Q1 2024 Glatfelter Corp Earnings Call

Participants

Ramesh Shettigar; Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President, Treasurer; Glatfelter Corp

Thomas Fahnemann; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; Glatfelter Corp

Josh Wool; Analyst; Carlson Capital

Presentation

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Glatfelter's Q1 2024 earnings release conference call. Today's conference is being recorded.
And at this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Ramesh Shettigar. Please go ahead.

Ramesh Shettigar

Thank you, Ruth, and good morning and welcome to Glatfelter's 2024 first-quarter earnings conference call. This is Ramesh Shettigar, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. On the call, to present our first-quarter results is Thomas Fahnemann, President and Chief Executive Officer of Glatfelter, and myself.
Before we begin our presentation, I have a few standard reminders. During our call this morning, we will use the term adjusted earnings as well as other non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these financial measures to our GAAP-based results is included in today's earnings release and in the investor slides. We will also make forward-looking statements today that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Our 2023 Form 10-K, which has been filed with the SEC and today's earnings release disclose factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. These statements speak only as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them.
And I will now turn the call over to Thomas.

Thomas Fahnemann

Thank you, Ramesh. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Glatfelter's first-quarter 2024 investor call.
I'm pleased to report that the business produced solid but mixed results at the segment level as we continue to face industry-wide market headwinds and challenges from the volatile global economic environment with Europe representing our most difficult market currently. We achieved adjusted EBITDA of $23.8 million for the quarter or approximately $1 million lower than the same quarter last year.
Also, in relation to the proposed merger of Glatfelter with Berry Global's HHNF business, we reached a significant regulatory milestone with the expiration of the HSR waiting period. I will speak more to the work that is underway related to the proposed merger towards the end of today's call.
Turning now to the highlights of Glatfelter's first-quarter performance. The spunlace segment continues to gain momentum, having generated $5 million higher EBITDA versus the first quarter of 2023. This performance was driven primarily by ongoing price cost cap improvements combined with approximately $2.4 million of operational efficiencies throughout our spunlace sites. In addition, we continued to hold pricing benefits for our branded Sontara products and realized further gains in our [sold strands] facility following the sites 2023 restructuring.
Also in spunlace, I'm pleased to report that our Tennessee facility is fully operational following the tornado that swept through the community in December. I commend the team for their hard work and dedication to restoring operations while ensuring customer commitments were met during the recovery efforts.
Transitioning to our composite fiber business, this segment continues to demonstrate a positive trajectory based on steps we have taken to maintain solid performance against the backdrop of a difficult European market. The Composite Fibers team delivered approximately $2 million higher EBITDA compared to the first quarter 2023. This performance was achieved primarily through price cost gap improvements despite a nominal volume increase.
Overall, Composite Fibers continues to be managed using a combination of carefully targeted pricing actions to effectively balance volume, inventories, and operational uptime while mitigating volatile raw material and energy costs. Our most challenging segment in the first quarter was airlaid as its European markets remain quite tenuous. The segment generated $9 million lower EBITDA with approximately $8 million of the decline attributed to the prolonged European market weakness, which resulted in lower shipments and production along with adverse pricing dynamics.
In addition, airlaid continues to experience growing competition from producers of related substrates. Despite the segment's dynamics, we are accelerating our efforts with new innovative products that have the potential to address customers' ongoing demand for sustainable plastic-free alternatives and new creative applications using Glatfelter's airlaid materials.
And I'm excited to share that we recently qualified a key customer for brand new airlaid solution with production targeted for Europe. Shipping volume for this application when fully ramped up has a potential to generate meaningful volume annually. Also, we recently shipped our first commercial plant-based caps to Blue Ocean Closures for use by a Swedish manufacturer of nutritional supplements. These innovation initiatives are part of our overall airlaid business strategy to reduce customer concentration in the segment.
I will now turn the call over to Ramesh.

