Rayonier Advanced Materials - Q4 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, and welcome to the RYAM fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be open to questions with instructions to follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the call over to your host, Mickey Walsh, Treasurer and Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you, Mr. Walsh. You may begin.

Mickey Walsh (Treasurer and VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you and good morning. Welcome again to RYAM's fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Scott Sutton, our President and CEO, and Marcus Moeltner, our CFO and Senior Vice President of Finance. Last evening, we released our earnings report and accompanying presentation materials, which are available on our website at ryam.com. These materials provide key insights into our financial performance and strategic direction. During today's discussion, we may make forward-looking statements subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks are outlined in our earnings release, SEC filings, and on slide 2 of the presentation. We will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures to offer perspective on our operational performance. Reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measures can be found in our presentation on slides 21-24.

We appreciate your participation today and your ongoing interest in RYAM. I'll now turn the call over to Scott.

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Thanks, Mickey. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Since stepping into this role, I've interfaced with many RYAM employees and visited every site. I'll start with three things. First, I mean, what a great team we have. I am quite lucky to have the opportunity to hold hands with the RYAM employees and make us the absolute leader in cellulose and derivatives. Second, we have exceptional capabilities and adaptability to produce the broadest portfolio of cellulose products. Third, we have urgent work to do to get out of the ditch. I'm gonna keep my prepared remarks focused on slides 4 through 7. As you can see on slide 4, our free cash flow in 2025 was -$88 million, and we also carry plenty of high-cost debt. That combination is not sustainable.

Priority 1 on slide number 5 is simple: deliver positive free cash flow in 2026. Every group in the company is executing on priority 1 as a mission-critical activity. We are not just aiming to get out of the ditch. We are aiming to exit 2026 with significant momentum with a heavy focus on execution. That brings me to priority 2, assert our leadership and lift our value equation in Cellulose Specialties. We're making great progress. 85% of the specialties business is now arranged at an average price increase of 18% over 2025, with expected volume loss of about 20% compared with 2025. The other 15% is still in discussion and may not be decided until the back half of this year.

If we are successful in those discussions, the remaining 15% will only come at an average price increase significantly higher than the 18% level. A great characteristic of RYAM is that everyone wants to contribute to our success, and that shows up in priority number 3. You should expect every business to improve EBITDA in 2026 relative to 2025 through a broad playbook of leadership initiatives, active portfolio management. In other words, leveling up and leveling down market segment categories to maximize contribution profit and new product commercializations across the portfolio shown on slide number 6. Slide number 6 shows the new product work across the company. The point is that one business does not carry the load. The point is that we have multiple levers, and we expect every business to take a step forward.

We will execute our way to the outcome shown on slide number 7. The summary is every business improves EBITDA over 2025. We bridge a near zero EBITDA first quarter as our leadership initiative kicks in. We deliver a full-year EBITDA substantially better than 2025, along with solid positive free cash flow. We intend to hit 2027 running hard. That's the plan, and it's what we're executing right now. Operator, please open the call for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw any questions, please press star 1 again. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Daniel Harriman from Sidoti. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Daniel Harriman (Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Scott, congratulations on the new role. I have two questions that I'll start with, and then I'll get back into the queue. Scott, you know, setting aside the near-term noise and the stock move following last week's AIP announcement, I'm curious to know what you've observed internally that gives you confidence in the company's underlying earnings power and the long-term shareholder value that the company can produce. Then as you assert leadership in Cellulose Specialties, how should we think about a ceiling for pricing in that market? Do you think there's a point at which higher prices could invite some competitors to add capacity over time?

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Yeah. Okay. Thanks a lot, Daniel. you know, great to be here. I mean, you know, I think early observations are that our best opportunity really comes from the team. I mean, the team here is incredible. They've been able to flip to an execution model almost overnight and really drive the free cash flow that we need. I know that the team's capable of more, and you should expect to see more. I'll just say the other surprise and, you know, I mean, it's really a positive surprise is there's more value here than I thought. We have significant opportunity to execute on that. We're updating our forward plans. You should expect to see more details about those forward plans on our upcoming earnings calls.

