Sonoco Products Company (NYSE:SON) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Howard Coker: Sure Gabe, this is Howard. I’m going to let Rob answer the bulk of the question, just to say. Just so you understand, as we build our bottom-up budgets, we do a very, very thorough–go through a very, very thorough process with all of our business units and understanding the puts and takes that they see in their individual businesses and their markets. We stress-test that so that when we have these conversations and these forecast, based on what we know today, these all feel like very realistic targets for the coming years. Rob maybe will be able to get a little deeper into that, but this is not lick your thumb and see which way the wind’s blowing. I mean, we put a lot of effort over the fourth quarter to–and manage it almost up until the day of announcement of what we think from our teams’ perspective, what we’re seeing from a macro perspective and what our customers are telling us. Rob, I don’t know if you have more to add in that?

Rob Dillard: Yes, we feel really good about the budget and the guide. We think that it’s very balanced. We think that there’s obviously opportunities that we go after every day, but there are certainly risks that we’ve seen in the last two to three years like we’ve never seen before. I’d say with regards to Q1 and then thinking about the full year, a big part of that really is this metal impact, and that business has seen absolutely unusual inflation and now deflation, which has really meaningful bottom line impacts. So as I said, Q1 total impact just from metal is going to be $0.50 to $0.60, and if you took that away, we would almost be at the $1.85 that we were at last year. I think that industrial certainly has some impact there, but we’re anticipating kind of a good year from productivity and a good year from performance, so rolling those–taking that metal price impact off and then rolling forward, because we think that that metal price impact is most acute in Q1, though with some lingering impact in Q2, but then completely gone in Q3 and Q4, you can think about our year in that regard and get to the number in a pretty straight line.

Howard Coker: Yes, I think just finally, Gabe, Slide 14, I spoke to at the end of my prepared remarks. That’s the point here, is that we are on the appropriate trajectory without one-time benefits, and an unbelievable trajectory without the one-time benefits. Look, I won’t belabor the point, we’re really bullish about the long term of the company and the actions that the global teams have been taking over the years that are getting us to this point.

Gabe Hajde: Understood, all right. One last one, I don’t think we’ve mentioned it or it has been mentioned – capex being 325 to 375. I thought we were sort of thinking about a step down post Project Horizon, so maybe you guys found some other discrete projects in there that you’re spending on?

Rob Dillard: Yes, it’s a big part of our strategy. We’ve been really focused on trying to identify as many good projects as we could, and we’ve got–you know, we are in a really good position right now where we’ve got so many good projects that we’re really managing it and we’re really identifying the best projects and the ones that fit our strategy the best. I’d say that number is a reflection of that. It’s also a reflection of us just being a bigger company than we’ve ever been before, and so as a percent of sales, it’s still kind of in line with what we’ve been targeting, and it’s also as a percent of sales a way for us to kind of continually ratchet up what we call value enhancing projects as a component of that spend, so that we’re getting better and better ROI.

Gabe Hajde: Okay, thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is a follow-up from Adam Josephson with Keybanc Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Adam Josephson: Howard, just one follow-up. Thanks for taking it, by the way. George asked a question about what you’re seeing in center of the store in terms of plastic versus paper board, any shifts you’re seeing from one substrate to the other. Just given that you’re uniquely positioned to answer that question, can you–forgive me if you answered it and I didn’t hear it, but can you address that question?

Howard Coker: Sure Adam. You know, it’s really where it resonates paper versus plastic and the beachhead right now is really in Europe, and we are seeing a lot of opportunities. We’re commercializing–where once a product was in a plastic container, it’s now coming to one of our all-paper containers. We’re just now rolling out the all-paper solutions that we’ve developed internally, as well as through our acquisition of Can Packaging several years ago just as COVID hit, and so we’ve got some assets coming into North America. We just don’t have the same level of pull here in the U.S. Certainly there’s focus and attention on the CPGs, but in Europe it’s almost a mandate and how quickly can you get us out of substrates such as plastic or flexibles into an all-paper or mostly paper product, so our expectation is that will continue to build on a more enhanced basis here in the United States.

We’re seeing it in Asia and South America almost to the equivalent of the situation in Europe.

Adam Josephson: I appreciate that. Just one–because I read, I think, that the EC was classifying any paperboard packaging with poly coating as technically a single-use plastic, and that was limiting the appeal at least to some CPGs in Europe. Any thoughts on that issue in Europe, and the States for that matter?

Howard Coker: Yes, I don’t know if I have a good answer for that because it’s a moving target and it’s by member country in the EC. But there it is required, and we’ve been really focused on paper content percentages, and so we’ve got solutions out there in the market today that are 95% paper, that are able to be recycled in the paper stream. Different countries in the EU, there will be different states that take on different positions here, but the reality is you do need some type of barrier and our focus, again, is to create solutions that have are easily managed through the recycling systems and programs, so we’re actually seeing a positive reaction in countries like the U.K., France, etc. with the products that we’re putting out in the market today.

Adam Josephson: Thanks very much. Best of luck.

Operator: Thank you. Our next follow-up comes from George Staphos with Bank of America. Your line is now open.