Sealed Air Corporation (NYSE:SEE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Ted Doheny: Maybe let me just add on the working capital, just to kind of give the confidence. So, in a nutshell, what happened last year, first six months disruptions across the world on every single category of items we are buying. And our lead times to our customers on many product lines were extended by more than 5x the normal lead time. So, we had to build the inventory to make sure that we are not starving the growth. And as we got over that hump essentially our inventory peaked in the Q3 period last year. At the same time, the end market started softening customers started destocking as they saw the lead times were returning back to normal. And that’s where we got caught in that trench. But from that peak to trough at year-end, we did take out more than $150 million in inventory.

The second piece is all those material supply issues are behind us. There is ample supply of materials. One area is much better, but still impacts a little bit on long lead times, that’s on the electronics side, but we are managing through that. And so, we are going to continue driving our working capital where at least. That’s a short story what happened last year. It wasn’t a fluke, is a couple of things that happen exactly at the same time, and we just power through it and make the rest happen.

Christopher Stephens: Very good. Thanks for the question, Adam.

Brian Sullivan: Next question operator.

Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Adam Samuelson from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Adam Samuelson: Hi. Thank you. Good morning everyone. A lot of ground has been covered, a couple of just cleanup type questions, if I may. Maybe first, in the new SEE 2.0, the contribution from digital growth is anticipated. I mean is that a €“ so I think about that being a pretty meaningful mix driver and how digital plays into your revenue growth and value capture that coming with pretty healthy incremental margins and that probably being a disproportionate driver of some of the operating leverage that you are forecasting? And then I just want to be clear on some of the changes in the way guidance is now being couched that restructuring costs are going to be included in the EBITDA guidance, not stripped out as a special item. So, like Chris, there is a $23 million restructuring that’s included in the 2023 outlook. I just want to be clear that that’s in the $1.25 billion to $1.3 billion of adjusted EBITDA?

Christopher Stephens: Yes. So, let me answer maybe the second half of your question, I will let Ted comment around the digital piece. That’s very much a big portion of what we are identifying as opportunities for Reinvent SEE 2.0. So, on the restructuring side, what we have profiled out on Page 16 is that restructuring mainly consists of the continuation of Reinvent, the program from several years ago, kind of concluding on that particular transaction as well as some of the restructurings we have got identified on the integration given the M&A deal. What we are specifically identifying to your point, is that Reinvent SEE 2.0 costs as well as the cash profile as we continue to execute that over the next 12 months to 18 months, you could see what we have targeted for overall structural changes and benefits.

That will €“ it is currently not reflected in our guidance. But at the same time, we view it as potential upside as we continued to manage costs in terms of what is in our control and how we are looking to change the structural dynamic of our company to buy it for margin expansion. So, on future calls, we will continue to update yourselves as well as investors on how we are executing that particular program.

Ted Doheny: And on the digital side, if you look at Slide 7, and as you highlight on 2.0, we are highlighting where digital is hitting. And on the sales side, incremental sales and there is a few things that we would identify as a digital sale. The one that is very clear is when we start bringing our digital printing and actually put digital printing connected to our equipment and adding digital incremental sales to our automation. Digital also shows up as we work with our packaging and be able to actually put digital coding on our packaging, letting our customers be able to mark the products, as we have talked before about track and trace as we get our digital printing deployed around the world. But also the digital is our access to market, going with MySEE, we think we can actually increase our capability.

And then the last piece is on the digital printing, especially as we have talked about, even with our fiber-based products that actually doing the printing with corrugated, fiberboard, pulling it into some of our other solutions. So, we think we have some growth opportunities there. So, that’s 1% incremental to what we are already doing in the model. But the second part is also in there that we are putting digital into the savings, as we are driving our operating engine. As we are creating our digital platform on MySEE, working more effectively and efficiently, some of our largest customers want to interact with us digitally, just like they have done in the COVID, whether it’s designing a product online, using our design studios, being fully Touchless from designing the product and actually sending those digital signals to our factories extreme, but not significant savings to our customers.

So, it’s part of that engine of how we are going to convert those additional sales to a more efficient and effective operation. And it’s also connected to the Touchless piece that Emile’s team is just really doing some exciting stuff with our factories as driving Touchless automation. And the digital is a big piece of making all that happen. Okay. Operator, I think we have a chance or time for one more question.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our last question. Last question will come from the line of Larry De Maria from William Blair. Your line is open.

Larry De Maria: Okay. Thank you and good morning. First, a clarification and a question, $275 million D&A versus run rate, it seems like a big jump. Can you just clarify what’s in there, why the jump? And then secondly, you highlighted 18% EPS growth CAGR over the prior 5 years. We just did an acquisition. We invested heavily in digital, driving automation. Are you only committing to over 10% growth? But it seems like the step up for the next 5 years is arguably better than it was in the prior 5 years. So, can you just talk to that and why it shouldn’t be better than over 10%?