner with Barclays. Your line is open

Thanks. Good morning. Just focusing on the free cash flow for a minute, because if I heard you correctly, you have got $135 million VAT refund built into your free cash flow guidance, so year-over-year cash flow actually looks like it would be down, if you take the refund out. Can you talk about – Jan, you mentioned AR, AP going significantly higher, but can you talk about – is it reducing the status is (45:28) an opportunity to change your working capital situation? Maybe if you could just give us a little bit more color on that so we could look at it properly. Jan A. Bertsch - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Sure. So, when you think about it, I think working capital have been contributing close to $100 million in free cash flow over the last several years. And this year what we're thinking is that we'd like to keep working capital a little more flat and really focus on the things that change the business, like focusing on our inventory levels and things like that. We think this is just a prudent way to plan and a good way to start on this trend considering that the VAT refund is planned to be coming in this year.

Andres Alberto Lopez - Chief Executive Officer

Management

When we look at inventories, we just mentioned that we appointed a lead for global supply chain. So, we intend to leverage best practices and systems across the world going forward. And this is going to help us drive inventories down contributing to working capital cash generation, if you will.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Ghansham Panjabi from Robert Baird & Company. Your line is open. Mehul M. Dalia - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Hi. Good morning. It's actually Mehul Dalia sitting in for Ghansham. How are you doing? Jan A. Bertsch - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Good. Thanks. Mehul M. Dalia - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Great. Given there is a quite a bit of beverage can capacity being allocated in Mexico and it all seems to be biased towards the same customer, how do you view the risk of overcapitalization in the region? Jan A. Bertsch - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Could you elaborate a little bit more in your question? Mehul M. Dalia - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Yeah. It seems like there's a lot of beverage can capacity being allocated towards the same customer in Mexico, the same customer that you guys are serving as well. So, I was just wondering how you view the risk of overcapitalization in the region, just given all of the capacity additions that is coming online.

Andres Alberto Lopez - Chief Executive Officer

Management

Yeah. We've been investing in our joint venture as well as the new furnace in Monterrey, which is all geared towards supporting this customer. The customer is growing very well in the U.S. All of this volume is under long-term contracts. And we're seeing this category of business, which is driven by this customer, as the fastest growing segment category in beer in the U.S. Now, as it happens in every market, there is a natural split between glass and cans. So, a capacity that has been built is just coming together to be able to take care of that share of cans of – share of volume that are in cans as it is in any market. So, that doesn't imply that it's going to reduce volume from our operations or our sales in the – our current investments.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Chris Manuel from Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open.

Chris D. Manuel - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Chris Manuel from Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open

Good morning. Just a quick question, Andres, to help me understand, talk a little bit about some of the changes in refillable and one-way containers down in Latin America. Can you just maybe give us a little color, as you sit today, what is your mix across several other regions, whether it's South America, Asia, Europe, et cetera, for one-way versus refillable? And is your kind of thinking about that, is that perhaps – as we're seeing that mix increase to one-way in Latin America, does that potentially account for a chunk of the degradation perhaps in margin over the last three, four, five years? I'm presuming that, of course, refillable carried a higher margin than one-way that I think as you told us over the years?

Andres Alberto Lopez - Chief Executive Officer

Management

Okay. Well, let me touch on two markets specifically, which are the ones that call the most attention. One is Brazil and the other one is North American mainstream beer. So, when I look at Brazil, Brazil beer is 11% of the total volume we sell in Latin America. Now, one-way premium beer is growing at double-digit rates in Brazil. That's the fastest growing package in the country and that is around 80% glass. Now, returnables, which are the most economic package in the country, are dropping slightly driven by the channel. And what that means is on-premise consumption is dropping because of the economic conditions and is moving into off-premise. And when it happens, then some of the demand that will be in returnable containers goes to one-way containers, some of it goes to cans, some of it goes to glass. Now, that's all driven by the channel not by consumers. It's just a situation of the economy at this point in time. Now, when we add the growth of one-way glass for premium beer, when we add the migration of returnable into one-way glass, which is happening, when we add the migration of mainstream beer, either packaging cans returnable for one-way glass into premium one-way glass, glass sales are growing in this country. Obviously, they're impacted by the economic situation right at this very point. However, they've been growing over time. So, even though, we hear very often that the share of cans is growing, glass volume is growing, too. And I think the most important support point for that is, over the last five years, O-I sales grew by 2.4 times in the total business and they grew two times in beer. So, that's the areas that the calculations that come out of share not necessarily reflected…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Philip Ng from Jefferies. Your line is open.

Philip Ng - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Philip Ng from Jefferies. Your line is open

Hey, guys. FX and D&A was a bigger drag relative to your 3Q guide for Vitro, but operationally, it looks like things improved. Can you provide some color on how trends are shaking out and how the integration process has come along? Thanks.

