Earnings Call Transcript - GEF Q2 2024

Operator, Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Greif second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star-one-one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star-one-one again. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Bill D’Onofrio, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Bill D’Onofrio, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development

Thank you and good day everyone. Welcome to Greif’s fiscal second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. During the call today, our Chief Executive Officer, Ole Rosgaard will provide you with an update on our second quarter results driven by our build-to-last strategy, as well as current business trends. Our Chief Financial Officer, Larry Hilsheimer will provide an overview of our financial results and our fiscal full year guidance. In accordance with Regulation Fair Disclosure, please ask questions regarding topics you consider important because we are prohibited from discussing material non-public information with you on an individual basis. Please turn to Slide 2. During today’s call, we will make forward-looking statements involving plans, expectations and beliefs related to future events. Actual results could differ materially from those discussed. Additionally, we will be referencing certain non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP metrics that can be found in the appendix to today’s presentation. I’ll now turn the presentation over to Ole on Slide 3.

Ole Rosgaard, CEO

Thanks Bill. Hello everyone and thank you for joining us. We are excited to discuss another successful quarter for Greif underpinned by solid execution across the business through the Greif business system. Before we dive into our results, I would like to widen our lens and discuss key updates on our build-to-last strategy, specifically touching on each of our four missions for value creation. This will help contextualize our continued solid performance despite the persistent headwinds our business has recently faced, as well as why we believe Greif is positioned for near and long term outperformance. First, I will discuss our creating thriving communities and delivering legendary customer service pillars through the principles of the service profit chain. I will then touch on how we protect our future for our customers and our communities. Larry will discuss our quarter results and how we ensure financial strength through strategic capital allocation. As a reminder to all, our vision is to be the best performing customer service company in the world. We consider our primary customers to be our end product customers, our supply chain partners, our colleagues, and our financial stakeholders. Everything we do focuses on improving our service to these customers through dedication to the principles of the service profit chain, which I’ll now discuss on Slide 4. Our service profit chain has created a competitive advantage for Greif through investing in our people. This creates a flywheel for value creation as colleagues are engaged and dedicated to providing legendary customer service. Customers recognize the value Greif delivers from a differentiated product and service standpoint. This culminates in improved customer loyalty and increased share of wallet over time. Due to our steadfast conviction in the power of this value creation model, we monitor engagement of our colleagues and customers very closely. Net promoter score measures a customer’s willingness to actively promote on our behalf, not simply a passive satisfaction in our product. Our net promoter score continues to consistently improve with each survey. Our most recent score of 68, completed this April, is well above the average across the manufacturing sector of 49, which reflects that our customers advocate strongly on our behalf. We likewise measure colleague engagement through an independent survey conducted by Gallup. This score likewise has continuously improved and the most recent result of the 85th percentile puts Greif in the top tier of engagement among all manufacturing companies. We are proud to have been awarded the 2024 Exceptional Workplace Award by Gallup in recognition of our people-first culture. This award follows from last quarter when we were named for the second year in a row among Newsweek’s Top 100 Global Most Loved Workplaces. These statistics are meaningful as they demonstrate our people are with us on our build-to-last journey, and alongside our Greif business system are the enablers which drive our performance each quarter and are fundamentally changing how we operate and deliver results as a company. Let’s now discuss protecting our future on Slide 5. At Greif, sustainability is ingrained in our culture, our processes, systems and relationships with our customers and suppliers. It’s our belief that in order to provide legendary customer service, we must understand the needs of our customers and create solutions alongside them. This both continuously improves our own sustainability journey and also improves customer loyalty and share