Graphic Packaging Holding Co (GPK) September 2026 Conference Transcript

All right, guys. We're going to kick things off here. I'm Jeffrey's paper and packaging analyst. I'm Phil Ng. We're delighted to have the graphic packaging team here, Robert, CEO, Chuck, the CFO. Robert, I think you're going to kick things off with some insights, what you're seeing out there.

Yeah, well, good morning, everyone, and thank you to Jeffrey's for organizing this great conference, and thanks, Phil, for hosting us and inviting us. Before we get started with the fireside chat, I'd just like to say a couple of things about graphic packaging. We are one of the leading fiber-based packaging companies in the world. We create graphic packaging with designs. You may be interacting with us ten times a day without knowing it. When you open your toothpaste box, when you're opening your favorite cereal brand, when you're getting your favorite value meal at the leading quick service restaurant, our brands are pretty much everywhere. We have a global operation, and we're a leader in sustainable consumer packaging. We have five mills, very large milling operations, Kalamazoo, Michigan, Waco, Texas, Macon, Georgia, West Monroe, Louisiana, and Texarkana in Texas. So we have two mills in Texas and pretty much one in the Midwest and then a couple in the South. We have about 100 packaging converting facilities, and we have operations in 26 countries. We are actually not a commodity seller. We sell a very premium product in very close partnership, and we have over 3,000 patents. Some of our most famous patents are the fridge vendor, which is the fridge pack that you can get with maybe a Pepsi or a Coke or a Dr. Pepper. So think about the fridge pack. We have KeelClip, which is a very innovative replacement of plastic for cans, a paper cover, gives you new real estate to print graphics on. Bordio is a great technology we sell. And we have very strong relationships with the leading consumer packaged goods companies in the world. We're very diversified. We have businesses in the food industry, food service, pet food, beverages, household care, health care, wellness and beauty. And we're basically in multiple corners of the store and we're in quick service restaurants. We are very well invested as a company. We have very competitively advantaged, I would say, packaging assets with a very deep bench of talents. So, great operations organization, great operators across 26 countries. Now, why are we a very good company to invest in? We've been at a very heavy investment cycle. So, we've invested heavily in our infrastructure. Most recently, we built the Waco Recycled Board Mill in Texas, and we're very proud of that asset. And that's going to be a long-term, durable, competitive advantage in our recycled platform. We are now focused on generating cash. So the investment cycle is behind us. We're going to be a free cash flow generative business for the years to come. And we're strengthening our commercial approach, really focused on revenue management, so revenue growth management, and driving more profitable growth. We are also driving cost discipline, so a lot of productivity efforts, which include earlier this year a reduction in force, and really getting ahead of the inflation that's hitting all of us in this industry and in consumer packaged goods. We're implementing best practices as well, and we're streamlining our processes. A big part of the work we're doing is portfolio and footprint optimization. So, you've probably heard that this quarter, we're closing two facilities and re-dividing the volume across our existing facilities, really driving cost transformation. And most recently, we've launched, I should say, we've relaunched into Uncoated Recycled Board, URB. We used to sell URB from Middletown, Ohio. We just got back in that business, and it's going ahead of schedule. And it's really helping us with filling the Waco asset and also driving cost absorption. So, again, we're very pleased to be here. Phil, thank you for inviting us, and I suggest we're getting into the Q&A for the fireside chat.

Maybe this is a silly question because you've kind of teased a number of things, but you've been in this role for eight months now, Robert. You come from a CPG background, which is exciting. You kind of teased out revenue management, but now that you've been in your role for some time now, what are some of the, you know, a few big opportunities to really unlock value? Would that be helpful?

