Berry Global Group, Inc. (NYSE:BERY) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
Berry Global Group, Inc. (NYSE:BERY) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript February 7, 2024
Berry Global Group, Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $1.22 EPS, expectations were $1.29. Berry Global Group, Inc. 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, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Berry Global Group Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Dustin Stilwell, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Dustin Stilwell: Thank you, operator, and thank you to everyone for joining Berry's first fiscal quarter 2024 earnings call. As you can see on Slide 2, joining me this morning, I have Berry's Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Kwilinski; Berry's Chief Financial Officer, Mark Miles; and Berry's HH&S President, Curt Begle. Following our comments today, we will have a question-and-answer session. In order to allow everyone the opportunity to participate, we do ask that you limit yourself to one question with a brief follow-up, and then fall back into the queue for any additional questions. A few things to note before handing the call over. On our website at berryglobal.com, you can find today's press release and earnings call presentation under our Investor Relations section.
As referenced on Slide 3, during this call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. These measures are reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings press release and presentation, which were made public earlier this morning. Additionally, we will make forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results or outcomes may differ materially from those that may be expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. Some factors that could cause the results or outcomes to differ are in the company's latest 10-K, our other SEC filings, and our news releases. I will now turn the call over to Berry's CEO, Kevin Kwilinski.
Kevin Kwilinski: Thank you, Dustin, and thank you to everyone for joining us today to discuss Berry's first quarter results for fiscal 2024 and our recent announcement regarding the combination of our Health, Hygiene and Specialties global nonwovens and films business with Glatfelter. Reflecting on my first quarter as the CEO of Berry, I'm even more excited about the opportunity to create value for all stakeholders. Having visited many of our global operations and engaged with strategic partners, including customers, suppliers and investors, I am confident in our ability to meet our objectives. Our dedicated team will continue working diligently to enhance our execution on organic growth, productivity, and portfolio enhancements.
Moving to our key takeaways for the quarter on Slide 6. Despite a challenging macro demand environment and soft consumer demand, we delivered solid first quarter result in line with our expectations. Additionally, we are reaffirming our guidance today for fiscal 2024. Our expectations of a stronger second half of the fiscal year have not changed, and we continue to expect to be within our adjusted EPS and free cash flow ranges. As a reminder, there are several reasons why we expect a stronger second half, including ongoing price and cost actions, continued benefits from structural cost initiatives, capital investment scale-ups, and favorable comparisons to the prior year's volume performance. Moreover, our focus remains on debt repayment, opportunistic share repurchases, and quarterly dividend payments in fiscal '24.
We expect our year-end leverage to be 3.5 times or lower, aligning with our target. We believe our long-term growth and value creation strategy, our market positions, stable portfolio of businesses, and capital allocation form a compelling investment thesis for Berry. Our teams have proactively taken actions to address inflation, increasing pricing, and driving productivity benefits through structural plant closures, labor management, and asset optimization. Simultaneously, strategic investments in high-growth markets like foodservice, health and beauty, dispensing, and pharmaceuticals with a strong sustainability focus will contribute to our success. Building upon a solid core, we have made substantial progress in this first 100 days on two key areas of priority: customer-focused organic growth through superior service and product performance, and world-class continuous improvement delivered through lean transformation.
To this end, we pivoted our service and quality review process to be less internal focused, and more driven by the voice of our customers, and we began adding a Net Promoter Score integrated process to ensure closed-loop feedback that our customers are seeing real improvement. We also extended the duration of these reviews and increased the scrutiny to ensure we are seeing improvement in the identification of true root causes and their subsequent elimination. Closing out calendar year 2023, I hosted a meeting of who my team identified as the Top 20 lean continuous improvement experts in the company, regardless of what current role they happen to be tasked with. It was fantastic interaction and it became clear to me that with the right vision, organizational structure, vision, and executive oversight, we have the beginnings of a true world-class lean operating system.
I've launched the search process to include both internal and external candidates to take the role of lean transformation leader. Lean transformation is a key priority for 2024 and will become a core component of our culture going forward. And lastly, we were pleased to report that we identified an exciting value-creation opportunity as part of our strategic review of our Health, Hygiene and Specialties segment announced in September. We have entered into an agreement to spin-off our global nonwovens and films businesses and merge with Glatfelter Corporation, creating a scaled, global franchise with an industry-leading solution set serving attractive, growing, specialty materials markets. We will discuss more detail on the new announcement later in our prepared remarks.