of wallet over time. This quarter, we released our 15th annual sustainability report which provides a comprehensive overview of our 2030 targets, as well as recent milestones and progress. Sustainability is another way in which Greif differentiates through the service profit chain and has bolstered our profitable growth over time. We encourage all our stakeholders to read our latest sustainability report, which is available at greif.com/sustainability. Please turn to Slide 6. This dedication to the service profit chain and its resulting value creation flywheel has enabled us to accelerate our growth and transform our portfolio for the future. As we announced at our 2022 investor day and have discussed often since, we are pursuing an acquisition strategy to become a global leader in high performance, high margin small plastic containers and jerry cans. This product group has an addressable market of over $3 billion and is favorably exposed to secular growth markets such as flavors and fragrances, food and beverage, pharma and ag chem. In March, we completed our acquisition of Ipackchem, and in doing so have now solidified the global platform that we committed to growing within the high performance portion of that $3 billion addressable market. Integration into Greif is going well and we are confident in our ability to capture the $7 million of synergies previously communicated. As a reminder, the primary synergy opportunities are in the form of raw materials scale advantage and expected and planned elimination of executive leadership overlap, both of which are already largely in effect. We are extremely pleased with our investment and value creation on the way; however, I’ll also note that given recent short term softness in the global ag chem market, our revised fiscal ’24 guidance reflects an expectation of smaller contribution for the six month ownership in fiscal ’24 than previously communicated run rates. Additionally, earnings for fiscal year ’24 will be impacted by a one-time expected $8.4 million inventory revaluation expense, approximately $6.7 million of which was included in the second quarter results. The combined operating expertise of our Greif and legacy Ipackchem colleagues working together over the past 60 days has further strengthened our conviction in the solid organic growth fundamentals of the business, as well as the long term earnings power of the capital we have invested in the small plastic and jerry can markets. Please turn to Slide 7 as we shift gears to the quarter and a discussion of our recent operating environment. In the past three months, we have seen a continuation of the same mix demand trends as in recent quarters. In APAC, which as a reminder is approximately 5% of total company net sales, was showing positive demand signals in Q1; however in Q2, trends reversed after the market’s strong demand expectations for Chinese New Year fell short of expectations, and a quick but significant destocking occurred. That lower level of demand has thus far persisted into Q3. In EMEA, Greif’s largest GIP market, positive demand trends have continued for the second quarter in a row with growth coming broadly across end markets, but notably in chemical and lubricant demand. In the Americas, LatAm was flat year-over-year with mixed demand; however, we are encouraged that LatAm saw the same growth in chemical markets as EMEA despite slower demand from ag chem. North America likewise remains mixed but has improved overall on a sequential basis. Although overall chemical demand remains weak in that region, we anticipate continued sequential demand improvements in Q3 in North America as well as LatAm and EMEA, which is reflected in our revised guidance. We will be monitoring our key end markets closely and responding to real time demand changes to ensure we fully capture opportunities as they present themselves. Lastly, our North American paper business continues to slow but steady improvements in containerboard driven by our bulk box business, which feeds into e-commerce channels, offset by softer although sequentially improving tube and core demand driven by stronger construction and industrial volumes. We also expect this modest improvement trend to continue. In May, we saw that continuation with our paper business showing modest improvement, led by construction and film demand in URB and anticipate continued improvement in containerboard, driven by the opening of our Dallas sheet feeder. GIP EMEA, North America and LatAm all show sequential improvement over April, with APAC demand mixed with slower China demand and stronger Southeast Asia demand. Overall when talking to our customers, there is generally positivity; however, it remains coupled with our customers indicating continued short visibility to their own demand, resulting in uncertainty to the duration of these improving demand trends. For that reason, we are continuing to be prudent on cost management while also monitoring end markets closely for more clearly defined signs of improvement. With that, I will now turn it over to Larry to walk you through our detailed financial results on Slide 8.

