Earnings Labs

Avery Dennison Corporation (AVY)

Q1 2008 Earnings Call· Tue, Apr 22, 2008

$162.95

-1.84%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-3.96%

1 Week

-3.63%

1 Month

-2.01%

vs S&P

-3.15%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Avery Dennison first quarter 2008 conference call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the conference over to Cynthia Guenther, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Madam.

Cynthia S. Guenther

Management

Thanks, Tanya. Hello, everyone and thank you for joining us. Hopefully you’ve had a chance to download our slide presentation that’s titled first quarter 2008 financial review and analysis. We filed that today with our 8-K and posted it at the investor section of our website. Our discussion will generally follow this handout and refer to information contained in the slides, so I encourage you to have that in front of you as you listen to our formal remarks. As usual, we have included references to GAAP operating margin in our news release which includes interest expense, restructuring and other charges included in the other expense line of our P&L, as well as transition associated with the Paxar integration does that show up this past quarter in MG&A expense. Restructuring charges and integration transition costs tend to be fairly disparate in amount, frequency, and timing. In light of the nature of these items, we will focus our margin commentary on pretax results before their effect and before interest expense, as detailed in schedules A3 to A5 of the financial statements accompanying our earnings news release for the quarter. We’ve also included a reconciliation of margin change in slides 17 and 18 of the handout to help you see the impact of the Paxar acquisition on gross margins and operating expense ratios. I’ll also remind you that we will make certain predictive statements that reflect our current views and estimates about our future performance and financial results. These statements are based on certain assumptions and expectations of future events that are subject to uncertainty. Our recent Form 10-K addresses the most important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from our expectations. Please see the MD&A and risk factors sections of that document for the discussion. Dean Scarborough, President and Chief Executive Officer; Dan O'Bryant, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Mitch Butier, Corporate Vice President, Global Finance, are here for today’s call. And now I will turn it over to Dean.

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Thanks, Cyndi. As you know, now know by our news release and financials, we experienced a very tough start to the year. The challenging business conditions we experienced last year continued for a number of our businesses during the first quarter and in some cases, we saw some further weakening. In particular, the slowdown in the U.S. retail environment hurt top line sales for both retail information services and office products. In retail information services, sales related to the U.S. retail market have tracked the rather dramatic reduction in apparel imports. In Europe, the picture for this business has been a lot brighter. Even though the retail apparel market has softened in Europe, our share gains from new applications and programs moving offshore have sustained solid growth for that region. On the office product side, our large customers continue to focus on inventory management in the face of weak consumer demand. We estimate that our customers’ inventory levels are down close to 20% compared to a year ago, so we do expect that the worst of this phase of the business cycle is behind us. The impact to the quarter though was very significant. Volume growth in the roll materials business actually improved a bit compared to the fourth quarter, both in North America and Europe, but the sales trend for our graphics and reflective business, which tends to be impacted by advertising and promotional spending, weakened considerably. Pressure sensitive profit margins were negatively impacted by weaker product mix across the segment, as well as incremental roll material inflation. PSM margins had the biggest impact on our earnings plan for the quarter and we are moving fast to address this issue. As we indicated earlier this year, we announced price increases for the roll materials businesses in the Americas that…

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

Thanks, Dean. Let’s begin with the financial overview on slides 5 and 6 of the handout that you hopefully have. Net sales were up 18% due to the benefits of the Paxar acquisition and currency translation. On an organic basis, sales declined about 2% compared to the prior year. I’ll provide some color in just a few minutes. Operating margin before charges and transition costs declined by 200 basis points, or about 150 basis points if you adjust for the addition of the base Paxar business. The year-on-year decline in margin reflects the carryover of the price reductions we experienced last year in the roll materials business, as well as raw material inflation, negative segment and product mix, and reduced fixed cost leverage due to the soft top line. Because of seasonal factors, Q1 will always represent the trough in the year from a margin perspective and that trough was deepened by the effects of the weaker-than-expected volume. We anticipate a substantial improvement in operating margin for the balance of the year, which I’ll discuss more in the context of our guidance. The shortfall in our expected operating earnings was offset by the realization of a large tax benefit in the quarter. This change has two effects. First, we’ll be able to capture the cash benefit of deferred tax assets already on the balance sheet and second, it will reduce the effective tax rate on future earnings. We now believe a tax rate in the range of 17% to 19% will be sustainable for at least the next few years, reflecting geographic income mix, reductions in the statutory rates in a few countries, as well as benefits of our tax structure. Let me walk you through the story on top line sales on slide seven. As I said, reported sales…

