Berry Global Group, Inc. (NYSE:BERY) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Tom Salmon: It doesn’t impact the €“ our ability to pursue bolt-ons. We’re going to operate the company within our targeted range between three and 3.9 times relative to prospective divestments. And we have nothing to report for this call. It continues to be an area of opportunity for us. And as you said Phil, as the markets ultimately provide those opportunities, we believe that we’ll have assets that ultimately can contribute to that strategy and ultimately be deployed in other areas of the company.

Phil Ng: Got you. And then, Mark, if I heard you correctly, for your 2023 guidance, you’re assuming $100 million price cost tailwind. Can you kind of unpack how much of that is cost as it relates to potentially deflation versus some of the good stuff you guys are doing on the self-help side, taking costs out. And then on the pricing side, in a potentially falling resin environment, do you have the ability to get more price, especially on the non-resin piece, which dinged you up a little bit this year, but have made pretty good progress to kind of wrap up last year? Thank you.

Mark Miles: Yes, sure. Thanks, Phil. I mean, I guess the good news and the bad news is, we’ve done an excellent job of tightening up our lag on resin pass-through, as you — as I’m sure you saw in the last fiscal year, resin was very volatile, up and down and kind of record movements. And yet you saw our earnings — have very little impact on earnings. So, team has done a great job of mitigating the impact of resin on our earnings. That’s also again kind of the bad news and that as resin drops. We pass that through very efficiently. To your point, though, it certainly provides a good backdrop relative to passing through cost increases outside of resin, and we’re certainly active in doing that. And as we said, about — I’m going to call it about 1/4 of the improvement we’re expecting in earnings next year to come from improved price cost with our customers, with the remaining coming from cost reduction efforts the company is initiating, which would include moving — getting more efficient on material usage which could involve changing suppliers, for example.

Phil Ng: Okay. Thanks a lot. Appreciate the color.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Josh Spector with UBS. Your line is now open.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi. It’s Chris Perrella on for Josh. I just wanted to follow up on the Engineered Materials. How much of the volume decline in the quarter was due to deselecting? And when do you see the portfolio — the product portfolio set at this point?

Tom Salmon: We’d anticipate in the back half of our fiscal year, we’ll begin to see sequential improvement on the demand front. This has been a conscious effort inside this predominantly distribution-served business to continue to refine our business mix alongside of some of the capital investments that we’ve made, specifically around areas like multilayer converted films and transportation films. Now, in distribution, clearly, there has been impact throughout the year, just from general destocking efforts that are underway periodically, just based on distributors trying to anticipate lower input costs. But I’d say the back half of the year, we’ll be in a more normalized rate. Couldn’t be prouder of the work that this team has done in offsetting its inflation, while at the same time, refining and improving its business and its product line mix, so really happy about the group.

Unidentified Analyst: So just to clarify that. So the product line mix, is that set at this point and then you’re just waiting for the market to grow, or do you still have more bottom slicing to do in the unit?

Tom Salmon: There’ll be still some work to do in the front half of the fiscal year.

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