Amcor plc Q3 FY2026 Earnings Call

Hello everyone, thank you for joining us and welcome to the AMCOR Third Quarter Results 2026. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference over to Tracy Whitehead, Head of Investor Relations. Tracy, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining AMCOR's Fiscal 2026 Third Quarter Earnings Call. Joining today is Peter Konietzny, Chief Executive Officer, and Steve Scherger, Chief Financial Officer. Before I hand over, let me note a few items. On our website, amcorp.com, under the Investors section, you'll find today's press release and presentation, which we will discuss on this call. Please be aware that we'll also discuss non-GAAP financial measures, and related reconciliations can be found in that press release and the presentation. Remarks will also include forward-looking statements that are based on management's current views and assumptions. The second slide in today's presentation lists several factors that could cause future results to be different than current estimates. Reference can be made to AMCOR's SEC filings, including our statements on Form 10-K and 10-Q for further details. Please note that during the question and answer session, we request that you limit yourself to a single question and then rejoin the queue if you have any additional questions or follow-ups. With that, over to you, PK.

Thank you, Tracy, and thanks to everyone for joining us as we review AMCOR's fiscal 2026 third quarter results as always on slide three we will start with safety our number one priority the health and well-being of our colleagues remain a core value at umcor and that commitment will not change in q3 we continue to deliver industry-leading safety performance 71 of our sites remained injury-free through the quarter our total recordable incident rate at 0.49 is a modest increase compared with last year's performance. This is not unusual after we acquire businesses, and we are pleased to see this key metric improve for the third consecutive quarter following the Berry acquisition. Slide four highlights the key messages for today. First, I want to take a moment to highlight an important milestone. We've just reached the first anniversary of the combination between legacy Amcor and Berry. Reflecting on the past year, I'm genuinely pleased with the progress we've made on the initiatives we set out to achieve. The integration process itself went very smoothly. We kept our colleagues safe, maintained a strong focus on our customers, and structured the organization around a robust leadership team, allowing us to quickly deliver on the synergy commitments we made. In addition, we were swift in identifying non-core businesses, and I'm happy to report that we're making substantial progress on those divestitures. We're navigating through a challenging and ever-changing environment, but it is clear that our uniquely positioned, diversified global portfolio and the strength of our customer and supplier relationships have positioned as well. Our ability to stay focused on what we can control and execute effectively continues to drive resilient financial results. In the face of the Middle East conflict, securing supply and responsibly managing cost and pricing to counterinflation are key priorities for us, just as we've done successfully in the past. We have again taken swift action, and as such, we're not expecting the Middle East conflict to have any material impact on our Q4 earnings. We're confident in the underlying strength of our business, and that assurance comes from always putting our customers at the center of our decisions. Additionally, we're excited about the significant opportunities ahead, as we work to realize the additional synergy benefits identified from the integration of legacy AMCOR and BERI. Second, our financial performance in the third quarter was in line with expectations. Adjusted EPS of 96 cents per share was up 6 percent year-over-year. For the first nine months, adjusted EPS increased 11 percent to $2.79 per share. Our ability to continue growing earnings through turbulent economic times reflects our focus on execution, synergies, cost and productivity improvements, and responsible pricing actions while responding quickly and in a coordinated way as global market conditions abruptly change. I am proud of the way our teams around the world have come together again to face challenges with energy, agility, and maturity. We are leveraging the unique position of Amcor's strengthened global portfolio to meet evolving customer needs. Our core portfolio continues to perform, with another quarter of strong synergy capture and earning stability in a modestly challenging volume environment. We are pleased to see a step up in financial performance across our non-core businesses, which we anticipated and discussed last quarter. Third, we made important progress on our portfolio optimization actions with four additional sale agreements reached over the last three months, adding to the two agreements previously announced in Q1. The combined transaction value from these six divestitures is approximately $500 million. All cash proceeds will be used to reduce debt, consistent with the capital allocation priorities we have highlighted over the last several quarters. These actions sharpen our focus on higher return and higher growth opportunities across the $20 billion core portfolio as we continue to improve the overall quality, resilience, and earnings profile of the business. Fourth, synergy delivery continues to accelerate, reaching $77 million in the quarter and $170 million for the first nine months. Our proven integration capabilities, a strong synergy pipeline, and consistent delivery at the upper end of expectations leaves us confident we will deliver $270 million of synergies in fiscal 2026 ahead of our initial $260 million year one target. And finally, we expect adjusted EPS to be in the range of $3.98 to $4.03 per share for fiscal year 2026, representing strong growth of roughly 12 percent at the midpoint, driven primarily by synergy realization. We have experience in successfully navigating supply disruptions and resulting inflation, and we do not expect the current conflict in the Middle East to have a material impact on Q4 earnings. The midpoint of our Q4 adjusted EPS implies more than 20 percent year-over-year growth and reflects the near full lap of the Bury acquisition on May 1st. With input cost inflation significantly exceeding historical norms, our teams have acted fast, implementing responsible price and cost actions to maintain expected dollar earnings as we have in the past. In this environment, continuity of supply is a critical priority for our customers. And to meet that need, we have made choices about working capital management, primarily inventory through the fourth quarter. This will impact the timing of our previously assumed fiscal 2026 working capital improvements, and as a result, we now expect free cash flow to be in the range of $1.5 to $1.6 billion. Steve will talk more about the actions we have taken and the temporary impact on free cash flow in more detail shortly. Turning now to slide five and financial performance for the third quarter and year-to-date. The business generated quarterly revenue of $5.9 billion, EBITDA of $892 million, and EBIT of $687 million. This is significantly higher than the prior year as a result of the Barry acquisition, disciplined cost management, improved productivity, and accelerating synergy benefits. Adjusted EPS increased 6% to $0.96 per share for the quarter, in line with our expectations. This includes benefits from tax-related synergies that lowered our effective tax rate partially offset by $25 million unfavorable impact related to the January and February winter storms in the U.S. And after funding $78 million of dairy transaction, restructuring and integration-related cash cost, free cash outflow was $39 million for the quarter. Today, the board also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.65 per share, which was modestly up over the prior year, and aligned with our capital allocation framework and long-term commitments to annualized dividend growth. Moving to slide six, taking advantage of a unique opportunity to optimize the portfolio was one of the key commitments we highlighted after announcing the Berry acquisition. As mentioned earlier, we're making important progress and have now close to reached a agreements for the divestiture of six non-core businesses, representing approximately $500 million of combined annual revenue. A combined transaction value of approximately $500 million implies an average multiple of around six times. In line with our previous commitments, all cash proceeds will be used to reduce debt, and the net impact on EPS is not expected to be material. We are making good progress exploring alternatives for the remaining non-core businesses, including further encouraging discussions related to the North American beverage business. As mentioned, financial performance across the non-core businesses improved in the third quarter as expected, supporting our confidence that the remaining non-core businesses will be divested in line with our commitments.

With that, I turn the call over to Steve. Thank you, P.K. let me start on slide seven with an update on our synergy progress. Synergy delivery continued to accelerate in the third quarter, and we continue to expect to exceed our initial year one target of $260 million. In Q3, we delivered approximately $77 million of synergies, and for the first nine months, synergies total approximately $170 million. dollars we are confident that we will deliver 270 million dollars in fiscal 2026 and 650 million dollars cumulatively over three years gna and procurement synergies continue to ramp up as planned and we have clear land of sight to achieving our targets of approximately 160 million dollars in year one and approximately 325 million dollars by fiscal 2028. we have started to see a modest contribution from operational synergies and the majority of these benefits are expected to contribute to earnings growth in years two and three financial synergies were approximately 20 million dollars for the quarter and 30 million dollars for the first nine months reflecting ongoing optimization of our debt and tax structures. Finally, growth synergies continue to track well against our $280 million three-year annualized revenue target, with annualized revenue now exceeding $110 million. Third quarter earnings benefited by a few million dollars as a result of these wins, which are expected to ramp up further in the second half of calendar 2026. Moving to slide eight, which highlights the performance of our $20 billion core portfolio. As a reminder, the core portfolio includes six focus categories, health care, beauty and wellness, proteins, liquids, food service, and pet care. These represent approximately 50% of core portfolio sales. Focus category volume performance continues to exceed the portfolio average. These represent the most attractive, defensible, and innovation-led markets where we hold leadership positions, where advanced solutions drive differentiation, and where long-term consumer demand is most durable. From a performance standpoint, the core portfolio continues to outperform the total company. While overall volumes were similar, down approximately 1.5% in the quarter, the core portfolio maintained stronger EBIT margins of approximately 12.3%, reflecting favorable mix, a higher concentration of advanced solutions, and the benefit of year one synergies. Volume and financial performance in the non-core business improved, as PK mentioned, with margins expanding meaningfully on a sequential basis. Year-to-date across the core portfolio, EBIT dollars were up approximately 4% relative to last year, despite modestly lower volumes. As we simplify and focus the business, exit non-core businesses, and invest in our focus categories, the overall growth profile, quality, and resilience of Amcor will continue to improve. turning to slide nine and the global flexible packaging solution segment sales for the segment increased 29 on a constant currency basis driven primarily by the berry acquisition on a comparable basis volumes were down approximately 1.5 percent an improvement of 100 basis points compared with q2 in the developed markets of north america and europe volumes were down low single digits compared with the prior year and similar overall to the second quarter volumes across emerging markets were up mainly reflecting mid single digit growth in asia by market category volumes were higher in pet food and proteins offset by lower volumes in healthcare and other nutrition adjusted ebit was up 28 on a constant currency basis to 452 million dollars driven by 78 million dollars of acquired earnings net of divestitures on a comparable basis adjusted EBIT was up approximately three percent and adjusted EBIT margin of 13.9 percent reflects synergy benefits in line with our expectations excluding synergies comparable earnings were broadly in line with the prior year turning to slide 10 and the global rigid packaging solution segment sales for the segment increased significantly on a constant currency basis mainly as a result of the berry acquisition on a comparable basis volumes were down approximately 1.5 percent in both the core and non-core businesses this was modestly weaker sequentially due largely to the winter storm impact in the U.S. The business continued to deliver volume growth across emerging markets, mainly reflecting mid-single-digit growth in Latin America. By market category, volumes were higher in liquids, food service, and beauty and wellness, offset by declines in health care and other nutrition. Adjusted EBIT was $276 million, up over last year on a constant currency basis, driven by approximately $175 million of acquired earnings net of divestitures. On a comparable basis, and excluding non-core businesses, adjusted EBIT was broadly in line with the prior year. Synergy benefits were offset by an unfavorable $25 million impact from the winter storms in January and February. A concentration of plants in the most weather-impacted areas across the Midwest and Northeast resulted in a large number of lost production days. Adjusted EBIT margin, excluding winter storm impact, was approximately 13 percent, 100 basis points higher than the second quarter. Moving to free cash flow and the balance sheet on slide 11. After funding $78 million of buried transactions, restructuring and integration-related cash costs, pre-cash outflow for the quarter was $39 million, broadly in line with our range of expectations for the quarter and resulting in a first nine-month outflow of $93 million. Capital spending of $687 million is up compared with the prior year, and we continue to expect fiscal 2026 capital spending to be in the range of $850 to $900 million. dollars. Adjusted leverage at the end of the quarter was 3.8 times. This is aligned with our expectations and consistent with prior year sequential movements between the second and third quarters. Stronger fourth quarter free cash flow is expected to drive this metric down at fiscal year end. Our commitment to an investment grade credit rating, a strong balance sheet, and a modestly growing dividend annually remains unchanged. Substantial annual free cash flow generation fully supports our capital allocation priorities. Turning to slide 12, as PK stated, we are uniquely positioned and proactively mitigating the impact of the Middle East conflict. We are well positioned to support our customers through reliable supply and service. We have no operations in and minimal polymer sourcing from the region. Our broad global network and supplier base gives us important flexibility to source materials from different regions and suppliers and flex production locations. We also have the capabilities to quickly reformulate and qualify alternative structures. these factors together with making a choice to hold more inventory than we previously assumed help us ensure supply continuity for our customers we have well established pass-through mechanisms in place which function effectively in a business-as-usual environment when conditions move outside normal operating ranges additional actions can and should be implemented to fairly reflect higher cost in our pricing our teams have acted quickly to mitigate cost inflation with balance and fair price actions in prior cycles this approach enabled us to successfully mitigate the impact of substantial inflation with very minimal earnings implications moving to our fiscal 2026 guidance on slide 13. as pk highlighted earlier we expect full year adjusted eps to be in the range of three dollars and 98 cents to four dollars and three cents per share this implies fourth quarter adjusted eps growth of approximately 20 percent and will result in eps growth of approximately 12 percent for fiscal 2026 earnings growth will be driven primarily by synergy capture and strong execution we expect fiscal 2026 free cash flow of 1.5 to 1.6 billion dollars including the impact of our decision to hold more inventory at higher costs this compares with original guidance of 1.8 to 1.9 billion dollars which assumed a meaningful reduction in working capital in q4 as supply conditions normalize we expect to deliver the inventory and working capital improvements we previously anticipated reversing the temporary timing impact we have now factored into our range taking into account updated earnings and free cash flow expectations we now expect year-end leverage to be approximately 3.4 to 3.5 times Importantly, our commitment to deleveraging and to an investment-grade balance sheet has not changed. We remain confident in our ability to deliver significant and growing annual free cash flow, and we continue to see a clear pathway to operating within a two-and-a-half to three-times leverage range. Before handing the call back to PK, I would like to briefly highlight an announcement we made earlier today. Effective in 2027, we will transition our fiscal year end from June 30th to December 31st. We believe this change will enhance comparability with peers and simplify modeling for investors and analysts. Our first full calendar fiscal year will begin on January 1st, 2027 and end on December 31st, 2027. As part of this transition, we will have a six-month reporting period from July 1st, 2026 through December 31st, 2026, and we plan to provide guidance for this transition period alongside our June 2026 Q4 and full-year results in August. In addition, beginning in 2027, we will initiate the migration and consolidation of select corporate functions to a new U.S. headquarters in Miami, Florida, aligning resources more closely with our operating footprint. Switzerland and Australia will remain important parts of our corporate footprint as key hubs for our business. With that, I'll hand the call back to PK.

Thanks, Steve. Too close. In spite of challenging market dynamics, Amcor is a uniquely positioned global packaging leader and we are proactively mitigating impacts of the middle east conflict execution remains disciplined and q3 results were resilient and in line with expectations portfolio optimization continues to progress sharpening our focus on higher value more resilient end markets and improving the overall earnings profile of the business synergies are tracking well and we expect to exceed our initial year one commitment and with clear visibility to additional synergy benefits and a proven ability to navigate through volatility we're confident in our outlook

and the continued strength of our business that concludes our prepared remarks operator please open the line for questions thank you we will now begin the question and answer session please limit yourself to one question if you would like to ask a follow-up question please rejoin the queue. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Gunsham Punjabi with Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everybody. Just going back to your comments on the Middle East impact on 4Q, which sounds sort of immaterial, can you just give us a sense as to whether there'll be any sort of residual impact on the back half of 26 from a calendar year standpoint? And the reason I ask is obviously resins up close to 100% in a very short period of time.

And legacy Amcor had a pretty good track record of passing it through quickly, but Barrie as a public company did have lags in their contract structure etc so just curious as to what's changed and how you've been able to mitigate the impact thank you thanks ganchem this is pk um it's a good question let me provide a bit of background here so first off i think it's important for us to to keep in mind that the collective new amcor between legacy barry and and and AMCOR does not really have a lot of exposure to the Middle East. We have no operations in the Middle East, nor do we have any employees. And we actually source very little resin from the Middle East. Actually, it's less than 5% of sourced resin from that region. So now we are operating in a global market, and therefore, we do have the two challenges of, one, keeping ourselves in supply and our customers in supply. and on the other hand dealing with the inflation now you're asking sort of for the impact of inflation post the fourth quarter the fourth quarter we've essentially pretty much covered in our introductory comments and you know that here's here's the here's the reality first off nobody knows what the inflation of the fourth quarter and in the in the back half of the year is going to be like we have a we have a view on the fourth quarter but there's lots of volatility out there. And, you know, I would just be speculating right now to throw an inflation number out there. And that's also important in terms of, you know, how to take the information on the fourth quarter. I'd be very, very careful and would suggest that nobody just annualizes that number because of the volatility that we're seeing. So I don't know what the inflation is. What I do know is the process that we are following in a very, you know, structured and disciplined way and somewhere in our prepared comments we said we didn't really have any impact of the middle east on the third quarter financially that is true we had a significant impact in the third quarter from the middle east in terms of our managerial activities that kicked into gear and as we saw the middle east crisis sort of develop and indeed and and the big efforts were on both sides securing supply and then also going to to customers and making sure that we would be able to offset the inflation um now on that part um you know keep in mind that the combined business between umcomberry roughly splits between 70 and 30 percent of contracted versus non-contracted business the 30 is something that we handle through general price increases so we're able to go to the market pretty quickly and recover that on On the 70%, we have pretty good pass-through clauses, some of which have, or I would say generally, they have all become even better after we've gone through significant inflation periods in the past, recall 22-23, but they're all designed for business as usual situations. Now what we're doing here, and that is across the whole portfolios, we're going to customers on the back of a collaborative approach, and this is driven by keeping everybody in supply which is a significant concern across the whole value chain. We justify the additional costs that we have, and we're able to sit and come to conclusions in terms of relief, which is appropriate and matches the inflation, and also appropriate in terms of the timing. That's sort of the way how we go about it, and we do that across the portfolio.

And, Gautam, and Steve, just to kind of follow on with PK, In terms of beyond Q4, our planning assumption is that our pass-through mechanisms and the relationships we have with our customers will continue to offset the cost environment. So, on a Q4 basis, as we talk, no material impact, and that would be the same assumption as we look beyond Q4, given the mechanisms that are in place to offset either an inflationary environment or if it were to revert the other direction. So as you look beyond Q4, that's the assumption for a continuation of an offset. Thanks, Gaution.

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Zikowis with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much. You talked about your inventories rising and your free cash flow moving down by about $300 million. And that's really a one-quarter effect. I would imagine that your inventories have to be relatively higher over the next several quarters. So as a base case, should we also expect some kind of free cash flow penalty in the four quarters that follow the June quarter of 2000?

Hey, Jeff and Steve, I'll be glad to take a cut at that. I think relative to our prior guidance, which assumed an inventory reduction, which was what we were planning to do, what you're absolutely right, we are maintaining inventory levels, kind of volumetrically, if you will, and the cash flow implications are driven by the inflation on the inventory. and so that is the the Q4 impact that we're sharing with you moving beyond Q4 I think it will depend obviously if the markets stabilize relative to supply chains and and value the cash flow implications could could be modest on a move forward basis so I think it's probably a little unpredictable to determine whether that cash flow impact is continues to rise or kind of stabilizes as the supply chains stabilize. So I think I wouldn't necessarily assume that there's an ongoing cash flow headwind. I think it will depend upon supply chain normalization in the environment. Appreciate the question.

Your next question comes on the line of Ramon Lazar with Jeffries. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Through your customers and cost impacts on the consumer I guess how the quarter panned out that would be useful I'll take that Ramon I'll talk to the quarter first and then make a couple of comments on the consumers if that's okay so the quarter that we're referring to is is the third quarter obviously which is the one that we're reporting on and we made a couple of comments already but I'll try to give it my spin here and summarize it and so So the company was down 1.5% in the third quarter, and that is 100 base points improvement sequentially versus the prior quarter. The 1.5% is equally split between the core and the non-core business. So the core was 1.5% down and pretty much on the same level as in the prior quarter. So the improvement we saw, we've seen a substantial improvement in the non-core business in terms of volumes. there were high single digits down in the in the prior quarter the second quarter and now 1.5 percent down in the third quarter so very pleased with that and that actually has driven also a significant improvement in the financial results of the non-core business which was expected by us and um and is is important also in the context of the progress that we're seeing in terms of selling it now back to the volumes if i if i double click on that by volumes by sorry by geography um you know north america and everything that i'm now saying is just focused on the core business so north america is a little weaker than it has been in the second quarter and that is due to the winter storm situation that we've seen in january and then to a lesser effect in february and hits particularly the rigid business. Europe is better than in the prior quarter sequentially, very low single digits down. And we've seen our emerging markets actually kick back in and come back to growth with mid-single-digit growth across both regions, Latam and Asia Pacific. And final comment is that the focus categories in the core business outperformed the company overall by about 150 base points so so they're they're collectively flat so that's that's the commentary on the quarter and I think about the consumer and look we think him you know the quarter third quarter was probably not that much impacted by the Middle East crisis and that the inflation has found its way through to the consumer I think it will be prudent to assume that it will happen over time the consumer we've talked about it many times in prior quarters is stretched and is as a result of that value seeking the last thing that the consumer is looking for is additional inflation at this point in time and what I will say though is that you know our customers have performed actually quite well in the third quarter when you when you take a look at their performance it's encouraging and there's also um you know a a continued commitment to supporting volumes across the customer base um which i find encouraging and and we'll have to see how that plays out obviously again that goes against a consumer that's already stretched and we'll have to see that it plays out our best guess at this point in time is and that applies to the fourth quarter and very high level i would also say that about the second half of the calendar year would be that the market the consumer will be down low single digits that's sort of our our high level base assumption your next question comes from the line of mike roxland with truest securities your line is open please go ahead uh yeah thank you pk steve tracy dustin uh for taking my questions PK, you mentioned continuity of supply critical for your customers, so obviously it's one of the reasons you're keeping inventory elevated.

We've heard that from other companies during the reporting season thus far. Coming at it from a different angle, have you been able to gain any share given your global presence and product availability?

Yeah, thanks, Mike. It's a great question. First off, you know, I believe that we're pretty well positioned in terms of supplies, And the reason for that is that we have a broad supply network across the globe. I was making a comment earlier that we buy very little from the Middle East region, less than 5%. Another reference point is that we buy about 65% of our resin from North America or in North America where the supply chain obviously is more stable. we do have a global procurement team obviously we have the opportunities to swing volumes between suppliers because we're in many cases some qualified across different formulations and even when that's not the case we have an excellent technical capability in order to get to qualifications quickly so that is one of that is probably the core those are the core reasons why We feel good about our supplies right now and while I will not you know Hide from you that it's it's we're laser focused on it because we want to keep our customers obviously in supply Now to the question of share gain It's it's probably a bit early still the only thing I can tell you is that in in some cases We have had conversations with customers that came to us and said, hey, can you help out? Because we are seeing some issues with incumbent suppliers in some cases. And we obviously try to help where we can, and it gives you an indication. But I will say overall, it's still early. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of John Pertel with Macquarie. Your line is open. please go ahead.

G'day, PK and Stephen. Hope you're both well. Steve, thanks for the early comments and PK as well. Just had a question on sort of the gearing, Stephen, just how you see it profiling, you know, over the next sort of 12 months. In particular, sort of what are the key drivers that you see to drive that gearing back to target? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for that, John. I appreciate you raising that as we shared, a modest uptick in our year-end leverage from our original guidance, a range now 3.4 to 3.5 times, pretty well chronicled in terms of the modest movements up there relative to the original guidance. It's a combination of modestly less EBITDA from the original guidance, given our volumes have been down 2 percent per original guidance assuming more flattish and then the impact of the inventory the 300 million dollars so that's a bit of the march towards the end of the year i think very importantly our commitment to our investment grade rating our commitment to de-leveraging back to three times or below is absolute and given the actions that we're taking both in the form of the divestitures that we've completed, those which we expect to complete, as well as continued synergy capture as we look out over the next 12 to 18 months, we can see, you know, line of sight back towards that three times leverage range as we look out towards really fiscal, the new fiscal and calendar 2027. So while there's some short-term temporary impacts, it really hasn't altered our conviction and line of sight to deleveraging using our cash flows as well as our divestiture cash inbound to move ourselves towards that three times and below. And I think the new fiscal calendar, 2027, will be an important year for that inflection.

Appreciate that, John. Your next question comes from the line of Matt Roberts with Raymond James. Your line is open. please go ahead.

I might have a new fellow Floridian soon, so welcome. PK, the color you gave on volumes previously to a question just a minute ago, could you maybe the March exit rate look versus what you saw in April? Was there any evidence of pre-buying in certain markets given those cost increases that you discussed?

And then additionally, maybe on nutrition and food service, are you seeing any changes in the promotional environment that could help drive sequential improvement or just what's driving yeah thanks matt the line was a bit choppy there but i think i got it all um so first off you asked for the exit volumes in march and what we're seeing in april um look i i i think i'm on record i don't really like to comment too much on on you know short-term volume performances of the business or anything that goes back to a month i think is is very risky to read too much into it what i will tell you is on the back of what i mentioned earlier too we're expecting the fourth quarter to play out pretty much in terms of volumes just like what we've seen in the in the third quarter so that's our assumption i will tell you that as we sit here today and we look back to april april looked better than that um and you know that doesn't change our expectations at this point in time but it's just a fact and when you ask me where that comes from. You know, I'm not across enough at this point in time to really give an indication here in terms of whether our customers are trying to increase stock a bit on the back of the overall situation. Could be the case, but I don't think it's a lot. I will also remind everybody that the supply chain is tight. So, whenever they're asking these questions, you know you have to make sure that you're actually in the in the position to to respond to that and to to satisfy that request so so that's um that's the situation on on March and April and I think at the end you also spoke about promotional activities and in general I made a comment earlier and I said we're very encouraged with what we're hearing from our large customers in their own results earnings results we hear what you hear and you know the commitment to supporting their volumes continues to be very solid and that's i guess will also try that will translate in different initiatives one of them being the promotional activities so you know we were carefully listening to that um and wondering how they deal with it in terms of making choices between protecting margins and driving volumes but i think we're in a position where we see more consistency on that. Thank you. Thank you for the question.

Your next question comes from the line of George Staffos with Bank of America Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks, everybody. Good morning. Appreciate the details. A lot of my questions have already been answered. My question, I want to go back to how you and your customers are mitigating the resin effect. On the additional pricing, PK and Steve, that you're contemplating with customers, Are these really an aggregation of one-off discussions, or are you triggering any extraordinary clauses in your contracts so it's a little bit more mechanical than negotiation? And how much does the extra inventory that you've built in not only allow for supply continuity, but maybe act as a buffer against the higher resin pricing and allowing you to thus far from what we're hearing, Steve, manage second half, you know, or excuse me, the stub year relatively consistently with what you're seeing the fourth quarter, which is not that big of an effect.

Thank you and good luck in the quarter. thanks george um i'll take the first part of your question and then maybe steve handles the inventory part if that's okay um you were going back to the to the to the dynamics that we're seeing currently in in um in dealing with our customers in order to get offset for the for the inflation um look as i said before 30 is not contracted so that's not the issue 70 is contracted that in that 70%, we have a few contracts where we have opening clauses, which we can refer to given the situation that we're currently seeing. And this is all with the common understanding that this is not business as usual, what is But it is an exception rather than the rule. The other conversations, I go back to what I said earlier, they are conversations in very collaborative approach with the customers where everybody understands that we're seeing significant inflation hitting the business really hard in a very short period of time we believe ourselves we have made it very clear and everybody understands that you know in our business we need to have an alignment on the commercial side between the buy and the sell side and therefore that requires support and help from our customers in order to keep us in business and make sure that we can supply them going forward. That's really the common interest driver that gets us to the table. And this is not a one-off conversation. You can call it a one-off and it's not a one-off, because as the situation changes with regards to inflation, we will have a continued dialogue with the customers in order to adjust ourselves to the market side of our inputs. So everybody understands it's not a one-off, it's not a destination here, it's a journey. So with that said, Steve, if you want to comment on the inventory side.

Yeah, thanks, P.K. I think, George, it's a good question, just relative to our inventory. As I mentioned earlier, we're not building necessarily volume of inventory. We're more maintaining what we had as opposed to the guidance of it declining, and obviously we're carrying it at a higher cost. But to your point, what it does allow us to do, because we had ample inventory at a volume level, is to mitigate some of the timing of some of the cost increases, and those get factored into the collaborative conversations that PK was referencing with customers. We're working to be just very fair and very reliable and very consistent on servicing our customers and having the pricing that we execute with them be in line with the actual realities of how pricing is coming through the business. As you indicate, some of the inventory that you have helps to mitigate. It also helps to mitigate some of the pace of the pricing and our intent for that to continue to be offset as we see movement. So it does actually help with those negotiations, those discussions with customers, because we're able to mitigate some of the abruptness of what we're seeing on the cost side. And it's all part of that good collaborative dialogue with customers to help keep them in supply.

