Earnings Call Transcript - ATR Q1 2022

Matt DellaMaria, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and thanks for being with us today. Joining me on today's call are Stephan Tanda, President and CEO; and Bob Kuhn, Executive Vice President and CFO. Our press release and accompanying slide deck have been posted on our website. If you are following along on our website, you can advance the slides by hovering over the presentation screen and clicking on the arrows on the right and left. As always, we will post a replay of this call on our website. Today's call includes some forward-looking statements. Please refer to our SEC filings to review factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we are discussing today. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Stephan.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today and I hope that you're doing well. Turning to slide 3, as highlighted in our press release. We reported very good performance in the first quarter with core and reported sales growth in each of our segments, resulting in total reported sales for Aptar increasing 9% and core sales increasing 13%. Before I cover our segment results, I would like to spend a few moments talking about our continued resiliency as a company during this uncertain economic environment where we face pandemic uncertainties, rising inflation, supply chain issues, labor shortages, the war in Ukraine and the recent COVID-19 variant outbreaks and lockdowns in China. To briefly comment on the latter two subjects. We are deeply saddened by the invasion and ongoing war in Ukraine. And our hearts and solidarity go out to everyone who is unfairly caught up in the midst of the tragic events unfolding. And on the recent COVID-19 variant outbreaks and lockdowns in China, we are focused on the health and safety of our employees. And we are updating our COVID-19 protocols where needed. While only a few of our facilities have been temporarily affected thus far, we are closely monitoring the impact on consumer consumption levels and demand patterns. Neither the war in Ukraine nor the COVID-19 outbreak in China has had a significant direct impact on our first quarter results. However, we are seeing indirect effects, including soaring energy costs in Europe and some supply chain disruptions in both regions. We will continue to monitor the evolving situation closely and adapt our approach if necessary to serve patients, consumers and customers to the best of our abilities. We achieved earnings per share in the quarter that were in the middle of previously issued guidance, despite a variety of headwinds that Bob will briefly touch on. Turning to our first quarter segment results, our pharma segment achieved double digit core sales growth, with growth in each market. Significant sales growth in the active material science market, along with increased demand in consumer healthcare and injectables were strong contributors to our results. Demand also began to recover for our drug delivery devices for allergic rhinitis treatments in the prescription market. I am also pleased to share that our elastomeric component capacity expansion in France is progressing nicely. In our beauty and home segment, increased demand from the beauty and personal care markets and price initiatives related to input cost recovery contributed to double digit core sales growth. We'd also like to share that earlier this month we celebrated with customers and employees the outer shell completion of our new facility in Oyo, in France, where we are investing in a new state-of-the-art Prestige Custom beauty site, which will be operational by the spring of 2023. With this initiative, we are consolidating five legacy operations into a new and dynamic facility. It further asserts our leadership as the driving force behind customizable luxury solutions with more sustainable features. In food and beverage, we also achieved double-digit core sales growth on top of a very strong prior year. The growth was driven by increased demand and pricing initiatives to recover rising raw material and other input costs. Turning to sustainability, we were pleased to announce progress in testing and transforming fuel cycle technologies ultra-pure recycled polypropylene. Working with Pure Cycle, we have recently converted prototype material from the Pure Cycle feedstock evaluation unit into multiple colors of hinged closures, a technically demanding application with performances similar to conventional resin for food, beverage, and cosmetic applications. This type of industry collaboration, which started with an early stage venturing investment, is essential to achieve a more circular economy where plastic is reused and recycled. Now I would like to highlight a few recent launches by customers using our technologies in the next few slides, starting with our pharma segment on slide 4. In consumer health care, the airless system for dermal is based on airless technology used on many of our beauty and home facial skincare products and is the dispensing solution for facial acne cream like Galderma called TWYNEO in the US. In the eye care market in India, Cipla has launched Brimocom, used to treat glaucoma without ophthalmic squeeze dispenser. Turning to the prescription market, the FDA approved Viatris Inc. and Kindeva, Breyna, a generic version of budesonide and formoterol, an inhaled medication used for the maintenance treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, using an Aptar metered dose valve. Our nasal spray pumps are the dispensing solutions for both Ventus and Monax brand allergic rhinitis medications in Brazil. Finally, our elastomeric components are featured on several animal care antibiotics in Mexico and an animal care sedative in the US. Turning to slide five, Beauty and Home, in the European prestige fragrance market after spray pumps are the dispensing solution for the launch of several new fragrances by brands such as Chloe, Guerlain, La Perla, Valentino, and more. In China, our pump is featured on a perfume called Scent Library. In addition, a well-known beauty retailer is featuring our airless pump made from post-consumer recycled resin on its line of facial skincare masks. Next, our unique combination between the dropper and the bottle for precise and clean application with SimpliSqueeze flow control valve. The flow control technology often found in our food and beverage dispensing solutions, along with some pharma applications is providing a soft and accurate drop dispensing for two new skincare products in Europe. And finally, our FusionPKG beauty business is providing a customized package for MAC Cosmetic’s skincare renewal emulsion product. In Food and Beverage, Aptar continues to see success with inverted closures featuring our SimpliSqueeze flow control technology, which has recently launched in a new range of flavored honey spreads by Kraft Heinz in the US. In addition, with its flow control technology, we have entered into new businesses in China with a leading oyster sauce and ketchup brand. We also partnered with Chacauhaa, Brazil, to convert their former glass with metal cap for its Mel de Cacau honey to an inverted closure with SimpliSqueeze flow control valve. This is yet another example of how we partner with our customers to differentiate the product and provide added convenience to the end consumer. Finally, in the beverage market, our sports cap is the dispensing system for H2Only’s purified drinking water in Europe. With that, I will now turn it over to Bob who will share some additional comments on our first quarter results. Bob?

