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Packaging Corporation of America produces containerboard, uncoated freesheet (paper that doesn't contain pulp), and other packaging materials.

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The Packaging Corporation of America (PCA) is one of the largest manufacturers in North America of paper and paper products that are corrugated, or strengthened through ridges and folds. Through a series of mergers, PCA emerged in its modern incarnation in 1959 and went public in 2000. The company manages both paper mills and cardboard factories, among other facilities. PCA’s customers are distributors and retailers, including Office Depot and OfficeMax.

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Packaging Corp. of America (PKG): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Packaging Corp. of America

packaging corp. of america

Thank you for joining Packaging Corporation of America's Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2025 Earnings Results Conference Call. Your host today will be Mark Kowlzan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PCA. Upon conclusion of his narrative, there will be a Q&A session. I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Kowlzan. Please proceed when you are ready.

Thanks for the introduction, Jamie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today and participating in Packaging Corporation of America's Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2025 Earnings Results Conference Call. Again, I'm Mark Kowlzan, Chairman and CEO of PCA, and with me on the call today is Tom Hassfurther, our President, and Kent Pflederer, our Chief Financial Officer. I'll begin the call with an overview of our fourth quarter results, and then I'll be turning the call over to Tom and Kent, who will be providing more details. After that, I'll wrap things up, and then we'd be glad to take questions. Yesterday, we reported fourth quarter net income of $102 million or $1.13 per share.

Excluding the special items, fourth quarter 2025 net income was $209 million, or $2.32 per share, compared to the fourth quarter of 2024's net income of $222 million, or $2.47 per share. Fourth quarter net sales were $2.4 billion in 2025 and $2.1 billion in 2024. Total company EBITDA for the fourth quarter, excluding special items, was $486 million in 2025 and $439 million in 2024. Excluding special items, we also reported full-year 2025 earnings of $888 million or $9.84 per share, compared to 2024's earnings of $815 million or $9.04 per share.

Net sales were $9 billion in 2025 and $8.4 billion in 2024. Excluding special items, total company EBITDA in 2025 was $1.86 billion and $1.64 billion in 2024. Fourth quarter net income included special items expense of $1.19 per share, primarily for the Wallula Mill restructuring charges, as well as costs relating to the acquisition and integration of the Greif containerboard business and costs related to the closure of corrugated products facilities. Details of these special items for both the fourth quarter and full-year of 2025 and 2024 were included in the schedules that accompanied the earnings press release. Excluding the special items, our earnings decreased by $0.15 per share compared to the fourth quarter of 2024.

The decrease was driven primarily by lower production and sales volume in the legacy PCA business for $0.23, higher operating costs, $0.23, higher maintenance outage expense, $0.14, higher depreciation expense in the legacy PCA packaging business for $0.07, higher freight expense, $0.06, higher interest expense, excluding the Greif acquisition debt for $0.01, and lower production and sales volume in the paper segment for $0.01. These items were partially offset by higher prices and mix in the packaging segment for $0.50, lower fiber costs, $0.10, lower fixed and other expenses, $0.04, and higher prices and mix in the paper segment, $0.01.

The acquired Greif operations, including interest on the acquisition indebtedness, generated a loss of $0.05 during the fourth quarter, primarily as a result of extended outages at the Massillon Mill in October and December to perform reliability maintenance activities and manage our inventory at the acquired operations. Looking at our packaging business, EBITDA, excluding special items in the fourth quarter, 2025 of $476 million, with sales of $2.2 billion, resulted in a margin of 21.7% versus last year's EBITDA of $426 million, sales of $2 billion or a 21.5% margin.

For the full-year 2025, packaging segment EBITDA, excluding special items, was $1.83 billion, with sales of $8.3 billion, or a 22.1% margin, compared to the full-year 2024 EBITDA of $1.6 billion, with sales of $7.7 billion or a 20.8% margin. We ran to demand during the quarter, and with the planned DeRidder maintenance outage and a full quarter of ownership of the acquired Greif operations, we produced 1,407,000 tons of containerboard. The legacy mills produced 1,235,000 tons of containerboard, 20,000 tons less than the third quarter and 75,000 tons less than the fourth quarter of 2024.

