All right. Good afternoon, everyone. We've got Steve Scherger here from Amcor. My name's Ramoun. I'll open it up to Q&A at the end, but I've got a few questions for Steve to kick it off. Steve, we're entering year two of the Berry merger. Maybe kick it off with how the pace of that integration's going, and touch on the synergy run rate versus your overall targets there, and then we'll jump into it.
Yep. I'll be glad to. Ramoun, thanks for taking the time today. Thanks for the audience as well, for joining us, so appreciate that. Yeah. Thank you. We're now a little over a year into the acquisition of Berry and creating Amcor in the state that it's in today. When we completed the acquisition and established the goal, $650 million of synergies were the three-year targets that we established for the business. Year one target, $260 million.
We're now post year one, and we captured $285 million of synergies in the first year. Importantly, those drop through to the bottom line for us, which is obviously critical when you take on an acquisition of this scale and help to drive double-digit EPS growth for the year. We're entering into a six-month transition period here. We're changing our fiscal year to December 31.
We expect to capture another $130 million of synergies during that six-month period, which is also in line with our expectations. $650 million over three years, our expectation we'll make that in that three-year period of time. Our internal goals are obviously to get there faster. The mix is as we expected it to be. We've got an important mix of procurement-related synergies.
We acquire, every year, over $13 billion of raw materials, so we established a strong synergy target around procurement. SG&A, of course, $100+ million taken out of the business. We've got a nice trajectory on revenue synergies, about a $280 million goal for three years, about $60 million of EBIT. We've captured $140 million of real business that is new to the company, much of which will start to come in over the coming quarters.
So we also, just including the commentary, we indicated we would spend about $280 million to capture the $650 million of synergies. We've spent about $160 million of that, so we're nicely on our way. So overall, really in line, slightly ahead of our expectations on synergy capture.
Yeah. Maybe on the revenue synergy side, it's a pretty good outcome so early on. What's driving that? Is it cross-sell? Because there was minimal overlap with Berry in terms of the product set, so just the motivation of customers coming to you
Yeah
is driving it.
We like what we see, and I say that, and you touched on it there. The combination, there was very little actual product overlap, and so we've seen really no revenue leakage from the combination, meaning we haven't gotten so large with a customer who says, "I've got to kind of redistribute." That's good. The revenue synergies are, in fact, additive, and they tend to fall into a couple of categories.
One tends to be a little more systems-based, meaning that we can sell you now multiple components of a package. For example, we made the yogurt cup before, now we can make the lid. Creates a little more of a systems-based approach. We can sell multiple components to you as customer. Gives you confidence that it's coming from one company, more confidence in the combination.
We're doing that in our healthcare space, making for single-dose applications, making the blister card, and then also making the bottle. We're seeing some real nice movement in that direction. We're also seeing some customer wins that are coming from some of the PPWR and some of the EPR fees. We've got some new innovation that is associated with, for example, a bottle with a dispenser on the top.
We've got some innovation that allows us to make both of those for you as a customer, before either company alone was making one. So we hold a pretty high bar, very high bar actually, to what we count. It has to be that we couldn't have sold you that business individually as either company. It has to be new to us, and that's been good traction. It actually has exceeded our expectations a bit, which gives us a lot of confidence in that $280 million run rate over the next few years.
Great. Just turning it to the current operating environment, very volatile in the raws. Maybe just touch on what you're seeing on raw material prices and Amcor's strategy of recouping those costs.
Yeah. No, I appreciate you raising it, and it has been. It's been a very volatile time really for the last several years. If you think about the inflation that the day-to-day consumer has absorbed over the last several years, it is very substantial, and we, of course, are a part of that as a packager.
With the Middle East conflict and the movement in resins, so of that $13 billion a year that we acquire in raw materials, $5 billion of it is resin-based. Within that resin base, we acquire resins around the world. Only about 4% of it actually comes from the Middle East, which is obviously experiencing the significant unfortunate disruptions that are happening there. Overall, inflation has been very substantial.
We passed through $280 million of price inflation to our customers in what was our fourth quarter, so the last quarter, and that was in line with the inflation that we were experiencing. So we, over the last several years, have developed the muscle, if you will, the capabilities that when we see significant disruption on costs, that we work with our customers hand in hand to pass that through them on a significantly reduced lag basis.
