AptarGroup, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Aptar Group's 2018 fourth quarter and year-end conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Introducing today's conference call is Mr. Matt Della Maria, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Howard, and welcome, everyone. Participating on the call today are Stephan Tanda, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Bob Kuhn, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Secretary. You can find a copy of our press release as well as a slide presentation that summarizes our results on our website. We will also post a replay of this conference call on the website. Lastly, today's call includes some forward-looking statements. Please refer to our SEC filings to review factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or contained in the forward-looking statements. APTAR undertakes no obligation to update the forward-looking information contained therein. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Stéphane.

Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. As you saw yesterday, we reported fourth-quarter results that included very robust core sales growth across seven of our eight end markets and in each geographic region. Bob will share some details regarding our financial results, and afterwards I will briefly recap the year. But first, I would like to comment on a few important topics that are an inherent part of our strategy. If you're following along with the presentation that accompanies our press release and is posted to our website, I'm referring now to slide four. The first topic is sustainability. The increased level of interest in this topic by our customers is driving new innovation projects that will drive future growth. You may also have seen that APTR has signed the L. MacArthur New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, and we have joined the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Joining these important organizations further underscores our efforts to work closely with customers and industry stakeholders to accelerate progress towards a circular economy. Some of our closures and pumps that feature post-consumer recycled resin, or PCR, can already be found on products on the market today. For example, most recently we announced the launch of a dispensing closure that uses 50% PCR for e-covers brand of liquid soap called Washing Up. We are also actively collaborating with our customers on refillable products. We are supporting our customers' participation in the circular e-commerce platform called Loop, by providing lotion pumps to key customers Unilever and Procter & Gamble. Finally, APTA was recently named by Barron's one of the top 100 most sustainable companies in the US as part of their 2019 sustainability rankings. Another important topic is innovation. As you know from our prior discussions about our strategic priorities, we have a dedicated innovation excellence group And we are very excited about the implementation of new tools and methods as the team works to identify opportunities in each business and in each geographic region. We continue to explore ways to leverage new technologies, including our active packaging technology that we recently acquired as part of CSP, and our growing platform of connected devices. I would like to share a few recent examples of interesting innovations that we are bringing to market. So turning to slide five, I will highlight the first three examples, starting with a product from our beauty and home segment. The so-called indie brands or independent brands are gaining more prominence within the beauty industry, and many of these players require a direct connection with key suppliers. Small business owners and founders of indie brands are turning to Aftar due to our expertise in dispensing, local supply chain, and industry knowledge to help their brands succeed. The photo on the left shows a moisturizing gel lotion by IT Cosmetics, the indie brand that L'Oreal has acquired, which features Aptar's airless dispensing system. Moving to the next product from our pharma segment, we recently launched our Quick Start injectable solution that is available to order online via our website. This solution is a sterile, ready-to-use offering designed to accelerate the development time for startups, biotechs, universities, and early-stage developers. The Quick Start solution offers everything needed for the small volume filling of high-value formulations, including various sizes, configuration of wild stoppers, push-off caps, as well as technical documentation that proactively address regulators' needs and accelerate approval. Turning to food and beverage products, we continue to help our customers convert their packaging from a non-dispensing format, such as a tub of sour cream, to inverted dispensing solutions featuring our closure and simply squeeze valve. The example on this slide shows Kemp's new inverted easy squeeze bottle for their sour cream. As we look to grow our business and manage near-term challenges and opportunities, we will also focus on long-term results by investing in sustainable solutions In accelerating our innovation, we are committing to a bright future for our customers and for our planet. With that, I will now turn it over to Bob. He's going to walk through some of the financial details and come back afterwards.