System-wide, our inventories were at the same level as at the end of the third quarter, and with the acquired Greif operations, 84,000 tons up from the beginning of the year. Operational performance during the quarter was again strong across the entire mill system and corrugated system, and we managed costs extremely well throughout the company. We made good progress on the integration and improvement of the acquired Greif assets, with better reliability and performance at both mills and completion of key systems integration activities. We do not expect to take any additional outages at the mills until their annual maintenance outages later in the year, and we'll operate the business at capacity. We're on track to complete the Wallula restructuring activities by mid-February, and we will begin to benefit from the improved cost structure beginning in March.

I'd like to give an update on the gas turbine energy projects that we're currently working on in the engineering phase. The plan includes the installation of gas turbines at the Jackson, Alabama mill and the Riverville, Virginia mills over the next 30 months. These locations have relatively high purchased power costs and good, reliable gas supply, as well as demand for the additional power that we can internally generate. We expect that these projects would involve roughly $250 million of total capital, some to be spent in 2026, but most of it coming in 2027 and 2028. The expected returns are in the mid- to high teens, and most importantly, it would make us energy, electricity independent at these facilities and protect us from future rising electric rates.

We're finalizing the scope, and we'll seek board approval during the first quarter. We're also working on plans for a third installation at one of our mills, and we'll provide more details at the appropriate time. We have a lot of good options, and that we're considering all of these. I'm now gonna turn it over to Tom, who will provide more details on containerboard sales in the corrugated business. Tom?

Thanks, Mark. Domestic containerboard and corrugated products prices and mix were $0.50 per share above the fourth quarter of 2024, and down $0.32 per share compared to the third quarter of 2025. This is mix related, as our fourth quarter is seasonally less rich, incorporating more holiday-driven e-com. Export containerboard prices were flat with last year's fourth quarter and down $0.01 from the third quarter of 2025. Export sales volume of containerboard was up 12,000 tons from the third quarter of 2025 and down 15,000 tons from the fourth quarter of 2024. In the legacy business, corrugated shipments per day and in total were down 1.7% versus last year's record fourth quarter, when per-day shipments were up more than 9% over 2023.

That said, 2025 fourth quarter legacy box plant shipments were the second highest ever. For the year, our corrugated shipments were essentially flat with 2024. Our order book strengthened in November and December, and though we were ultimately disappointed with December shipment volume, we've seen this strength reflected in January shipments so far. While our corrugated volume and mix ended up below our fourth quarter forecast, the underlying volume trends were positive heading into 2026. To provide a little more color, December got off to a strong start, leading us to believe that we would grow our volume over last year. Later in the month, customers appeared to manage their already low inventories further down for year-end. The exception was e-commerce, which continued to remain strong well into the first week of January. In addition to the volume implications, this unfavorably impacted our December mix.

The good news is that January is up significantly in terms of bookings and billings from a strong comp in 2025, where we were up 5% over 2024. January bookings in our legacy corrugated and sheet plants are up over 11%, and billings are up 8% on a per-day basis through last Thursday. We're seeing improvement across our customer base, which is a good sign for healthier underlying demand. Based on what we've seen so far, we are forecasting solid year-over-year growth for the first quarter and seasonal improvement in our mix. Our containerboard system is tightening up, and we will need to run at full capacity to support our demand. Including the acquisition, shipments were up 17% over last year for the fourth quarter and 6% for the year.

The acquired plants had a very good quarter, outperforming our expectations, and are also off to a strong start to the year. We made good progress on integration and are working toward operating as a single corrugated system as soon as we can, with systems integration work ongoing. We still have work to do to optimize the inventory levels and paper grades carried by the acquired plants. We are working off the remaining containerboard purchase and trade commitments, and ended the quarter at approximately the same inventory levels that we began, which is higher than what we had forecast. We had planned to bring the inventory levels down significantly while simplifying the grades carried at the plants and leveraging the larger integrated system. This will take place over the next two quarters, and better day-to-day visibility, once our systems are in place, will certainly help us.