Ramesh Shettigar

Thank you, Thomas.
Slide 3 of the investor presentation provides a summary of our first-quarter results. Adjusted EBITDA was $23.8 million, approximately $1 million lower compared to the same period last year while EBITDA margins improved by 70 basis points. Airlaid material's EBITDA was lower by $9 million versus a very strong quarter last year. The drop in earnings was mainly driven by weaker European demand, leading to lower shipments and consequently lower production to manage inventory levels.
Composite Fibers EBITDA improved by $2 million, mainly from favorable price-cost gap. Spunlace EBITDA was higher by $5 million compared to the same quarter last year, driven by favorable price-cost gap, headcount reduction, and operational improvements.
Slide 5 shows a summary of first-quarter results for the airlaid materials segment. Revenues were down 18% on a constant currency basis versus the same period last year, driven primarily by lower selling prices of approximately $20 million and 4% lower shipment.
Selling prices were lower, mainly due to cost pass-throughs, reflecting declines in raw material and energy costs in Europe and selective price concessions to non-floating customers to regain volume. On a net basis, the price-cost gap was unfavorable to earnings by $2.4 million. Volume was lower year over year, primarily due to weaker shipments in categories like hygiene, home care, and tabletop in Europe.
The decline was largely driven by pricing actions taken in 2023 to protect margins and improve our price cost dynamic. However, ongoing market softness in Europe continued to put downward pressure further impacting volume. In addition, mix was unfavorable compared to last year when we had much stronger color tabletop shipments. These two factors combined unfavorably impacted results by approximately $1.8 million.
Operations were unfavorable by $3.8 million versus the prior year, primarily due to lower production of approximately 2,800 tons to manage inventory levels. Also, wage and other general inflation were higher compared to the same period last year. Foreign exchange and related currency hedging negatively impacted earnings by $1 million, primarily due to hedging gains from the prior year.
Slide 6 shows a summary of first-quarter results for the Composite Fibers segment. Total revenues were down 13% on a constant currency basis, mainly due to lower selling prices of $11 million from floating contracts implemented with larger food and beverage customers and targeted pricing actions to preserve volume.
And although shipments overall were nominally higher by 1%, mainly from the composite laminates and metalized categories, mix also contributed to lower revenue for the quarter compared to the same period last year. Overall, the price-cost gap for Composite Fibers remain favorable with prices declining by $11.1 million versus lower prices for key raw materials, energy, and freight, which improved earnings by $13.6 million versus the same quarter last year. Operations and other was unfavorable by $800,000, mainly due to lower production and foreign exchange was unfavorable by $200,000.
Slide 7 shows a summary of first-quarter results for the spunlace segment. Revenues were down 8% on a constant currency basis, driven by lower selling prices of approximately $4 million coming from raw material cost pass-throughs, primarily in the hygiene and wipes categories. Volume was lower by 2%, driven by softer shipments in the wipes, healthcare, and hygiene categories, but partially offset by stronger shipments in critical cleaning. Raw material, energy, and other inflation were favorable by $7.4 million, resulting in positive price-cost gap. operations and other items were $2.4 million favorable through intense focus on manufacturing efficiencies, headcount reductions, and lower operational spending.
Slide 8 shows corporate costs and other financial items. Corporate costs were $700,000 lower versus the first quarter of last year, largely driven by lower professional services spending this year. However, strategic initiatives costs were higher this quarter, driven by our proposed transaction with Berry's HHNF business.
Slide 9 shows our cash flow summary. For the first quarter of 2024, our adjusted free cash flow was $9 million lower versus the same period in 2023. Cash interest was elevated by approximately $5 million related to our refinancing in Q1 2023 and a higher interest rate environment. Working capital cash usage was higher by $2 million and cash taxes paid in 2024 were higher by $1 million.
Slide 10 shows some balance sheet and liquidity metrics. Our leverage ratio, as calculated under the bank credit agreement, was 3.7 times as of March 31, and we had available liquidity of approximately $85 million at the end of Q1.
This concludes my prepared remarks. I will now turn the call back to Thomas.

Thomas Fahnemann

Thank you, Ramesh.
The team and I remain excited by the prospects of Glatfelter merger with Berry Global's HHNF business, which is anticipated to close in the second half of 2024. Extensive efforts are underway to prepare for integrating the two businesses into a combined organization that will create a leading publicly traded company in the specialty materials industry. Integration planning includes extensive work to assess the two organizations and ensure effective operations starting on day one under the direction of Curt Begle, NewCo CEO. Multiple teams are focused on key areas such as organizational structure, including the formation of a Board of Directors and the leadership team while assessing talent throughout the organization.
In addition, the work is focused on business processes and IT systems, along with operational excellence that leverages the combined company's complementary products, and manufacturing technologies. The integration is being guided by a carefully planned schedule, which is well underway, and I'm pleased by the tremendous efforts of our collective team. As we approach closing of the proposed transaction, I look forward to sharing additional details regarding the integration and the efforts to ensure a meaningful performance of Glatfelter in the coming months.
I will now open the call for questions.
Ruth?

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator instructions)
Josh Wool, Carlson Capital.

