Conference Transcript - BALL 2026-06-10

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

Welcome back, everyone. Good morning. Gabe Hady here, Wells Fargo Senior Paper and Packaging Analyst. I'm joined by my colleagues in the room, Richard Carlson and Bailey Gordon. We'd like to welcome everyone today to Ball Corporation, representing the company as CEO Ron Lewis. He took over in November, so he's been in the role about seven months, but not new to Ball. Ball. He joined in 2019, actually, after spending 19 years at Coca-Cola. We talked about that last night at dinner. So very much a seasoned veteran in the space, in the industry. Also attending is VP of Corporate Affairs and Communications, Courtney Reynolds, in the room, and Brandon Pontoff, IR. So as many of you are familiar, but those who may not be, Ball is the global leader in beverage metal packaging, aluminum metal packaging globally, largest player in the key three geographies that they choose to participate in, North America, South America, and Europe. This is intended to be kind of an interactive session to the extent that you all have questions. I think there's a microphone that's available, but feel free if you'd like. So with that introduction, Ron, I think you had a couple of just a few prepared remarks and then we can get

Ron Lewis, CEO

in the Q&A? Yeah, sure. Thanks, Gabe. So it is exactly seven months as of today that I've been in the role and seven years that I've been at Ball. Thanks for the opportunity. We're excited to tell our story. We delivered nine quarters of consecutive volume growth, and this will be our 10th quarter. We'll be in sort of this mid-single-digit range, and that'll put us at the half-year more or less on track with where we expect to be from a volume and operating earnings perspective on path towards delivering our 10 plus percent dps and 900 million dollars worth of free cash flow or greater that's what we committed to in january and that's what we intend to deliver and we're right on track to do that um and that's on the uh that'll be a record year on top of a record year we had in 2025 so we're excited to be here because i think we have a great story to tell and i'm looking forward to uh you helping me to tell it well we'll do our best

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

So you come, again, a little bit of a unique perspective being on the other side of the table, being a ball customer. So just maybe help folks understand investors, you know, how that helps inform your leadership in the organization. So there's obviously multiple ways to attack leadership, but one of which is unique customers, I think, that you bring to the table with unique relationships with customers. So just how that informs your kind of leadership style and or approach to the business.

Ron Lewis, CEO

Sure. Thanks, Gabe. I would say I joined this company in this industry because I actually do believe in the aluminum package. So what is it about the aluminum package and why the can? My two R's. I have three R's. The first R is the robustness of this package. The can has a 12-month shelf life. Other packages, plastic bottles, similar size, has a 12-week shelf life. That matters. It's robust in the supply chain. It doesn't break. It has flexibility from a single to a multi-pack up to a 30-pack. As someone who spent a bit of time merchandising cans and bottles on shelves in stores, I can tell you I'd much rather be slinging 12-packs of soft drinks or 24-packs of beer than putting individual bottles on a shelf. So it's robust. There's a real resilience to this material as well. I'm going to use the term 75%. That's a percentage. 75% on average of all of the cans we make have recycled content in them, up to 75%. So 75% of every product we make is recycled. That's pretty significant. 75% of all the cans that are placed in the markets in which we operate, on average, are collected. Some are at 100%, some are lower, and 75% of all of the aluminum ever created in the history of time is still in circulation. It's infinitely recyclable, and it makes economic sense to recycle it. So that's a positive for the can. Now, you asked about customers. Customers want reliability. That's my third R. And scale customers want scaled reliability. Reliability from an assurance of supply, reliability from a quality perspective, and reliability from a service perspective. So I think what I'm trying to bring to this company is very much of a customer-centric orientation and mindset. I think we've really focused on that in my first seven months in this role, and that's where I spend my time is where we create value, and that's one of the places we create value.

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

One of the words that you used, I think, on both conference calls thus far is humility. And studying leadership, I think, over time, that has struck me as something that's unique, tough to truly get with authenticity. And I think the message comes through. Can you just talk about sort of employee engagement and with that sort of leading from the front lines with a humble mindset?

