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Founded in 2007, Graphic Packaging Holding Company is a provider of consumer packaging solutions. The company has designed, produced, and sold paperboard packaging for major brands across the food, beverage, food service, household, and personal care industries. Operating globally through its Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific segments, Graphic Packaging offers a range of unbleached, bleached, and recycled paperboard products, as well as packaging machinery and food service items like cups and containers.

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Graphic Packaging Holding (GPK): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Graphic Packaging Holding

graphic packaging holding

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Graphic Packaging Holding Company first quarter 2026 conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode, and a question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Melanie Skijus, Vice President of Investor Relations. Ma'am, the floor is yours.

Good morning. Thank you for joining Graphic Packaging's first quarter 2026 earnings results conference call. Today's presentation will include forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the factors identified in today's press release and in our SEC filings. We have with us today Robbert Rietbroek, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Charles D. Lischer, Senior Vice President and Interim Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we will reference our first quarter 2026 earnings presentation that can be found in the investor relations section of our website at www.graphicpkg.com and company-directed slides if you are participating today through the webcast. Now, let me turn the call over to Robbert.

Thank you, Melanie. Good morning, everyone. As many of you know, Melanie has just rejoined Graphic Packaging as Vice President of Investor Relations. We are excited to benefit from her leadership in the role. Over the past four months, I've been getting to know the team, visiting our facilities both domestically and abroad, and meeting with many of our customers around the globe. Separately, I'm pleased to report that we've now completed our 90-day review of the business. Our review has confirmed several important conclusions. First, our foundation is strong, a point that is consistently validated during my site visits and in discussions with our major customers. Second, we have talented, experienced teams, including world-class operators, to support growth with customers. Lastly, our integrated high-quality asset base and production footprint enhance our service capabilities, expand innovation opportunities, and provide a competitive advantage.

All in, we see meaningful opportunity ahead. We're taking decisive, focused actions to strengthen our operations and position the business for improved profitability. In the first quarter, we delivered strong performance at the high end of our expectations. Net sales were up 2% year-over-year to $2.2 billion. Volumes were up 1% compared to last year, with volume performance improving as the quarter progressed. Adjusted EBITDA was $232 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 10.8%, and adjusted EPS was $0.09. While adjusted cash flow was -$183 million in the quarter, this represents a significant year-over-year improvement from -$442 million in the same period last year.

As we look at the demand environment this quarter, scanner data across our markets continues to reflect a more selective and value-conscious consumer. Our innovative packaging solutions that span the grocery store from the center aisle to the perimeter and on-the-go food service items meet consumers wherever they go. As we proceed through the first half of the year, we are encouraged to see customers increasingly taking actions to restore volume growth. Looking across our end markets, food and health and beauty were bright spots for us during the quarter, with higher packaging volumes from value products and consumption of everyday essentials. Bars, refrigerated ready meals, and yogurt continue to perform better due to more protein products entering the market to satisfy consumers' desire for higher protein diets.

Health and beauty, which is primarily an international business for us, delivered strong growth consistent with the trends we saw in the second half of 2025 as consumers continued to prioritize small indulgences like skincare and perfume. Our beverage business remains stable while food service and household reflect ongoing consumer affordability trends. Now, I will provide an update on the results of our 90-day review of the business, the decisive actions we have begun taking to achieve our strategic priorities, and an update on our views and expectations for 2026. As I walk through each of these topics, you will note that we are focused on accelerating the pace of execution across our business.

That means enhancing operational efficiency and generating free cash flow to drive shareholder value in an evolving market. While we are taking swift action and implementing tactical improvements to drive efficiency, there is still significant work ahead. Our path forward is clear. We're focused on advancing our 5 near-term strategic priorities. First, we are committed to disciplined organic growth and providing exceptional customer service. Second, we intend to drive profitability improvements through cost initiatives, operational efficiencies, and select pricing actions. Third, we will continue to optimize operations, footprint, and portfolio mix to better focus on our core competencies. Fourth, we will generate free cash flow through inventory rationalization and reduced capital spending. Finally, free cash flow will be used to pay down debt and return capital to shareholders.

Over the last four months, I have spent time at our Atlanta and Brussels offices, world-class mills, and manufacturing facilities, met our talented teams across the globe, and witnessed our technical capabilities and commitment to sustainability in action. I visited four of our five paperboard mills and several packaging facilities. Waco and Texarkana in Texas, Stone Mountain, Perry, and Macon in Georgia, Elk Grove in Illinois, Kalamazoo, Michigan, Cholet, France, and Bristol, England. I have met face-to-face with six global CPG customers in North America, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, and engaged with leading QSRs and retailers who deeply value our long-standing relationships. These customers have confirmed the value that Graphic Packaging brings as a trusted partner. We are one of the world's most innovative paperboard packaging companies and hold a leading position with a large addressable market supported by sustainability trends.

