Packaging Corporation of America (NYSE:PKG) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mark Weintraub: Well, I believe you had stated during the January call that you were looking for average daily box shipments to be flat in — sequentially, which would have suggested about down 6.5% rather than the down 12.7%. And — so basically, I’m saying, well, does that mean that instead of being a $0.95 negative hit, it would have been about half of that, like a $0.47 negative hit.

Robert Mundy: That volume is — it’s not just box shipments, right? It’s — there’s export volume, there’s trade, there’s domestic outside volume. So that would not be a good way to look at it. However, directionally, yes, it would be a higher number. But you would also have a lot better probably cost within your system because your mills would be running more full. Your box plants would be running more full. So you’re converting costs, your direct variable costs, all those types of things, your unabsorbed costs would not be as high would more than offset any additional decline that you would see in that price variance, if that makes sense, because of higher volumes.

Mark Weintraub: It does, but it sort of comes back to the point that you’re only $0.03 off what your guidance had been.

Robert Mundy: Yes. And if you want to look at it sort of simply the published price dropped $20 a ton after we gave our guidance. And if you sort of do the math, on that. And as we said before, when that price — the published price drops, it pretty much hits our outside containerboard immediately. There’s no delay. So if you sort of do the math, there’s about $0.03 just from that price decline that occurred after we gave our guidance.

Mark Weintraub: Right. And so what I’m trying to get to is if we get this sort of rebound in demand and what it would seem that our — the bounce back in earnings could be very dramatic relative to sort of that $2.23 type of run rate you had suggested in a down.

Mark Kowlzan: Absolutely, Mark. Absolutely. That’s what we would anticipate.

Mark Weintraub: Okay. I apologize for the fairly convoluted questioning here. But thank you.

Operator: Our next question is also a follow-up from Phil Ng from Jefferies.

Unidentified Analyst: This is john again. I appreciate you taking the follow-up. I just wanted to quickly shift over to the paper segment. Demand was a bit lower than we had expected. Just kind of looking to get some insights on how the paper segment volumes are trending. It looks like maybe this next quarter where we should see another down double-digit type of volume year-over-year. Just kind of what’s going on and maybe what are the main factors impacting demand on the paper side.

Mark Kowlzan: Again, as we spoke last year that we — our paper business now has become just the International Falls mill up in Minnesota, and that mill is capable of a little over 500,000 tons a year. And that’s pretty much what we’re selling too. We’re down slightly off of that peak capability. But what that allows us to do really is just run and optimize the market and where we choose to sell and where we want to sell to maximize profit. So we really have the luxury of being the fourth largest player and we don’t have to do anything. I say we’re in a real sweet spot right now, down just a few thousand tons off of where we were last year. Any other questions, please?