Ron Lewis, CEO

Yeah. Thanks for that question. It's pretty foundational and near and dear to my heart. We want sort of the things that I try to embody and I want in our company and our leaders. Firstly is humility. We want humble. We want hungry. We want steely grit and determination and resolve. And we want people that, because we have to solve problems every day, and we want quiet confidence. That's when we're at our best. That's the first point. We talk about low ego and high collaboration. This is one ball. We win as a team. The second thing I would say is we are a manufacturing company. We make something. I'm proud of that. We have 16,000 people, the overwhelming majority of whom come on shift every day. Those are our frontline heroes. I talked about where we create value. We create value in our plants for our customers. So that's where I spend my time. We have 65 plants around the world. I'll get to visit at least a third of them this year. That's not a significant amount of time to spend in our plants, and I love it. It's where I come from, and I come from operations. And when you take care of your people, they take care of your customers. So that's where I'm really focused, and it fits with everything I'm doing. And it's my background. I grew up working shoulder-to-shoulder with my dad on a farm, and I like the value of a hard day's work. I like seeing the fruits of my labor, and that's why we love going to our plants. Nobody that works at our company should work there if they don't love making things and honoring those that get to come and on-ship every day and make those products.

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

Sounds like a good place to work.

Ron Lewis, CEO

It's perfect for me. It's perfect for me, yeah. It's a great place to work. We take care of our people, and they take care of us.

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

Switching gears a little bit, affordability has been, you know, This is an industrial conference, but I interact with our consumer analysts quite a bit. That's been hitting the consumer overall, generally speaking. So kind of a multi-part question. But just first, when we look in the marketplace, how would you sort of characterize the current, I'll call it wave of inflation, relative to what we experienced just a couple of years ago with COVID, to the extent whether it's breadth, magnitude. Obviously, I guess just for posterity's sake, you guys take virtually no aluminum risk. It is a direct pass-through. But, you know, as it flows through to your customers and maybe potentially retailers on the shelf, just the current inflationary environment and how it could play out sort of near-term and then medium-term.

Ron Lewis, CEO

Let me try to come back to me if I don't answer all of that because I might miss some of it. But I would say the difference between what we experienced a few years ago with the pandemic, COVID, it was a worldwide supply chain disruption. I don't need to remind everybody about the toilet paper debacle. So you couldn't get things. The current disruptions that we face, they're point disruptions. They're point disruption in a strait, just like we had a point disruption in the Suez Canal. So when that happens, it isn't that you can't get things, it's just that the price may go higher. So that's how I contrast the two. Then I would say, coming out of COVID and the pandemic, our customers had to take significant price increases because of the massive inflation. So you saw really, really impact on the consumer from an inflationary cost pressure. I think this time around, our customers say to us, at least, they recognize and understand how stretched the consumer is, and they have to find a balance of volume growth because they need new consumers, they want consumers in their portfolio of products, along with achieving their price mechanism. So I think they are world class. I am amazed at the revenue growth management disciplines that they have around package, price, architecture, etc. And when they go to that discipline, the can wins. And it wins because of the robustness, because of the multi-pack capabilities. You can buy 6-pack, 12-pack, 18-pack, 20-pack, 24-pack, 30-pack. You go look in the shelf like it is amazing. So, is it impacting the consumer? For sure, it impacts all of us. But what I can say is, you can look every single week, every single month, every single quarter, every single year, the can wins. It wins share, and it's a growing part of the beverage, the ecosystem we operate in. We are so privileged to work in a section of the consumer goods industry that grows. It's grown year in and year out, and I believe it will continue to in the foreseeable future.

