Earnings Labs

International Paper Company (IP)

Q1 2010 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 29, 2010

$33.48

-1.51%

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

-4.51%

1 Week

-16.64%

1 Month

-20.58%

vs S&P

-9.55%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Christy and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the International Paper 2010 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Tom Cleves, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thomas Cleves

Analyst · CLSA

Thanks, Christy. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our First Quarter Earnings Call. Our speakers this morning are John Faraci, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Tim Nicholls, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and these are outlined on Slide 2 of the presentation deck. We will also present certain non-U.S. GAAP financial information. A reconciliation of those figures to U.S. GAAP financial measures is available on our website. Our website also contains copies of the first quarter 2010 earnings press release and today's presentation slides. This morning, Tim and I are in New York City, and John and the balances of the senior management team are in Memphis. We're conducting our portion of the call in the Q&A remotely. So please understand that some of the transitions are not a smooth as usual. With that, I'll turn the call over to John in Memphis.

John Faraci

Analyst · UBS

Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. As is usual over the next 20 to 30 minutes, Tim and I are going to review the financial performance of the company, our first quarter results and the individual businesses. And then we'll leave time for your questions. And we'll share our outlook on the second quarter. Let me just dive into the first quarter now and say it was a tough quarter. But it was in line with our original expectations. EPS came out at $0.04 and there's no doubt about it in our minds, the first quarter represents the cyclical trough. What's really important when you look at the quarter is the shape of the quarter, and by that means, the earnings shape during the quarter. January and February are really rugged and we made it all up and more in March. So I think the important thing here is the trajectory of earnings by month through the quarter and all these things that underlie that got increasingly positive. We absorbed $144 million of input cost inflation in the quarter. That's more than we thought. I think we had forecast about $120 million, and we actually turned out to be more. And we had planned for a heavy outage quarter, which is about $30 million. So between the input cost and the outages, that's about $0.30 a share. While it was a tough quarter, there were some good news there. European Paper and Packaging and Asia performed very well. Tim will talk more about that. And I think, importantly, demand and pricing increased as the quarter progressed and that continues in April. So we've got a much more positive outlook now on the second quarter and for the balance of the year. So first quarter sales are…

Timothy Nicholls

Analyst · Mark Wilde with Deutsche Bank

Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone. Let me walk you through the businesses. I'll start with Industrial Packaging. And just start off by saying for Industrials that I was disappointed a bit with the results for Industrial Packaging in the quarter but it wasn't a typical quarter. It was a transition quarter. There was a lot of things going on. And I think we finished on a strong note. So we've made improvements through the quarter. One things to keep in mind is that when we started the quarter, we were coming off of running a fair amount of downtime. We took two mills down and then went to running full scenario at the time that we took the mills down, right at the height of the extreme cold weather and the wood shortages. So it wasn't an ideal operating conditions. We did see volumes across all the geographies. That's essentially flat. The North American Box business was up 2%, which was good news. And then we had a combination of favorable operations in price that really offset all of the impact to the higher input costs. Most of that being fiber. We started realizing the fixed cost savings from the two mills shutdowns that happened at the end of the fourth quarter and our box operations ran extremely well. All that said, the mill system didn't run as well as it could have. And we probably left $15 million of earnings on the table from the weather-related and the wood-related issues that were occurring in January and February. But I'd say by the middle to the end of February, we had put most of those issues behind us. And again, I thought we ran very strongly in March. So the real difference in the quarter from fourth quarter to first…

