Sealed Air Corporation (NYSE:SEE) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Sealed Air Corporation (NYSE:SEE) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 27, 2024
Sealed Air Corporation beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.88, expectations were $0.62. Sealed Air Corporation isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Sealed Air Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's conference may be recorded. I would now like to hand our conference over to your -speaker host, Brian Sullivan, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Brian Sullivan: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. With me today are Emile Chammas, Interim Co-CEO and COO; as well as Dustin Semach, Interim Co-CEO and CFO. Before we begin, I would like to note that we have provided a slide presentation to supplement the call. Please visit sealedair.com where today's webcast and presentation can be downloaded from our Investor Relations page. Statements made during this call stating management's outlook or estimates for future periods are forward-looking statements. These statements are based solely on information that is now available to us. We encourage you to review the information in the section entitled Forward-Looking Statements in our earnings release and slide presentation, which applies to this call.
Additionally, our future performance may differ due to a number of factors. Many of these factors are listed in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed or to be filed with SEC, and as revised and updated on our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K. We discuss financial measures that do not conform to U.S. GAAP. You will find important information on our use of these measures and the reconciliations to U.S. GAAP in our earnings release. Included in the appendix of today's presentation, you will find U.S. GAAP financial results that correspond to the non-U.S. GAAP measures we reference throughout the presentation. I will now turn the call over to Emile and Dustin. Operator, please turn to Slide 3. Emile?
Emile Chammas: Thank you, Brian. And thank you for joining our fourth quarter and yearend earnings call. Today, Dustin and I will review SEE's financial performance, provide updates on the markets we serve, discuss relevant trends and highlight the significant progress made on the transformational actions discussed on our previous call. Lastly, we will conclude with our 2024 outlook before opening the call for questions. We close the quarter with sales of $1.4 billion and deliver $274 million in adjusted EBITDA in line with our expectations. Our fourth quarter results reflected the continued impact of challenging protein cycles and trade downs in our food business as well as a muted fourth quarter seasonal pick up in our protective segment.
For the full year, we finished with $5.5 billion in sales and $1.1 billion of adjusted EBITDA, slightly above the midpoint of our guidance. Through the later focused efforts of our global team, excluding payments and deposits related to the resolution of certain prior year’s tax matters, we delivered $467 million of free cash flow well above our guided estimate. Dustin will provide a more comprehensive overview of our financial performance shortly. Now, let us move on to our 2024 market and business update. While our end markets in 2024 should be better than 2023, we expect the best and L-shaped recovery with no near-term growth catalyst. We are continuing the transformational actions that we detailed during our third quarter call. We will continue to focus on our core business and customers, restore underlying fundamentals, and position ourselves for accelerated growth in 2025 and beyond.
I will now share some updates across our transformational initiatives. First, as we previously mentioned, we recognize the need to reallocate global resources back into our regions to enhance customer proximity and improve commercial effectiveness. As part of our reorganization efforts, we also determined that blending the protective and food commercial teams contributed to a loss of customer centricity and reduced commercial rigor. Consequently, we have reorganized our commercial teams by reestablishing food and protective operating units within each region and shifted global resources to our regional teams. This is an initial step in our broader transformation to improve our commercial execution and capture incremental market share as conditions improve.
Second, with sustainability as an accelerating mega trend in both food and protective, now more than ever, innovation will play a critical role in driving outside market growth. To maximize our opportunity, we are shifting our innovation focus from the laboratory to the field. What does this mean? We have a strong material science research and development capability, but we need to take the next step forward by better leveraging the voice of the customer to help prioritize and shape our innovation pipeline. Making this shift combined with our scale will allow us to outpace our competition, ultimately improving time to market and the commercial success of our new products. Throughout 2024, we will be introducing new recycle ready products at an accelerating rate, bringing to market full automation solutions within case ready, and expanding applications within our fluids and liquids businesses.
Moving to Slide 4. You can see a practical example of where sustainability pressures, driven by new regulations and consumer preferences, are driving unprecedented shifts in the protein trays market. In response, we recently introduced the first bio-based industrially compostable tray for protein packaging. These trays provide comparable performance and stability to traditionally expanded polystyrene trays, allowing us to gain share in an estimated $5 billion tray market while supporting our customer sustainability goals. Next, we have continued our portfolio optimization efforts, investing in core growth products while deprioritizing those that no longer align with our strategic objectives. We have made a lot of progress in redefining the long-term strategy for our portfolio of solutions, in large part getting back to SEE's differentiated material science, automation and service expertise.
