Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to CCL Industries Fourth Quarter Investor Update. Please note that there will be a question-and-answer session after the call. The moderator for today is Mr. Geoff Martin,
President and Chief Executive Officer, and joining him is Mr. Sean Washchuk, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, gentlemen.
Good morning, everyone. It's Sean Washchuk here. I'll draw your attention to page two, our disclaimer regarding forward-looking information. I'll remind everyone that our business faces known and unknown risks and opportunities. For further details of these key risks, please take a look at our 2019 and now 2020 annual MD&A under the section Risks and Uncertainties. Our annual and quarterly reports can be found online at the company's website, cclind.com or on sedar.com. Geoff ?
Thank you, Sean, and good morning, everybody. We're announcing our 2020 results today. Tremendous year given COVID, and I thought you might like a few facts about what happened to our employees during the course of the year. We've taken a lot of time and effort, and energy to keep safe all the way through the pandemic. We have a little over 22,000 employees in 191 locations in 42 countries. During the course of the pandemic, around just less than 2,000 or about 10% of those have been working from home. The rest have been work every day at our factories as an essential business. We've had about 650 positive cases during the pandemic. Currently, there's about 72 of those still positive and 53 are currently at their homes in quarantine. We have had two fatalities.
Neither of them caused by presence at work, both infected at their homes, one in the U.S. and one in Mexico. We're, of course, very sad about that, but very grateful for all the herculean efforts by our employees around the world, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them. I'm going to hand you back to Sean, who will take you through the numbers.
Thanks, Geoff. Turning to slide three. For the fourth quarter of 2020, sales increased 5.7%, including the almost half a percent of positive impact from currency translation, 2.8% acquisition-related sales growth, and a consolidated organic growth rate of 2.5%, resulting in sales of CAD 1.35 billion compared to CAD 1.28 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019. Operating income increased 22.3%, excluding currency translation, to CAD 213.3 million for the fourth quarter of 2020, compared to CAD 173.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2019. Geoff will expand on the segmented results of our CCL, Avery, Checkpoint, and Innovia segments momentarily. Corporate expenses for the 2020 fourth quarter were CAD 16.4 million compared to CAD 2.6 million for the 2019 fourth quarter. The increase in the corporate expenses is primarily attributable to a clawback of variable compensation accruals in the 2019 fourth quarter that reduced corporate costs.
Consolidated EBITDA for the 2020 fourth quarter, excluding the impact of foreign currency translation, increased 11.2% compared to the same period in 2019. Net finance expense was CAD 15.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2020, compared to CAD 18.9 million for the 2019 fourth quarter. The decrease in net finance costs is primarily attributable to lower average debt outstanding for the comparative quarters. The overall effective tax rate was 19% for the 2020 fourth quarter, less than the 22.8% effective tax rate reported for the fourth quarter of 2019.
The decline in comparative fourth quarter effective tax rates can be attributed to the utilization of a previously unrecognized deferred tax asset subsequent to some tax restructuring we did in our German subsidiaries. Net earnings for the 2020 fourth quarter was CAD 145.9 million, up excluding the impact of foreign currency translation from CAD 104.4 million from the 2019 fourth quarter.
For the year ended December 31st, 2020, sales declined 1.8%, operating income improved 4.3%, and net earnings increased 10.7% compared to 2019. 2020 included the results from 15 acquisitions completed since January 1st, 2019, delivering acquisition-related sales growth of 2.1% on organic sales decline of 3.9% and a foreign currency translation tailwind of 0.3% on sales. Moving to slide four. Basic earnings per Class B share increased 37.3% to CAD 0.81 for the fourth quarter of 2020, compared to CAD 0.59 for the fourth quarter of 2019. Net loss from restructuring and other items amounted to CAD 0.03 for the 2020 fourth quarter, compared to CAD 0.08 for the 2019 fourth quarter.
