Amcor plc

Good day and thank you for standing by and welcome to the AMCOR 2021 full year results. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Tracey Whitehead, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining AMCOR's full-year call for fiscal 2021. Joining the call today is Rhonda Leah, Chief Executive Officer, and Michael Casamento, Chief Financial Officer. At this time, I'll direct you to our website, amcor.com, under the Investor section, where you'll find our press release and presentation, which will be discussed on the call today. We'll also discuss non-GAAP financial measures and related reconciliations can be found in the press release and presentation on our website. Also a reminder that the call today includes some forward-looking statements, which remain subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Please refer to AMCOR's SEC filings, including our statements on Form 10-K and 10-Q, to review factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we're discussing today. During the question and answer session, we request that participants limit their questions to a maximum of two and then rejoin the queue for any follow-up. With that, I'll turn over to Ron.

Thanks, Tracey, and thanks, everyone, for joining us to discuss AMCOR's fiscal 2021 full-year results. Joining me today, as Tracey mentioned, is Michael Casimeno, AMCOR's Chief Financial Officer. We'll begin with some prepared remarks, and then we'll open the line for Q&A. We start every meeting at AMCOR with safety, and we'll begin there on slide three. Safety is the first and most important of our values, and AMCOR has been on a long-term journey towards our goal of no injuries. Our safety performance has shown continual improvement, including in the last 12 months, where our performance has been a real highlight. Across Amcor, we reduced the number of injuries by almost 25% compared to last year. All of our businesses reported fewer injuries, and over half of our sites have remained injury-free for at least 12 months. Through a year where the pandemic continued to present operational challenges in many countries, our focus on safety was unwavering, and we're incredibly grateful that our people continue to be engaged and focused on staying healthy as well as safe. We're proud of our safety performance, which we believe is the best in our industry, and the progress we've made over a number of years, but we're also convinced that our objective of no injuries is absolutely possible, and we continue striving towards that goal. We have four key messages today, which are set out on slide four. First, FY21 was an outstanding year for Amcor on multiple dimensions. The operating environment remained highly dynamic, but our teams stayed fully focused on the key business drivers within our control, remained agile as conditions changed, and demonstrated exceptional execution and consistency all year. Financial results exceeded our expectations as the year progressed. We ended the year with momentum, and we expect another strong year in fiscal 22, which is the second key message. Third, our recent performance in many ways is a result of the financial and strategic benefits from our 2019 acquisition of Bemis. Two years on, the integration is now essentially complete, Financial benefits are ahead of our expectations and strategically we're better positioned than ever with a stronger foundation for growth into the future. And lastly, we're capitalizing on that strong base by investing in a number of organic growth initiatives which will maintain a momentum beyond fiscal 22 and for the long term. Turning now to the financial highlights on slide five. FY21 was an exceptional year financially for Amcor with record earnings, exceptional margin management despite steep raw material cost increases and supply constraints, and momentum building through the year. Organic sales growth was 2%, and we exited the year in Q4 with sales 3% higher than the prior year. EVIC growth was 8%, with the flexibles and rigid packaging segments both delivering strong results. growing in several higher value end markets and contributing to margin expansion. In fiscal 21, AMCOR's EBIT margins increased 60 basis points to reach 12.6% for the year, which is a new high and an exceptional achievement in an environment where raw material price increases and supply disruptions continue to require an intense focus on securing availability as well as managing price recovery. We estimate Themis acquisition synergies were around $75 million, and as we close out the final integration activities, we expect to exceed the original synergy target by at least 10%. EPS increased 16% through the year and was ahead of guidance, which we're able to continuously increase through the year. And free cash flow of $1.1 billion was at the top of our expected range. Return on capital or return on average funds employed finished well above 15% at a time when our cost of capital is at an all-time low. And through the year, we returned $1.1 billion of cash to shareholders through share repurchases and higher dividends. The key message here is that the fundamentals of our business continue to strengthen, Our teams around the world have demonstrated unwavering focus on executing against our strategy, and as a result, we've delivered another year of outstanding financial performance with momentum continuing to build as we begin fiscal 22. I'll turn it over now to Michael to provide some more detail on the financial results, and I'll finish up with some comments on growth and sustainability.