Thanks for the question. Yeah, so I've been here eight months. After about 30 years in consumer packaged goods, so I started in 1996 in Procter & Gamble, worked in Europe, worked in South America, Caracas, worked in Cincinnati three times, based in Geneva, worked in Central East Europe, Middle East Africa, then went to Kimberly-Clark, where I spent a number of years in the U.S. and in Australia, then joined PepsiCo, Australia, New Zealand, and then ran Quaker Oats in Chicago. So I was the president of Quaker Food North America. And after that, I was the CEO of Primo Water and created Primo Brands, which is a big merger between two beverage companies. So 30 years in CPG, and I found myself moving in to the packaging industry as a former customer with all the insights that I had around the challenges I had with the consumer. The first thing I would have said, Phil, is the business is very resilient. So our volume is on track, right? Also for the quarter, we are surprisingly resilient. And part of that is really how diversified we are, as I said, across food, beverage, food service, 26 markets around the world. The second one is that we have a really strong foundation, especially after building Waco. Waco was overspent, but now that we are beyond that, we actually are really enjoying the benefits of this incredible recycled platform that we have. We have a long track record of serving global customers, very strong relationships with those customers, and we can help them win. And that's really what we're focused on right now, through surety of supply, through our capabilities, our innovation, our speed to market, our lead times, and our well-distributed manufacturing network, converting network across the U.S., Europe, and international markets. So, you know, the other observation I had was we have a very deep talent bench. We truly are a world-class packaging company, and we are the go-to company for a lot of the largest CPG companies that want to work with the best. We are focused right now on restoring growth, which is why when we gave update to our guidance, we said we would end up in the high end of our guidance in sales. Second, we're enhancing our profitability. They're really important, a lot of inflation this year, and we are now really driving productivity across the board to address that inflation, but also to get ahead of it. We want to future-proof the company and have the right cost structure to be competitive and drive the right value for our customers. The third is, you know, when we look at our global operations, we can optimize. We are looking at our footprint, we're looking at where we should be investing, where we have the right to win, where we need to be geographically located to win with our customers, and where we can close facilities and optimize. The same applies to our portfolio. We continue to look at our portfolio of businesses around the world and geographies, and it's an ongoing effort to see where we can further optimize. Now, the other real new focus for us is free cash flow. We believe cash is king. And after the heavy investment cycle, we've committed to reduce our capex to below $450. That's really new thinking, new direction. I've actually stopped certain projects like our automated roll warehouses, which are really in place to continue to manage our inventory. but we don't need them because we're going to be reducing our inventory. Various other key projects that we believe were not the right payback. That allowed us to get, you know, well below 450, which is below 5% of our $8.6 billion in revenue, and really focused on free cash flow. We have updated our guidance to $600 million to $700 million this year. That's a significant step up versus where we were last year, the year before, and the year before that. With that, we're going to be deploying that free cash flow and pay down our debts. We are fully aware that our net leverage ratio is too high. And everybody I've talked to, all the investors, our board, are aware that paying down our debt, getting our leverage ratio down is one of my top priorities for the next 24 to 36 months. Now, it also comes with a bunch of opportunities. If you think about where we have the right to win, we can improve our commercial excellence, Phil. Revenue management is going to be key terms and conditions. Think about pricing. Think about inventory holding, payment terms, minimum order quantity, and order lead times. Really zooming in on that, working with the world's best practices and the best outside consultants to get a revenue management really as a driver of growth and EBITDA. Number two is we can get better in demand and supply planning. Historically, we have been a sub-straightforward business where the mills, we play in bleached, unbleached, and recycled. We're pushing out their mill, their roll paper to the converting facilities. We are redesigning that to really think about demand signals and get the demand signals from our key customers and back that into our production planning, not only in the converting facilities but at the mills. So, that's a huge piece of work we're doing to get our OTIF ops, our on-time in-full delivery. Thirdly, procurement. So, we have a very large addressable spend. Procurement should be a core competency of our company, whether we're buying wood fiber, whether we're buying airline tickets, or whether we're buying OCC. Whatever it is we're buying, we should make that strategic. So we're actually working with the world's best consulting people in that space, a very accomplished former CPO and her team to really set that up, hire a CPO, and make that a best practice and competency for the company. Then we're driving productivity just in general by reduction in force and cost reduction, really disciplined approach with Chuck around cost management, and we can talk about that in a second. but also with AI. So we are digitizing the company rapidly. We're bringing AI into all of our processes and we'll continue to do so over the next three years. And finally, talent. We are hiring talent. You've probably seen the announcement of a new general counsel, Daniel Fishbein, who came in from Corpe. And most recently, we've announced a new CHRO from Multicolor Corporation, Tatiana Berardinelli, who's joined us this week, and we're very excited to have her coming in from the packaging industry with a lot of experience in developing commercial organizations and a very strong understanding of the talent in the market so you know because of that I'm very optimistic about our value creation runway we have a lot of opportunities to enhance and grow our market share we can leverage the competitive advantage footprint that we have we have a world class paper board manufacturing network as I said with recycled bleached and unbleached. We have great packaging operations and people that run those. We have design and innovation capabilities, both at our headquarters in Atlanta, where we have the PDC. We have our own test production facility downstairs. We can run all of our new products. We have an industrial design team, a graphic design team, and we're going to leverage those as value-add for our key customers. And we have, you know, best in industry operators and employees. So, Phil, that's the first observation.