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

One more on supply chain pinch points. Our metals and mining analyst was here today talking a little bit about there's some, unfortunately, obviously, that depends on the day and the tweet, but things are on and off in Iran. But there's primary aluminum production that sits in the Middle East and potential for shortages in aluminum. Excuse me. I think I saw a press release this morning. Novelis is back online. I know we talked about it last night at dinner. So that's a good thing. Just as it sits in the kind of summer 2026 selling season. And then as you look out, you guys source aluminum globally. I think it's a non-issue for you all, but just kind of how you.

Ron Lewis, CEO

Yeah. So our supply chains, we like short supply chains as much as possible. So yes, 9% of the primary aluminum in the world is produced in the Middle East, and it has been affected and disrupted. You had also read this morning that the shipments out of China grew more than people expected. So it is a global commodity. It flows around the world. And the price does impact, but there's no issue from a supply perspective. When I say short supply chains, 75% of the recycled content of this can or 75% of this can comes from a UBC. That's a short supply chain. This does not matter what is happening in the Middle East to collect 75% of the material that goes in that can. It's a robust, as I said, it's a growing industry, and we're proud to be a part of that and leading that growth. But it's a very resilient business as well. You mentioned it. We effectively, the biggest cost we have is the aluminum in this can. We want to be rewarded for being the most efficient converter of coils of aluminum into cans, bottles, and ends. The cost of the metal is either passed through to our customer, or they buy the metal themselves, or if they would like us to manage the price of it, we will, but we hedge it in a way that we want to get rewarded for the conversion. So it's a pretty resilient business model that we've built over years, decades,

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

and it serves us really well I kind of jumped over it a lot of people ask this question first but the walk around the world you mentioned 10 quarters in a row I think with Q2 will be there should be growth I feel like I heard you say mid single-digit yeah I don't want to pin it on second quarter for 2026 but can you elaborate and maybe just what you're seeing in North America currently sure some folks were optimistic about some events that are happening and you know we got World Cup, we got America 250. And then Europe, I've heard mixed things. You might have a double travel season where people choose not to travel to the Middle East. So they'll do two trips in Europe, which could be a good thing. And then Brazil, what we heard yesterday a little bit was that things slow down in the winter months, maybe not necessarily surprising as customers modulate inventory. So just any updates or take a walk around the world. Yep. Okay, sure. Let me

Ron Lewis, CEO

start in North America then. So we talk about our long-term growth outlook, and this is a long-term growth outlook. It isn't every single quarter, but our long-term growth outlook is to grow our business 2% to 3% volume every year, and we want to achieve a two-times operating leverage on that 2% to 3% volume growth. How that decomposes is 1% to 3% in North America, 3% to 5% in Europe, and 4% to 6% in South America. That combined rolls up to 2% to 3% because 50% of our business is in North America, 35%-ish is in Europe, and 30 to 35 and 15-ish is in South America. As you look across the piece, we announced we were a little light in Q1. We were about 1% volume growth. We will make up for all of that, and in the half year, we'll be right in our 2% to 3% range. So Q2 is going to be right in, I said mid-single, you repeat it, that's more or less where we're Promotional activity, all of the World Cup, America 250, those are great opportunities for our customers to activate an asset that they have, and they activate it with the can. When we walk out to go to a Kroger or a Publix or an Albertsons or a Safeway or a Walmart or any big box retailer, there will be a display when you come in the front lobby. It's going to be built with cans. that's what i mean by activating the asset they've spent a significant amount of time effort resources money thinking brain power and how they're going to take advantage of this asset to bring people together they're going to do that with a can and there will be lingering effects of that so north america right on track for what we planned for the year we are challenged because we grew more than that one to three percent last year in fact we grew more five percent last year so we're challenged and we're building a new plant here that we'll have up and running uh certainly for next year. Europe actually will be on the high end of our range of that 3% to 5% as we flow throughout the year, which is, you know, I wouldn't say we've seen any significant challenges for the first half of the year. I hadn't heard this double holiday idea. I like a double holiday. Maybe I should go there. South America is where I would diverge a little bit. We did start the year soft there and it was for for very good reasons a little bit of a de-stocking from a customer perspective we came back and gangbusters april was um was made up made up for all that deficit i said 20 on earnings call that's more or less where april was may is just as strong and we will be incredibly strong in the second quarter and we have high hopes i personally do that brazil will win the world cup brazilians more than anybody they really want to get together the times of matches is going to be perfect it's going to be in the evening so we're hoping for a long run from brazil i want to knock on hopefully this is wood um that they do a great job but um i actually have high hopes for for brazil it was a tough summer uh the the fall has been much more mild and we've seen uh actually a pickup um and and material like i said we should be in the in the low double maybe teens and that's kind of where we're going to finish the quarter in brazil and south america this year. So, Brazil will go deep. 100%. I checked it. Theoretically, there can be a USA-Brazil final, and that's what I'm putting in my bracket. It's a little far-fetched, but until it doesn't happen, that's what I'm going to believe. We talked about it a little bit last night.

