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Graphic Packaging Holding (GPK): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Graphic Packaging Holding

graphic packaging holding

Good day, everyone. Welcome to Graphic Packaging Second Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen only mode, and the floor will be open for questions and comments after your presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Mark Connelly. The floor is yours.

Good morning. We have with us today Mike Doss, President and Chief Executive Officer and Steve Scherger, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we will reference our second quarter twenty twenty five earnings presentation available through this webcast and on our website at www.graphicpkg.com. Today's presentation will include forward looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections.

These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the factors identified in today's press release and in our SEC filings. Now let me turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. Graphic Packaging is a global leader in sustainable consumer packaging. In the second quarter, we saw a continuation of uneven volumes as consumers remained stretched. Promotional activity helped drive modest volume improvement in some categories.

Conversations with our customers suggest potential for an increase in focus on volume growth and protecting their market share in the quarters ahead. Meanwhile, the last major investment in our Vision 2025 is nearing completion, and we expect to generate cash substantially in excess of our needs beginning in 2026. In the second quarter, Graphic Packaging sales were $2,200,000,000 adjusted EBITDA was $336,000,000 adjusted EBITDA margin was 15.3%, and adjusted EPS was $0.42 Volumes in The Americas were modestly better than expected, driven mainly by an increase in beverage promotion and some targeted promotional activity in food and foodservice. Our decision to curtail production to further reduce inventory levels did impact our adjusted EBITDA margin, but positions us to operate much closer to normal levels in the second half. Turning to slide three, we will bring our Waco recycled paperboard investment to life in the fourth quarter.

While the project remains on schedule, we are experiencing higher costs, principally labor and final engineering and design costs related to permitting and insurance requirements. We are now estimating twenty twenty five capital expenditures of $850,000,000 In 2026, capital spending will decline to 5% of sales, consistent with our original targets. The higher spending in 2025 will be offset by lower cash taxes after recent federal tax law changes and lower working capital as we reduce inventories. So, expect no net impact on estimated 2025 free cash flow. With Waco set to begin production later this year, we closed our Middletown, Ohio paperboard manufacturing facility in May.

We are now serving those customers mainly from existing inventory. Waco is the last major investment of our Vision 2020 transformation program. Recycled paperboard has, by a wide margin, the lowest environmental footprint, the lowest upfront capital and sustaining capital requirements, and with our quality advantage, can replace more expensive to produce bleach paperboard in a wide range of applications. When you look at the numbers from an investor standpoint, there is just no comparison. We will continue to utilize bleach paperboard where appropriate.

From the vantage point of cost, capital, and consumer appeal, recycled is superior to bleached, and we will continue to keep our footprint in bleached paperboard small and focused. We were pleased by the recent decision of the Recycled Materials Association to, for the very first time, include paper cups in their single stream and dual stream recycling specifications. Graphic Packaging's own Ed Tucciaroni worked closely with the association and with our colleagues at Closed Loop Partners and the Food Service Packaging Institute to promote and encourage this important update. The association's guidelines are highly influential with waste collectors and with thousands of material recovery facilities in deciding what does and doesn't get collected in municipal recycling and collection systems. As the largest producer of paper cups in North America and a major user of recovered fiber, this update has particular significance to us.

We designed Waco to take full advantage of this high quality underutilized fiber source, which today mostly ends up in landfills. I've already mentioned our action on inventory. Steve will discuss capital allocation in his comments in a few minutes. As expected, volumes across consumer staples remain uneven. A stretched consumer is spending more money on groceries, but leaving the store with fewer items than they did a year ago.

Our volumes in The Americas were roughly flat, modestly better than expected, and we again outperformed the broader CPG and QSR markets we serve. Our international results remain positive, but growth slowed modestly, confirming that consumers in those markets are also stretched, as we cautioned last quarter.

Private label and store brands continue to gain traction in select food categories. Trademarking activity has also been accelerating, suggesting that private label offerings will continue to expand across more grocery and other consumer staple categories. Have an excellent position with retailers and co packers, and have been particularly pleased with the reception our innovation portfolio is getting from these customers. We delivered innovation sales growth of $61,000,000 in the second quarter, and are on track to reach our 2% of sales growth target for the full year. While we have seen a few customers scale back their packaging innovation plans in the near term, most customers remain committed to reducing the environmental footprint of their packaging, and our innovation sales pipeline remains robust. Turning to slide four.

