Thanks, everyone, for joining. I'm Anthony Pettinari. I'm the packaging analyst here at Citi, and we're very pleased to welcome Gordon Hardie, CEO, and John Haudrich, CFO from O-I Glass. Gordon, John, thanks for joining us.
Yeah, thanks, Anthony.
Thanks.
Many thanks to the Citi team for hosting us. We've posted a brief presentation online, and I direct people to the safe harbor statement. What I might do is take a few minutes, just run through a few slides, and then we can hand it back to you for Q&A.
Okay.
Yeah, so, you know, we're the global leader in glass packaging. You know, we're systemic to the beverage industry. We service a lot of the world's top food and beverage brands. You know, we sell in over 74 countries, 21,000 employees, and we have a combination of what we call mainstream categories and premium categories. You know, roughly about $6.5 billion, and we're transforming the business by being much more competitive. We had lost over the years our competitive edge, mainly due to an inflated cost base, which we're now addressing through our Fit-to-Win program. So, you know, we've got a pretty simple approach divided into what we call three horizons.
First one is, you know, get fit, strip the waste and inefficiencies out of the business, and direct those savings to improving our earnings and our cash on the one hand, and, you know, investing in profitable growth with customers on the other. As we move through Fit-to-Win, we make progress towards that. That should open up, you know, sources of volume growth that have been close to us in the past because we weren't competitive enough. And we're already starting to see, you know, the green shoots of that in 2025, where we're winning business that perhaps in the past we wouldn't have been competitive enough to win. And as we drive through the whole Fit-to-Win and we, you know, get to the level of, you know, $650 million out in terms of cost, we would expect more profitable growth opportunities to open up.
And then as we work through that, you know, we should be reaching a $1.45 billion EBITDA, 5% of revenues as free cash flow and WACC plus two returns. That opens up sort of options then to, you know, maybe expand into new markets, you know, supporting customers as they grow in new geographies, new segments, new adjacencies. And that really is horizon three, which is 2028, 2028 onwards. We do have a very sharp focus on economic profit. So, you know, either we can have pieces of business that are, you know, well above their weighted average cost of capital targeting, you know, WACC plus two. If we can't get there through our own means and with, you know, better conditions, things like pricing and that, then, you know, we take that business out and redirect the capacity and the capital elsewhere. Yeah.
And I'll cover the last comments here. It's on page 21 of the materials, but just what are we trying to achieve over the next several years? Understanding that our journey here started with the 2024 as our base, we had about $1.1 billion of EBITDA. And as Gordon mentioned, our target over a three-year window by 2027 is to get that up to $1.45 billion. That's a 30% improvement or about 8% CAGR on EBITDA over that period of time. That should translate into a return of EBITDA margins in the low 20s. Importantly, free cash flow is a percent of sale greater than 5%. And then back to, as Gordon mentioned, an economic spread, that's 2% above our cost of capital. We're off to a very good start on this.
Fit-to-Win has exceeded our expectations, and we are set to double our adjusted earnings in 2025 compared to 2024. But the journey doesn't stop there. And we, you know, we have long legs as far as opportunities. As you can see in 2029, we aspire to $1.65 billion, continued improvement in margins, and importantly, getting free cash flow up to 7% of sales, as well as a higher economic spread. And you can see a number of other longer-term objectives too. While over this next three-year period up through 2027, we're looking for a stable top line as we really focus on becoming cost competitive. Our expectations to start to grow the business at more than 1.5% a year off of a more competitive base is going back to, Gordon said, the profitable growth stage, which we believe is above market.
So we believe that that should drive market share improvement. At the same token, while we're doing that, we're going to be moving our portfolio business from what's right now about 27% premium up to 40% over time. And we're going to do that through leveraging very good close relationships with customers, very good net promoter scores that we have right now, and a significantly improved cost base, which in the mainstream category should be 20% lower than where we are today. So, you know, we got a great plan, I think. We're executing well on it, coming out of the gate strong, and even if in a generally soft and sluggish marketplace, we're exceeding the original expectations we set for ourselves here.
Great, great. Well, it's super helpful. Maybe we can, you know, we're in December, close to the end of the year. Last month, you raised fully your EBITDA guidance, and I'm just wondering if you could kind of walk us through what led to that increase and maybe look back on the year, and if you can talk about sort of volumes, net price, and then Fit-to-Win and how it's gone versus expectation.
Sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, we have, you know, regularly increased our outlook in 2025, as you mentioned. Our current guidance has earnings of $1.55-$1.65 per share and corresponding EBITDA improvement, as you referred to. That increase has been substantially driven by improved Fit-to-Win benefits. So we entered the year thinking 250 or so of Fit-to-Win benefits. We're now guiding to 275-300, primarily because a lot of the operating improvement areas that we've been targeting are ahead of schedule. At the same token, we benefited from net price. While we thought it was going to be a bigger headwind this year, it's actually moderated as far as a headwind, which is a good thing, and that's helped offset some of the incremental volume softness.
You know, we anticipate the year will be down about 2% or so sales volume, consistent with what we kind of had last guided to. Expectations going into the year were originally flattish, so a little bit better on net price, a little bit softer on volumes, but overall, Fit-to-Win is the one that really drove the upside in guidance.
Got it. And just following up on a few things there, what kind of drove the better than expected Fit-to-Win performance? Was it, you know, a specific region, or do you think you were maybe conservative in the initial? What surprised you?
Yeah. I think the standout thing for me was the way our people sort of, you know, went after the opportunities that we identified. You know, it's not untypical to, you know, face a bit of resistance when you face into a big change program. You know, I think there was very little of that overall. And people really saw the opportunity. And I also think people recognized the reality and, you know, that we had become, you know, uncompetitive. And particularly people in the plants feel that because they're the first ones to see volumes dropping and so on. So there was, I think across the board, there was a feeling of, well, finally we're facing up to reality and we have a plan to get after it.
And yeah, I think people really stepped up and dug in and went after the opportunities that are there and are executing really well. And, you know, big shout out to the folks at O-I. I think they've done a tremendous job getting after the inefficiencies and waste in the system.
And not to go through a history lesson, but I think it's probably important for this discussion. Can you talk about, you know, maybe why the cost base got a little bit out of control and in terms of Fit-to-Win being different from, you know, maybe previous types of restructuring actions? Like, can you give us some kind of context for it?
Yeah, maybe start with the second part. You know, as you asked, Anthony, many people have asked me, well, so what's different with this versus other maybe productivity programs the company has undertaken in the past? And there have been, you know, successful productivity programs, but they've been in targeted areas. You know, unless you fundamentally change the business system and way of working, costs tend to go back, right? So what we're doing is reviewing, you know, as we pointed out at O-I, the business end-to-end, you know, from the back door of the suppliers all the way through to the customer. In the past, that supply chain was divided into five areas with four leaders reporting into the CEO. We've changed that structure. I now have one end-to-end Chief Supply Officer who is accountable for the whole chain.
And so there's much more cohesion in the approach to how we get fitter, how we strip inefficiencies and waste out. So it really is an end-to-end view of the business rather than just specific programs. I also think John and the team have set up, you know, a really effective method to track progress. And, you know, if it's not in the P&L or it doesn't appear as an improvement on the balance sheet, then it's not real. We've set up a value office to track that, you know, and that's working really, really well. So people see sort of almost results in real time and they're reported on. And people know where they stand each week and each month.
You know, as you get after the cost and the waste and people see it coming out, that engenders more confidence to, you know, you're on the right path and go faster. That's kind of what's different.
I might build on that just for somebody who's been around for 15 years in the company is, I think that redefining what good looks like is also really important. You know, historically, the business has been run by people who have been in the glass industry for 30, 40 years, right? And they believed they saw what they saw, right? And it's not a big industry, but it's kind of a little bit close-knit. So I don't think there was a really challenging of what best-in-class manufacturing looks like. And so in many regards, standards of how we operate were set 30, 40 years ago. And some of those were just became, you know, ways of doing business. Now that's being challenged in a way that it wasn't before with ideas that are outside of the industry and saying, hey, we can do something different.
It doesn't have to, you don't have to run this machine at this speed or this furnace at this particular rate. You can actually challenge that against long-held beliefs.
Right, right. Can you talk about curtailments and facility closures in terms of what you've done in 2024, 2025, you know, what you've flagged for 2026 and how that's impacted?
Yeah, I can address that one. So if you take a look at it, our demand is down about, you know, low double digits, maybe called 13% from pre-pandemic basis, right? So now, and of course, we're in a trough kind of marketplace and everything like that. But what we have done over the last, call it 12 months and will extend into the first few months of next year is permanently closing 13% of our capacity, all right? As at the end of the third quarter here, we were at about 8% or so was functionally closed. And the remaining 5% will be done by the first quarter of next year. And so most of the work here theretofore has been done in the Americas. It's easier and quicker to get on top of that.
All the actions that are going to be going into next year are going to be over in Europe, but we are moving forward with that, so at the end of the day, we should be substantially done with what we call initial network optimization, you know, rebalancing that whole network by the end of the first quarter, and all the cash restructuring associated should be out of the system by mid-year, so we believe we're just going to be at a much better, you know, both operating rate and cash run rate by around mid-year or so next year.
