Graphic Packaging (GPK) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Quarter over quarter adjusted EBITDA increased $42 million and adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by 190 basis points. This performance resulted from decisive actions taken this year, including the execution of structural cost reductions and successful commercial efforts by our team. While we are still early in our transformation journey, margin recovery is especially encouraging to see, given the heightened inflationary environment experienced in 2026. The resilience in our top line performance reflects the breadth of our packaging solutions across markets and customers, our integrated manufacturing network and the disciplined execution of our teams. We partner with large and small branded and private label customers across food, beverage, food service, household, and health and beauty.

Our innovative packaging satisfies different functional and price point requirements and positions us with a comprehensive set of solutions to support customers across a wide range of economic conditions and consumer preferences. The business environment for global consumer packaging providers remains dynamic. Generally, consumers remain value oriented and selective as widespread inflation has created affordability challenges and shaped consumption behavior. Broader adoption of GLP-1 medications is reinforced consumer preferences for protein and fiber, reduced portion sizes, less sugar, alongside a greater focus on health. Consumers are making deliberate choices about where value matters the most. While continuing to spend on convenience, wellness, or an attainable premium experience.

Unabated inflation across the entire supply chain continues to drive up costs of production. While in track contract pricing adjustments in our industry remain largely tied to paperboard market dynamics. Supply demand conditions vary across regions and substrates, And tariffs and higher logistics costs are influencing global trade flows. Amid these industry dynamics, we remain focused on the company specific levers within our control and delivering to our commitments. The breadth of our packaging portfolio and market reach enable us to serve the full spectrum of consumer demand, from value oriented solutions to premium packaging. And respond as customer and consumer preferences evolve. We are executing structural cost reductions. And productivity initiatives to enhance margins.

While implementing best practices and standardizing processes across the organization. As a result, we are improving outcomes and strengthening the long term sustainability of our business. We are taking price increases to mitigate impacts of inflation and strengthening inflation recovery mechanisms within our multiyear agreements with customers. The latter will improve the responsiveness of our customer contracts to changes in our cost base. As part of our commercially led revenue growth management initiatives, we are adding PPI based price change mechanisms to customer agreements to capture non board inflation and utilizing other recovery escalators. We are also moving from semi annual to quarterly pricing openers as contracts renew to ensure a more responsive and balanced framework with customers.

Graphic Packaging's global leadership position together with the strong progress made against our strategic priorities this year sets us on a clear path to return to profitable growth. We are leaning into the areas where we have competitive advantages. Our broad and diverse portfolio, leading positions in unbleached and recycled paperboard, differentiated innovative packaging machinery capabilities, and deep customer relationships. With greater spending discipline across our platform of well invested mill assets, we are focused on delivering our committed cash flow generation targets. Our cash generative business provides a clear path to reducing debt and returning significant capital to shareholders over time. Turning to our end markets, Food delivered another quarter of growth and remained our strongest and largest market.

In North America, center of store categories performed well, with strength in bars, confectionery, sweet and savory snacks and frozen and shelf stable prepared meals. These categories fit how consumers manage their budgets today. Offering convenience, controlled portions, and a more affordable alternative to fresh ingredients or eating away from home. End market performance was more nuanced in our international business, Select convenience categories like dry prepared meals, performed well in the quarter. While cereal and fresh protein remained under pressure given significant inflation and widening price gaps versus private label. Consumer preferences for protein, healthier choices and favorite brands remain. But macro pressures are driving some consumption toward lower cost formats and substitutes.

Our customers have had to adapt to a bifurcated consumer demand environment. Innovation and consumer engagement strategies, including new product formats, different pack sizes, and occasion based promotions, remain important tools for brands to increase shelf appeal and drive volumes. During the third quarter, our global beverage segment was stable, with stronger relative performance in energy drinks and certain emerging beverage categories. Across our beverage segments, customers broadly continue to focus on driving volume through consumer engagement strategies and expansion in new categories. As emerging and traditional brands gain traction, and accelerate growth in new categories from wellness beverages to ready-to-drink cocktail offerings, many are turning to co packers for packaging and fulfillment.

This trend is supporting growth in our beverage machinery business expanding our relationships with strategic co packing partners. Year to date, we have sold 12 machines to co packers, and now have more than 95 installed across the co packer network. Performance in our health and beauty which is largely a European business for us today, was mixed during the third quarter. Luxury fragrance and skincare benefited from resilient demand and benefits of restocking. And over the counter healthcare showed some signs of recovery. Mass market beauty categories, however, remain challenged. Our foodservice and household businesses experienced similar pressures as last quarter from consumer affordability, and continued trade offs consumers are making to manage their budgets.

