Good morning, and welcome to the Quad's third quarter conference call. [Operator Instructions] A slide presentation accompanies today's webcast and participants are invited to follow along, advancing the slides themselves. To access the webcast, follow instructions posted in the earnings release. Alternatively, you can access the slide presentation on the Investors section of Quad's website under the Events and Presentations link. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, that this event is being recorded. I'd like to turn the conference over to Katie Krebsbach, Quad's Investor Relations Manager. Katie, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. With me today are Joel Quadracci, Quad's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Tony Staniak, Quad's Chief Financial Officer. Joel will lead today's call with a business update, and Tony will follow with a summary of Quad's third quarter and year-to-date 2023 financial results, followed by Q&A. I would like to remind everyone that this call is being webcast and forward-looking statements are subject to safe harbor provisions as outlined in our quarterly news release and in today's slide presentation on Slide 2. Quad's financial results are prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. However, this presentation also contains non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted diluted earnings per share, free cash flow, net debt and debt leverage ratio. We have included in the slide presentation reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures. Finally, a replay of the call and the slide presentation will be available on the Investors section of quad.com shortly after our call concludes today. I will now hand over the call to Joel.

Thank you, Katie, and good morning, everyone. Beginning on Slide 3. In the third quarter, we were pleased to deliver consistent year-over-year EBITDA margins and $27 million of free cash flow despite a challenging revenue environment. Net sales declined compared to the same period in 2022, primarily due to lower print, paper logistics sales as well as the 2022 divestiture of our Argentinian print operations. We continue to pay down debt, strengthen our balance sheet and return capital to shareholders through additional share repurchases. We are on track to achieve full year 2023 guidance for adjusted EBITDA, free cash flow and debt leverage. And by the end of the year, we will have reduced debt by over $560 million or 55% since January 1, 2020. We are lowering our full year 2023 net sales guidance due to industry-wide print volume reductions in response to ongoing economic uncertainty, continued postal rate increases and the impact of rising interest rates on specific clients. At Quad, we have seen the greatest impact to categories most sensitive to rising interest rates, such as financial services, direct mail, including credit cards, insurance and loans. Tony will share more detail on our year-to-date net sales breakdown and financial guidance shortly. We are confident in our ability to manage for these near-term print volume challenges, along with long-term expected organic declines in certain product lines like retail inserts, due to our long-standing disciplined approach to managing all aspects of our business including treating all costs as variable and aligning our cost structure to revenue opportunities. At the same time, we continue to build momentum as a marketing experience company, and Quad is unparalleled in that we seamlessly bring together all these central resources, brands and marketers needed for frictionless, scalable marketing execution, as shown on Slide 4.…

Thanks, Joel, and good morning, everyone. On Slide 11, we show our diverse revenue mix. Net sales were $700 million in the third quarter of 2023, a 16% decline compared to the third quarter of 2022. On a year-to-date basis, net sales were $2.2 billion in 2023, a decline of 7% compared to 2022. Our net sales were impacted by industry-wide print volume reductions in response to continued economic uncertainty, postal rate increases and the impact of rising interest rates on specific clients. For example, on a year-to-date basis, direct mail has temporarily decreased from 14% of our total revenues to 11%. We expect direct mail growth in future years. Despite these headwinds, we have seen year-to-date increases in our net sales mix from segment share gains in magazines and catalogs, in Mexico due to increased education [Technical Difficulty] volumes exported to the United States and in our in-store signage product offering, continuing a multiyear trend of high revenue growth for our in-store team. Slide 12 provides a snapshot of our third quarter 2023 financial results. Adjusted EBITDA was $57 million in the third quarter of 2023 as compared to $69 million in the third quarter of 2022 and adjusted EBITDA margin declined slightly to 8.2% in the third quarter of 2023 compared to 8.3% in the third quarter of 2022. The decline was due to lower sales and lower pension income, partially offset by benefits from improved manufacturing productivity and savings from cost reduction initiatives. On a year-to-date basis, adjusted EBITDA was $168 million in 2023 compared to $173 million in 2022, while adjusted EBITDA margin improved from 7.4% to 7.7%. Adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.11 in the third quarter of 2023 as compared to $0.32 in the third quarter of 2022. On a year-to-date basis, adjusted…

[Operator Instructions] First question is from Kevin Steinke, Barrington Research Associates.

