Sonoco Products Company

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Sunoco second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question again, press star one. Thank you. I'd now like to turn the call over to Roger Schrum, Head of Investor Relations and Communications. You may begin.

Thank you, Jeannie, and good morning, everyone. Yesterday evening, we issued a news release and posted an investor presentation that reviews Sunoco's third quarter 2025 financial results. Both are posted on the investor relations section of our website at sunoco.com. A replay of today's conference call will be available on our website and we'll post a transcript later this week. If you would turn to slide two, I will remind you that during today's call, we will discuss a number of forward-looking statements based on current expectations, estimates, and projections. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Therefore, actual results may differ materially. Additionally, today's presentation includes the use of non-GAAP financial measures which management believes provides useful information to investors about the company's financial condition and results of operation. Further information about the company's use of non-GAAP financial measures, including definitions as well as reconciliations to GAAP measures, is available under the investor relations section of our website. Joining me this morning are Howard Coker, President and CEO, Roger Fuller, Chief Operating Officer and Interim CEO of Sunoco Metal Packaging, EMEA, and Paul Johimchik, a Chief Financial Officer. For today's call, we'll have prepared remarks followed by your questions. If you'll turn to slide four in our presentation, I will now turn it over to Howard.

Thank you, Roger, and good morning, everyone. Let me start by saying I am incredibly proud of our team's strong operating performance in the third quarter as we achieved record top-line and bottom-line performance along with margin expansion despite challenging market conditions, which affected both consumer and industrial demand, particularly in the EMEA region. Slide 5 shows net sales grew 57 percent and adjusted EBITDA was 37 percent up, while adjusted margin achieved a record 18.1% due primarily to improving margins from our industrial paper packaging business. Total adjusted earnings grew 29% in spite of higher than expected interest expense. Our consumer packaging sales and operating profit grew 117%, and adjusted EBITDA increased 112%. Most of the improvements came from the addition of metal packaging to MEA and strong results from our metal packaging U.S. business where we saw food can volumes up 5%. Our industrial packaging segment also had an exceptional quarter with operating profits up by 28% and adjusted EBITDA up by 21%. This operating profit and adjusted EBITDA margins grew significantly during the quarter and registered an eighth consecutive quarter of margin improvement in the industrial segment. Our industrial team continues to successfully drive our value-based pricing model while achieving solid productivity savings. Paul will go through all the numbers and business drivers for the quarter in a few minutes. As shown on slide six, We successfully entered into an agreement on September 7th to sell our thermosafe temperature-assured packaging business to Arsenal Capital Partners for a total purchase price of up to $725 million. We expect the transaction to close during the quarter, subject to regulatory review. The purchase price includes $650 million in cash at closing, an additional earn-out opportunity of up to $75 million based on the business's 2025 overall performance. The completion of the Seattle ThermoSafe will substantially complete Sunoco's portfolio transformation from a large portfolio of diversified businesses into a stronger, more simplified structure of two core global business segments, consumer packaging, which consists of our global metal and paper can businesses and industrial packaging, where we have global leadership and uncoated recycled paperboard and converted products. Performer for the transaction, the expected net proceeds from the divestiture, excluding any additional considerations, are projected to reduce our net leverage ratio to approximately 3.4 times. I'm now going to turn the call over to Roger Fuller to give us an update on activities and where we are at S&P EMEA. Thank you, Howard. Good morning, everyone.