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

You talked about versatility of the can, which I believe in. I feel like I'm packaging nerds, So when I walk into grocery stores, I see what you're talking about. I walk into C-stores. What I've observed in the kind of on-the-go channel is now more single-serve options for cans. It used to be you walk through, you saw just 20-ounce bottles. Now it might even be 60-40 cans. I don't know, 50-50 at least. So just to the extent that that decision tree or that decision that has been made, there's some channel fill associated with it. are they seeing, you know, the feedback that you're getting from that channel specifically, are they getting the desired outcome? Meaning, you know, throughput is as good or if not better, consumers like used to associate a bottle with resealability, now it's not as big of a deal. Just curious, maybe it's anecdotes, there's no hard data.

Ron Lewis, CEO

I could, yeah, it will be anecdotal, but I will say this, on a relative basis, the beer, we have three main categories. There's the beer category, there's the soft drinks category, and there's the energy drinks category beer and energy sells more on a relative to basis in that on a relative basis in that gas station petrol station convenience store um and gas prices do matter they they absolutely do but um let me pick out the the highlight energy drinks continue to grow double digits and they do so because of the innovation they bring to the market different size packages. There's actually been a much more of a scaling up into the 16 ounce and a 12 ounce package as opposed to the traditional 8.4 ounce package. So that's been a big win. They're innovating on in and out flavors that are great tasting products and there's a lot of functionality now much more so. So energy continues to grow in that category. So that's when you say I see more cans. You're seeing a lot of more energy cans in the doors in the stores that are cans. The one One thing that I think is really exciting, and I don't know if it will be huge, I think it's a nice plus, is they're trying to hit a price point for a consumer as well that is stretched. So as they walk into that store and they put $120 in their gas tank and they want a little something to drink, you can get a seven and a half ounce mini can for a much lower price point than you would for a 20 ounce can. So if you go into a store, you'll see a can rack, maybe even in the 20 ounce door. I've seen it. so we're excited for that anecdotally it's just a positive for us and teaching the consumer that like it's okay to go in and grab a small can and get a little

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

treat one Argentina was an issue for maybe four or five quarters we didn't hear much about it you didn't mention in your in your kind of walk around the world it kind of back to run rate where we expect it to be anything that we should be thinking about outside of Brazil sorry yeah I mean we generally

Ron Lewis, CEO

don't go into too much detail on those sorts of things but I will just say Like, we are really pleased to be in the southern cone of South America. We are the only can maker. We're the only can maker in Argentina, in Paraguay, and in Chile, combined with our Brazil business. We have a great position in that continent. Argentina's getting better, honestly. There's been a lot of tough medicine that they've taken, but we love our business there. And there's a lot of really interesting and good innovation. I'll give you another example, the opposite side of the spectrum. We make a large can, and it's a value for our customers to sell to consumers, so a 24-ounce So that's been a nascent product that's really never existed, and now it's been launched in a major way in not only Argentina, but in Chile and maybe coming to Brazil soon. Got it.

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

Um, your predecessor made a comment on a call. I think he said beer directionally or alcohol was about 40% of the mix in North America. And maybe if you look five years out, it'd be closer to 30%. Nothing's ever linear. So two part question. That's intentional, I think, by design, for a couple of reasons. So progress on that. And then to the extent that you've been able to diversify even within the alcohol category I think Mark Anthony is a reasonable sized customer for you all they're winning in the marketplace and sometimes you just you know you have customers and you win and lose with those customers you want to be best in class in terms of on time and in full and all those things but just maybe talk about the alcohol category because what we get sometimes some pushback to not get excited about the story or you know there's always two sides to a story is that well they have alcohol exposure in North America, and there's a little bit of a negative sentiment around that.

Ron Lewis, CEO

Let me just, I want to be very clear on something. It may have been the case, but we are not intentional. We love all of our customers. We especially love them when they sell cans. We love them when they sell ball cans, and we love them when they sell even more ball So we love all of our customers. So there is no intention to move in or out of any category. It happens naturally. So as energy grows 10%, 12%, we will naturally have more of our portfolio in energy. it just is it's it's it's gravity now as it relates to to alcohol specifically they are that category is i think finding their legs and learning what products consumers want you said you know a specific customer around seltzers well there's a winner in seltzers there's a winner in hard tea there's a winner in um in uh ready to drink cocktails and And we're proud to be a supplier and a partner to those customers. So I think just like in the other categories, the three categories, you have to innovate with new products. And they're doing that. You have to find the right occasions throughout the day. What are the day parts when you can consume? And you have to find what's the appeal, what's the brand appeal for that product. And, you know, World Cup's a great example. There's going to be great occasions, great marketing, and I think they're, and you saw it, our primary customers are winning in the beer category in North America. Now, I want to go even higher, and that is, like, if you believe that consumers want convenience, they're going to drink a certain amount of things. If they want convenience, they'll probably drink more from a package, and if they're going to drink more from a package, it's going to be a can. And the data points that out. It proves it out on a weekly, quarterly, monthly, annual basis for quite a long time and for the future. So the fact of the matter is there are puts and takes across the piece, but the can continues to grow. It grew the last two weeks. It grew the last four weeks. It grew the last 12 weeks. It grew the last 26 weeks. It grew the last 52 weeks in all categories, and it will continue to.

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

On that note, your customers have to make decisions in advance. Some of those, you know, filling sites have to be pre-ordered. There's capital decisions around that planning. You've talked about it a little bit, but just managing that with them to the extent you can engage, no pun intended, in those conversations. Just, again, informing your view as to why you're so confident in the growth is they're installing new filling capacity in CANS. Yeah. So can you just talk about that just from a planning horizon standpoint? And I mean, I know there's some new one of your big customers on the east coast of the U.S. That gives you visibility for growth, you know, on the future.

Ron Lewis, CEO

Sure. It gives me a chance to talk a little about, you know, our economic north star, which is EVA mindset. EVA. We intend to deliver greater than our 9 percent cost of capital or we don't get rewarded as a management team and as a company. So EVA has been and will forever be the foundation and the North Star of our economic decisions as a business. Second point is we reinvest in our business to compound our growth. We spend roughly at our depreciation and amortization level. That's $657 million this year. We've said $600 million is our budget. And about two-thirds of that is growth CapEx. So there will be years when we blip up above that because we have big opportunities with a specific customer. So that's what we spend on capital and capital to grow our business and grow our earnings. We install capital only when we have long-term off-take agreements, long-term off-take agreements from, and it usually has to come from a large strategic customer. So we're building a plant in Oregon. That's as a result of a long-term large strategic customer commitment to not only that plant, but to our entire network in North America. So we're really pleased. We're grateful for that opportunity to build this one-line plant that we can expand and beyond uh same thing one of our most strategic customers in the energy drain category space continues to grow and grow and grow and it will we're privileged and to be able to support them when the time comes so we make those decisions in collaboration with our customers it takes two to three years to build one of these plants so they need to make commitments to us and that's why they they give us these long-term commitments um and uh yeah fundamentally though what we expect from our entire network of those 65 plants we expect productivity we expect more output from every plant every single year from the best uh to the worst getting even a little bit better so we expect everyone that the the the estate uh that we have to get better and eventually you run out of runway and you do have to build and we're very judicious in how we build and we only do it when we have a commitment from a customer that we that we know is will be a partner of

