Hello and welcome to the Graphic Packaging Q4 and full-year 2022 earnings call and webcast. My name is Elliott, and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to register a question during the presentation, you may do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I'd now like to hand over to Melanie Skijus, Vice President of Investor Relations. The floor is yours. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and welcome to Graphic Packaging Holding Company's fourth quarter and full-year 2022 earnings call. Joining us on our call today are Mike Doss, the company's President and CEO, and Steve Scherger, Executive Vice President and CFO. To help you follow along with today's call, we will be referencing our fourth quarter earnings presentation, which can be accessed through the webcast and also on the investor section of our website at www.graphicpkg.com. Before I turn the call over to Mike, let me remind you that today's press release and the presentations made by our executives include forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections.
These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the factors identified in the release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, let me now turn the call over to Mike.
Thank you, Melanie. Good morning. Thank you for joining us on the call today. 2022 was an outstanding year for Graphic Packaging. We significantly grew our business and continued executing strategic initiatives focused on extending our leadership in fiber-based consumer packaging. Our focus on consumer packaging is driving profitable growth and delivering returns for shareholders in line with our Vision 2025 goals. Turning to slide four, let me walk you through the year's accomplishments and a brief look into 2023 before sharing the details of the exciting new strategic capital investment we are announcing this morning. Our financial results in both the quarter and the full-year were excellent, characterized by strong growth and margin expansion. Sales for the full-year increased 32% to $9.4 billion, driven by $1.1 billion positive pricing, 3% organic sales growth and acquisitions.
Adjusted EBITDA of $1.6 billion grew at a faster pace than sales of 52% as margins expanded by 210 basis points to 16.9%. The Coated Recycled Paperboard or CRB K2 machine investment, the largest capital investment we have made to date, came to light in early 2022 as we successfully ramped production of the machine on our original timeline. The investment is evidence of our long-term commitment to high quality, low-cost production of fiber-based consumer packaging utilizing recycled content. The investment returned the first $47 million of EBITDA in 2022 and remains on track to achieve the total annual run rate of $130 million of incremental EBITDA in 2024.
The success of this investment has provided us with the expertise and confidence to continue to strategically invest as we will detail further in a few moments. The AR Packaging acquisition in Europe continues to meet our high expectations. Growth opportunities provided by new consumer markets, geographic expansion, and proprietary solutions protected by intellectual property have further accelerated our excellent momentum. Our combined team successfully integrated the business and the initial targeted $40 million synergy goal remains on track with the first $15 million realized in 2022. As committed, our net leverage ratio has climbed 3.2x at year-end from pro forma 4.6 x at year-end 2021. Through new product innovations and expanded geographies, we increased the addressable market for organic growth to $12.5 billion from $5 billion just a few years ago.
We remain confident in our ability to achieve 100 basis points-200 basis points annual net organic sales growth in 2023 and beyond, given strong demand from global customers for our robust pipeline of innovative fiber-based consumer packaging. Looking briefly into 2023, and as Steve will describe in his remarks, we expect sales, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS to again grow year-over-year, generating strong cash flow we will invest for long-term value creation while having balance sheet prudent for today's uncertain economic environment. Before I walk through the details of the significant new investment we are announcing today, let me take a moment on slide five to reflect on our performance over the past three-year period since announcing Vision 2025 in September 2019.
Our global team has successfully executed a pivot to sustainability-supported organic growth with net organic sales up approximately 10% since 2019. We have pursued and achieved critical milestones on our journey to Vision 2025, including growing net sales, expanding margins, and building a much larger scale business focused almost entirely on fiber-based consumer packaging. Over the past three years, sales have grown by over $3 billion to $9.4 billion, representing a 15% compound annual growth rate. Adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share have expanded at a faster pace than sales driven by margin expansion. Our financial results and achievements over the last three years have resulted in a total shareholder return of 41%, outperforming the S&P 500 return by 1,600 basis. We are creating value through our leadership with Vision 2025.
The investments we have made to advance our capabilities as a fiber-based consumer packaging company differentiate us. As you've heard me say before, we are running a different race. Let me now turn to slide six to provide details regarding our announcement this morning and the role it will play in our long-term commitment to meeting consumer demand for sustainable packaging. Graphic Packaging is the only North American producer investing to meaningfully upgrade and expand CRB capabilities. We are confident this is the right strategy to deliver value to our customers and to our investors. We recognize the distinct opportunities the substrate can provide. The future of consumer packaging will include more CRB in more places, and we're taking steps to position our paperboard network to meet this growing demand.
We have a strong leadership position in CRB from a cost and capability perspective, and this investment will further these advantages. We will be leveraging our unique expertise in CRB production, our muscle memory from the recent K2 investment, and our leading North American mill system to build a new CRB mill in Waco, Texas. Importantly, this investment not only enhances our CRB capabilities but supports optimization of our full paperboard network and improves our environmental footprint, further distinguishing Graphic Packaging as the low-cost, highest quality paperboard producer in North America. As a result, we expect to drive significant and sustainable EBITDA improvement well into the future. Referring to slide seven, the growing demand for packaging made with recycled materials is driven by the consumer.
Today's consumer is more environmentally aware than ever, and according to a recent survey, consumers rank packaging made from recycled materials as the most appealing sustainability claim. Through a package made with CRB, consumers see the benefit of their recycling efforts each time they place the fiber-based packaging into a recycling bin. As you can imagine, our customers are responding to what consumers are telling them by seeking to use more recycled materials in their packaging. Not only is doing so in line with consumer trends and preferences, it's also a key driver for advancing their recyclability goals and supports their overall publicly committed sustainability programs. This growing demand, combined with the improved quality of CRB produced by Graphic Packaging's modern mills utilizing the latest state-of-the-art technology, is expanding the breadth of our opportunities for CRB-based packaging.