Last week, as you know, we notified our customers of a $70 per ton price increase on our linerboard and corrugated medium grades, effective March 1st. We will work as we normally do to implement the full price increase. I'll now turn it back to Mark.

Thanks, Tom. Looking at the paper segment, EBITDA, excluding special items in the fourth quarter, was $37 million, with sales of $154 million, or a 24.2% margin compared to the fourth quarter 2024 EBITDA of $39 million and sales of $151 million, or a 25.9% margin. Sales volume was 1% above the fourth quarter of 2024 and 4% below the third quarter of 2025. Prices and mix were up 1% from the fourth quarter of 2024, and down less than 1% from the third quarter of 2025. Performance exceeded our expectation on higher sales volume and strong underlying operating performance at the International Falls Mill.

For the full-year, paper segment EBITDA was $148 million with $615 million of sales, for a 24.1% margin. 2024's EBITDA was $154 million on sales of $625 million, for a 24.6% margin. I'll now turn it over to Kent.

Thanks, Mark. Cash provided by operations was a fourth quarter record, $443 million, and after $319 million of CapEx, free cash flow was $124 million. In addition to CapEx, the primary payments of cash during the quarter included share repurchases of $153 million, dividend payments of $112 million, net interest payments of $53 million, and cash tax payments of $15 million. We repurchased 760,000 shares during the quarter at an average price of $201.03. We have approximately $283 million of remaining repurchase authority. For the full-year 2025, cash from operations was $1.55 billion, with capital spending of $829 million, and free cash flow of $725 million.

Our year-end cash on hand balance, including marketable securities, was $668 million, with a liquidity of about $1.25 billion. Our final recurring effective tax rate for 2025 was 24.7%. Regarding full-year estimates of certain key items for the upcoming year, we currently estimate dividend payments of $450 million, total CapEx to be in the range of $840 million-$870 million, and DD&A is expected to be approximately $700 million. Our full-year interest expense in 2026 is expected to be approximately $139 million, and net cash interest payment should be about $147 million. The estimate, the estimate for our book, 2026 book effective tax rate is 25%.

We have planned annual outages in 2026 at all of our mills, which will cover a higher number of outage days and tons in 2025. Including lost volume, direct costs, and amortized repair costs, we currently expect the outages to total about $1.39 a share. The current estimated impact by quarter during the year is $0.16 in the first, $0.35 in the second, $0.24 in the third, and $0.63 in the fourth. I'll now turn it back over to Mark.

Thanks, Kent. Our employees put in a tremendous effort and delivered outstanding results for PCA during 2025, when business conditions were challenging at various times. We completed the acquisition of the Greif business and achieved significant progress on integration and improving the operations. We successfully started up our Glendale, Arizona plant and completed numerous capital and operational projects to improve our capabilities and efficiency in our corrugated business and continue to serve and profitably grow with our customers. Our paper business continued to deliver outstanding results through its commitment to customer service and manufacturing excellence. As a company, we still have many key strategic capital opportunities in progress or ahead for the 2026 year and beyond. Our balance sheet remains high quality. We have the flexibility to continue to take advantages of internal or external investment opportunities that generate shareholder value.

We continue our time-tested and balanced approach towards capital allocation, investing in our business to profitably grow our earnings and cash flows, and returning value to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. We accomplished a lot in 2025 and are positioned to accomplish even more this year. Looking ahead, as we move from the fourth and into the first quarter, as Tom mentioned, we see demand improving and expect year-over-year growth in corrugated volume in our legacy box plants and strong shipment volume from the acquired plants. First quarter volume is seasonally lower than the fourth quarter, and even with 1 more shipping day, overall volume is expected to be slightly lower than the fourth quarter.