I wanted to start off with something that really stood out to me here is the flexibility of your business model, as you noted. The midpoint of the sales guidance, as I calculate it for 2023 came down by about 6%, but you were able to maintain the midpoint of your adjusted EBITDA guidance. So you talked about cost management and labor productivity and things like that. But maybe just talk a little bit about what you're able to do to adjust to quickly to maintain the profitability outlook despite the lower sales outlook and maybe any actions that you took in the quarter on the cost side?

Yes, Kevin, I'll take -- this is Joel. I'll take a stab at that and then Tony can fill in. But yes, I mean I'd like to say that Quad has to be very ambidextrous. We come from a disruptive industry on the print side, and at the same time, we're building a case that could actually be a disruptor on the marketing side. And so being blessed with being in the printing industry, we've had to be very good at adjusting to things that get thrown at us. And so we do try and keep -- have a mentality that all costs are variable. And so over time, as we've seen some of the expected decline in some of the areas like retail inserts or publications, we've been able to scale down the platform by -- we've unfortunately closing plants to adjust for it, but then realizing the value of those plants by selling the real estate to help pay down debt. Furthermore, I'd say one of the big significant drivers too was the great work done by the people on the floor because Tony mentioned, productivity is quite a bit up this year. And when you think about where the world was only a year or so ago with really tough environment for getting labor, we ended up putting a holistic approach on that and really accelerating a lot of our training. And so as we saw softness come into this market this year due to a lot of what's going on in the economy, the core part of the full-time equivalents, we're much more trained up as a group than before. And so that's another way that we've done it. And you look, I guess we're a lean enterprise group, and we always have been, and we're able to adjust very quickly. And I think that we always have been focused on being able to weather storms and take advantage of those, which is why we move so quickly employee cost out. I mean when the pandemic hit, we got out of panic mode within weeks when that happened that spring, so that we could continue running the business. And that was by making really tough decisions very quick and squeezing down. And so it's kind of built in our DNA, maybe partially because of where we come from, but also because I think we've got a very disciplined group when it comes to making sure we adjust for these times. Tony, am I missing any?

One thing I would just add, when we think about EBITDA, Kevin, is we've been focused on our pricing and making sure that we get the value that we provide to customers. So you're seeing a benefit come through the bottom line coming from in the inflationary times we've been able to focus on some price increases.

Well, and also, I think that as we provide multiple service products to people, we're getting paid for the value of that because any time we can do more than one thing for our client, we can actually help them pull cost out through workflow analysis. And really, the more they kind of expose to us, the more we can kind of look at content and figure out where a lot of the waste is and people are willing to pay for that because their savings is much greater than the value that they are paying us.

Okay. That's great commentary. So when I think about the change in the sales outlook, maybe just walk us through what's changed there? Was it primarily the direct mail piece that you highlighted? Or is it more broad-based than that? Maybe as you have in previous calls, maybe just touch on the sales trends you're seeing across the various product categories?

Sure. And I'd say that there's an overarching thing on top, which is really economic softness. We started seeing that from our client, as we got towards the summer as people are looking at fall. Even though retail numbers came out recently, those weren't adjusted for inflation. So if you look at absolute units sort of in CPG world and retail, it's actually down. So that's an overriding factor. But we try and break out with large-scale print, targeted print and integrated solutions. We do that to kind of show where the expected decline is, and that's in large-scale print. And so that declined as expected. I'd say retail interest may be a little bit faster pull back just because of the economic side, but we expect that to keep declining. In targeted print, this is the area that you mentioned, where catalogs, direct mail, packaging, in-store, these tend to really benefit from our MX strategy of the working experience company because when we're solving some of the brand problems upstream, they tend to want to then also engage us for engaging their consumers through these different channels. And the tough one here has been direct mail. And it's important to point that out because we don't look at this as one that's going to keep declining. We really focus on the highly personalized, data-driven direct mail, but we were down double-digit percent sales in that this year, and we saw that starting to materialize at the end of last year when interest rates went crazy. So things like personal lending, we were deep in financial. We had one big outfit that was exiting Consumer Banking, which was a significant player. And so I see that the blip here in sales, we certainly have some economic overhang. But in direct mail, that's all reversible as we continue to sell the value add that direct mail brings. In-store was up 12% because that is one of our fast-growing places in packaging hung in there relatively flat. The one that other place that is hitting us on revenue would be what the post office is doing. And when I look at targeted print, catalogs is the one that's most affected by this. We have a post office who thinks that they can fix their problem by just increasing prices as opposed to pulling cost out, and they've accelerated that a bit this year with our customers getting 2 increases in 1 year. And so in catalogs that -- they get affected quickly because they could pull back on their prospecting of catalogs. And so we saw some pullback there. But I'd say that there is an overall economic pullback that we've seen and marketing tends to see it first. And the direct mail piece is the one that I would point to for people to understand that we see that as a manageable category that's not about -- or continue to decline.