As our transformation takes hold, end markets recover and financing environment improves, we will be in a much stronger position to take actions to drive further shareholder value. Meanwhile, our primary focus remains on making improvements we can drive regardless of the operating environment. Finally, our cost reduction initiatives within CTO2Grow are progressing as planned. In 2023, we drove actions culminating in an annual run rate savings largely in 2024 of $50 million, up from $40 million at the end of the third quarter. As part of the effort, we have completed three plant closures in 2023, and are in the process of closing four additional sites as part of our footprint rationalization efforts with more sites on the review. In addition, we are rightsizing our Argentina operation given recent regulatory and economic instability.
With the actions we have driven so far, we are currently at a total of $65 million in annual run rate savings. Building upon this momentum, we are confident in our ability to achieve $90 million in year-over-year cost savings in 2024. Moving on to updates on our Food and Protective segments. We observed ongoing challenges in the Food segment, where volumes declined year-over-year. However, sequential performance improved in Q4 due to increased holiday demand. The challenges we faced in the fourth quarter stemmed from multiple factors, including the rebuilding of the cattle herd in North America, shifts in the European protein production and consumption and consumer trade down in retail food. The depressed capital cycle, coupled with higher interest rates, negatively impacted our equipment business as customers scaled back their capital expenditures to preserve cash.
We expect these trends to continue into 2024. For Protective, 2023 was a turbulent year. Real industrial production contracted year-over-year in most advanced economies. High inflation and the subsequent drag on real income continued to squeeze household spending power and is reducing the demand for consumer goods. Additionally, sustainability and new business models like shipping your own container and buy online, pick up in store continue to reshape e-commerce packaging choices and demand. Pricing pressures have intensified as competitors step up to address weak market demand. On a positive note, the destocking of downstream inventories is largely complete. Different from previously expected, while market indicators are signaling an improving 2024, we have not yet seen this translate into improving demand for our customers' businesses and subsequent restocking or uptick in volumes for our packaging solutions.
While we do not see an immediate near-term market catalyst, we are anticipating a gradual recovery in our end markets throughout 2024 with volume lift towards the end of the year and continuing into 2025. As our markets recover, our focus on innovation and sustainability, coupled with our CTO2Grow and strategic commercial initiatives, gives us confidence in SEE's continued recovery. Now I'd like to turn it over to Dustin to review our financial results. Dustin?
Dustin Semach: Thank you, Emile, and good morning, everyone. Moving to the fourth quarter and full year results. Let's turn to Slide 5. Net sales were $1.4 billion in the quarter, flat on a constant currency basis, and were $5.5 billion for the full year of 2023, down 1% at constant currency. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was $274 million, down 8% compared to last year. For the year, adjusted EBITDA was approximately $1.1 billion, down 9%. Volumes have improved sequentially in Q4 as holiday demand drove a low single-digit seasonality pickup. As reported, adjusted earnings per share in the quarter of $0.88 were down 11% compared to a year ago. Our adjusted tax rate was 18% compared to 26.1% in the same period last year, driven by a onetime benefit due to the reversal of liabilities related to uncertain tax positions.
We did not repurchase any shares in the quarter. Our weighted average diluted shares outstanding in the fourth quarter of 2023 was $144.9 million. For the year, adjusted earnings per share of $3.18 was down 22%, primarily driven by lower adjusted EBITDA and higher interest expense, partially offset by lower tax expense. Turning to Slide 6. In Q4, Liquibox contributed 5% to total company sales or approximately $70 million, but was offset by lower pricing in Protective and lower volume in both businesses. The volume declines were driven by continued market pressures in Protective, lower automation sales as well as continued weakness in food retail end markets. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA of $274 million, which included $50 million contribution from Liquibox, decreased $23 million or approximately 8% compared to last year with margins of 19.9% and down 120 basis points.
This performance was mainly driven by lower volumes within both segments, offset by contributions from Liquibox. Moving to Slide 7. In the fourth quarter, Food net sales of $893 million were down 3% on an organic basis, primarily due to the volume declines driven by lower automation sales as customers enforce tighter controls on capital expenditures and by continued weakness in retail demand. Food adjusted EBITDA of $195 million in the fourth quarter was down 3%, with margins at 21.8%, down 130 basis points compared to last year. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA was mainly driven by higher operating costs and lower volumes, partially offset by contributions from Liquibox and favorable net price realization of $10 million. Protective fourth quarter net sales of $485 million were down 10% organically, driven by lower pricing and volume declines in Americas and EMEA from continued market pressures in the industrial fulfillment markets.
Protective adjusted EBITDA of approximately $90 million was down 12% in the fourth quarter, with margins at 18.7%, down 50 basis points. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA was driven by unfavorable net price realization and lower volumes, partially offset by favorable productivity benefits. On Slide 8, we review our fourth quarter net sales by segment and by region. In constant dollars, net sales were flat with 5% growth in Food, mainly driven by the Liquibox acquisition, while Protective was down 10% due to weak end market demand. By region, Asia Pac grew 5% organically driven by a strong Australian cattle cycle. Americas was down 6% due to lower automation sales, a weak U.S. cattle cycle and lower pricing in Protective. EMEA declined 11% on challenging market conditions across both segments and continued destocking within Protective.
In constant dollars, full year net sales were up 9% in food, while Protective was down 15%. By region, we were up 3% in Asia Pac, offset by declines of 2% in Americas, and 1% in EMEA. Now let's turn to free cash flow and leverage on Slide 9. Through the fourth quarter, excluding the impact of the payments and deposits related to the resolution of certain prior year tax matters, free cash flow was $467 million compared to $376 million in the same period a year ago, representing an increase of 24% year-over-year. The primary driver of this improvement was significant inventory reduction, partially offset by lower earnings and higher interest costs. Since the peak in the second quarter of 2023, we have reduced total debt by approximately $280 million, exiting the year with a net leverage ratio of 3.9x, down from 4.1x in the third quarter.
Our total liquidity position was $1.3 billion, including $346 million in cash and the remaining amount in committed and fully undrawn revolver. We will continue to focus on driving net debt to adjusted EBITDA to below 3.5x over the next two years. Let's turn to Slide 10 to review our 2024 outlook. We expect L-shape recovery through 2024 and into 2025. As a result, we expect net sales to be in the range of $5.2 billion to $5.6 billion, which at the midpoint assumes a 2% decline in organic growth with flat volume growth offset by negative pricing. Portfolio exits represent 0.5% lower volume in both segments. While the global protein end markets continue to be challenged, our food volume is expected to grow approximately 1%, driven by competitive wins in our core businesses, momentum in our fluids and liquids businesses, including Liquibox, and our new product launches, offset by pricing declines of 2%.
Our work on integration and operational momentum at Liquibox is taking hold, and we expect the business to continue to improve across 2024, further supported by a positive outlook for the food service end markets. We see a slower market recovery in Protective than previously anticipated with a full year volume decline of approximately 1%. Pricing pressures have increased, further reducing top line by 3% as the competitive landscape has intensified in a lower volume environment. Protective volumes are expected to recover towards the end of 2024 as our new commercial model gains traction and market dynamics improve. We expect full year adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion, which assumes adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 20% at the midpoint.
This outlook is lower than our soft guide provided during our Q3 earnings call, mainly driven by lower volume expectations. We anticipate continued softness in the first half of 2024 as volume reaches the trough and gradually improves as the market conditions and seasonality improve in the second half. We remain disciplined to drive the necessary cost actions to offset further volume weakness. The midpoint of our adjusted EBITDA guidance is in line with 2023, with $90 million year-over-year cost savings offsetting flattish overall volumes, negative net price realization and restoring bonus pools. Full year adjusted EPS is expected to be in the range of $2.65 to $3.05 per share. The lower 2024 adjusted EPS is largely driven by higher depreciation, interest and tax expense with an assumed tax rate of 26% to 27%.
We expect full year 2024 free cash flow in the range of $325 million to $425 million. At the midpoint, our free cash flow conversion as a percent of adjusted net earnings is expected to be 90%. We are assuming approximately $80 million in restructuring charges, and approximately $20 million incremental cash interest payments, offset by favorable working capital of roughly $30 million. Lastly, for the first quarter of 2024, we expect net sales and adjusted EBITDA to be ranged around $1.3 billion and $240 million, respectively, with earnings per share between $0.50 and $0.60. Our ranges and outlook reflect the dynamic environment we continue to operate in. As we gain more visibility throughout the year, we will be able to adjust and update expectations accordingly.
Turning to Slide 11. We closed out the year in line with our expectations and remain committed to executing against our caustic up to growth efforts. While our expectation for 2024 has reduced to a weaker and longer recovery period for our end markets, we are encouraged by the feedback from our customers and our distributors that destocking is largely behind us and are more confident in a second half modest recovery in volumes. We are focused on driving a transformation at SEE in 2024, improving commercial execution and restoring business fundamentals. We expect 2025 to be the year we return to a normal growth trajectory and where our cost reduction and operational excellence initiatives will position us well to return to adjusted EBITDA growth in 2025 and beyond.
Lastly, I'd like to close by thanking the global SEE team, who are at the center of our transformation for their efforts solving our customers' most critical packaging challenges day in and day out. With that, Emile and I look forward to your questions. Operator, we would like to begin the Q&A session.
See also 25 Companies with the Best Benefits and Perks and 20 Countries With the Longest Coastlines in the World.
To continue reading the Q&A session, please click here.