John Faraci

Analyst · UBS

Thanks, Tim. So let me just summarize the first quarter. As I said, it was a lousy January and February. Solid March. Good platform for the second quarter. Fiber prices peaked, spiked early in the quarter. Wood cost are moderating. OCC prices are falling. We didn't run well in Industrial Packaging and Consumer Packaging in January and February. March, we're running better. And April, running well. We had high outage expenses. That's good news because most of it's behind us at a point in time when demand's improving and with our right-sized footprint, we need the capacity. We've got the benefit to reduce the operating cost. We're beginning to see the fixed cost come down in both Industrial Packaging and in Printing Papers associated with those facility closures. Prices are improving as the quarter progressed. We're getting our announced price increases and I'll show you a slide in a minute. There's a huge amount out there. And we've just announced some additional price increases that at the quarter's end, we should be coming in, in subsequent quarters. So going forward, looking into the second quarter, I think the global economy continues to improve. I'm not euphoric about it but I'm certainly more positive. Certain parts of the word like Asia are very, very strong. But I think incrementally, what we thought would be a slow recovery is turning out to be still a slow recovery but maybe at a slightly faster clip. We see more and more of our customer's segments start to feel more positive about their business. Since we're a business-to-business company, when our customer's business gets better, so does ours. We're going to the see significant impact from price realizations in the second quarter. We're going to get an easing of wood cost and OCC prices, probably…

Thomas Cleves

Analyst · CLSA

Great. Thank you, John. Christy, we're now ready for the first question please.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Gail Glazerman with UBS.

Gail Glazerman - UBS Investment Bank

Analyst · UBS

Can you just give -- just on the cost issues, can you just give a little bit more insight? I guess maybe where you are today versus the first quarter average. Or just sense of how quickly those costs are coming down or not?

John Faraci

Analyst · UBS

Well, Gail, I can talk about OCC here. In OCC prices, the published prices were off $30 in April from where they were and another, kind of, $12 to $15 made from where they were. We think spot prices are off even more than that so OCC could be down 50 from where they peaked.

Gail Glazerman - UBS Investment Bank

Analyst · UBS

And how about wood costs? I mean, I appreciate. . .

John Faraci

Analyst · UBS

Wood costs aren't falling as fast. But wood costs are falling on the Pine side, which will impact Packaging more than Paper. They're probably down maybe $1, $2 a ton. And in hard wood, they're just starting to decline. So a sharper decline on OCC prices than we're seeing on wood fiber. But wood fiber will unfold during the summer. We've had great weather, logging conditions are getting better. Actually if we get some supply, if saw mills come back on stream, we'll get some of our chip supply back, which will help take the pressure off Pulpwood. So I mean, a color on that would be things are trending in the right way and probably with OCC, recently having falling faster than fiber cost had.

Gail Glazerman - UBS Investment Bank

Analyst · UBS

Just on I guess maybe some of the fixed cost benefit. Have you seen everything you'd expect to see in the Industrial side? From the no-closures? And when would we expect to see the real benefits from Franklin?

John Faraci

Analyst · UBS

Well, Carol Roberts is sitting right here. And so is Marc Sutton. Since Carol got Industial Packaging and Marc's got Franklin, I'll let both of them talk about that.

Carol Roberts

Analyst · UBS

Gail, this is Carol. We did see the full benefit from Pineville in Albany. Although with all of the heavy maintenance outages in the quarter, some of our other fixed spending was up. And when John or Tim talked about some of the little bit of money we left on the table of that $15 million, we probably had other spending that was probably up, maybe $5 million to $7 million in the quarter due to pushing the other mills hard to run. And I think that will come back. So I feel like we're going to be quite successful in getting all of that savings from Pineville in Albany to the bottom line in the second quarter.

Mark Sutton

Analyst · UBS

For Franklin, as Tim mentioned in his section, we just made the last real paper in the middle of April. And what we've been doing through the first quarter is transitioning the business that we plan on keeping, which is a significant portion of it to the other mills in the system. So while we're bringing the mill down, we have transition cost and logistics cost to get the grades in the right mill for the future. So the Franklin, in fact, at fixed cost savings, will really materialize in the second half of the year. It would be an important driver.

Gail Glazerman - UBS Investment Bank

Analyst · UBS

Carol, can you talk a little bit about maybe current demand on what you saw in April? And how much of the first Box price increase did you have in by the end of the quarter?