In terms of visibility into volumes, I mean, we had the kind of whipsaw of the pandemic, but, you know, how much visibility do you have? How much visibility do your customers have? And has that changed or is improving that been like a target?
You know, I think you have a fair amount of visibility, you know, certainly enough to take a view, okay, this is where revenue is going to be. Here's our target even, and therefore here's where our cost is going to be over, you know, over the period of, you know, of the year. Yeah. So one of the things that surprised me coming into the role in the industry is that forecast accuracy is pretty low across the industry, you know, from customer back to supplier, you know, running at, you know, about 50%. And in some instances, much lower. So if you're a plant manager, you've got a one in two chance of either shipping it to a customer or invoicing it or sending it into stock.
So we've done a lot of work in terms of our own systems and also working with our key customers and saying, hey, you know, how do we improve that? Because it's a cost for us, it's a cost for you, you know, it's just cash sitting there. And so over the last kind of six to eight months, we've taken that number from, you know, 50 to about 68. We'll see further improvements as we go through next year. And so the better you get at that, plus the more efficient and more agile you get at manufacturing, you know, you can respond more quickly to the ebbs and flows of demand.
I think there's a lot of work to do for us in our supply chain with our customers of getting that supply chain really, really fit and agile, responding to demand signals and producing on demand signals rather than, you know, necessarily forecast per se. We've got to improve forecast accuracy, but ultimately get to a place where we're producing to a demand signal from the customer or even the retailer.
Right, right. You talked about price being a bit better than expected year to date. Can you just kind of remind us the pricing mechanisms? You have some contracts in Europe and the timing of that, and then what you said about 2026 on price?
Yeah, sure. I'm going to just kind of go around some of the contract structures and the timing of things. If you go over, let's start over in Europe, which is about 45% of the company's business, right? About a third of that business is under long-term customer agreement, multi-year agreements that have price adjustment formulas associated with them. So it's very structural. But the other two-thirds is what we call open market. And so while the 30% is multinational accounts, think of thousands of small wineries, right? When you're looking at the open market, we typically have a negotiation window for those annual agreements that starts about now, right? The end of November and concludes mid-February or so. Okay. So that's kind of the dynamic that occurs in that environment. Over in the Americas, it is more contracted.
So for example, in North America, it's probably over 90% under long-term contracts with price adjustment formulas, much more predictable environment, and in Latin America, it's about 75% contracted with the other 25% kind of open market. Really, the thing that swings our view of net price realization is the outcome of those open market agreement negotiations that's basically just started now over in Europe. And what we had indicated during our, you know, during our last earnings call, we kind of gave a directional view of what we think going on next year. If you take aside the one-time energy contract resets, we can talk about that if you want, but that's a kind of known item out there. We had indicated that gross price would be up some, primarily in the Americas, whereas net price would be kind of balanced.
Maybe you might see a little bit of pressure over in Europe. It's a little early to be able to tell that because those negotiation windows have only just begun.
The maybe possibility of net price pressure in Europe, is that energy contracts or is that just a different?
I would say that you have the opportunity of some net price positive in the Americas, a little bit of net price pressure. I'm just talking about market and competitive dynamics, not the energy contracts, a little bit of pressure in Europe. So right now we're looking at a balanced environment overall for the company, understanding that we haven't initiated. We're just at the very front end of that. So we'll have to see what the net effect is and we'll update that at the earnings call.
Right, and you kind of talked about this before in terms of the cost, but can you talk about the competitiveness and the pricing of glass, especially versus, you know, beverage cans, PET?
Yeah, so you know, I think as we laid out at O-I, you know, one of the realities we need to face was that, you know, particularly in North America, glass had become very uncompetitive to cans, you know, with a 30%-40% differential, and when you look at the share of glass and beer, it's lowest in those markets where the cost differential is highest, so if you look, you know, in the U.S., you know, it's our lowest share of the beer category, and, you know, glass has some tremendous advantages. You know, it's the only packaging deemed GRAS, you know, generally recognized as safe. You know, product tastes better. You know, there's a brand equity piece for the brand owner, but all those advantages are blunted if you're out of whack, and I think, you know, realizing that, and how did that come to pass?
It came to pass by, you know, 0-1% productivity and then 2-3% cost growth a year. It doesn't take you very long to get out of whack. So we're addressing that. And in those markets where that gap is closest or even we have a cost advantage to cans, we have the highest share of the beer category in terms of substrate. So it's very clear that, you know, when we look back over the numbers and particularly in North America and in the U.S, when we get within about 15% substrate versus substrate, you know, we see a swing back to glass. So, you know, if you like, now in terms of competitiveness, I suppose the apex or target competition benchmark is the cans, not necessarily to other glass companies.
