Earnings Labs

Clearwater Paper Corporation (CLW)

Q3 2013 Earnings Call· Wed, Oct 23, 2013

$14.83

+1.44%

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

+10.72%

1 Week

+8.75%

1 Month

+10.55%

vs S&P

+6.97%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Clearwater Paper's third quarter 2013 earnings conference call and webcast. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the conference over Mr. John Hertz, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Sir, you may begin.

John Hertz

Management

Thank you, Saeed. Good afternoon, and welcome to Clearwater Paper's third quarter 2013 conference call. Our press release this afternoon includes details regarding our third quarter results, and you'll find a presentation of supplemental information posted on the Investor Relations area of our website at clearwaterpaper.com. Additionally, we will be providing 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 or in the supplemental material provided on our website. I would like to remind you that this presentation contains 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, 2012, and our 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. Now, turning to our third quarter financial performance. Like last quarter, I'll start with a little housekeeping. We are providing both Q3 GAAP results and those that are adjusted to exclude two charges and two benefits that we believe are not indicative of our core operating performance. On the cost side, we incurred $1.7 million in relocation and exit-related expenses associated with the planned closure of our Thomaston, Georgia, converting facility and had an expense of $400,000 related to mark-to-market adjustments to outstanding directors' common stock units. The two benefits, both were on the…

Linda Massman

Management

Thanks, John. Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Our third quarter results dwell within the updated outlook that we provided in early September. While near-term market challenges pressured our tissue business results, I am pleased with the team's reaction to those challenges within the quarter and what that means as we move forward into the fourth quarter and 2014. And while the environment has become more competitive, we still expect to achieve our financial goals, albeit a bit slower than originally anticipated. One of our larger optimization initiative has been the closure of our Thomaston site. We have completed the move of all the equipment out of Thomaston and expect to have all of it operational by the end of Q4, which is well ahead of our original plan. I would like to take the time to thank our consumer products team and especially our Thomaston team for their focus and dedication to the company during the transition and closure of our facility located there. This has obviously been a difficult time for many of our employees and we appreciate their effort. As John mentioned, the paperboard market continues to be strong, which is yielding volume and price increases. And our pulp and paperboard team is executing very well from an operational perspective. Now, let me discuss our view of the market environment and our outlook for each of our business segments, starting with the consumer business. Overall the retail tissue market is continuing to grow. Through the first nine months of 2013, retail tissue paper shift as reported by IRI, our multi-channel sales were up 3% versus the same period in 2012. Private label was up 7%, while national brands increased 2%, and Clearwater Paper grew shipments in estimate of 5%. Private label tissue market share grew…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from Steve Chercover from D. A. Davidson.

Steve Chercover - D. A. Davidson

Analyst

So one of your larger branded competitors did release yesterday and in their discussion of North America was, not that it wasn't competitive, but net selling prices were up. And I was just wondering if your cautioned in kind of early September was maybe just that, whether you're trying to be conservative and then things are a little bit better than you maybe thought?

Linda Massman

Management

Steve, we are aware of that call as well. At that, what we can comment is what we're seeing in the marketplace, and while I'd love to be able to tell you that we're just being cautious. We actually have been seeing increased promotional activity in the retail accounts where we sell the bulk of our products. So it is a competitive marketplace and we are also seeing increased competition from our other private label competitors.

Steve Chercover - D. A. Davidson

Analyst

I was thinking that it might be that you don't necessarily intersect in the exact same marketplace and that might be some of the other privates. And then with respect to your actual volumes, is it safe to assume that despite having Shelby online, the fact that production volume was flat-to-down, that's intentional, correct? And I suppose you could call it cannibalization of your less lucrative capacity?

Linda Massman

Management

Are you talking sequentially down, Steve, versus Q2 to Q3 or what timeframe are you looking at?

Steve Chercover - D. A. Davidson

Analyst

No, I'm actually looking year-over-year, if you did 138 million, almost 139 million tons or thousand tons in Q3 '12 versus 133 this year, was that maintenance downtime was associated with pulp and paper, so.

Linda Massman

Management

So if I look at CPD, which is where the sales were done on a ton basis year-over-year. Back in Q3 of 2012, we have abnormally high sales rate from a ton perspective and that was driven primarily by strong contract manufacturing business that we had undertaken back in Q3. And then compare with that with this year in Q3, we were really in very much of building inventory phase, most of this year which then we didn't have as many parents rolls to sell or even the converting capacity to take on some of the contract manufacturing work.

Steve Chercover - D. A. Davidson

Analyst

And then just last question, are we just to presume $3 million maintenance expense per quarter next year and that's a way to model it?

John Hertz

Management

This is little tricky, Steve, because it's lumpy. And so we're trying to help, people do this kind of how they should think about it on a straight line basis. So if you kind of take what we expect to be the lumpy cost over a three-year period in straight line, and that's what works out to be kind of a $3 million on a per quarter amount that we theoretically would have to cover if we'll spread evenly.

Steve Chercover - D. A. Davidson

Analyst

But to the extent that it might be very much lumped into Q2 for instance, because you can't do things during the winter, you'll try and help us, pinpoint when it's actually going to be taking an expense, correct?

John Hertz

Management

Right. And one of the things we did say in our prepared remarks was that actually 2014 is a year in which we will not have a major maintenance outage. And so specifically to 2014, as we sit here today, there won't be any.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from James Armstrong from Vertical Research.

James Armstrong - Vertical Research

Analyst

First, a quick house keeping question. Where do you expect the tax rate to be, given the movements in the fourth quarter as well as going forward?

John Hertz

Management

Both from what I'll call an adjusted basis. Our range was 36% to 38%. James Armstrong – Vertical Research Partners: And then, going back to the major competitors call, they talked about desheeting a lot to basically help margins in a promotional activity. Are you following suite on that or your customers' requiring you to maintain a sheet count, could you help us with that?

Linda Massman

Management

We follow too, where we can. And of course, we are always intend to be competitive in every way we can with our national brand target products, but we've also seen some of the benefit of that issue being in our price and sales numbers.

James Armstrong - Vertical Research Partners

Analyst

And then lastly, to date with the additional TAD capacity, how would you describe the acceptance of that capacity? Are there pockets of strength and weakness? And do you think your product is growing with the market or do you think you're displacing other product?

Linda Massman

Management

I think, first of all, the TAD shipments, we're seeing kind of a steady ramp up and in particular I think leading Q3 and entering Q4 in a really nice spot with regard to those shipments. I would say it's a little bit of both with regard to that new shipment and some displacement that will go into either additional premium product or more likely some of the parent roll sales.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And I'm showing no one else in queue at this time. I'd like to hand the conference over to Ms. Linda Massman for any closing remarks.

Linda Massman

Management

That was a easy call. But thank you everybody for joining us. We appreciate it and we'll talk to you next quarter.