AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Robert Kuhn: Gabe, you’re always good to drag me down the rabbit hole. So bear with me on this one. The biggest increase in the corporate expense comes from some of our supplemental pension in the U.S., and this is a kind of a quirk of the accounting rules, right? So we — we have annuity contracts on the books, which sit on the asset side. So any fluctuations in those asset contracts have to go through P&L while any fluctuations in the liability for the pension go through OCI. So what you had last year is you had a $2 million positive right, as the run it through corporate expense, and now it’s flipped to $2 million negative as the interest rates are increasing. So there’s an additional cost in theory on the annuity contracts, even though that they’re covered. So that accounts for about $3.5 million, $4 million of the delta.

Gabe Hajde: Okay. At least we didn’t get into organic chemistry or something crazy. One did pop in my mind as you’re talking about this. Did I hear you correctly that you were saying you expect 2023 net leverage to end sort of where you’re at today? Or you’re saying we’re at 1.7, we see some opportunities perhaps on the M&A side, but we’ll remain active in the absence of that for share repurchase. I just maybe clarify those comments.

Robert Kuhn: Yes. I mean I think, Gabe, we’re comfortable in the 1 to 3 times leverage where we’re at. So 1.7 is a nice spot to be in. We have to follow what’s going on with the interest rate environment. We’ve got some debt repayments that are coming due in 2024. We still have about $108 million left on our existing authorization for share repurchases. We’ll continue to look at M&A. So again, we’re going to stay in that comfortable range for now, and we’ll see what opportunities it brings. And we’re going to track where the interest rate environment goes for additional borrowings if that was necessary.

Stephan Tanda: Yes, we usually don’t guide the leverage ratio for other than the corridor of 1 to 3 times but the 1.7 is where we are at.

Gabe Hajde: Understood. Thank you guys. Good luck.

Operator: Thank you Gabe. We have a follow-up question from George Staphos from Bank of America. George, your line is now open.

George Staphos: Hi, thanks for taking the call. I had asked earlier about the launch activity that you might be seeing in beauty and fragrance. Can you talk to that? And then somewhat relatedly, can you give us assurances on what additional information you’ll be providing to us as we get on the call and have been getting on the calls underlying the segment data, will you be giving a kind of the end market data in the new reclassified segments. So launch activity that we’ll be getting post — please go ahead.

Stephan Tanda: Let me take the first one and then Bob follow up. So on the launches, look, there certainly is pent-up eagerness on behalf of our customers to launch new fragrances, that’s the business model, but they will not launch into the market that we had during COVID or the uncertainties of past year. Now as we exit that period of tremendous uncertainty, certainly, you will see a lot of launches in this what makes us also comfortable with continued strength in fragrance — as for the coming quarters. Even if you see a back off at some stage in Europe and the Americas, we certainly hear from customers that as China re-emerges and that consumer comes back that certainly the second half also looks very good. So overall, there are good momentum in launches. And then I’ll give you the assurance question, Bob.