Okay. That's helpful. And so when I look at the updated sales guidance, you're still -- it would still imply a nice seasonal ramp in the fourth quarter in sales. So I guess, are you expecting or seeing a fairly normal sequential ramp-up related to holidays, but just, I guess, off of a lower base?

Yes. I mean, at this point in the year, a lot of that stuff, our customers are pretty locked and loaded. There is some ebb and flow in it, and specifically, maybe between months, sometimes. But December is one that kind of sort of materializes later in the game, but we feel very good about where things are at for the rest of the year.

Okay. Any thoughts -- I know you haven't given guidance for next year, but just beyond the end of this year, do you think, I guess it's dependent on the economy, but how do you think volumes might trend in the industry. I suppose interest rates will continue to be a headwind in the financial services area, but do you think there's some pent-up marketing spend that starts to come back? Or it's just going to continue to follow like what the consumer is doing or -- just I mean, any thoughts on -- from your industry experience, how you might expect volumes to trend or react in this environment?

Well, I think, if you give me a glimpse of your economic crystal ball that I could answer it better. But yes, I think it has a lot to do with how this plays out. I mean, even like in the financial community, you have that shock of interest rates, but ultimately, they still got to market to their customers, right? So they freeze up really quickly, but ultimately, you have to get back to doing it. So I'd see probably some relative return to being out there. In terms of volumes, hard to predict at this point, just given the economic headwinds, but we're not kind of waiting around, like hope is an operating strategy. Even in direct mail, we've had a lot of strategy of how we're going to grow that in the future. And unfortunately, one of that -- and we just closed a plant, which helps with the volume shortfall now but strategically allows us to really shore up and create more opportunity for the type of direct mail we sell in the future. So I think we always look at all these categories when there's a softness like that, and we don't wait to make sure that we can manage through it. But on the sales side, we've got a ramp-up of a lot of stuff that's happening on the marketing experience category. And that's why we keep trying to show these case studies because these are not bland brands. I mean Titleist is a major brand here, and we feel really good about those wins because a lot of those things we show you, our wins that are, yes, it's maybe agency of record, but ultimately, we believe, will create a lot more downstream revenue and is normally proven out that way. And remember, any time you get down into targeted print from integrated solutions, you're dealing much bigger invoices. So we've been very good at bringing in a lot of really good talent. I talked about Josh Lowcock, who's helping on the media side and the data side and analytics. But we're going to gear up very quickly to go after a lot of new brands who never knew Quad. So despite what our normal customers are seeing economically in 2024, we expect to keep feeding it with new seeds.

And Kevin, I mean you've now participated in a few of our calls, you know that during uncertain economic times, we're going to continue to focus on strength of the balance sheet, debt reduction. We talked about going -- further decreases on debt reduction, getting below 2.0 leverage as we look out into 2024. So yes, as we'll continue to invest in growth as Joel has said, we're going to continue to support shareholders. We can do all that because of the strong free cash flow that we provide.

Yes, absolutely. That's a great point, Tony. And so -- and you did mention there, and I wanted -- I was planning to ask about this, but the -- you highlighted a couple of nice new wins in your slide deck. But maybe just talk about the overall pipeline for your agency solutions and how the messaging around your unique end-to-end integrated marketing solutions is being received in the current economic environment.

