The company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. Actual results or outcomes may differ materially from those that may be expressed or implied due to a wide range of factors, including those set forth in AMP's most recently filed Form 20-F with the SEC and any other public filings. AMP's earnings release and related materials for the second quarter can be found on AMP's website at ardaghmetalpackaging.com. Information regarding the use of non-IFRS financial measures may also be found in the notes section of the earnings release, which also includes a reconciliation to the most comparable IFRS measures of Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted operating cash flow, and Adjusted free cash flow. Details of AMP's forward-looking statements disclaimer can be found in AMP's earnings release.
If I turn to some opening remarks, for the second quarter of 2022, we are pleased to have delivered a result in line with our guidance despite currency headwinds and unprecedented inflationary and supply chain pressures. Global demand remains robust, and while the near term macroeconomic outlook is more challenging and less predictable, the beverage can industry has historically proven resilient through economic cycles. We remain confident in the long term secular growth of the beverage can, on which we're well placed to capitalize. That growth continues to be underpinned by category growth and expansion, with 75% of beverage innovation in North America weighted towards the beverage can. The can's pack mix advantages in terms of efficiency, quality, and branding potential and strong backing by favorable sustainability characteristics and associated regulatory drivers.
Our expansion plans are customer-led, but the plans do have flexibility, as we have recently demonstrated with our announced rephasing to adjust to changes in demand patterns and are assessed based on strict returns criteria. Our capacity is highly contracted and underpinned by volume clauses. We remain focused on the factors within our control, including phasing of investments, taking action to address our energy requirements, recovering exceptional inflationary costs, ramping up our growth investments, and progressing our sustainability agenda. We recently published our first green bond allocation report, highlighting our sustainability achievements and the numerous eligible green projects advanced as part of our sustainability strategy. We acknowledge concerns over gas availability in Europe, but our operations are spread across the continent and we have not experienced any operational disruption. The sector has historically been favored as an essential industry by governments, most recently during COVID.
As a reminder, we'd also like to highlight that we have no operations in either Ukraine or Russia, nor do we source any supplies directly from the region. The global supply of can sheet has also been in focus and conditions remain tight, but we are well supplied over the medium term as we have benefited from our actions in recent years to diversify our mostly local supplier base. In this regard, we also welcome the recent can sheet capacity announcements in North America, which will help protect the domestic supply to demand balance. We have also elected to prudently carry higher levels of inventory in the current environment. Turning to AMP's second quarter results, we recorded revenue of $1.3 billion, which represented growth of 38% on a constant currency basis, predominantly reflecting the pass through of increased input costs.
Adjusted EBITDA of $181 million was 10% higher than the prior year on a constant currency basis. This reflects favorable volume mix effects, which includes an impact from the group's growth investment program and recovery of input cost inflation, partly offset by increased operating costs. Total beverage can shipments in the quarter were 8% higher than the prior year. Growth was driven by our new investments across our global footprint, including from the ramp up of our more recently installed capacity in North America and Europe, and improved momentum in Brazil. Specialty cans represented 48% of shipments in the quarter, up from 46% in the prior year. Our specialty mix was higher still at 62% in the second quarter, inclusive of fifty centiliter cans in Europe, which some of our competitors include in their definition of specialty cans.
Looking at AMP's results by segment and at constant exchange rates, revenue in the Americas increased 46% to $770 million, mainly due to the pass-through of higher input costs. Shipments were 11% higher than the second quarter of 2021, with increases in both markets driven by growth investments and improved momentum in Brazil. In North America, shipments grew by mid-single-digit % for the quarter. Growth was spread across a broad mix of categories, including energy and fitness drinks, spirits-based drinks, ready to drink coffees, and CSDs. New capacity additions continue to support category growth and the substitution of expensive imports, which continued to reduce. The growth outlook in North America remains robust, albeit recent weeks have seen some softer demand than anticipated at the beginning of the year.
This is partly due to the significant price increases consumers are facing at retail, and partly a result of the well-documented declines in the hard seltzer category. While the category overall remains very significant, 10% share of beer. Third largest category over the July 4 weekend in beer, we have purposely added increased swing flexibility to our network to respond to variations in category demand, and we will now also phase in some of our planned capacity more slowly. In Brazil, second quarter shipments grew by a strong double-digit percentage, significantly outperforming the market, which returned to very modest growth, an encouraging turnaround due to increased consumer mobility and spending as social restrictions eased. Our outperformance reflected strong execution and customer mix effects, and as our customers seek to diversify their supply through us.
Good volume growth in both North America and Brazil drove a second quarter Adjusted EBITDA advance in the Americas of 36% to $120 million. Growth reflected higher volumes and strong recovery of input cost inflation, partly offset by increased operating costs. Looking forward, we expect further improvement in shipment growth in the Americas as contracted new capacity additions continue their ramp up in North America and market growth continues to normalize in Brazil, especially an unrestricted Q4 summer period, which also includes, for the first time, a World Cup. In Europe, second quarter revenue increased by 28% to $533 million compared with the same period in 2021. Shipments for the quarter grew by 5% on the prior year, supported by recently installed new capacity in the U.K. and Germany.
Across the categories, energy drinks and soft drinks grew well, while softer alcoholic beverage demand, particularly in the U.K., reflected increased on-trade activity. In addition, we have seen some transitory weakness in the export market for filled drinks from Europe as a result of the elevated cost of ocean freight. Inflationary pressures remain strong, and second quarter Adjusted EBITDA in Europe fell by 20% to $61 million, as input cost headwinds were not fully offset by higher volumes. We have now covered our outstanding 2022 energy requirements for Europe prior to the recent spike of costs in June and July, and we are well progressed on building out our hedging requirement on a rolling basis for 2023. We continue to actively pursue cost recovery initiatives with our customers, and in some cases, are working to a more permanent and separate pass-through arrangement for energy trust costs going forward.
We are not changing our prior assumption of full year 2022 net impact from European energy cost inflation of $25 million. Looking to the remainder of 2022 in Europe, the continued ramp up of recently installed capacity in Germany and the U.K. will contribute to shipment growth. Turning to AMP's growth initiatives. During the second quarter, AMP made additional growth investments of $192 million, supporting the pickup in shipments during the quarter and anticipated growth in the future. Our project teams continue to perform an exceptional job despite the inflationary and supply chain challenges to deliver our investments largely to budget and with minimal delays. To recap on some of the larger growth investment projects, all of which are backed by multi-year customer agreements.
In North America, the second of our two high speed lines in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, started production during the quarter, following the commencement of the first line earlier this year. In Huron, Ohio, can production recently commenced with additional capacity to be added later in the year. As a reminder, we acquired the Huron Brownfield site in late 2020 and commenced can production in late 2021. In Europe, new capacity in the U.K. and Germany continues to ramp up, as does the new line in Jacareí in Brazil that was added at the end of last year. We also provided an important update to our Investment plans alongside our financing and capital allocation update at the start of June that set out our new shareholder returns policy.
In that update, we detailed how our cash outlay for growth investments in 2022 has been lowered by approximately $300 million and includes a rephasing of certain projects. However, our overall plan footprint remains unchanged for the medium term, and the timing of its build will be driven by demand. AMP is well-placed to capitalize on the long term secular growth drivers supporting the beverage can through our global scale, long-standing customer relationships, and our strategic relevance to key customers. Moving now to our financial position. During the quarter, we raised $600 million of senior secured green notes and ended the quarter with strong liquidity of $761 million, of which $436 million was held in cash and $325 million by way of an undrawn ABL facility.
We have announced our intention to upsize this facility to approximately $400 million. We further supplemented our liquidity with the issuance of EUR 250 million in July of perpetual redeemable non-convertible preference shares. Our funding needs are fully covered into next year. Net leverage ended the quarter at 4.5 x LTM Adjusted EBITDA, and pro forma for the issuance of the preference shares was 4.1 x. As a reminder, currency effects are broadly neutral from a leverage perspective, given the currency mix of our debt. The majority of our debt has also been issued on fixed rate terms, and we have no bonds maturing before 2027. Adjusted EBITDA minus maintenance capital expenditure was $152 million for the quarter, or 84% of Adjusted EBITDA, which illustrates the strong underlying cash generation of the business.
We declared and paid our second quarter dividend of $0.10 in June, and also launched our buyback program, for which we have authorization to repurchase up to $200 million of our ordinary shares through to the end of 2023. Given the proximity to quarter end, there was only a minor impact in quarter two with $3 million of stock repurchased. Repurchases have since continued, and as of yesterday's close, our total repurchases are approaching $50 million of stock. We believe that AMP's approach to shareholder returns represents an attractive investment proposition through, firstly, an attractive recurring $0.10 quarterly ordinary dividend, currently representing a dividend yield of over 6%. Secondly, share buybacks to effectively return capital to shareholders, amplified in scale by the fact that Ardagh Group does not intend to participate.
