International Paper Company

Good morning and thank you for standing by. Welcome to International Papers, third quarter 2026 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, you will have an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mandi Gilliland, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Ma'am, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to International Paper's third quarter 2026 earnings call. Our speakers this morning are Andy Silvernail, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Lance Loeffler, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we jump in, please note that this quarter, in light of the planned separation of the EMEA business and the subsequent UK regulatory requirements, we are no longer including our existing packaging solutions EMEA US GAAP financial guidance in our guidance framework and do not anticipate providing such guidance in the future. The EMEA management team will provide more information at the DS Smith PLC Capital Markets Day on November 3rd. This will include details about the business model, growth strategy, and financial outlook following the separation. I'd also like to remind everyone there is important information at the beginning of our presentation, including certain legal disclaimers. For example, during this call, we will make forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Information about these risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements can be found in our press releases and reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. We will also present certain non-U.S. GAAP financial information. Reconciliation to U.S. GAAP financial measures are available on our website along with our third quarter earnings press release and today's presentation slides. Now let me turn it over to Andy Silvernail.

Thank you, Mandi. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Let's begin on slide three. In the third quarter, we improved execution and delivered an important inflection in earnings in an environment of weak consumer confidence and rising inflation. Our focus is to control what we can control and execute the three pillars of our strategy, an advantage cost position, superior customer experience, and a high relative supply position in the markets we serve. In North America, we made meaningful progress improving productivity, particularly across our mill system. Better execution helped us deliver results above expectations and offset persistent inflation as we continue to serve customers and strengthen our position in the market. Given performance to date and expectations for Q4, we expect to outpace industry demand by approximately two percentage points for the full year. In terms of improved execution, Pine Hill is a tangible example of our progress. We completed the roof repairs and restarted the mill ahead of schedule. The team's disciplined work and the commitment to safety allowed us to restore operations safely, limit disruption across the mill system, and minimize the impact on customer box shipments. I want to thank everybody involved. Great work. Packaging Solutions EMEA also improved sequentially, although results were below our expectations. Natural gas costs rose sharply and consumers remained cautious. Realization of previously published paper price increases are on track and cost out actions help mitigate rising input costs. We are also advancing preparations to separate the EMEA business, which I'll discuss later in the call. Across both businesses, the progress is encouraging, but there's more work to do. We expect the current market conditions to persist in the fourth quarter and into 2027. Our priorities remain clear, execute with discipline, manage what we can control, and strengthen the three pillars of our strategy. I'm on slide four. Let me spend a minute on demand in North America. Our box shipments declined approximately 2% year over year in the third quarter, one point better than our estimate of industry demand. In the quarter, we experienced headwinds from the disruption in the West Coast fresh fruit and vegetable business and softness in protein that have come from smaller livestock herds, inflation and a strained consumer. In the fourth quarter, we expect to continue to grow above market along with Modest Recovery and West Coast Agriculture, and we expect to see the traditional seasonal increase. We expect to outperform the industry by more than 1% in the fourth quarter and by approximately 2% for the full year. With that, I'll turn it over to Lance to discuss third quarter results and outlook in more detail.