Sylvamo Corporation

during this time, simply press the star key, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. As a reminder, your conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Hans Bjorkman, Vice President, Investor Relations. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thanks, Audra. Good morning, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call. Our speakers this morning are Jean-Michel Rivieres, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and John Simms, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Slides two and three contain important information, including certain legal disclaimers. For example, during this call, we will make forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. We will also present certain non-U.S. GAAP financial information. Reconciliations of those figures to U.S. GAAP financial measures are available in the appendix. Our website also contains copies of the earnings release as well as today's presentation. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jean-Michel.

Thanks, Hans. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. I'll stop on slide four. 2024, we generated 23% return on invested capital as we executed our strategy and strengthened our competitive advantages in our core uncoated free sheet market. We improved our financial position by repaying $154 million in debt, achieving a net debt to adjusted EBITDA of 0.9 times. We earned $632 million in adjusted EBITDA, generated $248 million in free cash flow, and returned $130 million in cash to shareholders. We reinvested $221 million across our manufacturing network and of Brazil Forestland to strengthen our low-cost position. We are committed to being the investment of choice and believe we can generate significant shareholders' returns in the future by executing our strategy. Slide 5 highlights our 2024 full-year key financial metrics. Our adjusted EBITDA was $632 million with a 17% margin. Our $248 million of free cash flow was more than $6 per share. Our adjusted operating earnings were $7.42 per share, which is 14% higher than 2023. We now have three full years under our belt in becoming an independent company. And our financial results have established a solid track record and are indicative of our ability to navigate tough industry conditions challenging in general political events and other uncertainty that we may face. As we enter 2025, we are confident in our ability to continue to create value for customers and shareholders. Let's move to slide six. We had very strong cash generation to finish the year. This allows us to pay down additional debt We invest in our business and return cash to shareholders. Our teams collaborated well with customers to manage through a successful transition as a result of the Georgetown mill closure. I want to thank our employees for their hard work and execution as we navigated through the transition. I also want to thank our customers for the trust they place in us each and every day. We're committed to remain the supplier of choice and we'll work hard to earn and retain the business. Lastly, regarding Project Horizon, our cost reduction program to streamline manufacturing, to buy chain and overhead costs, we exceeded our 110 million year end-run rate saving goals by 34 million. John will cover this in more detail in a few slides. Let's move to the next slide. Slide 7 shows our fourth quarter key financial metrics. We earn adjusted a bit of $157 million with a margin of 16%. Free cash flow generation was $100 million as we generated adjusted operating earnings of $1.96 per share. I'm proud of how our team delivered impressive results while taking care of our customers. More importantly, I'm proud of our team's commitment to putting people before paper to ensure everyone returns home safe at the end of each day. We are focused on building a resilient safety culture by involving every team member in our efforts to proactively eliminate risk and create a safer environment for everyone every day. Now, John will review our performance in more detail.