Andres Alberto Lopez - Chief Executive Officer

Management

Let me talk about the integration for a moment. It is progressing really well. We've been able to get into the operations, understand the current state, and then put in place the improvement programs that we're expecting to be able to get up to our synergies as planned. We are in the process of finalizing integration of systems, which is important for us to be able to improve the accuracy of our forecasting going forward, but we are very pleased with what we've seen in this operation. It's very well structured. It has very good technology, very good knowhow, very good people. So, we are very pleased and we look forward to having better visibility of the actual impact of this operation into the year. Jan A. Bertsch - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: And it's very nice to see that the favorability in the operations has helped a long way to offset the currency drag from the peso.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Wilde from BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Mark William Wilde - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Mark Wilde from BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open

Thanks and good morning. Jan, I noticed that you changed the debt covenants. And I wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about that and maybe give us a sense of any cost that was involved there for O-I? Jan A. Bertsch - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Okay. Sure. Yes, we started working with our banks a short while ago. We just thought that it was prudent in light of the foreign currency volatility that we experienced last year to address the debt covenant to allow ourselves a little bit more headroom should we continue to experience that in 2016. The banks are very supportive. We increased the leverage ratio to five times for the next three quarters and then 4.5 times after that until third quarter of 2017. And the fees that were involved were actually very minimal and did not include any step-up in pricing if the leverage – if we should increase our leverage ratio.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Anthony Pettinari from Citi. Your line is open.

Anthony Pettinari - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Anthony Pettinari from Citi. Your line is open

Hi. Good morning. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the European optimization program. And specifically, how should we reconcile the completion of this major three-year program with operating performance falling through 2014, 2015, if I'm reading slide five right? And maybe, how does the supply chain improvement efforts you're planning for the future, how did those activities differ maybe qualitatively from the optimization you've already completed in Europe?

Andres Alberto Lopez - Chief Executive Officer

Management

Okay. We finished the asset optimization program in Europe. And as we mentioned before, we had some issues last year coming from the complexity of those projects, which caused a difficulty for start-up and then stabilization, but this is behind us at this point in time. So, we expect that once we don't see the negative effect of performance, we're going to see, I think, the positive effect of this program in Europe. When we talk about supply chain, we see important opportunities in procurement, in inventories reduction and logistics cost reduction. Now, when we talk about inventories, we've got to increase our flexibility in the manufacturing operations first. We're seeing a very good momentum in that improvement. And as we do that, we will be able to add more flexibility to the factories. And with that, we're going to be able to lower the inventories in the system. And as we are able to put in place all the processes and practices across the world, we are expecting that we're going to get also some improvements out of procurement and logistics cost.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Adam Josephson with KeyBanc. Your line is open.

Adam Jesse Josephson - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Adam Josephson with KeyBanc. Your line is open

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Jan, welcome. Just one clarification on the tax refund; I know Scott asked you a question, but I was a bit confused by your answer. So, you'll get that benefit in 2016 and you're saying it's going to be mostly offset by working capital. I'm just trying to understand what the bridge from 2016 to 2017 is because that tax refund goes away presumably. And then, what are you saying with respect to working capital 2016 versus thereafter? Jan A. Bertsch - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Okay. Sure. Well, we do expect to get our tax refund in 2016 calendar year. So that will be good news for us. What the point I made about the working capital is that we have had working capital favorability in the last couple of years of about $100 million a year. And when I look at our accounts payable and receivable levels, I think we're pretty stretched at this point and that it makes sense for us to try to really focus on those controllable things that we can focus on in the company to enhance our free cash flow and our working capital. And so, we will be focusing very strongly on the inventory side of the business, and Andres mentioned that we have new plans in place and new people in place to help drive that this year. And also, we will be focused very clearly on Vitro and some of their operating practices, too, so that we can benefit from some of the things that they do very favorably and they can benefit from some of ours. So, that's really our focus for the year is where can we enhance our working capital.

Operator

Operator

And we have time for one more question today and that question comes from the line of Chip Dillon from Vertical Research. Your line is open.

Chip A. Dillon - Vertical Research Partners LLC

Analyst · Vertical Research. Your line is open

Yes. Hi. Good morning. I had a quick question regarding the CBI investment path, which you've previously disclosed as you go out to 2017. I know you mentioned that this year you'd spend the $80 million. And I guess the question is, if I look at your free cash flow guide and take away the investment for this year, obviously the minority interest dividends aren't discretionary. And you assume in 2017, let's just project you don't get the $135 million, your free cash flow would be down to about $45 million or less than 1% of your net debt. So I'm just wondering, given the environment, is there any thought to maybe slowing down some of that, or are there other things that you're planning so that we see the free cash flow net of whatever you put into constellation go up, given your debt load? Jan A. Bertsch - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah. I think the real key here is continuing focus on our inventory levels. There's a lot of opportunity in this area and I don't think that we've had the strong focus on this in the past, and all areas are working on this now to really focus on the performance of the business of the company that will help drive this cash flow. Obviously, we will make investments internally and through organic – and for organic growth for the company, but the key is that we really have to generate the cash to be able to do that and we're extremely focused on this area right now. One thing, Keith, if you don't mind, I would just like to reiterate a comment on asbestos. I think, George, you asked a comment earlier, and I think it's probably worth repeating because this is a change for the company. I mean, historically, each year, we added one additional year of asbestos liability. So, for example, and that was the third year, so in 2014, we added $135 million. Think of that as for 2017. Recently, we came to the conclusion that we could forecast four years of visibility. And so our charge was larger. It was $225 million because it included – it was essentially for 2018 and 2019. So, if you take that $225 million and try to more annualize that, it's a much lower number than that $135 million was for a year and it's actually a very nice trend that we continue to see in this area. So, I hope that helps.

David Johnson - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

So, thank you, everyone. That concludes our earnings conference call. Please have a great day and we'll see you in New York on March 1. Remember, we appreciate your interest and to choose glass. It's safe, it's pure and it's sustainable. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.