Avery Dennison Corporation (NYSE:AVY) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Josh Spector: Question on is destocking was having any impact on competitive pricing dynamics within the base label business?

Deon Stander: We don’t see that at the moment, Josh. Historically, as the market leader, we maintained fairly strong pricing discipline. And we will respond if there is pricing changes in the market. But typically, we tend to make sure our discipline hold is strong. And if you also remember during the inflationary period, Josh, we tend to use surcharges the first start in how we manage pricing. And as deflation starts to occur and if it does occur, those are the things that first start to roll off.

Operator: Our next question comes from George Staphos with BofA Securities.

George Staphos: I’ll try to get them all in here and turn it over for the rest of the call. So first of all could you talk at all to what your customers say their inventories grew to relative to normal at the peak of the inventory build, where customers in your key categories saying their inventories were double what they normally have triple, half — well, obviously not half, but somewhere in that range between what would you say there? Secondly, as we think about logistics and project out, your market share and the market growth you’ve talked about in the past, could logistics alone be $1 billion plus in revenue by 2030? And then last, Deon, any comments on how Vestcom is doing and how that’s adding or not relative to your expectations?

Mitch Butier: Thanks, George. Yes, so I’ll start off. So as far as what our customers are saying around inventory levels, a couple of things. One, as you know, we have many customers, particularly on the material side. And so there’s a lot of anecdotes, but we were hearing definitely a range of two to four weeks of excess inventory. So there was quite a bit of build overall. And on the Apparel side, the end customers not — I mean, you’ve heard — you can read all the headlines of what they’re talking through, but they definitely have quite a bit of extra inventory and even entire containers full that they were — said they’re just waiting for the next season to unload at the next season. So quite a bit of inventory, which is that’s what our customers are telling us and what we’re all seeing in the headlines, and I think what we all know on the Apparel side.

If you look at the actual hard data of inventory levels within Apparel, it’s actually dropped down a bit from where it was pre-pandemic. So a little bit of a disconnect between what the data says and what we’re hearing anecdotally, but we definitely ourselves know that there’s excess inventory there. As far as logistics, I think your question is with the growth and the opportunity we see, how big can logistics be specifically can it be $1 billion by 2030. Deon, do you want to take that one as well as a follow-up?

Deon Stander: Yes, George, you can see the scale of what we believe this initial phase of logistics adoption will do for us in our results overall and our drive to get to $1 billion business during this year commitment to that. And as you know as well, Logistics segment is highly concentrated. My sense and belief is that as the technology continues to resonate with one or two customers, I think it will become a de facto mechanism for operating as a logistics provider around the world and if that should happen, then I believe that this should be a $1 billion-plus business by 2023. As it relates to…

George Staphos: 2030.