Yeah, lots on back there. The revenue management part was the most fascinating, once again, just because your volume and just the broader industry volumes have been flattened down the last few years. And then just a function of the consumer dealing with a lot of inflation. You talked about terms and condition, inventory holding, min-order quantities, and all that great stuff. How quickly can you implement that? Because most of your business is contractually locked in, right? And you got multi-year contracts. So, you know, how receptive are your customers? What does that entail? Do you need to invest more in ERPs? Is this ongoing negotiation? So just kind of help us think through this revenue management dynamic. How quick of an uplift could we see?

We have, we are a contractual business. So we are a very predictable business in general. We renew a good percentage of our contracts on an annualized basis. We also win new contracts, and we participate in RFPs. And as we do that, we build contracts, and the majority of our customers want the RECI index in the contract. Historically, we would adjust our pricing once every six months, but with the dynamic and very volatile external environment, We're going to accelerate that to quarterly. Then we have the non-paper-based inflation that we also have to address. It includes everything from labor to energy to transport to oil and gas, resins, which, you know, are going to be implemented in a more rapid way than historically. As our pass-through clauses were historically restrictive, we are trying to accelerate those into the market, given the fact that we need to ensure a shorty of supply and the right level of profitability. Revenue growth management is going to be a core capability of our commercial excellence initiative, and we will work with the world's best outside partners to help develop talent, help set terms and conditions, help develop the right contracts. But we also want to do that to help our customers, Because our customers are more and more focused on the best in industry, reliable partners to help them win in the market, with a very strong focus on surety of supply. With all of these volatile dynamics in the market, surety of supply becomes more important. If you have a natural event, a tornado or a hurricane, you want to make sure you have multiple production facilities where you can source from. So you need multiple plates across multiple sites. There's only very few manufacturers in packaging that have those capabilities, and we're definitely on the leading edge of that. Also, sustainability. The regulations are changing rapidly. We are the sustainable alternative to plastic. So plastic to paper is a secular trend that is a tailwind that's going to be here for years to come. Europe is slightly ahead of the U.S. We have a very big footprint in Europe. And as a result, we can innovate faster in Europe with our customers. The way we innovate is we get involved with the customer supply chain. We have to understand their pack price architecture, their business objectives, and their tiering strategy across their brands. When we do that, we can come in and offer solutions that run on their existing manufacturing networks so they don't have to recapitalize. That is a specialty of graphic packaging. That's why we are a preferred partner for most. and get nominated for Supplier of the Year very frequently. So that is the underpinning of the quality and the service that we offer that then allows us to drive revenue growth management. And, you know, order quantity and order lead time, they're all dynamic things where we can charge a little bit more for a product if the lead time is shorter or if the order quantity is less.

Okay. That's a great color. Maybe, Chuck, you jump in, too. Pretty dynamic macro backdrop here, just given consumer concerns on consumer sentiment, oil prices, diesel prices have continued to take off. Any insights you're comfortable sharing in terms of July, August order trends, and then how inflation is kind of shaping up relative to your expectations?

Yeah, I'll take that one. So just specifically around July and August, trending broadly as we guided and expected for the quarter. We guided the volume would be between plus one, minus one for the quarter, and I'm seeing trends that would reinforce that. So, quarter's on track from a volume standpoint. From an inflation standpoint, that's, of course, a very dynamic environment that changes every day. But, indeed, with oil at $100 a barrel and OCC being recognized with two increases this quarter, We are clearly seeing inflation at the higher end of our expectations for the quarter. So think that that would impact the quarter, the range of $5 to $10 million for the quarter, full year being the range of $10 to $20 million, but we're not standing still. What we're doing about that is going and looking for other costs to reduce, other pricing that we can take to offset that. So we still see a path to the low end of our guidance, and at this point, don't see any reason to change our guidance for either Q3 or full year.

Okay. So the big swing factor is really diesel and energy?

Those are the two, and then resin usually falls at a lag, but diesel and energy are the two that we're seeing. Or diesel and OCC, energy is pretty well hedged for the rest of the year. So it's really diesel, OCC, and then resin usually falls with somewhat of a lag.

From a supply-demand standpoint, actually, coming into the year, SPS, CRB felt really at an imbalance. You know, it's actually in a pretty good spot right now. Obviously, some work you guys have done to pivot to URB, some SPS capacities come out, and CRB as well. But perhaps give us some perspective what you are seeing in terms of supply demand for the various grades and how is there any more noise around substitution between SBI, CRB and what that positions you. Certainly you and the industry at large are trying to implement in a round of price increases.

Oh, you didn't take that one. Yeah. So in general, what we're seeing is that we are in a situation where we're much tighter than we were earlier in the year. And I think you're hearing that from other participants in the industry. We've seen capacity come out in bleach, seen capacity come out in recycled. And so that has certainly had a positive impact more broadly on the supply demand environment. And then also now there's the new tariffs with Canada. There's about 200,000 tons of paperboard that's being brought in from Canada. and that's primarily FPB and recycled, and then imports from Europe are also down as well. So all that's kind of worked to tighten the industry. You're seeing all that. We were very pleased to see the recognition of the $60 a ton in both cup stock and in bleach folding carton, and we are, of course, out with additional price increases in unbleached, bleached, and recycled. So, broadly, we continue to be tight and full and expect to be able to continue to operate in that environment.

Any color how extended your backlogs are for your main grades, whether it's C-U-K or C-R-B?

Yeah, we don't give specific numbers on backlogs, but I'll just tell you that we're tight and have been. I mean, the one grade where we, of course, have capacity is in recycled since Waco has come up, But we're the ones that control the excess capacity in recycled. We run our supply to match our demand. That's, of course, part of the reason why we're getting into URB. I'm very excited about that to help absorb that excess capacity within our recycled system. But clearly from a bleach perspective and an unbleached perspective, very tight.

Helpful. On your earnings call, at least, you guys painted a path for perhaps EBITDA growth in 2027. Inflation is certainly heavier than you thought, so it's a bigger challenge this year. What are the key drivers that we should be mindful of that's going to help drive EBITDA growth? Certainly, pricing will be helpful. Inflation is out of your control, but any, you know, GPK initiatives in play that gives investors in this room confidence and said you're back to growing Ibatab because Ibatab has been in decline for the last few years?