Restructuring and other costs in the 2020 fourth quarter were primarily for reorganization and severance costs associated with our Checkpoint segment. Adjusted basic earnings per Class B share were CAD 0.84, up 25.4%, compared to adjusted basic earnings per Class B share of CAD 0.67 for the fourth quarter of 2019. The increase in adjusted basic EPS to CAD 0.84 is primarily attributable to an increase in operating income resulting in CAD 0.17 per share. The decline in quarterly effective tax rate adding CAD 0.04, and a reduction in net interest expense, and an increase in joint venture income, each accounting for CAD 0.01, partially offset by an increase in corporate costs, reducing EPS by CAD 0.06.
For the year ended December 31st, 2020, the CAD 0.29 improvement in adjusted basic earnings per Class B share was principally attributable to increased operating income adding CAD 0.13, reduced net interest expense adding CAD 0.07, and a decline in effective tax rate adding CAD 0.05. This resulted in record annual adjusted basic earnings per Class B share of CAD 3.08 for the 2020 year, compared to CAD 2.79 for the 2019 year. Moving to slide five. For the fourth quarter of 2020, free cash flow from operations improved to CAD 255 million compared to CAD 242 million in the 2019 fourth quarter. The improvement can be attributed primarily to increased operating income for the company. For the year ended December 31st, 2020, free cash flow from operations was a record CAD 616 million, compared to the prior year of CAD 444 million.
The comparative improvement is attributable to improved income for the company, a change in working capital, and reduced capital expenditures for the comparative years. Moving to slide six. Net debt as at December 31, 2020 was CAD 1.39 billion, a decrease of approximately CAD 225.3 million compared to December 31, 2019. This decrease is primarily a result of the record free cash flow for the 2020 year. The company's balance sheet closed the quarter in strong position. Our balance sheet leverage ratio was 1.24 x, declining from 1.61 x at the end of December 2019. Liquidity was robust, with almost CAD 704 million of cash on hand and CAD 1.2 billion of available undrawn credit capacity in the company's revolving bank credit facility. Furthermore, the company does not have any significant debt maturities until 2022.
The company's overall finance rate was 2.29% at December 31, 2020, lower than the approximate 2.35% average finance rate at December 31, 2019. This was a result of a decrease in rates on our variable drawn debt. The company's balance sheet is well positioned to start the 2021 year. Geoff ?
Thank you, Sean, and good morning again, everybody. I'm on slide seven, highlights of capital spending for the year. We curtailed our project plan for the year somewhat. We'd originally budgeted CAD 350 million or thereabout, and we came in at CAD 266 million net of some disposals. Excludes right-of-use assets and depreciation thereof for the IFRS 16 lease treatment. We had CAD 330 million planned for 2021. I would say it'll be at least CAD 330 million.
May drift a little higher than that, depending on how the year unfolds and how much capacity we need to keep up with demand in a recovering economy. Page eight, highlights for CCL. It was a very good quarter, 7.4% organic sales growth. Up double digit in the Americas. That's low double digits in North America and up over 20% in Latin America, and up low single digits in Asia. Very mixed there.
Europe is up slightly. Real Asia, so China and the ASEAN countries, up in mid-single digits, and Australia and South Africa down low double digits. All sectors post increased sales, and we had excellent profitability changes in CCL Design, Food & Beverage, Healthcare & Specialty, and CCL Secure. Our Home & Personal Care profits were down slightly on capacity building costs for aluminum and slugs for our container business, and we had lower results in Asia. Profitability for 2020 improved in all sectors except Food & Beverage, but it was only a slight lag there in that particular part of the company, and really all caused by the impact of on-premise and travel-related channels for key customers in that space. Moving to slide nine. It's our highlights for our joint ventures here. The only consolidator in this income line.