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

ours for the long term we're talking about customers talking about relationships contracts I think probably maybe for the benefit of the audience those aren't familiar in North America contracts tend to run five to ten years There's some variation of that, typically. But can you remind us, I think you mentioned on the most recent call, you're contracted virtually all for this year, and then for 20, 27, 90%. Just update us on that, and then anything that's changed, let's say, in the past two years as it relates to contract renewals or contract terms from a longevity standpoint?

Ron Lewis, CEO

Sure. Let's see. It is true that we have usually multi-year contracts, and the larger the customer and the bigger the commitments that we make, the longer the contract is. So we've renewed a couple of very big contracts, you said, in the last two years. One of them resulted in us building this asset in Oregon that will be up and running later this year and we'll scale into it next year. And you mentioned the one on the East Coast. We're talking North America specifically. That's also as a result of a long-term extension, multi, multi, multi years. Let's see. Terms. One of the things that changed coming out of COVID is we do have generally terms in our country. You would asked about length but one of the things that that does we have the right to go back and say if there are extraordinary things that happen like we we we have the right to go back and ask for something now that's not an easy thing to do even in today's market like freight costs have gone through the roof and generally our customers well not generally they do uh have the burden of that freight cost um so it's a challenge to have that conversation with your customer but it's we can prove it it's real, so we pass those on. What did I miss in your

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

question? I think you mentioned 90% or contracted for this year, 90% for next year.

Ron Lewis, CEO

Listen, this year, because we grew so fast last year, more than we expected to, we are tight. We are expecting more output from all of our plants, but we are tight. We're in the high 90% utilization rates across all of the northern hemisphere, Europe and North America. And because Because we have the most advantaged network, we have the broadest breadth and depth of customers, I think we have the most envied customer portfolio in our industry, we are contracted out 90%-ish for next year and more than 50% out through the end of the decade and even into the next decade. And we do that because, as you said, these are long-term decisions that our customers need to make. And as long as we provide them reliability and to make the commitment, they want assurance and supply they want quality they want service that's why we do this and we're we're really happy with where we stand um and again we renewed a few really big contracts uh and you know we're we're what we hear from our customers is they like the quality that we supply them and uh we're going to

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

continue to lean into that um i think washington one line plant or organ organ sorry um one line plant, which is kind of atypical for a BevCAM plant, but room to build it out. Benapak, I think, is an interesting acquisition that's underappreciated from folks. You basically got two plants for the cost of one.

Ron Lewis, CEO

Pretty much, yes.

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

Buy one, get one free. But just it's adding a little bit of growth this year, maybe in Europe, but then really it'll hit stride next year. Just help us understand that.

Ron Lewis, CEO

So as I said, we sell about 115 billion cans, bottles, and ends a year. About 50 billion of those in North America, 40-ish billion in broader Europe, Middle East. And this adds this year about a billion cans worth of capacity and sales to our network. Of that billion, like we don't intend to make a lot of money with it this year because they are, even though they are built plants, they are startups. In fact, in one case, the plant in Hungary literally is a startup. It hadn't made a can. And it is only, you know, it's a one-line plant right now. But we will scale it to two when the time is right. And that's how we really get EBA dollars and EBA out of our businesses when we scale into and build out assets that we already have in the ground. And similarly, while the plant in Belgium was running, it wasn't running 24-7. So, again, we grew much faster than we anticipated in mainland Europe last year. This was a great opportunity for us to buy versus build because we can get the market faster. They were already built. And now we have to treat them more or less as a startup. Get them to ball operational excellence standards, which is running 24-7 in a standard way, and quite frankly, start up an entire brand new plant. And then we look forward to scaling into that, building out those plants for our customers.