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Thanks, Dan. Notwithstanding the uncertainty regarding near-term demand trends, my confidence in the strength of each of our key businesses remains very high. We reviewed our key strategies for long-term value creation at our March investor meeting but let me just quickly recap our priorities. We will capture the synergies from the Paxar acquisition and begin to deliver on the growth promise as well. We will change the trajectory of our pressure sensitive business by driving accelerated productivity, price realization, and continued growth in emerging markets, and we’ll continue to invest in growing new applications. In office products, we intend to renovate and develop new products but will focus on those areas close to our core and on projects that have rapid pay-back. We will accelerate our enterprise lean sigma efforts to improve productivity and to enhance our service and quality for customers. And we will deliver better cash flow this year with a reduced capital budget and focused targets on working capital improvement. Now we’ll be happy to take your questions.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Jeffrey Zekauskas with J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

On the sales decline for the -- the organic sales decline for the company as a whole, the 2% percent number, can you break that up into price and volume?

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

Volume was up a couple of percent; price and mix offset that volume. It was heavily weighted toward mix. The price in the quarter, the price decline that we saw was primarily the carryover from what happened mostly in the second half of last year. So price and mix on a combined basis were around 2.5% to 3% for the entire company.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

So if I understand what you said, so if sales declined 2 and volume, forgive me, was up 2, then price mix was down 4?

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

Well, the volume was up about 1%, offset by about three points of combined price and mix, so core sales, as we define it, would be down roughly 2%.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

Okay.

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

I have to just remind you too that with RIS being a much bigger part of the business, measuring price and mix in that highly customized business is an art, not a science, so these numbers are not as precise as they have been in past years when we haven’t had that much of that business mix in.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

Okay. Secondly, if you just looked at Fasson exclusive of the graphics and reflective business, was the operating income sort of up or down or flat year over year?

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

Definitely down.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

Definitely down. And in general --

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

It was down year over year and down sequentially.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

And can you talk a little bit about the price dynamics in that business, sort of what the first -- how the price dynamic either changed or didn’t change over the course of the first quarter?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

We didn’t see too much impact on price. Most of the impact was on mix so a lot of the growth that we saw in terms of volume tended to be in lower margin product categories. And we did see a little more raw material inflation than we had anticipated, especially in North America.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

And then lastly on the RIS margin, you know, like order of magnitude, by what amount of operating profit did RIS miss your own target in the quarter?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Jeff, they only have about 10% of their operating profit in the year in the first quarter, so obviously a small miss in the margin in such a soft quarter makes a huge difference in margin, so it was in the -- I don’t know, low single-digit millions.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

Low single digit millions -- so the major miss from your point of view was on -- was mostly in PSA?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Pressure sensitive had the biggest impact on the margins and of course with office products, with the inventory reductions we had, it also had a knock-on effect because that’s our highest margin business.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

So the reason that RIS doesn’t have a much greater operating profit number in the first quarter, given all of the cost savings that you are achieving, has to do with its unusually low volume number and that will -- presumably we’ll see the cost synergies when the volumes seasonally pick up?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Here’s a couple of factors, Jeff. So we have first of all in this economic environment, what we see is retailers delaying decisions on ordering later I would say than normal, so I think we are definitely seeing a shift into the second quarter from the first quarter, just as we did last year. We saw a shift of ordering from the third quarter into the fourth quarter. So I think the seasonality was magnified. Volume leverage was a big part of it. There is also a printer systems business in part of retail information services -- I don’t want to make this too complicated -- that sells printers. And as you can imagine, hardware sales in terms of selling printers isn’t exactly robust right now. It’s mainly a U.S. business. And then we did see some inflation in terms of raw materials and labor costs in South China.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ghansham Panjabi with Wachovia. Please proceed with your question.