Yes, it's actually being received well. I think that it goes to the ecosystem that's out there for brands and how they market it is, it's fairly broken. Like we always say, it's not very integrated. And in one of my answers before I mentioned, the more a client allows us to look at their process, their content, how they go to market, the more we can help integrate those processes, not just in how they would interact with us in producing it versus a big holding company, but also within their own 4 walls. We're very good at helping them squeeze the cost out that, that can happen because of cost takeout. So it's been received very well. And I'd say that I always believe that never waste a soft environment because that's when a lot of our marketers are under more pressure. It's under more pressure to try and find audience, convert them to customers, but also under more pressure to find cost takeout. And so they tend to want to listen a lot quicker in a downturn, but our marketing team has done an outstanding job over the past 2 years of making us known to a whole group of clients who never knew us before. And so we feel very good about the growth of the pipeline and the types of services we're being asked to do and the fact that the integration part is playing out. And so again, sometimes it takes a little while for someone to start with being an AOR, but then cascade down into us doing in-store or packaging for them. But when they do that, that's when you start to see the revenue pop from each of the accounts. So like I said -- we're very ambidextrous. Yes, I'm like a little disappointed that on the print side, we have to manage for some pullback, but I'm super excited on the marketing experience side because it's really reign true to what people are looking for.

Okay. Great. I just ask maybe a couple more here. But -- when you talk about the increases in postage rates and how your clients have reacted to that, you specifically called out the catalog piece. Do you think that's something they eventually adjust to or you work with them to help them out on that side? I know you already do that in terms of trying to lower their postage expenses. But how do you think that situation ultimately plays out or resolves?

Yes, I think it's twofold. When you get a rapid increase in your biggest cost, you get a quick reaction until you can adjust for it. So historically, when you see the post office do increases that are outsized, you see a quick pullback. And then ultimately, though, people still have to market, right? So they adjust, they get smarter about who they're mailing to. They really start to focus more on what's your response per piece and how can we make that better. That all lends to understanding your data better of audience and who you're going to and what you're sending to them. And then -- which plays into all the things we're doing about helping people with analytically figuring out what's the best use of their dollar. But on the operational side, we do a lot of stuff to offset the post office over a lot of time. We significantly offset current postal costs through all the co-mailing that we do. And we're really excited because we're rolling out a whole new product right now that might -- not might, will, help our clients significantly offset more of this postal increase that's going on. It takes time to ramp up because some people need to test into it, but we're rolling it out with publications right now, and we expect to -- as fast as possible to get the catalogers on task as well. So we -- it really pushes us to be innovative. Because I think the key point is people have to remember, we do most of the post offices work. We do all the sortation, we combine the customers, and we drop it to the almost to the closest post-office to your house, and that's where the post office picks up. And so that's where we really push process innovation to help them offset it. So it's a little bit of both in terms of your question.

Yes, and the majority of cost that someone pays to print is postal, right? So this is a big item. So all the solutions that Joel talked about and the scale that we bring, that gives us an advantage in helping businesses be the most efficient they can be in getting things delivered to end destinations.

All right. Yes. Understood. So just 2 more here. Anything to highlight in your international markets and what's going on there? Saw decline year-over-year. But is that seeing the same kind of headwinds as you're experiencing in the U.S., I guess?

Well, quite frankly, where we see the softness would be in Europe because Europe has obviously big challenges now and ahead of it. But if you look at Mexico, that is being tremendously successful for us, and we're continuing to actually grow that organically. And so we've got into some new product lines. We've signed up a lot of new customers. We're adding a new very large press in Mexico, has to be up and running by February or our clients will be upset, but it's on schedule. But that's actually a great story. So Mexico is a very good highlight offset by some of the softnesses in Europe.

Okay. And then lastly, Tony, as we think about the restructuring and impairment charge line, they were up a bit sequentially in the third quarter from the second quarter. Have you taken additional actions that would lead to a bit higher charges than you had been previously expecting here? Or just how should we think about that trending in the fourth quarter?

Sure. So if I start with the third quarter on that, a portion of the expense that you saw come through that line was impairment related, about half of it, impairment-related noncash in nature. So third quarter was actually from a cash perspective, the lowest restructuring quarter thus far. As we look out in the fourth quarter, we are anticipating some restructuring expenses. We continue to address capacity needs in our production platform that will lead to cost there.

Operator?

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Joel for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. I want to close by reiterating my confidence in our strategy and in our role as a marketing experience company. Our integrated marketing offering continues to be a competitive differentiator and a key driver behind our company's overall momentum going forward. At the same time, we remain focused on proactively managing all aspects of our business for long-term strength and stability and shareholder value creation. With that, thank you again, and have a good day. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.

Conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.