Slide eight demonstrates how we believe this new investment will meet the increased demand for CRB at an unmatched cost compared to our competitors. As you can see, the addition of Waco allows us to further optimize our network by closing higher-cost mills over time while still expanding capacity to meet growing global demand. We expect the new machine in Waco will mirror the capacity and cost per ton of the recently completed K2 machine in Kalamazoo. It's clear to see that the modern technology inherent in these new machines provides a meaningful cost to produce step change improvement compared to decades-old machines used elsewhere. Notably, this expansive competitive cost differentiation is unique to the CRB substrate as compared to other fiber-based substrates. We are building for the future in a manner that is far more efficient than what was built in the past. Turning to slide nine.
In addition to the efficiency of the mill itself, we are very excited to have secured a location that is ideally positioned within a growing economic center. The city of Waco is situated in the Texas Triangle. Our new mill will be strategically located within 200 miles of approximately 80% of the population of Texas, providing easy access to a strong existing recycled fiber basket. Waco also has existing infrastructure to support a mill as well as advantaged logistics from a rail and roadway perspective to supplier packaging facilities and our customers. We're looking forward to joining the Waco community and working with the great talent base in the area. We appreciate the strong support and engagement we have received from the city and the county as we conducted our site selection process.
From a timing perspective, we expect to start construction this quarter and begin commissioning the machine by the end of 2025, with production ramping up in early 2026. Our decision to build this mill shortly after K2 allows us to leverage key learnings from that process, both internally and with our external partners, which gives us added confidence in our ability to meet the projected timeline and quickly ramp up production on the new recycled paperboard machine. Slide 10 shows an updated map for our current and future mill network. With this new investment and targeted mill closures, we are looking at a simplified and optimized mill network that will lower cost and strategically increase capacity. Our virgin paperboard mills are located throughout the Southeast, which is the best virgin fiber basket in the country.
Our two industry-leading CRB mills in the future will be geographically located to provide strong coverage across the United States as well as into Canada and Mexico. We estimate the optimized mill network will have 5% more capacity than we have today, with the flexibility to adjust capacity in line with demand. Importantly, while the capacity expansion is driven by the addition of the new Waco mill, the benefits run across other substrates. The improved CRB quality made possible by our new machines will enable substrate optimization across our mill system, as some packages that historically required virgin fiber can now be made with CRB. Incremental virgin capacity in our other mills to meet our growing global demand. The combination of our global packaging growth plans and our mill network optimization plans will support integration rates in excess of 90% once the new mill is operational.
Overall, this investment will extend our position as the lowest cost, highest quality paperboard producer in North America. Beyond cost, quality, and capacity, there are also significant sustainability advantages to this new investment as outlined on slide 11. First, we will be increasing circularity of our system through an enhanced drum pulper investment. This investment increases our ability to clean and separate a broader range of secondary fiber. Today, a large percentage of our paperboard waste that we cannot recycle is exported. Our Waco mill is designed to enable the recycling of 100% of our own internally generated paperboard side rolls and waste. We plan to capture the value of that fiber as well as reduce the environmental impact of shipping the fiber offshore for processing.
We are estimating around 200,000 pounds of side rolls and waste will be processed at the Waco mill versus purchasing external secondary fiber as we do today. This will also significantly enhance the security of the secondary fiber supply. This machine also increases our paper cup recycling ability. The drum pulper has the capacity to process up to 15 million paper cups per day. To take advantage of this increased recycling capacity, we have launched teams to engage with our customers and recycling partners to increase the collection rate of paper cups to further support recovery and a more circular economy. As you would expect, initial interest from customers is very high. The CRB mill network optimization is expected to improve our environmental footprint. Our absolute greenhouse gas emissions are expected to decrease in our optimized North American CRB mill network by 12%.
Investments in technologies such as the gas turbine to generate all the electricity needed by the mill, as well as produce steam for paperboard drying, will improve overall efficiency and reliability. Lastly, let me cover the financial highlights of the project on slide 12. This approximately $1 billion investment will be internally funded with operating cash flow over the course of three years and is consistent with our balanced approach to capital allocation. We have flexibility to invest in our business and have a strong balance sheet with manageable debt levels. As Steve will detail further, we remain focused on continuing to reduce our net leverage in 2023.
We expect the state-of-the-art mill will generate $160 million in incremental annual EBITDA at its full run rate, driven by approximately $100 million in cost reduction and $60 million benefit through optimized mill capacity. We expect to realize approximately $80 million as a return on the investment in 2026, the machine's first year of operation. This strategic investment showcases how we are extending our leadership in fiber-based consumer packaging to meet growing demand for more sustainable packaging solutions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve to provide more detail on the quarter and full-year financials along with 2023 guidance. Steve?
Thanks, Mike. Good morning. Turning to slide 13, the key financial highlights for the fourth quarter and full-year. Net sales increased 20% in the fourth quarter to $2.4 billion, 32% for the full-year to $9.4 billion. Fourth quarter net organic sales growth of 1% was in line with our expectations as our customers managed year-end inventory positions, resulting in full-year net organic sales growth of 3%. This represents our third consecutive year of delivering organic sales growth at or above the high end of our targeted range.
Q4 adjusted EBITDA of $413 million increased $128 million or 45% year-over-year, meeting our expectations despite the $20 million unfavorable impact from the late December winter storm, which impacted paperboard production by roughly 40,000 tons during the month. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.3% improved 300 basis points from the prior year period. Full-year adjusted EBITDA of $1.6 billion increased $544 million, or 52% from 2021. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 16.9% was up 210 basis points year-over-year. Adjusted EPS, excluding amortization of purchased intangibles, continued to expand, growing $0.78 for the full-year to $2.33.
On slide 14, let me walk through additional details of financial performance, markets, operations, and capital allocation. Our food, beverage, and consumer sales grew 37% in 2022, driven by positive price, organic sales growth, and acquisitions. full-year sales were up 16% before acquisitions. Food service sales also achieved strong growth of 25% from 2021. Significant growth in both sales and adjusted EBITDA were driven by positive pricing, organic sales growth, and acquisitions. Adjusted EBITDA was also positively impacted by $47 million from the K2 CRB investment and $15 million in synergies realized from the AR Packaging acquisition. These positive benefits were partially offset by supply chain challenges and costs that our teams successfully managed throughout 2022 in order to meet customer demand. For your reference, our sales and EBITDA waterfalls are available in the appendix of today's presentation.