The diverse set of markets and customers we serve remains an important portfolio advantage for Graphic Packaging. Our broad market and customer reach coupled with the breadth of capabilities we offer allow us to capture opportunities whether consumption occurs at home, or away from home, in large scale formats, or smaller pack architectures in value oriented or premium ends of the markets. Regardless of whether our packaging is used on the go or in the home, 2 themes are increasingly clear. First, value does not always translate to the lowest price. Consumers continue to pay for convenience, wellness benefits, smaller portion packaging formats and differentiated experiences when the value proposition is clear.

Second, our customers need packaging partners that help them move quickly, manage complexity, and maintain reliable supply. Those demands align directly with graphic packaging scale innovation capabilities and elevated focus on customer service. We strive to be the packaging partner of choice and we are honored to receive packaging accolades during the third quarter including 3 AmeriStar awards for achievements in packaging design, sustainability, and a People's Choice Award. And 3 Paperboard Packaging Council Awards. Also in the third quarter, we were the recipient of the Global Supplier Co Creation Award by Asahi, and the Innovation Leadership Award from Portillo's. More recently, during the month of October, we received customer acknowledgments for outstanding service.

Notably, our Canadian food service team was honored with the Customer Hero Award for outstanding support of Yum! Brands, and the Unified Purchasing Group of Canada. Additionally, we were proud to be named among America's leading corporate citizens. We were awarded the top-5 ranking overall and achieved the best ranking in the materials sector on 3BL's 26 100 Best corporate citizens list. Progress against our 5 near term strategic priorities continued in the quarter. As shared with you earlier in the year, our first priority is to deliver disciplined organic growth by focusing our resources on the markets and applications where we have the strongest right to win. Our second priority is profitability enhancements.

And we now expect approximately $19 million of structural cost reductions for the year. This reflects an incremental improvement of 6 percent over the 2026 savings we guided last quarter. Our third priority is the optimization of our operations footprint, and portfolio. The pivot to produce URB in addition to CRB at Waco leverages our best in class recycled platform and drives new growth opportunities for us with existing and new customers. You will see us continue to strengthen strategic capabilities and lean into our core as we target the highest return markets.

Finally, we are on track to deliver adjusted cash flow of $600 million to $700 million Our discipline this year in capital spending and improvements in working capital generated $314 million of positive adjusted cash flow year to date, with net debt now lower than year end 2025. Debt reduction remains our highest priority. The significant trajectory in cash generation we see provides the foundation to reduce leverage increase financial flexibility over time. Our objective at Graphic Packaging is straightforward. Strengthen partnerships with our customers to help them win with consumers. That means helping customers address consumer affordability pressures through price pack architecture.

Optimizing formats, and offering a range of price points while also creating premium experiences that strengthen brand equity and shelf impact. 2 recent examples illustrate the breadth of our packaging capabilities. We partnered with Brami to produce club store and retail packaging for its protein pasta portfolio. Supporting the customers' continued growth. This collaboration was driven by increasing consumer demand for protein focused products, strong traffic in value oriented channels and Brami's preference for local packaging partner capable of providing scale, service, and surety of supply. We also partnered with 2 Doors Down Drinks, to create a premium 4-pack for Harry Brompton's peach iced tea using our EnviroClip™ beam solution.

This innovative glue free paperboard package combines strong shelf impact with a more sustainable packaging approach, while providing flexibility to scale. This is a great example of how our innovation and design capabilities can elevate brands, enable growth, and deliver more sustainable packaging solutions. Turning to an operational update. AI is being carefully deployed into functions of our business. 2 agents were set up across our paperboard grades to optimize inventory and fulfillment and support cost-avoidance. Additionally, we are in the early stages of embedding AI into commercial and procurement contract processes to reduce manual work and improve consistency and elevate insights. We will provide updates as automation and technology drive material productivity improvements across our global operations.

Within our recycle platform, we benefit from durable production and quality advantages. The ability to optimize production across both CRB and URB enables us to serve a broad range of consumer and industrial applications, while maximizing the performance and utilization of our industry leading asset base. Our recycled platform will serve as a competitive advantage to service a broad range of customers for years to come. The ramp of uncoated recycled paperboard at WACO is ahead of expectations. Today, we can serve folding carton, lamination, and low strength tubes and cores applications. The market opportunity available in tubes and cores requiring minimal capital investment is a more recent development.

URB production in Waco is generating high interest and broadening demand from industrial customers. We have seen numerous potential growth avenues as we move forward. We expect to sell in excess of 20 thousand tons of URB in 26. And more than 100 thousand tons in 2027. Coated recycled paperboard continues to see strong interest from customers given their unique circularity and sustainability characteristics. Our coated recycled paperboard produced on new machines with the latest technology provides recycled packaging of the highest quality brightness, and printability. More recent commercializations include private label butter packaging and certain-strength packaging for food items.

Over time, we anticipate more movement to our recycled solutions as brands and retailers seek high quality circular packaging options that minimize impacts to the environment and appeal to consumers on the shelf. With that, I will now turn the call over to Chuck.