Appreciate that, George. Your next question comes from the line of Nice and Raleigh with UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yes, morning gents. Just a question about the synergy target as we roll into 27. Obviously you've got the challenges in relation to tight procurement and supply chains and of course I guess a more uncertain consumer environment given the volatility and the potential for inflation. Can you just talk to me about how that impacts your ability to deliver on the procurement and also the growth synergy targets into FY27?

Yeah, nice. And it's PK. I'll kick off here and then I'll see if Steve wants to build. So first off, taking a step back, we reconfirmed our target of 650 synergies over a period of three years. And we're guiding to a year one result in synergies, which exceeds our expectations with 270 million. That number in year one has a significant contribution of procurement in there, otherwise we would have not gotten there, and that was delivered in a situation where we were facing a supply charge side, and we had many conversations on these calls before that with facing a pretty low margin situation on the supply side. As we go forward, particularly with regards to procurement, we're going to see a different situation. A lot of inflation is happening. I would assume that the margin situation on the supply side is going to somewhat improve, and we just believe that we will continue to be able to extract value, and that is on the back of certain characteristics that Amcor now has, that we had in the past and that will have going forward that is we are a big buyer um we're we're a global buyer and um and you know we're important to uh to our suppliers um therefore um the confidence in extracting synergies from the resin side has not changed i will also say and this is important for calibration we've said this many times resonance is um is a portion of our procurement spend right we have In overall, $13 billion procurement spend, three of that is indirect. And from the remaining 10, about half of that would be resin. So you have the other half is non-resin direct spend from procurement. Overall, we're pretty confident that we can deliver those numbers.

Yeah, and I can just add to P.K.'s comments briefly. I think we certainly remain committed to the year two synergies, which are $260 million in year two, coming off of the 270 that we're committed to here in year one. And so our line of sight to that remains positive and consistent. And then if you just kind of take it to what will be the stub year, as was referenced earlier, we don't see anything that would change, you know, know, having half of that kind of roll through, roughly half of that roll through during that six-month upcoming period of time. So no change to our commitments and no change to the relative timing overall.

Your next question comes from the line of Anthony Patanari with Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning. I just had a quick question on the non-core portfolio. During the fiscal year did the the number or the composition of businesses that you consider non-core change did you sort of add or remove any businesses um from that group and then did the middle east conflict has it impacted uh timeline or discussions um for the divestitures yeah thanks anthony um it's a it's a great question the answer to your first question is, has the portfolio of the non-core businesses changed?

The answer is no. And we never intended to do that. Just a few words on this. But we did a strategic assessment of our whole portfolio after we combined AMCO with Barry. And we had a number of parameters that we had on the table. We looked at growth, margin profiles, cyclicality of the businesses, industry structure, just to mentioned a few and there were a couple of others and but those were those were strategic reviews that we had and therefore we singled those businesses out and we said look we we do not we believe that there's that there's better owners for that business we want to focus elsewhere so that gives the whole process of certain solidity which and it doesn't make it sort of erratic or opportunistic when you see a market dislocation like as what we're seeing currently with the Middle East crisis right so the perimeters has always been been the same we're very encouraged with the progress that we're making we announced a number of other agreements over the last three months which is great and we're also encouraged with the conversations that we have around the North American beverage business which is where we do not have an agreement yet and and some adjacencies to that business in the in the specialty containers um sort of space um it's a it's encouraging conversations and particularly because these business are on a very nicely improving trend we said that we saw improved performance in the third quarter um which was um you know certainly driven by some relative volume performance sequentially but even more so by us getting those businesses back on a on a very productive footing and i have a lot of time for the teams that have done an excellent job in getting that done remember that we had a number of customer interactions that also addressed some challenging margin situations and we have made good progress with that and that's what you're seeing right now so that has helped the business in the third quarter to perform better we expect even more so sequentially um of of profitability in the in the fourth quarter So in terms of timing, I cannot be specific around that as you would expect me to, but we're pretty encouraged that we will be able to get that done.

Yeah, to your question, Anthony, and to PK's point, our actual performance in the North American beverage perimeter that is the component of that we're still working on a sale process, the actual performance financially was in line with prior year and margins were in line with our expectations that was a good outcome and is probably the most relevant component of the sale process nothing that really is impactful relative to the middle east conflict it's more around the improvement in the performance year over year ebit in line with prior year your next question comes from the line of hillary caconado with deutsche bank your line is open please go ahead

Hi.

Thanks for taking my question. So, you know, you're making great progress on your synergy targets. You know, could you go over any recent example of growth synergies where you were able to win a new contract because of a, you know, because of a combined product using both Encore and various products? I would love to hear that. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you, Hilary. Look, we have made really good progress on the growth synergies. Let me just recalibrate us. We are on a year-to-date basis, or since we have had the acquisition, we have been able to close deals now up to 100 million annualized dollars. Those businesses are ramping up, and they have started to impact the bottom line of the third quarter with a couple of million. That's perfectly as we expected. We got out of the chutes pretty quickly here because we were expecting 280 million of growth synergies over three years. And we're essentially now at 110. So we made really good progress. And the growth synergies, again, they're driven by the fact that we are able across the product portfolio, which is very complete now between Omco and Barry, to sell systems rather than the components. And we have very complementary technology footprint. We have additional capacity on the table. So these are just some examples now, you know, in terms of examples, there's various ones here. I wasn't quite expecting the question, but I want to go back to one that I've highlighted on an earlier call, Global Pharma customer, you know, actually in line with the oral solid those um glp1 drug and was looking for different packaging formats for europe and north america um in in europe it was a blister format and north america was a container format a rigid container format so almost an opportunity that was made for the combined umco berry um and we had the opportunities we had the product we were multi-regional and that has led to the closing of a good contract. This is just one example. There's many others out there. Happy to follow up offline, but that gives you a feel.

Your next question comes in the line of Gabe Hyde with Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, Gabe. Good morning. I have lots of questions, but I'm curious on the healthcare and nutrition, which I think are our focus areas for you all. Both, I think, were called out as being areas of weakness, and I think healthcare specifically was intended to improve kind of beginning in the middle of 2026. Can you comment on that?

Yeah, Gabe, I'll give you some more color here. So I think what Steve was saying was, look, within the core business, we have our six focus categories. They actually outperformed the overall core business, right? And they were flat while the overall company was one and a half percent down. So the focus categories which make up about 50 percent of the business, they include certain categories in nutrition and then they also include healthcare. I'm not sure if we mentioned it on the call yet, but five out of the six focus categories were actually either flat. There was one that was flat. The others were low to mid-single digits up. And we had a bit of a weaker situation in healthcare, just maybe commenting on healthcare because you specifically asked. I continue to believe that healthcare is a great end market category for us and a great We've had a number of positives also in the third quarter. We actually had wins with several pharma customers. We have a great partnership with a generics player around sustainability. We opened a coating facility in Malaysia in April with the first air knife coating technology, which we've made a separate announcement on. So all of that is good. The volumes in healthcare were slightly down, but we had good positive mix. And when you go to the volumes, you know, the U.S. winter storm impacted a few sites in terms of both our production but also the customer pull-through. And, you know, when you look to our customers, you will see that we also had a bit of a weaker cold and flu season. and then in terms of outside of the of the focus categories when you look at what's driven the rest is the other nutrition category um where you see more discretionary categories down we've spoken about some actual confectionaries in the past that's a market and and also a customer sort of driven um issue and then some weakness on the fresh and frozen food um and um you know we we also see some i would say generally um you know trends to value oriented the essentials in that category so that's that should give you a feel but it's not that overall nutrition is

down it was a particular segment of nutrition outside of the focus categories i hope that makes sense thank you your next question comes from the line of keith chow with mst your line is open please go ahead oh hi pk hi steve thanks for taking my question um i can go back to the leverage points and maybe one for steve um at the end of the year the guidance is for a leverage ratio of 3.4 to 3.5 times typically heading into the september quarter your leverage goes up by call it anywhere between 0.3 and 0.4 times given you'll finish the year at an elevator level already. Are you expecting to see that step up? And given the high working capital at the moment and the investment in working capital, should we see an over-recovery of cash in calendar year 27?

Yeah, thanks for that. I think the recovery of the cash will definitely occur once we see, you know, supply chains normalize and kind of see some of the consistency rather than a little bit of the volatility. The timing of that, of course, will be dependent upon when we actually see that occur. But the probabilities of it happening, certainly, you know, as you look out of calendar 26 into calendar 27, we would certainly see that as the likely case. But there's, of course, some unpredictability to that if the supply chains generally have volatility in it. But I think your planning assumption, our planning assumption, that would be relatively consistent with that. Relative to this fiscal year-end leverage being modestly up, we'll see some inflection, as you indicated, kind of in a normal, I'll call it, Q1 of the stub period. But we wouldn't expect to end the now stub period with leverage, you know, necessarily above where we're finishing. And then, as we mentioned earlier, we would expect real improvement on the leverage as we look into the fiscal and calendar 2027 particularly given the things that will be very focused on for us synergy capture being at the levels that we've expected and would see improvement both at the EBITDA and EPS level from synergy capture during during that period of time obviously our price and cost relationships will mean maintain themselves as as neutral per today's conversations. And so, no, I think we'll see really some very positive deleveraging as we look out of calendar 26 and into now calendar and fiscal 27. It's important to us and our commitment to deleveraging is as we've previously discussed and highly committed.

We have reached the end of the time we have for the Q&A session.

I will now turn the call back to Peter Konyetsny for closing remarks. yeah thank you operator thank you again for joining us everyone i'm sorry we could not get to everyone today um but i and we certainly appreciate the interest and and we hope to see you soon thank you very much this concludes today's call thank you for attending you may now disconnect.