Ghansham Panjabi - Wachovia Securities

Analyst · Ghansham Panjabi with Wachovia. Please proceed with your question

The growth in Asia still seemed very solid. Just curious as to whether you’ve seen any change in customer sentiment there. It seems like the rest of your businesses on a geographic basis are seeing some signs of slowing, or at least have slowed. I’m just wondering what the sentiment overall in Asia is.

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

If we pull out RIS because obviously a lot of apparel comes from Asia for the U.S. market, if you pull that out, the other businesses in Asia had a great quarter. South America is actually just fine. The issue there was about a two-week strike in Argentina where they basically shut down the country and we didn’t see much of a lift. I expect that to come back. And Eastern Europe was also strong again for the materials business. So so far, customer sentiment in Asia and in most emerging markets actually is still good.

Ghansham Panjabi - Wachovia Securities

Analyst · Ghansham Panjabi with Wachovia. Please proceed with your question

Okay, and just in terms of your comment on your pricing initiatives and the backdrop of increased inflation with oil close to $120 now, should we expect then that margins in the second quarter are not as weak on a year-over-year basis as the first quarter, but still down year over year and start to see a little bit of acceleration in the back half? Is that how we should model it?

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

As I said in my prepared remarks, we expect the margin to improve significantly. The biggest single thing that happens going into Q2 is we anticipate sales picking up in the range of $150 million over Q1. That’s the significance of the seasonality that is a fact of life in our business right now. On top of that, we start getting price increases through that help margins, more productivity initiatives, both out of Paxar and other sources build as the year goes by, so we definitely expect to see margins improve on a year-on-year basis in Q2 versus what we saw in Q1 and continue to pick up as the year goes by. By the back half of the year, we expect margins to be running at a rate above where they were prior year. Let me add one thing -- I said last year we had a pretty solid second quarter with a pretty high operating margin. The comps there are going to be tough in the second quarter. By the back half of the year, clearly the margins will be up to where they were last year or better.

Ghansham Panjabi - Wachovia Securities

Analyst · Ghansham Panjabi with Wachovia. Please proceed with your question

Okay. Thank you.

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

One other thing, Ghansham, and that is the difficulty for us timing back to school shipments for office products. We don’t know but I would bet that most of our customers are going to be pretty conservative and bring most of the volume in the third quarter rather than the second quarter.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

Just to clarify then on Ghansham’s question; 2Q margins lower than last year and presumably higher in the second half -- is that what you are saying?

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

I’m not going to get completely specific but you remember last year we had some volumes that shifted out of Q1 into Q2 that helped the margins. We had really high margins, so year-on-year comps in Q2 are tougher. But we expect to see the margins improve substantially above Q1 and in the back half of the year to be better than prior year.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

Fair enough, Dan. Now, in terms of office product volume, what are you seeing early in 2Q? Can you relate that to us?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Right now, George, what we are getting is orders for back to school. We expect back to school to be down versus prior year, probably in the low single digits. We’re getting nice orders now but we never really know until June when people will want it shipped, whether they want it in Q2 or Q3.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

Okay but if we look at either RIS or office products broadly speaking and realizing it is difficult to measure this in RIS, pricing really wasn’t the factor; it was just volume and/or reduced operating leverage. Is that correct?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Yes, that’s exactly right.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

