International Paper Company (NYSE:IP) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Thomas Hamic: Hey, Mark. This is Tom Hamic. I think, Jay and Mark laid it out very well. I would say the one difference with the Box business because we are increasing maintenance spending is that it’s very targeted to places where either we’ve struggled with reliability or we have an opportunity to grow. So if you look across the country, it’s not that we are spreading the maintenance dollars. We are really reacting to the marketplace and the strength of demand. And then we are targeting maintenance spending to improve reliability for those customers. While at the same time, we are improving our margins. So this real focus on reliability and delivering on time, it’s going to pay off.

Mark Weintraub: Okay. Thank you. So, are we — would you say that what we are going to see in the second quarter is back to what you think to be your normal type of and this — given where the world is today, your normal levels of maintenance type spending, et cetera, et cetera? Or are we spending even a bit extra now to make up for maybe having spent a little bit before — or is there even further increases that we might — it didn’t sound like there’d be further increases going forward. But maybe just clarify, are we just kind of at normalized spend levels in the second quarter and we were just a bit below previously? Is that the way to think about it?

Thomas Hamic: Hey, Mark. This is Tom Hamic again. I think there is a large part of it that is adjusting. But I think the key is what I talked about earlier is we’ve got to respond to the market, and we can’t wait for the market to then respond. And so there’s a bit of this that is getting ready, as Jay talked about, for what we see as an expansion in Box demand going forward. And one of the really positive things about maintenance expense in the Box plants is what we’ve seen is a very short payback. So we are seeing the results. We are tracking the results and I feel very good. It really is our fastest way to react to customer needs. And so I feel very confident what we are spending is going to pay off.

Mark Sutton: So Mark, I think what Jay described on the mill side is true in packaging. It’s also true in Cellulose Fibers, modulating our spending over the last, let’s say, four to five quarters as we were running both businesses at less than target output, which would be somewhere in the 94% to 95% output. It’s been much lower than that, as you know, based on the demand environment. And so we stretched those dollars over a longer period of time because we didn’t need our plants to run at maximum output. So now we are preparing to be running more toward our target output. The only thing I would call out that’s maybe a little bit of an abnormality in the mill system is it just so happens timing of some of these projects that are related to power generation.

So in some of our integrated mills, we have major preventive maintenance shutdowns of some of the turbine generators that generate our steam and electricity. Those aren’t done every year. they’re sequenced, but you have to get them done in a certain window. There’s a few extra turbine generator major scheduled maintenance roles, jobs in this period of time that we would normally have. So if you take that out, then I think the rest of it is preparing to be at a more — I don’t like to call it one full, but a more targeted run environment.

Mark Weintraub: Got it. Thanks, guys, and thank you, Mark, for your clear explanation there and for your clarity last — the years you’ve been working and congrats on the retirement.

Thomas Hamic: Thanks, Mark.

Mark Sutton: Thank you, Mark.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Next, we will go to the line of Charlie Muir-Sands from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Charlie Muir-Sands: Yes. Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I just want to stay with two, please. Firstly, just in terms of the market prices and the recognition of the $40 per ton increase that [indiscernible] put through in March, followed by no further change in April. Is it your expectation that relative to the higher numbers that you and others announced at the start of the year that we won’t see any further recognition unless there’s further price increases made? And then the second question, just related to the corporate expenses, $24 million in the first quarter compared with $60 million to $80 million guided for the year. Have you got any view on how Q2 might shape up specifically and whether for the full year, you might now be perhaps looking towards the upper end of that range given the large number in Q1? Thanks.

Mark Sutton: Charlie, this is Mark Sutton. Thank you for your questions. I’ll take the first one and our CFO, Tim Nicholls, will take the second one on the corporate expenses. On the pricing, we don’t comment on forward looking pricing. We obviously — IP had an announcement of $70, $40 was recognized. There’s lots of reasons for that in the way that the index discovers price through the analytics. So I think we would just stop there and say that’s what we had, that will flow through the next few quarters, but we really don’t — we don’t forecast or talk about forward pricing that hasn’t kind of published in an index. Tim, do you want to take the corporate expense question?

Timothy Nicholls: Yes. Great. Hi, Charlie. So we …

Charlie Muir-Sands: Hi.

Timothy Nicholls: … we don’t break it out quarter-by-quarter. There’s a lot [indiscernible] keep at corporate, there’s a lot of things that have some volatility to them. We still feel good about the $60 million to $80 million for the year. But we capture things like FX movements and there’s some unallocated subs and things like that. So there’s a lot of moving parts running through. And generally, you can estimate it for a full year, it can bounce around quarter-by-quarter.

Charlie Muir-Sands: Okay. Thanks.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Mike Roxland from Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Michael Roxland: Thank you, Mark, Andy, Tim and Mark for taking my questions, and Mark I just want to echo what everybody else says, congrats on the retirement and all the years [indiscernible].

Mark Sutton: Thanks, Mike.

Michael Roxland: Just wanted to get a sense, going through this commercially margin improvement in industrial packaging, what type of EBITDA margin are you looking to achieve and over what time frame? And can you help us frame how this should play out [indiscernible] itself?