Yeah, so for 2027, we talked about a few items on the call. I'll run through some of those and then give you any updates on where we are with them. But I would, of course, encourage you to think about how some items are impacting 2026. I mean, in 2027 that are occurring now versus a full-year bridge or a full guide to 2027. And so these items totaled to about $175 million that should show up favorably in 2027 versus 2026. So if you start with pricing, we said the pricing initiatives that we have in the marketplace, including what's been recognized, is about $145 million. We said $60 million of that would impact 2026, so the carryover of that is about $85 million. And then since we went out with our Q2 earnings call, the third-party index did recognize an additional $20 in bleach folding cartons. So think about that as another $5 million tailwind for that in 2027. So that's from a pricing standpoint. From a cost standpoint, we've talked about the structural cost improvements that we're making in the business. called that at about $85 million for 2026, and on an annualized basis, be about $100 million. And so that's a carryover of about $15 million. And then we have about $150 million of one-time items that are impacting 2026, and that's made up of the $90 million that we're taking to reduce inventory levels from additional downtime. It's the $40 million from the weather event in Q1 plus the impact of the Mexico disturbance and some other one-time items that we've seen. And then about $20 million, we talked about the inefficiencies that we've experienced in unbleached this year. And so that all totals to around that $175 million once you back out the carryover of inflation. We called that out in Q2 at around $75 million, but now think of that more as around $80 million. The one item that I'll add to that, that's, of course, all before volume growth. And so, as Robert talked about, the initiatives that we have in place to restore volume growth. And then, specifically, URB. We only launched URB halfway through the year, so we'll have a full year of URB next year. So, that will add to the growth as well. And then the other pricing that hasn't been recognized, as I mentioned on the last call, we have about $200 million of pricing that has been recognized out in the marketplace. So, if any of that gets recognized, that would be a carryover and would positively impact 2027 as well.

Helpful. Maybe this was a question for you, Robert. Certainly, the COVID era where you were generating high teen EBITDA margins, probably aspirational. I mean, everyone saw a COVID bump, and you're not unique to that. but this business generated pretty steady margins for a long time, call it 16%, 17% even though margins consistently, appreciating we've had some macro shocks in recent years and all this inflation. Your margins aren't in the low teens right now. Looking three years out, you know, is that still a path you feel pretty comfortable getting back to with all the big initiatives you have in place, getting back to that mid-teen margins, or structurally the industry just feels different now?

Yeah, I'll take the question and I'll pass it to Chuck, But that is the aspiration. We do have a number of initiatives that would suggest we should be able to get to that point, including revenue growth management, significant productivity initiatives. We've seen that paperboard pricing on SPS has now been passed through, which will significantly help. And with overcoming some of the irregularities this year, like the winter in Mexico, and, you know, some of the maintenance things that we're phasing out in the future, and that combined with URB launch, really that's an absorption play. So you think about adding about, let's say, 100,000 long-term tons of URB in our recycled platform. And remember, we are very good at URB. We used to make URB at Middletown. We know that market very well. And we have a lot of demand as a result. So that's tracking ahead of where we thought we'd be now this time of the year and for the full year. And we are very hopeful that it will be about 100,000-ton business for us. Obviously, we'll confirm that as we get closer to next year. But that's the aspiration, and that's a massive absorption play. And think about the cost structure of an integrated paper company that makes packaging. A lot of that sits with the mills. So the more we can drive cost absorption in the mills and run those efficiently, the more that will translate into EBITDA. Chuck, any further thoughts?

Yeah, I think Robert covered it well. Only thing I would add, you know, over time, you generally see the higher cost capacity come out of this market and this business. We've seen that start with bleached. We've seen a little bit of that with recycled. So no reason to believe that wouldn't continue, and that will continue to benefit us over time and ability to take price to offset the inflation. And then the URB and any growth that we have in CRB is going to be highly margin expansion or expandatory with the initiatives that we have in place and with the fixed costs already in the business. And so all that combined with the cost improvements that we have, I mean, clearly we see margin expansion from here. We'll come back to you in a few months with some more specificity around that as part of our strategic review. We're looking at our financial model as well.