We'll now be running our mills full, but production will be lower than the fourth quarter, with two fewer operating days, slightly more outage tons, and Wallula running in its new reconfigured state. We expect slightly lower inventory levels at the quarter end. Price and mix will seasonally improve, and we expect to see some benefits from our containerboard price increase in March. Export containerboard sales will be slightly higher than the fourth quarter, and prices should be flat to slightly down. Paper volumes will be lower, with two fewer operating days, and price mix is expected to be slightly lower and will begin to improve in March with our recently announced uncoated freesheet price increase. With the exception of fiber prices, we expect price inflation across most of our direct, indirect, and fixed operating and converting costs.

In addition, wood, energy, and chemical costs will also increase due to winter conditions that impact usages and yields for these items. Our cost structure will begin to benefit from the Wallula reconfiguration during the month of March. Labor and benefits costs will be higher due to the normal timing-related items that occur at the beginning of the new year for annual increases, the restart of payroll taxes and share-based compensation expenses. Freight will be slightly higher, and we expect slightly lower depreciation expense. Lastly, scheduled outage expenses will be lower, and we assume a lower corporate tax rate. Considering these items, we expect first quarter earnings of $2.20 per share, excluding special items.

We are, in fact, assessing last weekend's winter storm across multiple regions, which caused some of our plants to be down earlier in the week, and which could negatively impact shipments and operating and transportation costs for the quarter. With that, we'd be happy to entertain any questions, but I must remind you that some of the statements we've made on the call constituted forward-looking statements. The statements were based on current estimates, expectations, and projections of the company, and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including the direction of the economy, and those identified as risk factors in the annual report on Form 10-K on file with the SEC. Actual results could differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. With that, Jamie, I'd like to open the call for the Q&A.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin that question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then one. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. If you are using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please pick up the handset prior to pressing the keys to ensure the best sound quality. Once again, that is star and then one to join the question queue. Our first question today comes from George Staphos from Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead with your question.

Thanks. Hi, everyone. Good morning. Thanks for the details. Hope you're doing well. I guess the first question I had is on operations in the mills, and I guess, yeah, in the mills overall. We have the outages. You call out the sequential pickup in variable costs, you know, for inputs. We have, you know, fewer days and also going to be trying to take down inventory to some degree. Kent, is there a way to maybe size or give us a bit more granularity on what looks like it'll be a, you know, a decent increase in cost per ton in the containerboard business? You know, we're not surprised by the 1Q sequential drop, but just trying to figure out in earnings.

Just trying to get a, maybe a little more granularity on what the cost per ton might look like for Q2 to Q1?

I'm not sure. You know, we're gonna run the system full. We've got the typical, you know, seasonal weather impacts taking place, along with the recent storm. So there's some uncertainty there. But, again, we're basically faced with the normal, you know, year-over-year inflationary concerns that we always see in January with labor, medical benefits, cost type matters, and then just the winter usage and yield matters with energy and wood. I don't. Again, I'd like to give you a number, but I don't have that off the top of my head.

No, that's okay, Mark. I guess maybe a related question. I know you're still assessing, but what have you built into your guidance for the quarter related to the winter storms, you know, from an earnings standpoint or more, you know, sort of a factor standpoint, you know, from a volume versus cost, qualitatively?

You know, George, we're just starting. You know, we've had plants down from the Texas region all the way across the Gulf region up through the Mid-Atlantic. Some of these areas are still down without power. We've got power outages continuing in Tennessee. The Dallas region is, you know, has thawed out and coming back, but things are coming back as we speak, literally on the call this morning. You know, the mills ran through this. The two biggest mills that were impacted, the Counce, Tennessee mill and the Riverville, Virginia mill, both mills did run through this quite well. We had exceptional support from all of the employees, and the mills ran through this. The problem was we couldn't ship any tons out during the period of time.

So just, in the last 24 hours, we started moving trucks and rail into Counce and Riverville. But nevertheless, we've had a huge number of the box plant system down for the few days. Tom, do you want to add a little color on that? Because it's pretty significant.