We have two labeled joint ventures in here, one in Russia and one in the Middle East. The one in Russia has had to deal with the decline of the value of the ruble, which has moved from 45 to 60 in the year 2020. That's impacted the sales line, because we saw very strong organic growth in Russia, 24% in Q4 and 12% for the year 2020. As you can see on the earnings line, we've had a very good period of time here. We're very pleased with the results in these two businesses. Moving on to Avery. Another good improved quarter. If you look at the quarterly progress during the course of the year, we started 2020 in the first quarter up 1% in revenue.
Q2, we dropped 30% as the pandemic hit. Q3 we were down 16%, fourth quarter we were down 11.8%. We are seeing a slow gradual recovery in this space as the world begins to return to normal. Credit consumer strength in labels more than offset steep declines in badges. The declines in the badge business is still a significant headwind for us and probably will continue to be so for the first half. Organization products, that's two most important, the binders and indexes, are still down on workplace closures. The printable media business of mainly labels for imprinting has been improving, especially in the U.S., but also internationally. We are seeing gradual improvement in Avery, which we're pleased to see. Slide 11, Checkpoint.
Checkpoint's year was started off in Q1 this year, down 10% as the apparel industry really began its pandemic affected period in January of this year-- Of last year, sorry, in 2020. We were down 33% in Q2, down 8% in Q3 and down just less than 3% or around 3.1% in Q4. In the second half of the year, our profits moved above the prior year periods. We're seeing a good recovery there, particularly with our sales to retailers who are in the essential category versus in the discretionary category. We had record results in our apparel label business, boosted by robust RFID performance. Our MAS sales were down in hardware, but held up nicely in labels and tags, which aided our mix and cost savings initiatives that Sean talked about earlier, augmented results. Moving on to Innovia. Another strong quarter here.
Innovia's really had a banner year quarter by quarter, and we've had a slow period in the summer months, but we've had very strong Q2 and a very strong Q4, and profits have really followed that, really driven by improved mix cost savings and much better asset utilization. Resins have been increasing dramatically. They've actually doubled in North America and have been really quite seriously impacted by the storms you've all been reading about in the newspapers. We'll give you some more commentary about that in the outlook section. Page 13, a few comments for the first quarter and how things look. The start to the year has been good so far, despite lockdowns in many countries. As I indicated, Avery remains below prior year, but the gap, I think, will continue to close in Q1.
Checkpoint is now moving ahead of prior year levels, bearing in mind we were down 10% in the corresponding quarter last year. We expect the CCL segment to progress in the first half. The first half last year of CCL, we were flat in Q1, down 6% in Q2, and our profits were pretty much flat in the first half. We'd expect to do better than that this year. The second half of the year, we were up 26% in profits. Little bit of a hurdle we'll have to overcome in the second half of the year. We are seeing commodities beginning to rise, as I mentioned, in some cases rapidly. We do have some supply shortages in certain areas, chips, which you've been reading about for RFID in the newspapers. We're slightly concerned about that.
The impact of the storms in Texas on a couple of our operations that need LPG gas supply from the energy production sources down there. The fact that 75% of the resin-making capacity in North America has really been closed down for 10 or 15 days. That's causing us some short-term problems and will likely affect Innovia in particularly in the first quarter of the year. We expect FX to be nominal or moving to a slight headwind, depending on what happens with the US dollar, Canadian dollar rate. US dollar is a drag, but other foreign currencies are a win. We'll see how that pans out. With that operator, we'd like to open the call for questions.
Your first question comes from the line of Mark Neville with Scotiabank. Your line is open.
Hey, Geoff , Sean. Good morning, guys.
Morning, Mark.
Maybe just to follow up the conversation on some of the commodities. When I think about your business, again, I think it's obvious the exposure to Innovia. I guess I'm thinking about CCL segment and some of the other business, and just maybe talk about the commodity exposure. I think historically, you've done a great job of sort of managing some volatility, but maybe just kind of get a sense for how material the impact you think could be. Yeah, thanks.