In other words, do it quickly, do it in line with the inflation that we're experiencing, and we are successful at doing that in the prior quarter, and we'll continue and have expectations we'll do that here for the coming quarters. Unfortunately, it's not unprecedented because we've seen periods like this. It's not preferred, obviously.
Our customers have come to understand that we want to keep you in product, we want to keep you in supply, want to do it well, and that this is the best way to do it, is to pass it through to you in a way that's consistent, that is not a win-lose. It's in line with what we're actually experiencing, and we've had good execution on that front, expect to continue to do so. It remains a volatile environment, as you indicated.
Yeah. You guys have tightened the lags historically that you've had to much shorter sort of-
We have. We have, and it's important because, generally, the lags, if you will, lag from an inflationary environment to a price change, has tended to be in that three-month range. Historically, it went years back, it would've been longer. It's been tightened down to three. Actually, in times of significant disruption like we've been experiencing, we'll tighten them up even more down to a month, so that we're in literally a very reduced lag.
Now, that tends to be temporary because you don't want it to be permanent. It doesn't help with forecasting for our customers, doesn't help them with cost consistency. But it's something that we'll do for periods of time when we have this level of disruption, which allows us to keep that relationship in line like we did in the prior quarter and will do for the coming quarters.
You do what is appropriate and do it in connection with our thousands of customers, and overall customer receptivity. Like I said, no one wants to have that level of volatility, but we've got to keep our customers in product. They want to keep we as consumers in product, and it's one of the best ways to do it.
Got it. Shifting gears maybe to volume and
Yep
the fourth quarter was encouraging. You had modestly positive volumes across the business. Maybe just touch on that backdrop. What's driving that and what you're seeing from customers.
Yeah. It was important because as we were just talking, the consumer being under very significant pressure, our customers, generally CPGs, private label producers, QSRs, et cetera, have been in a multi-year environment of taking significant price up at the expense of volume.
They too took a little more of a balanced approach, balanced this year in 2026, that we saw play itself out in our fourth quarter, where we moved sequentially, we improved volume about 200 basis points. We were down about a percent and a half in what was our Q3, up a half a percent in our Q4, and it was pretty broad-based. It showed a little more of a balanced approach by our customers, volume and price, which was good.
It was a little more broad-based in categories that we're focusing on higher growth, so categories where the consumer is moving, like proteins, food service applications, healthcare, personal care, us taking care of ourselves, us taking care of our pets. The categories that we've been focused on, we saw a little bit better growth. Then categories which are very important to the company, a little under half of the company, more center of the store, we saw our customers take a little more of a balanced approach.
Then finally, in some of our emerging regions, so for us that's China, India, Brazil, Mexico, we continued to see multiple quarters now of growth. The summary of that is pretty broad-based, which was important. It didn't appear to us to be kind of a one-off event. And through now, August, it's continued for us, so the guide that we provided for this six-month period of being flat to modestly positive, what we've seen to date through August is consistent with that.
Great. You talked through the stub period. We've got to get through that
Yep
that period over the next few months. But calendar year 2027, you seem pretty confident of delivering a double-digit growth year. Maybe just talk us through that and size up what's going to drive that double-digit growth into
Yeah
a more normal year.
No, and thank you for that. What we were really working to do, particularly with this last quarter, because we have a little bit of an unusual period of a six-month transition period that we guided to, we wanted to provide some context, at least what we call a look into 2027.
We believe that 2027 sets up for us to show the value that we are creating as this day-to-day life global consumer packager. In doing so, what we expect to see in 2027 is a continuation of several things. One, that we have kind of the third year or year one and a, one and a half to two and a half, but basically, the last portion of that $650 million of synergy capture. That will be important to driving improvement.
We also should be in a little bit of a cleaner environment, meaning that we will have worked through some of the realities of the volume headwinds that we were experiencing. We are expecting to have what I would characterize as globally a little more of steady and consistent demand at the customer level, so nothing of substance. That gives us the opportunity to outperform that with the revenue synergies, with the focus on the categories that we are committed to, us investing behind private label, as an example, investing in those couple of emerging regions.
That gives us confidence that a low single-digit organic growth business is plausible, and that, along with the synergy capture, gives us confidence we can have mid-single digit EBITDA growth, which can drive that double-digit EPS growth. So it is a look into it. Obviously, we are operating in unique and volatile times, so it does not have perfect line of sight, but those are the fundamental assumptions that are implied in our look into 2027.
Got it. Just the enabler of that longer term organic growth, I think you have talked through CapEx, a CapEx step-
Yes
up to 5% of sales to support growth initiatives. Maybe just talk us through those a bit more. Is it about modernizing plants or putting greenfield plants on, or is it more incremental spend as your customers demand it?
Yeah, thanks for asking that. I think one of the things we've been working to do is, as part of that algorithm we were just talking about, is talk about CapEx. Is what kind of level of CapEx as a percentage of sales for our business allows for and enables low single digit organic growth.
Based upon all the work that we've done around the CapEx as a percentage of sales to maintain our assets, think about that in the 2%-3% range of sales. Productivity enablers, so automation, driving cost out, driving productivity, and then organic growth, cumulatively, we believe at around 5% of sales, that we can consistently operate in that low single digit organic growth environment.
What's good about it is, and you just touched on it in your question, is it's more small and incremental investments that tend to be customer specific as opposed to large scale greenfield in style investments where you have to put iron in the ground and then look for ways to populate it, if you will, or fill it. That's good because it makes it a little more variable.
It, of course, ties to the realities of do you have the organic growth opportunities with customers, and so if those don't exist, if we're in an environment where that isn't as available, then of course CapEx wouldn't be at that 5% of sales. So it is, of course, variable. The two businesses prior, Amcor and Berry, tended to operate more as in the threes and fours, but with relatively limited positive organic growth.
We're just trying to put it out there in terms of this is probably what it takes, what we think is plausible and appropriate. The free cash flow generation from that, with the kind of margin profile in which we operate, drives above cost of capital returns and is a nice enabler for value creation.
I guess just culturally as well, if you could touch on, Berry was very much an M&A focused business. Amcor probably more returns based.
Yep.
How does this new sort of thinking compare to those two businesses previously?
Yeah, and by the way, both great businesses with excellent capital allocation philosophies, M&A driven, a little more margin enhancing, ROIC driven in environments that were conducive to that. Both of those are, of course, important to the long-term value creation of the business.
What we are investing behind is building out the fundamental skills, the capabilities to allow ourselves to leverage our scale, leverage our innovation, which is larger capacity than anyone in our space, and leverage the geographic reach of the business to reach into more of our customers' opportunities to win with them in ways that are consistent with what we were just talking about, which is the right to win and being very targeted in it. We're in the early days. We have more data about our customers and about the realities of where we're operating than anybody.
Leveraging that data to determine where, in fact, should we be placing our commercial efforts. Use an example. We've got a great business with a customer in Germany. They're a global producer. We now have the data to say, "Gosh, we've got them in Germany. We don't have them in Brazil. Let's go after that. Let's target that. Let's head that direction."
You would say to yourself, well, that should be common knowledge. Historically, not as simple. Now we can get after that, very time effectively and really target our commercial efforts to give us more confidence that the organic growth is in fact plausible. You got to build a culture around that. You got to build reward systems around that, and that's what we're doing, and you got to put dedicated leadership around it.
That's why we have invested in a new private label, commercial team. That's why we've invested in efforts around how do we reward our commercial teams for winning and capturing new opportunities for growth. It is a culture build. We're in early stages, which is good, but we now are seeing evidence of it playing itself out.
Maybe just switching to free cash.
Yeah.
Free cash was a bit lower in that period versus what.
It was.
versus your guide because of what was going on in the Middle East. I guess just give us your perspectives around how you get back that $500 million, and then beyond that, what to expect from free cash for this business.
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. When we started the year, we had free cash flow estimates and guidance in the $1.8 billion-$1.9 billion range. As the Middle East conflict was emerging and playing itself out, we lowered it towards about 1.5. Actually came in around 1.3, so of substance.
And what we have experienced is around a $500 million investment fundamentally in working capital, primarily accounts receivable with our customers and inventory, both in terms of some volume and value, that we must and have line of sight to recovering over the next 12-18 months as one of the critical cash flow enablers as we de-lever from roughly 3.5 x down towards 3 x over the next roughly 18 months. It was an important investment. It was a choice.
It was a choice to keep our customers in product, to have appropriate supply of things like resins in order to make sure that we could service customers. Now that we're through that period of time, and obviously you've seen resin prices move up pretty significantly, come down modestly, we can see line of sight to our customers.
As example, we're tending to pay within their terms, but they were tending to pay toward the latter higher end of their terms rather than taking a discount, as an example, when we saw as they were absorbing this pricing. We expect that to more normalize. The supply chains for inventory have actually been functioning quite well. Gives us confidence that we can start to take down the volume component of the inventories that we're carrying, primarily raw materials, on a pathway to recovering that $500 million.
That $500 million, along with the normal free cash flow generation of the business above our dividend, gives us line of sight to roughly $1 billion of debt reduction over the next 18 months, if you will, out into the end of 2027.
Coupled with ongoing mid-single-digit EBITDA growth is the pathway back down to leverage that's in that 3 x range, well within our investment-grade status, which is critical for us. We've got full commitment to our investment-grade status and want to maintain that, and de-leveraging is critical. So gave a little longer answer on a few things around leverage and the like, but it's a critical enabler around how to utilize our cash flow.
Yeah. I guess we see headlines around the conflict daily, and they swing around, and oil prices swing around. You made the point around this reversal being dependent on supply chains that are predictable or stable.
Yeah.
Can you just touch on that a bit more compared to this constant headline around what's going on in the Middle East?
Yeah. Obviously we have no appetite for the conflicts and the like, and want to see things resolved appropriately over time. I think for us, it's less around the conflict itself and more around the actual impact on the supply chains. As mentioned, we buy about 4% of our resins in the Middle East, probably even lower percentage today. We have a very distributed global and regional, that's regional in terms of where we acquire most of our raw materials.
That distributed nature of that allows us to make sure that we're buying very effectively in regions. We are a very limited spot buyer. We tend to have more relationship build with our suppliers. That's important because we want to be a confident supplier of choice, in our case, and producer for us that allows us to have the assurances of supply.
As long as the overall supply chains continue to operate effectively, we have every confidence we'll keep our customers in product very effectively. That being said, of course, there's some risk. If you had true escalation or a very significant new shock to the system on oil, we'd have to navigate through that. But to date, the supply chains themselves, and how we operate within them more regionally, have been operating effectively.
Just on your point around leverage.
Yeah
Getting back to that 3x by the end of calendar year 2027, I guess, how to think about capital allocation beyond that?
Yeah
Should we expect buybacks, or is there M&A potentially on the horizon or segments that Amcor wants to increase its exposure to?
Yeah, I think reiterating from a couple of moments ago, our capital allocation priorities here in the medium term, if you will, short to medium, are very clear. We've got an important dividend, one that's been steady and consistent and modestly growing. Expect to continue that. Expect to continue our full commitment to our investment-grade rating and the de-leveraging.
So it is clear. You look beyond that, of course, then the apertures, things open up beyond that. We've got a good history of M&A. That opportunity would reemerge once we get back down into that appropriate zone on leverage. That being said, the bar is pretty high on that right now, and so we obviously monitor and effectively do so.
We'll also keep the cost of capital in mind and the like relative to the value of the corporation. Our share repurchase is a better use of free cash flow at that time. So the lens will open up. It'll open up, but we'll be very conscientious of when we open it up, what are the trade-offs we're making between using capital to buy back the organization versus putting it to work to grow the organization. We'll be very measured as that window starts to open up down the road.
Got it. Maybe just on portfolio and portfolio pruning, I guess.
Yes.
Five sales done. You've still got the beverages business within that profile.
Yes.
Maybe just talk us around the pathway to-
Yeah
that pruning.
Yeah. Just as reminder, we identified $2.5 billion of top-line sales within our $23 billion enterprise that we viewed as in better hands with different owners. It didn't fit our strategic profile relative to the organic growth conversation and margin discussion we were just having. $500 million of that we've executed on successfully, and have executed on those five transactions that you mentioned. We've got one large component to that.
That's mostly a North American bottle business, so think Gatorade bottles and Powerade bottles, et cetera. The business was underperforming. We had to improve its performance and have done so over the last 12 months. The team has done a phenomenal job of improving the margin profile and cash flow generation profile of the business. We've been active in a sale process.
Obviously, you've got to have willing buyers and of course, we're the seller, and we've been working through that. We've had to be a little bit patient because we've had to improve the business kind of in motion, and have had good success there. As a resin-based business, selling that during the Middle East conflict creates some volatility that you have to get potential buyers comfortable with the business, the actual pass-through mechanism of the cash flow generation.
So we maintain our commitment to the sale process, the strategic intent. As you can appreciate, you want to also make sure that you're making good financial decisions as well. Strategic of course, financial, do they make sense relative to deleveraging? Make sense relative to the impact on dilution from an EPS perspective? So we're keeping all of those in mind as we navigate through the process to exit.
Yeah. Anything on timing?
It's hard to predict. We are very actively engaged. Obviously every day that passes by, we are intent on navigating towards that announcement. But nothing to share relative to timing. As we'd mentioned on our fourth quarter call or didn't actually talk about it, there wasn't really an update for that, but we're actively engaged.
Okay. One area that you've flagged previously as being potentially a bit underweight is private label.
Yep
and the growth of private label.
Yep.
Maybe if you can touch on that and what Amcor's been doing to, I guess, increase its exposure to that private label segment.
Yeah, as the combination was coming together, both businesses and then one business observed that we were underweighted in our private label efforts. Both businesses tended to be overweighted with traditional CPGs, obviously with QSRs and good, strong, and healthy global brands. It was actually one of the initial changes organizationally that we made was to actually put dedicated leadership, starting with a leader, over our private label commercial efforts, over the selling efforts.
We have been grabbing resources around the organization to invest behind that as well as new. Just by reference, selling to private label producers, so think about this as the Walmarts and the Aldi and the big brands that are emerging from what would be considered historically private label, which are now of substance brands and important brands that have high-quality products and high-quality packaging.
The sales process is a little different because it tends to be earning the right with the retailer, if you will, to make sure that you are qualified and accepted, and viewed as a good, strong advocate that they can support, and support and advocate on behalf of. The selling process tends to be across a broader cross-section of contract manufacturers.
So the selling process is a little different. It is one of the reasons why some packagers like ourselves and others became a little underweighted. Yet there is really no difference in the quality needs, the capabilities, the margin profile of selling into that category. So make good progress. We expect to share more examples of that in the quarters ahead, because we like the traction that we have. Some of those revenue synergies actually are a good example of ones that will come on the private label side.
Got it. All right. I have almost exhausted all my questions. Any questions from the room for Steve? Anyone? No. It is pretty quiet out there, Steve.
That is great.
Your $20 billion portfolio, that's your core portfolio.
Yes.
Within that, there's obviously the growth segments of that portfolio. Maybe just touch on the most attractive ones to Amcor and what you're doing to continue to drive, I guess, increased exposure to those segments.
Yeah. No, and I appreciate that and use that to conclude because I think you touched on it's important, overall as a $20 billion global consumer packager, we've got really good line of sight into the day-to-day life of the consumer, as well as the trends that are occurring both, in big regions, North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, that are actually taking place with the consumer.
We spend a lot of time focused on what are the dietary habit changes that are taking place that we should be investing behind to make sure that we're packaging those product categories. We identified six of them pretty early on, where the growth rate should be low to mid-single digits.
These are categories would be no surprise to many of you, like proteins, a place where certainly, caloric intake changes and dietary habit changes, more proteins, big part of it. Healthcare. We've got a $2.5 billion healthcare platform. Wonderful opportunity to grow and invest behind that with the medium and long-term in mind. Personal care. Taking care of ourselves.
As we improve our dietary habits, we tend to improve our commitments to ourselves in terms of our own health and wellbeing. We all love our pets. We're feeding our pets now as well as we feed ourselves. We package that and do that distinctively in advantaged ways. Food service markets. As a resin-based producer, now polypropylene cups. We're the highest quality, lowest cost producer in North America. Now that the cups are more readily recyclable and viewed as such, the QSRs are making advances that direction.
They like seeing the product, they like seeing the brands. By focusing in on what happened to be six categories, a little over half of that $20 billion, we believe there's opportunities to outperform the broader market. It doesn't mean that we're not incredibly focused on the other 45%. We are. They're equally important in terms of center of the store, kind of day-to-day consumption.
As we continue to weight the corporation towards those higher value and higher growth-oriented markets, a greater percentage of the enterprise will move that direction, hence our belief that there's an opportunity there to outperform the broader market, and it's about the where you point your investment dollars, like private label as well. Those fall into those market categories and commercial categories, and then a couple of regions that are important to us.
That's great, Steve. Appreciate your time.
Absolutely. Thank you all for taking the time. Have a good rest of the afternoon.