Yeah, I think the important thing is, George, to understand, it's gonna be very hard for us to get our arms around this until we find out, you know, what the impact is on that book of orders that were not shipped in the short term, and whether they'll pick back up with our customers going forward. Obviously, our customers were down as well. So, you know, it's. You know, we've been through these before, and sometimes, you know, and if it's too long of a process, you know, there are orders lost. Other times, we get right back up and we can catch up.

So we'll just have to see as this month goes on and really kind of probably as this winter goes on, because they're calling for another big storm, you know, coming on the, in the Mid-Atlantic and Southern region this weekend. So, you know, we'll just have to see what happens. But I think overall, I mean, you know, we've I think we weathered it pretty decent, although we had a lot of box plants down. And the transportation is another big issue that, you know, exists, whether it's rail or truck, if we can get the product out, once we get the plants and mills up and going.

Hey, George, back to your first question, it's Kent. Ex-freight, and with a little bit of Wallula benefit in, but not all of it, we're about $15 million total on the cost line in the mills. So running that through, that's maybe $10 a ton.

Okay. I appreciate that, Kent. Last one, and I'll turn it over. Just be mindful. You know, what gives you comfort that at Massillon, you're through the reliability issues, and, you know, for that matter, what gives you comfort, and what caused the inventory mismatch in the acquired facilities? Again, presuming it's gonna be worked down, but hopefully by one Q. But what caused that? Thank you, guys. Good luck in the quarter.

Yeah, I'll talk about the operational matters, and then I'll let Tom talk about the inventory. You know, during the month of. If you went back to the acquisition date in September, we spent 6 straight weeks with probably 200 PCA personnel assisting Massillon, along with contractors, essentially rebuilding Massillon Mill from bearings, bushings, pumps, motors. You know, we put our hands on everything, gas turbine rebuild, again, all of the mechanical infrastructure. And then during the period of time during December that the mill was down, we continued to address some of the even finer detail items, some operational improvements, even down to the lubrication technology, again, more bearing monitoring.

I'd like to say that in over a 3.5-month period of time, we've essentially rebuilt the Massillon Mill, so it's become the little mill that could. We've improved operational efficiency at both Massillon and Riverville from the, from the, you know, probably a 15% improvement overall, in operational efficiency, the way we measure efficiency. So both mills are very close now to running to the PCA standard efficiencies. Tom, do you want to talk about the inventory again?

So, George, I'll at least start on the Massillon piece to quantify it. We were maybe 10,000 tons above where we'd forecasted, finishing up the year. Some of that were taking purchase commitment tons. Some of that was we were a little bit lower than forecasted shipment volume. So Tom, I'll let you expand.

Okay, so I think, George, think of it this way: you know, we had, we knew we had a lot of work that needed to be done. We knew we had to get our reliability up in a number of things. And, you know, fortunately, we had the financial flexibility to go do that right away to prepare us for 2026 and the demand we saw coming forward in 2026. Now, that said, you know, everybody did an outstanding job, and, you know, we're in good shape starting in 2026. But there is another big piece of this that was part of that inventory miss, and that is that we had the Greif.

The Greif had a lot of containerboard purchase and trade commitments that were in place that we just chose to absorb, basically, in the fourth quarter. And, and, you know, we don't have a lot of visibility from a systems point of view into a lot of their day-to-day activities like we do at PCA. So those, those were the main, those were the main drivers for the inventory miss. And, but, but I think the, I think the most important thing is we got all that work done upfront and put ourselves in good shape for 2026.

Our next question comes from Michael Roxland from Truist Securities. Please go ahead with your question.

Yeah, thank you, Mark, Tom, and Kent, for taking my questions. Just wanted to, Tom, I wanted to follow up on that last point in terms of the purchase and trade commitments that Greif had in place. Just want to provide some more color around those commitments. Is it something you're looking to keep? Is it something that you're looking to get rid of once those contracts expire? Just any color you can provide around those commitments and what you're looking to do with them.

Okay, Mike, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ignore the color part and just tell you that those commitments and, and, and purchases, we no longer are keeping or, or, or, you know, pursuing or anything like that. Those were agreements that Greif had. We would not typically have any of those in place, and we're discontinuing those. We met the commitments, and, you know, we're, we're moving forward from there.