Right, right.
One thing I would add is our business overlaps with cans about 35% of our business. So think about wine and spirits and the food categories that we do serve. They don't overlap with aluminum cans. So it really is that kind of mainstream beer category and certain NABs categories that overlap. And that's where we're certainly targeting our cost competitiveness efforts really, really need to be really honed in on those. I mean, right now, as Gordon said, is the price differential was, call it, you know, 30% plus between glass and aluminum. With the tariffs now, that's probably between 15%-20% would be our estimate. Of course, we're not relying on that. You know, we need to be competitive at the core. And that's why we're looking to improve that really in a targeted way on the cost competitive side.
Yeah. And I think, you know, if you're 5%-10% less competitive than, you know, another glass company or a substrate, you know, you have to think about costs in a certain way. When you're 30%-40% out, then you've got to radically rethink your business model, you know, every process in the business to get that level of cost and inefficiency and waste out of the system. And that's part of the, you know, thinking behind Fit to Win. It's not an incremental program. It's a transformation program, which will, you know, take 13%-15% of our cost base out and changes the total enterprise cost base. And then when you narrow that down to what John said, you know, where we compete against cans, that really gets us well into the zone of where we need to be.
Right, and so are you actually seeing some switchback or in that 35%, are you seeing some markets where you have large customers that are kind of moving a little bit back into glass? And or is that something maybe you anticipate for next year?
I think it's more next year. You know, this year has really kind of been, you know, working it out, getting traction. You know, we'll, you know, as we said, we'll be somewhere between $275 million-$300 million this year. If you add the $25 million we delivered in the last quarter of Q4, we'll be close to 50% of the three-year program after 15 months. You know, there's a very high probability, you know, when you're that far advanced after 15 months that you'll deliver the whole program and maybe go well beyond. You know, and as we start to, you know, gain and deliver that momentum, then that gives us, you know, the ability to, you know, to get much closer to cans. And we've got to get there irrespective of, you know, the price of aluminum. You know, tariffs have driven the aluminum prices.
You know, that'll help, but you can't always rely on that. We have to get there in a much more structured and structural way, I would say.
I think there's you know, my understanding of the aluminum purchasing process, there's utilization of hedges and other things like that that have actually mitigated some of the near-term impact of those, but those will eventually roll off and then the market will be exposed to that price so they'll take a little bit of time to flush through.
And for that 35% overlap, if I'm one of those large customers in beer or NABs, I mean, do I have a reasonable ability to flex or do I have to like recapitalize the filling line and make a capital investment to go more into glass? I mean, it's hard to generalize, but just.
Yeah, I think it depends on the market, but in general, no, there's a lot of, you know, bottling capacity out there. The, you know, the dollar margins on bottled product are very good. I, you know, I think when you're that far out on the cost base, you know, the issue is ours to fix, not the customers. We're setting about that in a very, you know, targeted, focused way and executing well against it. Over time, over the next two to three years, I would expect us to, you know, to pick up share, particularly in the premium segments. Yeah. I also think there's a job not just on cost, but on innovation.
You know, for the first time, I think in 30 years, glass will be able to or can now play in the, you know, the 12-ounce RTD market, which is quite a large segment and growing in double digits. But I think we need to bring some, you know, really kind of innovative concepts to, you know, to those customers that will help them premiumize, you know, a lot of the RTD segments. Yeah. So there's both cost opportunities and also innovation opportunities for us as we go forward.
Right. I don't know if there's any questions in the room, but, you know, one question that we do get is, you know, trend volume growth in terms of how to think about, you know, glass volumes, long-term trend, you know, but maybe start in North America. I mean, there's only one publicly traded glass company in North America. There's a bunch in Europe. So it's sort of hard for us to, you know, to know really how you think about that. But.
You know, the way we look at it is kind of a, you know, demand stack. If you look, it's the organic growth of the category. Then there's growth potential from us getting either a greater share of customers' business already. And so you might argue kind of being more competitive and share steal. But there's also a very large segment of the U.S. demand serviced by imports, largely from Asia, that have been, you know, that have managed to survive and thrive because the cost base we've had was so high. So through Fit to Win, we're going to get a lot fitter in North America. And that also opens up, you know, growth opportunities for us to combine cost with proximity to customer and agility to respond to demand that will allow us to kind of take share from there.
So we kind of look at that at three levels. And then you look at, you know, categories like food where, you know, there's a growing disquiet among consumers with regard to microplastics and food in plastic packaging. And so we are seeing, you know, a steady and accelerating flow back into glass. So food manufacturers that might have moved to plastic packaging, now moving back into glass. And particularly in the more premium segments of food, we're seeing that. And then things like Gen Zers and a specific section of Gen Zers kind of age 22-26 are drinking less alcohol. They are drinking, they are accessing the beer category through non-alcoholic beer and, you know, waters, you know, flavored beverages, you know, vitamin drinks. And we see those non-alcoholic beverage categories growing strongly. And that's opportunity for us as well. So we see growth.
I'm very bullish about the U.S. market, actually. It's a large market, a large profit pool. You know, we've got a privileged footprint here. We're on the path now to getting much more competitive and much closer to customers in terms of what their innovation needs are.
Is there for the 2027, 2029 targets, is there specific volume assumptions there that you highlight?
I think we said, you know, about 1.5% volume growth, right? And when you see the kind of scale of the markets in which we operate, you know, on a cost base that could be up to 20% more competitive, you know, I think that's not an unreasonable target for us to set ourselves.
You gave some color on the North American market. Maybe we can just kind of take a tour and talk a little bit more about Europe.
Yeah, Europe, you know, quite a fragmented market. You know, big beer market, big wine market, obviously big spirits market. You know, at the moment, demand, just like here in the U.S., you know, I think there's a large portion of consumers that, you know, are challenged, you know, by affordability. And, you know, discretionary income is a driver of, you know, alcoholic beverage consumption. So we're seeing that everywhere. Premium beer continues to kind of operate well. It's really the mid-tier that's sort of declined. And then with regard to spirits, I mean, the two, you know, there's a big proportion of spirits produced in Europe that are exported. And the two largest markets are the U.S. and China.
The U.S. has been challenged for a number of years, both on the offtake, but also on the amount of stock that was in the system and sold into the system during COVID. That's still kind of finding its way out. Then in China, you know, consumer demand has been mooted. You know, there's been talk of the government, you know, having an edict on alcohol consumption at events, you know, official events that impacts. The supply chain to China actually is quite empty. You know, we expect that probably to ease up maybe in 2027. So you could see a scenario where that supply chain to China would fill up fairly quickly. Yeah, so that's kind of the European picture. You know, there are green shoots in certain areas, again, like waters, non-alcoholic beverages doing quite well.
Food, particularly in Southern Europe, in, you know, again, that shift back into glass. You know, then Latin America, you know, we have a very strong business in the Andean region. So, you know, Colombia, Peru, you know, Central America, beer doing well there, you know, food doing well. And then Brazil, Brazil had a, you know, kind of a tough beer year, I would say. It was one of the coldest winters in 30 years in Brazil. And that impacted both consumption of beer, but also crop availability for certain food products. So we saw lesser demand for food in glass. And there have been, you know, price increases due to inflation going to the market. And I think that impacted demand a bit in Brazil.
But overall, if you look at the kind of dynamics of Brazil, you know, population demographics, increasing, you know, consumer wealth over time, I think it's a very, very interesting market for us.
Coming up on time here, but can you talk about cash generation when you get to 2027 or 2029?
Yeah. I mean, you know, that's a, you know, massive focus for us. You know, I came from a world of daily fresh where you drop your inventories to zero every night. So coming into a business where, you know, inventories are sitting, we're sitting at 70 days, you kind of got to ask yourself, okay, where are the inefficiencies that cause that? So we had a usage of cash last year, you know, as we curtailed capacity of about $128 million. You know, I think we've told the market we'll deliver somewhere between $150-$200 after about $150 of restructuring this year. So that's almost a, you know, $420 million cash turnaround at a gross level. We'll improve our cash flow next year, our net cash flow after restructuring. Restructuring should be, you know, around a similar level, maybe a bit less next year.
And then we're through that heavy restructuring in 2027. If you look at the gross number before restructuring, we're almost at the 5% of revenue target. And that's still with kind of 55 days of inventory in the system, right? So we have tremendous opportunities to get beyond, you know, to get our 5%. And as we outlined at IDA, you know, we expect to be at 7% of revenue by 2029. I mean, this is a business that has tremendous potential to generate a lot more cash out of the business. And that would allow us then to pay down debt, get below the 2.5. And that allows us then, you know, to look at options of returning capital to shareholders by buyback or by, you know, dividend. So that's the plan, pay down debt and get us below 2.5, maybe closer to 2.
And then we look at how we reallocate capital.
We're coming up on time, but Gordon, John, I mean, the progress this year has actually been very impressive from my perspective. I think great job. Thanks for the time.
Yeah, thank you.
Appreciate the interest.
It's good to be here.
Thank you.
Thank you.