Bob. Thank you, Stephan, and good morning, everyone. I'll briefly walk through some of the details concerning our fourth quarter results. If you are following the slides we published with the press release, you can refer to slide six. We reported sales growth of 9% that was comprised of core sales growth of 7% with a positive impact from acquisitions of 6% and a negative impact from currency rates of minus 4%. Sales increased across each geographic region and in all end markets other than beverage. As you saw in our press release, beauty and home core sales excluding acquisitions and keeping currencies constant increased 4%. Looking at sales growth by market on a core basis, core sales to the beauty market increased 3%. This was mostly due to strong demand for facial skin care and color cosmetic products. Core sales to the personal care market increased 4% due to an increased demand for dispensing pumps for body care and baby care. Core sales to the home care market increased 10%, due primarily to increased demand for dispensing solutions for household cleaners and air fresheners. When we look at profitability, our beauty and home segment had an adjusted EBITDA margin of 13%. Margins were negatively impacted by headwinds from the timing of passing through rising raw material costs startup losses at Rabul, and some isolated operational challenges at other facilities. Our pharma segment achieved a core sales growth of 15% and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 36%. The strong sales volumes, along with the gain recognized on the sale of an equity investment, contributed to strong pharma margins. Core sales to the prescription market increased 17%, primarily due to increased demand of our metered dose inhalers and nasal spray systems used with allergy and central nervous system treatments. Core sales to the consumer healthcare market increased 21%, driven primarily by increased demand for ophthalmic dispensers for eye care and other solutions for cold and cough treatments. Lastly, core sales to the injectables market increased 5%. Turning to our food and beverage segment, core sales were flat in the quarter due to lower custom tooling sales, and the segment had an adjusted EBITDA margin of 12%. Margins were negatively affected by the write-off of a prepaid license fee related to our bonded aluminum to plastic technology. This write-off is related to a prepaid license fee that has concluded, and this does not affect the future use of our technology. Looking at each market, core sales to the food market increased 2%, in spite of a negative impact from lower custom tooling sales of about 12%. Demand increased for our leading dispensing solutions for condiments and sauces, as well as infant nutrition products. Core sales to the beverage market decreased 6% due to weaker demand in the China beverage market. Comparable adjusted earnings per share totaled 92 cents compared to 77 cents adjusted earnings per share in the prior year, including comparable exchange rates. On slide eight, you can see that our adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter increased 20% due to year-on-year improvement from our pharma and beauty and home segments. Slide 9 refers to our outlook. We are expecting earnings per share for the first quarter to be in the range of $0.95 to $1 per share, using an expected tax rate range for the first quarter of 29% to 31%. I'd like to point out that when we compare to the prior year adjusted earnings per share, and we compare using similar exchange and tax rates, the midpoint of our range represents an increase of approximately 9%. I have a few other details to share, and then I will hand it back to Stefan. In the quarter, cash flow from operations was approximately $104 million. Capital expenditures were approximately $66 million. And our free cash flow was approximately $38 million. compared to $24 million a year ago. For the year, cash flow from operations was approximately $314 million, capital expenditures were approximately $211 million, and our free cash flow was approximately $102 million compared to $168 million a year ago. The primary reasons for the decrease in cash flow relate to $64 million of cash outflows related to our restructuring and acquisition costs, and higher capital expenditures compared to the prior year, primarily related to our business transformation. Looking at our balance sheet capitalization on a gross basis, debt to capital was approximately 48%, while on a net basis it was approximately 42%, and we remain slightly less than two times levered compared to our 2018 annual adjusted EBITDA. At this time, Stefan will provide a few comments before we move to Q&A.

Thanks, Bob. So a few key takeaways. It was clearly a good quarter and a good year. In 2018, we made significant progress on our strategic priorities. I'd like to leave you with a few key takeaways as shown on slide 10. We achieved excellent organic growth with our beauty and home business, reporting strong top-line improvement, helped in part by our transformation initiatives, and also remarkably strong end-market demand. Our business segments grew nicely, and beauty and home and pharma finished well ahead of their long-term targets, with food and beverage slightly below their target range for core sales growth. We also finished the year with a strong EBITDA improvement when we exclude costs related to our acquisitions and restructuring initiatives. As highlighted last quarter, we continue to add key external talent to our executive ranks and accelerate and strengthen our internal leadership development activities. As part of our balanced capital allocation, we completed strategic acquisitions and equity investments. We also increased our dividends, and 2018 was our 25th consecutive year of paying an increased dividend. Furthermore, we invested in our business in 2018 and will continue to do so in 2019. About half of the expected capital expenditures for 2019 will be related to additional capacity and to new products, including those related to our recently acquired businesses. In closing, Aptar is a company with a very resilient business model with the industry's broadest portfolio of differentiated solutions. Our business is diversified across attractive end markets, across geographic regions, and across thousands of high-quality customers. There's a lot of discussion these days about a potential economic slowdown. While we are not recession-proof, we are able to leverage our great diversity, and along with our strong balance sheet, we can withstand economic slowdowns should they occur. We only need to look to the last great recession to understand that even with a decline in sales, our margins were very stable. And post-recession, we had back-to-back record sales growth, and our portfolio has become even more resilient since then. So just to be clear, while we read the same headlines as you do, we do not see a slowdown in our business at this time, and our customers see robust demand. APTA is a unique company with a tremendous long-term track record, that we intend to protect. With that, we would like to open it up for your questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or comment at this time, please press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, simply press the pound key. In the interest of time and fairness to all participants, please limit yourself to two questions and one follow-up. Then you can come back into the queue if you have more questions, as time allows. Again, if you have a question or comment at this time, please press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. Our first question or comment comes from the line of Daniel Rizzo from Jefferies. Your line is open.

