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

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Gabe Hajde: All right. Thank you. And not to pin down too much. You guys obviously ramped up the share repurchase activity this year kind of in March. Given the seasonal swings will we kind of expect a similar cadence given the initiation of the dividend and things like that, or would you guys kind of be more I’ll say programmatic about it over the course of the year?

Mark Miles: Yes. Thanks, Gabe. Our guidance has the share repurchases fairly ratable over the year. It’s slightly front-loaded, to your point, given the current share valuation is hopefully very temporary. But I would say, pretty ratable to slightly front-loaded, that’s the way we’ve laid out the share repurchases for fiscal 2023.

Gabe Hajde: Great, Thank you, guys. Good luck.

Mark Miles: Thank you, Gabe.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Arun Viswanathan with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Arun Viswanathan: Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess, first off, when you look at the FY 2023 guidance, you’re pointing to about $2.1 billion of EBITDA, $800 million to $900 million of free cash flow. Just wanted to see what would push you to the upper end of that range. Is it maybe price mix or price cost or volume growth above the 2%, or maybe you can just elaborate on your guidance as well. Thanks.

Mark Miles: Yes, sure. Arun, I would say, certainly, deflation wouldn’t hurt, relative to getting to the higher end of the range. 2022 obviously was a year of inflation and we did a great job in spite of that. Our markets, as we’ve talked about are much more stable, given food and beverage, personal care, hygiene, being our largest end market. So the reality is, demand volatility, as you know, doesn’t have a large impact on our earnings. The larger impact is price cost spread. And to the extent we can get some tailwinds from other markets decreasing, which puts downward pressure on our commodity prices that would be a tailwind for us. And same thing on cash, right? To the extent we have some deflation that would help. As I mentioned earlier, the working capital being a zero target that would create a tailwind on working capital as well.

And, obviously, FX. Who knows? We assumed end of October, as we sit here today, we’ve got a slight tailwind there, but obviously that could reverse tomorrow. But FX is another factor to consider.

Tom Salmon: Thanks. And also, this is kind of, keep an eye on energy. For sure, the footprint of plastics converters is considerably lower than other substrates, from an energy consumption perspective, so that will create an opportunity, as you see continued pressure in certain geographies around energy inflation, where the economic feasibility of the pivot to plastics will be a value proposition that I speculate end users will begin to consider.

Arun Viswanathan: Thanks for that. And when you think about the leverage, you noted that you’re at 3.7 now, so the lowest fiscal year-end. Where do you see that kind of evolving over the next year — couple of years? Would you want to move that down into the lower 3s? I think in the past, you’ve commented 3 to 3.9. So how should we think about that? Thanks.

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