The breadth and depth of our consumer staples packaging portfolio is the foundation of our strength. We are in every aisle of the supermarket, and are a major packaging supplier to quick service restaurants. Over time, we expect to grow our presence substantially across household products, and health and beauty, as customers increasingly embrace recycled paperboard as a less expensive, more logical, and more appealing alternative to bleach paperboard. Turning to slide five. Overall second quarter packaging sales were roughly flat year over year.

Food results remained uneven. Snacks are among the more discretionary grocery items and saw pressure, although bars continue to benefit from wellness trends. Cereals saw continued weakness, but pasta, sauces, and prepared foods saw gains as consumers shifted from high cost alternatives. Our Bordeaux container is driving solid growth for us in coffee, where we are also benefiting from a trend towards more home and office consumption. In The Americas, frozen foods saw further declines as consumers shifted to fresh and refrigerated categories, including bakery.

Grocery stores generally earned higher margin on freshly prepared food items, and are continuing to expand and promote their fresh offerings. In Europe, frozen food results remain solid, as consumers in those markets continue to prioritize convenience. After solid beverage seasons in 2023 and 2024, we are encouraged to see 2025 again off to a very good start. Beer's decline moderated for us, and carbonated soft drinks saw good growth on the back of higher promotional activity around Memorial Day. July and August are the heart of the beverage season, and July results have been very good.

Energy drinks, flavored seltzer, and wellness beverages are continuing to gain in popularity with consumers. Foodservice results were relatively unchanged, despite some aggressive but targeted promotional activity. We are actively engaging with our QSR customers on their strategies to drive higher foot traffic. Promotional activity in Europe continues to drive volume more successfully than it has in The United States to this point. Household product results were relatively unchanged overall, with tissue products turning positive and food storage remaining strong. Health and beauty is still mostly an international business for us, although we expect that to change over time. Fragrances are showing further recovery after a good result last quarter, and healthcare products also showed improvement.

Slide six highlights our five packaging innovation platforms which are key to generating top line growth over time. We are seeing good opportunities across each of these areas, and every new product launch adds to our insights and to the value we bring to our customers. On slide seven, I want to highlight an innovation specifically designed for club store customers. Most of the innovations we have highlighted recently are focused on plastic replacement, but sometimes innovation means taking a fresh look at traditional packaging solutions and creating something better. One of our largest CPG customers asked us to help them develop a more cost effective bulk packaging solution for coffee pods.

Working closely with their product development and marketing teams, we developed a solution that reduces materials, cuts production and material handling costs, improves on shelf marketing impact, and delivers a superior customer experience. The traditional packaging method for bulk coffee pods is called dump fill. You set up a corrugated box, dump the pods in, and glue the box shut. Our nested pod solution is better from nearly every angle. As you can see in these pictures, by orienting the pods in layers, the new design eliminated the dead space at the top, and fit the same number of pods into a 21% smaller package.

It also uses 30% less material per package. Reorienting the container to be narrower and taller gives the package more shelf appeal and takes up less space in the consumer's pantry. The taller, narrower box also means that we can stack 26 boxes per layer on a pallet rather than just 16, and are only stacking four layers high rather than five. Moving the opening to the top center made the sides and corners of the package stronger. With fewer layers and a stronger structure, we were able to switch to a layer than our materials.

And finally, we replaced the expensive bleach paperboard top sheet with our Pacesetter Reindeer recycled paperboard. That lowered the cost further and reduced the package's overall environmental footprint with 100% recycled alternative that provides the same outstanding print quality. This new nested coffee pod solution is on store shelves right now and represents the gold standard for coffee pod packaging. Turning to slide eight. Our vision for graphic packaging is clear.

Our focus on innovation, culture, and commitment to sustainability is how we generate best in class results for our customers and for all our stakeholders. When our Waco investment is complete, we will have everything we need to reach our Vision 2030 goals. On the governance front, I'm happy to report that we recently published our 2024 Impact Report. We've added two new directors to our board in the past year, with extensive operational and senior leadership experience in food and healthcare. And we are in the process of declassifying our Board.

