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

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Daniel Fisher: Global is 4%, North America, it’s flat. Mid- to high single digits in Europe; mid-single digits in South America. That’s how we get to the 4%.

Phil Ng: Okay. And then, on Latin America, in general, certainly Brazil has been really choppy and there’s certainly some social unrest. What gives you confidence kind of deliver the mid to high single digit growth in 2023? It’s just been a pretty tough environment for some time, especially Brazil. Any contractor up renewal in 2023, 2024 in that Brazilian market?

Daniel Fisher: No. We have no open contracts heading into 2023 and 2024. The resiliency relative to South America is going to be the stabilization. First of all, lapping the contract for each in Q1. And then the actual cost position of our customers down there will have the aluminum package being the most cost advantaged product in Brazil, in particular, with that customer base.

Phil Ng: Okay. Appreciate the color, guys.

Operator: Next question from the line of Angel Castillo, Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Angel Castillo: Thanks for taking my question. And just a quick little near-term one. It seemed like that you talked about kind of full year volume growth across the different regions. Could you give us a similar walk for what that 1Q number is and how you’re kind of thinking about across the regions?

Daniel Fisher: I think 1Q in total will be down. Again, we had pretty good growth in Q1 of 2022. And so, I think we’ll be slightly down Q1 in total. Yeah. I’d say in North America, you’ll be flat. In South America, you’ll be flat because of the customer breach, so we’ll be lapping that. Flat would actually be growth on an apples-to-apples basis. So, we could be a little plus, a little minus there, and we’d expect to be that high single digits growth, mid to high single digits for Europe. That will be a linear number throughout the year. It’ll — you’ll have more opportunity to grow in the back half because of the two facilities that are coming online, but you should see growth right out of the gate in Europe. And then flattish in the other two regions for the aforementioned customer breach and the market dynamics that exist right now in North America.

Angel Castillo: Got it. That’s very helpful. And then just curious, as you think about the ranges that you gave for the full year, I guess, maybe I’m reading too much into this, but South America, Europe and other seem to be a little bit of a wider range, whereas North America flat. I think if I kind of heard it correctly, flat to slightly down. It seems to be a little bit narrower, but this also seems to be an area or the region where we’ve seen maybe some of the more or bigger deterioration throughout the last few quarters. So, you kind of mentioned liquor and cocktails as one area of potential growth in promotional activity. But how much of this — I guess, what gives you comfort to have a narrow range there as you think about the year progressing? Is some of that cocktail liquor related volume, the degree of visibility? Is it there? Is things contracted? Like I guess, yeah, I just want to give you comfort in that kind of narrow range.

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