Larry Hilsheimer, CFO

Thank you Ole, and thank you all for joining our call. Our second quarter results reflect improving but still weak demand and the extremely challenging price-cost dynamics in our paper business, resulting in $170 million of adjusted EBITDA, $59 million of free cash flow, and adjusted EPS of $0.82 per share. As Ole mentioned, we are leaning on the Greif business system to serve our customers with excellence, manage costs, and diligently monitor our business for signs of an inflection. The Greif business system champions for continuous improvement, accelerates plant modernization and automation, as well as creates value through gemba and Six Sigma programs. Using these tools, we continue to drive structural cost out and build productivity gains that not only help optimize our current business but also provides the foundation to accelerate integration and synergy capture as we grow through acquisitions. While managing the present, we are also growing for the future through the Ipackchem acquisition and through high value capital projects, such as our recently opened Dallas sheet feeder. These investments are critical to our long term vision and strategy and will position us well for outperformance once markets return to a normalized state. We are reinstating the guidance range given our confidence in our view of the remainder of our fiscal year. We are pleased to raise the low end from our prior $610 million to $675 million and add a high end of $725 million. Before discussing guidance assumptions, let me provide a segment performance update, starting on Slide 9. For GIP, continuing weak but improving demand led to a year-over-year sales decline of $57 million and margin compression of 1.5% year-over-year. In addition, SG&A costs were up year-over-year, in line with our expectations communicated in our Q4 call. This was primarily a result of D&A step-up on new acquisitions as well as our ongoing strategic investments in IT and global operating excellence which, while expensed, we view as strategic capital we are investing for long term margin improvement. Despite the incremental cost of these investments, margins rallied strongly by over 4.4% on a sequential basis from fiscal Q1 2024. As Ole touched on, EMEA continued to improve, underpinned by strong lube and chemical markets. The Americas remained flat to down as lube and chemical demand improvement has not yet been seen; however, North America has seen overall sequential improvement and we do anticipate that recovery to continue into the second half of our fiscal year. Please turn to Slide 10 for PPS results. The continued delayed recognition of announced pricing increases combined with the rising OCC cost has led to a significant margin compression of over 10% despite flat sales. Our PPS team is continuing to manage controllables well, including successful price increase implementation on our non-index based customers. However, the outsized impact of the index-driven price-cost dynamic, which we still view to not be in sync with real market trends, is a headwind we have and will continue to aggressively work to offset. On the volume side in containerboard, we are seeing modest improvement, while the tube and core end markets remain flat to down. While managing the present, we are also continuing to invest in the future within this product group, resulting in SG&A cost inflation for a similar strategic initiative, as discussed, with GIP. Please turn to Slide 11 for our updated guidance and outlook. As previously stated, we are providing a guidance EBITDA range of $675 million to $725 million, reflecting an increase of $65 million on the low end. The high end of our guidance range reflects recognition of our announced paper price increases, as well as continued margin improvement in GIP. By contrast, the low end of our guidance range assumes no paper price recognition, slight further OCC cost inflation, and no margin improvement in GIP. On the volume side, our guidance change of $22 million to $62 million of EBITDA assumes further contribution of the improving volume trends across most of our products and end markets. As Ole mentioned earlier, our incremental EBITDA contribution from Ipackchem is less than previously disclosed run rate due to a full year impact of purchase accounting of $8.4 million, as well as short term slowness in the global ag markets. Lastly, we anticipate volume-related as well as inflationary transport and manufacturing headwinds of $19 million to $39 million of EBITDA relative to prior guidance. As for free cash flow, we are leaving our previous guidance unchanged at our midpoint at $200 million for the full year. We anticipate that the increase in our EBITDA guidance midpoint of $90 million will not result in incremental cash flow within fiscal ’24. The drivers of this are at the midpoint higher spend on strategic capex and efficiency-related maintenance projects for $20 million, higher cash interest primarily related to the acquisition of Ipackchem of $25 million, higher cash taxes of $26 million related to improved earnings as well as the failure of Congress to extend favorable tax provisions, higher working capital needs to address improving demand of $32 million partially offset by a favorable $13 million of other miscellaneous cash items. As Ole mentioned in his remarks, while we continue to monitor our business near term, it is critical we also maintain a long term lens and invest for the future. As such, I would like to discuss capital allocation on Slide 12. Under build-to-last, which we define as fiscal ’22 through present, we have deployed over $2.6 billion of capital. Our capital allocation framework is simple: we first invest in two non-negotiables, our safety and maintenance capex which keeps our cash machine running, and our regular and increasing dividend. While critical, these uses are not a significant portion of total cash generated in that same time frame, and so the rest we devoted towards growing our business and increasing shareholder return. On the growth side, the recent majority has come through developing the leading global small plastics platform which Ole discussed in his remarks. The long-term benefits of this business are substantial, and we are encouraged by our successful execution of the transactions, our integration progress and synergy realization. We balanced growth with debt reduction at times when it is necessary to temporarily increase our leverage above our long-term target of leverage ratio in the range of 2 to 2.5 times in order to capitalize on long-term value-accretive growth opportunities, such as Ipackchem. Given our current leverage, we anticipate in the short term prioritizing incremental debt reduction. We have confidence in the value creation benefits of our capital deployment under build-to-last, and we’ll plan to dive deeper into this topic at our upcoming investor day in December. With that, I’ll turn things back to Ole for closing on Slide 13.

Ole Rosgaard, CEO

Thank you Larry. I appreciate each of you taking the time to listen to my opening remarks on our strategy and hope that I clearly communicated the value creation which is occurring through leveraging what we do best, customer service, to drive growth and transform our business. Our recent capital investments and internal initiatives are setting the stage for the next wave of accelerated growth at Greif. Our Greif business system and dedication to the service profit chain have combined to create a flywheel of success, which is driving growth and our disciplined capital allocation framework. We have an investor day upcoming this December and plan to discuss in greater detail the changes we are currently making through the Greif business system to transform our organization for breakout success. Operator, will you please open the lines for Q&A now?

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from Ghansham Panjabi with Baird. Your line is now open.

Matt Krueger, Analyst

Hi, good morning. This is Matt Krueger sitting in for Ghansham. How is everybody doing today?

Larry Hilsheimer, CFO

Great Matt, thanks.

Ole Rosgaard, CEO

Good, thank you.

Matt Krueger, Analyst

Wonderful. I guess I just wanted to start off with a quick question on volumes. Can you provide some added detail on the volume cadence across both business segments during the quarter, and then just some early thoughts on how the third fiscal quarter has kicked off would be really helpful as well.

Ole Rosgaard, CEO

Sure, let me provide some insights. First, I will give a regional overview year-on-year, and then we can discuss substrates and the end markets. Regionally, the strongest market was EMEA, showing an 8% growth, which is also our largest GIP market. LatAm remained flat, while North America saw a decline of 5%, and APAC was down 11%. The improvement in EMEA was observed across our industrial end markets for the second consecutive quarter, particularly in bulk chemicals and lubricants. In LatAm, we experienced some strengths in bulk chemicals and paints and coatings, although there was some weakness in agricultural chemicals, mirroring trends in other regions. In North America, we continue to see slow development in bulk and commodity markets, with agricultural chemical demand down, but we did notice sequential improvements from Q1. Regarding APAC, we noted that Q2 volumes were affected by seasonality due to the Chinese New Year and weaker demand in the food and beverage sector. On a year-on-year basis for substrates, plastic demonstrated the strongest performance thanks to our investments, resulting in a low teens percentage increase. Steel remained flat but showed a sequential improvement of up to 10%, while we saw a low single-digit decline in fiber, although it too is improving sequentially, with a 10% increase. Our primary end markets are bulk chemicals and lubricants, where we see significant development. Additionally, global economic indicators have been encouraging, with the PMI exceeding 50 for the past four months, including May, reflecting positive trends that give us optimism for the future. We remain connected with our customers and supply chain partners, and as demand continues to rise, we will respond quickly, as we've done in EMEA.

Matt Krueger, Analyst

Great, that’s very helpful. Then just to follow up, I wanted to touch on price-cost a bit. Can you provide an updated view on the absolute price-cost expectation for the year? If you could provide some detail on how that performed this quarter and what you would expect from the upcoming two quarters, that would be helpful as well. It seems like we could be reaching kind of a peak price-cost pain point across your business, given the pricing initiatives you have in the market. I just want to check the validity of that statement.

Ole Rosgaard, CEO

Yes, that’s a great question. I think Larry would be good to answer that.

Larry Hilsheimer, CFO

Yes, if you look at the price-cost we had compared to Q2 2023, there was a significant year-over-year impact, with a price-cost squeeze of around $49 million in paper and a positive effect of about $20 million in GIP. Specifically, we had a $12 million volume benefit in GIP and a $27 million volume benefit in PPS, indicating positive volume trends, although the price-cost squeeze was detrimental to us. Regarding our updated guidance, from the previous low end of 610, we see a price-cost benefit in our GIP business of approximately $39 million and a volume of $27 million. In PPS, at the midpoint, there was a price-cost increase of $16 million compared to prior estimates, with a $15 million adjustment. When comparing to last year, the squeeze has been evident, going from $819 million last year to $700 million this year within the PPS sector. There has been a significant squeeze on OCC of roughly $95 million to $100 million, $5 million pressure on URB, and containerboard has remained relatively flat. In our GIP business, the price-cost impact is about a positive $59 million, alongside a positive volume of about $30 million, so hopefully, that addresses your question, Matt.

Matt Krueger, Analyst

Yes, that’s very helpful. That’s it for me. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of George Staphos with Bank of America Securities. Your line is now open.

George Staphos, Analyst

Hi everyone, good morning. Thanks for the details, and congratulations on the quarter. I wanted to go to Slide 11, where you have the waterfall. Larry and Ole, if we look at the volume pickup in your guidance, recognizing there are no guarantees in life, things could move more positively, things could move more negatively, where are you right now in terms of that $22 million to $62 million would you say roughly in terms of the volume pick-up that in turn informed your improvement in your guidance?

Larry Hilsheimer, CFO

Yes, I would say, George, where we’re at in the trend right now is right smack in the middle of that. What we did is build a range around it based on, as Ole mentioned in his comments, there’s still some nervousness in some of our customers, but there’s also some areas where we’re seeing there’s potential optimism, so we built a range around what we thought was possible for the rest of the year.

George Staphos, Analyst

Okay. Larry, I probably missed this, Ole, I probably missed this, but if you could, either by end market or by substrate, maybe both, could you just give us kind of a quick where are you year-on-year early in fiscal 3Q in terms of trends you’re seeing at the moment on volume?

Ole Rosgaard, CEO

Exit trends in May were generally positive. Steel and containerboard continued to improve throughout Q2. Plastic and URB showed mixed results on a month-to-month basis during the quarter, but GIP and EMEA remained the strongest sequentially. North America and LatAm also showed improvements, and containerboard has continued to enhance, especially with our Dallas sheetfeeder now operational and producing sellable sheets. In URB, we are seeing an increase in construction and film demand in May, despite the mixed demand across all end markets.

George Staphos, Analyst

Okay. My last two and I’ll turn it over, just if you could, Ole, give us a bit more color or remind us what you said in terms of year-on-year in paper, it sounded like containerboard was alright, not gangbusters but up modestly year-on-year. Sequentially tube and core, URB was getting better but still down. If you could affirm that and discuss what you’re seeing early in May there. Then what kind of price-cost should we expect out of steel in GIP in particular the rest of the year? Do you have improving or sequentially decelerating benefits there? Thank you.

Ole Rosgaard, CEO

Yes, on steel, we expect continued improvement, and I will discuss our internal efforts regarding that later. In the tube and core segment, film cores are performing well, as is construction. However, our largest segment, paper cores, has not shown significant recovery. While we are doing well with paper cores and also selling to other paper companies, we have not yet seen an increase in demand there, but we are hopeful for that to change soon.

George Staphos, Analyst

Thank you so much.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Roxland with Truist Securities. Your line is now open.

Mike Roxland, Analyst

Thank you Ole, Larry and Bill for taking my questions. First question I just had on Slide 11, I think Larry, if I heard you correctly, you mentioned there the $19 million to $39 million of manufacturing headwinds, and that’s new. What’s driving that?

Larry Hilsheimer, CFO

The predominant driver of that is volume, so with volume pick-up you get just more incremental transport costs, and then a little bit of additional manufacturing costs, just volume driven.

Mike Roxland, Analyst

Got you, perfect. Thank you for that. Then Larry also, can you talk about the pent-up operating leverage in the business that could be released maybe once global volumes start to normalize? You certainly are in early stages, depending on region, in servicing the volume improvement. Once everything is, let’s say, firing on all cylinders, what’s this pent-up operating leverage that could potentially be released and positively impact the business?

Larry Hilsheimer, CFO

As this volume increases, the main demand is coming from raw material costs, but your value addition will be around 50%. Generally, we can expect over a 20% increase in gross margins from additional volume. Looking back, if we return to 2022 volume levels, we could gain approximately $160 million in EBITDA. This estimate does not include the additional EBITDA from reaching full capacity on all our acquisitions and getting back to the necessary price-cost balance. We envision a return to favorable economic conditions leading to an EBITDA exceeding $900 million.

Ole Rosgaard, CEO

I want to highlight our internal cost-saving initiatives and the influence of our Greif business system. We are performing at a high level and consistently seeking what we refer to as the aggregation of marginal gains across our 250 locations. For instance, our sourcing team recently completed a targeted review in North America that led to an estimated 8% reduction in total spending for that area. Additionally, they conducted a review of certain global indirect material expenditures, achieving an estimated run rate cost savings of 5%. We also performed two comprehensive operational excellence reviews at steel plants that were previously underperforming. These reviews involved full value stream mapping and lean Six Sigma evaluations, which allowed us to focus on raw material usage and reduce scrap. As a result, both plants experienced a sustained increase in EBITDA margin of around 800 basis points compared to their previous performance. I visited a plant recently that has made significant progress in its NPS and Gallup scores over the past few years, and its profitability trend strongly correlates with these improvements, making it one of our top-tier facilities. The aggregation of these marginal gains plays a significant role in enhancing our structural margin profile. We are truly leveraging all aspects of the business, ranging from operational and commercial excellence initiatives to supply chain and sourcing. I should also mention that our automation efforts are reflected in our earnings.

Mike Roxland, Analyst

Got it, thank you Ole. Then one for the next question, how many of your facilities could be subject to those types of reviews? How much further potential do you have in terms of enhancing plant level profitability like that?

Ole Rosgaard, CEO

Yes, to be honest, I previously thought there must be a limit somewhere, but I keep getting surprised. We conducted a gemba and implemented a Six Sigma program that involved nearly 700 participants worldwide. So far, we have 400 white belts, 170 yellow belts, 130 green belts, and 10 black belts, all working on projects of various magnitudes that drive savings to the bottom line. This initiative has been deployed in 250 plants. The things I observe, which continue to surprise me, raise the question of whether we could really find that level of savings. It's incredible, and there is still a significant runway for these initiatives. You might identify $300,000 in one area and $700,000 in another, but when you aggregate these amounts over time, they add up to substantial figures.

Mike Roxland, Analyst

Understood. Thanks very much for the color.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Butler with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Brian Butler, Analyst

Hi, good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. You mentioned reaching the $900 million EBITDA. Could we discuss the key components that will help us achieve that, including price-cost, volume, and any other factors related to the $700 million?

Larry Hilsheimer, CFO

Yes, the single largest component of that is just getting back to volume levels of ’22. That alone is a $160 million driver at current margin rates. We look good a little bit on volume recovery sequentially, but you look on a two-year stack, volumes are still significantly off, and obviously that’s evidenced in the economic data with PMI statistics and everything else. Getting back to that kind of volume level drives a huge amount of earnings lift for us, and so as Ole mentioned, we undertake all these operational improvement areas to really change our structural cost drivers so that we can even tweak that more and cover other inflationary cost. The secondary element is clearly getting back to what we consider much needed, well deserved price-cost in our paper business, as evidenced by the price increases we recently announced - those things can drive a big pick-up as well, and then just getting full run rate on and performance level back on the acquisitions we’ve done, and then also this new Dallas sheet feeder business in our containerboard business. You put all those elements together and it drives you easily over that $900 million figure.

Brian Butler, Analyst

Okay, you mentioned the recent URB price increases. How much of that falls within the 40 to 70 range? Is the low end zero and the high end 100%, or is it a different mix?

Larry Hilsheimer, CFO

We expect to fully recognize these price increases, which are necessary and justified. The inflationary costs affecting our production and paper trades are significant, and we need to ensure appropriate returns on our capital. However, we are also pragmatic and are still facing challenges due to the outdated survey system used by Richey. We hope they will transition to a more relevant, data-driven automated system that accurately reflects the true market. As a result, we've hedged our expectations. Our guidance won't take this system into account, and we have a range to manage around it, as well as timing issues related to when the increases are recognized. For example, the $50 linerboard and $80 medium price increases effective June 1 will be recognized this month and start impacting our P&L in late July. The $50 and $70 in URB, effective July 18, will benefit us if recognized timely, showing effects by late August to September. There is potential for more upside if we received immediate recognition after rolling out these changes.

Brian Butler, Analyst

When you think about kind of the midpoint of what you’re assuming there, if that was to roll over, what’s the benefit into ’25 from a perspective of incremental EBITDA that you would be able to capture?

Larry Hilsheimer, CFO

Yes, if you consider our pricing in general, a $10 change in containerboard results in a $700,000 monthly impact, translating to roughly $8 million annually. For URB, the impact is half a million monthly, amounting to $6 million annually. This should provide you with the figures needed to adjust your assumptions.

Brian Butler, Analyst

Okay, and then one last one, maybe on the capital expenditures - that kind of increased a little bit on the updated guidance. Maybe break that out, is that all Ipackchem or are there other growth initiatives that you’re spending that $20 million on?

Larry Hilsheimer, CFO

We had minimal impact from Ipackchem. The increase was primarily due to inflationary costs related to the Dallas sheet feeder, which is a strategic growth project. While it slightly raised our expenses, we believe it’s worthwhile, as it could generate around $2 million in monthly EBITDA when fully operational. Additionally, we were generating more cash, and our engineering team identified some urgent safety and maintenance projects that we felt should be prioritized. Given that we had the available cash, we decided to move forward with those projects.

Brian Butler, Analyst

Okay. Nice quarter. Thank you for taking the questions.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question at this time, please press star-one-one on your touchtone telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Gabe Hadje with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Gabe Hadje, Analyst

Ole, Larry, Bill, good morning.

Larry Hilsheimer, CFO

Hey Gabe.

Gabe Hadje, Analyst

Just a housekeeping question on the $8.4 million that you called out, Larry. Was that backed out as a one-timer or are you flowing that through? I know it’s non-cash.

Larry Hilsheimer, CFO

No, we flow it through. It’s accounting. We have to mark to basically sales price any finished goods inventory we acquire, so had Ipackchem gone forward with it, it would have been profit, but for us it’s not. That’s a one-year thing.

Gabe Hadje, Analyst

Okay, and then I wanted to ask a question about, I guess, Southeast Asia or maybe China specifically. If memory serves, on the GIP side you guys have, I think, four remaining plants there; but when we look at, I don’t know, EV production and all these different things, it seems like film activity more than others is fairly robust. Again, I know you guys are being selective about customers and what you’re doing over there. Can you just talk about the appetite to grow over there, or maybe limiting factors that prevent you from deploying more capital in Southeast Asia in general? I know obviously it’s a returns oriented mindset, but just curious about that.

Ole Rosgaard, CEO

We have a very disciplined approach to how we use our cash. When requests for safety-related capital expenditures come in, we never decline them. Our steel network and other assets generate significant cash, which we need to maintain, along with our dividends. After addressing those priorities, we begin to consider growth-related capital expenditures. We regularly review all incoming requests and apply criteria such as return on investment and payback period, along with geopolitical considerations. Currently, China is not our top priority in terms of geopolitical factors, so if there’s an alternative, we would likely direct our investments elsewhere. While we have made investments in safety maintenance and some upgrades in China, we recently constructed a new IBC plant in Malaysia, indicating that we are focusing on investments in the broader APAC region.

Larry Hilsheimer, CFO

Yes, the same thing I would add, Gabe, is Ipackchem does have some operations in China. Whenever we assess any kind of project, we always have, as Ole mentioned, geopolitical as part of our risk factors. Now, what does that mean mechanically in our capital decisioning process? It means the hurdle rate for us investing in someplace like that is much higher, so if it can’t meet the hurdle rate, we ain’t getting it done. Then the other thing is part of our enterprise risk management program, as we look at those kind of things, and we did this in Ipackchem, you look at what happens if something goes wrong, what’s your next plan. We have plans to deal with anything that could evolve as best as we would be able to.

Gabe Hadje, Analyst

I appreciate that. One last one.

Ole Rosgaard, CEO

Just one last comment on that. Bear in mind, we operate in 41 countries across the globe and we’ve done that for decades, so what happens on the geopolitical stage is really part of our disciplined operating system. We always focus on that, and since we are talking about Asia-Pacific, we do have growth plans in that region, and as a result, Matt Lahey has been promoted to lead that region. He’s actually already in place to do that.

Gabe Hadje, Analyst

Good luck Matt. I haven’t heard you guys discuss IBC deployment recently. I appreciate that the manufacturing backdrop hasn’t supported that. I’m just curious if there’s a slight increase in capital expenditures, or on the other hand, perhaps you have developed that infrastructure, so I think I understand those lines pretty well. Let’s say you’re positioned to serve your customers on the IBC side when demand does indeed increase.

Ole Rosgaard, CEO

We have continued to expand on our IBC network, not through acquisition but primarily organic. We have deployed blow molders and new lines throughout last year and also this year, and I said in September, we will formally open our new IBC plant in Malaysia. Last year, we opened a new IBC plant in Turkey and we have put additional lines in, in many of the existing facilities, so this is an area where we have continued to grow. It’s also part of our M&A strategy because it’s resin-based, it’s high margin, so it’s a very attractive market for us to grow in. We do that at the request of our customers as well - you know, when they expand, they tend to come and ask if we could provide them the service on certain locations.

Larry Hilsheimer, CFO

Yes, and Gabe, you’ll remember this but just to remind everybody, we increased our equity ownership of Centurion last year significantly, and we continue to explore opportunities with other IBC recyclers around the world. Most of them are relatively small but they fill out our footprint, and we continue to have dialogs around those in many geographies.

Gabe Hadje, Analyst

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. I will now hand the microphone over to Ole Rosgaard for closing comments.

Ole Rosgaard, CEO

Thank you. Before we end the call, I just want to thank you all for the questions and your continued interest in Greif. We’re very proud of our global Greif team for utilizing the Greif business system to its fullest, as you’ve heard, and creating significant operating leverage during this temporary sluggish demand environment. We are equally excited to realize the outperformance we have positioned the business to capture through build-to-last, and we’ll continue to execute with excellence and provide you with the legendary customer service for which we are known. Thank you to all of our colleagues, our customers and stakeholders for your dedication, loyalty and commitment to Greif. Have a great day.

Operator, Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.