Silgan Holdings Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Silgan Holdings fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Alex Hutter. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. Joining me on the call today are Adam Greenlee, President and CEO, Bob Lewis, EVP Corporate Development and Administration, and Kim Ulmer, SVP and CFO. before we begin the call today we would like to make it clear that certain statements made on this conference call may be forward-looking statements these forward-looking statements are made based upon management's expectations and beliefs concerning future events impacting the company and therefore involve a number of uncertainties and risks including but not limited to those described in the company's annual report on form 10k for 2023 and other filings with the securities and exchange commission therefore the actual results of operations or financial condition of the company could differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. In addition, commentary on today's call may contain references to certain non-GAAP financial metrics, including adjusted EBIT, adjusted EBITDA, free cash flow, and net income per diluted share or adjusted EPS. A reconciliation of these metrics, which should not be considered substitutes for similar GAAP metrics, can be found in today's press release. and under the non-GAAP financial information portion of the investor relations section of our website at silganholdings.com. With that, let me turn it over to Adam.

Thank you, Alex, and we'd like to welcome everyone to Silgan's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call. Our team delivered another year of strong performance in 2024 as the success of our winning strategy, the power of our portfolio, the strength of our team, and our disciplined approach to capital deployment continue to set us apart from our competition and drive value for our shareholders. Normalizing in-market conditions in most of our businesses showcased the organic growth potential of our strategic initiatives, and we delivered mid-single-digit organic adjusted EPS growth and double-digit free cash flow growth in 2024, despite customer destocking activities that impacted the first half of the year. We made significant progress towards achieving our multi-year $50 million cost savings initiative, while continuing to invest organically in our businesses to drive growth into the future. Our disciplined capital deployment model continued to create value for our shareholders as we announced and closed the acquisition of Vayner Packaging during the year. We are pleased to add another high margin, strong organic growth business to the Silgan portfolio and believe this to be a logical next step in the evolution of our capabilities in the attractive dispensing markets as we continue to evolve our portfolio. Its advanced product and manufacturing technologies and strong innovation pipeline will bolster the organic growth and enhance the profile mix of the company for years to come. At the segment level, our dispensing and specialty closure segment continued to perform exceptionally well in 2024 and delivered three consecutive quarters of double digit organic growth in dispensing products to close out the year. Our adjusted EBITDA margins in the segment expanded almost 75 basis points during the year and reached new record levels as the margin enhancing mix and higher growth rate of our dispensing products continues to deliver meaningful upside to our bottom line. We drove operational improvement in the segment and continued to make progress against our multi-year cost savings initiatives. In metal containers, our pet food markets, which represents a strategic growth category and approximately half of our segment volume, showed improving trends throughout the year with high single digit growth in the second half of the year and double digit growth in the fourth quarter as volumes normalized. We once again validated our leadership in the market and the strength of our customer relationships by extending our decades long supply partnership with our largest customer. Our team navigated dynamic volume conditions in the fruit and vegetable market with the impact of a large customer reducing their inventories to drive working capital during the year compounded by severe weather that drove the worst fruit and vegetable pack in many years. In custom containers, our business delivered strong operating performance and experienced continued success in the marketplace as the commercialization of new contractual business wins and more normalized market conditions drove mid single digit volume growth and over 200 basis points of adjusted EBIT margin improvement. As we now turn our focus to 2025, With our strategic initiatives yielding strong organic growth, the contribution of the Vayner acquisition and first-year synergies, the full benefit of our cost savings program, and a partial recovery in the fruit and vegetable market, our business exits 2024 with strong momentum and is positioned to deliver record performance in 2025 with double-digit increases to both earnings and free cash flow. At the segment level, we are expecting dispensing and specialty closures organic volumes to grow by a mid single digit rate in 2025 driven by another year of high single digit growth in our dispensing products and low single digit growth in our closure products resulting in an improved mix. Metal containers volumes are expected to grow by a mid single digit percentage driven primarily by mid single digit growth in pet food and a partial recovery in the fruit and vegetable volumes. Custom containers volumes are expected to grow by a mid single digit percentage driven by the annualization of the new business wins that ramped up in 2024, as well as additional new business awards in 2025. As we enter 2025, we are excited about the opportunities that lay ahead for the company and our ability to execute upon them. Our customer partnerships remain strong and our teams remain focused on meeting the unique needs of our customers. We continue to compete and win in the markets we serve. Our strategic growth initiatives continue to shape the company's future And our discipline capital to deployment model continues to create significant value for shareholders. Before I turn it over to Kim, I'd also like to highlight that earlier this week, we announced that Philippe Chevrier will join our team as executive vice president and chief operating officer as part of our executive office in Stanford. We look forward to Philippe fully participating in the collaborative management process that has proven to be so successful since the founding of our company. He brings additional strong leadership capabilities to our team, a broad operational skill set, significant international experience, and a deep understanding of the importance of commercial relationships, all of which will help him be successful at Filgun. With that, Kim will take you through the financials for the quarter and our estimates for the first quarter and full year 2025.