Bob Kuhn, Executive Vice President and CFO

Thank you, Stephan, and good morning, everyone. I would like to summarize the quarter starting on slide 6, where you can see our reported and core sales results. When we neutralize currencies and acquisitions, we grew core sales solidly by 13%. About 8% was coming from increased demand, with the remainder coming from price initiatives across the majority of our markets, which I will detail in a minute. As shown on slide 7, we achieved adjusted earnings per share of $0.96 and adjusted EBITDA of $156 million. Adjusted earnings included currency translation headwinds, a net negative inflation impact of approximately $4 million, a reserve against the note receivable of approximately $1.5 million, and startup costs related to our last elastomeric component capacity expansion of approximately $2 million. We also continue to face ongoing supply chain disruptions primarily in the US. Prior year’s adjusted earnings per share reflect a lower tax rate. And if we would have equalized the tax and currency rates, our adjusted earnings per share would have increased 7%. If we isolate net price cost effects including the margin compression impact from passing on the higher costs, our consolidated adjusted EBITDA margin of roughly 18.5% would have been approximately 150 basis points higher. Turning to some of the details by segment. Our pharma segment’s core sales increased 13% with approximately 11% coming from strong demand, and 2% coming from price adjustments related to inflation cost recovery. Pharma’s adjusted EBITDA margin of 34% included customer startup costs related to our elastomeric components capacity expansion, and the impact of the notes receivable reserve. Looking at sales in each pharma market, core sales in the prescription market increased 3% primarily due to the recovery in demand for nasal devices for allergic rhinitis treatments. Core sales to the consumer healthcare market increased 13% on strong demand for nasal decongestants, nasal saline, and dermal devices. It was again a solid quarter for solutions for vaccines and other injectable medicines with core sales increasing 7% primarily due to strong demand for our elastomeric components used with biologics and vaccines. Our active material science solution market had a very strong quarter, with core sales increasing 58% and strong demand across a variety of applications led by our Activ-Film technology that enhances the integrity of at home COVID-19 tests. In addition to the strong quarter, our business is also putting up strong core growth numbers including vials for probiotics and diabetes related diagnostics. Turning to our beauty and home segment, core sales increased 10% over the prior year first quarter, with 6% of the growth coming from price adjustments related to inflation cost recovery. The segment's adjusted EBITDA margin was 11% in the quarter and slightly higher than the prior year and included the net negative inflation effect of approximately $5 million. Had we not had this net negative including the margin compression effect of passing through higher costs, our adjusted EBITDA margins would have been approximately 200 basis points higher. In addition, we also had approximately $2 million from the significant labor shortage and supply chain disruptions primarily in the US. Looking at each beauty and home market, core sales for the beauty market increased 16% due to strong demand across all beauty applications led by the fragrance market, especially the prestige market in Europe. Core sales to the personal care market increased 8% due to increased demand for haircare and sun care dispensing systems. Core sales to the home care market decreased 9%, primarily due to a reduction in demand for surface cleaning products. Turning to our food and beverage segment, core sales grew strongly in the quarter increasing 18%. In addition to volume growth, pricing adjustments related to inflation cost recovery also contributed and accounted for approximately 12% of the segment’s core sales growth in the quarter. This segment’s adjusted EBITDA margin was 14% in the quarter. We continue to pass-through rising costs and therefore the margin compression effect on passing through higher costs and EBITDA was approximately 300 basis points. Looking at each market, core sales to the food market increased 18% due to price