Josh Wool

Before I get to some questions on Q1, a few questions just on the Berry deal and the process from here. I know you noted HSR approval. I also saw a press report in late April talking about the financing preparation. When do you and Barry expect to place the new financing and outside of financing? When do you expect to file a preliminary S-4? And is there a target for when you could announce a name for NewCo. It's something the corporate branding.

Thomas Fahnemann

Yeah, thanks for the question, Josh.
Again, we are still heavily working on all the different things we have to do and conditions we have to meet in order to close the transaction, which includes approval by Glatfelter shareholders, securing several regulatory approvals outside of the US. So we are still very optimistic that we are closing the transaction in the second half of this year. And as far as your question about financing is concerned, that's still to be determined and it depends -- first of all, we need to get all the approvals from the different authorities.

Josh Wool

Okay. Thanks for that.
And then on Q1, normally, I ask about volumes generally and then price cost generally. But given the performance [interrelates], I thought I would just focus on that segment as a whole. I mean, it seems the biggest driver of the weakness was the economic downtime. And so I guess I'm trying to understand a little bit by how you guys were caught so off guard. I mean, I realize shipments were down year over year, but they improved sequentially, and I think the year-over-year decline was a little bit less than Q4.
And maybe as it relates to that question, some of the CPG data I've seen has continued to improve sequentially, including some of what I'm hearing from Europe like the guys that make label stock, which can usually be a leading indicator. So like what was the issue with either planning or forecasting that or why you had to take such severe downtime to get your inventory back?

Thomas Fahnemann

Okay. Josh, I think let me just go through segment by segment because we have a different picture in the segments. Maybe let's start with Composite Fibers. In Composite Fibers, we saw a 10% volume growth from Q4 of '23 to Q1 of '24. And this growth was mainly driven by composite laminates and wall cover. The food and beverage side was slightly lower, and that was mainly driven by tea. But we are expecting that this subsegment tea will pick up in Q2.
We are still seeing -- and again, in the other areas, I think the destocking has more or less vanished. It's gone. The only segment where we're seeing it a little bit is still in the food and beverage area mainly coffee where we are still -- that's still lagging the trend of all the other areas. And then what's really positive in the CF area, composite laminates. We are running right now at a rate, which would actually if we continue doing that would be 20% higher than in 2023. So that's CF.
On the spunlace side, also spunlace is actually improving. We have an overall 5% volume growth from Q4 '23 to Q1. And the growth in that area was mainly driven by hygiene and wipes, but we have seen some large customers bought additional volume in Q1. And going into Q2 and seeing April a little bit -- and then we also see some upside tea on the volume and also on the mix side.
Sontara, and you might remember when we talked about this a year ago, we said we are qualifying and all that, but we are seeing right now Sontara shows a 10% increase, mainly in the critical cleaning with higher volumes from new business development, but also with existing customers. So that's the spunlace area.
And on airlaid, we really have to look at the different regions. If I look at airlaid, in North America, we have an overall volume increase of 13% in Q1 versus Q4. And we are seeing this really in all different categories. It's not just one category. We see it in hygiene and wipes, tabletop, home care. And also here, we think the destocking has been done.
Unfortunately, Europe is a totally different story. In Europe, the markets are much more challenging, and our volume dropped by 7% from Q4 to Q1. And the decline in that area in Europe was mainly driven by hygiene with probably minus 10%, minus 11%. And here we had to take actions to really protect our margins and our goal. And we have an overall strategy to really be less dependent on big customers and widen our product portfolio.
But we have to offset this with new products. We have made some really good progress with new products and new customers, and we are at the edge right now of -- kind of really making supplying customers with the first shipments and orders, and we will see actually better results than in Q -- in the second half of this year but probably in '25. But Europe is the big issue as far as airlaid is concerned. And what we're also seeing is competition from other substrates, competition from Asia, Turkey, Europe is the issue in airlaid.

Ramesh Shettigar

And, you know, Josh, we did lag Europe is being an issue, right when we came out of the fourth quarter. But clearly things have gotten worse there for us from a geographic standpoint. And that's why the dramatic decline in year-over-year earnings.

Josh Wool

No, the context is helpful, including around the other segments, but just to home in a little bit more on just the inventory and the downtime. How usual -- I don't have a table of your economic downtime in airlaid, but give us some context, how unusual is that level of downtime? I'm just trying to understand how much of that is going to be persistent. Maybe to some extent, we've been spoiled by the reliability in airlaids for many years. But it just is surprising because it's not like you went from a strong period of demand and volume growth in Europe, so just wondering what could really happen this quarter that was so much different than your expectation or maybe if it happens from time to time.