With the comprehensive 90-day review completed, we are taking decisive steps to optimize our operational footprint, reduce structural costs, and impose discipline across capital and operating decisions. I will walk you through our key takeaways, actions, and where we will continue to focus our efforts. Strategically, our review has reinforced our commitment to the core North America and European markets, and we will make selective, disciplined moves to optimize our portfolio while maintaining our scale advantage. That means expanding with customers in our core markets and driving new growth opportunities through innovation. With regard to our portfolio, we have started to simplify and streamline our business and organization. We recently reached an agreement to divest our non-core assets in Croatia. We are in the final stages of the transaction, which we expect to complete in the second quarter.

Operationally, our transformation office is driving continued improvements in both our operations and cost structure. We are executing this transformation in real time with a focus on network optimization, disciplined capital allocation, and aligning our commercial teams to highest value opportunities. To increase efficiencies and better align with the business environment, we have taken actions to streamline our global workforce and eliminated over 500 roles. The majority of these roles were salaried, including both employee separations and eliminating vacant roles. These were difficult decisions, but the changes we have made are based on structural improvements and alignment to business needs while maintaining vital frontline operations. Importantly, these actions will not impact our commitment to customer service and growth-focused initiatives. Reductions represent less than 3% of all global roles, though they account for over 10% of global full-time salaried roles.

We are instituting a rigorous capital spend process, one that demands every $1 of spend be justified against our highest priorities. As we continue to progress, we are confident we will deliver on our full-year 2026 capital spend commitment of approximately $450 million. To further enhance productivity and operational efficiency, we are deploying AI to streamline areas of our inventory management and procurement processes. We are also utilizing remote monitoring of machine usage and performance, leveraging machine learning to generate predictive analytics and enable proactive maintenance, reducing unplanned downtime. I am confident all these actions will deliver the $60 million in cost savings announced last December and enhance our agility and decision-making, enabling us to move faster, reduce complexity, and empower our teams. Continuous improvement is an ongoing effort. We are actively pursuing opportunities for additional cost savings.

We will operate with fewer layers, increased focus, more accountability, and clear priorities, concentrating on what drives the greatest impact for our customers, our people, and our business. Our efforts and the many actions underway at Graphic Packaging reflect a company focused on value creation. We are committed to strong financial discipline, building a more resilient cost structure, and accelerating free cash flow. Chuck will elaborate on this further. I would like to focus now on an aspect of our business that I am very passionate about, our partnership with our customers. We are focused on driving disciplined organic growth by building on our strong customer relationships and capturing new business through our commercialization efforts.

In the face of changing customer growth strategies, we are strengthening our position across categories and have recently reorganized our commercial team to better align globally with customers and to support them through different stages and market conditions. Our customers continue to experience a dynamic consumer environment. While demand is relatively resilient, we recognize that consumers are continuing to prioritize value, with about 47% of global shoppers now considered value seekers. Shoppers are switching to private label options, opting for value packs or sizing down to smaller pack sizes at lower price points. To appeal to this value-seeking population, consumer brands and retailers are investing in their product quality and value perception, leveraging price pack architecture and novel pack designs while also focusing on selling through value-oriented channels.

Consumer preference for store brands continues to grow, creating meaningful opportunities for our retail partners to enhance their private label strategies and drive sustainable packaging solutions. Recently, we partnered with one of the world's largest retailers to produce packaging for its private label butter using our PaceSetter Rainier recycled paperboard. This is a great example of how we are helping our customers address consumer preferences for more sustainable packaging. By replacing bleached paperboard with 100% recycled alternative, the large retailer is making measurable progress towards its sustainability objectives without sacrificing print quality. The private label butter is expected to reach store shelves in the coming weeks, and we are proud to support that journey. Our customers are also looking to drive volume growth and gain market share.

We continue to see customers selectively upgrade to our premium packaging solutions as our innovative, differentiated designs allow their products to stand out and win on the shelf. We recently partnered with Keurig Dr Pepper to create a premium package for their Coffee Collective Wake-Up launch. They wanted a premium unboxing experience for consumers to match the elevated coffee blends. We created a custom two-piece box set utilizing our unbleached paperboard for stiffness and applied matte and gloss coatings and foil stamping to enhance the look of the carton and differentiate it on the shelf. This example highlights our innovation, operational capabilities, and commitment to helping customers achieve their goals. In addition to CPG customers, QSR brands are increasing promotional activity and limited time offers in an effort to drive foot traffic and bring consumers back into the restaurants.

We are supporting a number of our QSR customers across multiple geographies in these initiatives. My experience leading and growing CPG companies and their brands will supplement and strengthen the team's efforts to be an even stronger partner to our customers. We are supporting our customers' pursuit of meeting consumers where they are in order to grow volume and expand market share. There are many ways we partner with our customers to successfully elevate their brands. Customers rely on us to lead with innovation and accelerate their adoption to more sustainable packaging solutions preferred by consumers. A broader understanding of customer economics and their decision-making processes will enable our teams to better anticipate customer needs and leverage insights to drive our commercial and innovation engine.

Graphic Packaging has a unique ability to partner more effectively on pack design, brand architecture, and growth, and we are actively strengthening partnerships, taking a proactive commercial strategy and having conversations with top CPGs, QSRs, and retailers around the globe. We continued to build on our strengths and had an exceptional quarter driving packaging innovation. We filed 13 new patents, adding to our portfolio of approximately 3,100 patents. Looking ahead, we remain committed to growth of intellectual property and extending our competitive advantage in serving customers. Our capabilities in sustainable packaging are truly differentiated and position the company for continued leadership. Graphic Packaging is seen as the premier sustainable packaging partner by the brands we serve.

We are differentiated with our scale and capabilities, superior innovation and technical expertise, and talented people. With a broad portfolio and a strong innovation engine, we are partnering with customers to bring even more innovative products to life. From our childproof laundry pod box to our double wall cups that retain heat and cold, to our ProducePack punnets for fruit and vegetables. Our addressable paperboard packaging market opportunity is an estimated $15 billion, with roughly 85% of it plastic to paper packaging conversion, representing opportunities we have solutions for right now. Over time, we anticipate regulatory, retailer, consumer, and NGO scrutiny on the use of single-use plastics and foam packaging to increase. With a continued customer focus on innovation and an evolving regulatory environment, this market opportunity is expected to grow and will be an area of differentiation for us.

We recently commercialized an innovation and partnership with the health-focused emerging brand. We are supporting their transition from plastic to a more sustainable paperboard multi-pack to better align the packaging with their environmentally conscious consumer base. We developed a custom carton solution for the 10-pack SKU and seasonal formats. The structure optimizes in-store merchandising. The plastic bag to box transition is available today on shelves at leading retailers. As customers increase commitments and their desire to move to more sustainable packaging, they often evaluate solutions that move away from plastic or greatly reduce its usage. These packaging transitions to paperboard alternatives can increase brand equity without compromising product performance or shelf life. We are proud to help these advancements and for the recognition we have received for our leadership and support of customers on their sustainability journey.

In January 2026, two of our solutions earned Worldstar Best of the Best awards. PaperSeal Shape, deployed with leading European retailers, delivers roughly an 80% reduction in plastic per tray while maintaining full shelf life performance and runs on existing customer lines. Our ProducePack Punnet tray was also recognized for replacing PET with renewable, recyclable paperboard, eliminating more than 17 million plastic trays annually in a single retail application. In addition, EnviroClip Duo received an award of distinction at the PAC Global Awards for sustainable packaging design, reflecting our continued ability to replace plastic while preserving functionality and shelf appeal. This award was one of eight PAC Global awards we received. From an operational standpoint, this quarter was marked by a number of wins. At Waco, we continue to make meaningful progress ramping production.

Commercial performance is meeting expectations, and we are ahead of plan with customer qualifications. This positions us to better penetrate new geographies and more efficiently support existing geographies while taking advantage of available recovered fiber streams in our Texas triangle. In parallel, we are completing our cogeneration plant project, strengthening power supply assurance while helping to advance our customers' sustainability goals. We expect Waco to be a durable, competitive advantage for us over time. We are excited to help prepare our customers for promotions through the 100 days of summer and large events like the upcoming World Cup. 24 brands across our food and beverage customer base are running promotions for the World Cup, and our customers are planning for increased demand from spectators and fans.

For large global events like these, customers rely on a consistent, trusted partner who can deliver to time-sensitive deadlines and can execute critical graphic changes. We are prepared to provide the excellent customer service Graphic Packaging is known for. We also took a significant step forward in our renewable energy strategy, finalizing a virtual power purchase agreement with NextEra Energy Resources. This agreement increases renewable electricity coverage across our North American operations and supports disciplined execution against our long-term emissions targets. The 250 megawatt solar energy plant in West Texas is expected to begin commercial operations at the end of 2027. This agreement better positions us to support our customers, the world's leading consumer brands, in making progress towards their sustainability goals. We continue to build an award-winning culture and be recognized for our values and the way we do business.

In March, we were recognized as one of the world's most ethical companies by Ethisphere. This recognition, alongside our placement in the 2026 ranking of America's Most Just Companies by Just Capital and Fortune World's Most Admired Companies, shows that others recognize the values our people put into action every day. As we build on our strong foundation, we are also strengthening our team with highly selective new hires to ensure that we have the right talent and leadership roles as we drive performance across our business. As I mentioned at the start of the call, I'm excited that Melanie Skijus has rejoined Graphic Packaging to lead investor relations. Additionally, we recently appointed Randy Miller to serve as Vice President of Treasury and Capital Finance. Randy will lead global treasury with a focus on cash flow generation and capital structure optimization.

We just announced that Daniel Fishbein will join as General Counsel in June. Daniel brings more than two decades of legal experience, having spent his career as a corporate attorney focusing on strategic transactions, corporate governance, and securities law matters. He most recently served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Corpay, where he oversaw the company's global legal and regulatory function. These leadership appointments and talent upgrades support our priorities, starting with our commitment to enhancing shareholder value. We aim to deliver greater returns for shareholders by harnessing the significant cash generative business we operate with our immediate priority to reduce leverage and strengthen the balance sheet while continuing to return capital to our shareholders through our established dividends. Our progress gives me confidence in our strong market position and the many expansion opportunities ahead. Our first priority is to strengthen the balance sheet.

We are utilizing our strong capabilities to drive sustained growth through a robust, proactive commercial strategy and commitment to innovation. You can expect future investment in growth to be more disciplined and focused on the highest return opportunities. Looking ahead, we have an opportunity to reduce our operational complexity and improve accountability by focusing on driving profitability and business excellence, including the ramp-up of Waco. We expect to reduce our capital spend to 5% of sales or less and reduce our inventory from 20.5% at the end of 2025 to between 17%-18% of sales this year toward our long-term goal of 15%-16% of sales. We will also continue to innovate and develop world-class products for our customers. We remain on track to generate $700 million-$800 million of adjusted free cash flow in 2026.

Moving forward, I am encouraged by the opportunity to grow alongside our customers and partner with them to achieve their goals. We are uniquely positioned with our broad product portfolio, strong innovation engine, and integrated network. We are on offense. Now, I will turn it over to Chuck to provide more details on our financials.

Thank you, Robbert, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased with our performance in the first quarter, including the strengthening of packaging volumes we experienced as we progressed through the quarter. Total volumes were up 1% from the same period in 2025. Top line growth and higher packaging volumes are a direct result of the resilience of our business, the markets we serve, and the execution of our team. Sales increased 2% year-over-year to $2.2 billion, driven by the volume increase and a $50 million benefit from favorable foreign exchange. Partially offsetting these gains, price experienced a decline of 2% in the quarter. The pricing decline reflects third-party index changes in bleached paperboard that occurred in the fourth quarter of 2025, along with the continuation of unusual competitive packaging pricing experienced in the last few quarters of 2025.

Innovation sales growth was $42 million in the quarter, reflecting the strength of our innovation pipeline, continued strong partnerships, and engagement with customers. Adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter was $232 million, including a $6 million foreign exchange benefit. This represents a $133 million decline from the first quarter of 2025. Price, volume, and mix combined were a $46 million headwind and, again, were a result of the unusual competitive price environment. Commodity input and operating cost inflation of approximately $37 million was roughly $10 million higher than we were expecting. Unfavorable net performance in the quarter of $56 million was driven by several factors.

Severe weather in January across the central and eastern U.S. and the domestic disturbances in Mexico during the quarter caused an approximately $25 million impact from disruption and downtime at our facilities. In addition, heavier scheduled maintenance in the quarter and our decision to curtail production to reduce inventories resulted in additional costs of $20 million each as compared to the year-ago period. As Robbert discussed, we are executing cost reduction and efficiency initiatives, which drove about $10 million of savings in the quarter. Though these savings were offset in the quarter by the factors mentioned, we will swing to positive overall contribution to earnings from net performance later in the year. Adjusted EPS in the first quarter was $0.09 and included a higher tax rate due to the vesting of employee equity awards during the quarter.

We still expect the full year tax rate to be approximately 25%. In line with historical seasonality of cash flow and working capital, first quarter adjusted cash flow was a negative of $183 million, which is an improvement of $259 million from the first quarter of 2025. First quarter adjusted cash flow results included heavier capital spending than we expect for the rest of the year, attributed to the work to complete our recycled paperboard mill in Waco, Texas. We ended the quarter with $5.6 billion of net debt and net leverage of 4.4x. As Robbert alluded to, our operating environment remains dynamic, with geopolitical uncertainty and inflation impacting the business. During the quarter, we experienced incremental commodity cost inflation resulting from the conflict in Iran, which impacted our logistics, energy, and resin spend.

With energy, we're about 60% hedged for both natural gas purchased in North America and electricity purchased in Europe and have commodity cost recovery mechanisms embedded in many of our contracts. However, these recovery mechanisms can experience lags due to contractual terms. We are proactively addressing the inflation and working on initiatives to offset it. On April ninth, we announced a $60 per ton price increase for bleached cup stock, effective May eighth. While this price increase will be realized in Q2 for non-index-based paperboard sales, most of our affected contracts require price recognition by the industry's third-party index before we can pass it through our packaging business. Looking ahead to second quarter. From a volume standpoint, our expectation for Q2 is consistent with our full year range of down 1% to up 1%.

We see pricing similar to Q1 and expect foreign exchange to be a slight benefit. With adjusted EBITDA, we anticipate certain commodity costs to stay elevated in Q2 before moderating towards the end of the year. Accordingly, we estimate a sequential $10 million incremental inflationary impact in the second quarter versus the first quarter, totaling $30 million of incremental inflation in the first half of 2026 compared to our original expectations. Q2 adjusted EBITDA is now expected to be in the range of $230 million-$250 million. We are reaffirming 2026 guidance. The many initiatives that we laid out today, in addition to the contractual recovery mechanisms to be realized in the second half of the year and our pricing actions, are expected to help offset the incremental inflationary impacts throughout the remainder of the year.

As a result of these efforts, we remain confident in our ability to deliver 2026 adjusted EBITDA in the range of $1.05 billion-$1.25 billion, in line with our prior guidance. Our 2026 adjusted free cash flow outlook remains unchanged in the range of $700 million-$800 million, a significant step-up from 2025. Cash flow generation is back-end weighted, consistent with the seasonality of our business, timing of capital expenditures, and timing of inflationary cost recovery. We intend to pay down approximately $500 million of debt in 2026 and remain committed to our dividend. We understand that our dividend is important to many of our shareholders and also reflects the confidence that we have in the future cash flows of the business.

Capital expenditures in 2026 are expected to be approximately $450 million. As a result of our completed 90-day review, we identified certain projects and investments that no longer align with our operational priorities. We canceled them. One of these projects, the automated roll warehouses at Texarkana and Kalamazoo, resulted in a one-time, primarily non-cash write-off of approximately $40 million. Importantly, this decision avoids approximately $200 million of capital spending over the next few years and is a prudent move given the project no longer yields the original return thresholds since we will be operating with less inventory. In conclusion, we're moving out of a heavy investment cycle to a cash harvesting cycle. This is an exciting and much anticipated next phase.

The past few years have been characterized as building years, with capital investments and acquisitions made to differentiate our packaging and service offerings in the marketplace and position the company for long-term growth. We are focused on optimizing our footprint and operations, executing disciplined capital allocation, expanding profitability in the business, and to my prior point, delivering the free cash flow we committed to. 2026 will be a foundational year for Graphic Packaging. We are excited about what our future holds. With that, I will turn it back to Robbert.

Thank you, Chuck. To conclude, we see a clear line of sight to long-term value creation, supported by the value we are generating from our near-term strategic priorities. Our confidence is grounded not in aspiration, but in a clear path to execution and operational excellence. We look forward to taking your questions and continued engagement to hear your perspectives as we continue to enhance and streamline the business. Let me take this opportunity to thank our dedicated team around the world for their hard work in delivering a strong start to 2026. With that, operator, let's open it up for questions.

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue, and you may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. We do ask that during the question and answer session, you try and limit yourself to one question plus one follow-up in the interest of time. one moment please while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question today is coming from Ghansham Panjabi with Baird. Your line is live.

Yeah, thank you, operator. First off, welcome back, Melanie. We look forward to working with you. I guess, you know, first off on the heat map on slide five, you know, can you just touch on if you're actually seeing any sort of inflection in food or is it just, you know, easy comparisons from several quarters of just minimal growth? Just trying to get a sense as to what you're seeing in that market specific to that category, which has been weak for several years at this point. Then second, as it relates to the realigned commercial teams, can you just give us a bit more insight into what's going on there? Thank you.

Thank you, Ghansham. Thanks for welcoming Melanie back. We're very happy to have you back, Melanie. With regards to your first question on food, let me just reflect on the macro environment for a second, and I'll zoom in on food. What we're hearing from our customers continues to be a focus on growth, gaining share, investing in product quality that specifically applies to food and value perception, pack size, pricing, promotions. There is an increased emphasis on overall across the categories on price pack architecture as well as novel pack designs and obviously a localized, reliable supply chain. The consumer environment of which food is a part remains very value-driven, there is a focus on affordability.

We are seeing stable demand signals, Ghansham, with certain pockets of strength, and we're seeing select growth across larger customers and key segments, particularly in what we call everyday essentials. You know, food is performing rather well with strength, particularly in protein-driven categories like yogurt, bars, refrigerated meals, and that really reflects underlying consumption trends. If you look at some of the other categories like health and beauty, that's performing well as consumers continue to prioritize, you know, small indulgences like skincare and perfume. Beverages is stable, and food service was a little slow, you know, due to the weather and consumer affordability trends, but is expected to gain momentum throughout the year. That's, that's how we see food as part of the broader macro environment.

With regards to the realigned commercial organization, we are seeing a big need to serve our customers better, both at the national level, in some cases international level, where we see more and more procurement teams centralized in locations like Switzerland or the Netherlands or even Ireland. So we are organized now in a way where we can serve both the global procurement organizations of our large CPG customers as well as domestic customers with a slightly enhanced organization. And we feel very good about the leadership we put in place under Jean-François Roche, who is really doing a great job in getting me in front of customers as well. I've met six global customers across different geographies in the fist quarter and the last month as well.

That's really given me a good perspective on how our commercial organization is now organized and how well we're serving customers.

Okay, thanks for that. Then just for my follow-up question on the EBITDA reconciliation in the press release, what is the $71 million add back specific to the first quarter of 2026? You know, it's just quite a bit higher than the first quarter of last year. Then just to clarify, as it relates to the commodity cost comment, are you expecting a sequential moderation in commodity costs? Is that what you're assuming in that $30 million incremental, you know, impact in the first half? What would that number be comparable in the second half? Thank you.

Hey, Ghansham, this is Chuck. I'll take those. On the, what we have in the special charges bucket, I mentioned on the prepared remarks, the $40 million from the automated roll warehouse write-off. That was the biggest component of it. We also had severance from the actions that we took, that we talked about in the quarter. That's about $20 million. For the Croatia business that we're divesting, we had about a $13 million write-off of assets, and that's primarily for intangibles that we had acquired with that AR Packaging acquisition. Those components are the majority of what you see in the quarter.

On the inflation, what we called out is $10 million of incremental inflation in Q1, $10 million incremental to that in Q2, for a total of $30 million versus our original expectations in the first half. At this point, we see about the same number, about $60 million-$65 million of incremental inflation for the full year. That environment, of course, remains very fluid and dynamic, changes every day. What you see us doing is pulling several levers to offset that inflation. We talked about on the call the contractual recoveries and passthroughs, that'll account for about a third of it. Talked about the cup stock price increase, we're further evaluating some packaging price increases. As Robbert mentioned, we're looking at other cost savings, procurement initiatives to provide a further buffer.

With all of those offsets, we're confident that we can neutralize the inflationary impact that we see.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Mark Weintraub with Seaport Research.

Thanks very much. Hey, Chuck, just one, just a point of confusion for me. I think that 71, that was on adjusted EBITDA. Was the warehouse in Croatia, were those not non-cash write-downs primarily? Maybe if you could just clarify for us.

The Yeah, it's primarily non-cash, but just in the add back to get to the, you know, effectively the number. The EBITDA is of course an all-in number. It does include depreciation and amortization, but it does include non-cash charges before you adjust for them.

Okay. Second, I know you were kinda answering this in Ghansham's question as well. Basically you have about $200 million of improvement in the second half of the year to the first half of the year. If you'd be willing, would you kinda share in terms of the way you provide those buckets, volume, price, you know, the big drivers, where the majority of that $200 would be showing up?

Yeah, happy to do that. Broadly, we see the year playing out similar to what we laid out in the original year-end call, other than the inflationary impact that I already talked about. If you look at first half to second half, as you mentioned, there's a step up second half versus first half. Think about a few things. First of all, our first half includes several unfavorable items, as we talked about the January weather that caused facilities downtime that we don't expect to recur in the second half. Second, our first half has a larger unfavorable impact from several items, including scheduled higher maintenance and then also the market downtime that we're taking to lower inventory levels is higher in the first half.

Finally, the second half has a bigger impact from some of the positive items that we're seeing. For example, we mentioned the contractual cost recoveries, the packaging price initiatives, and some of the procurement and other cost savings initiatives. Several moving parts, but of course with our current expectations for inflation, we are confident that we'll be able to hit our full year EBITDA guidance.

Okay. Super. I mean, any chance of getting a little bit more granular? I think you talked about weather being $25 in the first quarter. I think on the last quarter's call you roughly downtime would be about $50 million, inventory-related downtime about $50 million lower. Are those numbers about right? If So if we're kinda left with like $125 in the drivers you were providing and kind of just round numbers to where they might come from. It's not understood, but just trying to get a bit more granular.

Yeah. I'll just give you a couple more nuggets, and then we can talk more offline. The phasing of the cost savings, so we called out $10 million in Q1. It'll pick up a little bit in Q2, the majority of that will be back-end loaded. You mentioned the downtime. That of course is something that we'll be taking more market downtime in the first half than the second half. We can work through it more offline.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Hillary Cacanando with Deutsche Bank. Your line is live.

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Just the breakdown that you were talking about to get to your guidance, last quarter, you actually had guided to a $100 million incentive compensation impact for 2026, and I didn't see that in today's presentation. Is that included anywhere? Maybe in like net performance in the first quarter, and what type, you know, what phasing should we expect for incentive compensation through the year?

Yeah. That's all included within the original numbers that we had expected and all included in what we've reported. We didn't talk about it again. It is a year-over-year factor in net performance.

It's all included in the first quarter, you're not expecting any additional incentive comp this year for the remainder of the year?

Well, of course, it'll roll throughout the year. It's the Q1 impact that we had expected was recorded in Q1.

Okay. Then how much should we expect for the remaining, remainder of the year?

Again, we embedded about the $100 million in our full year guide.

Okay. Okay, got it. Just on pricing, I know you had asked for, you know, price increase. Does that have to go? Is RISI involved in this, or do you have it pretty set? Like, is it just between you and the customer, or is RISI involved? Like, is it like, is it gonna depend on what they come up with final, you know, you know, in terms of like what the final number will be or if there will actually be an increase?

Yeah, a couple of components of our price. Specifically what I talked about in cup stock paperboard price, and that is something that will impact our open market business more quickly than it would pass through our food service packaging business. That will be once RISI recognizes it and then whatever the contractual period is, but before it starts getting reflected. That is on that side. On the other packaging, price increases, those would go into effect in our, let's say, around $1 billion of revenue that we have that's not under direct pricing contract.

Okay. Got it. Great. Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Arun Viswanathan with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is live.

Thanks for taking my question. I guess maybe I can just clarify, you know, maybe the walk on free cash flow. It looks like you have kinda harvested some out of working capital and inventory, but does that maybe reverse as you take some downtime? Maybe next year also, would you have to kind of rebuild those inventories? Do you expect kind of less contribution from working capital? Just related to that point, just kinda curious if you still expect kind of an $80 million uplift from Waco, and is that being offset by maybe some downtime at Kalamazoo? Thanks.

I'll start with the last part. First of all, on Waco, what we're seeing there is the business case for Waco is indeed playing out in terms of the variable cost. The benefits we haven't kept recommitted to the specific benefits number because until we're able to cover the fixed cost with the volume that we need, then that's when you'll see the additional impact of the fixed cost. As Robbert talked about on the call, the operations are running well, the ramp-up is going well, and everything is overall is going very well. In terms of the first part of your question, the inventory will not be rebuilt in next year.

As we've talked about, or as Robbert mentioned, we expect to get a 17% to 18% of inventory or inventories percentage of sales this year on our way towards a longer-term target of 15% to 16%. We will continue to see some working capital benefit next year from lower inventory. Also 2027, if you think about 2027's cash flow, that will continue to benefit from lower cash taxes and then, of course, lower interest expense. Some of the items will come back. As we talked about at the year-end call, we still see the post 2027 free cash flow number of $700 million plus.

Thanks for that. Then if I could ask on supply-demand. Obviously there's been some changes in SBS. Our understanding is, I guess, that, you know, may not necessarily have the impact as to reduce supply to tighten up that market enough to get pricing power. Would you agree with that? Are you still kind of facing some pricing headwinds in SBS? Is that weighing on CUK and CRB as well? Maybe you can just comment on, you know, kind of potential pricing in those across the different substrates to cover inflation. Thanks.

Yeah, let me take that question. You know, with regards to the paper board grades, you know, the 2 grades that really matter most to us, as you know, are recycled and unbleached because that's what we primarily use. Both of those markets are in good balance. With regards to the cross-category dynamics, we're not necessarily seeing a lot of impact of bleached on recycled with regards to cannibalization. We're not seeing recycled lose volume to bleached, but it does have to respond to price competition. Switching is rare. With our new PaceSetter Rainier grade, that matches bleached printability, but it's a 100% recycled and cheaper to make. We continue to believe that PaceSetter Rainier will take volume from bleached over time.

When it comes to, you know, the balancing of supply and demand, you know, I just wanna remind you that we closed Tama in Iowa, which was a CRB mill, in 2023. We decommissioned our K3 machine in Kalamazoo in 2023, and we closed Middletown, Ohio, which was a CRB mill, in 2025. We closed East Angus in Quebec in 2025 and 2026, and we sold the Augusta Mill, as you know. Bleached, you know, continues to be oversupplied, but accounts for the smallest part of our business. We have been very proactive in our approach to supply, whilst others have added capacity, as you know. What we do here is we actively match our internal supply with our demand profile, and that's supported by our integrated system. Our portfolio, as a result, is structurally advantaged.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Anthony Pettinari with Citi. Your line is live.

Good morning. Just following up on, I think Hillary Cacanando's question. If you look at your total tonnage, is it possible to say what % is on a RISI index versus, like, a custom index? Maybe what the lag is in terms of price increases, you know, if it's realized in RISI versus, you know, you see it in your in a custom index. Then how much of your volumes would be covered by that cup stock price increase that you talked about earlier?

Yeah, this is Chuck. I'll take that. In our bleach business, we have more of our packaging tied to RISI than we do in our other models. The majority of our packaging volume is indeed tied to RISI. That's for the cup stock business, a couple hundred thousand tons and generally would be recognized in price three to six months after it's recognized by RISI, depending on the timing during the quarter that it's recognized by RISI.

Yeah, we don't disclose exact details around the percentage of our contracts that are tied to RISI. Chuck did refer to the $1 billion of non-contractual sales. We do have a cupstock business as well, where we sell a big part of that on the external market. That, you know, that should answer your question.

Got it. Got it. I guess, you know, fiber is up, diesel is up. You've indicated that you're not seeing big cannibalization of SBS into CRB. I mean, obviously you can't talk about, you know, forward pricing or anything like that, but can you just talk about maybe your philosophy on pricing? You know, do you expect Graphic to be a price leader? How do you think about it? You know, we've seen price improvement in other, you know, container board, Graphic paper grades this year. Can you just talk to us kinda how you think about pricing generally?

Yeah, you know, the majority of our business is converted finished product packaging. And the majority of that is either a recycled, you know, or bleached. Unbleached, sorry. We are not necessarily spending our entire day thinking about paperboard pricing at Graphic. We continue to focus on customer service, operational excellence, and taking share and growing our business by delivering better products, better finished products, which are, you know, essentially converted finished packages. That is how we think about pricing.

Okay. That's very helpful. I'll turn it over.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Philip Ng with Jefferies. Your line is live.

Hey, guys. Thanks for squeezing me in. Robbert, appreciate the 90-day post review. Volumes are up, that's great. You got some headwinds this year that you're gonna work through, but it sounds like destocking inventory could potentially still be a drag when we think about 2027. With some of the levers that you may have a better appreciation now, is there a path where you could grow EBITDA next year without prices going higher? I just wanna think through that just because obviously it's a big earnings reset this year.

Yeah, look, I just thank you for raising the 90-day review. I just wanna give a little bit of color on that, and then I'll talk a little bit about how it's all gonna impact EBITDA. We have concluded that review and, you know, confirmed that, you know, we have a strong foundation, an opportunity to drive better financial and operational performance, as we talked. We've taken 500 roles out of the organization. As Chuck talked about, that's gonna primarily impact the second half of this year. We are advancing some of these capital efficiency initiatives where we're prioritizing higher return opportunities. We've reorganized the commercial team. We've deployed AI.

You know, we are very confident that the work we're doing is going to allow us to deliver on the cost reduction commitment that we have, which is $60 million. There is some inflation. As you know, we have mitigation actions in place, which include contractual cost recovery mechanisms. Those have some timing lags. There's some targeted price actions in the non-contractual business that we just discussed. We just announced a recent price increase on cupstock and primarily cost reductions and operational efficiency actions. With that and the fact that we're taking obviously an EBITDA hit this year to reduce our inventory, and we are resetting the base because we're reinvesting in incentives for our associates, that's the walk that Chuck talked us through.

You know, we will continue to rely on productivity and category growth and share growth to drive top line and therefore, EBITDA.

Okay. It sounds like you feel like you got enough levers to grow next year from an EBITDA standpoint, Robbert?

Well, we are not giving guidance for next year at this point. It's early. We're still early days in 2026. Give us a couple of months to get a better understanding. We're doing all the right things and the right work to set ourselves up for a great 2027.

Fair enough. A question for Chuck. Your guidance, you reiterated, which is encouraging. Certainly, you're seeing some inflation here. Your guidance, does that embed the SBS cup stock sticking? You know, granted there is a lag, so I don't know how impactful it's gonna be. Some of the packaging price increases that are not tied to RISI some of these contracts. You know, is it embedded that you get price? I ask just because in your prepared remarks, you mentioned, you've seen some unusual price declines in packaging prices, right? Not necessarily tied to SBS, but some of the other grades. Have you seen that component, like, stabilize? Like, what are you seeing on some of that packaging price in the last few months?

Yeah. A couple of things there. We don't embed anticipated RISI moves until they are announced. Any impact of that on our contracts from a RISI move would not be reflected. We will embed what we see in the open market business of course. From time to time, we would embed packaging prices, but right now we're still working through exactly the size of all of that. We'll embed that as we go. That's the that's what we see on the price.

Have you seen a stabilization there, Chuck, on the packaging price? What you've said that it's been an unusual coming of the year.

Yeah. What we see there is our customers, whenever there's geopolitical uncertainty, that the assurance of supplier becomes a bigger deal to our customers. They talk about local supply and our integrated model really sells well to them. It certainly gives us the opportunity to stop any negative trends or to introduce the idea of a packaging price.

Thank you. Our final question today will be coming from Gabe Hajde with Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is live.

Hey, Robbert and Chuck. Good morning. I'm curious if we can go back to the cup stock announcement. I find it interesting, I think in the slide that you gave us, it's the one category that decelerated. It was pretty strong over the last two quarters. I guess, is there something unique about that supply-demand dynamic in cup stock that would afford you all to the industry to get price? Maybe something unique about the input cost structure that makes it such that you can recover costs faster than maybe some of the other, you know, the other two grades you participate in?

Yeah. On the, there is a higher input cost, of course, that cup stock is barrier-coated with resin, and so there's an impact when you see resin prices increase. Yes, a higher input cost. Cup stock has historically been a strong grade for us and have not had a lot of excess capacity.

Okay. As you have conversations with your customers, I mean, you guys are trying to reduce inventories. Maybe they were looking around the corner at oil above 100, saying we might envision some price increases. Do your sales folks envision any sort of pre-buying activity that happened in the summer? one last on CapEx. It sounds like the entire $200 million that you called out is specifically associated with that 1 discrete or those two discrete winder projects. I seem to remember there were some, I guess, greenhouse gas initiatives later in the decade, and it seems pretty hard right now to get some projects still on the drawing board.

Yeah, let me Gabe, let me take the one around customers, and then you can talk, Chuck, about how we got to the $200 million capital investment reduction and what that entails, if that's one project or more projects. We are having a lot of conversations with our customers regarding surety of supply or assurance of supply. That's primarily related to having multiple sites producing their packaging so that they're not relying on one site in case of a natural disaster, more so than anything related to oil and gas right now. You know, as Chuck said, they do really value our integrated business model.

The customers, they want value. They wanna balance cost. They wanna see the best performance, especially in our beverage sector. You know, you need certain properties in the packaging. They want sustainability. Most recently, there's more and more discussion around assurance of supply, as I discussed. They are focused on cost efficiency, and they're looking for ways to optimize packaging formats, reduce material usage, and improve cost. Those are most of the things we're seeing, Gabe.

Gabe, I'll build on the CapEx. The $200 million that we called out, that was those two projects specifically, but that was over the next several years that that $200 million would come out, not primarily this year. The $450 million is the number that we had originally guided to for this year. Clearly, we've gone in and shored up our path to get there, and we'll continue to look for opportunities to even cut further.

Graphic Packaging Holding (GPK) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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