adjustments and continued steady demand for food service trays, and dispensing closures for a variety of home food staples. Core sales to the beverage market increased 16% due to price adjustments and recovering demand for premium bottled water dispensing closures. Cash flow from operations totaled $92 million for the quarter, up $20 million from the prior year, primarily due to improvements in working capital. Moving now to slide 8, which summarizes our outlook for the second quarter. As Stephan covered, we are expecting some of the momentum we saw in Q1 to continue. Currency exchange rates have recently reflected a strengthening US dollar and we anticipate that we will face ongoing currency headwinds in the near term, as well as supply chain and inflationary pressures. The Euro rate for the prior year second quarter was 1.21. And our guidance for the coming second quarter is assuming a 1.07 Euro rate. We have said that roughly for every $0.01 move in the Euro rate that equates to approximately $0.02 per share for the full year. So for the coming quarter, you could be looking at approximately a $0.05 to $0.06 currency drag on earnings compared to the prior year. Based on recently published economic and currency forecasts, we could also potentially be looking at similar headwinds in Q3 and Q4. We expect our second quarter adjusted earnings per share to be in the range of $0.92 to $1.02 per share using an estimated tax rate range of 27% to 29%. You may recall that the prior year second quarter effective tax rate was 25%. The midpoint of our guidance range represents an 18% increase over the prior year second quarter adjusted earnings per share when currency translation effects and tax rates are neutralized. Looking to our current estimate for depreciation and amortization, we expect $240 to $250 million for the current year. For capital expenditures net of any government grants we expect between $300 and $330 million, which includes $109 million net for our three important growth projects that we discussed during our previous earnings call. In closing, we continue to have a strong balance sheet with a leverage ratio of 1.8, which allows us to continue to invest in a business, pursue strategic opportunities and continue to return value to shareholders in the form of dividends and repurchases. In addition to our cash dividend payments to shareholders, which totaled $25 million in the quarter, we repurchased approximately 140,000 shares of common stock in the first quarter for approximately $16 million, leaving $184 million authorized for common stock repurchases at the end of the first quarter. At this time, Stephan will provide a few closing comments before we move to Q&A.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Thanks, Bob. In closing on slide 9, looking ahead to the second quarter, we expect the broad based momentum we experienced in the first quarter to continue with growth in each segment, including strong growth of our prescription drug device business, which will help compensate for lower demand for at home COVID-19 tests. The war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdowns in China are expected to have some impact on our business in their respective regions. Though the near-term visibility for both in these situations is expected to remain highly uncertain and fluid for the next several quarters. Nevertheless, the near term overall business outlook is solid with strong demand and a high focus on mitigating inflation supply chain challenges, improving cost and margin management going forward. With that, I would like to open up the call for your questions.

Operator, Operator

Our first question comes from George Staphos of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

George Staphos, Analyst

Hi, I'd like to use my first question on margin and particularly in food and beverage you had very strong core growth. Obviously, I think you said pricing and pass-through was 12% of that. But that still suggests that you had 6% or so volume growth, yet the incremental margin so the profit change, relative revenue change was negative. Can you talk about what was driving that bad performance? I recognize there was pass-through effects and so on, and how you can turn food and beverage into much more predictable grower of earnings and margin guys on a going forward basis and then had a follow on?