Our commitment to driving shareholder value is stronger than ever, and Vision 2030 is our roadmap. Now let me turn the discussion over to Steve for a review of the company's financial performance and capital allocation.

Thank you, Mike. Turning to slide nine. Sales for the 2025 were $2,200,000,000 If we exclude the impact of the Augusta divestiture and the impact of foreign exchange in the quarter, packaging sales were roughly flat. Packaging price was approximately 1% lower, which mainly reflects the impact of third party price recognition from 2024. Overall volume was up approximately 1%, with Americas basically flat and international modestly positive.

Adjusted EBITDA was $336,000,000 in line with the commentary we provided in June. The second quarter is our biggest maintenance quarter and we took aggressive action to manage inventories, which had an incremental impact on our reported margin, but positions us to run at more normal levels in the second half. During the second quarter, the impact of lower prices, input cost inflation, labor and benefits inflation, and the Augusta divestiture reduced EBITDA by approximately $64,000,000 Our actions to reduce inventory drove net performance negative in the quarter, more than offsetting a modest benefit from higher volume, or a combined net negative $13,000,000 Inflation did moderate in the second quarter with lower resin, recovered fiber and logistics costs compared to the first quarter. Foreign exchange was an $11,000,000 tailwind. Slide 10 highlights the still challenging consumer packaging environment on the left and the strength of our business model and execution on the right.

While inflation and our inventory management decisions pushed our margins below normal this quarter, less maintenance and the actions we have taken on both costs and production should push margins closer to normal levels in the second half, and we will see the Waco investment benefits starting in 2026. Turning to slide 11, we repurchased 1.6% of the company's outstanding shares during the second quarter at an average price of $22.26 per share. We allowed net leverage to rise modestly in the quarter, taking advantage of what we believe was an unusually attractive stock price. We expect to end the year with net leverage below 3.5 times, in line with our guidance. In the appendix to today's presentation, on slide 18, we highlight the company's strong record of opportunistic share repurchase.

Since 2018, when we completed the combination with International Paper's consumer business, Graphic Packaging has repurchased nearly a quarter of the company, while we doubled in size and completed the transformation into a global consumer packaging leader. With the Waco investment nearing completion, free cash flow will rise substantially. And as of June 30, availability under share repurchase authorizations was approximately $1,750,000,000 Turning to the outlook on slide 12. Have updated our guidance to reflect performance to date and a somewhat narrower range of outcomes, with no change to the adjusted EBITDA midpoint. Volume uncertainty remains elevated, given the stretched consumer and the targeted promotional activity we are seeing, particularly in food packaging, our biggest market.

Many, if not most of our CPG and QSR customers continue to express caution about their own near term volume outlooks. As I mentioned, we expect second half adjusted EBITDA margins to be meaningfully better than first half as a result of actions we have taken to reduce inventories, less scheduled maintenance and normal seasonality. As Mike mentioned, the increase in capital spending in 2025 is offset elsewhere, and so our expected 2025 free cash flow remains unchanged. This late phase increase in project costs is not expected to materially affect overall investment returns. Waco's economic and quality advantages are expected to be even stronger than they were in our previous estimates.

Slide 13 summarizes the company's Vision 2030 base financial model and capital allocation priorities, which are unchanged. As we move toward 2026, Graphic Packaging will return to a more normal level of reinvestment for growth and productivity, which is included in our 5% of sales CapEx target. We expect to generate free cash substantially in excess of our needs over the next several years, and we plan to return significant capital to stockholders while also reducing debt levels. We remain committed to an investment grade credit rating by 02/1930. On slide 14, given the weaker near term volumes and their impact on 2025 adjusted EBITDA, we've adjusted our expectations for 2026 free cash flow to $700,000,000 to $800,000,000 As volume moves back to more normal levels, we expect to achieve our original free cash flow targets in 2027 and beyond.

In the appendix that begins with slide 15, you will find additional information that may be useful for modeling, information on seasonality, and the review of our buyback history, which I referenced earlier. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, let's begin the Q and A.