Yeah, I think you've called it out right, Mark. I think the one to be concerned about is Innovia. Specifically, it's all happened in North America, so the impact will be more there than it will be in Europe and Asia. Because that's where we've seen the spike in inflation. The rest of it's really about LPG supply down into Mexico, which also impacts Innovia and has impacted our cans business in terms of its ability to produce. They're the two impacts we're seeing. I don't see much commodity risk in the other parts of the company that couldn't easily be managed.
Sure. Okay. The comments you made about CapEx that were interesting. I'm just curious, two parts to the question. First, if there's any parts of the business now where you're capacity constrained. I guess the second part, excuse me, when you think about a reopening, is there any parts of your business you think that are obvious that maybe face some headwinds? I think about hand sanitizer. I don't think that actually goes away. I'm just curious if you think there's any parts of the business that face obvious challenges as we reopen.
Well, I think the parts that have done well will probably recede, and the parts that have been badly affected will come back. I think it's the scale, really. We'd expect Avery and Checkpoint, which are the two businesses that have been most affected by the pandemic, to recover quite significantly and quite quickly in the year ahead. Businesses that have been on a tear because of the restrictions. We've had a very good year with sanitizers, and I think some of that won't go away. I think you're right about that, but probably the levels of demand will probably recede. Some of our businesses are focused on products for home improvement.
Whether that will recede or not later in the year as travel opens up and people spend less money at home and more money on more discretionary things, only time will tell. I think the things that are coming back will outweigh the things that are likely to recede, in my opinion.
Okay. Thanks. I'll pass the line. Good quarter, and good job to you.
Thank you.
Next question comes from the line of Stephen MacLeod with BMO Capital Markets. Line is open.
Thank you. Good morning, guys.
Hey, Stephen.
I just wanted to turn quickly to the CCL segment. You gave some comments for the first quarter, expected to progress. Can you give a little bit of color around maybe some segment-specific performance and how that has been different or varied based on lockdowns around the world?
I don't think it's been a lot different to how it was in the second half of the year so far in the quarter. Things that were doing well in the second half of the year are still doing well. That's kind of what we see. We haven't seen any change in trend since the second half of last year. Q3 and Q4 were both good in the CCL segment space, and those trends have continued so far in Q1.
Okay. That's great. Just turning back to resins, the Innovia business, you did a lot of work sort of changing the contract structures to pass through resin inflation. Can you talk a little bit about sort of what you see in terms of that business's ability to manage this current period of resin inflation and what that might do to margins?
Well, they have pass-through mechanisms, but if you get 100% inflation in the space of three months, it's pretty difficult.
We'll pass. It's really about timing, Steve. Some of our contracts have monthly pass-throughs, some of them are quarterly. The ones that are quarterly pass-throughs will be problematic. The ones that are monthly, we'll only have a 30-day lag. We've got some of them with 90-day lags. The inflation is pretty dramatic. I think we'll just have to work our way through it. I think once the resin cracking capacity comes back online, I think we'll see this quickly adjust. I mean, polypropylene is at all-time highs. It's never been higher in its history. A combination of tight capacity and then the storm has just made life very difficult. I think we've done a good job of organizing the pass-throughs. Like I say, there's always a lag between getting the prices put through and then moving on from there.
I think there will be an impact in Q1, on top of the fact that we haven't been able to run the plant properly because of availability of LPG from Texas.
Okay. That's helpful. Maybe just turning to the Avery business. You talked about recovery through the year, which has been impressive as things have rebounded. Would you expect maybe the full year to be up year-over-year in Avery?
Yes.
W hat we're seeing now, Stephen, Australia is one country where we can see an impact because Australia, life is relatively normal down there compared to many other parts of the world. It's a domestic business, and we're not dependent on travel there. We've seen a very, very strong start to the year down there as life's currently more or less operating normally. Obviously, in the first half of the year, the comps are very easy. If we have a good back-to-school , we didn't have a good back-to-school this year, it's not difficult to see how Avery could bounce back pretty quickly as the economy opens up.
Okay. That's great. Thanks, Geoff . Thanks, Sean.
Thanks.
Next question comes from Walter Spracklin of RBC Capital Markets.
Thanks very much, operator. Good morning, Geoff . Good morning, Sean. Geoff, you pointed to a fairly big variance in your organic sales growth by region in the CCL division. Can you speak a little bit to why the big variance and also comment on CCL Secure? Would you say these are still cash hoarding going on, or is that more normalized now here in the fourth quarter?
I would say the regional call-outs pretty much what you'd hear from our customers too. If you talk to the consumer products industry, they've all seen very strong numbers in the U.S., not such strong numbers in Europe, strong numbers in Latin America, and sort of in-between in Asia. Asia is really a mix between what's going on in China and what's going on in the ASEAN countries, where the lockdowns are pretty extreme. I think the results we see there pretty much follow the same trends you see from the big consumer products groups. CCL Secure had another strong quarter in Q4. We see no end in sight to growth of cash continuing.
We'll have some tough comps in the second half of next year, but the first half of the year, I think we'll be in good shape, and so we're still pleased to see how things are going there.
Okay. CCL was up mid-single digit in the second half, as you mentioned, and you said that's going to continue here in the first half. Comps are fairly, obviously meaningfully easier in the first half. Is mid-single digit higher than mid-single digit for you, sir?
Could be. We'll have to see. It could be.
Okay. That's all my questions. Thank you.
No problem.
Next question comes from Adam Josephson of KeyBanc.
Geoff and Sean, good morning.
Morning, Adam.
Good to talk to you both. Couple questions just about the comps as you see them for this year. Last year was quite an odd year, obviously, in many ways. Your organic sales were down four, but your earnings growth was the best it's been in three years. Your margins were near record. You actually had really quite a good earnings year, despite sales being down four. How difficult or easy do you think the earnings comp is in 21?
I think you have to bear in mind, Adam, Checkpoint and Avery are two of our more profitable businesses, and we expect both of those to come back quite strongly this year. I don't think the earnings comp is that difficult, really. It's more difficult in the CCL segment in the second half because we had 25%, 26% increases in both Q3 and Q4. In Q4 last year, in 2019, it was a soft quarter. If you look at it over a longer period of time, it's really not that difficult. We do expect our Food & Beverage business, which has been difficult all the way through the pandemic because of the impact of that on-premise trade restriction. Once bars and restaurants open up again, we expect that business to recover quite quickly. That's another one that could bounce back.
I don't feel that we've got difficult earnings comparisons.
Got it. Thanks for that, Geoff . One on CCL organic growth outlook. Somewhat remarkably, it was up as much last year as it was the year before. I know 2019 was a global slowdown, but one would think that 2020 would've been worse than 2019 in terms of CCL organic growth. It wasn't. It was identical.
Yeah.
In light of that, how are you thinking about 2021 organic growth in CCL? Do you think the last 2 years were quite depressed and therefore 2021 should be much better than the past years? How are you thinking about that issue?
Yeah, I think we had 1.1% organic growth in both of those years. I think we have to remember about the pandemic year, we have had the healthcare boom excess sales of over-the-counter medicine. The CCL Design, the IT peripheral phenomena was another very good tailwind. I think that offset the things that were down, Food & Beverage, parts of the Home & Personal Care business, high-end cosmetics and things like that.
We had sort of balance in the portfolio. If you look at what happened in the last two years' slowdowns, the same thing happened. We slowed right down to flat or up a little or even down a little. I expect our organic growth rate, if the economy recovers, to go back to its normal previous run rate, 3%-5%, something like that.
Right. Got it, Geoff . Just two more. One on the Innovia margin. They were the highest they've been. Obviously, you had a tremendous year there, 20.5% EBITDA margins.
I'm trying to remember what the margins were when you announced the deal. How do you think about the margins you earned last year, just in the context of what you think normalized margins should be for that business as you see it now?
I think the industry had a record year. The supply was tight in some parts of the world. We were fortunate to be in places where we could supply from. We didn't have any plant closures. We did a lot of operational work. I think a lot of the improvements in the results of that business came from a lot of operational turnaround-type activity. Pruning the mix. We had some, particularly in the former Treofan businesses, we had some bad mix to prune out. That also helped because it got replaced by things that are fundamentally more profitable. It's hard to say. In the first quarter, I think we're going to have to deal with this situation in North America with this sort of incredible rise in resin.
It's the fastest it's ever happened in history, the highest level it's ever been in history. I think it's likely to recede as quickly as it started. The resin hit over CAD 1.20 per pound in the month of January, and I think it'll probably end up closer to CAD 1.30 by the time February's out. I wouldn't be surprised to see it drop CAD 0.50 or CAD 0.60 by the time the summer arrives. It's a short-term peak, really, and I don't expect to see it stay at these elevated levels for very long, and we'll just have to work our way through it.
Right. One last one, Geoff , on M&A. You had a comment in your release about being well-placed to fund your global ambition. Obviously, your balance sheet's in terrific shape. Asset prices globally are very high.
With all that in mind, how are you thinking about sizable M&A in the next year or so?
No change. It's difficult right now. Travel is still a real problem for us. We're able to get about a little bit now, but it's still pretty restricted. I think taking on anything in the near term, not likely, but valuations are still up there. We haven't found things that we'd like the prices of any time soon. There's a good level of activity in the bolt-ons, but large-scale M&A, nothing immediately on the horizon. I think that may change as the year progresses, and we're able to be a bit more aggressive about going and looking at things that we've been restricted from doing so throughout the pandemic.
Thanks so much, Geoff .
No problem.
Next question comes from the line of Michael Glen of Raymond James.
Hey, good morning. Just on Checkpoint, as we think about the merchandise availability solutions and security tags business ramping, is there incremental cost that comes back into Checkpoint for that business and that'll keep the margin, say, stable at these levels? Or should we think about the margin there potentially moving even higher?
The MAS hardware has a lower operating margin than the supply side. If we get more hardware orders, that hurts the mix. I think generally it improves the overall result because we've got people involved in that who are fixed cost. If we get some sales in that area comes back, which I expect, we're already starting to see it happen, it'll be an overall benefit. We did benefit certainly in the second half, Michael, from the mix, being more supplies based and being quite strong in what we would call essential retail, the Walmarts and Targets and supermarket chains, places like that, versus some more discretionary type retailers.
Okay. Just on Innovia, how do we think about the opportunity for M&A growth in that segment in particular? Do you see a wider M&A opportunity in Innovia versus some of the other businesses?
Well, we've made one acquisition last year. There's others in the pipeline. Whether any of them happen or not, time will tell.
Okay. The resin inflation, does that impact the CCL Secure margins?
No.
Tax rate for next year?
Geoff ?
Sure. Slightly less than 25%, maybe 24 and a half-ish.
Okay. Thanks, guys.
Your next question comes from the line of Daryl Young of TD Securities.
Good morning, guys.
Good morning, Daryl.
One quick one for you on Checkpoint. I think with respect to RFID and apparel labeling, last quarter, you mentioned the majority of the growth was just from the recovery and pent-up demand. Would you say that's still the same this quarter now that you've got record results again? Or would there be an element of a shift towards more RFID during the pandemic?
No, certainly in Q4. Q4, we continued to see the shift of our apparel label business grew about 7% in Q4. I think some of that is the rebound of the supply side of the retail and apparel supply chain, and some of it's RFID. It's a combination of the two.
Okay, great. On labels, we've heard some of the consumer package companies talk about taking share from the generics during the pandemic. Is that something you're seeing? Is that a trend that you think will continue as consumers look towards the safety of a premium brand, just given pandemic concerns?
Yeah, I think that's certainly true. I do think people have been loyal to the brands they know during the pandemic and haven't been price shopping. If you look at the results of P&G, they're probably the archetypal company in regards to your comment there. That's been a benefit to us. I think for us, we see that status still mixed because of the impact of travel retail-related products, so sun care cream, sun care aerosols, travel size aerosols, things that were sold in specialty retail stores are still somewhat down. It's still a mixed story in personal care between brands that are doing well on the shelf as I see the market and ones that are more associated with different types of activity from being in lockdown.
Perfect. All right, thanks very much, guys. That's it for me.
No problem.
To ask a question, you may press star one on your telephone keypad. Next question comes from Scott Fromson of CIBC.
Thanks, and good morning, gentlemen. You've covered mostly operating and market growth issues. I'm wondering if you can comment on planned initiatives in sustainability and other ESG issues.
Not a lot to say there. I've said in the past about that, Scott, we're very much tied to the behavior of our CPG customers in that regard. We've got a whole suite of products that are what I would call sustainability drivers. Whether they get adopted or not is in their hands more than it is in ours. It's a topic du jour of the moment for sure, and I think will continue to be so for some time.
Thanks. I think that covers it off. I'll turn it over. Thanks.
Thank you.
Next question comes from Ben Jekic of PI Financial.
Good morning. Great quarter. I have three very quick questions. Geoff , on the Avery side, and the badges and events business, can you put that into context, revenue, so that is within DTC, how much of that is part of the overall Avery? There's also another part of DTC, if I am not mistaken.
The badge part of Avery is about CAD 100 million, and it's down 65%-70%.
Okay. The rest is growing well?
The other part of direct-to-consumer is all labels, and that's growing well.
Okay. Then the second question is, M&A, assuming it's done and when it's done, but you're not targeting any specific segments, like it will be opportunistic wherever you see.
I'm not going to comment any more than I have done on M&A, Ben. I think we've said more here about what our position on M&A is.
Got it. The third one, just probably the same answer, but just in Innovia, the way I understand it is Innovia is better prepared this time than in 2018, but the increase in resin now is higher than in 2018. If I compare Innovia now and two years ago and resin prices now and two years ago, is that about the ratio?
Yeah.
Okay. That's it.
That's a good way to put it, Ben. I think what you have to bear in mind is how extreme the price rises have been. I'm just looking them up here for you. If you take the resin in the month of September was trading at $0.61 a pound in the U.S., and it's trading at close to $1.30 today.
Oh, goodness.
It's really risen. It's somewhat compounded by the storm in Texas because 75% of the industry got shut down when the storm came. I expect this will gradually alleviate itself as March unfolds. Right now it's a pressure cooker.
Okay. Thanks, Geoff.
Thank you.
Next question comes from David McFadgen of Cormark Securities.
Oh, yes. Thank you. Two questions. First of all, just on Avery, I was wondering if you could maybe provide some color on where you think the business will perform. I would imagine that badges is still going to be pretty challenged in 2021, but maybe it'll come back in the latter half as things normalize, and then there's still a lot of workplace closures, so organizational products probably be down. I was just wondering, is direct-to-consumer going to carry the day there? I was just wondering if you could provide some color on that. Just on free cash flow, obviously, very strong free cash flow in 2020. Do you actually think you could grow your free cash flow in 2021 versus 2020? Thanks.
Well, we're not going to comment. We don't give guidance on free cash flow for the year ahead, the numbers will be what they'll be, and we'll see how the year unfolds. As for your questions on Avery, I think you have to bear in mind there was a lot of significant drops from their performance last year. Down 30% in Q2, down 16 in Q3, down 11 in Q4. The comps, once we get through Q1, are pretty easy for the rest of the year. I think it'll be difficult to do better than prior year in Q1 just because they weren't really impacted by the pandemic in 2020 until Q2 arrived. We actually had a pretty strong start to the year in 2020 until the pandemic hit.
Obviously once we get through that, the next three quarters, the comps are going to be particularly easy. I don't expect to see any of our product lines showing drops, and I think we'll all be showing increases of one sort or another once we get into the second, third, and fourth quarters of the year.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Okay.
We have a follow-up question from Adam Josephson of KeyBanc.
Thanks, Geoff and Sean. Geoff , just one question on your comment on resin, that you think prices could rather quickly come back down heading into the summer. The reason I ask is obviously resin prices were up dramatically even before the winter storm a couple weeks ago, just as many other global commodity prices had actually surged since last summer, whether steel, copper, iron ore, lumber, you name it. Oil has been surging. I guess what gives you confidence in that forecast, if you will, that resin prices could quickly come back down? Do you think the supply chain?
It's really the situation in North America, Adam, because resins have not gone up to the same extent in other parts of the world as it has in North America. It's really a regional comment about the situation in the U.S. Capacity was tight, pricing was tight before the storm. The storm has exacerbated it, but a lot of new capacity is coming on stream in the second half, and the storm will recover. The rate of premium we have above supply of resin in the U.S. is not sustainable. You'll see if you get one region of the world that has a price premium of 50% above another region of the world, that doesn't sustain itself over time. It's really the premium nature of the price change in North America versus other parts of the world that gives us confidence to say that.
Yeah. Just one other question, Geoff. In terms of your visibility, and obviously when the pandemic started, you and everyone else had none, and the year unfolded much better than I think you might have feared in March, April, thereabout. What are you thinking these days in terms of the economic outlook and how it pertains? How would you characterize your visibility, and how much better is it now than it was three, six, nine months ago?
Well, I think in the days of March and April last year, it was difficult to feel confident. We feel dramatically better this year than we did this time last year.
I do think the stimulus that's happening all around the world from governments is going to have a big impact, and I think people's behaviors to go back to normal is also going to have a big impact. Some of our businesses will recede, benefited from the COVID era and the lockdown era, but others were significantly hurt. I think we'll just see that sort of two edges of the scale. The businesses that have done well in the pandemic will probably recede to normal, but the ones that were already in the toilet are going to come bouncing back. I think the balance of that is probably a good thing for us overall.
Yep. Are you at all concerned about what happens after the government stop sending out checks? Is that just beyond your purview at this point?
Yeah, we have the same concerns as everybody else has about debt levels and what that means. For the near term, I think for the year ahead. I wouldn't be surprised to see U.S. GDP grow 5%, 6% this year. We tend to follow that. If you see these rises from the previous lows, we can't help but follow it. We feel quite confident about the year ahead.
Thanks.
Sorry, in the short term. Short-term problem with Texas.
Yep. Sure.
That aside, I feel quite confident about the year ahead.
Thank you.
We have a follow-up question from Stephen MacLeod of BMO Capital Markets.
Oh, thank you. I just wanted to follow up on Innovia. I don't want to beat that horse here given the resin price inflation. Is it reasonable to expect that in Q1 you could be in a situation where EBIT gets sort of totally wiped out by the resin price inflation given how dramatic it was? Or is that too extreme of a situation?
I think that might be the case in the U.S., Stephen. In the U.S., because it's so dramatic, and then we've had our plant not able to operate at normal capacity because we can't get LPG.
Right.
I think in the U.S., we may have that problem. I don't think we'll have that problem in the rest of Innovia. I think we can disclose on the chart there the exposure we have to the U.S. versus other parts of the world.
Yes.
That's the part that I think will be particularly impacted. We had a very good January, so I can tell you we didn't see it in January. January numbers were good.
Right.
We expect February to be difficult, partly driven by the situation in Texas.
Yeah. Would you expect that you're still seeing strong demand on the Innovia side? This is more a cost issue than a demand issue.
It's more driven by the inflation and our ability to operate the plant because of energy supply. Those are the two compelling factors.
Yeah.
Not demand driven.
Right. The demand is still robust as it was.
Demand's still strong. Yeah.
Yeah. Great. Okay. Thank you so much, Sean.
No problem.
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