Perfect. Got it. And it sounds like demand hasn't slackened, and you need to run full, you know, but you have two less shipping days in 1Q. So just, you know, this is a theoretical question. I mean, if you had those two extra shipping days in 1Q, would things be looser and volumes be softer, or has demand firmed up enough such that you would still be running full, even with those two extra shipping days?

If we had the two extra days, we'd still be running full. I mean, we're the way we've looked at the entire year for the full, full 2026, we expect to run the entire mill system full out. And so, which is a high-class problem to have. So Tom, you want to add anything?

No, we'd, we'd. You know, it's, it's, this is just a matter of a 30-day period that we're looking at as opposed to, the long term. So we would, we would absolutely be running full out if we had the, if we had the two extra days.

Got it. And then just from a demand perspective, you know, you guys have called out on, on recent quarters, the housing environment, you've called out, called out protein. Any inflection in those particular end markets that are contributing to this better demand?

Well, I think as I mentioned in the comments, that the underlying demand is improving, and it's improving in all the segments, which is what's really positive for us. You know, as I've talked about over the last, certainly last year and maybe even going into the previous year, auto building products, durables, those segments were down and continued to be down all the way through the fourth quarter. But, you know, and they worked their inventories down to the bare bones also, by the way. And we're seeing some pickup in that area, and that's a real positive for us because those are still large segments for us.

Obviously, we're doing well in the other segments, and the other segments continued to do well. But I think, you know, consumer sentiment is getting better. You know, the GDP is up 4% the previous quarter, a little over 4%. Previously forecast to be up over 5% this quarter. If you just think about, you know, at worst, box demand could trend at half of the GDP, and that's a big number, you know, in terms of demand. So, you know, everything, everything underlying demand has been, is very positive right now, Mike.

Got it. Thank you, guys. Just one quick follow-up, just on a housekeeping question. Are you reflecting the $70 per ton in your 1Q guide? So is that part- is that, you know, you guys, you announced that $70 per ton for, for March 1, is that included in the $2.20 you're guiding for 1Q?

The answer is no. We have a little bit into March, but not the full benefit.

So you are baking in, though, the. So you, you are, you are counting that in your 1Q guide to a little, to some extent?

Just a small amount is what we're putting in the forecast. You know, as you know, these price increases, I mean, you know, they take place over, you know, for us, they take place over about a 90-day period. And then we have some contracts that extend to mid-year and, you know, that's that sort of thing. But for the most part, you know, I mean, we're baking in. Of course, it's effective starting March 1, but, you know, we can't bake in the full amount, obviously.

Got it. Very helpful. Thanks very much, and good luck in 2Q.

Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it. Next question, please.

Our next question comes from Mark Weintraub from Seaport Research Partners. Please go ahead with your question.

Great. Thank you. Just a few, two quick clarifications. One, just to be clear, the $70 you get that in containerboard in March, but you're talking about because it takes a while to flow through into boxes, is why it would have a fairly de minimis impact in 1Q. Is that correct?

And just second clarification, just to make sure I wasn't missing something. If there were two more shipping days, then you'd have more demand on your mill system, not less, in the short term?

Oh, okay. And then just to, going back to costs, last year, you had talked about $0.50-$0.60 impact going from 4Q to 1Q, and that you expected to get about half of it, or even perhaps a bit more than that, back in the second quarter, because, you know, some of it's seasonal, et cetera. Could you share those types of metrics this time around?

Yes, we can, Mark. It's about $0.45-$0.50, 4Q-1Q. We will get, excluding Wallula, a little under half of that back, but then Wallula, the cost improvements there start kicking in, more so in the second quarter.

Okay. Super. And then, can we also contrast how the containerboard box markets feel now relative to how they felt this time last year? I mean, obviously, you went with price increases January first last year. You got, at least in terms of what Pulp and Paper Week reflected, partial increases. How does it feel this time around versus the last two years?