Certainly. The floor is now open for set if listening on a speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. Please hold just a few moments while we poll for any questions. Your first question is coming from Anthony Pettinari with Citi. Anthony, please pose your question. Your line is live.

Good morning. I had a question about the in terms of the increase in capital spending from 700,000,000 to $850,000,000 that impacts free cash flow in 2026. I'm just trying to understand kind of the flow through because it looks like you trimmed the 2026 free cash flow number. And then that just completely sort of one time in nature and then 2027 you're kind of stepping up from a lower base or just can you help us understand how that sort of flows through and impacts cash from 2025, 2026, 2027?

Yeah, Anthony, it's Steve. I'll take that. 2025, as we articulated, CapEx $850,000,000 a combination of cash taxes, working capital down $150,000,000 that's driven by some benefits from the recent tax legislation, $50,000,000 and a decrease in working capital as we significantly reduced working capital. So, for 2025, no change in our free cash flow, and as such, no change in our expectations for year end leverage. In 2026, what we've done is we've updated 2026 cash flow for our expectations of where the leap off point is for this year's EBITDA, and so that's got 2025 EBITDA at the midpoint of 1.5.

Our assumption obviously is that it will grow next year. And then the cash to run the company in 2026 is very consistent with what we've shared previously. Total cash for CapEx, interest, taxes, working capital will be between $750,000,000 and $850,000,000 and that'll have CapEx at 5% of sales, so think about that as in the mid $400,000,000 range, and then the remaining items in the mid $300,000,000 range. So, that's kind of the path to the updated 700,000,000 to $800,000,000 of free cash flow in next year. So, we took this opportunity to update it for this year's CapEx, this year's cash flow consistency, and then updating it for twenty twenty six's cash flow, free cash flow expectations.

Got it, got it. That's very helpful. And then maybe just one follow-up. In terms of you referenced maybe some higher permitting costs, insurance costs, maybe labor around Waco. Was that something that was sort of inflating over the course of the year or were there some aspect of the project where you saw kind of a big step up in that estimate maybe during the quarter?

Just trying to understand you know, what's driving those costs, if it's maybe a bunch of little things or something that changed with the project.

Anthony, it's Mike. Yes, look, it's a couple of things. I appreciate the question. First, labor costs, specifically electricians. As you can appreciate, we've got about 600 electricians working to finish up the project here as we speak, in the final phases of it.

That portion of the labor came in a little higher than what we expected. That's really a function of the fact, as you're well aware, there's a real boom on data centers and other construction that's bid up by the cost of that labor. So we had to deal with that. I think if you take a step back and look at it over a two and a half year period, we started with a greenfield. And of course, we had the engineering done on certain aspects from Kalamazoo.

We built the same machine hall. There were other elements that were different because we did tend to have certain things like the powerhouse, wastewater treatment, those types of things we had to build. And that comes with what we had initial permits and insurance understanding. And some of that stuff evolved over the course of construction, you try to deal with those as they come in. In some cases there was rework that was required on things that we had already done in order to get the final permitting, as I alluded to in my prepared remarks.

And all of it was inflationary. And so ultimately, you kind of put it together, we pushed out the $150,000,000 we talked about today. If you add up where we're over on that project, it's around 20% from our original commitments that we made about 2.5 ago. And what I'll tell you is that I'm more encouraged than ever around our ability really deliver on the returns of that project. The capabilities are going to be fantastic, both in terms of quality and cost.

When you put Kalamazoo and Waco together, the replacement costs of both of those assets are substantially above what we pay for them now if someone was replicated. So, it really creates a bit of a moat around that business. No one likes a cost overrun. We take those things seriously, and obviously we try to deal with them, as you've seen us do here by managing other aspects of our business to make sure we deliver our free cash flow. But we had to get the project done.

We'll have it done here. It's going start up on time. And I'm really excited about bringing Wavell to life here in the fourth quarter.

Okay, that's very helpful. I'll turn it over.