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Sure. Hey, George. I'll take that one. Part of it and the biggest reason obviously is the heavily closures based business. So what's the resin pass-through dollar for dollar is impacted by about 300 basis points. But in addition to that the growth in the quarter was primarily coming from some of our lower margin food service trade business as well as in pooling increasing. So it was also a mix of business issue in a quarter that had some compression on the margins.

George Staphos, Analyst

Okay. Thanks. And we expect that staying little bit and going forward. Yes, and so looking forward how you turn food and beverage into more predictable growth of earnings? Just to finish up that first question.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Yes. Hi, George. You do follow up on follow up. Look, the economy and business is a very important part of the business for us and clearly, North America this quarter was impacted by some of the supply chain issues. So primarily in the situation for quarter one. Other than that, I think the business keeps chugging along and the closer you are the predictable grow on earning.

George Staphos, Analyst

Okay. I'll come back at another point. And then just can you talk a little bit and thanks for that. Can you talk a little bit about some of the one off items in the quarter? There was a note receivable on the venture. There was $1.1 million miscellaneous net on P&L. Can you talk about what within those items? Thank you. I'll turn it over there. Yes, let me take the venturing and then Bob pulls up on the other one. But you know, we have a mentoring program to complement our early stage R&D. And this is related to a mentoring investment where the business did not work out quite as well as we hoped. And it's being sold. And we still have a note to the venture and we just wrote that down to be prudent. Overall, our venture portfolio is actually performing very well and has enabled significant pipeline growth. We talk later maybe about field side of technologies and another but this is one where we needed to break down that middle.

Bob Kuhn, Executive Vice President and CFO

Yes, George, on the miscellaneous net it was an expense, about $1.1 million comparable really to last year at about $1 million, the majority of what goes to that line is going to be OpEx losses. So we've seen a fair amount of currency fluctuations in the quarter. And so that's where that would show and then you obviously can see the rest of it in the P&L, but most of them attended medics and the VFX.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Ghansham Panjabi from Baird.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

Great, thank you. This is actually Matt sitting in for Ghansham. Good morning, everyone. And Happy Friday, I was hoping that you could give us a real time sense of how your business is being impacted by the following three factors. So one, the ongoing war in Ukraine and its impact on the operating environment within Europe. Two, the China COVID lockdowns. And then three, at least aside from those lockdowns, the dynamic of growing and improving consumer mobility across the other regions across the globe.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Sure, let me kick off and Bob can chime in, so the war in Ukraine led to the tremendous tragedy, it is impacted three segments differently just as a reminder for everyone, before the war, we had roughly a $60 million business in Russia, and roughly half of that produced locally, the other half imported, and we continue to operate this facility Vladimir to support primarily essential customers and products in the pharma space, basic nutrition, especially infant nutrition and other essential products. And clearly the mainly pharma has not been impacted anecdotally, I can tell you that some customers in Ukraine have restarted essential food products and also not been impacted. Beauty and home has of course been a bit more impacted. Now, what we do not know and it's almost impossible to know what is the indirect impact of products we sell in the west that would have gone to Russia? Clearly, you've seen many of our customers have shut down their retail locations, but they'll continue operating in undisclosed fields or nobody, including ourselves is doing anything new in the country. Now, having said that demand in Western Europe is rebounding so strongly that whatever we use on the back end in Russia, it's hard to decipher so that indirect impact is not as big as we once feared. And that's what you also see solid growth numbers and we expected it to continue. The much bigger impact of all this is the inflation impact especially on energy in Europe and anything we buy in Europe. If you want materialize energy, we buy a lot of transportation; most of our customers do not have lost in some of their energy costs. So that just leads to inflation now anything we buy in Europe I think that's probably the biggest impact of the war in Ukraine. The second point for China, clearly the lockdown has an impact on economic activity. So far most of our facilities have been spared. We have some shutdown for a couple of days here and there consuming. Having said that the consumers being locked down and some of our customers not operating. Clearly, demand has been impacted in April. And the big uncertainty for us is what's going to happen in May and June for the balance of the quarter. And ultimately, what will be the impact on overall demand, just as a reminder, about 10%- 11% of our revenue is in Asia, roughly 6% of that is in China. And certainly, if we have a significant drop for a quarter that will have an impact on us. Now, what was the third one?

Bob Kuhn, Executive Vice President and CFO

The dynamic improvement around mobility?

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

In the US and Europe, along with the movement between these regions, things are thriving. We can see this through the demand, although we still lack mobility in Asia as discussed. However, the importance of our business in China is relatively small. The recovery in Europe and the US has a much more substantial effect on us compared to the challenges we are facing in China.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

Great, that's super helpful and provides excellent detail across your business just turning positive for implementing incremental pricing actions to achieve that. Are we simply waiting for already implemented actions to flow through the P&L?

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Yes, it's very hard to give you a date certain here. Of course, we continue to lay in price increases. Depending on the business, we are on wave five or wave six. And they're not getting easier. Of course, the cost keeps rolling in. And especially since we don't know when the increase in inflationary increases, especially in Europe will stop. It's very hard to give you uncertain when that will be behind us. I am looking at Bob whether –

Bob Kuhn, Executive Vice President and CFO

Beginning in the year, we would not have anticipated the net $5 million negative that I talked about in my opening remarks. So the war in Ukraine has added a whole new element as Stefan has mentioned on the energy prices and in the indirect ripple effect is that rolls through all the different substrates and everything that we buy. So it's really difficult, we are, as Stefan said being very diligent in passing on now it's cumulative, and those pricing increases are taking hold. But we're really at the mercy of where the costs go up from here, right? While we saw some resin abatement in Q1 in North America, and an increase in Europe, we thought that resin was kind of on its way down only to see now that resin is starting to trend higher again in both North America and Europe. So it's a very fluid situation, as we said, and it's more dependent than I guess on and where the costs go from here.

Operator, Operator

The next question is from Mark Wilde of BMO Capital Markets.

Mark Wilde, Analyst

Hi, good morning, Stefan. Good morning, Bob and Matt. I want to just to start off if you could give us any sense just of sort of activity levels across the business in April.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

We don't typically discuss the individual months within the quarter. However, we are seeing some positive trends throughout the quarter. Resin is picking up, and we faced challenging comparisons in emergency treatment in the first quarter, but those comparisons should be much easier in the second quarter. We anticipate good growth in prescriptions, consumer healthcare continues to perform well, and we are developing our injectables and consumer-facing business. Overall, we're experiencing strong momentum.

Mark Wilde, Analyst

For my follow-up, I want to discuss geopolitics and the associated risks, particularly in light of the situation between Russia and Ukraine. I'm interested to know how this has influenced your views on the growth rate in China. Additionally, considering China's recent aggressive hacking activities in the South China Sea and around Taiwan, I would like to understand your perspective on these matters and if they have affected your outlook.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

What guides us primarily is demand, which is influenced by demographics. These demographics are currently shifting, and despite the political tensions we are all aware of, business continues. At both local and provincial levels, governments are very supportive of investments, which will be one of the major growth drivers in the coming decades. We acknowledge the concerns of stakeholders, but when we examine the US-China relationship, there is significant interdependence and mutual interest in maintaining business operations.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Kyle White of Deutsche Bank.

Kyle White, Analyst

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. On pharma, I just wanted to update on with this destocking that you had in prescription that seems like it's largely behind you based on the commentary and the outlook. Is that what you're seeing as well? And then, as you go forward do you have good visibility for prescription getting back to the high single digits or clear and possibly double digit core sales growth, given the inflation that you're seeing?

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Yes, certainly, those challenges are mostly behind us now. As we move into upcoming quarters, we might see growth touching double digits for one or two quarters. Overall, the outlook appears very solid. Regarding Mark's point on China, I want to emphasize that we are in a significantly different environment today compared to three or four years ago. We are all aware that our business was expanding as globalization and trends converged. The current landscape is more complex, with increased tariffs, non-tariff barriers, and political issues. However, for a global company that has a long-standing philosophy of local engagement and strong local leadership, navigating this environment is much easier than for smaller local competitors. While we do face some headwinds from certain rhetoric, we also see fewer threats from aggressive local competitors in other markets. Additionally, customer behavior is changing; customers who used to prioritize low costs are now more concerned about longer supply chains, extended response times, and the environmental impact of transportation. In the long run, these shifts are actually beneficial for us. Sorry to add that point.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Angel Castillo of Morgan Stanley.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

Good morning. I'm filling in for Angel. I wanted to get more insights on the beauty market, which saw a 16% increase in core sales. I’m interested in your expectations coming into the quarter and how we should view the market for the rest of the year. Could you provide any additional details on that?