Charles D. Lischer:Thank you, Robert, and good morning, everyone. Our third quarter results reflect improved sequential profitability disciplined execution and continued progress on cost and productivity initiatives, offset by elevated inflation and higher maintenance expense. Net sales were $2.2 billion up slightly from the third quarter of 2025. Volumes increased 1% or $19 million while price was a headwind of 1% or $15 million Innovation sales growth contributed $42 million and foreign exchange and other had a $2 million unfavorable impact. Adjusted EBITDA was $289 million, compared with $383 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 13.2%, an improvement of 190 basis points quarter over quarter and the second sequential improvement.

Adjusted EPS was $0.23 Net performance was modestly favorable reflecting benefits of structural cost savings and productivity improvements largely offset by costs related to inventory reduction actions and approximately $12 million of higher maintenance expense compared with the prior year period. Commodity input and operating cost inflation was $83 million in the quarter, driven by logistics, chemicals, resins, secondary fiber and labor expense. These expenses were approximately $5 million higher than our previous expectations, in total of $55 million of incremental inflation in the third quarter. We executed roughly $30 million of structural cost reductions during the quarter and now expect full year savings of approximately $90 million, $5 million higher than what we expected last quarter.

The benefits remain broadly distributed across cost of goods sold and SG&A and reflect structural and productivity and process improvement. Year to date adjusted cash flow was $314 million a $646 million increase versus the same period in 2025. Our expectation for full year adjusted cash flow remains in the $600 million to $700 million range. We ended the third quarter with net debt of $5.2 billion which is $148 million reduction from year end 2025 and a net leverage ratio of 4.8x. As a reminder, the net leverage ratio under our credit agreement is lower than our reported net leverage ratio because of calculation differences.

We expect to pay down between $400 million to $500 million of debt this year and end 2026 with net leverage of approximately 4.7x. While we see sufficient room with the net leverage ratio threshold in our existing credit agreement, we weighed the current dynamic macro environment and decided to take a prudent approach with our covenant structure. We expect the modified covenants to provide adequate cushion through the remaining life of the agreement and view this as a risk mitigation measure. Importantly, this amendment to our credit agreement has no bearing on our priorities for cash flow, As we have shared, we intend to use our cash flow to pay down debt and improve our leverage ratio.

For full year 2026, interest expense is estimated at $275 million of note, approximately 70% of our debt is fixed and only 30 percent is floating. At the end of the third quarter, we had $1.9 billion in total liquidity. We intend to use cash flow to pay down the revolver in 2026. As we move into 2027, cash flow generated in the business along with our revolver will address our bank term loan and unsecured notes maturing next year. Our capital allocation framework is disciplined. Invest prudently in safety, regulatory requirements, and high return projects, reduce debt, and expand the capacity to return capital to shareholders as leverage declines.

We remain committed to our existing dividend while working simultaneously to bring down leverage and strengthen the balance sheet. As capital return is important to many of our shareholders. Turning to our outlook, we continue to expect full year net sales of approximately $8.6 billion. Fourth quarter volumes are expected to be in the range of down 1% to up 1%. While full year 2026 volumes are expected to be flat to up 1% from 2025. Pricing trends are improving, and we expect a sequential increase for the fourth quarter.

We expect full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA of approximately $1.05 billion and adjusted EPS of approximately $0.65 Our full year adjusted EBITDA guidance incorporates the increasingly challenged inflationary environment this year, and includes an incremental $20 million of input cost headwinds versus our expectations last quarter. Accordingly, we now estimate incremental input cost inflation for the full year totaling approximately $170 million versus our previous estimate of $150 million. The rigor and discipline we are applying to project prioritization and capital spending will keep capital expenditures below $450 million in 2026. During the third quarter, we were pleased to conclude the testing of controls implemented to successfully remediate the previously identified material weakness.

Our fourth quarter financial results will reflect continued progress on our strategic initiatives, and will benefit from pricing actions taken earlier in the year contractual pass throughs, structural cost reductions, and improving utilization at Waco. Offsetting these positives is the continued impact of well chronicled input cost inflation. With traction in URB above expectations, we now expect to end the year with inventory of approximately 19% of sales. Expected total downtime costs related to inventory efforts this year moved to approximately $75 million, a decrease from our previous assumption of $90 million Our effective tax rate is now expected to fall within a 25% to 26% range.

As Robert relayed earlier, we are positioned to drive an inflection in financial results in 2027 and a pivot to year over year EBITDA growth, expansion of margins, and strong EBITDA to cash flow conversion. Our company specific levers enable positive price carryover continued operational improvements, and organic growth with customers. In summary, we are continuing to build positive momentum. Results in the third quarter demonstrated the turnaround we are driving in the business. We remain focused on delivering on our commitments, and creating long term value for our shareholders. I will now turn the call back to Robert.

Robbert E. Rietbroek:Thank you, Chuck. I want to thank our employees around the world for their dedication, hard work, and continued focus on customer service. Since the beginning of the year, we continue to strengthen our leadership team sharpen our focus on commercial and operational excellence, and advanced cost reductions and productivity initiatives. I am proud of what our team has accomplished in a short period of time. The progress made is tangible. We have delivered 2 consecutive quarters of sequential margin expansion. Increased our in-year cost savings, achieved strengthening cash flow performance and taken pragmatic actions to improve utilization, and returns across our asset base.

Importantly, we are creating alignment between our strategy, investments and the market opportunities where graphic packaging has the strongest right to win. We remain focused on restoring profitable growth generating sustained adjusted cash flow and creating long term value for our shareholders. We are acting on the levers within our control. And we are building the commercial, operational and financial capabilities required to perform with greater consistency. Operator, let's open the line for questions.

Operator:Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. And you may press 2 For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. And we do ask that you limit yourself to 1 question plus 1 follow-up. Thank you. Our first question today is coming from Mark Weintraub with Seaport Research Partners. Your line is live.

Mark Weintraub:Great. Thank you very much. So, obviously, it is a more difficult cost environment. And you are obviously taking measures to manage through that, and you retain guidance for this year. And so, I mean, it sounded like 1 of the factors is that with the URB production, you have less inventory reduction. So maybe if you could sort of walk through some of the puts and takes What has been. What the negatives are? You sort of quantify that for us as well.

And what the positive drives are and what implications, if anything, they might have as we think into 2027, for instance, with the inventory reduction, does that mean we are going to have more EBITDA degradation because of more inventory reduction while still better for free cash flow? Or is that not necessarily the case anymore given changes in your business dynamics? And, also, just kind of 1 a little color on employee stock if you would, which I know was gonna be a pretty big drag At the start of the year, you thought as much as $100 million. What your updated view on what it is gonna be for this year given where things stand today?

Robbert E. Rietbroek:Yes. Good morning, Mark, and thank you for the question. I will address each of the points around cost URB inventory the incentive. But overall, I think, you have seen the results, the quarter was strong, our business is resilient. And we have been managing decisively through the incremental inflation this quarter. Our top line was strong and resilient. We met expectations. was slightly up from a year ago, 1% volume. A little bit of negative pricing impact on the revenue, and our EBITDA did well within guidance range. It was the second sequential increase in adjusted EBITDA margin.

And that is in fact a very much a result of the very decisive actions we have taken to manage productivity and cost this year. You have probably also seen our adjusted cash flow results. There were very, very strong year-to-date, $314 million. In Q3 alone, was $359 million, and a $332 million improvement versus a year ago. With capital spend at $2.87 But it is true that inflation is at the high end of the expected range. Crude oil moved up quite a bit and was above $100 a barrel several days in September. OCC went up in September as well.

So on your first point, we do continue to focus on driving cost reductions and driving efficiency throughout the business to improve the margin and to generate cash flow and pay down debt. With regards to URB, we are surprised by the excitement in the market. It is significantly better than we expected, and we now anticipate to sell about 20 thousand tons in 2026 and over 100 thousand tons in 2027. And it is in fact true that we had to build up some inventory for URB which is reflected in the updated inventory number.

And we want to continue to participate in both CRB and URB, and we have flexibility between these 2 grades to capture growth opportunities and deliver the expected returns on Waco. You have probably seen that we are now entering into higher strength sorry, in the tubes and cores market, We can only produce currently low strength tubes and cores. But we have a lot of growth opportunities available to us with minimal additional capital spend. With regards to the incentive, I will let Chuck explain the impact of next year and also maybe go on about the inventory a little bit?

Charles D. Lischer:Right. Hey, Martin. This is Chuck. So let me just start by hitting on a couple of the points on 2027, and I think that will wrap up or include a couple of the items that you are asking about as well. So latest on 2027, we, of course, in 2026, started, seeing a significant amount of inflation. After the Middle East conflict, And to offset that, we have been aggressively taking price and both taking cost out as well. So not giving a formal guide for 2027 or an EBITDA bridge today, but at a high level, I will talk you through some of the.

Both carryover items as a result of the inflation and the pricing and then also a few of the nonrecurring items you asked about the inventory reductions a few of the nonrecurring items. And how those will all, impact 2027. So the. First of all, on the inflation, what we see in 2026 is, of course, the $170 million inflation that we called out That has a carryover impact into next year. Of around $90 million, and that will offset the, carryover impact of the pricing that we see as well. So think of those, the pricing and the cost, the carryover impact to that going into next year as basically offsetting each other.

From a cost action standpoint, we have aggressively been taking cost out of the business to also offset the inflation that we see in 2026. that is $90 million in 2026, and flows into 2027, it would be about a $15 million carryover. So the carryover impact to those items is around $15 million. And then I previously talked about $135 million of non-recurring items. If the buckets are the same, the inventory reduction downtime, the weather from Q1 and the 1-time items dropped to $40 million, and the unbleached system inefficiencies The 1 item, and you asked about this was the inventory reduction downtime. that is now at $75 million.

So that is, slightly down from earlier in the year and really is just as we are seeking to end the year with more inventory due to the URB build. On variable incentives, yes, those are, those were accruing less on those. We had originally laid out in earlier in the year as a result of the current performance. So that is a factor to consider as well.

Mark Weintraub:Very helpful, and, congrats on the progress.

Robbert E. Rietbroek:Thanks, Mark. Thank you.

Operator:Thank you. Our next question is coming from Ghansham Panjabi with Baird. Your line is live.

Ghansham Panjabi:Hey, guys. Good morning. This is actually Josh Vestly on for Ghansham. Maybe, Robbert, if we can just start at a high level and just kind of focusing on the volume trend line at least on a directional basis going forward Obviously, a lot of CPGs kind of entered the year maybe more focused on volumes. That seems to have shifted lately just with input costs rising and whatnot. So just curious about your high level view of how volume should trend for your graphic and then the broader industry into 4Q and then possibly into 2027?

Robbert E. Rietbroek:Yeah. Thank you, Josh. Great question. When we look at demand in the markets, we think it is stable. With certain pockets of strength, seeing select growth, particularly in center of store staples. We do see some softness in food service, primarily QSR cups and household based on affordability concerns. And overall we see what we refer to as a bifurcated consumer demand. So there is a very strong focus on value orientation and simultaneously premium product consumption. If you look at the subcategories, food is the best performer for us that drove higher sales performance, We see demand for value oriented staples like bars, confectionery, snacks. We see demand for frozen and shelf stable prepared meals.

If you look at the international markets, we see growth in dry prepared meals. Also luxury fragrance and skincare. With beverage, it is relatively stable, We see growth in energy drinks and emerging brands. And household and food service remain challenged. We see consumers budgeting in that space. If you look at the quarter, we are pleased with our volume up about 1% in Q3. Despite that uneven consumer market and continued affordability headwinds. Of course, I said food is largest end market, and food continues to show year over year growth for the third consecutive quarter. And we do see a little bit of a decline in traffic in QSR.

And what we are hearing from our customers right now is a continued focus on driving volume and share recovery. But there is a secondary theme emerging, which is that they need to start taking pricing to offset higher commodity inflation in 2026, in Q4 and 2027. So we continue to see them invest in promotions to drive traffic and share, but there is a more balanced approach now to pricing and volume given the excessive inflation that we are experiencing. So there is an intent to return the categories to volume growth from what I call a heavy investment in value price points to now a focus on innovation driven mix for the next 12 months.

Which leverages sophisticated price-pack architectures and at the same time must buy promotional frequency with a wider variety of pack sizes. Great.

Ghansham Panjabi:that is super helpful. And then maybe for my second question, I think last quarter you talked about some competitive pricing activity just specific packaging pricing. Just curious how that kind of trended through the quarter? And out of the $15 million in pricing headwinds, how much was that versus maybe some flow through of third party index pricing?

Charles D. Lischer:Yeah. This is Chuck. I will take that. So, I think what you are referring to is earlier in the year, of the negative pricing that we were that, was flowing through was the, competitive packaging pricing. That. that is still flowing through somewhat, but a good piece of the negative in the quarter is as well the $100 a ton on bleach that was recognized, last year. So the key to that, though, is we are seeing significant improvement in throughout the year in our pricing and you will see additional improvement going into Q4. With our. Many of our contracts have openers starting on October 1.

So that will really be the first significant opportunity for the contract openers to kick in And before that, what you have seen and the improvements that you have seen and also what continue into Q4 is really the pass through of cost that show up in our contracts that we have currently and are pushing more through our commercial excellence efforts, And then also, we have talked about the $1 billion of pricing. I mean, of revenue that. Where we can take price, the pricing's done on a contractual basis. So, really, we have multiple levers to take price it is not just all tied to a third party index. And that is critical.

And that is how we have been able to generate $60 million of in-year pricing with a $150 million as a run rate.

Ghansham Panjabi:Okay. Great. Thank you, guys.

Operator:Thank you. Our next question is coming from Hillary Cacanando with Deutsche Bank. Your line is live.

Hillary Cacanando:Thank you for taking my question. Just on the special item add backs, the magnitude of add backs seem kind of pretty meaningful this year versus the last couple of years. Can you just talk about what is driving the increase? And how much of the 2026 add backs you would consider genuinely nonrecurring? And as we think about leverage, you know, what would leverage look like excluding those adjustments?

Charles D. Lischer:Yeah. Hillary, this is Chuck. I will take that. The 2026 add backs, we would, of course, consider all of those nonrecurring. We talked about some pretty significant ones earlier in the year, the biggest of which was the write off that we had as we stopped the automated roll warehouse project, that was $40 million impact and was going to cost us a couple hundred million dollars of additional CapEx over the next few years. So we put the brakes on that project. You also see all of the impact of the severance that we have paid this year. In order to have the headcount reductions, as Robert's talked about, the over 500 roles that we reduce.

So severance is a big piece of that. Really, what you see showing up in the third quarter is we have, pushed even harder for cost reductions. There are a couple of floors and some of our administrative office buildings that we have consolidated. And that resulted in a write off of, future lease assets, and continued severance payments in Q3 as well.

Hillary Cacanando:Got it. And then, like, what would the, the leverage How would that have looked without the adjustments?

Charles D. Lischer:Well, I mean, of course, it would have been higher, but our credit agreement allows us to add back items such as that are nonrecurring just as we do in the printed number that we show to you.

Hillary Cacanando:Okay. Got it. And then and then you mentioned, you know, 2 and cores as a new opportunity for URB from Waco. But that, you know, that would require some minimal capital investment. Can you quantify things incremental CapEx required to serve the market? And then is that investment already contemplated within your current CapEx guidance?

Robbert E. Rietbroek:So we will evaluate downstream applications which will include expanding into the higher strength tubes and cores The margins there are even higher and stronger than they are in the lower strength tubes and cores that we are playing in now. But remember that the reason we are entering in URB is not only to tap into the market, but to fully leverage our recycled platform and to use. To utilize the available capacity and absorb fixed costs. And it gives us stronger margins for the overall recycled platform balancing the system to maximize the profits We do not disclose the CapEx that would be required to get into the higher strength course.

But we have made some minimal investments already to be able to play in what we believe is a very attractive space of the URB market.

Hillary Cacanando:Got it. Great. Thank you. that is helpful.

Robbert E. Rietbroek:Thank you very much.

Operator:Thank you. Our next question is coming from Nick Sherwood with Bank of America. Your line is live.

George Staphos:Good morning. This is Nick Sherwood, speaking for George Staphos. Thank you for taking my questions. How much of the volume guidance is impacted by the URB rollout? The fourth quarter?

Charles D. Lischer:Hey, Nick, this is Chuck. I will take that. it is not significant.

Robbert E. Rietbroek:I mean, the 20 thousand tons are predominantly in the fourth quarter, but not an overall significant needle mover for us And, so I think, Nick, what I would say is we are very pleased to see the growth return to Q3. Remember last year, our volume declined in Q3. We are driving results with our commercial efforts, with innovation, and we are supporting our customers that look to grow volumes. So if you look at this year's volume growth, first quarter was up 1%, second was flat third was up 1%. that is why we are guiding for 2026 at flat to plus 1%. And, you know, we are very pleased with that.

Given the macro environment we are operating in.

George Staphos:Okay. Thank you. And I guess as a follow-up, you know, you talked about some of those new contract structures that you are rolling out to get more pricing and push through the cost. Can you talk about how many sort of contracts have been converted over in sort of what that ramp up will look like as you know, move from that semiannual to more of a quarterly pricing change?

Robbert E. Rietbroek:Yeah. that is a great question, Nicholas. You know, we talked about the fact that we are at the enterprise level focused on commercial excellence, operational excellence and procurement. Commercial excellence is a very broad enterprise wide initiative that involves revenue growth management, commercial terms, customer service. it is a it is a big it is a big scope that we are really leading forward on. And we are continuing to evolve our contractual clauses We do that to ensure more predictable and also more reasonable contract framework that really adjusts for underlying cost inflation, not only paperboard, So we are currently in the middle, we always, we renew about a third of our contracts every year.

They generally last for 3 years. And we are working towards agreements that we feel are mutually beneficial to both parties. So not just us, but to be accretive for ourselves and for the customer and joint business plans. And we are doing that by implementing commercial discipline, We are having, I would say more realistic discussions with our partners. And we are negotiating agreements that are mutually beneficial but also responsive to the cost environments and aligned with the long term nature of these business relationships. We do not disclose what percent of our contracts are specific quarterly or biannual clauses. But we are focused on moving the majority of those to a quarterly cadence.

George Staphos:Great. Thank you for taking my questions, and I will return to the queue.

Operator:Thank you. Our next question is coming from Anthony Pettinari with Citi. Your line is live.

Anthony Pettinari:Good morning. I just had a follow-up question on free cash flow. And if I guess if we look at the EBITDA, CapEx and free cash flow guide and look at 4Q, I mean, it seems like 4Q free cash flow would be a lot higher than sort of EBITDA minus CapEx. So I was just wondering if you could speak to that. And if I guess if it is working capital, how are you selling out of inventory? Or what does that represent? I am just trying to understand a little bit better. That at kind of the end of the year.

Charles D. Lischer:Yeah. Hey, Anthony. This is Chuck. I will take that. So Q4 is a historically a quarter where we harvest working capital and that is, while we saw very strong cash flow results in Q3, had $359 million of cash flow in Q3 to give us confidence that we will be able to deliver the 600 to $700 million for the full year We do still expect a significant contribution from, working capital in Q4. And so that is really what is driving the variability in the range. Is many of those initiatives are new initiatives. And, and so we are working those to ensure that we deliver the free cash flow guide for the full year.

Anthony Pettinari:Okay. That. that is helpful. And then just switching gears on equipment sales. I do not you have not called that out as much in the past. I am just wondering what we should take away there? And is there any kind of potential flow through for consumables or maybe improvement in bev or you know, just, what kind of messages you would highlight there?

Robbert E. Rietbroek:Yeah. I think the headline there was that we are selling more of our equipment to co packers in the beverage space. A lot of new brands emerging in that space and we are very pleased with performance of our machining division. And we have not really talked much about it in the past, but a critical part of our long term partnerships with our beverage customers. Beverage is a business where our large customers continue to focus on returning to volume and it is not only CSDs, but we are very big in alcohol as well, right?

And beer companies, we serve many of the global beer companies and leading beer businesses in the world with baskets you know, we see we see strength in energy and functional wellness beverages Those are made by those co packers. As well as ready to drink beverages. But we also saw a little bit of weakness in the carbonated soft drink business. And those beverage machine placements that you are referring to were with the with the growing co packer network. And they do serve a mix of beer and soft drink. So we are partnering with them and with our bigger global customers to support growth and automation needs.

Anthony Pettinari:Okay. that is helpful. I will turn it over.

Operator:Thank you. Our next question is coming from Philip Ng with Jefferies. Your line is live.

Philip Ng:Hey, guys. Chuck, appreciate the help color for 2027 early read. The commentary talked about caregiver pricing for next year. Does that count for any of the cost plus type openers kicking in? And then talked about a billion of sales that are not tethered to contracts. You have the ability to take price. Is that a lever that is in that number, or that provides some optionality when we think about 2027 in terms of pricing?

Charles D. Lischer:Yeah. Hey, Philip. The guide number that I talked about, the $150 million does include the cost carryovers for the items that have impacted 2026 and how we see that rolling through 2026. We have not given a full pricing guide on 2027 yet, so that is just really the carryover of how the inflation that we are seeing is in 2026. Will show up in the cost that have those pass through mechanisms. On the $1 billion that is something that we have been aggressively pushing on. As a way to offset the inflation that we are seeing this year.

So we have been taking those prices already throughout the year. that is what you started seeing show up somewhat in Q3 and will show up even more in Q4. And then we will continue to push that as we see inflation continuing to stay elevated. So a combination of all the $150 million of pricing and the cost actions are helping us to cover the inflation.

Philip Ng:So I interpret your comment correctly, Chuck. So the cost plus piece, it sounds like it is in the $1.50. Anything on the billion dollars you guys are trying to be proactive on that, that could be incremental.

Charles D. Lischer:Is that how you I am sorry. No. No. That is in the in the $1.50 as well. Both components that we have driven in 2026 are in the 1 the $1.50 And if there is additional opportunity in 2027, we will come back on that on the 2027 guide.

Philip Ng:Okay. Helpful. Then I believe, Graphic as well as some of your peers have announced price increases new price increases for SBS. Curious. How your order book and backlogs are shaping up. A little surprised that, you know, resale reflected CEK increase that you guys have out there. Color in terms of what you are seeing in your order book on CUK? Backlogs, any color on that front would be helpful.

Robbert E. Rietbroek:Yeah. And I will I will let Chuck comment on it in a second, but high level, the industry conditions are evolving. Versus where they were 9 to 12 months ago. We do see a tighter environment across the grades So last year, imports into The US were down by about 100 thousand tons This year imports are flat versus that lower year last year. And obviously tariffs are impacting those trade flows. We continue to see the backlogs be higher versus year ago, on bleach is continued tightness. We see a little bit of overselling of capacity there is been some recognition of an increase and some of it has not been recognized.

On the coated unbleached craft, which is CUK which is used for beverages primarily because of the strength profile of that paper, We are building inventory for next beverage season. Because we want to make sure that we have sufficient volume for, you know, for the for the beverage season. We cannot run out. Within recycled, we are flexing between CRB and URB, we are growing in both grades. And we are leveraging the installed capacity You know our Waco facility is which we came online last year, is a state of the art facility, has the best quality that we make bright brightness, printability, And, you know, I think that what you are what you are saying is correct.

And let me just pass it on to Chuck for further color on the further grades and the pricing.

Charles D. Lischer:Yeah. I think Robert covered it all, very well. I will just add a little bit of commentary on the actual pricing actions that we that you alluded to and that we have taken In October, we did go out with our third increase in bleached And so that grade, as Robert mentioned, continues to be tight. And our order books continue to be strong. With that increase that we are out with. And then on Unbleached, as well mentioned that continues to be tight, and we have had 2 we have 2 increases in the marketplace there. And continue to be tight. And so certainly, believe that the increases are justified.