Okay. I guess the last question I have for now and I’ll turn it over, if I take out the tax benefit from the first quarter, and I’m assuming that wasn’t originally in your guidance anyway, but your run-rate earnings power was more like $0.60 in 1Q. To get to $4 or more, you have to ramp very, very quickly in the next several quarters. You laid out what the factors are, productivity, seasonal improvement in volume, et cetera. Of those, what are you banking the most on? Is it the pricing, is it the productivity? Is it the sequential improvement in volume, because it’s a big gap at this juncture to make up?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Well, a lot of it is volume, George. Remember that the -- we didn’t see a quick start to the apparel ordering season, so I’m making the assumption that some of the volume has shifted from Q1 into Q2 and volume is probably the most important factor going forward.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

Okay and you have seen a bit of a pick-up in RIS but it’s really the volume in RIS that’s going to drive your year --

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

We’re booming right now. We just don’t know how long that’s going to last.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

Okay. All right, thanks, guys. I’ll turn it over.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Reik W. Read with Robert W. Baird & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Reik W. Read - Robert W. Baird

Analyst · Reik W. Read with Robert W. Baird & Company. Please proceed with your question

Can you guys just go back on the pricing side of things? It doesn’t sound like pricing bothered you too much in this past quarter but you do have to put through some price increases. Can you talk a little bit about the challenges associated with implementing those price increases and what the lags might be?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Well, we’ve announced the price increase for office products that goes into effect on the first of July. That one will go through. We’ve implemented a price increase in our pressure sensitive business in North America and what we are seeing right now is that has gone through. That’s been successful. We’ve also implemented increases in Latin America and other parts of Asia. And now while we’re implementing them in Europe, I’m confident we’ll get our price increases and that’s because of the -- basically because of the additional raw material inflation we are seeing that’s impacting our entire industry. And generally in times of when we see rising raw material cost, we see rising prices. So I do think that there’s probably a little more lag time than we would normally see when we are raising prices. Part of it frankly is just a tactic to make sure we get the price increases and we are delaying it so that we minimize any type of share loss. Secondly, I think we are going to see more inflation in the back half of the year. We haven’t heard any additional price increase announcements right now but I think it’s going to happen, given where oil is and given the fact that in the U.S., I think the big surprise to us was paper increases being much higher than we had anticipated and some of that frankly is because those mills are selling more product overseas and just are allocating less capacity to U.S. markets. So I think there is going to be a lag time.

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

Let me also clarify; we did see some negative price impact in the quarter beyond just mix. Mix was most of it but the business that’s been feeling over the last few quarters the most price decline is our roll materials business in North America. It raised prices effective in March, so we saw that slow down and start to turn the other way and other businesses began moving toward price increases too. But on a net basis, we still saw some incremental price decline in Q1 over where we were in Q4 just at a slower rate than Q4 was.

Reik W. Read - Robert W. Baird

Analyst · Reik W. Read with Robert W. Baird & Company. Please proceed with your question

Okay, but having said all of that, you guys feel like second quarter you are going to get a good chunk of it and most of these will be felt in the third quarter in total.

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

That’s right. We start to get relief in Q2 and get more in Q3 and Q4, that’s right.

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Our price increase in Europe goes into effect at the latter part of the second quarter, so there we should see the impact in Q3 and Q4.

Reik W. Read - Robert W. Baird

Analyst · Reik W. Read with Robert W. Baird & Company. Please proceed with your question

Okay. And with respect to the productivity that you guys are talking about, do you have a sense for in terms of milestones -- I mean, you are talking about achieving more than you have before but in terms of milestones, is that back-end loaded or -- how do we think about throughout the year?

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

Well, it builds as the year goes by. We talked in the earlier remarks about some of the carryover from programs that we did in ’07 benefiting us now. We have other actions that we are taking. Some have been announced and some will be announced and in our cash flow guidance, we’ve got some restructuring money still in there. So we anticipate doing more things as the year unfolds and announcing those as we go and getting some significant productivity by the fourth quarter out of these new actions, so it builds.