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Overall demand has been strong, and we expect this trend to continue, with March performing particularly well. This strength helped us alleviate some of the challenges we mentioned, such as the $1.5 million reserve and the FX range with our guidance, although we still have to consider the impact of the China lockdown.

Bob Kuhn, Executive Vice President and CFO

Yes, the sort of cost that we're experiencing in the elastomeric division are expected to we're going to continue to incur those. Remember, this is a kind of multiyear ramp up. So they'll be getting less over time, but we do expect to continue to incur some of the startup costs for the remainder of the year.

John Gillen, Analyst

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I want to focus on the pharma segment here. Regarding your prescription business, is there any key product conversion opportunities coming up, for example, converting injectable to nasal in the short term.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

A significant factor in the growth of prescriptions is conversion. This includes changes like Naloxone moving from an injection to a needle, as well as other emergency treatments like Spravato, and the shift in allergic rhinitis treatments from oral to nasal delivery. We are unable to discuss specific projects and must let our customers reveal those details. The growth in our injectable business largely comes from the rise of biologics, vaccine growth, and the transition from large multi-dose vials to single-dose vials and prefilled syringes. This can be considered conversion as well, but it is evident that the injectable segment is greatly influenced by the increasing presence of biotech in the pharmaceutical sector and our readiness with robust products to meet that demand.

John Gillen, Analyst

Got it. And I'm glad you mentioned that, in terms of injectables, how is the quarter in terms of your order book? I understand that is not a big part of your business currently, but are you still seeing COVID orders coming through? And what about non-COVID biologics? Thank you.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Yes, we continue to see good order book developing both these vaccine and biologics. I mentioned earlier, what we see is kind of people focusing on a next generation vaccine. And the annual vaccine made a combination vaccine with the flu and converting that or migrating it from the multi-dose vial to single dose and prefilled syringe which will only help us in more favor our premium products.

John Gillen, Analyst

Okay, I understood and just the last one for. Do you have any early read on your client’s view of the cold and flu season coming for this fall? Does world is near normal upcoming season for prescription and consumer health or I guess ask another way where do you think we are versus pre-pandemic part?

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Well, I am not sure that I can give you a crystal ball. But clearly, this is a normal, maybe strong, cold or flu season year and the colleagues around you getting close to normal colds and flus as opposed to COVID you see is in our consumer healthcare business, which is pulling very strongly. And you would think that people who go through that experience better want to get their flu shot. So this portfolio is not crystal ball gazing I can do.

Bob Kuhn, Executive Vice President and CFO

And maybe I could add that with this time variant of Omicron it has much more cold and flu-like symptoms. And so you have people treating it like they would a normal cold and flu anyway, so you kind of have a convergence of the two as well as it is runny nose, sore throat, those types of things. So that's also kind of now melding together.

Operator, Operator

We now have Daniel of Jeffries.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

So you have to make an inflationary environment?

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Yes, I mean thing that what is contractual, which is mainly raw material on the polymer side. Everything else is negotiated prices. And we'll do our best to go along to those things. And by and large we have differentiated products, and we should be able to hold on to that.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

And if things keep going higher, I mean, can we see some demand destruction or continuous? I guess, mix degradation? I mean, just giving consumers pushing back, I guess, is that something that's happened in the past, where you've seen demand destruction amongst your products? I mean, obviously, I would think mostly outside of pharma.