Good morning, guys. Just a quick question on costs, what you're seeing. I mean, I assume that this kind of leveled off, and I was wondering how long it takes for you guys to pass cost increase through to your customers. I mean, what's the lag?

Thanks, Daniel. Usually anywhere between 30 to 90 days, so a quarter to make the adjustment. I realize when you get to the end of that period, by the time you see the effect, it can be up to six months because you have the trailing effect.

Daniel, just to put some context around it, we did have pass-throughs in a quarter which positively impacted the top line. by between that and general price increase about a percent and a half but when we look at the EBITDA impact it was about a three million negative primarily in beauty and home and predominantly from raw material or input cost other than resin.

And what are we seeing with those costs now?

Well I mean in the first quarter we're seeing a continued reduction in the resin cost so you know we're anticipating a modest positive to EBITDA in the first quarter projection.

And then it looks like your CapEx is stepping up a bit in 2019. I was wondering if you could provide color on that and what it's relating to.

Sure. I mean, when you step back, we really, after an extended period of slow or no growth, we have now experienced some six quarters of risk growth and expect that growth to continue. So we are starting to experience shortages in several areas of our business that is not only causing service issues to clients, but also contributes to some of our operational challenges. So we need to ramp up capacity to ensure we meet the customer demands to take advantage of the growth opportunities in an efficient manner. And remember, these organic investments provide some of the best returns that we can generate. But maybe Bob can add some more color to the investments.

Yeah, I mean, I think Stefan mentioned in his opening remarks as well, you know, about half of the expected cash outlays next year are going to be coming from these capacity growth initiatives, including capital for the newly acquired CSP and Rabool in 2018. We do have some additional cash outlays for transformation and that we had highlighted earlier in 2018 where the cash is expected to be spent in 2019. And then really everything else is, I would call, more in line normally with maintenance and systems-type investments.

And final question, to alleviate the operational issues you just pointed to, how long is that going to take? Are you going to be able to, I mean, will it take mostly a year to kind of catch up to get your utilization where you want it to be?

Well, I mean, let's put it in the context of the transformation. If you remember, the transformation really has four elements. The first and biggest impact is top line growth, and the second was to significantly improve operations in the factories. The third one was around the G&A reductions. And then the fourth one was all about streamlining the support infrastructure. You can almost also look at this from a time point of view. If we're focused on accelerating the top line first, this year will be all about improving operations. Some of those things do need investments. And the G&A reductions will come towards the end of the transformation program.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Gansham Punjabi from Baird. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. This is actually Matt Krieger sitting for Gansham. How are you doing today?

Good, Matt.

How are you? Good, good. So I was hoping that you could provide a further breakdown of core sales in terms of volume contributions versus pricing contributions for your segments. And then could you provide some added detail on kind of the strict volume outlook for 2019 as it relates to your segments or even by region would be helpful.

Sure. On the top line, when I mentioned we had about a positive 1 to 1.5% of pass-through, about 3% of that is impacting the food and beverage side, and then 1% is for beauty and home. Okay. That's helpful.

Just in terms of the outlook?

Well, I mean, we don't really provide guidance for top line. As you know, we have a target range for our top line growth for the company of 4% to 7%, and then that splits into beauty and home, 3% to 6%, and then pharma, 6% to 10%, and food and beverage, 6% to 10%. Clearly, pharma has done significantly better with growth in the teens now for quite a few quarters, which is also driving some of the need to expand capacity in pharma. And that's certainly a place where we don't want to shortchange customers. And, yeah, we are committed to these guided ranges, but not every quarter. So there will be differences by quarter.

Okay, understood. And then my next question is, can you provide some added detail on your outlook for margin recovery, specifically across the home and beauty and food and beverage segments? as we progress through 2019, just trying to get a sense as to when you guys could be kind of turning the corner to margin positive for year over year.

Yeah, we certainly expect the transformation to continue to impact us positively, not only in the top line, but also on the margin improvement. So we would expect margin expansion both for beauty and home and food and beverage to gradually come in over the year.