Reik W. Read - Robert W. Baird

Analyst · Reik W. Read with Robert W. Baird & Company. Please proceed with your question

Okay, and then just one last question -- can you talk a little bit about what’s driving the weaker mix in PSM?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Some of it is we are seeing volume growth in kind of food and beverage categories on glass containers. That tends to be rigid films. They are less expensive than conformable films that you would see in the health and beauty aid category. And I think some of it is simply cost savings, as customers are figuring out ways to use less expensive versions of coated papers than they are before on the paper market.

Reik W. Read - Robert W. Baird

Analyst · Reik W. Read with Robert W. Baird & Company. Please proceed with your question

Thank you, guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mark [Hurland] with Bear Stearns. Please proceed with your question.

Mark Hurland - Bear Stearns

Analyst

My question was asked by I think George Staphos about the back-end loaded nature of the year. Is that -- I just want to make sure; that seemed to be like the answer that you guys gave or that you expected much greater strength in the back half than in the second quarter and such. Is that fair?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Well, on the sales line we are really not anticipating a pick-up as we said before, and that is a little different from some forecasts I’ve seen anticipating economic pick-up. We haven’t done that. What we are talking about is getting more out of integration savings as the year goes by, getting more of our productivity programs put in place and then the price increases building that are happening basically between March and June. So on a margin basis, it does build as the year goes by but that’s not driven so much by volume. We get a big spike between Q1 and Q2 and then the volume levels remain fairly constant the rest of the year.

Mark Hurland - Bear Stearns

Analyst

Okay, but you would more revenue, assuming you get the price increases?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Over the Q1 base, just seasonally our volume picks up by on average about $150 million a quarter and on top of that or included in that number is some price, which helps the margins.

Mark Hurland - Bear Stearns

Analyst

Just one question regarding price -- are you guys getting any resistance -- you always get resistance but what kind of resistance are you finding with your customers?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Well I think most of them, they pick up the newspaper and everything else they buy is going up in costs so there is always -- no customer loves getting a price increase. On the other hand, they understand it. So I think that’s why we were successful getting it in the U.S. and that’s why I’m confident we’ll get a price increase in other parts of the world as well.

Mark Hurland - Bear Stearns

Analyst

Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John McNulty with Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question.

John P. McNulty - Credit Suisse

Analyst · John McNulty with Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question

Good afternoon, guys. Just one or two questions; looking back to 2001 into 2002, can you tell us what the RIS first quarter margin would have been then? I know you didn’t break out the details but can you give us some color as to how things looked in the last recession and if something is different this time around?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

I don’t think I have those numbers in front of me but the business that tends to rebound the most after a recession -- I mean, we do -- across the company tends to be pressure sensitive as people build inventory. We’d have to go back into the archives I think.

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

I think if you go back that far too, our business in RIS was about $200 million in sales, so -- and the mix would be radically different from today. So I’m not sure the correlation works and haven’t got an answer for you, John.

John P. McNulty - Credit Suisse

Analyst · John McNulty with Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question

Okay, but I mean -- I guess maybe looking at it from a different way, is there anything that is different that you are seeing in your markets right now from what maybe you would normally have expected going into a recession?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Well, yeah, I think the impact on apparel sales is more dramatic. This is -- I mean, talking to customers, they said -- and I’m talking about people who sell apparel, they say this is the worst retail recession they have seen in 20 years. So I think it is more severe and I think it is because the U.S. consumer is faced with not a lot of extra money and what money they have is going to things like food and fuel, which are going up pretty dramatically in price. So those things like apparel, which you don’t have to buy every day, are simply getting deferred right now. And that’s the big concern from all the apparel guys. And I don’t remember that being the case in 2001. I remember the apparel business going down about as much as the normal economy did, so this is different.

John P. McNulty - Credit Suisse

Analyst · John McNulty with Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question

Okay, fair enough. And Dan, you had mentioned sequentially normally you’d see kind of a seasonal swing in terms of revenues of about $150 million. I assume that the price increases that you’ve put through would be additional to that, that the price increases say from late -- call it late March and even some of the ones that you are putting through in the second quarter, that would be kind of -- if we were going to use that as a normalized run-rate, you’d be tacking on top of that the price increase. Is that fair?

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

Well, I don’t think our ability to forecast the revenue range is quite that precise. What I would say is that over the next three quarters, we should average about $150 million a quarter in sales above the Q1 rate and the richness of that sales mix ought to be good because we are getting price built into it, but I wouldn’t take 150 and add the price on top of that, no.

John P. McNulty - Credit Suisse

Analyst · John McNulty with Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question

Okay, fair enough. That’s all I needed. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is a follow-up question from the line of Jeffrey Zekauskas with J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · Jeffrey Zekauskas with J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

I have a couple of questions. What more is to be done in making the RIS business more efficient or if you can review what it is that you’ve accomplished and what it is that is to be done?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

I don’t know if we want to go through specifics on -- I mean, are you talking specifically on the integration?

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · Jeffrey Zekauskas with J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

Exactly right -- that is, how many plants did you plan to close, how many plants are closed right now, how many more do you have to go and when will it be done?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Well, we expect to be 75% complete, or more than 75% complete by the end of the year. Again, the corporate costs are done. A lot of the front-end costs and the overlap are completed certainly in the U.S. and in Europe. We have -- we still have some plant closures that we need to get done this year. In the first quarter, we are still in the midst of some changes in our Latin American business. And so we’ve got -- Mexico, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic ought to be done by the end of the second quarter and then there were some other units in Europe where we are making some changes. So I don’t know if I want to be more specific than that because some of these have not been announced yet.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · Jeffrey Zekauskas with J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

In terms of -- Dan spoke about there being incrementally another $150 million in revenues in RIS in the second quarter.

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

Total company number.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · Jeffrey Zekauskas with J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

Forgive me, for the total company. For the RIS business though, the numbers should still be pretty big. I guess maybe half of that would be RIS?

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

That’s a big part of it, the most seasonal, but we also get back to school pick-up in the office products business but yeah, a good half of that or close to that is probably a little less than half but close to half of that is RIS.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · Jeffrey Zekauskas with J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

So what are the incremental margins in RIS like? You talked about all of the penalties you had because of high overhead. Are the incremental sequential margins 30% or 20% or -- how do you think about that? You know, you talked about a substantial pick-up in the second quarter. Can you quantify that at all in terms of margins?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Well, the variable margins within that business are actually higher than the ranges you threw out, but it obviously depends whether it’s the Q2 or Q4 peak, depending on the mix that you see within that business. So yes, they are higher than that on a variable basis.

Jeffrey Zekauskas - J.P. Morgan Securities

Analyst · Jeffrey Zekauskas with J.P. Morgan Securities. Please proceed with your question

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

A few, just to conclude, maybe piggy-backing first on Jeff’s question and RIS; if I just very, very simply look at the EBIT this year in the first quarter and look at last year’s, and I tack on the synergies that you say that you are getting, obviously there is a deficit somewhere. You talked about volumes being down but you also mentioned earlier that volumes were only off low single digit millions of dollars relative to your forecast, if I heard you right. So are you seeing detrimental margins of 40%, 50% right now or is there a base RIS split that we are seeing much worse performance in one of the businesses versus the other? If you could just help me fill in some of the holes there, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

Well, in the first quarter I think the main thing to recognize is that the normally seasonally low business was really compounded by the shortfall in revenues and that double effect had pretty dramatic impact on the margins for that business in the quarter. That we do get substantial recovery on as we go right into Q2. There are mix issues too. We have customers that are trading down in terms of the kinds of things that they were ordering, so there is a top line and a margin impact from the downward mix shift as retailers become sensitive about their costs and so on.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

Dan, is it possible to parse it at this juncture between your old business and Paxar or not really anymore?

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

We really can’t do that, George. They are so mixed together and production has been co-mingled. The front-end has been co-mingled, IT systems. It’s a -- I wouldn’t say it’s a single business now but it’s a lot closer than it was six months ago.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

But as far as you can tell, there wouldn’t be a -- go ahead, Dean. I’m sorry.

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

We had an abnormal impact in the first quarter from two other -- I would characterize them as non-apparel related businesses, our printer systems business, as I mentioned before, and our fastener business -- you know, the plastic table tie and cable ties, which unfortunately there’s a big chunk of that in automotive which had a really bad quarter. And that actually -- that was half of our shortfall to our plan, anyway, in the quarter.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

Those two items?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Sorry?

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

Those two items combined?

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

The areas outside of the --

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Outside of the apparel sourcing business.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

Got it. Okay. Now, second question -- how do you prevent, as you are trying to raise pricing, two things; one, your customer is trying to further go downstream or lower in price mix and mix so as to offset the inflation they see coming at them. Secondly, you had mentioned earlier they too see input costs rising. They know you are going to have to raise pricing. How do you prevent against pre-buying, which is inflating demand really to what is truly occurring in the market right now?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

On the pre-buying, we don’t really see very much of that, George. It is very, very difficult for -- I’ll just to go the pressure sensitive side of the house, to -- they are in a custom business, most of them, so they have unpredictable demand and so they are buying on a kind of per order basis. So if we did see pre-buying, we might see a week, maybe two weeks across some customers, so it’s really a very minor amount. And remember, the products we make are fairly bulky, so you have to actually store them somewhere and most label converters don’t have a place to do that. So I’m not really anticipating so much on those issues. As far as customers, how they decide what materials they are going to use for labels, that’s a very difficult thing to impact. What we do do is we tripled our rate of product reengineering so at least on an ongoing basis, we work on the productivity side to make those lower price products more profitable.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

You mentioned glass volume as being strong in beverages and that is one of the reasons you are seeing mix lower. Is that true?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

So we’ve seen more business come over on the beer side and other food products, so we’ve captured some more new applications.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

Can you mention how much your volumes might be up there? Because at least from the industry data that we see, volumes in beverage and food are down significantly in glass this year. So do you think it’s share gain?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Some of it is share gain but some of it, we have captured some applications that weren’t pressure sensitive before and so -- I mean, it’s -- I think it’s -- I don’t know for sure, high single-digits or low double-digits for the quarter, so it was quite good. But I don’t think you can attribute that to any sort of glass bottle volume that’s out there. Remember, we have a really small share of beverage.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

Okay, so it affected mix but not really because it’s not that large, is what you are saying?

Dean A. Scarborough

Management

Well, I thought maybe you were trying to attribute glass container volume out there to us. It’s basically we are capturing an ever-increasing share of glass bottle decoration. More is moving to pressure sensitive. That’s continuing to be a growth story for us.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

No, I understand but --

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

The mix point, George, is that we did see improved growth in these businesses in the U.S. and Europe in the quarter. A lot of that growth came from the areas Dean is talking about, which is not as rich a mix as we would normally see in the films area, for example.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

All right. Last question and I’ll turn it over and good luck in the quarter; the deferred taxes in 1Q were minus $20 million. I’m wondering if that’s somehow related to the tax benefit you saw on the P&L. If you can just reconcile that or at least give the additional color. Thanks, guys.

Daniel R. O'Bryant

Management

There is -- you can’t see the move on our balance sheet in the deferred tax line. This will be a cash benefit. We get some of that cash benefit in the current year, probably about a third and the rest of it will spill into future years. So this is real cash benefit; it’s just not as immediate as the entry would reflect.

George Staphos - Banc of America Securities

Analyst · George Staphos with Banc of America Securities. Please proceed with your question

Okay. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to you. Please continue with your presentation or closing remarks, sir.

Cynthia S. Guenther

Management

Okay. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Bye-bye.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect.