Robert Lewis: Yes. Look, I think you hit on the strategic priority, right? I mean — and it hasn’t changed, quite honestly. We continue to be active even when the market is inactive in terms of building relationships and making sure we understand what could come to market and when that may be. We probably are aligned with your thinking that it is starting to work itself out in terms of folks thinking that 2024 at a point in time where they will bring properties to market. I think given what’s going on with the credit markets right now, that probably facilitates some of that. We do think that we’re continue to be advantaged in that — in those opportunities. None of that ensures that a deal will happen, of course, but we’re excited about getting back to the activity that we view as a strategic priority, and that’s the way we would choose to want to grow the business.
Likewise, if nothing does happen, then we’ll pull other levers to make sure that we create good returns for the shareholder. And as you said, that could be in a debt reduction mode to preserve capacity or it could be in continued share repurchases. And we will look at that as to where we believe the best return for the shareholder is going to be.
Gabe Hajde: Okay. One quick follow-up. Do you feel like maybe just from conversations that seller expectations have been adjusted or starting to adjust in the right direction to accommodate or compensate for the rising cost of capital?
Robert Lewis: Yes. I don’t know if you ever get entirely reconciled from a buyer and a seller perspective. But I do think, given that a lot of the friction that’s happened around some of the deals in the market more recently, I think there’s a realization that maybe peak levels are going gone anyway. So I think there’s negotiations to be had, and that’s typically where we do well.
Operator: We’ll take our next question from Ghansham Panjabi with Baird.
Ghansham Panjabi: Adam, going back to some of the comments you made earlier. It’s still very early in the fourth quarter earnings season but some of your customers and the retailers, I mean, there definitely seems to be a new tone towards a different tone, I should say, towards promotional spending and also product innovation and so on and so forth to increase volume velocity. And that — so that seems pretty clear on the human food side, if you will. How does that sort of manifest on the pet food side because pet food is quite large for you relative to years past. So just curious as to anything you could highlight in terms of conversations with customers apart from just the obvious of going through a bit more destocking in that category.
Adam Greenlee: Sure. And I think you’re spot on, Ghansham, with the broader food market and that promotional activity and maybe just to add a comment to what you said. I think the price recovery was really the focus for our customers, certainly in 2023. And I think that conversation has shifted now more to a volume recovery in 2024. And you’re seeing the, again, the promotional activity, advertising, et cetera, in support of that. And what I would tell you about the pet food market is I think there’s a small lag to the pet food market, following some of those similar patterns as they think about promotional activity. They were a little later to pass through the price to consumers as we were working through inflationary items.
And I think they’ll just be a little later to look to recover the volume as — with promotional activity, et cetera. So I think that’s all factored into our guidance. We’re having those conversations with our customers. And there are promotional activity plans for 2024. They’re just starting a little bit later than what we’ve seen in other categories.
Ghansham Panjabi: And then on Dispensing Closures, I apologize if I missed this, but the higher margin categories such as fragrances, et cetera, you’re starting to cycle through some more difficult comparisons and so on and so forth, just given the extraordinary growth in those segments. How do you see those evolving in 2024??
Adam Greenlee: Well, look, I mean, we’re competing and winning that space all day long. So we’ve invested fairly heavily to support the growth as well. So we have a really good degree of confidence that those new business wins that we probably haven’t talked as much about in Dispensing and Specialty Closures will deliver the growth that we’re seeing in that space. So we have done a very nice job not only getting the new wins, but putting the capacity and commercializing that capacity to support the growth.
Ghansham Panjabi: And just to clarify on that, so the categories themselves seem to be relatively intact from an overall standpoint. Is that right?
Adam Greenlee: Yes. I think I go back to the comment I just made a few minutes ago that we’re seeing some slight moderation from the kind of significant double-digit kind of growth to the maybe low double-digit kind of growth in the category now.
Operator: We’ll take our next question from Anthony Pettinari with Citi.
Anthony Pettinari: The EPS guidance seems to point to kind of stronger year-over-year growth as the year progresses. And I was just wondering if there’s any detail on how the $20 million in cost saves could ramp throughout the year? And if there’s any other kind of cost items, resin or freight or in terms of recovery, how those assumptions could kind of impact the trajectory or cadence of year-over-year growth as we go through the 4 quarters of the year.
