Ball Corporation (NYSE:BALL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Kyle White: Right. And I guess, I was assuming that the net inflation was trying to net for maybe the incremental inflation that you’re seeing, but maybe that’s not the right way to look at it.

Scott Morrison: It’s really the net of what we expect.

Kyle White: Okay.

Scott Morrison: But that again that’s just inflation, right?

Kyle White: Yeah. Makes sense. Sticking on that point. So, it seems like a large portion of that recovery, the $200 million inflation recovery is in North America, but it doesn’t happen just given the contractual time until July.

Scott Morrison: Correct.

Kyle White: I know it’s early days. But you have a sense

Scott Morrison: Yeah. 60% of it is in North America, the other 40% is in Europe. Yeah.

Kyle White: Okay. I appreciate that. That’s very helpful. Do you — I know it’s early days, but do you have a sense of how much of that benefit could actually continue to flow into 2024 in North America?

Scott Morrison: It stays. It doesn’t go back the other way, it stays.

Kyle White: Right. I am just asking

Scott Morrison: The perfect scenario for us is you get a pretty sizable PPI increase and your costs actually go down.

Daniel Fisher: Effectively, what would happen to your question, you’re thinking about it the right way. So, you pass-through inflation a year in arrears. If inflation moderates or dissipates, you hold on to that margin expansion for the following year. It was just the opposite of that the past two years for us. But if things come up in energy prices, et cetera, et cetera, come up after we put through the existing cost, then that would be carried into parts of 2024. You’re right.

Kyle White: Got it. Sounds good. Well, everything looks much better from a price cost standpoint going into this year versus the challenging last year. So, good luck with the balance of the year.

Daniel Fisher: Thank you very much.

Scott Morrison: I was glad to be done with 2022 and excited about 2023.

End of Q&A:

Daniel Fisher: Well said, Carlos, with that, we’ll close the call and look forward to talking to you at the end of the first quarter. We are excited for 2023. And we’ve got the teams and the plans in place to execute. So, we’ll be following up and iterating on those plans as we look forward to the next time we get together. Thanks.

Operator: That concludes today’s call. We thank you for your participation and ask you to please disconnect your lines.