CCL Industries Inc.

Good morning, and welcome to CCL Industries' Third Quarter Investor Update. Please note that there will be a question and answer session after the call. The moderator for today is Mr. Jeff Martin, President and Chief Executive Officer, and joining him is Mr. Sean Waschuk, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, gentlemen.

Good morning, everyone. Sean Waschuk here with Jeff Martin. We're in New Jersey at our home and personal care office in Lumberton, New Jersey, and we'll begin our Q3 presentation. Turning to slide two, our disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements. I'll remind everyone that our business faces known and unknown risks and opportunities. For further details of these key risks, please take a look at our 2024 annual report, particularly the section Risks and Uncertainties. Our annual and quarterly reports can be found online on the company's website, CCLIND.com, or CDARplus.ca. Moving to slide three, our summary of our financial results. For the third quarter of 2025, sales increased 6.3%, with 3.7% organic growth 0.1% acquisition-related growth and 2.5% positive impact from foreign currency translation, resulting in sales of almost $2 billion compared to approximately $1.8 billion in the third quarter of 2024. Operating income was $321.8 million for the 2025 third quarter compared to $288.9 million for the third quarter of 2024. a 9% increase excluding the impact of foreign currency translation. Jeff will expand on our segmented operating results for our CCL, Avery, Check Point, and Inovia segments momentarily. Corporate expenses were up for the 2025 third quarter compared to the prior year third quarter due to higher variable long-term compensation expenses. Consolidated EBITDA for the 2025 third quarter excluding the impact of foreign currency translation, increased 7% compared to the same period in 2024. Net finance expense was $18.2 million for the third quarter of 2025, lower than the $19.3 million for the third quarter of 2024. The decrease is due to higher finance income earned on our higher cash and cash equivalent balances. The overall effective tax rate for Q3 2025 was 25.5% compared to an effective tax rate of 24.5% recorded in the third quarter of 2024. This was due to a higher portion of our taxable income being earned in higher tax jurisdictions. Our effective tax rate may change in future periods depending on the proportion of taxable income earned in different tax jurisdictions with different rates. Net earnings. for the 2025 third quarter was $210.8 million compared to $191.7 million for the 2024 third quarter. For the nine-month period, sales, operating income, and net income increased 6.5%, 9.9%, and 7.9% respectively. This all excluded the impact of a $78.1 million revaluation gain recorded in the second quarter of 2024, also compared to the nine-month period of 2024. 2025 included the results from two acquisitions completed since January 1st, 2024, delivering acquisition-related sales growth for the period of 0.8%, organic growth of 3.1%, with foreign currency translation tailwind of 2.6% to sales. Our next slide, earnings per share. Basic and adjusted basic earnings per Class B share were $1.21 for the 2025 third quarter compared to $1.08 basic and $1.09 adjusted basic earnings per Class B share for the 2024 third quarter. Adjusted earnings per Class B share increased 11% compared to the third quarter of 2024. This 12 cent increase in adjusted basic EPS was primarily driven by improved operating income, which was attributable to 14 cents, foreign currency translation adding 2 cents, reduced net finance costs added 1 cent. These gains were partly offset by lower joint venture earnings of 1 cent, higher corporate costs of 2 cents, and a higher income tax rate of 2 cents. Moving to slide five, our free cash flow from operations. For the third quarter of 2025, free cash flow from operations was an info of $333.4 million compared to an inflow of $233 million posted in the third quarter of 2024. This increase is principally due to improved earnings and improved net working capital for the third quarter of 2025 compared to the prior year third quarter. For the trailing 12 months September 25, free cash flow from operations was $860.2 million, compared to $618.6 million for the trailing 12 months ended September 24. This change is primarily attributable to improved adjusted earnings and reduced net capital expenditures over the comparative periods. Moving to the next slide, a return to shareholder slide. For the 2025 third quarter, we repurchased 1.3 million shares for $100 million, including the 10.3% increase in the 2025 annual dividend announced in February of this year. Dividends paid year-to-date have amounted to $167.9 million, for a total of $467.9 million returned to shareholders. Moving to slide seven, our cash and debt summary. Net debt as at September 30th, 2025 was 1.49 billion, a decrease of $131 million compared to December 31st, 2024. This decrease is principally a result of higher total debt outstanding more than offset by an increase in our cash and cash equivalents. With the decrease in the company's net debt, the balance sheet closed the quarter in a strong position. Our balance sheet leverage ratio was approximately 0.93 times at September 30th, 2025, down from 1.08 times reported at the end of December 2024. Liquidity was robust, with $1.1 billion of cash on hand and U.S. $0.8 billion of available undrawn credit capacity in our revolving credit facility. The company's overall finance rate was 2.6% at September 30, 2025, equal to December 31, 2024. The company's balance sheet continues to be well-positioned for the balance of 2025 and well-positioned as we move into 2026. Jeff, over to you.

Thank you, Sean. Good morning, everybody. On slide eight, highlights for capital spending for the year. We're expecting gross costs for the year to end up about $450 million, most of it spent in the CCL segment. Page nine, highlights for the quarter for the CCL segment, which was the strongest part of the company for the quarter, 6.6% Q3 organic growth was on top of 4.9% at the same quarter last year. It's single-digit growth in North America and Europe, high single-digit in Latin America and Asia Pacific, including the Middle East. Very good quarters in healthcare and specialty home and personal care, and especially CCL design. CCL secure was up significantly, but it compared to a week prior year, and the food and beverage business was flat. Moving on to slide 10, just one comment really on our joint ventures here. Pac-Man CCL was acquired in the middle part of last year, so we're just seeing the results of the one joint venture we have left remaining here for the quarter. Page 11, highlights for Avery. As we expected, we had some impact in the back-to-school season in the US from tariffs. particularly affecting our ring binder business. We'll talk more about that in the Q&A. But that was part offset by continuing growth in our direct-to-consumer statement in North America and Europe. Latin America was affected by currency, particularly for imported materials, and especially in Brazil. Page 12 highlights the checkpoint. Another strong quarter in Europe in the MAS business. few large technology rollouts, chain-wide rollout technology in European retailers and elsewhere except the Americas where we had also tariff impacts from our intercompany supply of products from China. The apparel label industry continues to be disrupted by the supply chain disruption from tariff policies. So that's continuing to affect us. We had very strong growth in this quarter last year. It was modestly better this year. But we're expecting to see that gradually improve as things settle down in the apparel supply chain. Page 13, highlights for Inovia. Profits down to the quarter entirely due to the Germany scale-up. We had a pretty good quarter in Europe, softer in North America on the volume side, and sales declined also on lower resident cost parts, particularly in North America. Slide 14, some outlook comments for the coming quarter. For the CCL segment, orders are stable. Most of you would have seen the CPG customer volumes are still soft. But our CCR design business continues to be quite an offset to that. October results were modestly ahead of this time, October prior year. Avery had its slow quarter, horticultural aside, but also had a pretty good October. The checkpoint tariff-related risks remain in MAS internally and in the apparel supply chain externally. And then in Germany, we've got continuing startup costs, and we'll have a shutdown this December to fix some problems on the line. And we'll start up with gusto into the new year. We have challenging cons for the fourth quarter, but we also have FX as an increasing tailwind. So we'll all wait and see how that pans out as the year finalizes at the end of December. So with that, operator, we'd like to open the call for questions.

Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Your first question for today is from Ahmed Abdullah with National Bank Capital Markets.

Yeah, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Solid results at CCO and I just wanted to clarify the commentary about the softer volumes on the CPG customers. Are you seeing any dramatic step change there or is it like a step change down or is this referencing the ongoing sluggishness that we've been seeing throughout the year?

ongoing sluggishness we've seen throughout the year.

Okay, perfect. And just in the CCL segment, are you still seeing a benefit from customers kind of rethinking their supply chains and, you know, helping you gain some share there? Any color you can give on that?

We have some share gain on the margin, but it's not material.

Okay. Thank you. And... For RFID at Checkpoint, you called out a strong September. Any color you can give us on how Q4 has been trending for RFID growth?

We don't have the data for Q4 yet, but September was pretty strong. So the Q3 data, July, was actually below prior year. August was modestly above, and September fell into double digits.

Okay. And just a final question for me. On the German plant startup costs, this quarter was a bit higher than last quarter. Should we expect this number to be trending down as we head into early 2026 or kind of staying around that level?

I think it'll be three to four million a quarter for another quarter or two until we get through the qualification with all the customers. So it's a new line with new technology, so we have to get the films approved by all the customers, which we're now doing. So we expect that situation to improve in the second half of next year.

Okay. That's it for me. I'll pass the line.

Thank you.

Your next question is from Hamir Patel with CIBC Capital Markets.

Hi, good morning. Jeff, for the CPG softness that you've been seeing this year, are there any maybe notable differences that you'd point to across geographies? And is that also affecting price comps with those customers?