Your next question is coming from George Staphos with Bank of America. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

Thanks very much. Hi, everyone. Good morning. Thanks for the details. I guess as we look out nearer term in terms of margin and the implied as we're doing the math, 19% margin or so for the second half of this year, Mike and Steve, can you talk to us about maybe not to the penny, but what some of the building blocks are there that give you confidence that you can get there?

And what's sustainable into 2026 and beyond? And then I had a follow on related to the intermediate term growth outlook for EBITDA.

Hey George, it's Steve. I'll take that. And maybe just do it this way, kind of first half, second half. First half EBITDA $700,000,000 midpoint of second half $800,000,000 the margins as you described. A couple of components: one, our pricing, while around $50,000,000 negative in the first half, be closer to $25,000,000 in the second half, so that's a $25,000,000 first halfsecond half pickup.

And then really the majority of it, probably $60,000,000 is that combination of less planned maintenance downtime, Q2 was very high for planned maintenance, and less market related downtime as we took over 50,000 tons of inventory out of the company in the first half that doesn't need to be repeated in the second half. So, two major components to the $100,000,000 price and performance being 25,000,000 and $60,000,000 cumulatively. The remaining $15,000,000 is a cross section of some other inflation FX items, so relatively modest. So, that's really the first half, second half conversation and we're very pleased with our inventory reduction efforts through from December here through June. There'll be more inventory coming out of the company naturally in the second half of the year with the Middletown closure, but the economic impact of that is relatively modest as we sell aggressively out of inventory.

Okay, very good. I appreciate that, Steve. It's just maybe factual if you can cover it as part of the answer to the question. I didn't see really the inventory move that much 1Q to 2Q, I'm assuming you're holding some extra as you basically the fleet of machines is changing. You've got Middletown coming out, you've Waco coming out.

I'm assuming that's a little bit of buffer. And then as we think out more to '26 and '27, obviously we have the Waco EBITDA pickup. But can you again, maybe not to the penny, but help us bridge to what you think some of the more important EBITDA pickups will be next year and thereafter. I'm assuming volume is a big one, but if you can give us additional color there would be great. Thanks and good luck in the quarter.

Yes, George, I'll start and then Mike can add some color into next year. On the balance sheet, you're absolutely correct. The actual inventory numbers are not down. Our inventory volume down 50,000 tonnes or roughly 12%, very material, that's very important. It's offset by FX, George, actual balance sheet terms of how it gets layered is an FX issue.

So, volumetrically down 12% on inventory, offset by FX, and I appreciate you raising that because it's important. As we look to 2026, the algorithm we have for the company, we would expect to be on display in 2026. Importantly, our Waco expectations for 2026 remain at $80,000,000 and then obviously our overall performance will hinge upon some levels of modest volume growth. But the $80,000,000 on Waco next year remains our expectation for 2026. I think Michael may add a couple of things around the business.

Yeah, George, I think, look, the catalyst, as Steve outlined in 2016 and 2017, is bringing Waco to life, 80,000,080 million as you well know. It's a really good question, your follow on there around the confidence in our algorithm around low single digit growth rate after a disappointing 2024 to be fair and 2025 that what we played to a draw. And we've driven our innovation. You see that. We had $61,000,000 of innovation.

This quarter was eaten up by the fact that our customers' volumes continue to go down. We're in a highly unusual time. I mean, prices are very high and consumers are struggling both here and in Europe. And ultimately, the macro uncertainty is something that we have to deal with, particularly as consumer confidence declines. So, as we look out into 'twenty six and 'twenty seven, we know our customers are working various strategies to continue to deal with this.

Of course, their stocks aren't working either when their volumes go down. You've seen a fair amount of discussion by customers. Some are buying one another, some are breaking themselves up, others are changing leadership. So there's a fair amount of things that are happening as they look to kind of deal with those things. And we believe over time, over the medium term for sure, that that stuff gets worked out, it needs to get worked out.

And we're there to help. We're going help our customers work through those formulation changes and how they work on the promotional activity. But a big part of our algorithm is getting to that low single digit growth. And our Vision 02/1930, as you know, as demonstrated here, it's not linear. But we believe that's still the right model for us over time. That's how we're thinking about it.

Okay. Thank you very much. I'll turn it over.

Your next question is coming from Phil Ng with Jefferies. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

Good morning, Mike. Steve, this is actually John on for Phil. Appreciate all the details here. I wanted to actually look a little further out. The 2027 guide for free cash flow, you guys maintained 900,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 So it implies at the midpoint, it's like a plus 200,000,000 type of improvement.

I know you said volumes are expected to recover to more normalized levels, but it just seems like a big jump. Can you just help us bridge that expectation out in 2027 and beyond?

Yeah, John, it's Steve. What we really did with our long term free cash flow expectations is we dialed in 2026 a bit, as we just described a couple of moments ago, 700 to $800,000,000 And as Mike just described, as our algorithm for low, mid and high single digit sales EBITDA and EPS growth plays itself out over the next several years, along with a second $80,000,000 of EBITDA improvement in 2027 from Waco, gives us the opportunity for cash flows to continue to grow from the 7,000,000 to $800,000,000 range into that $900 plus range towards the billion that we originally targeted. And so as Mike said, it's not linear. We've worked through some consumer and inflation realities here at twenty fourtwenty five, But our confidence in the long term algorithm for the company remains intact and hence not moving off of our 2027 and beyond free cash flow expectations.

Okay. And just to kind of follow-up on that a little bit, Mike, I know you just said you're still expecting the $160,000,000 from Waco, but does volume need to recover to get that full 160,000,000 over the next couple of years? Or is this mostly coming from lower costs and such things are still flat volumes into some of the outlook at least?

Yeah, there's a portion of it, John, that obviously comes from shutting down our smaller, higher cost facilities, as you've seen us do with Middletown. Of course, he's saying this falls in that bucket as well. I'll remind you, there's also been two other mills for a total of 370,000 tons that have come out in the last ninety days, Middletown being part of that and two additional mills on top of that. So there is probably growth of around 200,000 tons as you kind of look in the outlying years, '27 to '28, as we ramp that facility up. And we expect to grow as we just talked about.

And we're going to need that paperboard in order to that low cost, high quality paperboard that we'll be making in order to fund that growth and take care of customers. So the answer is yes. There's a portion of it that's fixed, just a reduction and then a portion of it that's growth. But our confidence level in the 8080 is high, and that's why we ask you to model it that way.

Appreciate the details. I'll turn it over. Thanks.

Your next question is coming from Gabriel Haight with Wells Fargo. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

Mike, Steve, Mark, good morning. Point of clarification on something you said, on, I guess, I'll call it underabsorbed fixed overhead. You talked about reducing inventories by $50,000 in the quarter, excuse me, but it costs you $60,000,000 which implies sort of $1,100 or so a ton of under absorbed fixed overhead. It seems like a big number. Is there anything else going on there that we should be mindful of when we think about that?

Yeah, Gabe, it's Steve. As a reminder, Q2 is our largest planned maintenance downtime quarter. So, you're doing a first half, second half, we pick up 20,000,000 or $30,000,000 of the 60,000,000 just from less planned maintenance downtime. The remainder is from the actions that we took to take the 50,000 tons out. So, it is not $60,000,000 as I think you're potentially implying.

It's a combination of less planned maintenance downtime, first half, second half, and less market related drive out inventory first half to second half. So, thanks for raising that. I wouldn't want that to be confusing.

Okay. No, thank you. Maybe two quick follow ups. One, the maintenance this year, is that a relatively normalized number when you kind of look out '26, 27? And then related or separately, I should say, on the beverage end market, I know it's difficult to understand exactly what your customers are holding in terms of inventory, but they did promote pretty heavily in the first half.

Is it your view that they're getting uncomfortable levels of inventory, maybe a little less than they need or more than they need as they go into the back half? Thank you and good luck.

Dave, I'll take the first one and Mike can discuss the second. We don't expect any of substance planned maintenance downtime differences 25 to 26. So, that will play itself out relatively normalized. Obviously, we do not expect to repeat the market related inventory correction downtime that we took if you look at it on a year over year basis.

In regards to the beverage season, Dave, we actually have seen a very solid beverage season both in Europe and in North America. And North America is a little bit a function of the mix of customers that we're serving. For us, it makes us our volume obviously quite good this year. Relative to what customers are holding in warehouses and the retail, we don't have a lot of insight into that. I can tell you we're busy.

