John Faraci
Analyst · Goldman Sachs
Okay, Tim, thanks. I'm on Slide 24 now. And looking ahead to the fourth quarter, we expect to continue to generate strong earnings and free cash flow but at seasonally lower levels than the third quarter, and that's why a lot of this chart you're looking at shows yellow. We're into the fourth quarter, and we all know from experience that November, December and January are usually the seasonally slowest quarters in our industry. We expect Paper Packaging volumes to decline in line with those seasonal demand trends. We expect stable Paper Packaging pricing. Maintenance outages are going to be about $30 million higher at fourth quarter than they were in the third. We do expect higher OCC costs because we ended the quarter with higher OCC costs, and we expect slightly higher cost, cornstarch costs in the fourth quarter. xpedx earnings, like the rest of our Paper Packaging businesses in North America, will also experience a seasonal slowdown after we get through October. And we expect stable contributions from Ilim, again remember, that's on a one quarter lag. And obviously, since we completed the last of our forest land sales, Forest Products' earnings are going to be off by $50 million. So this is the last slide I have here, and this just summarizes our third quarter results and our outlook for the fourth quarter. Volumes continue to recover in line with economic recovery and finished stronger at the end of the third quarter. Our average selling prices increase as the quarter progressed, reflecting a continued realization of our announced price increases. Our mills and converting plants continue to operate very well. Input costs, primarily OCC and chemicals, at the end of the quarter were flat but slightly higher than we expected. We've capitalized and continue to capitalize on the restructuring efforts, and that shows up in our increased margins and in generation of very strong earnings and free cash flow. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, we expect to be strong but seasonally slower as I said. We anticipate that the fourth quarter performance will basically be similar to the third quarter after we adjust for the seasonal volume declines and the higher maintenance outages, some minimal input cost inflation and the impact of the recurring items, which we talked about, including the land sales and the bad debt recovery. So I'll just sum up saying, we're very pleased with our postrecession progress. Our earnings and free cash flow come back faster and stronger than prior recovery periods despite the fact that this latest recession was the deepest and longest in 80 years. And I call 2010 a transition year, not a full recovery year. So as Tim said, I think we're setting the stage for a continued improvement in earnings, free cash flow and returns as we go into 2011. And with that, Tom, I guess we'll open it up for questions.