Well, I would say on the geography side, the most notable change is things are improving in China. So we've seen that pretty much across the board with all the customers overseeing definitely improving strength in China. Europe and the U.S. I think could best be described as flat. Latin America, volumes are okay, but foreign exchange-driven inflation can present some challenges in Latin America. Middle East is very strong.

Great. Thanks. That's helpful. And for Inovia, just given the, I think, planned outage you referenced for Q4, how much of a headwind would that be in addition to the startup costs you mentioned?

Well, I don't think it'd be very much because it's a short month, so we're just taking a little bit of extra time. So there's not much point in running the line between Christmas and New Year. So it's really taking that sort of Christmas, New Year period to make some adjustments to the line on the trials we've been running. That's really what we're doing. I think the impact would be very modest compared to what we saw in Q3.

Fair enough. And, Sean, for CapEx, what would you expect for 2026, just given the strength of the balance sheet?

Well, I think it'll be plus or minus our current run rate, $450 million. We'll have an update for the Q1 core because we'll have our entire budget process completed by then.

Great. Thanks. That's all I had. I'll turn it over.

Your next question for today is from Steven McLeod with BMO.

Thank you.

Good morning, guys. Good morning. Just a couple of things I wanted to circle around on. Just with respect to the CCL segment and the performance in the quarter and the outlook commentary, it was a very strong quarter, but it sounded like a bit more of a moderated outlook. So I was just curious if I'm interpreting that correctly. And then secondly, along those lines, did you see sort of growth kind of decelerate into the end of the quarter?

No, no, no, we didn't see that. So it's always difficult in Q4 because you've got two short months. So forecasting the end of the year is always tough. I wouldn't say the environment is terribly different. So we had a good fourth quarter last year. So it's just we haven't seen an improvement, really, the message that we haven't seen a robust consumer environment that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. So we're just, we're just taking into account the fact that it's a difficult cause to predict because of the two months of holiday seasons. And we haven't really seen any, any improvement compared to how it's been all year.

Okay. Okay. No, that's helpful. Um, and then I just wanted to ask about the CCL segment margin, which was, uh, quite quite strong and uh you know the highest quarterly margin i think you've had in four years so i was just curious if there's anything kind of one time or or unique to the quarter that was driving that um 17.2 margin yeah comparatively we had a very weak quarter last year in ccl secure so so that was that was certainly an impact and we we didn't have an exceptional quarter in

in Q3 compared to other forces we've had in that business over the years. But the comparisons were very strong because it was good this year and not good last year.

Okay, okay, that's helpful. And then I guess maybe as we think about that margin into Q4 and into next year, you know, is it still, is there reason to think that, you know, we could continue to sit above 16%?

Well, we'll have to wait and see. Okay. Okay. We hope so.

We'll have to wait and see. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Jeff. And then maybe just finally, I noticed in the outlook commentary, you highlighted particularly on Avery focus on tuck-in acquisitions. And I'm just curious if you're seeing anything popping up in the pipeline on the CCL side as well.

No change on the CCL side. There's always things we're looking at. But those direct-to-consumer acquisitions at Avery have been largely home runs in the main. So we want to do more of them. And we've announced a couple this year. There's a few more in the hopper. And we'd like to do more of those because that's the part of the business that's really growing.

Yeah, okay. That's great. That's helpful. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks, Sean. I'll pass it back to the line. Appreciate it. No problem.

The next question for today is from Michael Glenn with Raymond James.

Hey, good morning. Just going back to the CCL games, The 6.6, Jeff, you're talking about low CPG volumes and then modest share gains. So what's the explaining factor for the outperformance on an organic basis?

Well, we can't measure physical volume, organic gains. We can only really measure revenue gains. So it's more mix-driven than anything. I can say that for sure. We know it's more mix-driven and probably a little bit of share gain on the margins, but it doesn't really move the needle that much. So mix would have been the biggest factor for sure.

Okay. And then just back on the CCL Secure, the contribution you saw from CCL Secure this quarter, is this something specific in Q3, or is it a new recurring piece of business?

It's really about the comp. So it's just the fact that last year, CCL Secure's Q3 was not good. There's nothing unusual. It's just back to normal. That's all it is.

Okay. And then just on Avery with the back to school, how do we parse between the tariff impact and what might be an underlying structural decline in those legacy products?

Well, the tariff impact is a couple of million. So in terms of cost on us, And then you've got the effect the whole tariff regime has had on retailers sourcing products for a very short selling season. So you have to remember that the tariff shock came as quite a surprise right in the middle of the time of the year where retailers are preparing for the back-to-school season. They do it well in advance. Here are the impacted. So that affected how many products they could put on the shelf by when. And then on top of that, we had tariff impact ourselves directly on some products we had which were not USMCA compliant that we had to pay tariffs on.

Okay.

Thanks for taking the questions. I'll leave it there. No problem.

Your next question for today is from Sean Stewart with TD Cowan.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Jeff, I wanted to follow up on the M&A opportunity set. You touched on the direct-to-consumer opportunities for Avery and maybe more on the hopper there. What you've announced this year, a pretty small scale. I guess I'm hoping you can frame the scale of some of these opportunities. Are there opportunities out there that are larger scale than what you've announced this year that could maybe move the needle to a greater extent?

Well, we can't discuss things like that. I'm sorry, I know all of us get asked these questions, but we have a hopper of opportunities we look at constantly all the time, developed over many years, and we just have to wait and see how many of them come up. And I think we're highly direct to consumer space because it's doing so well and we want to do more of it, but Beyond that, I don't have any other comment to make.

Okay, understood. In Anovia, you touched on sales being affected by the lower resin cost pass-through. Would you qualify that as strictly a timing issue? Is there anything structural there that we expect to normalize?

It's just the pass-through of resin. So if resin drops 20%, well, And resin's half-year cost, so sales go down 10. That's the way the math works. So in this quarter, we had mid-single-digit volume decline. So you can look at the revenue decline and deduce from that how much the resin pasture impacted us.

Got it. So, I mean, the margin effect was strictly the German scale-up.

That's right, yeah. So the difference in the bottom line all came from the German scale-up.

Got it. Okay, the rest of my questions have been answered.

Thanks very much. No problem.

Your next question is from Arthur Nagourney with RBC Capital.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just maybe going back to the margin questions, one of your suppliers is continuing to point to deflationary cost pressures. Is this something that you're seeing as well? And is that maybe contributing to some of the strong margin performance that we're seeing?

No, it's really much more about mix. We certainly don't see a huge amount of deflation in our space. So when you think in the aluminum, we buy is up like 50% year on year. So we certainly, if you look at the company in total, I wouldn't say we see any deflation at all. It's on the raw material side, it's pretty modest on an overall basis. So the margin impact is very much mixed derived.

All right. And then maybe just touching on Inovia as well. talked about rising prices a little bit, but maybe on the volume piece, is that mid-single-digit decline really being driven by the weaker CPG operating backdrop, or are there any other moving pieces in there as well?

It's really the flat-to-down label materials, volume in the pressure-sensitive materials manufacturers. So that segment is slow, is how I would characterize it.

Got it. And then you called out some restructuring expenses across CCL Design and Checkpoint. Should we expect anything else there going forward, or is that largely isolated to this quarter?

Yeah, so we made some changes in Checkpoint in our Iberian Peninsula operations. We've got a number of operations there. We've done some consolidations. So that's pretty much done. And I don't have any other comments to make other than the ones we've already done.

And then just touching on tariffs, I guess there wasn't much color this quarter in the press release or presentation. Are you seeing any impacts beyond what you disclosed in Q2, whether that's direct or indirect via customer impacts? And just wondering, you know, how your mitigating actions are trending so far as well.

The tariff impacts on the financial side really occurred only at Avery and Checkpoint. So everything else, largely local, local, and any tariff impact that we had in the other parts of the operation got passed through. So we had a little bit of financial impact at Checkpoint on the importation of MAS products into the United States from China. and the impact we had, particularly in our ring-binded business at Avery. But, you know, total company, $3 to $4 million, something like that for the quarter, unrecovered tariff cost.

Perfect. That's all for me. Thank you. Okay.

Your next question is from David McFadden with Cormark Securities.

All right. Yeah, a couple of questions. Maybe just, first of all, just on the CCL organic growth rate in the quarter, you know, obviously quite strong. I was just wondering, was CCL secure really a big factor in, say, taking it from 3% up to 6% or was it just broad?

It's too small, too small a business to do that. So the impact of CCL secure was much more on the bottom line rather than the top line. So it had some impact, but it's not a big enough business. So it's $50 million a quarter, just to give you a frame of reference. On top line, it doesn't have that much impact. It's just a solid quarter in all the spaces. So healthcare, HPC, food and beverage, So you see our design. So everywhere was up. So it was across the board.

Okay. Okay. Good to see. So then just a question on checkpoints. So if you look at the ALS business, you know, it was down in Q2, but it was up in Q3. And then, you know, just on your comments about the RFID growth, you know, down July, August flat, September up to the digit. So can we assume that the worst is behind you now and things just look a lot better? I think it's still somewhat volatile.

So I think until there's some certainty about if you're a retailer wondering about where you're going to make stuff and import it from, a lot of head scratching going on around that and some changes being made and then having to undo changes based on what happens with the tariff policy. So until that noise settles down, I think that there's likely to be some ongoing volatility in the apparel supply chain, but eventually it'll have to normalize and settle down. So we certainly saw some improvement in September. October, we haven't got the details of that relative to RFID, but we'll have to wait and see.

Okay. And then just a question on Avery. You know, obviously the back-to-school business was a bit soft in Q3. Is there any possibility to recover some of that in the fourth quarter or no? No, back-to-school is done.

Yeah, it's done. It comes and it goes. So if you miss it, it's gone.

Okay, that's what I thought. Okay, all right, thank you. No problem.

Your next question for today is from Daryl Young with Stifel.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Good morning, Daryl. Just with respect to the CCL segment and the 6.6% organic, you've given lots of color. It sounds like it's broad-based strength, but is it primarily volume and very little price, and is that a function of market share or new product launches?

It's definitely mix-derived. So if we have rich MEX, that definitely helps the revenue line. So it's certainly volume in CCL secure compared to the prior year, which we've already called out as being weakness last year versus strength this year. But in the rest of the business, it's really about MEX.

Okay. And then can you just remind me, in Inovia, the mid-single-digit declines in the materials volumes, is that a leading indicator at all for the CCL segment or not related at all? No, not really. Perfect. Thanks very much. Thank you.

Your next question is from Jonathan Goldman with Scotiabank.

Hey, good morning, guys, and thanks for taking my questions. Most of them have been asked, but that's just a few from me. Jeff, what are you seeing from the CPGs in terms of their marketing programs? Have they started rolling out new advertising campaigns? Anything there?

I don't think we've seen anything different to what we've seen all year. So I think all the CPGs are reporting sluggish volume. I think that's As I said earlier, we've seen a broad-based recovery in China, and that's been a while coming, so we're pleased about that. And given what you read in the newspapers, we're surprised by the markets still being as good as they are in North America and Europe, even though they're slow, they're flat, we're still able to find ways to make money and And so are they, so things seem to have held up better than you might imagine when you read the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal.

Okay, that's helpful. And I guess not to be a dead horse, but on the CCL segment, the organic growth, I think the outlook last quarter was calling for order stable year on year. The delta, I guess, versus that and what you guys actually reported, I guess that's mixed, would be the main thing? Correct. Perfect. And on the checkpoint segment, another strong quarter of organic growth, again, lapping a pretty significant comp of 15% in the disclosures. You guys did call out the technology rollout. I think there was also something like that last quarter, too. Is that a one-time thing, or should we think this could actually persist for a couple more quarters?

Well, it's a thing that occurs in that business routinely. So when you land a chain-wide technology rollout, it usually – crosses two or three quarters. So sometimes you can have quarters where you had it this year and you didn't have it last year and vice versa. But it does introduce some volatility to the quarter-to-quarter sales profile from the MAS business and checkpoint. And we've had some good wins, particularly in Europe.

Okay, that makes sense. I'll get back in queue. Thank you.

No problem.

Your next question is a follow-up question from Ahmed Abdullah. Your line is live.

Yeah, just a couple of housekeeping questions. The CapEx expectations kind of was revised down from last quarter. Any color you can give us on that? Is this project canceled?

Yeah, we had one large project in Turkey. So we were going to build a new campus in Turkey. And in view of the tariff environment and the uncertainty around apparel supply and where it might come from in the future, we put that project into abeyance. And it's still in abeyance right now. We'll determine what's going to happen when we see some certainty about where retailers are going to source apparel from.

Okay. And I see that there was a disposal in the quarter of PP&E. Any color of what was sold or?

That's the Belgian plant. The old Inovia property in Belgium, we sold that, of course.

Okay, perfect. That answers my housekeeping questions. I'll pass the line. Thank you. No problem.

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1. We have reached the end of the question and answer session, and I will now turn the call over to Jeff Martin for closing remarks.

Well, thank you very much for joining the call today. Thank you for all your questions, and we'll look forward to seeing you in the new year.

This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.