Carol Roberts

Analyst · UBS

Yes, Gail. On the other current demand, as we've shown, we saw a sequential increase in actual shipments from fourth to first and we saw a year-over-year increase of 2%. For our particular case, we had a fairly weak January. And we saw our business improved through the quarter. And just to give you a couple of examples, some of our consumer packaged goods companies was slower in the beginning of the quarter and got better. In April, we've seen that trend continue. So what I'm, kind of, anticipating is that the year-over-year increase in that 2% to 3% is still solidly there. Plus, we'll get the seasonal uptick in the second quarter due to the agriculture. And it does feel like it's going to be a good Agricultural segment. Relative to the box pricing, we, kind of, hit our low-end box pricing in December and when we exited the quarter, we were about $20 higher. And then when April 1 hit, of course, we had contracts that came in. So in April, we got another pop and I think we had in the appendix -- which pages is that?

John Faraci

Analyst · UBS

Slide 29, Carol.

Carol Roberts

Analyst · UBS

29. You can see that as of the 28th of April, which is really pretty solid through the whole month of April. We're up $39 on boxes on the first increase. So I would say the first increase is pretty much done. And of course, we're moving now to implement the second 60.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Wilde with Deutsche Bank.

Mark Wilde - Deutsche Bank AG

Analyst · Mark Wilde with Deutsche Bank

John, can we talk a little bit about the issue of returning cash to shareholders? And I think everybody is happy to see that dividend back at $0.50. Any thoughts about further restoration, maybe going back to that $1 that we were at, kind of, pre-crisis?

John Faraci

Analyst · Mark Wilde with Deutsche Bank

Well, I think the move we made is indicative of what we think we can maintain, and we're going to be cautious about that. And to the extent we generate cash and we're pretty positive about our free cash flow target that we'd rather be distributing the cash when have it as opposed to in advance of having it. I think, if we knew then what we know now, we may not have needed to decrease the dividend. But back last year, everybody was planning for the worst and we are committed to the return of cash. We're going to generate $1.5 billion of free cash flow a year, a good portion of that will go back to shareholders in the form of dividend and/or share buybacks.

Mark Wilde - Deutsche Bank AG

Analyst · Mark Wilde with Deutsche Bank

And any thoughts on buybacks?

John Faraci

Analyst · Mark Wilde with Deutsche Bank

Again, I think that reflect a balanced program of how you're returning cash to shareholders is I think what we're going to have and we're going to talk to shareholders about -- some prefer share buybacks, some prefer dividends. We had a what we thought was a healthy dividend in place. We have to cut it. We didn't want to but we did. And we're in the process of bringing it back in steps.

Timothy Nicholls

Analyst · Mark Wilde with Deutsche Bank

John, if I could just add one comment, I think all right. And, Mark, the other thing that we'll look at is what might happen with tax rates on dividend as we go through this year and the next year. So all of the things John mentioned, as well as that.

Mark Wilde - Deutsche Bank AG

Analyst · Mark Wilde with Deutsche Bank

And then, John, if I could, just as a follow-up, if we just take two steps back, it seems like a very good setting for International Paper right now. As you mentioned, price to be moving up on a global basis. We're seeing some signs that kind of costs are easing. Demand seems to be picking up maybe even a little better than a lot of us expected. So with that backdrop, what are the things that you worry about, that you're concerned about at this point?

John Faraci

Analyst · Mark Wilde with Deutsche Bank

OCC isn't going to fall to $200 a ton. for sure. The fiber cost increase that we got hit with in the first quarter was not anything other than weather-related and a contraction supply due to the plan in the lumber plywood markets. I think OCC has taken a pause, it probably got higher than it should have. So we're not going to see continuing falling prices in OCC. We don't know when they're going to level out. So we're thinking about that when we have a lot of flexibility in terms of how we run our system. So frankly for us, given the 65% versus fiber higher OCC prices over the long term are a good thing for us. The thing I think most of that, Mark, is getting the right people in place to the job that needs to be done around International Paper, which is different in Russia than it is in Consumer Packaging. It's different in xpedx than it is in coated paperboard. I think we've got the right people in place. We've made a number of moves at the end of the year, which I think enabled us to get some fresh thinking into a lot of businesses, get some new leadership in place. And that to me is, that's my job.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Richard Skidmore with Goldman Sachs.

Richard Skidmore - Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Analyst · Richard Skidmore with Goldman Sachs

I just wanted to follow up on the Industrial Packaging segment for a moment. Last quarter, you talked about a $300 million productivity benefits through the year, exiting 2010. I just wondered if you could update us on where you're at in that process and what you saw in the first quarter in terms of benefits and how you see that trend going through the year?

Carol Roberts

Analyst · Richard Skidmore with Goldman Sachs

Yes, Rick, this is Carol. We did make progress in the first quarter over a couple of fronts very specifically, and I'll give you the highlights. Our plan is pretty broad-based plan. Number one, was the fixed cost savings down in the mills system. And as we already comment on that, we successfully implemented that and that will flow to the bottom line. The second piece of our plan was clearly on the box side, driving further improvement in our box operation. People don't realize how much money actually get spend in the box side in making those productive, efficient, low-cost, is absolutely vital. So we did well there. The other two big areas that we have identified for this year, one was on the supply chain on our distribution costs. That's an area where we did not have a good quarter, mainly due to our low inventory levels and the challenges in our supply chain. But I'm very confident that we will get those average back on track as soon as we get our inventories to a manageable level. And the other area obviously is just in our mills system. We're transitioning from running slow and not pull to pretty much running full. We've made progress on our consumption in the quarter on things like fiber, energy, chemicals. We did not do as well on spending due to some reliability issues that John and Tim had mentioned. So at the end of the day, I believe we'll be on track. We exited quarters slightly behind. But I believe we're on track and our commitment is to hit that $300 million run rate on top of what we did last year by the end of the year. And a feel confident that we're going to be able to do that.

Richard Skidmore - Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Analyst · Richard Skidmore with Goldman Sachs

So you're still feel comfortable with the $300 million, if I heard that last statement correctly? And then second, just wanted to follow up on your prior statement about box pricing. I think you said that you're up $39 at the end of April and essentially moving on to the second price increase? Can you just elaborate on that $39 versus the $50 increase that was announced for January. And is that suggesting that there's $10 that's being left on the table or $10 that you are going to see show up in May?

Carol Roberts

Analyst · Richard Skidmore with Goldman Sachs

Yes, I speaking in the majority of it. We still have some contracts, some things that are lagging. We have some stuff that will come in July that had a longer lag, it's not a lot. The other thing that happened in the quarter, which we had some other contracts that some prices went down at the first of the year, a few dollars. So when you add it all up, I believe we're going to get very close, at the end of the day, to the full $50 when you take everything into consideration.

John Faraci

Analyst · Richard Skidmore with Goldman Sachs

I just want to comment because we also have the ag business work too because we got a big ag now.

Carol Roberts

Analyst · Richard Skidmore with Goldman Sachs

The agricultural piece, that pricing gets set by season. And so in the first quarter, because that price was happening through the quarter, some of those prices got set pre-season. And so that kind of comes in chunks as the commodities come online. So it's a little choppier, Rick, that's under the standard consumer packaged goods business or the industrial segment.

John Faraci

Analyst · Richard Skidmore with Goldman Sachs

But at the end of the day, we get the price..

Carol Roberts

Analyst · Richard Skidmore with Goldman Sachs

Absolutely.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Chip Dillon with Crédit Suisse. Chip Dillon - Crédit Suisse First Boston, Inc.: I thought we'd just spend a minute in the on the acquisition in China, the SCA box plants. I mean it looks like you said that with their 15 plants, you tripled your revenues there. And that would suggest that perhaps their throughput was a little bit more than yours on a legacy basis? And if you could just talk a little bit about how you expect what kind of board flexible do you have there, will you depend solely on domestically-sourced test liner or recycled liner board? Or will you actually be able to export board from the U.S. to help fiber those box plants?

John Faraci

Analyst · UBS

My sense, Chip, at least for now is we're going to be that core buyer of China, we have been. We are in Europe, we like that position. There's a lot of recycle capacity that's been committed to by the board producers over there. And they bring out all the capacity that we're talking about. We like being board buyer in Asia just like being a board buyer in Europe. And I wouldn't anticipate us bringing liner board in from the U.S. in a big way because the probably the low-cost provider of liner board into China right now than Russia. Now we finished the Bronx project, we're going to make liner board approximately to make the market full. And China is mostly recycled market, there's not a lot of virgin fiber that gets user now. Chip Dillon - Crédit Suisse First Boston, Inc.: And what you're saying by the ability to ramp up to $800 million, that's basically just with the sort of 27 box plant facility footprint you have now?

John Faraci

Analyst · UBS

SCA's plants are running about 40% of capacity. We have roughly $100 million box business and we acquired roughly a $250 million box business. So if you just kind of extrapolate, we're probably a little more than 50% of capacity in our plants because we haven't built in this as fast as SCA had. The markets over there are growing and 15% a year, pick the number. It's not going to take long for those plants to really start to ramp up in terms of capacity utilization. Chip Dillon - Crédit Suisse First Boston, Inc.: We've heard a lot in recent months about the difficulty in keeping up with export liner board orders. And in fact, people like perhaps yourselves or others that make liner turning away export business. Our condition still the same as we've been hearing?

John Faraci

Analyst · UBS

Yes, it's tugging. Stated all around the world and why would you sell export liner board at a price that's below your mill net in North America when demand is starting to increase in North America. So we're out there. And I'll let Carol comment on this, but we're out there getting our prices up around the world so that our margins are comparable in a mill net basis anyway where sell.

Carol Roberts

Analyst · UBS

Yes, we definitely constrained export production in the first quarter and will continue to do so in the second quarter. The demand is still strong. The deeds are there, prices are moving up. So that's a good thing.

John Faraci

Analyst · UBS

We've got the capacity to meet our customers planned needs over the cycle. And we made a footprint decision so we can carry a lot of excess capacity, which we think what we need. But as those market plays out, when we get modest but steady growth in North America of 2%, let's say, a year, we'll be in great shape to be able to meet our needs. What we want is to be able to supply our strategic customers but supply and demand are at a point where we don't have to sell product at lower margin somewhere we're not going to.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Claudia Hueston with JPMorgan. Claudia Hueston - JP Morgan Chase & Co: Maybe just building off that question, I just wondered if you've seen any change trade on the paper side of your business, just given the change in currency and somewhat what surprised you?

John Faraci

Analyst · Claudia Hueston with JPMorgan

I'd ask Mark Sutton, who runs our Paper business in North America and Brazil, to talk about that.

Mark Sutton

Analyst · Claudia Hueston with JPMorgan

Claudia, the only thing we saw probably partially related to currency was a bit more imports into Brazil in the first quarter than we had a normally seen in the past and than what we're expecting. As far as a Europe, I don't think there were any issues. And exports out of the U.S. were actually, as an industry, down and core IP down. But most of that was related to the inability to get fiber to meet all of our commitments. So the Brazil import piece was the only thing that I see from a potential currency influence the quarter. Claudia Hueston - JP Morgan Chase & Co: And then I was wondering if you could just comment on the visibility of your customers now and how you think it compares to what might be normal? have you seen any changes in the buying patterns or inventory management on their end or just any really noticeable change in mood?

John Faraci

Analyst · Claudia Hueston with JPMorgan

Our business is closest to lot of customers at xpedx. Maybe Mary Laschinger is just going to add some color on that.

Mary Laschinger

Analyst · Claudia Hueston with JPMorgan

Claudia, Mary Laschinger here. Claudia, I think what we're seeing, first of all, in the print side of our business is that I would characterize it as more stable and with some optimism in the marketplace. And again, we saw some improvement more or less focused in the east coast as a stronger region for us than in the West, but we are starting to see some greater demand coming across the country. But again of the print side, I'd characterize it as stable with some optimism. When we move over to packaging, we've actually seen a pretty healthy improvement in volume in packaging in our business across the country, more heavily focused in the Midwest. And the customers seem quite optimistic about the Packaging side of the business.

Timothy Nicholls

Analyst · Claudia Hueston with JPMorgan

Claudia, in the consumer packaging and our converting business that was really a bimodal quarter. We went from taking downtime in coated paperboard in January to being sold out in March. And we also experienced similar trends in our Shorewood business and in Food Service. So again, like John said, we're not ready to call it a recovery yet but our customers are feeling a whole lot better in March and April, probably sooner than we expected.

John Faraci

Analyst · Claudia Hueston with JPMorgan

Maybe the way to say it is to think about it as we're not calling euphoric robust recovery but it clearly is recovery that's starting to get more legs and more tentacles.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Peter Ruschmeier with Barclays Capital.

Peter Ruschmeier - Barclays Capital

Analyst · Peter Ruschmeier with Barclays Capital

John, I was hoping if you could update us on the Ilim strategy in the recently announced investment there? Is that presumably fiber that's going to go into China? But can you elaborate on your thoughts on the strategy?

John Faraci

Analyst · Peter Ruschmeier with Barclays Capital

Same strategy, Pete, that we had when we made the joint venture investment two plus years ago. The whole notion here was to build out the position in Siberia and modernize the facility in Western Russia so that we can reduce costs, improve product quality and expand capacity. But all got put on hold by about for a year, maybe 15 months, because of what happened in the end of 2008, 2009 because it's being financed off the balance sheet. We're basically going add call it $1.5 billion modernization program, the single biggest project, the single biggest piece being the pulp project at Rogers. About $700 million of that is about half of the overall program. Theres another investment that's underway or being studied or kind of finalized for a conference which is the facility that serves the Russian market in paper.

Peter Ruschmeier - Barclays Capital

Analyst · Peter Ruschmeier with Barclays Capital

I was curious to see your 9% headcount reduction at xpedx, pretty big number. Can you elaborate what you see going forward there? I we kind of through some of the rightsizing? Or do you view this as ongoing? How should we think about that?

John Faraci

Analyst · Peter Ruschmeier with Barclays Capital

I'll let Mary talk about xpedx and then I'll just make a comment about International Paper.

Mary Laschinger

Analyst · Peter Ruschmeier with Barclays Capital

As was reported, we did experience a 9% reduction in 2009. We continue to look at the business in terms of what's going to be the right structure as well as headcount going forward. I wouldn't anticipate at this time that we're going to see the kind of reduction we saw in 2009, but we'll continue to evaluate the business in accordance with the revenue of that we're being able to generate within the business.

John Faraci

Analyst · Peter Ruschmeier with Barclays Capital

Pete, we've submitted for paper perspective, we've got roughly 80% of revenues. We had eight or nine years ago with less than half the people. Now, I mean, no one likes to have a fewer jobs. I think it needs a lot of tough decision but at the end of the day, that's what we've done over the past eight years and we've done it systematically as opposed hypothetically. So we're going to continue to look for ways to get the job better in all of our businesses, with the big push on productivity and planning for attrition.

Peter Ruschmeier - Barclays Capital

Analyst · Peter Ruschmeier with Barclays Capital

John, I think you mentioned pretty heavy maintenance expense in 1Q, your slides indicate a little bit heavier in 2Q and I think you said first half is a 2/3 of the year. So what kind of a drop might we might expect from between 2Q and 3Q in terms of lower maintenance expense level?

John Faraci

Analyst · Peter Ruschmeier with Barclays Capital

I think that's in the appendix, isn't it, Tom?

Thomas Kadien

Analyst · Peter Ruschmeier with Barclays Capital

Yes, it's on Slide 27, Pete, in the Appendix.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Weintraub with Buckingham Research.

Mark Weintraub - Buckingham Research Group

Analyst · Mark Weintraub with Buckingham Research

If I'm getting a ride that downtime, that's like a $0.15 swing from second to third quarter, is that right, Tom?

Thomas Kadien

Analyst · Mark Weintraub with Buckingham Research

It's about $90 million, Mark.

Mark Weintraub - Buckingham Research Group

Analyst · Mark Weintraub with Buckingham Research

I thought you were more specific on this than I heard. But in terms of the pension funding, have you determined order of magnitude what you might contribute this year?

Thomas Kadien

Analyst · Mark Weintraub with Buckingham Research

We haven't made a determination yet. As you know, we don't have a funding requirement in 2010. We probably do have one in 2011 unless there's some changes in legislation. But we're looking at the potential voluntary contribution this year as part of our overall debt reduction plan. So we're thinking of balance sheet debt and pension combined and looking at the options we have for further debt reduction as we go through the year.

Mark Weintraub - Buckingham Research Group

Analyst · Mark Weintraub with Buckingham Research

What is striking, the price increases which you had with the fact that you do have input costs coming down and maintenance would be coming down, the free cash generation of things play out as hopefully they will, will get really very, very strong. You talked about dividend and share repurchase as a things would be sorting through. I mean is it feasible six-month we do see things are working out and hope for that would be something you'd be revisiting potentially. We'd be hearing more about it another step up in the dividend and/or share repurchase, recognizing that there are a number of factors that you alluded to that would help to determine what the mix, et cetera, might be?

Timothy Nicholls

Analyst · Mark Weintraub with Buckingham Research

Mark, it's something that we constantly look out. So yes, it will be tied to economic performance. It'll be tied to our earnings growth and our cash flow generation. I think 2010, you're right, 2010 is going to be a strong cash flow year for the company. So it's something we'll consider as we go through the year.

John Faraci

Analyst · Mark Weintraub with Buckingham Research

Think about on where we are on some of these valid uses of cash. Our balance sheet that is about where we think it ought to be. We still got a pension issue to deal with. That number becomes a moving target based on interest rates and return. So we do want to end up with an overfunded pension plan but we've got a couple of billion dollars over a several year period that we anticipate we're going to need to put the pension plan. So our cash would be used for that and it will also be used to go back insurance. We don't need to sit on $2 billion, $3 billion of cash.

Mark Weintraub - Buckingham Research Group

Analyst · Mark Weintraub with Buckingham Research

You guys struck me that was the one gaining factor was getting the cash in to deal with the pension before you would then be ready to potentially more aggressive because as you said, arguably, you would not need have even cut the dividend at all from a dollar had you known how things were playing out, which kind of raised the question of why you couldn't go right back to a dollar right now.

Timothy Nicholls

Analyst · Mark Weintraub with Buckingham Research

Yes, I think we moved the dividend at the right time. We moved it at the right amount from where we are, Mark.

John Faraci

Analyst · Mark Weintraub with Buckingham Research

And pension, we have more visibility on the legislation. And obviously, we have a $600 million, $700 million changing in that liability from an accounting standpoint just in one year. So we know we can move pretty significantly both ways. The dividend, Mark, is something we've just decided to take just the could have got all the way back to $1.01 when we thought that the right thing to do is to make a meaningful move and hopefully assigned to investors that we're feeling that 2009 is behind us. We've got a lot ahead of us.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of the George Staphos with Bank of America.

George Staphos

Analyst · the George Staphos with Bank of America

Could you update us at all in terms of how you're thinking about capital spending and investment longer term. I know you have the estimate for this year at $800 million, is that number perhaps move a little bit higher now as the platform is growing internationally?

Timothy Nicholls

Analyst · the George Staphos with Bank of America

We are moving higher this year. Most of the increase is focused on cost reduction, consumption reduction, projects towards that, quick return, quick payback types of opportunities that really we put off last year so we're going through the crisis. We've said for 12 to 18 months now, we think a more normalized level is probably around $1 billion of capital investment on average for the cycle versus D&A of about $1.5 billion. And I think it will be situational, we've learned through the crisis there might be some opportunities to be more efficient about how we invest given pricing on inputs, or components that go in. And so that's somewhere between $900 million and $1 billion on average a year through cycle.

Timothy Nicholls

Analyst · the George Staphos with Bank of America

I think that's the important thing, George. A little bit higher, lower, a lot lower last year. Maybe $1.1 billion, $1.2 billion, but we're committed to the discipline keeping well below depreciation, being very selective of where the capital goes. That kind of include some organic growth outside North America if and when those projects will be having a affect of returns.

George Staphos

Analyst · the George Staphos with Bank of America

If I relate that to John what you're saying earlier about $1.5 billion of free cash flow and it took your comment is being an average figure over the course of the cycle. That would then roughly translate if I assume nothing longer-term for pension funding and working capital to roughly about $250 million of average earnings power through the cycle. Does that figure sound about right given your long-term playing horizon? How should we think about that is that if that is the right number?

John Faraci

Analyst · the George Staphos with Bank of America

Your forecast, but not necessarily ours. The way we think about that, George, is what it's going to take to get $20 billion capital base, roughly $20 billion capital base across the capital returns our cycle. And our target is get a mid-cycle basis, which means less in the down market, more in the up market in 2011 or 2010. Certainly not anywhere near mid-cycle markets. So you can do your own math to figure out what the EPS is going to be, or 8% return on $20 billion of capital.

George Staphos

Analyst · the George Staphos with Bank of America

Relating to what you said before, last one, just the trade flow question maybe for Mark. One of the European companies is now saying recently that they are beginning to shift some cut size here to the U.S. I realized it's a big affect given how much of the market's driven by the big box retail, but have you seen any effect of that at all in the market or over the course of the year?

Mark Sutton

Analyst · the George Staphos with Bank of America

We haven't seen a significant impact. There is always some movement and it really tends to be tied into things that you mentioned, or that was mentioned earlier. One is currency and one is excess startup capacity in the market. So we haven't seen any noticeable impact from increased imports in cut size.

Operator

Operator

Your final question comes from the line of Mark Connelly with CLSA.

Mark Connelly - Credit Suisse

Analyst · CLSA

What assumptions do you have make about SCA in your existing container business in Asia to make the SCA acquisition accretive and when? And do you expect it to be the cost of capital in 2011. I'm just trying to get a sense of what kind of growth and assumptions you need to make that deal hit your own hurdles?

Thomas Cleves

Analyst · CLSA

Mark, let me use our box business that we've got into China right now as a proxy. It's a growing North of 15%. We got a number of a brand-new plants that we've built a lot of over the last couple of years. But we've got several plants I'd say are four years or older. If you look at those, their earnings north the cost of capital returns right now. And as we fill them up, they are cost of capital returns. The key to the into China is not overpay the capacity. And what's kind of unique is our EBITDA margins are about our ROI is, which is in my experience a bit unusual usual. But as long as you're paying the right price to build it or to buy it, we have the cost of capital in China, just like what we do in our non-integrated business in Europe.

Mark Weintraub - Buckingham Research Group

Analyst · CLSA

So would SCA accretive this year?

John Faraci

Analyst · CLSA

On the calculation, I don't know, Mark. We can take that off-line and kind of work it out.

Operator

Operator

And we'll now turn the call back over to Mr. Cleves for closing remarks.

Thomas Cleves

Analyst · CLSA

Thanks, Christi. We appreciate your help. Thanks, everybody for joining us for the call today. Investor Relations will be available for follow-up questions. With that said, I'm going to go to the airport and get on an airplane. I'll be back in Memphis midafternoon. But next we'll be in the office for immediate responses. Please go either one of us with additional questions. Thanks for joining today's call.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for participating today is International Paper 2010 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. You may now disconnect.