Greif, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Greif First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Matt Leahy. Please go ahead.

Thanks, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to GRIF's fiscal first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. This is Matt Leahy, GRIF Vice President of Corporate Development and Investment Relations, and I am joined by Ole Rosgaard, GRIF's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Larry Hilsheimer, GRIF's Chief Financial Officer. We will take questions at the end of today's call. And in accordance with regulation fair disclosure, please ask questions regarding issues you consider important because we are prohibited from discussing material nonpublic information with you on an individual basis. Please turn to slide two. As a reminder, during today's call, we will make forward-looking statements involving plans, expectations, and beliefs related to future events. Actual results could differ materially from those discussed. Additionally, we will be referencing certain non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP metrics can be found in the appendix of today's presentation. And now, I'd like to turn the presentation over to Ole on slide three.

Thank you, Matt, and good morning, all. Ahead of covering our first quarter results, I would like to briefly recap our strategy and philosophy of how we lead and serve customers. At Guife, we are a purpose-driven company. we create packaging solutions for life's essentials. Our 13,000 colleagues around the world serve as a critical supply chain partner for our customers who are delivering the raw materials, ingredients, foods, beverages, medicines, and products that make the world work. Our packaging helps our customers deliver the juice and ketchup on your table, the paint on your walls, the oil in the car, the furniture in your home, the soles on your shoes, your Amazon boxes, and the vitamins or meds that you take. We help our customers do very important work. Our Build to Last strategy is designed to help us be better stewards of our customers' goods, and our vision is to be the best in the world at customer service. The way we do that is through our four strategic missions, how we work, and the principles that guide how we lead, support, and serve our colleagues and customers. We've built a powerful culture and business systems at Greif that both serve as a flywheel to consistently improve our competitive positioning, attract and retain great talent, and create value as we grow the business. Please turn to slide four. We believe the future of global industrial packaging will be driven by a focus on sustainable packaging solutions, including recyclable resin-based products. We have aligned our strategy with these broader industry trends, and through acquisition and organic investments, we are slowly transforming our portfolio. The five product groups shown on slide four are the same focus areas communicated at our investor day in 2022. And since then, we have made substantial progress on expanding in these verticals. We've executed three transactions in small plastics in the past year in Lee, Reliance and IPAC Chem to build global scale in that important and growing markets. We intend to continue to build on our small plastics platform with high quality, high margin speciality businesses. Our focus in IBC centers on building scale regionally at both the manufacturing and the reconditioning level to offer our customers a full lifecycle solution of sustainable products and further our circularity mission. Our acquisition of Centurion Container has significantly increased our mix of washed, re-bottled, and reconditioned IPCs, and all with a growing margin. This business improves both the environment and our economics, a powerful combination. In our paper packaging business, our growth is focused on unique high-margin converting businesses that improve our downstream integration as well as our end-market exposures into more stable food, beverage, and consumer markets. Our cold pack acquisition, Dallas Sheet Feeder and the Louisville Litho Laminator investments all meet this goal in paper. And while our closures business is predominantly internally focused, we see tremendous potential to grow beyond our current footprint, both organically and through acquisition. In summary, we see a long runway for growth in many of our businesses and intend to continue along this path of transforming our portfolio to meet the market needs and better serve our customers. Please turn to slide five. Now into the first quarter. Volumes remained under pressure in most parts of the world through the quarter, consistent with our expectations and full year guidance. Starting east to west, which is how we normally see volume trends emerge. Our APAC business saw some bright spots in the quarter as volumes in our China business improved slightly on both a sequential and year-on-year basis. China manufacturing PMI remained above 50 for all three months in the quarter, and lubricants, which are predominantly used by heavy manufacturing customers, were the primary improving end market in that region. In EMEA, We also saw improving lubricants and end-market demands reflected more of the low comparison versus an improving sequential trend, as Eurozone PMI remained well below 50 through January. The agricultural and clinical markets are still working through some of the year-end 2023 destocking, and we expect those businesses to improve throughout the year. Our land-sand business primarily serves the agrochemical, juice and beverage industries and is impacted by planting, yield and consumer demand dynamics in those markets. Volumes in that region remain weaker and we do not at present see any material volume inflections. North America, still our largest and most diverse region with both rigid and paper packaging remained our weakest market globally in the first quarter. U.S. manufacturing PMIs remained in contraction territory through January, the 14th consecutive month at or below 50. This continued low level of industrial activity has driven GIP volumes down 19% in the quarter and 36% over two-year periods. This is a truly historic period for our GIP business and makes the results from that team over the past year and a half even more impressive. We are excited by the prospects when volume trends inflect. Our PBS business saw a mix of volume trends with container board clearly improving and our box board business still trending down slightly. Overall, it is clear We remain in a difficult point in the cycle, and our teams are doing an excellent job controlling what we can control and focusing on serving our customers. I'm proud of our work this quarter and our continued resilience and commitments as we navigate the tough environments. I'll now turn it over to Larry to walk through our detailed financial results.