Furthermore, in conjunction with today's announcement, Berry will change the name of its Engineered Materials segment to Flexibles, to showcase the continued evolution of this segment towards high-value products and solutions. We will continue to prioritize our focus on increasing our presence in stable, non-cyclical, fast-moving consumer goods. Next on Slide 7, I want to continue to emphasize our substantial levers to drive consistent, dependable, and sustainable organic growth. Berry's scale advantages drive cost leadership and innovation capabilities that provide us confidence that we will consistently deliver solid earnings growth from our stable portfolio of businesses. Our strategic investments, particularly in key end markets like healthcare, personal care and beauty, and foodservice, allow Berry greater differentiation, leading to long-term sustainable growth.
These markets also offer higher growth and higher margins, providing positive mix benefits for our overall portfolio. These drivers have not changed, and collectively give us confidence in our ability to deliver future growth and support our long-term target of increasing our presence in stable, non-cyclical fast-moving consumer goods from 70% of our portfolio to our goal of over 80%. And before handing over to Mark, I want to discuss Slide 8 and some of our specific focus investments for growth, emphasizing our commitment to innovation and sustainability. Investing in markets and product categories that drive long-term organic growth complements our efforts to build a resilient product portfolio. With a focus on sustainable packaging solutions, and a strong competitive advantage in recycled resins, Berry is positioned for higher-growth opportunities and long-term value creation.
Now, I will turn the call over to Mark, who will review Berry's financial results. Mark?
Mark Miles: Thank you, Kevin. Turning now to financial results highlights on Slide 9. As Kevin mentioned, our quarterly results for both revenue and earnings were in line with our expectations, while cash flow came in higher. Our global teams have executed exceptionally well, implementing robust cost reductions without disruption to our customers, and optimizing our product mix across our businesses. This strategic focus is helping to counter the challenges of soft market demand caused by inflation. We have made significant progress in consolidating our higher-cost assets, and as volumes recover, we expect an incremental benefit to earnings on more efficient assets. For the quarter, adjusted earnings per share decreased by 9% versus the prior comparable year, while operating EBITDA was down 6%, primarily due to a $30 million impact from the timing of passing through polymer costs as the prior-year quarter had a timing benefit against a headwind in the current quarter.
This timing difference was anticipated, and was partially offset by our cost actions and benefits from recent capital expenditures. Free cash flow for the last four quarters totaled nearly $1 billion, and is up over 10% versus the prior comparable period. I would like to refer everyone to Slide 10 for our quarterly performance by each of our four operating segments. The segment we review will focus on the year-over-year changes for fiscal Q1. Starting with our Consumer Packaging International division, revenue was down 6%, primarily from the pass-through of polymer costs and softer consumer and industrial market demand. Consumer categories across Europe performed marginally better than industrial markets, and we continue to execute our strategy to drive improved product mix to higher-value products.
EBITDA was down 10% versus the prior-year quarter, primarily driven by the timing of resin pass-through and softer overall customer demand, partially offset by our cost-reduction efforts, along with improved product mix by increasing our presence in healthcare packaging, pharmaceutical devices and dispensing systems. We continue to recover cost inflation through pricing actions, and cost reduction initiatives, while driving revenue growth from our sustainability leadership in areas such as high-value dispensing systems and closures. Next, on Slide 11, revenue in our Consumer Packaging North America division was down 10%, primarily from lower selling prices due to the pass-through of resin costs, along with softer overall customer demand. Over the past year, we have delivered strong double-digit growth in our foodservice markets, as we continue to see conversion from paper and foam to our fully recyclable clear polypropylene cup, in addition to market growth from cold brew coffees.
EBITDA was down modestly compared to the prior-year quarter, primarily driven by resin pass-through timing, and softer market demand, partially offset by our cost reduction efforts and our focus on higher-value products such as closures, foodservice, and dispensing systems. And on Slide 12, revenue in our Flexibles division was down 10% due primarily to lower selling prices from the pass-through of lower resin costs and volume softness primarily in European industrial markets, partially offset by growth in our premium protection film products in North America. Volumes were also impacted by our focused effort to mix-up in certain categories like consumer and transportation films. We are encouraged as volumes have improved sequentially over the past two quarters.
