Clearwater Paper Corporation (NYSE:CLW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Arsen Kitch: I don’t have those numbers at the tip of my fingers, but generally speaking, I think you’re right. So that in the Northwest it’s largely a residual market where higher operating rates at the lumber mills are beneficial to us and in the Southeast it’s a whole log market. So I don’t have specific information around some of the impact of some of the impact of some of the closures that we’ve seen. But just overall, I think we expect in total across the company, we expect wood to be a net positive this year versus last year, especially in the first half of this year versus the first half of last year, so that’s across Arkansas and Idaho. We expect for wood to be a good guy.

Matthew McKellar: Okay, great. Thanks. May be just focusing in on the paperboard market a little bit, it sounds like that market is firming up and you’re seeing better trends there. Can you talk about what you may be seeing to start Q2 and maybe call it any pockets of strength and weakness by end market that you might be seeing?

Arsen Kitch: No specific comments on end markets. I think we’re seeing a nice recovery happening and you saw in the NPA data utilization rates were up. Shipments were up in Q1 versus Q4. So we’re seeing those same trends and customers have positive outlooks here for the balance of 2024. We’re expecting at this point, from where we sit to be running full for balance of the year. We do have a major outage which will have some impact on our production, but outside of that, our expectation is to run full this year for the remainder of the year.

Matthew McKellar: Great. Thank you. And maybe last one from me and please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think your collective bargaining agreement at Cypress Bend for hourly employees would expire in July. Can you talk about that event and tone of discussions you’ve been having so far and maybe what we should expect, just given a sort of general inflationary environment for labor?

Arsen Kitch: I think I’ll stay away from commenting on expectations. I think generally speaking, we have very good relationship with our unions, and I think we’re looking forward to a good, constructive dialogue as we have had historically in Arkansas.

Matthew McKellar: Great. Fair enough. That’s all from me. I’ll turn it back. Thanks.

Operator: Seeing no further questions at this time, this will conclude today’s conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.