Smurfit WestRock PLC

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Smurfit Westrock 2025 Q3 results webcast and conference 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 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Ciaran Potts, Smurfett Westrock Group VP, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sarah. As a reminder, statements in today's earnings release and presentation and the comments made by management during this call may be considered forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the factors identified in the earnings release and in our SEC filing. The company undertakes no obligation to revise any forward-looking statements. Today's remarks also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures are included in today's release and in the appendix to the presentation, which are available at investors.smurfitwestrock.com. I'll now hand you over to Tony Smurfit, CEO of Smurfit Westrock.

Thank you very much, Kieran, for the introduction. Today I'm joined by Ken Bowles, our Executive Vice President and Group CFO, and we appreciate all of you taking the time to be with us. I am very happy to say that we have again delivered on guidance in what is a challenging environment with an adjusted EBITDA margin number of 1.3 billion US dollars and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 16.3%. The quarter was characterized by some challenging months. specifically July in our North American region and August in Europe. Nonetheless, we were able to come through with the numbers we predicted and planned. Since our combination, our North American business has shown great improvement over the course of the last 16 months on both the commercial and operational front, best reflected by an improved adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.2% for the quarter. As you will have heard us say, as we got to understand the legacy Westrock business, we have taken strong actions to remove uneconomic volume within our portfolio of businesses. This, of course, has resulted in a loss of volume as we transition and reposition our business. While there will be a time adjustment to this reposition, we believe we are clearly on the right track as we are already seeing quality customer wins. In addition to changing our customer portfolio, we're also continuing to right-size the business by closing down inefficient or loss-making operations including the recently announced closure of a corrugated facility in California, in addition to the eight previously announced closures. In paper, we have already announced approximately 500,000 tons of capacity closure in both container board and consumer board grades. These footprint optimizations will be a continuing feature as we develop and grow our business. Turning now to EMA and APAC, Our adjusted EBITDA margin of 14.8% is highly creditable given the environment that exists in the European sphere. We believe it clearly demonstrates the power of the integrated model which is producing this resilient margin in an environment of paper over capacity. Our mills continue to run optimally while at the same time our converting businesses are capitalizing on their outstanding leadership position in innovation. We believe this combined with our insights into sustainability and the significant pending regulations from the European Union should give our customers confidence to help them in navigating this environment. In our LATAM business, with an excellent EBITDA margin of over 21% due to our strong market positions, these are principally in Brazil and our central cluster. Our sequential margin showed a small fall in the last quarter as a result of some operational issues in one of our larger mills in our central cluster, which has now been resolved. The region still has significant growth opportunities for us to develop in the years ahead. Turning now to the group and regional highlights, what I'm very happy with is the initial potential of the combination is evident in our cash flow performance in the quarter. With operating cash delivered, $1.1 billion, and an adjusted free cash flow of approximately $580 million. One of the things that especially pleases me about this number is that we're really only starting to get going on working capital optimization as we continue to focus on operating excellence. I'm also very happy at how the people in the new Smurf at Westrock have come together and adapted to the culture of the company and its values of loyalty, integrity, and respect, and safety adoption by everyone in the workplace. The group has also been working effectively on the Synergy Program, which Ken will speak on further. which is exceeding our expectations, especially when one looks at the commercial improvements that we can see across the businesses. Finally, in the group, not only in North America, but also in Latin America and Europe, we continue to optimize our asset base with the recent closure of a facility in Brazil and the transfer of equipment to other operating units, together with constant trimming of our assets in our European sphere. In terms of the regions, as I've mentioned, we continue to make excellent progress across our North American system. For example, in corrugated, our loss-making units have declined by almost 50% in a one-year period, with today over 70% of our corrugated operations solidly profitable. And we expect significantly more progress to occur as we replace and swap out uneconomical volume. In our consumer business, this business is very well positioned, with substantial investments and restructuring already done. With strong positions in SBS and CUK, we're actively working to transfer customers from CRB to these grades, and have already switched about $100 million worth of business. We do, however, believe in offering all three substrates to our customer mix. Our first Global Innovation Summit was held in Virginia in September, and the rollout of our experience centers in our North American region, while in its infancy, is now happening. In EMA and APAC, our integrated model is really proving the success of our business. Our mills are well utilized and our outstanding position and innovative offering is retaining and developing customers. One of the great opportunities for us has been the effective integration of our consumer operations into our European business. We have a vastly greater customer base to introduce to our consumer operations into Europe and moving these businesses back to local sales and manufacturing accountability has already started to see some significant benefits. And finally, during the quarter, the rationalization of two of our German converting plants has been agreed. This will significantly strengthen our leading German position as we await the inevitable upturn. Turning to Latin America, I'm increasingly excited about our Brazilian operations. The Legacy Smurfit and Legacy Westrock businesses are a perfect fit, with one concentrated on recycled container board and the other on virgin craft liner. Our converting businesses have quickly adopted our value over volume focus, which is already showing significant improvements. In our Colombian business, we experienced significant growth of 8% due to our commercial offering and the market developing as a growing exporter of fruits and vegetables. Across the region, we're capitalizing on many of the growth and development opportunities we have. For example, in Chile and Peru, where our volumes grew by 15% and 25% respectively during the third quarter. I'd like to give you a sense of the excitement that exists and is building within Smurfit Westrock company today. We're a stronger and better company through the adoption of the owner-operator model. Everyone across our world is now responsible for their own P&Ls. This has unleashed a tremendous enthusiasm and internal competition to do better and lends itself perfectly into having a performance-led culture where everybody is responsible for what they do. I'm especially pleased that we have now initiated global and regional leadership programs, whereby over 300 managers will have started our group programs. In Smurfit Westrock, people are at the heart of everything we do, and we ensure that they have the tools to succeed in their job and to realize their potential. And our synergy programs and optimized asset base, together with our innovation offering and transfer of best practice will, we believe contribute to superior performance in the future. I'll now hand you over to Ken, who'll take you through the financials.