You know, those plans will be built mainly around, you know, 4 themes. Hopefully, we get a chance to talk more about those 4 themes today. I think, Daniel, that was your first question. The second one, you know, the price increase question and how much might be too much. I actually think the best question is maybe what kind of price increase is necessary just to keep really the remaining domestic producers of Cellulose Specialties in business and healthy. If you think about it, you know, before we have achieved this 18%, which by the way, leaves us far, far short of reinvestment economics. Before we achieve that, if you look at the last 4 years, you've seen specialty sites and businesses shut down in the state of Washington.

They've shut down in Tennessee. They've shut down in Florida. We also permanently ceased production of dissolving wood pulp in our Témiscaming facility. You're really left with, you know, two domestic sites, and those two sites are both RYAMs. We have the capability to fully supply the whole domestic market, but we're not. In fact, we're kind of set up now as an export facility, and it's, you know, really because of so many subsidized imports coming in. I guess that's a long way to say that, you know, we've got a long way to go before we get to reinvestment economics and really encourage anybody else to expand or enter the market.

Daniel Harriman (Equity Research Analyst)

Really appreciate that color, Scott. Thanks again.

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Sure.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Matt McKellar from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Matt McKellar (VP)

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I'd like to ask, first, I mean recognizing that the process seems to have played out before you joined the company, can you maybe provide some perspective around the recent filing that indicated you'd rejected a potential offer? Maybe with that, speak to why you see, you know, continuing to progress as an independent company as the superior option to that offer. Thanks very much.

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, hey, Matthew. You know, I'm probably not gonna comment on a specific shareholder or any specific offer except what I will say is, you know, we have plans that will deliver substantially more value. I think a good reference point for you in terms of that target is maybe my inducement agreement. That sets a place that, you know, I think and the team thinks that we can, you know, get to. You're gonna hear more about those plans as we're updating them in upcoming earnings calls. I know I just answered Daniel's question by saying, you know, that it'd be good to talk about some of those themes today. We have 4 of them. Maybe I just outline them here since it's already come up twice.

Those four themes are really based on the following. I mean, number one, we're gonna have leadership initiatives where we go out and extract the most value we can from the landscape that's there. Those are gonna be a lot more sophisticated than what we're doing today. We're sort of using a blunt instrument to lift value today. Those will be more specific and sophisticated, just like, you know, we'll look at nitration grade cellulose into propellants, particularly for, you know, the U.S. military. That may be some initiative we work on, and you should expect to hear about playbooks set up around that. The second theme is that we're gonna get a lot more skilled at leveling up and down across all our product groups. If you think about the product groups across cellulose, you know, you're familiar with them.

There's acetate-grade, ether grade, nitration grade, and so on. It also includes viscose-grade, fluff grade, paperboard grade as well. We're not going to keep our specialty capacity reserved and not operating while we go out and run an initiative. Nor will we run it and just push material into a leadership market. Some of those areas we have a 30% market share. Some of those areas we have a 3% market share. We're gonna run our assets all the time and go in and out of those different market areas as necessary to maximize contribution. You can almost think of it as like a, if you watch professional golf, you can think of it as a leaderboard.

You know, if you like F1, the F1 leaderboard, NASCAR leaderboard, you know, you're gonna see which markets we're going in and out of move up and down that scale as we fully run our assets all the time without damaging where we have a leadership position. So in other words, in those 30% market share areas. The third theme of that plan will be around, you know, new products, new cousins of the products we have, new tweaks on those products to deliver maybe what others can't. And then finally, the fourth theme, you know, we'll have a very active idea pipeline across the whole company that always offsets inflation. So those are the main themes of the plan that you should expect to hear more about. I mean Marcus, anything to add or?