Now, I can only speak for PCA, so, you know, let's just. I wanna qualify that. How does it feel for us? I mean, it feels improved. In fact, much improved, I think, because there were still a lot of question marks in place a year ago. A new administration was gonna take pla, you know, take hold. A lot of things were up in the air. You know, we dealt with, we were already dealing with potential tariff stuff and all these other things that were question marks hanging in the air. Those are all pretty well cleared up at this point in time, and I think the most encouraging thing is what I just mentioned earlier, relative to GDP and consumer sentiment.

You know, GDP being up over 4% last quarter, projected to be up over 5% this quarter, those are big numbers and make a big difference in terms of corrugated box demand. And, and also, you know, I think another great metric is, you know, for the first time in over four years, you know, you've got wages that are now ahead of inflation, and that will also improve the consumer sentiment going forward. They may not feel it immediately, but I think throughout the year, I think that's an important metric for our business.

Our next question comes from Gabe Hajde, from Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead with your question.

Mark, Tom, Ken, good morning. Thanks for taking the question.

I, not to be combative here, but I'm curious, like, I think GDP is projected to be up 3%-4% in 2025, yet box demand has been pretty muted, sluggish, disappointing. There seems to be a clear inflection in your tone. I'm curious, if you can, is this something specific to what PCA is doing, maybe the new Glendale box plant and internal initiatives? You know, we heard from someone else this morning, more hunters on the field versus gatherers. It just. There's obviously been a clear change in tone on the demand side. And then we've been dealing with this seemingly, jockeying around of orders and inventories at quarter end, and then the first month of the new quarter.

Any visibility, any work you guys have done to try to discern if that's going on here, or again, if this is more durable in terms of order patterns? Thank you.

Well, Gabe, I wish I could dramatically, you know, give you great answers here, but all I can do is anecdotally talk about, you know, the fact that we do have these discussions with our customers. We are trying to find out what they're thinking and what they're doing, because that's important to our ability to adapt our business accordingly. But I can tell you, there is, there is a much more positive vibe across our entire customer base right now. The starts and stops we experienced last year was quite unusual, quite frankly, you know, because I think everybody was trying to figure out, you know, what consumer demand really was and what, and what...

CapEx spending from from companies and all these other sorts of things, what was really going to occur? Because start, stop, start, stop, you know, I mean, we had, I have customers that talked about having product that they were importing, that they then add value to and then sell in the market, that were stuck in, you know, stuck in ports in different places, you know, waiting for tariffs to find out what the tariffs were gonna be, all these other sorts of things. So it was an unusual year, in my opinion, and a lot of that, a lot of that's now, you know, cleared out. And and I think that's helped the visibility going forward, and I think it's also helped the positivity going forward in terms of predictability.

All right. Thank you, Tom. On the Greif acquisition, some of the feedback that we've gotten is that it feels maybe a little bit slow out of the gate. And I know you guys had a plan going in, but maybe, Mark, can you just talk about, you know, let's say, an impromptu mill rebuild in three and a half weeks? Was that part of the plan? And as you project forward and think about the acquired assets, you talked about running full for the rest of this year, but for planned maintenance outage, do you expect that to be kind of reaching that, you know, I guess, EPS accretion level in the second quarter, first quarter, second half of this year? Just any thoughts on that?

As far as the two mills, the Massillon Mill and the Riverville Mill, we learned a lesson from Boise, and we also have a different organization in place now than we did 13 years ago. But we took advantage of the fact that we have the technology engineering group in-house, and decided that after the, you know, acquisition, we would execute an immediate corrective action at the mills and go in force and, you know, do what PCA does well, and that's provide operational expertise. And so we took the couple of months in the fall, you know, right through December at Massillon, and essentially addressed all of the issues that normally might take a few years to address.

And so all of the normal maintenance matters are behind us now. We've identified, like the gas turbine opportunity at Riverville. We've identified some bigger long-term cost takeouts at Riverville. And then we'll continue just to instill the you know the day-to-day normal practice at Massillon and Riverville in terms of operational expertise. But no, we accelerated that execution and took advantage of the opportunity this fall when we not only had the capability, but we were going to manage inventories you know to our needs, and so we took advantage of that.

Gabe, on the accretion piece, we are forecasting it to be slightly accretive in the first quarter and then improving as we get on and, you know, seasonality improves as well there, so.

Thank you. One quick last one, we'll stay on CapEx. Just, I guess, directionally, I think things are probably coming in maybe a little bit heavy in 2026, and you talked about maybe only a smidge of the $250 million for the two gas turbines, the majority of that hitting in 2027. Just directionally, would we expect things to be flattish next year on CapEx or down? I know we're just kicking off 2026, but just any preliminary thoughts?

I think we're in a range right now that you know is in this low 800. The gas turbines will continue to you know keep the number on the higher end here. We're finishing up the big box plant in Ohio. We've got a couple of other projects that will finish up this year on the box plant side. We've got on a bigger pieces of capital, you've got the Jackson, Alabama, winder installation and you know improvements there. So there's a few discrete big pieces. Some of those will be wrapping up this year. My goal, quite frankly, would be to see the number come down. There's a number of reasons for that.

Part of it is just the psychological discipline that you, you want the organization to take a pause once in a while and step back and, and then look at what's been done over the last few years, and then go truly put some optimization on all of the capital. So, without giving you a number and quantifying that number, my goal would be to bring the number down below the $800 million level. We did that back in 2022 into 2023, and then we had the opportunities, and we brought that number up into the $600 million level. Last year, you know, $800 million with the bigger projects and, you know, new box plants.

So it really depends on the opportunities, but we are mindful of the discipline required to, you know, spend the money wisely. So long, long answer to a question, but the goal would be to get it down, but we will; we'll take advantage of the opportunities.

Our next question comes from Anojja Shah from UBS. Please go ahead with your question.

Good morning. I just wanted to ask more specifically, what changed in January? It does seem like there was a pretty sudden upturn in demand. And I, I know you talked about less uncertainty versus last year, but consumer confidence numbers are still kind of depressing, and CPG earnings tone hasn't really changed. So do you think your customers are responding to maybe the promise of stimulus in the one big beautiful bill, and then after we get through tax refund season, we can see some choppiness again in demand? What are you hearing from your customers on that?

I think the upturn in demand is a couple things. One is, obviously, as we've talked about from an inventory standpoint, they ran inventories incredibly low. So, you know, you can't continue to operate forever at these tremendously low inventory numbers. But I think there is a lot more positivity going forward, you know, with tax reform, a number of different things. I mentioned, you know, wages and some other things. Consumer sentiment, you know, it depends on what, you know, on what, you know, survey you're looking at, too. You know, one day you get a survey that's positive, the next one is a little more negative. I think the questions get slanted, and a number of different things occur.

I think, I think overall, anytime you get more, you get more money in the pockets of the consumer, you know, we're gonna see, we're gonna see more demand, and that, and that, ultimately reflects in the box business. I think from our, from our customer's point of view, of course, we try to align with, you know, the very best and, and the ones that, you know, tend to be the winners in their space. You know, they tend to have a much more positive viewpoint going forward.

As I said, all the noise that took place in 2025, with all the different things that were going on with the new administration, I think a lot of that, the air is cleared on that, and I think people can see demand improving, and count on it a little bit better than they did in the past.

Yep. Okay, it's good to hear. Let's hope you're right. And then for my second question, did I miss the cash tax expectation for 2026? And could you get a meaningful step down year over year this year? Because, I don't know, maybe, immediate depreciation expensing provisions on Glendale or anything else.

Anojja, we didn't provide what the cash tax forecast would be for the year. It'll be higher, though, than we paid out in 2025. The Greif acquisition and being able to take some of the immediate depreciation on those assets was a big help. But we'll be approaching it maybe a little more normal levels, but we will still get some benefit from the bonus depreciation provisions.

All right. Sounds good. I'll turn it over. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Anthony Pettinari from Citi. Please go ahead with your question.

Packaging Corp. of America (PKG) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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