Ramesh Shettigar

Yeah, I would say, clearly, as we were seeing the demand softened for us in Europe. We had to dial down our production as well. So the absorption impact of that was quite meaningful. The capacity utilization or we've typically seen this being in the mid-to-high 80s was in the mid-to-high 70s and having a pretty capital-intensive business across all three segments, the absorption can play a very, very meaningful role.
Also, keep in mind that we made some conscious volume decisions with certain customers in terms of going into 2024, which we had also talked about previously that if the business is not -- if the book of business is not generating enough money, then we want to be able to reallocate that capacity to the B and C customers and that takes time right? We want to make sure that we're broadening the customer base. We want to make sure -- yeah -- sorry, Josh (multiple speakers)--

Josh Wool

Maybe (multiple speakers) have a question then around this is just so -- obviously the last question I have around the issue in airlaid is so broadening out the customer base and finding, I guess, new customers to replace some of that. When do you think that could get the operating rate and absorption back to a more normal level? Is that like a Q2 or is it more second half? Just some context there.

Thomas Fahnemann

Okay, Josh. Now what we're seeing right now is that we are seeing first shipments in Q2, but this -- again, we are ramping up its new application and all this. We see already coming some volume in the second half of this year and then the full impact you'll see in 2025 and 2026 while we can replace it. And again, as I mentioned in my remarks earlier, it's really exciting. We have a nice absolutely new applications where we can position airlaid and also in a segment, which is also providing enough profitability because that's the biggest issue because we get faced with other substrates, which have a totally different price point. And we cannot -- we just can't do that. We don't see that in the US yet, but we are seeing it in Europe, mainly coming from Turkey and Asia. And we already initiated the strategy back 15, 16 months ago, and it's coming to fruition. But again, coming back to your question, you'll see something in a little bit in the second half of this year and then in '25, '26.

Josh Wool

Okay. And let's talk about the price of pulp and here you can speak to airlaid as well as Composite Fibers. But just looking at pulp prices in North America and Europe, they entered 2023 at a very elevated level. They did pretty hard through the summer and now they've been rising again, albeit you're below the last peak.
When should we see the impact of rising pulp prices in your margins? And will the experience be any different this year, positive or negative, given either changes to contracts or the fact that you're not also being squeezed on energy or maybe negatively because of what you said, competition with other substrates? And is that competitiveness getting worse as the price of pulp goes up?

Thomas Fahnemann

Okay. I mean, we are seeing the pulp price increases in Q2. So we are holding normally a 2-, 2.5-month inventory. Then if I look at our floating customers, we will pass that on with I would say around about three months' time lag, so we'll get it. But there's a time lag.
And contracts are little bit different, but it's on average is around about three months. And also, we have implemented some of these floating mechanisms in our food and beverage segment and with other customers. So that will house. There's always a time lag, but it will help, and we'll pass that on.
If I look at the non-floating side, we already were able to increase our prices roughly by 2%, 3% in North America, and this was generally accepted. Again here, Europe is much more challenging with a very competitive market conditions, but we are working on that as we speak.

Josh Wool

Okay, helpful. Just one last question and then I can get back in the queue. Around cash flow, just any context on the performance in Q1 versus your expectations and normal seasonality? And are there any guideposts around seasonality and also the timing of some of the restructuring spend over the balance of 2024 that can help us model that out?

Ramesh Shettigar

Sure. So Josh, I would say in terms of seasonality in the cash flow, typically the first quarter is a heavier cash outflow for us, and we've seen that over the last several years. I would say from a working capital standpoint, if inflation stays moderated, we can continue to have at least a breakeven to slightly positive working capital profile, and that's what we've been expecting.
But if inflation starts to creep up here, whether it's an input cost, whether it's an energy that could have a similar impact like we saw last year as well where working capital was quite strained. Our going-in expectation is having the cost pass throughs structured appropriately. We should be able to manage the working capital situation this year as well.
So overall, as we think about the rest of the year, the second half of the year is typically more positive cash flow from a seasonality perspective. But some of these one-time restructuring costs, the cost that we're incurring related to the pre-merger integration and the HHNF transaction, all of that is fairly spread out throughout the year all the way until closing. So we're going to be continuing to manage that appropriately. But as of right now, our cash flow picture going into this year versus where we are right now is largely unchanged.
Ruth, is there anyone else in the queue?

Operator

There are no others in the queue at this time.

Ramesh Shettigar

Then why don't we give Josh an opportunity to ask any further questions if he does have.

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
There are no other questions at this time.

Ramesh Shettigar

Thank you very much and we will speak with you again next quarter.

Thomas Fahnemann

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.