Bob Kuhn, Executive Vice President and CFO

I would say historically in the past, you have certain tradeoffs right. So you may see smaller packaging, right, which is important which is a positive for us, right, more units sold, you may see a shift to private label less expensive products, we serve that market as well. So I would say that past historical pressures on the consumer have been met with different choices. And that's the beauty I think of where we play, we play across the whole spectrum, right? We serve prestige fragrance as well as nasty fragrances, we serve private label on personal care, as well as brand itself. Those are the types of historical patterns that you've seen.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

I mean, what I would say is COVID has certainly been a significant net negative for us, including missing a year of demand for a cough and cold and allergic rhinitis, but a generic recession, if there is such a thing we should see fairly well and have done in the past.

Operator, Operator

We now have Gabe Hajde from Wells Fargo Securities.

Gabe Hajde, Analyst

Good morning, Stefan and Bob. Hope you're well. Bob, not that yes believer and I am trying to revisit the price cost situation, Bob. I just put some numbers around it, I'd want to say you were $27 million on faster. But the expectation would be you get that back at some point. And maybe it's 2023 when kind of margin or price cost restoration. So first, can you confirm those numbers? Two, is a risk that similar to prior question was that you don't get it all back?

Bob Kuhn, Executive Vice President and CFO

So yes, your numbers are pretty close. I had between $27 million - $28 million for last year and roughly $5 million for this year set. So your numbers are pretty spot on to what we're tracking to. Is there a risk we don't catch up? It's really hard to say the further on if you go everything kind of blends together. But I mean, we have put out multiple price increases, right? So those has to kick in and cumulatively, like I said, it's really more on what happens on the cost side, I'm convinced that the price unit we push through should be sufficient for what we've seen in the past. What I can't foresee or foreshadow is how much more it's going to keep increasing, and how much more price increases, we'll have to push through it. So whether it takes the ‘23 or whether it will catch up at ‘22 is really difficult for us to put a target out there.

Gabe Hajde, Analyst

No understood. And then one, I guess quick housekeeping question. Corporate was a little bit elevated this quarter. And I want to say the $1.5 million that you reference in the final segment. I'm assuming it was directly in there. So is there anything that we should be mindful of kind of forecasting going forward or that occurred this quarter?

Bob Kuhn, Executive Vice President and CFO

Sure. So yes, Q1, we – it’s a limit higher than when I would kind of project going forward, I would probably target more in that $15 million to $16 million range for corporate like we've seen in the past some of our equity awards, the accounting rules change when people hit certain substances vesting thresholds, meaning that awards which normally might have been expensed over the three year LTI period get expensed immediately. So you got a little bit more of an increase in Q1, you've also got comparatively speaking, a higher approval level for SPI due to the improvement in the business compared to the prior year. And we've got a little bit more on the professional fees. But I would say, run-rate Q1 will be now historically a couple million higher than the other quarters, so I would target more than a $15 million to $16 million range.

Operator, Operator

We now have a follow-up question from George Staphos of Bank of America.

George Staphos, Analyst

Thank you very much. Hi, everyone. I appreciate you taking the follow-up. It's late in the call, so I'll ask these questions together. Firstly, it sounds like there’s been some increased momentum and interest in SimpliSqueeze. Would you say that's an accurate assessment, or is it just a coincidence based on current pipeline observations? If there is indeed some traction with SimpliSqueeze, can you discuss any margin implications linked to that? Additionally, there have been numerous questions regarding margins, price, and costs. On the Pharma side, food and beverage, beauty, and home have generally underperformed in terms of margins, likely due to pricing pressures. Is there anything further you can explore that hasn’t already been considered in the transformation of beauty and home or in any of your manufacturing strategies that could enhance your cost efficiency? Thank you, everyone, and good luck in the upcoming quarter.

Stephan Tanda, President and CEO

Thank you, George. Regarding SimpliSqueeze, I believe we see opportunities in moving to pharmaceuticals, beauty, and home products, which positively impacts margins. While no single product launch significantly alters our trajectory, I can highlight the new dishwashing product from a major company, which stands out against P and G and looks promising. We're constantly looking for improvements in beauty, home, food, and beverage categories. We are not yet back to the volume levels of 2019, but that doesn't mean we're complacent. We have more ideas in the pipeline, and our teams are actively working on them. When we're ready to share, we will, and we remain committed to achieving our goals. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. And we look forward to being to see on the road and – including virtual and in person.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. That concludes today's conference call. Please have a lovely day. You may now disconnect.