Marcus Moeltner (CFO and SVP of Finance)

Yeah, Matt, another fifth that I'd add that is very complementary to the items that Scott covered is, you know, that improved performance based on execution on those themes will position RYAM for refi to really address the capital structure and drive down our interest expense and fixed charges. Very complementary in nature and fits well.

Matt McKellar (VP)

Great. Thanks for all the commentary, Scott. Sorry?

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Did we answer your question, Matthew?

Matt McKellar (VP)

Yeah. That was helpful, Scott. Thank you very much. Maybe next for me, then I'll jump back in the queue. Could you just touch on demand conditions and I guess, market conditions. You're seeing a couple of CS products. Maybe first in ethers, one of your competitors, I think, recently called out it was seeing increased competition from Chinese CLP producers in European markets. Are you seeing something similar? If so, can you speak to how significant this phenomenon is and how it's affecting the market? Then second, you mentioned nitrocellulose in your previous remarks. Could you just give us a sense of what conditions in that market are like with some of the geopolitical events we're seeing? Thanks very much.

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Yeah, sure. I mean, look, you know, ethers-grade cellulose, you know, it is challenged a bit. It's particularly challenged in Europe, but it's mainly because of, you know, the ethers coming out of China. In other words, our customers' products are under attack, and therefore, their demand for ethers-grade cellulose is less. You know, I will say, even with that, we've still been able to achieve that near 20% price increase across ethers in Europe, which, you know, I think is quite different than what others have said. Again, it's just a demonstration that, you know, these products can command more value even when there is demand pressure and even when others, you know, may have said that pricing is actually going down. I mean, that's a testament to our team, I think.

You know, your, the other part of that, the nitration-grade cellulose, yeah, there's lots of new inquiries around that, I would say. There's lots of demand coming from domestic producers of propellants as well. I would say that's an area where we've been able to achieve more than that 18% price increase that we quoted in the prepared remarks.

Matt McKellar (VP)

Thanks very much. I'll get back in queue.

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

All right.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Dmitry Silversteyn from Water Tower Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Dmitry Silversteyn (Senior Research Analyst)

Good morning, gentlemen, and Scott, welcome to RYAM. Quick question. There, there's been some discussion about, not discussion, but you announced that you're not gonna be participating in the energy project in Georgia. There's been some issues with Tartas plants as far as skipping production and getting the raw material sufficient to produce the Bioethanol business there. Can you talk a little bit about your strategy for Biomaterials broadly, and then maybe more specifically of how these decisions are impacting the BioNova joint venture?

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Yeah, sure. Hey, Dmitry. Good to meet ya. Look, I would say just broadly across Biomaterials, I mean, it's an important business for us today. It's an important part of our growth story in the future. I would just say that it's really one contributor to our growth. You know, if you think back to the slide that we had put in the earnings deck, you know, you see new products or new cousins across every business. That's what you should expect to see, you know, going forward. We're gonna be talking much more about an integrated model across Cellulose Specialties, commodities, and Biomaterials that sort of gets run under the same value creation model, and all of those items will contribute to our growth.

Here, if you go back to the leveling up, leveling down, in other words, like the NASCAR leaderboard that I just talked about before. By running Tartas much more and much stronger, not only are we able to get the value we want in specialties by being able to hold out and not push volume into that leadership market, of course, we're able to access, you know, other product groups like Fluff, but at the same time, that provides an increased feedstock that goes into the Biomaterials business, and in particular, it goes into BioNova there, and we sell more ethanol, and we sell more, you know, lignosulfonates as well. We're actively working on a plan to run Tartas harder. We have basically a crisis management team, and we're having success in doing that.

Dmitry Silversteyn (Senior Research Analyst)

Understood. Thank you. Then the second question, to follow up on your remarks about pricing getting so low that even an 18% price increase still doesn't put you at reinvestment economics. There's been a, you know, antidumping case that you filed against Brazilian and North European importers. I think that's been positively decided, but it hasn't been adjudicated yet. Can you talk about sort of where you think or when you think the remedies are going to come in to allow you to restore pricing in North America?

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Yeah, I will. I mean, by the way, I mean, we're going down a path of restoring prices with or without, you know, the antidumping and the countervailing duties case. It's just that success in those cases would certainly help us close the remaining 15% of business likely sooner than we otherwise would. Success in those dumping cases would also make our 2027 improvement and next steps in value likely better as well. The situation around those, and I'll just start with the countervailing duties case. There's likely, and there will be, we believe, a preliminary determination of those duty rates later this month. You know, just as a reminder, you know, that applies to exports out of Brazil from the subsidized state-sponsored producer that has sort of taken over the North American market.

Those, we believe, will come in March. The antidumping duties, you know, are applicable to both Brazil and Norway, and we believe that there'll be a preliminary determination of those rates in May. By the way, those things are stackable. In other words, the countervailing duties and the antidumping duties can stack on top of one another, as could other things around tariffs as well if they were enacted. You know, that's the status of the duties.

Dmitry Silversteyn (Senior Research Analyst)

Understood. Thank you very much. I'll get back into the queue.

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Sure.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Daniel Harriman from Sidoti. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Daniel Harriman (Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. Thanks again. Just a quick follow-up. Scott, we've talked a good amount on specialties and Biomaterials, but I'm curious to know, with the new product initiatives and cost actions underway within the Paperboard and High-Yield Pulp businesses, how do you see them fitting into the company portfolio longer term? Specifically, do you still see them as potential divestiture candidates, or is there a role for them longer term in the RYAM portfolio?

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Yeah, no, thanks for the question. You know, I would just say across all of RYAM's portfolio, you know, we're not selling any business, and we're not closing any assets. All of them right now are certainly sources of improvement for us, and we expect to improve them all. You know, both the paperboard business and the High-Yield Pulp business, you know, look, they're certainly challenged, and, you know, they're still absorbing new capacity, particularly in paperboard, but we have new products there that we're being successful at commercializing. The source of improvement in 2026 over 2025 for paperboard will be those new products.

One is associated with an, you know, oil and grease-resistant board, and the other one is a foldable freezer board, all of which can carry, you know, a unique set of printing and coatings on them. That will be the source of improvement. We expect to do more volume in Paperboard as that other capacity is getting absorbed. You know, High-Yield Pulp, yep, there's a lingering oversupply issue there as well, but we also have a significant new product that is under customer testing, and we've sold some trial quantities there already. We'll expect to see price, you know, start to move back up as that oversupply issue gets addressed.

Daniel Harriman (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thanks again, Scott. I really appreciate it.

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Yep, sure.

Operator (participant)

For any additional questions, please press Star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Matthew McKellar from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Matt McKellar (VP)

Thanks again for taking my questions. Scott, you made an interesting comment there about a more integrated model across CS commodities and even biomaterials. Could you maybe expand on that a bit? You know, I think the current segmentation has helped make clear there are products with very different margins within your business. Does that segmentation maybe mask to some degree that commodity pricing is, you know, very outside your control, and maybe you need higher CS margins still to justify, you know, continued investments? I guess, would you even make an argument that maybe the commodity side has become structurally more challenging, and with that, you know, again, that kind of would suggest CS margins need to go higher? Thanks.

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Yeah. Yeah, sure. I mean, look, you know, our forward model is gonna be one value creation model in this area. You know, you look at the scale and scope of our assets, we've gotta be successful on every kind of product that can come out of those assets. You know, whether it's the 7 or 8 market segments that we previously classified as specialties, or whether it's the 3 or 4 segments that we previously classified as commodities, or whether it's the 4 or 5 other segments that, you know, we've called Biomaterials. We're gonna be setting those assets, and we're gonna be setting our market participation strategy in whatever configuration gives us the most contribution at the time. Sometimes we're gonna, you know, we're gonna be running more fluff and more viscose. That's just like today.