EBITDA for the quarter was up 4%, primarily related to our continued and focused effort on improving sales mix to higher-value product categories and growth in our premium protection film products, partially offset by softer demand in our European industrial markets. On Slide 13, revenue in our Health, Hygiene and Specialties division was down 11%, primarily due to reduced selling prices from the pass-through of lower resin costs, along with softer demand in our hygiene and specialties markets, such as building and construction and air and liquid filtration, partially offset by improved demand in our disinfectant wipes markets. We are encouraged as volumes have improved sequentially over the past three quarters. EBITDA was down 15% versus the prior-year quarter, primarily driven by resin lag on polypropylene, and weaker demand in some of our higher-value healthcare and specialty markets, partially offset by structural cost reduction initiatives and positive demand in our wipes markets.
Our consistent cash flows have granted us the flexibility to provide robust returns to our shareholders, a key strength and core value of our company. This financial stability allows us to invest in our businesses, foster growth, enhance efficiency, and simultaneously return capital to our shareholders. As illustrated on Slide 14, our unchanged capital allocation strategy is return based and encompasses continued investment in growth markets, strategic portfolio management, debt repayment, share repurchases, and a growing quarterly cash dividend. As part of our ongoing efforts to improve our product portfolio, we completed a divestiture in January after quarter end. We divested a European industrial automotive business, which was historically reported inside our Consumer Packaging International segment.
Revenue for this business was $90 million with profit margins well below the company average. Since the RPC acquisition in 2019, we have now completed eight divestitures. These divestitures are in direct alignment with our long-term strategy of simplifying the portfolio, and enhancing the stability of earnings, and improving long-term growth. Over the last four quarters, we generated nearly $1 billion in free cash flow, reaching $988 million, a 10% increase from the prior-year period. Leveraging our strong and dependable cash flows, we adjusted our leverage target to 2.5 to 3.5 times last year, focusing on driving long-term value for our shareholders. We anticipate being within this reduced range by the end of fiscal '24. In support of our ongoing commitment to further strengthen our strong balance sheet, we have repaid $300 million on our term loans in the first quarter, and in January, we issued $800 million of first-priority senior secured 10-year notes.
We used the proceeds to pay down over $500 million on our 2026 term loan, with the remaining amount expected to be used on our notes maturing in 2024. This strategic approach continues to enhance our capital structure and extend our debt maturity profile, all with little to no impact on earnings. We believe we are well positioned for continued value creation. Our strong cash flows have allowed us the flexibility to drive robust returns for our shareholders. As demonstrated on Slide 15, Berry has reduced net debt by more than $3 billion since mid-2019, along with more than $1.5 billion returned to shareholders through both share repurchases and dividends in fiscal 2022 and 2023. In fiscal '24, we anticipate a balanced capital allocation, utilizing our free cash flow for debt repayment, share repurchases, and regular quarterly dividends.
By the end of fiscal 2024, we expect that we will have returned an impressive $5.4 billion of cumulative net debt reduction and capital returns since fiscal 2020. As you can see on Slide 16, Berry's history of driving top-tier results across various key financial metrics such as revenue, earnings, and free cash flow highlights our consistent growth from the solid execution of our strategies. We remain committed to enhancing long-term value for all stakeholders, by maintaining a stable and dependable portfolio. This consistency has been validated through many different economic cycles, and since our last significant acquisition of RPC in 2019, we have delivered free cash every year between $850 million and $1 billion. Additionally, from an earnings perspective, our annual adjusted EPS CAGR of over 20% from 2015 to 2023 holds a leading position amongst our peer set and is well above the peer average adjusted EPS CAGR of 8%.
This concludes my financial review, and now I will turn it back to Kevin.
Kevin Kwilinski: Thank you, Mark. Our fiscal '24 guidance and assumptions outlined on Slide 17 reflect a solid Q1 performance, aligning with our expectations. We are reaffirming our full year guidance for adjusted earnings per share, ranging from $7.35 to $7.85. We expect earnings to strengthen in the second half of fiscal '24 compared to fiscal '23. This is driven by resin pass-through timing, benefits from cost-reduction efforts, and capital project timing. We continue to expect given the easing of inflation and easier comparisons year-over-year, volumes will improve as we progress through the fiscal 2024 year. Also, as Mark stated, we anticipate incremental benefits to earnings on more efficient assets as volumes recover during the year.
We continue to expect free cash flow to be in the range of $800 million to $900 million, assuming cash from operations of $1.35 billion to $1.45 billion less capital expenditures of $550 million. Furthermore, and in-line with our focus on driving long-term shareholder value, in fiscal 2024, we expect to prioritize repayment of debt to meet our leveraged target commitment, along with further share repurchases. We continue to believe our shares are undervalued, and our repurchases reflect our confidence in the outlook for our business and long-term strategy. As you can see on Slide 18, Berry has consistently met or exceeded its targets over the past several years, and we expect to continue doing so in the future. Our long-term targets emphasize the consistency and dependability of our model with EBITDA growth of 4% to 6%, adjusted EPS growth of 7% to 12%, and total shareholder returns of 10% to 15%.