We're steady. The demand is strong. We've got no indications from them that it's going to back off before the normal occurrence, which, as you know, in the Northern hemispheres from basically from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Next question is coming from Matt Roberts with Raymond James. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

Hey, Mike, Steve, Mark. Good morning. Just on the second half volumes, the first half was up 1% and so flat in place second half down slightly. So you have the slightly harder comp. But when you spoke in mid June, believe you said the quarter 2Q was going to be at flat, came in a bit better than that.

So maybe some additional color on what you saw exiting June and what you've seen to date here in July?

Yeah, so I'll take that one, Matt. I think from that standpoint, it's a pretty small number. Europe was up 2% and our North American business our Americas business was basically flat in the quarter. That was off from minus 1% in Q1, so we were encouraged to see that. You know, July started off consistent with the guide that we put out.

You know, we see beverages solid, and food's a bit mixed, as Steve talked about. Some categories are up, some are down. I would characterize it just there's still a lot of uncertainty. I mean, our customers are struggling. You see their reports, and there'll be a number of them that release over the next week and a half or so.

We expect to see volumes that are down year on year. We're outperforming that with what we're doing by playing to a draw, which is really what we have to do, our innovation, as I mentioned earlier to a previous question. We're on track for our 2% this year. We're encouraged by that. Relative to try to completely call the second half of this year, it's very difficult for us to do that right now because we don't have a ton of insight from customers.

They're telling us that they're going to promote. They told us that last year. We're being very cautious, as you know, because we built inventory last year to accommodate that promotional activity and then we had to burn it off in the first six months of this year. So we're not doing that. We're there and ready to help them with anything that they need in regards to reformulation.

That's always an opportunity for us, so we'll continue to do that. We've got a wide array of portfolio of innovation ideas that will help us help them really resonate with the end use consumer. So that's where our focus is. But I just want to underline that word again, uncertainty here in the second half. And so we're going to be a little cautious in terms of how we're trying to call volumes at a very precise level.

Understandable. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate that color. And maybe if I could ask on price. When I think about the price changes, so you noted beverage demand has remained strong, and I believe we lapped the price decrease in February 24.

Open market exposure is now de minimis. But I think, Steve, I think you said price in second half is down 25,000,000 What do you need to see to get that to flat? Or given tightness in certain substrates, would another run at a list price increase be warranted? And then just a point of clarification. Steve, I think you said that lower cash taxes in '25 was a $50,000,000 benefit from the big beautiful bill.

Is there any lift in 2026 that you've quantified? I understand there certainly could be some nuances in when projects are put in place and what qualifies. So if you just help me understand that a little bit better. Thank you all for taking the questions.

Matt, thanks. There's a couple of them there. I'm going answer the first one in regards to pricing. Of course, you can appreciate I can't talk about forward pricing options or optionality and things that we would do or wouldn't do, but I can talk about current market conditions. If you look at recycled paperboard and unbleached paperboard, they've been a really good balance for the past several years.

Pricing's been pretty stable, and that's certainly in contrast to bleached paperboard. And we've taken some actions to address the inventories, as you've heard Steve talk about. We took out 50,000 tons here in our second quarter. We're going to continue to be very focused on managing our supply and demand, making sure we have the paperboard to take care of customers, but no more than we need. Very disciplined in that regard.

And I've already mentioned the 370,000 tons that have come out of the CRB and the unbleached paperboard side. I think if you look at the AFP-eight the American Forest and Paper Association data that I'm sure you did that came out last Friday, there's some interesting things to take away there. I mean, if you look at the recycled and the unbleached, those are the two grades where we're a major player. If you think about where we're going to be post Waco, 80% of our production is going to be in those two grades of paper. We're a minor player on the bleach side.

Primarily, we focus on cup, as you know, and you mentioned that in your question. Production was down 3% in the second quarter, owing to some of those shutdowns that we talked about. The shipments were up 1%. Year to date, production was down 2.5%, shipments were down 1%. So inventory is down 20% in the quarter, which is a good thing, and 30% year to date, and backlogs are up.