Turning to paperboard market data, industry operating rates reported by the FPA remained solid across substrates in the fourth quarter. SBS was 91% and CRB was 95%. Our CUK operating rate remains over 95%. Company backlogs of 7 weeks-8 weeks remain healthy and are reflective of a balanced supply-demand environment. During the year, our strong cash flow engine really was on full split. In addition to investing strategic capital to grow our business, we returned capital to shareholders while significantly de-levering our balance sheet. Net debt declined by $526 million to $5.1 billion. As committed, we reduced leverage to 3.2x at year-end 2022 from pro forma 4.6x at the end of 2021. A significant achievement. Liquidity remains very strong at over $1.5 billion.
As a reminder, our board of directors announced a quarterly dividend increase to $0.10 per share that was effective in January 2023, given the strength of our cash flows and the progress we have made toward achieving our Vision 2025 goals. On slide 15, let me provide our guidance for 2023. Many of the positive drivers that fueled growth in 2022 will continue in 2023. We believe net organic sales growth driven by innovative packaging solutions, positive pricing, returns from the K2 investment, synergy capture, and core productivity will drive financial performance improvements year-over-year. 2023 sales are expected to grow over $500 million to approximately $10 billion.
Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in a range of $1.7 billion-$1.9 billion, reflecting an increase of 13% or $200 million at the midpoint. Adjusted EPS, excluding amortization of purchased intangibles, is expected to increase to a range of $2.50-$2.90 per share. We expect to generate robust cash flow of $600 million-$800 million, which includes an initial $250 million-$300 million investment to support the new CRB mill in Waco, Texas. We are targeting further reduction in our net leverage ratio to approximately 2.5x by year-end. Slide 16 presents strong progress we have made toward achieving our Vision 2025 goals over the last three years.
Our 2023 guidance reflects momentum in the business towards achieving the enhanced financial goals we established last February. We expect to further expand our margins, grow returns on invested capital, increase our paperboard integration rate, and deploy capital to support growth and reduce costs. Finally, as noted on slide 16, we believe Graphic Packaging is well positioned to consider pursuing an investment-grade credit rating. Our leadership position and progress to date achieving Vision 2025 growth and return milestones, coupled with our confidence in the sustained future cash flows of the business, provide us with the flexibility required to continue to invest for growth while pursuing an enhanced credit rating. We will be engaging with the rating agencies in 2023 to assess options and the associated benefits of a potential upgrade. Thank you for your time this morning.
I will turn the call back to Mike for closing remarks.
Steve, thank you. Building on Steve's comments, cash flow generation in our business is significant and provides the means and financial flexibility to make investments such as the new CRB mill in Waco we announced today, while simultaneously further reducing debt and exploring an investment-grade credit rating. Let me now wrap up my prepared remarks on slide 17. Through our established track record of delivering net organic sales growth and productivity gains, along with our long history of deploying capital strategically to strengthen and grow the business, we are creating value for all stakeholders. We are executing strategic initiatives that answer the call from consumers for more sustainable packaging options and expanding the breadth of consumer packaging solutions we offer. As a pure-play global fiber-based consumer packaging leader, we are running a different race. Thank you for your time this morning.
Let's turn the call back to the operator now to begin the question and answer session.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by 2. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question today comes from Ghanshyam Panjabi from Baird. Your line is open.
Yeah. Hey, guys. Good morning. A lot of the CPGs that have been reporting, you know, calendar year 4Q numbers, a lot of their volumes, almost without exception are down mid-single digits. I look at your volumes, and they seem to have substantially de-correlated from them. Can you just give us some perspective on that? Also maybe you can parse out volumes between Europe and the U.S. as well for you.
Yeah, sure. Happy to do that. First, our growth last year was broad-based and really in all geographies. I'll start with that comment. You know, obviously in Q4, we saw some deceleration as we talked to you about when we got on our call at the end of Q3. That played out through the quarter. You know, October and November were quite strong, and December was weaker, as we expected it to be, quite frankly, given some of the de-stocking that our customers had talked to us about. Look, we were able to finish the quarter with positive growth.
Really, it's all about, as I said in my prepared remarks, we're attacking this market differently with our new product innovation, the products that we have focused on plastic substitution around the margin. We've been profiling a number of those different examples on our calls over the last couple of years. I think it's really evidenced to see, you know, over a three-year period of time, you know, if you look at a three-year stack, as Steve talked about in his prepared comments, you know, over 10%, you know, volume growth. So it's real. Even though some of those elasticities, to your point, are down a bit, you know, we like the defensive nature of our portfolio.
If you think about what we've done over the last, you know, really five years in terms of, you know, differentiating end-use market participation, our core food and beverage, as we talked about in our February, you know, Investor Day, is 56%, which is down dramatically from where it was, you know, five years ago. We've got a food service business that really is in the heart of this mobility movement and convenience movement. When you see things like, you know, last Friday's job announcement about 500,000 jobs, I mean, people are on the go, you know, and they're busy, and so they like to appreciate those kind of products.
You add that to a consumer business that's now almost 20% in diversified defensive end products like, you know, cat litters and dog food and glue and filter frames. I mean, we're kind of hitting those on multiple fronts. The last little piece of that would be our, you know, health and beauty business that we acquired with AR Packaging to kind of build up a 100% profile. I think the other part of it that I'd point to, Ghanshyam, and you know this, is, you know, the defensive nature of that portfolio. We've got, you know, almost 20% of that is right in the heart of, you know, store brands, private label type offerings. If the consumer trades down, we kind of catch it there, too.
We're participating on the branded side. If they see some weakness, we have it on the retail side, you know, in the private label sectors. Ultimately, this food service business has been a real winner for us, you know, as customers, you know, continue to be mobile.
Got you. Then for my second question, you know, back to the announcement in Waco, just the thought process of building a brand new mill versus, you know, perhaps pursuing an expansion of an existing mill system, sort of like you did with Kalamazoo. Is it just the world has changed from a geographic standpoint as it relates to your customers and the cost is overwhelming in terms of optimization by doing this? Or just give us more perspective on that?