And one thing I would like to point out is that I think in Q1 last year, beauty and home margin was about 14%. And I mentioned in my comments the startup losses at Rabool. Rabool didn't come in. to the median home results until sometime in the second quarter. So we will have a little bit of overhang on those startup losses in Q1, but we should be pretty close, relatively speaking, to where the first quarter was last year. And then we should see a gradual increase, as Stefan mentioned, moving through the rest of 2019.

Great. And then my last question relates to the business transformation. I was hoping that we could just dig a little further into what savings you've already achieved from the transformation initiatives and where those savings can be attributed. I know it was focused on corporate and the home and beauty segment. What's the spending that's been required to achieve these savings? And then what's your outlook for 2019 for both of those factors as well?

Yeah. So let's break up again. So the... Fundamental numbers are $90 million of one-time cost to achieve a $80 million EBITDA improvement over a three-year period, plus capital expenditure. It's a three-year program. The biggest impact is from top-line growth. I think you have all seen that. We have achieved quite a few also cost improvements last year, but they are obscured and the partially upset by the operational challenges that we've been very transparent about. Nevertheless, those are occurring. And as I said, this year will be all about improving the factories, addressing some more of these operational issues so that the obscuration of those transformation savings goes away. And then towards the end of the transformation will be some of the G&A reductions that are We are working in detailing now specifically. Okay, great.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of George Staffos from Bank of America. Your line is open.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Good morning. Thanks for all the details, and congratulations on the year. I guess the first question I had was, was on beverage trends and kind of a two-part. One, in China, you've been managing against this issue now for probably, I don't know, a year and a half. When should we, if it's possible to discern, anniversary that beverage closure issue in China? When will the comps turn flat to positive, at least in terms of that issue? And relatedly, what are your customers saying more broadly about about their use of plastic for beverages from water to, you know, everything else, energy drinks, et cetera.

On the first topic or question, you're being very kind with the term managing. That's how we are, Stefan. The China beverage customer is... constitutes a very good business, but we have very limited visibility both on the end user demand as well as on the customer orders. I've called the anniversary before, so I'm not gonna do it again since I've been wrong. Our best guess is that this business will continue to surprise both on the upside and on the downside. It just depends which quarters you compare. The fourth quarter was kind of a perfect storm. next water might be the opposite. And I cannot give you a better answer, unfortunately. Now on your second question, the big debate or the big question with bottled water is really the flat top caps. How can you eliminate the screwing off the caps and throwing away because those single caps are one of the highest volume items that ends up in the sea. So that drives people more to the sports type closures, that drives more to solutions where the cap stays with the bottle, and hopefully also the flip lid product that we are discussing with customers and technologies already in the market in some countries with that. Again, where the lid stays with the bottle and gets recycled with the bottle. I mean, the overall theme here is really all about circularity Plastic is a very good energy-efficient product, but it needs to come back. It can't be a one-way street.

So that's helpful, Stefan. So from your customer standpoint and from what they're hearing from the consumer, the bigger issue is on the cap on the one hand, which presumably that's an opportunity and you can solve that. and less on the actual use of plastic as long as it's recyclable and returnable, and your customers are comfortable that that'll be resolved.

Yeah, and you see initiatives around having to pay a fee that you get returned when you return the bottle, as has been standard in places like Germany for a long time. Okay.

My last two questions, and I'll turn it over. Can you talk to us about, this is, you know, because of the really good comparison of the other segments within pharma, it kind of stands out, but injectables, was the 5% core growth, which would be better than most of the other sectors that I look at, period, in packaging, but was it in line with what you were expecting? You know, how are trends in injectables playing out relative to your expectations? And then, I'm not sure I heard, and perhaps you're not in a position to provide, but did you comment on how much cash outlay there will be this year for the transformation, both in terms of cash costs for redundancies and capital? Thank you.

On the injectable market, this is certainly in line. So with market demand, market demand is even a little bit higher, to be perfectly honest. That's one of the areas where we have service issues from a capacity point of view. But that certainly continues to be a very interesting area with good growth prospects.

And, George, you were looking at 2019 for the cash outlines for transformation?

Yeah, both. If you can, redundancy and other costs and then capital associated with it. Thank you.

So, in total, it's around $40 million is what we're anticipating for 2019.

Okay. Thank you, Bob.

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Debbie Jones from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning. Hi, Debbie. Hi. I wanted to go back to the volume growth you're calling out in beauty at home. I know some of this on the core sales side is raw materials. It does seem like it's been a little better than expected the last couple of quarters. And I'm just trying to get a sense of how sustainable the growth you're seeing in this segment is. And specifically, is the growth you're seeing in line with what your customers are doing? Or are you benefiting from winning more new product development or other types of ways? And how should we think about that in 2019?

Yeah, it's really both. If you remember when we kicked off the transformation, we were very transparent that in some areas we had lost some market share, and we were being much more proactive with customers, tracking things like win rates and customer projects on a weekly basis. That certainly has allowed us to regain some of the lost business. that is a contributor. Secondly, of course, the market demand is strong. And when you read the earnings announcement of some of our customers, whether it's L'Oreal or Estée Lauder or LVMH, you will find them pointing to very robust consumer growth, particularly in the Asia luxury and Asia premium consumer. And while we all read the headlines about China slowing down with respect to automobile sales, maybe mobile phone sales, we don't see that or don't hear that from our customers in the beauty segment.

Okay, thank you. My second question, I was just noting that your cash balance is a lot lower than it normally is. If I just look historically, I think it was the same level kind of in Q3. but I tend to think it'd be running around $400 million. So I was just wondering if there was anything there to note and if we should expect that to kind of change over time.

No, I mean, the cash balance, well, clearly we had a big outflow for the CSP transaction. But I mean, we had peaked out around $700 million prior to that, and we were around $300 million roughly in Q3 and a little bit below that in Q4. That's really just some of the cash outlays we've had for the transformation and for the increase in CapEx that we had in the fourth quarter.

Okay, thanks. I'll turn it over.

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Edlin Rodriguez from UBS. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning, guys. Just one quick one on the guidance for 1Q. I mean, clearly a little lower than I think most of us have expected. Outside of currency, anything else that we should be thinking of that's kind of causing the shortfall? And is that related to the share we purchase? And again, what should we be thinking in terms of the cadence for share we purchase and pays?

One of the things that I hesitate to look into what was in your model going forward, but if we just first look at acquisitions, CSP is performing as we expected, adding between two and three cents per share in Q4. What's offsetting that a little bit is the Rabool startup losses, which were about two cents. So maybe there's some of that as well. We expect that startup loss to continue to go into Q1, as I mentioned earlier, and then slowly abate as the year goes on. I'm sorry, what was the other question? Share buyback. Share buyback. So yeah, so we were on the sidelines in Q3 and Q4 because of the CSP acquisition. And we'll continue to be in the market from time to time. We've got about $80 million remaining on our existing authorization. And then... and then we'll continue to evaluate. We've had our 25th consecutive year of paying an increased dividend. We've talked a little bit about slightly higher spending on CapEx, and then we'll continue to evaluate M&A opportunities as they present themselves.

Okay, and one last one. On the whole sustainability issue, do you see it as a positive or negative for Apto, especially if there's a shift away from plastics, you know, to metals and paper. So at the end of the day, it's like, how do you see up to a position? Thanks.

We actually see this as a tremendous opportunity because it accelerates customer dialogue around creating new solutions, creating recyclable versions of products. And at the end of the day, Whenever you innovate, have a new customer project, then when we can bring all our assets and all our differentiation to bear. So we actually are encouraged by the pickup in our customer project pipeline that's driven by sustainability. A lot of our customers have made significant commitments around either full recyclability of their packaging or high PCR contents, and they need companies like Aptar to help them fulfill their commitment. Of course, in the pharma world, this is almost a non-topic. To be honest, in the luxury beauty world, it's also not a big topic. The biggest topic is, as we discussed earlier, in some of the beverage markets. We are not the player in the large bottled water market today. We are a player in more of the specialty sports drink market and we offer solutions as we discussed earlier for the flat cap problem. Now, if I put my engineering hat on, plastic by far is the most sustainable product from an LCA footprint, but it has to be recycled. If you recycle plastic, there is nothing that can come even close to it from an environmental footprint. I realize that it has a marketing problem, but in the end, I think the fundamental economics and including all the environmental footprint, I think, will rule the day.

Okay. Thank you much.

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Adam Josephson from KeyBank. Your line is open.

Stefan, Bob, Matt, good morning. Good morning, Adam. Yeah. Bob, just a couple on cash flow. Your free cash of 102, was there any working capital drag in there? And was the cash flow performance as you expected?

I would say the working capital wasn't a big drag. We're starting to see some Some pickup on our payables initiatives and increasing terms on suppliers. That's going to gradually ramp up as we move forward. Yeah, the cash flow is where we expected it to be. We knew we had all the transformation costs. to pay for. We had the acquisition costs in the year, and what we're reporting to you is a reported free cash flow number rather than an adjusted number taking those things out. CapEx, we knew based on the project pipeline that Q4 would be a little bit higher than it was the prior year, but I would say overall it didn't really shock us. It came in where we expected it to be.

Okay, and then, Bob, just on the restructuring cost, I think you said you had $64 million in 2018, and I think in response to a question you said you expect another $40 million in 2019, so that totals about $100 million.

And when I go back to the... Yeah, the $40 million included also capital outlays.

Right, so when you made the announcement, you said, I think, $90 million of costs and then $45 million of cap-backs associated with the restructuring, so call it $135 million total. assuming that the 90 of costs were all cash, right?

That's correct. And then we also said that the capital would be funded through working capital initiatives and improvements, which were kind of there now.

So the additional cost you'll incur at 19, would that be how much left would you have post-19 related to the restructuring in terms of cash costs?

Well, we had about 58 million, if my memory serves me right, on cash outlays of the 64. So, I mean, we've got that delta. So, I mean, you're looking at probably 30-something then on cash outlays.

The bulk of the 90 will be done by the end of the year with some sprinkling into 2020.

Okay, and on the CapEx, Bob, the 240, I know you said you have some growth projects in there, presumably of growth projects every year. So I'm just trying to understand, is that, would you say that 240 is a normal-ish number given that you have growth projects every year? Would you say that's an unusually high number for Aptar given that you have just more growth projects than normal coming up in 19?

Maybe I just want to remind back When you talk normally, we have changed the growth trajectory quite a bit. So what was normal in kind of a flattish environment is not normal in a growth environment when you need to add capacity to meet demand and have capacity ready. I mean, it pains me not to be able to supply customers. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, and then, you know, included in that growth is also, you know, the additional amount of, you know, capital that we've got for both the CSP and the RABUL acquisitions as well. So we're lumping that into the, you know, to the capacity and the growth side.

Thanks, Bob. And just my last one, just back to sustainability for a moment. Stefan, You talked about sustainability being a big opportunity for Aftar, appreciating that you're not much in just water bottles, so you wouldn't get hurt to the extent that water bottles go out of favor. But we're hearing from other packaging companies, and most notably those that make aluminum beverage cans, that sustainability is a massive opportunity for them, not only in bottled water, but other forms of beverage. And you're saying you don't expect any pain associated with sustainability. So can you just help us square why seemingly every purveyor of packaging is saying this is an opportunity because presumably someone would get hurt in all of this?

Well, look, once you peel back the onion, I don't want this to make an aluminum versus plastics, but... If you run the LCA numbers, the answers are pretty stark. But even if you take the loop example that we participate in, so some customers say, okay, we're going to switch a shampoo bottle from plastic to aluminum, and then we'll recycle or wash the aluminum bottle. It still needs a dispenser. It still needs a pump on top. And then you have a solution either – You have a recyclable pump, so when it comes back, you recycle the pump. So a customer needs a recyclable pump. There will not be an aluminum pump. I can guarantee you there will be a plastic pump. Or it is a multi-use pump that then needs very different engineering. In both cases, we are one of the go-to partners in developing that, either a fully recyclable pump or one that has a multi-use solution.

Thank you, Stefan.

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Anosha Shah from BMO Capital. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. Morning. I just wanted to get some clarity. Is China still a target region for you for M&A? I'm only asking because, you know, given the current trade point climate and your experience in beverages there, is that still an area you're targeting? And if so, what kinds of valuations are you seeing and have they come down any with recent market volatility?

Yeah. Look, I mean, China is a peer economy to the U.S. and to Europe. So we're not going to take an economy that size off the table on anything. And we have significant customer challenges in each region at one point in time. So This one happens to be in China, but this is not a paint the whole country with that brush. Now, on the valuation question, it really depends on the target, on the specific situation, attractiveness. We have walked away from a target. 18 months ago, I think we've been quite transparent on that, where it became too pricey, but other targets might be interesting. So that's like with any other M&A. You look at the target, you make your own judgment, and then if you can make it work, you get the deal, and if not, you walk away. And again, there it's no different than any other situation. The most important thing is that you have good people on the ground locally. You cannot manage China from the U.S., and you cannot manage the U.S. from China. You need to have good people, and we're strengthening our people. You've seen we've added Jesse Wu to our board. We've added Zhang Weigong to our XCOM. We've added the senior leader to run China. If you have good people, you will have good results in the end.

Okay, thank you. And then just switching over, you mentioned in your prepared comments, I believe, that a lot of independent beauty brands are actually reaching out to you, the smaller beauty brands. What do you think that you're doing, or how do you think you've successfully worked with these smaller brands? Because traditionally, I think it's been quite difficult for packaging companies to serve small-run customers.

Yeah, you may remember early on when we started to kick off our commercial excellence efforts, we started to sub-segment our sales force that we had different people dealing with the small brands and with the big brands, and frankly, different people dealing with fragrance than with the large shampoo customers, so that we have our go-to-market force to be more tailored to the needs of the individual customers or the segments. The second one is, of course, we can provide local solutions around the world, so we can be very responsive no matter where that indie brand player comes from. And in some cases, or in many cases, we're able to take what we call stock products and slightly customize them or not at all customize them, and that is something that the indie brand can run and go with, which significantly shortens their time to market.

Right. Okay, thank you. That does it for me.

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Chip Dillon from Vertical Realty. Your line is open.

Good morning, Stefan and Bob. Appreciate all the comments. Could you just, I don't think you gave us this detail, but you mentioned a gain in pharma and a write-off of some licensing licenses in another segment. Could you give us an idea of the magnitude of those two numbers? And I believe they were included in the adjusted earnings, if I'm not mistaken.

No. Okay. So, Chip, let me, I'll take both of those. So, the The gain that we referred to was approximately $6 million. That was on an equity investment we made in a connected device company, which was sold in late 2018. So we recognized an equity gain on that. And then the write-off of the prepaid royalty was related to our bonds in aluminum plastic. We had a period in the contract where we had minimum annual royalty payments, and then those concluded in 2018. The license continues to go on, but we had a closeout period. In fact, while we remain very optimistic on the pipeline of projects that we have using that technology, The delay in getting the volume that we thought we were going to get when we signed the contract, we didn't get there to eat up all the prepaid royalties at the end of 2018. They were not in our adjusted numbers. Okay. I'm sorry. They were included in the $0.92. They weren't adjusted out.

Okay. And I'm sorry, the prepaid was how much in the quarter?

It was about $2 million.

Okay. And then the second question, follow-up is, it looks like year to year, it looks like you bought about 1% of your stock during the year, 668,000 shares. I think you mentioned you didn't buy any in the fourth quarter. And the share count, I'm going to guess, is up to about 65.5 million. So that would suggest that about 2.5% more shares were issued through options exercises. Is that roughly correct?

Yeah, we're not quite at 65.5. You know, my numbers have us at about 65.3, but we're close there.

Okay, gotcha. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Gabe Hajda from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking the question. Stefan, if you can maybe elaborate a little bit on the investments that you're making specific to the CSP Technologies acquisition. Is this more in the traditional sort of diabetes end market, or is there a new application that you're expanding on and are you targeting any specific geography with that or is it spread across the footprint?

Yeah, I don't think we want to get into that level of detail. I mean, clearly, our first investment priority is to expand the capacity in our pharma business where we have some places or some areas where we have supply constraints which we need to remedy. as soon as possible. We see good opportunity in the CSP business to grow it further. We've been open with the fact that one of the synergies we see that we have an existing facility that comes online in China, in Guangzhou, and that will accelerate expansion for CSP there compared to their plans pre-Abtar. And I think that's about where I'm going to leave it.

All right, thank you. And then I guess switching gears to the pharma segment, just looking at comps, they become a little bit more difficult. And I was curious if you could help us with either new pipeline of products or how that looks in the 12 to 18-month horizon or something like that, maybe where inventories are. And I know it's sort of a difficult thing, but any color you can give us would be helpful.

Yes, so we put quite an emphasis on continuing to build the pipeline. Where I'm hesitating a little bit is with your 12 to 18 months, the pipeline is really built for five, six, seven, eight years. So what we're putting in now is there. Now, what's coming out of the pipeline in the next 12 to 18 months is very good, so we're quite encouraged with the pipeline that we have, the things that we can see. Now, you always have FDA approvals that need to happen and sometimes that's misjudged, but what we see is very encouraging. We see the allergic rhinitis business to continue to go from strength to strength, partly that is driven by broader distribution in club stores, online, partly that's driven by increased incidence of allergy as a disease. And part of that is driven by switching from pill form to using nasal spray because sometimes the pills decrease blood pressure, for example. And in a more larger case, we see also some conversion of other drugs specifically in the central nervous system category from old delivery forms of being injected or being ingested in a pill to being delivered via a nasal device. So you've seen, of course, the unfortunate example with Narcan, but we also see other central nervous system drugs like antidepressants and painkillers going that way.

All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Adam Josephson from KeyBank. Your line is open.

Thanks again, everyone. Bob, I think you mentioned you're expecting a modest positive to EBITDA in the first quarter from lower resin. Obviously, polypropylene fell quite substantially in the US in the fourth quarter. I don't remember Europe offhand, but can you help me with why you're not? I don't know. Help me with what modest means and why you may not be expecting a bigger benefit than a modest one.

Well, it's a very difficult calculation. I'm not sitting with a number that I can give you that says this is exactly what's baked in. It depends on the timing of the pass-throughs, the customers, their volumes in the quarter, how much is linked to closure pass-throughs, how much is linked through you know, the raw material that's in lotion pumps. So there's really a lot of factors in there. So I'd rather stick with modest because directionally that's what we've got in the quarter rather than try to hang an exact number out there.

And just based on what's happened thus far, Bob, would you expect further benefits beyond 1Q just based on those pass-throughs?

I mean, it all depends on, again, it depends on the volatility and what happens beyond Q1, right? You know, I mean, we've got lots of data over the years that depending on, you know, where we can typically catch up is when the resident prices stabilize a little bit. But we'll have to see where it goes the remainder of the year.

I appreciate that. And just on, Stefan, on beauty and home and food and beverage, I know you talked about focusing more on operations than perhaps just on top-line growth. So are you expecting... slower, appreciably slower top-line growth in those segments, but much better margin improvement? Could I infer that from your comments earlier?

No, not really. It's just you've got to think one thing at a time, directionally. And actually, as I probably not explained very well, the transformation savings that we were working on. We are getting those, but they've been obscured with all this activity. Plants are very busy and hit other operational bottlenecks that we are addressing. So that's really what I refer to when I'm speaking about priority this year. I don't see this as a trade-off. We clearly will make investments to expand capacity so that we're able to meet the demand and improve operations. So I don't see that as a trade-off. We don't intend to a throttle back on the top line. Of course, the markets will do what the markets will do, but the visibility we have is not, we will not shy away from our guidance or from our external targets for top line growth.

I appreciate that. And just forgive me if I missed this, but I know you said you expected 80 million of eventual EBITDA, total EBITDA, cumulative EBITDA benefits from the restructuring. How much of that 80 have you realized to date?

Well, I mean, it's a difficult question. I mean, in terms of what's tracked in our system were probably around the $50 million range and then offset by additional headwinds that weren't anticipated when we started the project.

And those were all in beauty and home, that $50 million, Bob?

There were some that were across some of the other segments, some of the procurement savings and the G&A savings, but predominantly around beauty and home.

Got it. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question or comment is a follow-up from Mr. George Staffels from Bank of America. Your line is open.

Thanks. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my follow-on. Mostly around growth, just to finish up. Fragrance, I don't recall, Bob, you calling out what the growth rate was in the quarter. If you had that handy, I'd be interested. And then more importantly... You know, what kind of market do you see developing in fragrance this year? What's the backlog on projects and fragrances through the year? To the extent that you can comment, fragrance has been something of a, you know, on-again, off-again business. You used to have a lot larger order size way, way back when, and now it seems like they've been smaller. What's the outlook for this year, number one? And then I had a quick follow-on.

So, George, on the fragrance question, we don't break out fragrance specifically, but the overall beauty market grew 3%. 3%. Yeah, but that also includes skin care and color cosmetics.

So the more broad question in terms of how the market's evolving for 2019?

I mean, it's doing well. I mean, we're seeing good growth. Again, there's going to be a higher growth rate in there for skincare and cosmetics. And just generally, as Stefan said, we're in that 3% to 6% range overall for beauty and home in total as a segment.

Okay. And then I was just curious, the sale on the equity investment in the active device, what prompted that? Thank you very much, because that seems to be a – Future area of development is certainly one where we'd expect Aptar to be innovating as well. Thanks and good luck in the quarter, guys.

Yeah, that was really, we had a small share in that company and the company was sold. I see. But the collaboration continues now with the new owner. So in terms of collaboration, what we do in terms of developing connected devices together and the deal we have is continuing under the new owner. It is just that the ownership changed.

Okay. Thank you, Stefan.

Thank you. I'm sure no additional questions in the queue at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Tamba for any closing remarks.

Thanks very much for joining us. We'll look forward to see you on the road and talk to you at the next quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone have a wonderful day.