That's a healthy operating environment for both those grades. And that really contrasts what's going on in bleach paperboard, where we are a minor player. If you look at that same data, production was up 5% in the second quarter, shipments fell 5%. Year to date production's up 2%, shipments down 2.5%. So, inventories are up 8% in the quarter and 20% year over year, which means backlogs are down.

So, it's really kind of a tale of two cities there relative to what the grades are doing. And certainly, we're not immune to the impact of that paperboard coming online. The supply and demand dynamics I'm talking about with bleach versus the two grades that we are well invested in. But with graphics inventories on SBS, I can tell you, we're actually down in the quarter. So we're pleased with that.

So, hopefully that gives you a little bit of context in terms of how we're thinking about the overall market health, what we're seeing, what we're doing to manage our order books. I'll tell you that our order books continue to build on the grades that we're talking about, and they did over the quarter, and they have been in July so far.

And Matt, to your second question, embedded in the $700 to $800,000,000 of free cash flow in 2026, We do expect to see some positive benefits from the tax legislation. So, as I mentioned, that cumulative impact of interest, cash taxes, working capital, we kind of have in the mid $300,000,000 range next year, and that will have some benefits from the tax legislation as well. So our line of sight to cash flow next year is actually quite high. And that's why that conviction around the 700 to $800,000,000 and then obviously the ability to deploy that for shareholder value creation and the inflection of the cash flow into a very material level, which gives us outstanding optionality for share repurchase activity, debt reduction. That inflection is happening and our confidence in that is extremely high. There will be some benefits from the tax legislation embedded in that.

Nicely, very detailed. Thank you all very much.

Your next question is coming from Ghansham Panjabi with Baird. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

Thank you. Good morning, guys. Mike, going back to your comments on consumer affordability, which has been an issue for basically three years at this point, what, if anything, is different as it relates to how your customer strategy has changed to counter this elongated period of volume weakness? And I'm just kind of going back to your comment on promotional activity, etcetera, is that something that's incremental or is it just sort of seasonal?

Ghansham, I wish I had a better, more intelligent answer for that question to share with you. I mean, I think the biggest challenge this has gone on longer than I've historically seen. Our customers have struggled from time to time over my career, and then they retool and they revamp. I think there's change in consumer preferences that are certainly at play. You've got things like GLP-one that are positives and negatives, that are out there in the marketplace.

The MAHA piece of this hits our customers at a very unopportunistic time. They're already struggling with consumer affordability, now they need to reformulate, and reformulation almost always means it's more expensive. It does create an opportunity for us, for sure, for a new package sale or a different package sale. So, as I mentioned earlier, we always want to help them through that whole process. I guess, look, as I indicated, I think in my response to George, one of the things that we are encouraged about is we see more urgency on behalf of our customers to look at different things, whether they're buying one another, whether they're splitting themselves up, they're making managerial changes.

These are things that are done to initiate change and to stimulate growth. And so that's what our belief is right now, and as I sit here today, that's why I still have to deal with the uncertainty in the second half, because I want to believe those things all endure benefit. But it's been longer than I would have probably been what we've experienced in the past, perhaps I should say it that way.

Okay, fair enough. And then maybe a question for Steve on the revised 2026 free cash flow, which obviously is lower implied EBITDA, how does that change your view as it relates to prioritizing share repurchases versus debt paid on it? I think you ended 2Q at 3.7 times net debt to EBITDA. Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks, Ghansham. Our confidence in 3.5 times levered at the end of this year is high given the cash flow that we talked about earlier. We did begin the share repurchase activity and given what we believe is the long term value of the enterprise, you should expect to see us to apply the vast majority of our free cash flow to share repurchase, keeping in mind that the balance sheet needs to stay in a reasonable place, but being in that 3.5 times levered range, while we see incredible value long term relative to the value of the enterprise, you'll see us continue to lean towards share repurchase certainly into that 2026 time horizon, assuming that the value of the company continues to be as compelling as it is today. And you saw us begin that process here in 2025.

Graphic Packaging Holding Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript | Fortune

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Graphic Packaging Holding (GPK) Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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