Yeah. Thanks for the question. It's a good one. I think, look, we looked at expanding every existing CRB facility, we had to do a similar type project to what we did in Kalamazoo. If you really take a step back from it for a minute, what you need to do if you're making, you know, high quality, you know, low cost CRB is be in a fiber basket that's growing and very resilient. When we looked at kind of our profile, you see it there on the slide, the reduction down to six mills, which I'll come back to in terms of why that's important from a simplification standpoint. We really needed to be kind of in that southwest area. It gives us great optionality to go down into our growing Mexico business.
We can hit the West Coast, we can go back to the east. You've got a basket of 20 million people in that Texas triangle area there with very little pressure on that fiber basket. As a matter of fact, a lot of that fiber goes down into Mexico right now. We'll grab that, process it and turn it back into, you know, high quality materials. On top of that, as you heard in my prepared remarks, what we're really excited about is we're making some other pretty big investments with this mill in terms of, you know, kind of owning our own, our own energy production relative to electricity. You know, with the gas turbine generator there, we'll put in to cogen type, you know, setup.
We'll take the steam, you know, from that, turn it into electricity. Then we'll drive the paperboard. Then a lot of money going into a specialized, you know, hydro pulping system there that's gonna give us maximum optionality to internalize, you know, side and trim rolls that right now are, you know, are sold or exported in the open market. Then trim things like some of our Aqua-Kote trim that we haven't been able to process effectively at our existing CRB mills. We'll be able to take all that trim from our carton plants and bring it back to our mill in Waco and process it. That really allows us to have the reliability we're looking for. It allows us to have the security of supply. Of course, that fiber is fiber we already own.
you know, from a cash standpoint, it's a real winner for us. we really like how that's kind of coming together. you know, and then you have the tangential knock-on benefits of the muscle memory that was just built, you know, in Kalamazoo with our end-Contractors that have done this once, this machine will be an identical machine to the one we built in Kalamazoo. It'll be a single, you know, machine operation. you know, so we've got the costs associated with, you know, the infrastructure that we didn't have there. geographically, locating one mill in Michigan between, you know, Chicago and Detroit, and then this new mill in the Texas Triangle. You couldn't, you know, geographically position two coated recycled paperboard mills in better spots.
That really, you know, over, you know, the next, you know, three decades, you know, drives, you know, from the highest cost and, or excuse me, the highest quality and lowest cost, you know, platform that we can have.
Ganchu and Steve, just one thing to add that we mentioned in the prepared remarks is also with the drum pulping, the ability to also recycle up to 15 million cups a day. It's really an incredible investment in the circular economy, the ability to capture more fiber in better ways. We're looking forward to advancing that over the next couple of years as well. It just kind of rounded out some of the net positive benefits of the investment.
Maybe one final thing that I would share, Ganchu, since you went there. I mean, if you really take a step back and think about what we're doing here over the next three years, we're really building a mode around our business. We're simplifying our mill structure. We're gonna be the lowest cost by far. As you saw in our prepared comments, and again, our track record would support this, you know, we're gonna be over 90% integrated. We get a lot of questions around other paperboard that's being added, you know, globally, primarily a little bit here in North America on the virgin grades. We're the only one investing on the recycled side, and we see, you know, the end-use consumer really appreciating that much more. They like the materials that are recycled.
You kn.w, they get the benefit of seeing their work when they put it in a recycling bin or, you know, some other container that's gonna go back. I mean, recovery rates for paper and paper packaging in the U.S. last year were almost 68%, much higher than almost any other substrate, with the exception of maybe aluminum. If you, if you look at that, it's right at the center of it. You're gonna see CRB in more applications. You know, we have low caliber grades that we can run now that we have the capability on these modern machines to be able to do it. We can do freezer-grade boards and beverage boards. As both Steve and I said in our prepared comments, it allows us to really optimize our whole system.
You have to remember, we buy 1 million tons on the external market. Now we'll not be able to have to buy that many as we optimize that system. Because between what we've got and the new investment in Waco and our virgin mills, we'll be able to optimize things. Our confidence in $160 million is very high and largely within our control.
Thanks so much.
Thanks so much.
Got it.
Our next question comes from Mark Weintraub from Seaport Research Partners. Your line is open.
Thank you. A few I'll keep them really quick, though. Run rate for price costs, the spread as we look at it today, recognizing, of course, your guidance is gonna be factoring possibilities for, you know, changes in costs, et cetera. If, I think, like last quarter, the midpoint had been about $225. If we were to just look at a midpoint today, what would it be?
Mark, it's Steve. Glad to take that on. The range we provided, the $100-$400, we think is a good prudent range, just given the volatility that we've seen over the last couple of years. It feels like a very appropriate range for us. Obviously, we've got some commodities moving up and down right now. Up, paperboard that we buy, chemicals that we buy. Down, you know, fiber, obviously energy and some logistics. On a mark-to-market basis, sitting here today, we would be at the low end of the range, so closer to the low end of the $100-$400. It's also February, obviously we'll continue to refine as the year plays out.
There's certainly dialogue around some acceleration of costs in the second half of the year that could occur, so we're trying to keep a range that makes good sense. The mark-to-market currently would be closer to the low end of the range, the $100-$400.
Okay. Appreciate that. Then just follow up on the organic sales growth. The 1%-2% for 2023, understood. Curiosity, as you're looking at the first quarter, are you expecting to be in that type of range, or are you thinking that it's, you know, perhaps a little weaker at the start of the year and you make up ground later in the year against easier comps?
Mark, I'll start it, and then Mike can add, any color. I think, one of the positives sitting here on the call today is we've got a good view into January. We're off to the kind of start we expected to be in line with that 100 basis points-200 basis points. As we talked, we saw some, almost across the board, all packagers slow down in December. Things have cycled back, order patterns to where we expected them to be. No, we would expect the Q1 to be, you know, in line with those kind of expectations as we move into the year. A lot of that supported by the new product development activities that have been commercialized.
Maybe the only add I'd have, Mark, is that, you know, that confidence in January was broad-based. It was really all geographies. We're seeing that really across our business.
Okay. A few more. Yeah, I'll get back in queue, though, 'cause I realize others have questions.
Thanks, Mark.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from George Staphos from Bank of America. Your line is open.
Hi, everyone. Good morning. Thanks for all the details, you know, good end to the year. I wanted to turn back to Waco and, you know, you mentioned the comment, Mike, you know, building a moat around your business and, you know, certainly that's been one of the things you've talked about a lot. We've talked about is one way to think about this as well, that you obviously have had very strong results the last year, and it looks like given your guidance, you're expecting that in 23. The prudent thing to do ahead of potentially, you know, additional supply and competition is build the return, build the ability to grow your earnings ahead of when that capacity hits in 2025 and 2026.
You'll have potentially, if all plays out as you expect, a lot of tools at your disposal in 2025 and 2026. Use cash for buybacks. You'll have growth off this new machine in terms of EBITDA. Is that one way to look at this or would you totally disagree with that and why not?
It's the absolute right way to look at it, George. Again, just building on some of the comments, you know, that I made earlier to the conscience question. I mean, the part of that that we really like is the simplified mill structure. Six well-capitalized, low cost, high quality mills in the substrates that we need, driving towards 90% vertical integration between our organic growth and, you know, just kind of some, you know, additional growth that we anticipate that we'll see here over that time if you just do the math on the 102 basis points. It positions us very well, you know, for 2025, 2026 regardless kind of what those outcomes look like.
What I'd also say, George Staphos, and you've seen this, you've done this a long time, is we'll have to kind of watch and see what others are doing there because our experience in this industry, and it's quite a bit for Stephen Scherger and I, is that over time, low cost wins, high cost loses. I'd expect that to be similar to this go around. The great thing about how we're positioned in Graphic Packaging is not only are we low cost on the mill side, but our converting, you know, system is largely tied into that. Of course, you know, we've spent, you know, over the years to create, you know, capability there too, which is really supporting our growth. You're thinking about it the absolute right way.
All right. Thanks for that, Mike. I don't want to turn this into kind of an algebra class, but when I do some rough math on East Angus, Middletown and Tama and look at the slide deck and also make a conversion from metric to short ton, it seems like Waco adds about 550,000 short tons if I did the math right. Would you agree with that? If so, it seems like the profit per ton is a bit more $20-$30 versus K2. Could you know, talk to that and if it is higher, you know, why would that be the case?
Yeah, George, it's Steve, I'll start and Mike can add on as well. You got it correct. The Waco investment, 550,000 short tons at addition. The assumption as you see in the slides, the cumulative capacity of the other three facilities that are the higher cost facilities are 350,000 tons across Middletown, East Angus and Tama. That's the net incremental 200. Obviously, that can move over the years dependent upon the growth profile and the supply demand environment-
Yep.
-for what we're doing. That's the math that you're seeing there. Yes, you're seeing a slightly higher net improvement because of the singularity of this investment, if you will, in terms of its ability to kind of stand on its own and with some of the incremental investments that Mike was talking about on re-recovery and energy production and the like. I don't know if it makes sense to you?
No, that's right.
You know, again, fiber costs will be a little lower in the aggregate here because of the capabilities we have, George, in internalizing some of that material we're just not getting much money for right now in the export market. Like I said, that's a pickup for us there, from a cost standpoint. Also from a sustainability standpoint, which we're quite excited about. The other part of that is making our own electricity with our own steam, that's gonna lower the overall cost of that mill. You're thinking about it the right way.
Okay, guys, I will turn it over. Thanks very much.
Thanks, George.
I'll turn to Kyle White from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. You know, a lot of investors are concerned that pricing for your paperboard grades will begin to roll over as has happened in other markets. Looks like backlogs came down just a touch, but remain pretty healthy. I guess, what do you say when asked about this, you know, standpoint and environment? Do you see any increased competition in any of your markets with any kind of discounting taking place?
Kyle, as you know, overall capacity based on what's been publicly announced is gonna be relatively flat over the next, you know, couple of years for sure. Then there's some adds that'll happen into 2025 and 2026. If you just take a step back and look at what we're talking about in Graphic Packaging, which is what I'll talk about and speak to, we expect our volumes to grow in 2023, meaning we're gonna need more paperboard. We expect those markets to remain, you know, stuck. Our backlogs are solid as we reported here, and that's our expectation going forward.
Then on the cost, you increased the range by quite a bit on the commodity cost bucket relative to the preliminary outlook last quarter. you know, what was kind of the reasoning behind this? You talked about a little bit, but where do you see the most uncertainty in costs that could see the most inflation throughout the year that caused you to increase this range?
Yeah. Kyle, it's Steve. I mean, I think we're just being prudent. If you look back over the last two years, you know, we've seen
Hundreds of millions of dollars of inflation come at the business in short order at times. You've seen very high volatility in cost categories like nat gas, like recycled fiber. We're just looking at this saying, "Listen, we don't know where it will land. We think the $100-$400 is a good assumption." I just provided the mark-to-market a little bit earlier, which is on the lower end. You know, could you see some reinflation in the back half of the year? Is that plausible? Certainly we don't have a point of view on it, but we're recognizing that it is in fact plausible. If it occurs, then we'll take appropriate price action to recover.
We're just trying to be mindful of the fact that we've been, for now over two years, operating in a pretty volatile commodity input cost environment.
I mean, if you think about it, Kyle, just to build on that, I mean, if someone would've told us in August that we'd have $2.50, you know, MMBtu nat gas, I don't know if you would've believed it either. I mean, things can move around in a hurry, based on geopolitical things and other events. A couple of the analysts on the call have actually wrote about reinflation in the second half of this year. I think it's prudent to be, you know, a bit conservative here in terms of how we're looking at it because as Steve said, we just don't know for sure.
Kyle, to that, just to round that out.
That sounds good. I'll turn it over.
Yep. Thanks Kyle.
Thank you.
We now turn to Adam Samuelson from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Yes, thank you. Good morning everyone.
Hi Adam.
I guess, hi. I wanted to come back to the Waco investment and just, I mean, talk about a 12% kinda return, a cash return and 11% ROIC. I'm just trying to get a sense of how you've risk adjusted that versus your cost of capital for the size of the project and alternative uses of capital in terms of buying, whether it's buying stock or M&A, which obviously delivers earnings, you know, on a much shorter order. Just would seem like the spread versus the cost of capital for a sizable project is, does not have a big project risk premium in there. I just wanna make sure, I guess, that's how you're viewing that.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Adam. First off, you know, part of how we de-risk the project is the experience and the knowledge we have coming out of K2. I'll start with that. I mean, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, this is an identical machine to the one we just got done building. All the engineering is done. If you think about the operating system on this machine, it'll be all debugged by the time we lift and shift it down to Waco. You know, all those things, you know, really give us confidence in our ability to have a vertical ramp.
I think you'd actually have to agree our ramp in Kalamazoo in an 11 month fashion, getting up to, you know, full run rate, you know, exceeded most people's expectations, including mine, which were high. I think if you think about it in those terms, that's, that gives us confidence in the project. Having said that, I think the other thing you've gotta factor into an investment like a mill like this is, this is, you know, a 3+ decade , you know, type investment. And one other benefit about CRB versus some of the virgin stuff is the ongoing capital requirements to run a CRB mill are much lower than that of a virgin mill 'cause you don't have all the pulping and back end things that you gotta deal with.
The drop through on that 160 once we're at full run rate is pretty large. Our, you know, our stakeholders and investors will be, you know, the beneficiaries of, you know, that kinda cash dropping through each and every year. Just like they were, if you recall, when we talked about when we did K2, what we saw in K1, it had been running for, you know, three decades, throwing off $100 million of cash for a $120 million investment. That's how we think about it, a high level capital allocation. And you're right, there's things like, you know, acquisitions that you could do that could have a little bit more immediate, but they come with risk too, as we know in a situation in a macro like we're dealing with right now.
We've done all of those. I mean, if you think about the AR deal we did, it was a winner for us. Synergies are, you know, on track. We're growing our top line there. We have done buybacks in the past. You know, if you go back to 2015 almost, $1 billion of buybacks that we've done, you know, over that period of time. We look at it as truly a, you know, balanced capital allocation process and we think this one is a real winner for our shareholders.
Just to add onto that, Steve, I think, you know, there's a couple things in there that Mike was articulating. One is the returns are actually in many ways mechanical. It is fixed cost reduction, variable cost reduction. We can see it's in our control. We know how to execute against it. Echoing the point, a 30-year return profile for best in class cost structure at 11%-12% returns is quite value creating. We're also with what we're sharing today, there's a both and. We're investing for long-term growth, we're gonna reduce debt again in 2023, probably by another half a billion dollars. Leverage is gonna drop from 3.2x- 2.5 x.
We are returning very significant cash flows in a balanced way back to all stakeholders in this case by investing for the long term to build the moat up around the business while returning value to shareholders in a significant way, you know, driving leverage down to the low end of our targeted range.
Okay, that's all very helpful. If I could just ask a follow-up. You talked about kind of reoptimizing the mill, you know, the mill network and the, some of the different kind of products that can come out of the virgin grade mills. How do you think this positions your footprint to compete against some of the FBB kind of
SBS type capacity that's being put up by others and what, kind of how your cost position in those markets are impacted by putting Aqua-Kote and directing that capacity to CRB.
I think it creates a very tough environment for them in many ways. I mean, when you think about it, we're gonna have an optimized 6 mil system coming out of this, the lowest cost, you know, domiciled here in the U.S., and the best fiber baskets both on the virgin and on the CRB side. Over time, we're gonna take our tons, you know, the 5% growth that we're talking about and grow organically, driving our integration rates up above 90%. We always have said, Adam, that we wanna have the ability to, you know, have levers to pull and different optionality.
Growing our global spend to the point now where we're buying 1 million tons of paperboard, you know, creates a situation where we can pull a lot of different levers that allow us to optimize our core and continue to have to buy on the outside as we grow our converting business, both organically and with, you know, strategic M&A. That's our strategy. You know, I think it positions us well from a moat standpoint, you know, as those tons come on-online in 2025 and 2026.
Okay. All right. That's all. That's all very helpful. I'll pass it on. Thank you.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask any questions, please press star 1 on your telephone keypads. We ask you limit yourself to 1 question and 1 follow-up. Our next question comes from Gabe Hajde from Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open.
Mike, Steve, good morning.
Hey, Gabe. How are you doing?
Two, I guess, points of clarification. Thank you. This Tama mill with, I guess, a footnote one on there, it sounds like it was acquired at the end of January. Maybe just a little bit of color there as to what was driving that decision, 'cause it seems like it's not on the map when I look at the right side of slide 10. On the cash flow discussion or guide that you're giving us, I don't know if you talked about it much, Steve. The $300 million-$400 million that's working capital interest, taxes, pension, what are you trying to tell us there?
I'll take the first part of that, Gabe, and then let Steve handle your second part of the question. The first part of it is, if you take a step back and remember, we had a supply agreement with Greif when we bought their converting business back in, you know, February of 2020, that was pretty large, almost 100,000 tons. This mill played centrally into that. We're over half the volume of that mill. You know, relative to what we're doing here, we need those tons to make sure that we can run our business over the next few years and ultimately, you know, integrate that into our overall business. We're very committed to CRB as evidenced by the investments that we're making. It made sense for us to kind of de-risk that part of our business here going forward.
Yeah, just to add that, a couple of context points there in terms of expectations inside of the guide, our expectation for the mill, for the Tama mill this year is about $15 million of EBITDA. It'll get offset a little bit by the exit from Russia that we've articulated earlier that we're continuing to work through. Relative to the other cash item, all we're really doing there is just providing you with the range of what we expect or the really the other uses of cash for the business this year. That's where interest, taxes, working capital and pension will fall. Our interest costs are gonna be in the low to mid twos.
Our cash taxes will be ±$100 million, and then working capital and pension, you know, in a range of probably $0-$75 million. All we're doing there is just, you know, putting it into the appropriate category, $300 million-$400 million. That's really what it costs to operate the business, beyond the capital that we're putting to work. Hence, it's your walk from the midpoint of our EBITDA less the CapEx, less the $300 million-$400 million, gets you to the cash flow of $600 million-$800 million. Take the dividend off of that, any other small things that we do, and that's where the debt reduction, and there's the benefits to get you down to leverage in the 2.5 range. We're just providing you with the walk.
Understood. It was just the aggregate of those numbers, and I think maybe previously you guys had kind of broken those out for us. I appreciate it. Thank you, Steve. Maybe what you're hearing, the next question is kind of two parts. I guess what you're hearing from our side of the table is maybe a little bit of surprise on behalf of investors in terms of the magnitude and timing of this investment. I'll start by saying, you know, look, I think you guys have proven a lot of success with K2. you know, congrats there.
The two-part question is, one, as you look across the existing system, one of the things from a timing perspective that may have accelerated this or brought it to the forefront could be, I guess some existing capital requirements of some of the existing footprint. You know, can you talk about whether or not that was part of the decision-making? The second point, Steve, from a financial standpoint, I think the Middletown mill enabled you to maybe capture some of this incremental 200,000 tons of growth. In other words, as a part of your original K2 project, you guys were gonna close that. You kept it open because, as you've talked about, you've seen the growth.
If I were to ascribe that kind of $400 million EBITDA per ton figure to that, it would say, well, they were already on track to get some $70 million of incremental EBITDA that they weren't expecting before. Looking at the project from that perspective, maybe the return potential is really $90 million from the cost saves that you'd be getting because you could have already gotten that growth with Middletown. I know it's not that simple, but just maybe flaws in that logic, if you will.
Let me take the second one first, then Mike can attack the first. No, for real clarity, we got the first $50 million from K2. We'll get the next $50 million this year. We'll get the final $30 million in 2024, and the $160 million is incremental to that $80 million and $80 million. You've got an accumulation here of $130 million, $160 million. I mean, this is a very substantial multi nearly decade-level improvement of EBITDA from this investment in a very unique and world-class, low-cost, high-quality CRB platform. There is not, if you're asking that question, there is not a plus and minus. $50 million plus $50 million plus $30 million plus $80 million plus $80 million. That's what's coming.
Yeah. Again, the other part of that I think is important, you said it is, you know, 3 mills that we will look to, you know, shut down once Waco is operational. I mean, these are small end-of-life type assets. You know, to be fair, the folks that run those mills and work in those mills have done an excellent job with what they have for a really long time. These kind of decisions are always hard, our ability to attract new talent to work in places like that, you know, it's diminishing, quite frankly. We need to have modern facilities that are well capitalized, you know, control rooms that are digital in nature. You know, people will work in those kind of environments. We see it in Kalamazoo in terms of our hiring process.
The other thing I'll point out, and this is important, our customers are under increasing pressure because of the public proclamations they're making and commitments they're making around sustainability that really, we have to have the ability to, you know, service them and help them accomplish those objectives that they have over the next 5 years-10 years. When you look at an investment like we did in Kalamazoo and now in Waco alone is gonna reduce our absolute greenhouse gas emissions across our CRB platform by 12%. If you're serious about, you know, sustainability and circularity, you've got to make those kind of investments 'cause you can't get there re-lamping a converting facility with LED lights.
You know, these are major moves that we're making to support our customers and position this company over a multi-decade period of time, you know, to, you know, really generate ongoing cash flows and margins, you know, that are consistent with our Vision 2025 goals and aspirations that we've outlined.
I appreciate it, gentlemen. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Kieran de Brun from Mizuho. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning. Yeah, a lot of the questions have been answered, but, just to touch again on kind of the capital deployment priorities, I guess, as we look out towards 2025. If I just gotta look at that adjusted EBITDA and sales range, it implies to... may not so much on the sales front, but on the EBITDA front, it implies that there might be some room there, at the midpoint or even towards the higher end for M&A. You know, where do you think about adding capabilities in the future if there is kind of that focus on, you know, bolt-on acquisitions or even larger M&A? Thank you.
Thanks for the question, Kieran. One of the things that Steve and I are both happy about as we head into 2023, a bit of an uncertain macro, to say the least. If you, if you have self-help things that you can work on, you know, what a great thing, you know, for a CEO and a CFO to have and to be able to align your organization around. We've got that. We've got the continued ramp up in Kalamazoo, that's gonna deliver another $50 million this year of, ongoing savings, as Steve has outlined. We've got synergies and growth that we can drive with our AR Packaging acquisition. Ultimately, of course, our teams will be getting busy now, you know, down in Waco.
These are things that we control, and we can execute on, and our track record around execution is really, really high, as you know. We like that. As we've said before, and we'll continue to say, I mean, our bar for any M&A is extremely high, you know, given, you know, some of the things that we're working on internally. Having said that, we don't always get to control when something would come to market. There are certain things obviously we would take a look at, but it's gonna have a really, really high bar, you know, given the other priorities that we've got in front of us and the ability to really improve our EBITDA, you know, through our own actions over the next 2 years-3 years.
You know, that's kinda how we think about that. As Steve has said, you know, we're gonna pay down, you know, another $500 million worth of debt roughly here this year. If you take a look at what that looks like, our debt ratio goes to 2.5 x. You know, we like how we're positioning this company, not just into the future, but in 2023. You know, so the optionality we'll have will continue to grow, and it'll expand as we go into 2024 and 2025. Again, we like our internal self-help story, and that's where we're gonna spend our focus here, you know, unless, you know, something very compelling would come along. As we've said, they have an incredibly high bar.
Yeah. Kieran, to Mike's point, big part of that high bar is integration. That's as we look out over the next several years, you know, that's where we can really drive value, moving that integration up towards 90%. That's a big part of the bar, if you will, that we set around return expectations for anything we would assess.
Great. Thank you.
You bet. You bet.
We now turn to Michael Roxland from Truist Securities. Your line is open.
Thanks, Mike, Steve, Melanie Skijus. Appreciate you taking the questions. I know we're over the hour here, but just one quick one on the Waco acquisition. If you just look at some of your initial estimates on cost and EBITDA, it seems like that Waco is yielding a lower return than Kalamazoo based on those initial EBITDA generation and the cost and kind of spend. Can you help us with frame what's driving that lower return at the outset? Is that primarily due to the fact you're dealing with a greenfield versus brownfield?
Well, I'll start with the absolute answer in terms of the increased some of the increased cost is a function. We have to build the infrastructure, so wastewater treatment, power island, those kind of things. We've got to, you know, construct. As we said, Michael, we're actually going to have, you know, enhanced capabilities here, too, both in terms of our pulping capabilities and, you know, our ability to generate our own electricity within the mill. You know, the overall returns is a ratio. If you think about what we spent in Kalamazoo and what we publicly talked about spending in Kalamazoo, you know, it's substantially similar.
Okay. Just quickly on Texarkana, can you remind us what the metrics are you're looking at to determine whether to proceed with a potential conversion of that mill, particularly given all the capacity that has been announced at the start here domestically? I remember you mentioned that you postponed the conversion because it would take about 90 days of downtime. Obviously not particularly favorable in light of current tight supply demand. Just wondering if that's something that's on your radar as well, given the capacity additions that are targeted for the U.S.
Yeah. As we've talked publicly about, Michael, we looked at projects to do FBB. We looked at projects to expand our CUK capacity, and we looked at this project to expand our CRB capacity. Obviously, today in the near term, we're talking about, you know, CRB if for all the reasons I've already outlined. I won't recover those points. Having said that, we've got good projects on both those different substrates over time if we see a need for those. Right now, our focus is gonna be on CRB. I'll tell you that our Texarkana mill is quite busy because that machine that took downtime that you're referencing correctly so, that was during the pandemic when, you know, food service volumes were down substantially.
Of course, since, you know, the reopening here in the U.S., and all through last year and into January here, our food service business has accelerated in terms of volumes and growth. We need those tons, you know, coming out of that mill now. Ultimately, you know, that's how we're thinking about that.
Thank you.
Yeah.
This question comes from Cleveland Rueckert from UBS. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, everybody. Thanks for sneaking me in here past the hour. I appreciate it.
Yeah.
I wanted to just follow up on something you said, or I thought I heard you said in your prepared remarks. Like you said, I think the CRB cost advantage exceeds other substrates or the potential cost advantage in CRB. Did I hear that right? Maybe could you expand on that a little bit?
Yeah, Cleve, it's Steve. I'll start. I think what we were articulating there is that there's a unique opportunity that we began with K2 and that exists with Aquacoat for very distinctive and substantial cost to produce differences with CRB when you compare these investments to the other capabilities in the industry, our own remaining and others. Whereas in virgin substrates, that level of difference tends to be smaller, whether you're making a current investment or maintaining your assets. There's a unique competitive differentiation of substance with CRB that is larger than you would see being capable of being captured with virgin paperboard investments, I think is what we were articulating there.
Right. If you look at that cash cost curve that's in the slide, Cleve, what Steve is referencing is that advantage is much larger on CRB than if you saw the same cash cost curve for SBS, which if you can go get the Fisher curve, if you look at North America between the lowest cost and the highest cost on SBS, it's within a $50 bill. Our advantage is gonna be, when this is done, $135 a ton. That's the substantial nature of it that we're talking about.
Yeah. No, I just wanted to make sure that point was clear. Mike, I really liked your point earlier about the lower capital intensity of recycled grains versus virgin. Just wondering as well.
It's really true. We see that.
you know, one.
We have a long history on that. Sorry.
Yeah. No, it's a great point. Just one quick follow-up. You know, we're talking more about integration now and vertical integration. I'm just wondering if you guys could quantify a little bit for us what it, you know, what it means to go from 73% to 90% integration, you know, what that does for you in other areas of your business, just as a reminder. Maybe just remind us what the restricting factor is on integration. You know, in other markets, we kinda think of the downstream as being the restriction. You know, I think, Mike, you were talking about you buy, you know, 1 million tons of paper every year. Maybe it's really just this upstream investment that enables that integration.
That's it for me. Thank you.
Yeah. I think, look, if you think about that, and I appreciate the question, we really take a look at, you know, that 1 million tons we buy as make versus buy. That calculus will change over time based on freight and other things that go into that, you know, around some of the places we purchase the paperboard around the globe. Optimize our mill network, which we'll be able to do once we're done here with this Waco investment. I think the biggest thing for driving integration rates up is our organic growth. You know, every time we grow, each year we grow, like we've done over the last three, you know, we need more tons next year, and we have to have low cost, high quality, you know, material, paperboard to be able to, you know, convert it for our customers.
Our customers really appreciate the vertical integration, and they were reminded of how important that was during, you know, the pandemic and ultimately through some of the dislocations associated with these supply chain difficulties. Being an integrated supplier to these large brands, these large retailers really helps de-risk their overall supply chain profile. It's an important part of that calculus. Having said that, you got to invest in your converting too, and we've done a good job on that over the years to make sure that, you've got, you know, good, you know, converting plants that are geographically located to where your customers are. We like to say that all packaging is local. That end conversion has to be done in a way that helps service our customers facilities and plants.
Again, our selection of Waco is, you know, great because we've got 100, you know, converting facilities here in the U.S., and it's a great location for us to be able to service them, you know, geographically, as I mentioned, down into Mexico, the West Coast, back east, and even up into the upper Midwest. That's how we think about it, Cleve, and why vertical integration is such a key part of our strategy and has been really for, you know, well over a decade now.
Appreciate it. Thank you very much.
You bet.
This concludes the call today. I'll now turn the call back to Michael Doss, President and CEO, for closing remarks.
Thank you, Elliott. I do want to thank everybody for joining us for our call today. We'll look forward to talking to you again towards the end of April with our updated, you know, first quarter results. Have a great day.
Today's call is now concluded. We'd like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your-