Thirdly, growth investments to support global demand with attractive payback terms backed by customers. Before moving to take your questions, I'd like to recap on AMP's performance and key messages. Today, AMP reported second quarter EBITDA that was in line with our guidance despite challenging conditions. While the near-term demand outlook has some uncertainty, global demand remains robust, and beverage can industry performance has historically proven resilient through economic cycles. Secular long-term growth trends supporting the beverage can remain intact, and AMP is very well placed to capitalize on these. There are some specific areas of demand weakness, in particular in hard seltzers in North America, around which we will continue to adjust our capacity ramp up as required to match demand. We are taking action to reduce near-term energy risk while remaining focused on improving cost recovery and pass-through mechanisms in Europe.
Our current view of the market leads us to project global shipment growth for 2022 of high single-digit %. Full year 2022 adjusted EBITDA is projected to be of the order of $710 million, assuming a EUR-USD parity exchange rate to year-end. This compares with the prior year reported adjusted EBITDA of $662 million or $629 million on a constant currency basis. As a proxy, every 1 cent movement in the euro-dollar rate represents circa $2 million on an annual basis. Our estimate compares with our previous full year 2022 guidance of $750 million. Of the $40 million reduction, approximately $20 million is attributable to currency impacts, and the balance reflects lower volume assumptions.
In terms of guidance for the third quarter, Adjusted EBITDA is anticipated to be in the order of $175 million, which compares with prior year Adjusted EBITDA of $176 million or $167 million on a constant currency basis. Having made these opening remarks, we will now proceed to take any questions that you may have.
If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, that is star one if you would like to ask a question. We'll take our first question from Kyle White with Deutsche Bank.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to focus on the revised growth outlook. You know, now pointing to high single digit volume growth versus the mid to high teens initially coming into the year. Can you just walk us through some of the details of why that lowered outlook versus the initial one? How much is related to maybe a slower first half in Brazil? How much is related to underlying consumer demand of hard seltzer or however you would characterize it? That would be helpful.
Sure. Hi, Kyle. I think if we take it region by region, you know, obviously we're still projecting significant growth in all three regions. But the change in the guidance links to a number of specific factors. In North America, obviously it's the well-documented decline in hard seltzers in the last quarter, which we're therefore taking a more cautious approach through to the end of the year. That's obviously aligned with the two major customers in the category, one of which announced recently. There is some volume weakness in North America due to lower promotional activity in the core categories, so slightly higher price points as customers pass through significant input cost inflation. Those are the two factors really that led us to more caution in North America.
In Europe, we talked about a couple of factors. The on-trade has reopened more quickly than anticipated this year, and so there's been a shift to kegs in particular and some one-way glass by our customers. We're also seeing the export volumes that we talked about down because of the ocean freight issues. The exports of beer and sparkling waters into North America have declined. We also see our customers now increasingly facing their own supply chain issues in terms of raw material inputs, logistics. They're also struggling sometimes to get their product out of the door and into retail. There's certainly some operational disruption in Europe as opposed to any market weakness. We still see good market growth in a number of categories.
Brazil, actually, we're looking at a very strong growth through to the end of the year. We anticipate a good Q4 on the back, as I said, of the football World Cup. We see, you know, Carnival hopefully will be fully open this year, and hopefully we have better weather as well. I think our customers and we're the same are anticipating a strong Q4 in Brazil. It's pretty much Europe and North America, where we're being more cautious on the outlook.
Got it. That's very helpful. On the rephasing of some of the capital projects, can you just talk about that? What exactly is being rephased or delayed? Any thoughts about potentially canceling the project or maybe canceling additional line that you were planning on initially?
Yeah. We're not canceling any projects. You know, our footprint plans remain intact, but we're certainly going to be very careful and disciplined about bringing up capacity in line with demand. We signaled at the debt raise that we were pushing out our BGI by on average a quarter or two, and that took $300 million out of this year and, you know, more out of next year and some out of next year. What we're looking at now very carefully is the timing of the greenfields, you know, how much we bring up, you know, what lines we bring up in what sequence and you know, what timing.
We don't have exact dates on that now because I think we want to make sure we're absolutely clear on the growth and the support that we're gonna get, because we'll be very focused on the overall utilization of our network, and we won't ramp up lines until we need them.
Sounds good. I'll turn it over.
Thanks, Kyle.
We'll now take our next question from George Staphos with Bank of America.
Hi, everyone. Good day. Oli, thanks for the details. Hey, I was hoping you could perhaps give a bit more granularity on the five or so things that you mentioned in answering Kyle's question in terms of how they contributed to the call down more specifically, or should we just take whatever would be kind of the, call it 7%-10% sequential drop or not or drop from where you were to where you are now at high single digits% and sort of applied evenly to each of those, the North American decline, hard seltzer, the promotional activity? Then I had a couple of follow-ons.
Okay. Yeah. Hi, George. No, I think we can give you a bit more around that. Sort of broadly we're 60/40, you know, percentages across North America and Europe in terms of the change. The majority of the North America is around the seltzer market, where we'd anticipated growth this year, and obviously we haven't got growth this year. There is some, as I said, around the increased pricing at retail, but as I say, the majority of that is the seltzer side. Then on the European side, I mean, you've broadly got a 50/50 split around this, exports and other supply chain issues and the more rapid opening of the on-trade, particularly in the UK. I think that's broadly how those split out.
Okay. I appreciate that. Then I didn't detect anything in what you're saying as a change in your view of the secular growth of the beverage can, yet on the other hand, you know, if we're all, you know, charged here in terms of trying to be respectfully skeptical, you know, you called out. And you're not alone here, so we're not picking on Ardagh. You mentioned promotional activity. For a couple of years, the industry did need promotional activity to sell more cans than it could produce. You know, you are being a bit more, as you said, careful about how you're bringing on capacity, rightly so, to make sure that you fully utilize it. But if the secular outlook hasn't changed, why would your long-term capital plans change?
Just trying to parse or get at what maybe you're seeing on the customer side that maybe is giving you a bit more uncertainty. Maybe I'm overthinking it and overlooking into the details there. Any thoughts on that would be helpful.
No, sure. Look, I think that the can has always had significant promotional activity, as you know, and particularly in North America. I think what we're seeing at the moment on that side is just a very unprecedented in the last 30-40 years level of inflation.
Yeah.
Which is leading to, you know, price rises that we've not seen. I'd expect that to normalize. You know, obviously, there's been more positive economic sentiment the last few days with what the Fed's been doing. I'd expect that to normalize and you to see our customers to return to their normal promotional patterns, which will be very accretive for the beverage can. One of the very encouraging data points in, you know, all the market data at the moment is the growth in share in beverage cans in the soft drinks category in North America through this whole period, which I think shows that it's winning in the pack mix, particularly versus plastic.
That is the thing that's really shifted the long-term growth outlook for the can almost globally by removing the drag that used to be in North America. We definitely anticipate that to continue with the sustainability tailwinds, regulatory challenges for our customers to get hold of recycled PET and the permanent nature of the beverage can. I think that fundamental sustainability story is fully intact and is what has reversed, particularly the North America situation. The rest of the world, as you know, George, has always grown and always grown very healthily. That's again about the pack mix advantages of the can, the efficiency of the can through the whole supply chain, the way it works for the quality of the drink, the branding, and that's why we see so much innovation going into the can.
All the things we laid out in, you know, when we came to market, the category growth in beer in Brazil, the growth of Germany, all those things we believe are completely intact. It's certainly true that the last 12 months with the inflation, the supply chain challenges, and some weakness in hard seltzers has been a more difficult environment than we anticipated. As I say, I think we take the position of the rest of the industry that the secular growth drivers that really came to play in the last few years are still fully intact.
Oh, we appreciate that. Actually, I mean, from our data, we'd agree with your comment on share, not just in CSD from what we've seen of cans versus other materials, but we'll see how that plays out. Two last ones, I'll turn it over. One, can you talk about how the surcharge efforts went for you? What were the learnings? What can you continue? Again, to the extent you can comment on a live mic conference call. Then any thoughts on the California legislation, SB 54, the positives or negatives as you see them, for the industry and for cans in particular? Thank you.
Thanks, George. Yes. Look, I think, as you say, I can't say too much on a live mic call about the customer contracts. I think we've got very positive engagement with customers around the energy surcharge. I think that they fully recognize that this is an unprecedented situation for which the whole supply chain has to come together. I think they are, and you can see that in all their results announcements, they are successfully achieving price rises at retail, and that makes it obviously fair that we're not holding, you know, the costs that are part of the supply chain. I think they've been a very constructive set of conversations. I think that some go quicker than others, just the nature of the organization, smaller customers versus bigger.
We will see an accelerated recovery in our numbers towards the second half of the year. We are, as I said in the prepared remarks, exploring specific mechanisms to deal with the complete dislocation of the energy category in Europe, which, you know, has never been seen before, and the fact that in our view, needs special treatment relative to normal inflationary pass-through mechanisms. Again, I think we're having a very constructive set of customer conversations with our customers about that because they also are suffering this, and they fully understand what's going on. Sorry, George, I think in all. Oh, yeah, California.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just quickly.
Yeah. Clearly positive. I think there's been rumors for a number of years that, you know, pretty dramatic legislation could come on single-use plastic in California. Definitely part of the underpinning for why we want to be in the Southwest and why we will be in the Southwest. Yeah, we remain very positive about that.
Thank you, Ollie.
Thanks, George.
We'll take our next question from Mark Wilde with Bank of Montreal.
Good morning, Ollie. How are you?
Hi, Mark. Very good. Thank you.
Good. Ollie, just curious if you're seeing any shifts in consumer behavior in any of your regions just in reaction to higher inflation and a slower economic climate. I'm thinking, you know, like in Brazil, you know, are you seeing a kind of a toggle back to maybe returnable glass bottles, things like that?
Yeah. I think that was definitely a factor in Brazil in the last 12 months. I think that you know there was much less protection on the consumer through COVID, much lower savings rates. When the Real devalued and the economic conditions became more difficult, and when LME increased significantly, which is priced there in U.S. dollars, the can did become less competitive for a short period of time in the pack mix. I think that did have an impact, and you did see a return to returnable two-way glass temporarily as our customers took some margin there. You know that did impact the can. I think that what you've seen in the last few months is the stabilization of those trends. I think April the market actually grew.
May and June were still a bit weak, but not as weak as Q1 or Q4. I think that's, you know, again, because the economy is stabilizing and LME is falling and the Real has strengthened somewhat, though obviously recently, the dollar is strengthening again. That will continue to be a slight headwind. I think we did have a set of market factors that we talked about, Carnival, poor weather, that also played in, as in the Carnival being canceled. I think Brazil is the only region where we can identify an economic issue in our numbers. Unless you think, and this has been cited, that one of the reasons for hard seltzer weakness is the price gap to premium light beer, which I think is cited at around 7%.
That does seem plausible to me that there's some trading down on price. Otherwise, I think, you know, North America, obviously, consumer savings rates have been high, European, you know, the same. Our only issue, I think, is to look carefully into the winter in Europe, in particular with the energy inflation and just keep a weather eye on whether the consumer spending is impacting us. What we do know and what our customers have reinforced to us is that the last thing to get cut back is the grocery shop. It will be the holiday, which currently people are not canceling because we're in that post-COVID period. It will be the holiday, the day out, the restaurant, the discretionary spending, and it won't be the at-home consumption that gets cut when times get tight.
Yeah. Okay, that's helpful. Look, I was very glad to see the kind of pullback and the market-based approach to kind of how and when you add capacity. I just wonder if it is too early to talk about adjusting some of those medium-term financial targets that you laid out around the SPAC?
I mean, I think we already signaled at the time the debt raise that there's delay to those targets. And, you know, I think we have to recognize that if we push out some of the business growth investment, you're inevitably pushing out the timing of the achievement of those targets. We still remain very confident in the overall business plan and the goals we set. I just think that with what's happened in the last 12 months, you know, which has been a pretty extraordinary, an unanticipated set of events. We have to be realistic about the timing over which they can be achieved. We haven't. Obviously, we'll go into our business planning cycle in the autumn and have a better view of that timing and what we're looking at for 2023 and 2024.
We won't give any specific guidance in this quarter, but clearly there are some delays to that. As I say, we remain very confident in the overall trends for the category and for the product. Therefore, we remain, you know, absolutely committed to the business plan that we laid out. It's simply a question of timing and phasing.
Last one for me. Any sense on the recovery of the $25 million energy headwind in 2023?
Yeah, we expect a material step-up in profitability for Europe in 2023 off the back of, as I say, an extremely constructive set of conversations with customers around the input cost inflation, where I think it's fully understood that it can't be held in the supply chain like this and needs to go through to the consumer. Yes, I think, you know, we'd be anticipating recovering, and not exact numbers yet. We'll go through the process again in the autumn once we've finalized all these conversations, but we expect material increases in the profitability of our European business in 2023.
Okay. Sounds good. I'll turn it over.
We'll take our next question from Arun Viswanathan with RBC Capital Markets.
Great. Thanks for taking my question. Good morning. I just wanted to, I guess, first off, go back to the growth question. You know, obviously there, I guess what you're kind of indicating is there is a little bit of elasticity relative to the beverage can. Is that what you're observing, I guess, in certain categories, you know, as it relates to hard seltzers and potentially, you know, the Brazil customer and so on? Maybe you can just kind of give us your thoughts on that. Also similarly, you know, you cited high energy costs and high retail costs, inflation for the customer or for the consumer.
Is it really kind of do you expect demand to kind of accelerate if inflation moderates or how should we think about that dynamic? Thanks.
Sure, yeah. No, I mean, look, I think every consumer category has a degree of elasticity. If you push the consumer, you know, to a certain point, they will inevitably buy a bit less. I think the scale of inflation that's going through at the moment is having an impact. As I said, to George's question, I mean, the beverage can has always been a heavily promoted product, and that's because it's a super efficient way to package beverage. Our customers and their customers can make good margins promoting beverage cans. We'll always see a high percentage of promotional activity. What's going on at the moment is that our customers are raising, and the retailers are raising average retail price with fewer promotions, and so more is being bought off the shelf.
I think we shouldn't be surprised. In fact, the unusual period was really the back end of last year when there were significant price rises going through in North America and volumes continued to grow. That's quite unusual. I think, therefore, you're right to say that the reverse does apply, which is as the inflation comes off, which you know, we're much more hopeful in North America than Europe, you would expect to see, you know, back to full-scale promotional activity, and therefore you expect to see a growth in beverage cans, which would then be additive to the growth that we're seeing because of sustainability and because of innovation. Yeah, we'd be very hopeful around that trend.
Okay, thanks. You know, you have weathered quite a bit of FX and energy inflation. You noted that, you know, your energy outlook is similar as it was in the past. Maybe you can just kinda give us your thoughts on kind of the longer term targets that you had laid out, either at the time of the SPAC or, you know, more recently. How does, you know, some of your comments around, you know, kind of making sure that the growth is there, before you add lines kind of relate to that? You know, are there any capital projects that you're pausing on that would change your kind of 2024, 2025 EBITDA build-out, or how should we think about that? Thanks.
Yes. As I said, at the debt raise, we did already rephase some of our business growth investments by, I think we said an average of a quarter or two at the time. That remains true. As I mentioned earlier, we'll be keeping a close eye on the greenfield investments, which are obviously our biggest investments, and we'll be making sure we phase those both in terms of the amount of capacity we bring up, you know, how many lines, and the timing of that capacity appropriately with demand. That will affect some of the capital that was in the original plan, but also some of the, what we call the second generation. It's mostly focused on that second generation capital that we've also discussed with you.
Yeah, as I said earlier, there's definitely some impact to timings of the EBITDA, you know, ramp. We won't be giving any specifics on that today. We'll be going through our business planning cycle through the autumn. There will be some impact on timing. As I say, we remain very committed to the overall goal.
Thanks. I wanted to ask just one quick question on Brazil. You know, you noted well above market growth. Do you think that market now has kind of resumed its recovery or has passed its headwinds that you experienced the last couple of quarters? Or are there some that are still lingering? How would you kind of characterize the Brazilian market at this point? Thanks.
We're hopeful that it'll grow from here out. I mean, you know, sometime in Q3, we think it'll get into a consistent growth pattern. In Q4, we expect to be strong. By then, obviously, we'll be lapping some weaker comps as well. You could say there's some economic uncertainty into 2023, but again, we remain very confident in the fundamentals of that market because they're driven by the long-term economics of the switch from on-trade to off-trade, which you can see in markets all over the world as they develop. We're very comfortable overall for the market, and we think that the Q3 through Q2 of next year should be good levels of growth. We're also very confident in our own growth at this point.
Okay, thanks.
We'll now take our next question from Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley.
Hi, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to touch base on inventories. You've talked in the past about, you know, hard seltzer end market. I think there's a very clear inventory issue there. But just wondering across the other categories, is there anywhere else you think that there may have been some inventory build maybe because of, again, all of the supply chain concerns where maybe customers might have stocked up a little bit more than normal? Just, yeah, just what you're seeing across other categories in that respect.
Yeah. I'll kick off, and I'll pass it to David. I think that we did see some inventory build. We deliberately have some inventory build in our system because of supply chain concerns, particularly on metal. We had some deliberate prudence in the quarter to make sure we covered that. Particularly in Europe, we're also working on and working with customers to get appropriate inventory positions in case of any disruption, particularly in the German market. You know, that's the high level picture. I'll pass it to David for more of the detail.
Thanks, Oli. Yeah, I think working capital has two factors as you get elevated input costs, even if your days inventory outstanding and so forth stays the same. You get a dollar build in the working capital balance. As Oli says, we very deliberately took the opportunity we had in quarter two to push up our inventory levels a little bit, really as a contingency against potential future supply chain disruption, which could come from a number of sources that are fairly obvious from what's out there in the market. Also we are actively diversifying our supplier mix on aluminum to make it a more global mix. Yeah, and this is a good opportunity to protect while we're in that transition process.
Have you seen your customers do something similar outside of hard seltzer?
Not that I'm aware, to be honest, but again, I think we are looking into the European situation, and we have a team obviously on contingency planning for the situations that may emerge in the autumn. Part of that will be, and already is dialogue with customers about what inventory positions they want to hold, on our side and their side.
Got it. That's helpful. I wanted to just clarify on the high single digit growth for the year. I think you talked about where the sources of maybe some of the incremental weakness came from. As we think about those regions, how would you characterize the growth in each region in terms of the makeup of that high single- digit?
Sure, yeah. I think the factors I mentioned are the main factors going through to the end of the year. We see Europe in the mid-single-digit%. We see Americas low- to mid-teens%, and that splits between America lower and Brazil higher. That's pretty much how we see the full year.
Got it. Thank you.
We'll now take our next question from Jay Mayers with Goldman Sachs.
Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking the questions. Wanted to follow up on the kind of guidance you just gave thinking about America's shipment volumes. Can you help us think about, you know, how much of the volume growth for the rest of the year in North America is gonna come from outright kind of consumer-driven demand versus replacing some of the imports that you've talked about?
Yes. I mean, I think hard to put very definitive numbers on it, but you've got a few points, I think, of growth that have come out of imports this year. You know, there has been a significant reduction from the 14 billion. There are still imports coming into North America. It's not that they all go away. I think, you know, the other few points of growth are sitting in the actual consumer demand, and you can see some of that in the published data.
Got it. Thank you. Just kind of can you help us think about your ability to actually offset the imports? You know, you have some kind of competitors who have a large number of the imports coming into North America. Are those kind of contracted volume agreements, or are those kind of more, you know, spot market type contracts that you can go in and offset with, you know, either lower price cans or a kind of a better contract for those customers?
Most of those, I think, were contractual situations if they were being brought in by our competitors, is my understanding. I think it's not that they then suddenly appear in the market. I think there were some spot situations where customers obviously got quite desperate at points over the last few years, and those opportunities are available to us. I believe a significant number were contracted.
That's helpful. Thank you. Just a final one from me. On Brazil, I wonder, you know, we've spent a lot of time talking about the kind of demand situation, but, you know, had a competitor announce a new capacity addition there, this week. Can you just talk about a little bit how the supply situation is shaping up there and kind of how you feel about the kind of supply outlook versus, you know, what you're seeing on the demand front?
Yes. I mean, look, there's clearly some short-term weakness, and you can see that in the data. Our customers, and we share their view, are very confident about the future of cans in Brazil. You know, the long-term guidance we gave, the 6%-10% growth, when we came to market, we'd stand by that. We think this is a short-term blip. I think that it's not surprising that our competitors are being asked by our customers and other customers to plan projects and bring additional capacity to that market. We see ourselves being short on cans, you know, through the back half of this year. It doesn't take much, and we've seen it many times in Brazil. It doesn't take much for it to turn, and when it turns, it turns very fast, and the growth is very strong.
Yeah, I wasn't surprised to see an announcement of additional capacity in Brazil. I think the market is one of the strongest for beverage cans in the world.
That's it for me. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Once again, that is star one if you would like to ask a question. We'll now take our next question from Ed Brucker with Barclays.
Hey, thanks for taking my question this morning. My first one, I wanted to get the ultimate reason for doing the share buybacks versus paying the larger dividend that you had telegraphed before. Was that uncertainty with free cash flow or earnings going forward, or was it more of a cautious outlook on the beverage can market?
No, I think we were being very responsive to our shareholders. I think that there were a number of ways, we could support them and this was one of the ways that we had feedback around, and I think we ended with a very good mix of the dividend, the share buyback, and then the growth investment program. We certainly haven't lost confidence in our program. I've talked about the fact that the timing obviously isn't exactly what we'd originally planned, but we haven't lost any confidence in it. I think that, you know, we had a lot of feedback. We spent a lot of time listening to our shareholders. We took that advice seriously.
Got it. My next question, if there is some pullback of the business growth investments, or I guess the timing is pushed back, what would you do with the cash that you've built up to spend on that and then, you know, expected free cash flow that you get over the next couple of years? Would you look to reduce debt, maybe do higher dividends or buybacks?
Yeah. I think we haven't worked all that through. You know, we've set some leverage targets that we're comfortable with, the 3.7-4 times forward EBITDA. You know, that's where we expect to be. Obviously, we have got a dividend policy. We can adjust that over time. I think we haven't fixed on any of that, but we'd obviously think through all the different options and be very cognizant of what worked for all the shareholder base.
Perfect. Thanks for the time.
Thanks very much.
Our next question will come from Michael Wolfe with Credit Suisse.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. Maybe just two follow-ups, on Europe. I guess first of all, just on aluminum sourcing, how is that looking at the moment? Are you sort of diversifying away from perhaps Russian suppliers? I appreciate some of the European suppliers are perhaps less vertically integrated as well, so perhaps there's not that many avenues for procurement, maybe a few in the Middle East. Curious to sort of hear your thoughts around aluminum procurement, particularly in Europe.
Sure. Yeah, we have no Russian supply, so no disruption from our perspective or for our main suppliers. We have diversified somewhat. We have a very local supply base, which is an advantage, I think. We have diversified somewhat to address the growth. There are, you know, investments coming or needed in that market on the can sheet side. We're making sure we're covered with an appropriate mix of local and import, but none of it's Russian-based. We've worked very hard, particularly on the can end supply chain to make ourselves secure, and that's partly why you see some of the inventory build that you see in our numbers. Right now we're feeling, yeah, very good actually about our aluminum supply chain and the security of our position.
A lot of that inventory is actually just in the form of sheets at the moment?
Correct.
Okay. Maybe just understanding a little bit of the downside scenario with regard to sort of some of the ongoing gas challenges in Europe. Appreciate you have, what is it, four facilities or so in Germany. I guess how are we to think about some of your production footprint if there is a scenario perhaps where there is some gas rationing? How flexible is your production there with regard to maybe increasing capacity in some of the other facilities? I guess. Appreciate it's a complex question, and it's sort of an ongoing challenge, but maybe for us to just better understand what you would do and kind of the levers you would pull and if you can quantify anything at all around that's helpful.
As I said, we've got a team working on contingency planning around the situation. There are a number of levers. We are confident, just to make sure this prefaces the comments, that we would be treated as essential just as we were through COVID, and that we'd be well-positioned in terms of prioritization. We are doing a lot of work on that as well in terms of industry associations and our own personal contacts. We're confident it should not come to this. If it did, I think we have one of the most flexible networks of any can maker in Europe in terms of the breadth of our network and the different sizes we have on different lines around continental Europe, and we do already ship significant volumes of cans around that network.
To the extent the capacity is available, we're well-placed to adjust. Usually at the end of the year, we do have a few line stops, typically of a seasonal business. Again, we could take some of those out earlier and plan for those. And then we have some inventory positions that we're addressing in terms of both raw materials and customer inventories, and we will be talking to our customers again about whether they want to build additional inventory to take account of this situation. They, of course, also have their own contingency planning teams in place. It's a range of things. It's not totally straightforward. If it came to really a full-scale shutdown and we were not prioritized, it would not be possible to completely replace it all.
I think we've got as good a position as anyone in terms of the flexibility of our network and the options we have.
How much of your European volume is German?
25%, I'd want to say. Yeah. Yeah. Something like maybe 20-25%. Because again, some of our German plants serve other markets, legacy reasons. You'll remember the German deposit scheme came in, the German market actually went to zero. Some of those facilities do serve customers in other regions.
Sorry. The volumes produced in Germany, I should say. That's more than the
Yeah. You're in that 20%. Yeah, 20%.
Yeah.
You've actually got an ends facility there as well as can plants.
Yeah. Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
As a final reminder, that is star one if you would like to ask a question. We'll now take a follow-up from Mark Wilde with Bank of Montreal.
Thanks, Ali. Just a very simple one. Any prospects of us getting kind of North American industry data back? I mean, you know, at a time when the market has been pretty volatile, the elimination of this CMI quarterly data seems like a real disservice to your shareholder base.
Yes. I would say we weren't responsible for it, but I hear what you're saying. Yes, there is ongoing conversation about doing that. I think it is a possibility, yes.
All right. Well, I think many of us would welcome it.
No, I understand. I fully understand.
Okay. Very good. I'll turn it over. Good luck in the rest of the year.
Thanks, Mark.
It appears there are no further telephone questions. I'd like to turn the conference back over to our presenters for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you very much, everybody, for joining the call. I think we were pleased to be able to present a strong quarter in very difficult circumstances, given the foreign exchange, the inflation, and some of the demand weakness that we saw in certain categories. We're looking forward to good growth for the rest of the year and into 2023, a material growth in both earnings and volumes into 2023. We look forward to talking to you at the next quarter. Thank you.
Once again, that does conclude today's conference. We thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.