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

You mentioned productivity. 2024, again, it kicked off of three-and-a-half, three-to-four-year productivity program, $500 million gross. As you said, you've got to do some of that every single year to offset, I call it the inflation treadmill, stuff that you can't get praised for as you look across the platform or the business is there another leg to that do we think kind of through the end of the decade I know you task your teams with it you know we got to push hard but just

Ron Lewis, CEO

how to think about that yeah 100% so we we my job is to set the strategy of the company there are four pillars are to our strategy then is to execute the strategy and I don't need to go through all the pillars with you but I'll give you one like excellence and execution every day that's the very first leg of our strategy. Our platform that we operate is our ball business system. This isn't exotic. It's commercial excellence and operational excellence with the people that run it in the middle and the culture that we drive. So let's go into the ball operational excellence platform. Yes, on June of 2024, I stood on a stage and said, we're going to deliver $500 million of productivity in this business. We will deliver that a year early. We'll deliver that by the end of this year. That's just one way point on this journey. Every single year, we need productivity out of this business every single year. And it is for, as you say, to offset any inflationary cost pressures that we receive. Now, you said gross as well. It is true. Some of this we share with customers in terms of our efficiency from a lightweighting, this can perspective. They want to enjoy some of that benefit as well. Some of that offsets our inflationary cost pressures, but some of it should fall to the bottom line. If there's one thing I want this version, this generation of ball leaders and the people that have the privilege to lead this company to give to our investors is we intend to improve our gross profit. Over the next five years we intend to be the preeminent packaging company in the world by every metric and that means we have to improve our gross profit and that isn't going to come through anything other than being the best can maker there is. That's productivity. That's what we have to deliver and that's what we aim to do.

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

Well, I've covered the industry for a long time. It's the first way I've heard it expressed that way, so it's pretty exciting. Last one for you, typically a layup, but just capital allocation, you guys, you talked about EVA being the North Star. You pay a dividend. We had a discussion about that last night. I think you appropriately maintain flexibility to buy back stock, 4% to 6% being repurchased this year. But just can you talk about the philosophy, your targets, and then maybe to the extent there is M&A out in the marketplace.

Ron Lewis, CEO

So very quickly, I talk about balance, like balance. I'm not one side or the other. Balance for me in the short term is growing volume and profitable volume. Growing in the midterm, it's about how do we allocate our capital for CapEx. It's growth CapEx. We have to sometimes spend growth CapEx to grow. And in the long term, it is about where do we allocate our capital. So we have an intention to, we've been higher than three times net debt EBITDA, we ended last year at 2.8, we intend to end this year at 2.7 on a path to 2.5. Doesn't mean that if there are opportunities in the marketplace for us to acquire EBITDA at a multiple lower than what we earned today and bring it into our system and build it out, we will do that. There's been a few examples. Florida can. We bought a plant in Winter Haven, Florida. We immediately took it to 24-7 Ball Operational Standards. That was a great acquisition for us. Benipak, you mentioned. Those will be a great acquisition for us. Are there big opportunities? You know, we're always looking, but we won't. We will stay very true to our core, which is aluminum packaging. And if there are opportunities in aluminum packaging, we'll certainly look to expand our business as and when we can, if it's accretive to our EBITDA. Okay. Wraps it up. Thank you very much, Ron. Thank you, Gabe.

Gabe Hady, Analyst — Wells Fargo

I learned a lot and thank you everyone in the room. Yeah, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate your interest.