Additionally, our dividend is expected to grow annually and we aim to achieve our recently lowered long-term leverage target by the end of fiscal 2024. And now to today's announcement regarding our strategic review of HH&S on Slide 19. We have signed an agreement and plans for a tax-free spin-off and merger of our global nonwovens and films business with Glatfelter Corporation. In a transaction expected to be valued at $3.6 billion, creating a scaled, leading global franchise with a broadened solution set serving attractive specialty materials market. The new company is expected to become a global leader in the growing specialty materials industry and the #1 supplier in nonwovens, serving the world's largest brand owners across global end markets with favorable long-term growth dynamics.
Berry brings an extensive portfolio of proprietary technology with a strong focus on healthcare, hygiene, and engineered solutions. Glatfelter also provides a broad range of proprietary technology, innovation capabilities, and sustainability solutions. The combined company is expected to provide a highly complementary product offering, including both polymer-based and fiber-based applications, supported by strong manufacturing platforms and broad geographic footprint. At closing, the newly-created company, or hereby referred to as NewCo, ownership will consist of Berry shareholders owning approximately 90%, Glatfelter shareholders owning approximately 10%. Additionally, Berry will receive a cash distribution of approximately $1 billion. Committed financing is in place to support the transaction, and we expect it to close in the second half of calendar 2024.
The transaction was unanimously recommended by the Boards of the both Berry Global and Glatfelter. On Slide 20, you can see the transaction benefits summary for Berry. As we explored options as part of our announced strategic review, led by our Board Capital Allocation Committee, we are thrilled with the opportunity that was identified in a partnership with Glatfelter. This announcement is the culmination of a comprehensive review to determine the highest value alternative for Berry shareholders. We have detailed the capitalization of NewCo with an expected total transaction value of $3.6 billion. At closing, Berry will receive an approximate $1 billion cash distribution and shareholders will participate in the upside of NewCo. We believe these two businesses independently can drive significant value for their respective stakeholders with more focused portfolios, positioning each for greater success.
Berry will now be poised to become a pure-play leading supplier of sustainable global packaging solutions, and we believe this focus will result in an even more predictable, stable earnings and growth profile for Berry. On Slide 21, our remaining three segments will be roughly evenly split from a pro forma revenue perspective, with all three remaining segments producing solid profit margins and returns, and we will continue our focus on increasing our consumer-facing products within each of our segments. This proposed transaction is a significant step in the optimization of our portfolio, and allows Berry's management team to be 100% laser-focused on driving consistent long-term growth with a more simplified and aligned portfolio. In summary, our strategic priorities remain unchanged, with a concentrated focus on driving more revenue through our sales and innovation pipelines.
Our commercial excellence approach is focused on increasing share of wallet with our customers. We will continue to operate with agility as we navigate current market dynamics to deliver long-term sustainable growth. Additionally, we plan to drive non-CapEx productivity through world-class operational excellence, to deliver conversion cost reductions over the long-term of 2% to 3% per year, which we expect to help mitigate the impact of inflation and to expand margins. As I stated earlier, lean transformation is a key priority for us here in 2024, and will become a core component of our culture going forward. These initiatives, along with our strong cash generation, supports our ability to ultimately drive strong returns for our shareholders.
We are optimistic about our outlook for fiscal 2024, as we anticipate positive impacts from the continued easing of inflation, and the return of more normalized levels of customer promotional activity. We are reaffirming our earnings and cash flow guidance today, as we continue to have confidence and visibility to solid earnings growth in the second half. We will continue to make progress toward our long-term market targets and remain focused on our strategy to deliver long-term growth and value-creation for our stakeholders. As you can see on Slide 22, we have executed on areas previously identified as to why our valuation multiple is below our peers. Sales volumes have been at or above peer average. We improved our strong balance sheet, lowered our targeted leverage range, and returned substantial cash to our shareholders.
Together, with our inclusion into the S&P 400 MidCap, we believe we'll continue to close the valuation gap to peer groups, presenting an attractive investment opportunity. Thank you for your time and interest in Berry. And with that, Mark, Curt, and I are happy to address any questions which you may have. Operator?
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