Philip Ng:Okay. Thank you.

Operator:Thank you. Our next question is coming from Arun Viswanathan with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is live.

Arun Viswanathan:Great. Thanks for taking my question. Hope you guys are well. I guess a couple of questions here. So first off, just to reiterate, on the free cash flow, I understand there is gonna be a pretty large working capital release. But by my math, it comes out to at least $200 million Is that right? And if so, for Q4, it does. Would you have to kind of rebuild that inventory next year, and would that be a cash drag? So I will start I will I will start with that. Thanks.

Charles D. Lischer:Yeah, Arun. Hey. This is Chuck. I will take that. So the cash flow movement is really just driven by the overall seasonality of the business. And is what we have seen in the past. Last year, for example, our Q4, we generated over $500 million of free cash flow And, so this seasonality of our cash flow driven by higher sales during the summer and, working down the inventory towards the end of the year is something that is, been a been a part of our business for many years. And so that. that is, that is a consistent situation. The and we do expect to see that continue in Q4.

I will tell you that, the amount of working capital that we need to harvest in Q4 is lighter in Q4 of this year than it was last year given the strong performance in our free cash flow and working capital in Q3.

Arun Viswanathan:Thanks for that. And then just on the cost side, so obviously, there is been some energy cost inflation recently and it looks like it is potential to persist for quite a while. So, I guess, is that helping with the price increases? Meaning, giving support and you know, our customers kinda willing to understand that environment. And if so, are the CPGs in turn gonna be raising prices as well? What are you hearing from those customers, as far as pricing and promotion? And could that further negative impacts on demand? Thanks.

Robbert E. Rietbroek:Yeah. Look, it is great question. We are pulling all available contractual and non contractual pricing levers that we have available, right? So I think Chuck already mentioned that we have about $60 million of price increase in 2026. a $150 million run rate That includes the last, I think, you know, increase on bleached. The longer term, we are structuring our customer renewals to really shorten the lags to quarterly openers. Remember that we have a billion dollars of non contractual business, where we are already taking pricing and we are refining our go forward processes in terms of commercial finance revenue growth management, contract development, and implementing inflation recovery mechanisms. It has to be accretive.

Both the customer and us have to benefit from the supplier relationship that we have. I cannot speak to their pricing strategy. But we do know that from publicly available information, that they have commented on balancing volume and pricing So we are seeing the same publicly available data that you do.

Arun Viswanathan:Thanks.

Operator:Thank you. Our final question today will be coming from Matthew Roberts with Raymond James. Your line is live.

Matthew Roberts:Robbert, Chuck, Melanie. Good morning. Thanks for getting me in here. On the 26 adjusted free cash flow, I think there is 200-some-odd receivables-related cash to date in investing. Could you distinguish what is ordinary or any increase in the program utilization or acceleration of collections there? Are there any changes assumed in 4Q? Or how should we think about that going into 2027?

Charles D. Lischer:Yeah. Hey, Matthew. This is Chuck. I will take that. The, you know, we, of course, have a broad set of initiatives to drive free cash flow in the business, overall optimize the business. And so we are looking at every lever that we can, whether it is inventory extension of payment terms, ways to accelerate cash collections. And as we look across that, 1 of the items that we saw was an opportunity to expand our AR sale programs and we decided to go forward with that since the cost of those programs is favorable compared to our bank facilities and also provides us an additional source of liquidity.

So that is all included within the working capital improvement that we expect for the full year and that is in the range of $275 million to $325 million.

Matthew Roberts:Okay. Thanks, Chuck. Appreciate that. And then maybe on the debt covenants, when was that executed? Why now given the improving leverage outlook? Any changes there regarding the borrowing spread or fees for capital? Allocation? And also CapEx, that coming down, any changes to ongoing expectations or catch up needed in that figure in 2027?

Charles D. Lischer:Yeah. So this is Chuck. I will take those So from a covenant standpoint, as I mentioned on the prepared remarks, we proactively sought the amendment that is going into effect today. Really just as a risk mitigation measure and it adds cushion to our existing covenant ratios where it existed already. And just to reiterate, the amendment does not change anything about our priorities. Which are to pay down debt and improve our leverage ratio with our cash flows. In terms of the cost of it, it was about 10 basis points to get that executed. And, and then from a CapEx perspective, you asked about that for 2027.

We will come back to you and guide on that when we when we guide in February.

Matthew Roberts:Thank you as always, Chuck. Good luck.

Robbert E. Rietbroek:Thank you.

Operator:Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude the Graphic Packaging Holding Company's third quarter 26 conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. And we thank you for your participation.

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Graphic Packaging (GPK) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool