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Clearwater Paper Corporation (CLW)

Q4 2011 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 22, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to your Clearwater Paper Fourth Quarter 2011 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator instructions] And now I would like to introduce your host for today, Linda Massman. Linda, please go ahead.

Linda Massman

Analyst

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to Clearwater Paper’s fourth quarter 2011 conference call. Our press release this afternoon includes the detail regarding our fourth quarter and full year results, and you will find a presentation of supplemental information posted on the Investor Relations area of our website at www.clearwaterpaper.com. Additionally, we provide certain non-GAAP information in this afternoon’s discussion. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP information to comparable GAAP information is included in the press release and supplemental material provided on our website. I would like to remind you that this presentation will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates, assumptions and projections that are subject to change, and actual results may differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include those expressed or implied by risks and uncertainties described from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2010, and more recent quarterly filings on Form 10-Q. Any forward-looking statements are made only as of this date, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. On today’s call with me is Gordon Jones, Chairman and CEO. I will begin today’s call with financial highlights for the quarter and will be followed by Gordon, who will provide commentary on the different business segments before we take questions. We reported net earnings of $11.5 million, or $0.48 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2011, compared to net earnings of $37.8 million, or $1.60 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2010. On an adjusted basis, fourth quarter 2011 net earnings were $13.3 million, or $0.55 per…

Gordon Jones

Analyst

Thanks, Linda. As Linda pointed out, we finished the year with solid operating results and we believe we are positioned well for 2012 and beyond. For the full year, net sales came in just under $2 billion, while adjusted EBITDA of $196 million was our best ever. To recap the year, in June we announced the grand opening of our Shelby, North Carolina tissue facility in conjunction with the startup of our first 2 converting lines. Later that month, we announced the expansion of our FSC certified product offerings of premium and ultra bath tissue and ultra paper towels, which have been well-received by our customers. In July, we announced a two-for-one stock split and a $30 million share buyback program. Finally, in November, we sold the sawmill at Lewiston, Idaho for approximately $30 million, and signed a long term residual fiber supply agreement with the buyer, Idaho Forest Group. Consumer Products net sales of $268.5 million were up significantly versus the fourth quarter of 2010, mainly due to the inclusion of a full quarter of Cellu Tissue results versus inclusion of only 4 days during the prior year’s quarter. Tissue volume of 123,046 tons declined 8.3% from the third quarter of 2011 and 7.3% from the fourth quarter of 2010 on a pro forma basis, had we included Cellu Tissue results for the entire 2010 quarter. The declines were attributable to softness in our contract manufacturing and machine glazed tissue markets. We also converted more parent rolls into finished cases in 2011, which resulted in a yield loss associated with the process of manufacturing converted cases, and we curtailed parent roll sales to build some retail inventory to support customer service needs. This reduction in tissue volumes was mostly offset by a 6.3% increase in pricing to $2,182 per…

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] And we’ll take our first question from Steven Chercover from D.A. Davidson.

Steven Chercover

Analyst

Two quick questions. First of all, you indicated I guess what the EBITDA impact was of the lumber operations in the quarter. Were the revenues from lumber scrubbed out of those numbers for Pulp and Paperboard?

Linda Massman

Analyst

Yes.

Steven Chercover

Analyst

For both quarters and for the full year?

Linda Massman

Analyst

That’s correct. For the 2011 results, yes.

Steven Chercover

Analyst

Very good, ok. And then obviously you guys are excited about Shelby, but some of your competitors aren’t excited about having you in the mix. How concerned are you about the amount of new private label TAD tissue that’s coming into the marketplace? Are the folks who are, I guess, trying to block your project targeting the same customers as you?

Gordon Jones

Analyst

Well, we really -- when it comes to litigation, or even then, we really can’t comment on it, Steve, but they are a competitor of ours, and they are, to our knowledge, bringing on some extra TAD capacity. But in the general scope of things, we still feel very good about the tissue business and as you know, and we’ve talked this with our marketplace many times, the population is really key when it comes to tissues. As long as population is growing, tissue demand continues to grow. So we feel good about it. There are some extra machines or machines beyond what we currently have coming on over the next few years, but we’re not panicked by that at all. We just really think that that’s going to match up with the demand characteristics in the market. So we still feel very good about being in the tissue market.

Steven Chercover

Analyst

And I’m not looking for any commentary on the lawsuit, but are the machine components being delivered? Or are you just building the foundation?

Gordon Jones

Analyst

Again, we really can’t comment on where we are, but we’re right on track with all the things that you might expect to have happen from the kinds of things that you mention there, to everything else. We still anticipate being up and running by the end of this year, by December of 2012. So we’re right on track with that. We’re within budget, on schedule. Everything seems to be going very well.

Steven Chercover

Analyst

Ok, that's encouraging. And final question, I might have missed your commentary on pricing. You said it’s going to be competitive in pricing on the tissue side. Do you expect your mill nets to go up or down or sideways when you consider mix as well?

Gordon Jones

Analyst

It’s hard to know. We know that it’s a competitive market out there, and there are some extra tons coming on, which we anticipated all along when we made our announcement. So if these tons come into the marketplace there’s a tendency for people to get a little bit more competitive. We see a little bit more competitive activity in the tissue market, but we’re not worried by that. As I said earlier, we had a price increase and that’s gone very well, so we still feel very comfortable about where we are, but it’s a competitive market out there, and we wouldn’t want anybody to think it’s not a competitive market.

Steven Chercover

Analyst

Sure. I apologize if I sneak one more in. So do you have the sense that any of your branded competitors are trying to maybe squelch the private label threat?

Gordon Jones

Analyst

We don’t get that sense. I think -- we always say we try to offer very high quality products which work for all of our customers. They’re trying to do the same thing from a branded perspective, but I don’t see that there’s any major league point of attack at any particular category or segment of the business. It’s just a normal kind of competitive market, where we’re all working hard to satisfy our customers and gain our market share.

Operator

Operator

And we’ll take our next question from Ian Zaffino from Oppenheimer & Company.

Ian Zaffino

Analyst

A question with a -- as far as the price increases that you had in place for the fourth quarter, given that usually it's more competitive, should we assume that it’s going to be less than what you had in the fourth quarter? Or is this something where it’s being contracted, and you really should see those price increases continue?

Linda Massman

Analyst

Ian, it really depends on mix of product and how much more we convert into retail product, and typically when we see these kind of competitive marketplaces, we usually end up seeing some pressure around promotion, and how we support our product in-store.

Gordon Jones

Analyst

In fairness, on the price increase, price increase has been successful and really has been implemented. We’re just realizing the benefits here in the fourth quarter, and there’s a few more benefits to realize in the first quarter. But that increase went through at the levels that we had talked about before. In fact, it came through a little bit faster than we had originally talked about before. We talked about 1.25% in the fourth quarter and 1.25% in the first quarter, and our folks actually did a little bit better than that in the fourth quarter and it will be a little bit less than half of that in the first quarter. But I think the point there is that the price increase is [indiscernible]

Ian Zaffino

Analyst

And then on the volume side, I know you attributed some of it to the -- converting more of the parent roll. Can you give us a break out of how much was related to that and how much was related to the competitive environment as far as the volume decline?

Gordon Jones

Analyst

Well, we’re really not planning on disclosing that. We think that that’s information that our competitors don’t need to hear, but it’s really the things that we’ve mentioned in the script. The concept there about we’ve always wanted to take parent rolls and convert them into the retail, and we’re continuing to do that, and we’re doing, I think, that at a very healthy pace. The other thing's about making sure that you can satisfy all of your customers’ needs by having the proper amount of inventory in the proper place is another key part of that. The reasons that we talked about in the script are really the ones, but we’re not able, Ian, to start giving you percentages of what each of those impacts was relative to that number. I think the thing to think about on our business is it still remains very good, very solid. We have a nice high demand business and I think one of the fun things is as we continue to convert more into the retail side of the business, we’re going to continue to look at … [Technical Difficulty]

Operator

Operator

And we’ll take our next question from Graham Meagher from TD Securities.

Graham Meagher

Analyst

First question for you: on the sawmill costs, just want to make sure we’re looking at this the right way. So it’s a $2.9 million net cost. There’s $15.4 million in the Pulp and Paperboard. So does that mean the difference there, $12.5 million, that was a benefit to corporate?

Linda Massman

Analyst

That’s exactly right, Graham.

Graham Meagher

Analyst

And that’s all related to the LIFO adjustment there?

Linda Massman

Analyst

Most of it is, yes. Those were all pre-tax numbers.

Graham Meagher

Analyst

Pre-tax, of course. And then so that means that corporate is sort of running at that $11 million level. Is that -- it had been a little bit lower than that prior couple of quarters. Is that -- how should we think about corporate going forward?

Linda Massman

Analyst

I would say that’s pretty much in the range. It runs about $10 million a quarter, give or take.

Graham Meagher

Analyst

Ok. And then Slide 4, this is the comparison of the segments quarter-over-quarter, just looking at the Consumer Products -- sorry, the benefit of $25 million on the cost side. Are you able to break that out at all between fiber, chemicals, transportation, energy, maintenance? Or can we assume that most of that is fiber?

Linda Massman

Analyst

Graham, we’ll have some of that breakout on a total company basis in the 10-K that we’ll file here shortly. But we don’t break it down by segment. So you’ll have to try to draw your own conclusions. We do have a line on there, as you probably remember, called “fiber,” and pulp will be a big part of that. Sequentially, pulp has benefited us, probably less so on a fourth quarter to fourth quarter basis. But sequentially, third quarter to fourth quarter has been a benefit.

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] And we’ll take our next question from Richard Kus from Jefferies.

Richard Kus

Analyst

Following on Graham’s question around pulp costs, you know, as you look forward to the first quarter, do you expect that benefit sequentially to be similar or greater than you saw in the fourth quarter?

Gordon Jones

Analyst

I don’t know that we’ve categorized it that way, but if I go back to last quarter’s call, when we talked about how pulp prices flow through to the system, if you go back and look at the quarter that relates to the quarter that we’re currently in, and look at those pulp prices, you can make a good assumption about that. That as pulp prices continue to go down, we continue to see a benefit. If pulp prices go up, we start to lose that benefit. And we’re running about a quarter behind on that. So yes, we’re seeing some benefits in this particular quarter from the quarter where they started going down in the third quarter and then depending on what happens in the fourth quarter, of course, could affect the first quarter.

Richard Kus

Analyst

Ok, I see. And have you started to see pulp costs rise yet?

Gordon Jones

Analyst

Well, there’s been a little bit of pressure. The pundits out there are predicting that pulp prices have kind of bottomed a little bit, and there are some efforts by some producers to raise price, particularly offshore. That’s where we think that they would go first. Typically, the most volatile spots are non-North America locations. So as they try to raise those prices offshore, if those get successful, that might creep back to North America. But most of the pundits are saying that we’re kind of bouncing a little bit on what might be an apparent bottom on pulp and pulp prices would be expected to go up in the latter half of the year.

Richard Kus

Analyst

Ok, I see what you’re saying. And then lastly, on SBS, we’ve heard some anecdotal evidence that prices have been a little bit soft in that market. Would you comment on what you guys are seeing?

Gordon Jones

Analyst

Sure. We feel, just in general, awfully good about the SBS market and what our customers -- or how they’re supporting us, and what our sales force is making happen out there. One of the things that we had talked about on a previous call was a folding carton increase and it started at a $50 number and went to a $25 number. That particular increase was difficult to hold in place. So demand continues to remain solid for us. And we don’t feel bad about that. But one of the publications had recently put the folding carton price down $20, I believe, and that never helps, when a publication pushes it down $20. But we’ll kind of wait and see. I think that right now we’d categorize the market as still good. It’s not robust. It’s not like it was a couple of years ago when everything was going good. We do know that a couple of our competitors -- at least one for sure -- has confirmed that they’ve taken a little bit of market downtime. And I also really believe that the key to thinking about SBS is -- and this is our plan -- if we would control the supply relative to to the order book -- so as long as we’re matched up well, we’re going to continue to run and I think this still continues to be an excellent market to be in. But it’s a little bit softer than we would like it. And one other thought, without answering too much of the question here, but making sure you know where we’re coming from, is that we’re right now in a softer seasonal time of the year on SBS, and that market typically picks up in the spring. So it might be too soon to tell, really, where that market’s going to go. That will be more a function of the economy. But we anticipate that we’ll have stronger backlogs moving very shortly as we head into a normal spring pickup.

Operator

Operator

I’m showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I would like to turn the conference back to your hosts for any concluding remarks.

Gordon Jones

Analyst

Okay, well, we thank everyone for their attention and their interest in the company. As I mentioned before, we feel very good about where we are, and we’re anxious to keep you all posted. So thank you very much, and this concludes the call.

Operator

Operator

Ok, ladies and gentlemen, this does now conclude our conference. You may now disconnect and have a great day.