Great. We'll go ahead and get started. For those of you I haven't met yet, my name is Michael Leithead. I head up the chemicals and packaging efforts here at Barclays. We're happy to have Ball Corporation, Dan Fisher, President and CEO, Scott Morrison, CFO, Scott Vail from the IR dream team here as well. Before we start, we're gonna run through some of these audience response questions. If you can man the clickers, we'll run through these pretty quickly. I guess question one, do you currently own this stock? Yes, overweight; yes, market weight; three, underweight; four, no.
I need a clicker.
Fortunately, you guys can participate in that.
That would be one.
Okay, fairly balanced. Looks like we got some opportunity here. Next question. What is your general bias towards the stock right now? one, positive, two, negative, three, neutral. Okay, fairly balanced again. Next question. In your opinion, through cycle EPS growth for Ball should be above peers, in line with peers, below peers? Okay. Got the most neutral crowd so far. Everybody's pretty in line. Next question. In your opinion, what should Ball do with the excess cash? Bolt on M&A, larger M&A, share repurchases, dividends, debt pay down, or internal investment. I swear these aren't pre-prepped. The most balanced responses. Next question.
It's like asking my household what are we gonna have for dinner?
In your opinion, on what multiple of 2023 earnings should Ball Corp trade? Less than 10-12, 13-15, 16-18, 19-21, higher than 21. Now, hopefully, this isn't as balanced because I hope there's nobody saying under 10. Okay. It's again, fairly balanced. Next question. What do you see as the most significant share price headwind facing Ball Corp? Core growth, margin performance, capital deployment, execution strategy. We have one last one on ESG after this. Wrap it up. Okay. Last one. Does ESG play an active role in your investment decision relating to the company? Yes, it's a positive factor. Yes, it's a negative consideration. No, it does not play a role in our assessment right now. No, but we plan to incorporate ESG in the future.
I don't think these are all the right results, I swear. We'll leave it at that. well, look, appreciate you guys joining us again. shoot, a lot has changed since last February where we sat here. I mean, I think we sat here maybe day one of or day zero. Maybe to start off, can you just level set where the Ball organization is today, where you feel you're well-positioned to return to kinda long-term growth rates here in 2023?
Yeah, we were just talking about the fact that I was watching the tanks roll in on a TV out there, which wasn't a big deal writ large for a lot of companies, but it was for us because nearly 10% of our earnings came from our asset base in Russia. Walking out of here, that was sort of all-consuming at that point last year. Kudos to our leadership team in Europe that dealt with sanction after sanction after sanction and kept those assets running. We exited that, I think in a place where very few folks did, certainly didn't get the value that that business was worth 366 days ago, but we got $535 million of cash out, and we're able to pay down some debt with that.
That was a remarkable exit. We saw elements of an incredible growth trajectory, meter a bit, right around the May, June time frame. We grew 6% in May last year in our North America business, and it went to negative in June. A lot of that had to do with the well-publicized nature of how our customers treated price and inflation and passing that through lack of promotional activity in the peak season. With the combination of the Russia business that we had to deal with from a structural standpoint and a metering or a rebasing of sort of our planned growth, we had to then take consideration of how we were gonna manage our working capital, finished goods, raw material stock.
We made a couple of announcements relative to some facility rationalizations that were, I think, overblown relative to the connective tissue to growth. It had a lot more to do with the fact that those were aged assets that we were not going to recapitalize over the next three to five years. We had an opportunity to simply shutter two legacy facilities that were less agile, more costly, and that we weren't gonna recapitalize. We took that as an opportunity, and we started to get ready candidly for 2023, taking structural actions to the tune of $150 million relative to SG&A and fixed cost adjustments. We will benefit from the PPI catch-up of what happened last year, and that will be net $200 million.
We positioned the business, in 2023 to get back in line with what folks understand Ball to do, and that is to return capital to our shareholders. We'll be doing that in the form of a de-levering this year, in conjunction with our dividend payout. We're gonna generate $750 million of free cash flow this year. That free cash flow generation will start to tick up considerably in 2024 and 2025, you'll start to see a return to share buybacks and continue to evaluate leverage position. The growth story is still in place. We expect to grow in the range of 4% this year. Sorry, I keep saying next year, but we're here in February.
We took a lot of body blows last year, candidly, and I think we're gonna deliver body blows this year. I think the business is on its toes, and fundamentally, what you've known about Ball historically is what Ball is going to deliver this year and beyond. We're in a really good spot, and aluminum still is by far and away the best circularity story amongst packaging. We're opening doors in the reuse and refill space at an accelerated clip in our aerosol business. Traditionally, the aerosol business that folks know. Scott and I are gonna talk to the person who runs this hotel and try to ask them what exactly these compostable plastics are, because I'm quite certain they're gonna end up in the trash, because you can't compost plastic.
Other than that, I'll turn it back over to you.
I will not comment on that.
Yeah.
I guess maybe, Dan, you talked a little bit about North America and obviously the actions that you took to kind of, to your point, get it in the right position for growth. I think on your fourth quarter call recently, you talked a little bit about returning to promotional activity in North America. Appreciate it's only February, but I mean, just can you talk broadly kind of what you're seeing, hearing from your customers so far this year?
The first, and I think a lot of our customers have released earnings here over the last couple weeks. They've leaned into this concept of returning to a more normalized pricing behavior. I think what you should take away from that is normalized pricing behavior in the United States and even to some extent in Europe, but to a lesser extent 'cause they're not a pantry stuffing society. Memorial Day through Labor Day are where promotions, barbecues, all of that happens, and it's been traditionally a peak in terms of our volume. There's seasonality benefit to that. There was no promotion for the first time in 40 years last summer.
You can I think, attribute that to any number of things, the COVID stimulus and additional cash and on and on and on. The behavioral disruption from our customers certainly manifested through lower growth rates during that peak period for us. The first promotional opportunity at the beginning of the year in North America is always two weeks prior to the Super Bowl. We actually saw, especially on the beer side, promotion. You won't see another real opportunity for promotion again until sort of late March in and around Easter. But that was a welcome sign, and so has the external commentary of our customers. To your point, one point in the year does not a trend make.
However, it is, it is something that is a clear indication that the pricing lever that has been pulled repeatedly for about six or seven quarters has come off, and it came off dramatically in the last four to six weeks of 2022.
Great. That's, that's helpful. Maybe just looping into that, I'll tie in a sustainability question. It's been an up and down kind of customer demand environment for the past 12 to 18 months for all the factors you talked about. Can you just kind of speak to your conversations with your customers around substrate shift to aluminum? Has that changed at all? I mean, again, has that been a continuous steady driver despite all of the, again, we'll call it market fluctuations?
Yeah
... the past two years or so?
Yeah. I think there are, there are conversations and then there are data points, we try to tell ourselves the truth with the data. One, one data point that we've leaned on heavily over the last handful of years is the new product introductions in the U.S. relative to the packaging substrates. Cans went from about a 35% share five years ago to 85%, I think Q3 of last year, and they've come off 1%. We're in this 80%-85% range, which tells me that new products are getting launched overwhelmingly into cans and aluminum packaging. That means that our customers don't wanna build on the problem they already have with single-use plastic.
If you remove water out of the plastic calculation, you can really see that plastic has come down over the last handful of years. We still continue to consume an inordinate amount of single-use plastic and water, and that's really the volumetric climb of PET still. There's nothing relative to specific conversations. There's a lot of ideation in and around new product development and new products. I don't know which one's gonna win. That's always the question. What's the next spiked seltzer? What's the next... I don't know, but at some level, I really don't care if they're all coming out in cans. Something's gonna win in a can.
Great. If we maybe shift the conversation to the international markets a little bit. We talked about North America. South America has probably been a bit choppy. EMEA seems quite resilient, though. I mean, despite the inflationary pressures there, if you carve out Russia, I mean, it still feels like demand there is pretty good. Can you just kind of talk about your outlook in those regions as we go into 2023?
Yeah. I would say Europe for us is... It's interesting. It's obviously there's energy policy, and there's the ridiculousness that's taking place in a very sad way in the Ukraine. The best medium and long-term outlook for us is Europe, and largely because aluminum is so under-penetrated. We're sub 30% substrate penetration there. If you look in some parts of the region where we're adding capacity, it's fundamentally tethered to not only substrate shift from plastic, but substrate shift from glass, which is not well understood, but that's the preference of the high volume consumers. High volume consumers obviously are not older than 35. There's this generational shift that continues to happen in the Nordics and Eastern Europe and places like that we will benefit from for the medium and the long term.
If I was to shift to South America, Michael, I would say South America is exactly as you characterize. It's choppy, it's inflation, it's interest rates, it's all of those things. I think Lula's trying to get his footing in Brazil, which is the biggest country, but we're still seeing growth in Argentina, believe it or not, with 60% inflation every month. We're still seeing returnable glass shift in all of the other regions and all of the other countries in and around. We've gotten to a little bit more stable footing relative to can penetration versus returnable glass right now over the last 18 months, and that's not dissimilar to when we've seen higher inflation in Brazil over the last 30 years.
There's inflection points where they'll use the returnable glass, they'll push that in an inflationary environment, and then as things normalize, you'll see the return to can. We would expect that back half of this year and into 2024.
Great. Okay. Maybe if we just round out the aluminum parts of the portfolio, the areas that maybe don't get as much focus sometimes, the aerosol, the aluminum cups. Can you just update us just kind of what the opportunity for growth is there, what you're seeing in terms of the market, kind of going forward?
Yeah. Aerosol is, has the greatest opportunity it's probably ever had in the historical context of Ball owning that asset. Personal care, conversion of steel to aluminum, personal care refill, conditioner, shampoos, things of that nature have really taken off in Europe. This product here is actually our aerosol technology that you're seeing more and more in terms of the refill in the water market. Still low volumes, but it doesn't take a lot of volume to really move the needle for that business. It's really good margins. Lower capital throws to incrementally grow. We're really encouraged by that product and that portfolio.
One of the things that I think is not as well understood in that market, one of the large European players was actually a Russian player, so supply-demand has really moved in our, in our favor over the last year. That's one minor benefit to the Russian business as long in conjunction with the things that our aerospace and defense business do are much more in demand now as a result of that conflict. That business we're excited about. We should see double-digit growth for the foreseeable future and nice returns on the leverage of that asset base. You may even hear us talk a little bit more about some tactical investments, some surgical investments in and around capital.
Again, it's low capital throws for that business, but nice payback. We'll probably be talking more and more about that in the foreseeable future. On cups, it is such an opportunity, and they're facing some significant challenges in terms of... I mean, let's be honest, greenwashing. I know my IR representative is not gonna like this, but I'll tell you, Hawaii has banned single-use plastic cups in Hawaii. When you go to your favorite hotel, you'll see compostable plastic cups. There is no industrial compost facility in Hawaii, so where do you think those cups are actually going? I think the more we tell this story, the easier it's gonna be for us to step into a real solve for this product and a real circularity solve. It's not waste.
That business is a rocket ship if you get a modicum of regulation and/or a modicum of real understanding. Right now it's on a slow, steady growth trajectory. It is still an earnings drag for us, but we're big believers in it at this point. I think a couple things are gonna break our way here in the next year or two, which makes that an incredibly viable product for our portfolio and for our investors.
Great. Maybe I can actually tie that into a, maybe a bit broader of a question. You guys have done a lot of work, and I think have been pretty adamant in public around recycling rates, circularity. I guess, bottom line, how do you think we can get to a higher rate here in the U.S.? I mean, I think that's kind of a key, I don't want to say impediment, but a key catalyst that not just for cups, for cans, for all of your products. Kind of what do you think needs to get done or how do you think we kind of get there over the medium term?
Get really close to this.
I mean, I think realistically, you're gonna see more and more legislation, single serve plastic is being legislated out in a lot of places already, especially along the coast, both East and West Coast. I think that can help. I think to Dan's point, getting through the greenwashing that other people are doing on certain products, and telling our story. This is by far, aluminum is by far the best circularity story that there is. I think we keep telling that story. You're seeing we get a report every Monday on what's going on from a sustainability standpoint around the world. I would say 85%-90% of the legislation that is coming favors the aluminum container.
I think over time, we'll continue to win.
We've done such a good job with aluminum that all of the discussions now with our customers are solely on carbon zero. Getting there, it's like if you can, if you can demonstrate that you can get there, I think that is now the next leg in the stool that we knock over. We've got great industry partners. We've got great technicians that recycle content and recycling is the answer. You've also gotta demonstrate that you're gonna have a supply chain that's gonna continue to invest to navigate that carbon zero end state for your product. I think we're doing both of those simultaneously. I'm encouraged by. I was talking to the governor of Colorado a couple of weeks ago. He's fully supportive of it. He's working on the circularity benefits. You do need deposit legislation.
I mean, that's clear. The states that have deposit legislation, it's a 90-plus % recycling rate. The ones that don't, it's embarrassing, but Colorado, I think, is somewhere in the forties. People go out there to enjoy the outdoors, but I think we're 42nd in terms of recycling rates. It legitimately is deposit legislation can really turn the dime. We've been hesitant to enter into that historically because we wanna make sure that everyone is paying at the same rate. Because if everyone's paying at the same rate, we actually have economic value. We don't wanna subsidize other competitors and their streams. We're starting to get more and more practicality in and around that. As Scott said, coupled with the bans of plastic, you gotta get additional recycling.
I think those in conjunction with a carbon zero landscape are the three linchpins that we're working against. Each one of them is as important as the other, depending on what audience you're talking to. In every instance, we actually have a plan, and we have underpinnings for that plan, and I think we'll continue to, you'll continue to see the packaging win, short-term, medium-term, long-term.
Great. Maybe if we can just tie it all together. I mean, we've talked about most of your businesses other than aerospace tonight. I do wanna get to aerospace 'cause there is a really nice story there in terms of backlogs and earnings growth. Just as we think about for the company 2023 earnings growth, you talked a little bit about the cost side, you talked a little bit about the volume growth. Can you maybe help people? You just kind of laid out your reiteration of your long-term targets for 2023, just kind of the framework or the key moving pieces that get you confident about delivering that this year.
I'll speak to that. Yeah, I think the. You know, we took actions pretty early last year, and it was painful to do, but the plant closures, the cost takeout, fixed costs, and then the G&A savings that are at least the same size as, probably larger than the fixed cost savings. We'll get the benefit of that. Dan mentioned the $200 million of PPI. What we're starting to see also is inflation or input inflation moderating. You know, you don't have the problem with the ports that we had a year or so ago at this time. You're starting to see transportation come off. Oil's moderating. A lot of our coatings input materials are moderating.
That's kind of a perfect scenario of we're gonna get the PPI catch up and then our cost base is moderating. I think all of those things, we're really focused on cash generation. We said $750 million of free cash flow this year. We'll pay our dividend and then use the rest, about $500 million to delever. We need to see a path kinda getting back to 3.5 times is kinda the next target, and then we'll see from there what the world looks like, what interest rates look like. I know, you know, people in this room, everybody talks about how high interest rates are. I can remember when interest rates were a lot higher than this.
These are not, these are still not interest rates that you'd say kill growth. It definitely can dampen it a little bit, but these are still pretty attractive markets.
Great. As you segued perfectly into my next question around capital deployment and how we should think really about the next kind of 12- 18 months. You talked a little bit about where you'd like leverage to be before you kind of re-ramp some of the buyback. As we get from 2023 to 2024, can you talk a little about growth CapEx, kind of where you think that kind of gets to? Just if we can kind of build the bridge. I know it's too early to talk 2024, but just kind of the key moving pieces as we think about a better free cash flow conversion. Continuing to move forward.
Yeah, I think we're at a pretty good spot. You know, we've spent a lot of capital in the last couple of years, and then we're finishing up the two new locations in Europe, and that gives us a nice platform to still be able to grow. We can put incremental lines in those facilities if we need to at the appropriate time. I think the capital takes another step down. You know, last year we spent just under $1.7 billion. This year it'll be about $1.2 billion. I see it stepping down below, well below $1 billion next year. That's just gonna add incrementally to that free cash flow. The faster we can get there, the faster we can start buying back stock.
Great.
Two points to add to that is we get a lot of questions about is 3.5 times the right number. I think Scott and I internally and with the board, if interest rates continue to tick up, it feels like that's probably closer to three, is where we would probably drive that to over 2024 and 2025. Sort of implied in Scott's comments, internally, what we talk about for 2024 and 2025 is something a lot closer to free cash flow equaling net income. A real step down in depreciation and returning that back to shareholders, which is really what we laid out in our 2020 investor day. It's like we're gonna put capital in, we're gonna see, the volumes come up, which it has overwhelmingly around the world, and then we'll be strategic in capital deployment.
We're gonna take that operation cash flow expansion, and we're gonna push it back to our shareholders, similar to what Paul's always done since EVA, which I think Ann remind me, 31 years this year.
Great. Well, I do wanna save some time for questions. I could sit up here and ask you questions for an hour and a half. Any questions in the room? Yes, over there. I think they've got a mic that'll swing over to you.
Hi. I was curious about the promotional environment. You said beer was more promotional ahead of the Super Bowl than carbonated soft drinks. Is that because that market's more competitive? Should we expect that for the rest of the year and maybe going forward, that pricing will be firmer on the carbonated soft drink side and more competitive, I guess, in beer?
No, that's a great question. Beer volumes were off in the second half of the year at a much more pronounced rate than carbonated soft drinks and energy. I think some of the major brewers put forth price increases late October, early November, and they've essentially unwound that because they really saw an elasticity movement versus what they had seen up to that point. Once those elasticity paradigms break on that pricing strategy, that's when you start to see a little different behavior. I would expect CSB. My expectation would be you would see in North America, obviously, you would see that over more over the peak season, more over those normalized pantry stuffing events.
With the exception that there is one large beverage company that lost a pretty good amount of share over the last 18 months. They may be a bit more aggressive. All we need is one. All we need is I think you heard most of that.
Sorry, if you guys can't tell from here, it's blinding up here.
On CapEx, can you remind us what it means CapEx 2023? How much of the $1.2 billion is from projects you already had started? Kind of the payment for projects that are in the works.
Maintenance is probably in the, like, $3-$3.50, in that range probably now. The fees have definitely inflated from where they were a few years ago. In terms of, almost all the capital that we're spending this year is on things that went in the ground or are going in the ground early this year. The facilities in Europe ramp up here, late in the first quarter, so we'll be paying for that as we get to the end of the year. Most of what we're paying for this year are things that were put in the ground last year. We haven't announced anything new in the past six to nine months.
Almost half of that capital this year is 80% of half of it's the big facilities in Europe.
Yes.
We built them last year, we're paying for them this year. Kinda how you look at that. On the 350, if you break it down, 125 for aerospace and 225 for everything else, that's sort of your M&R. It's actually a bigger piece than most people think for the aerospace.
Any last questions in the room? I think we got time for one more if anybody has one. Going once, going twice. Well, Dan.
Thanks, everybody.
Thanks, Mike.
Thank you as always for coming. Appreciate it.
Awesome.
They'll be around all day.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Mike. Good seeing you.