To get that type of margin expansion with operating leverage, you've got to see some real volume growth. um so aspiration only uh your revenue revenue management um game plan um what type of uh long-term growth algo do you expect from a volume smack standpoint relative overall anomaly or versus the market yeah we're not ready ready yet to give guidance on on volume growth but what we have said is for this year we are seeing our sales at the high end of guidance sure that that is a result of strengthening fundamentals and our ability to continue to be very competitive in the market with our service levels, our quality, and our costs. We will give some more perspective on that when we give guidance, but our aspiration, as I stated earlier, is to restore growth. We have had two or three years of flat to declining volumes. This year is definitely a stabilizing year. And that allows us to build a platform for growth for the future. We're also conducting a market study right now. I mentioned that in the earnings call. This is really an exercise whereby we will be defining our where-to-play choices, both from a segment standpoint and from a geographical standpoint. Obviously, our core businesses in food, beverage, and household are the biggest contributors to our EBITDA. We want to double dine on those, but we will also continue to find growth avenues in very margin and creative businesses going forward. That is a core piece of the work we're doing. We're also looking at building some significant core competencies. We talked earlier about commercial excellence. That's really the revenue growth and the optimizing the commercial organization but we're also focused on SNOP. SNOP gives higher service levels. That means you have a better demand signal, better demand planning, supply planning and production planning. It's all integrated, enabled by humans and AI. That gives you much higher predictability, longer production runs and therefore you are better able to serve your customer. So that's the second core competency we want to build. The third one is procurement. Procurement is as important as sales. We, you know, you can only make money by selling more or spending less. It's a really simple framework, but we will be focused on making our procurement team a best-in-class team in the industry. And that's enabled by our end-to-end AI implementation and our talents, our human talents, all the human capital we have in the company and the new additional capabilities we're recruiting into the company. So that gives us a very strong platform for growth going forward.

To get there, Robert, what will that require from an investment standpoint? Is this people? Is this SG&A spend from a CRM system? Is it CapEx? Because, yeah, I mean, look now.

It means we have to – first, we started by building a transformation office. So we brought in a former booze and co-consulting leader who also worked in the industry, CPG, to help us build a transformation team. And that transformation team is leading a transformation journey. That includes the RIF, includes productivity, includes portfolio optimization, footprint optimization, and the market study, which we'll be concluding this month and then, you know, giving an update on later this year. The second one is adding a chief procurement officer. So we are currently recruiting a chief procurement officer. We have a number of lead candidates, and we will be making announcements there soon. And then finally, you know, a stronger, more focused commercial organization. We have an incredible sales team, and we will continue to fine-tune that and enhance that with a revenue growth management organization that is world-class and industry-leading.

Will there require any incentive comp relignment for Salesforce?

Yeah, we are currently redesigning our comp plan for Salesforce. We have historically had a management incentive program and a sales incentive program. We are currently redesigning that with the help of our new CHRO, Tatjana, who specializes in this area. And we will be deploying that in 2027.

So once again, will we see a big step up in SG&A? Will we see a big step up in CapEx to kind of deliver these aspirations?

No, our CapEx will be capped. We will continue to maintain strong discipline around both OPEX, SG&A, and CapEx, and we don't anticipate any escalation of those two.

It's optimizing where you deploy your investments, right? I guess you're taking costs out and re-deploying it. Just one last one for me. You talked about looking at your global portfolio and footprint. Where are you with that journey? You've taken some capacity out already, but whether it's the network or assets, you know, are there anything that stands out where they're of substance or these are just smaller pieces of the business that you deem non-core?

Yeah, the first, in the public domain, we've announced the sale of our Croatian facility, the closure of our Lebanon, Tennessee facility, and we're in the process of closing a UK facility, right? so that's that's announced those are the first steps towards this ongoing effort to optimize our footprint with regards to portfolio that's going to be informed by the market study later this month where we want to play and where we do not want to play going forward and that will then lead to potentially some minor divestitures nothing too big i've i've said before north america Europe are core to our company. Food, beverage, and household are core to our company, so don't expect any major moves there. However, there is optimization possible. I think we did just over 20 acquisitions over the last 10 years, including one very large one. We haven't really pruned the tree. We need to really understand where we want to play going forward. But, you know, we don't have any news on that today.

That's helpful. Well, let's wrap it up here. Robert, you got a full plate and a pretty impactful strategy. Let's see how you execute. Thank you, Phil. Thanks to Jeffries.