I can tell you for 2026, our highest volume product by far is Fluff Pulp. You know, that's because we're going through this leadership initiative, and we're able to not rush that leadership initiative, not push, you know, production out into a market where we're trying to increase the value of it. It's serving us very well in doing that. You know, you also heard me speak about Tartas. For the Biomaterials, the, you know, the, the co-product, or the black liquor that comes off the production of the other serves as the feed for that. We can balance all that together instead of sort of isolating those and showing isolated results. It doesn't really matter what we produce, we're just gonna be showing a better and better result each time.

Marcus Moeltner (CFO and SVP of Finance)

Yeah. Matt, as you know, our breadth in production capability, as Scott mentioned, we can make a myriad of products. We've got a sulfite and Kraft process. We've got hardwood and softwood capabilities. We're just gonna look to optimize that contribution margin across our footprint while driving down absolute fixed costs, right? We must drive down fixed costs and be more profitable across the footprint.

Matt McKellar (VP)

Great. Thanks very much for that perspective. Last question from me. It was interesting to see your paperboard volumes and prices increase sequentially in Q4. Would you attribute that mostly to the introduction of the Freezerboard product you mentioned previously? Is there anything else we should understand about your results for that business? I guess with the recently announced closure of a competitor's SBS mill in Quebec, do you see opportunities to potentially win some attractive business there that could further support results? Thanks.

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Yeah. Yeah, I think that, and maybe Mark has a comment more. I mean, there's some mix issue there. We were successful with the freezer board, you know, new product introduction as well because you're speaking about the third quarter of last year compared to the fourth quarter.

Marcus Moeltner (CFO and SVP of Finance)

Yeah. I'll add to that, Matt. There's an element of mix as it relates to quality as well. Better productivity and better quality at the plant results in less calls, that's gonna drive your mix as well. We've seen the plant performance, better and improved.

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Hey, hey, Matt, ask your second question again.

Matt McKellar (VP)

Sure. I guess with the closure of a competitor's SBS mill in Quebec, do you see some opportunities to win business that could further support results in that segment? Thanks.

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Yeah. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I think there's opportunities, but you know, at the same time that's going on, you know, we are having to absorb the new capacity up in the Northeast U.S. as well. So it sort of, you know, may be helping offset the negative from that.

Matt McKellar (VP)

Okay. Fair enough. Thanks very much. I'll turn it back.

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

All right.

Operator (participant)

We have no further questions. I would like to turn the call back to Scott Sutton for closing remarks.

Scott Sutton (President and CEO)

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, thanks. I mean, there's just a couple things I'd like to add here at the end, maybe things that didn't really come up. You know, we did comment that we still have, you know, 15% of the expected Cellulose Specialties business to place. You know, I just wanted to relay that I think we have options for that. I mean, clearly the first option is to get that in the specialties area. You know, it's mainly a shortage in the acetate area, and it's mainly a shortage in the U.S. You know, all I would say there is it's gonna take some time to be successful, but I would hate to really be the last man standing there, you know, like maybe the U.S. tow producers are gonna be.

It's sort of like there's a game of musical chairs, and someone is gonna be left standing without a chair, and, you know, we're gonna see where that goes, and that's why I made my earlier comments that, you know, that remaining 15% is only gonna come at a higher price increase than the 18% that, you know, we've already achieved. You know, the other option that we have there, if we're not successful at getting that remaining 15% is we'll run our, you know, NASCAR leaderboard strategy, and, you know, we're already practicing at that some.

Some will level up and level down as necessary, you know, we'll go do some more fluff business where we only have a 3 or 4% global market share. We can enter that market, you know, basically without damaging the pricing profile of it. You know, I think that's something that didn't come up, but it's important because how we manage that is important to our EBITDA profile going forward through the rest of 2026. Okay. Look, I mean, you know, with that, I guess I'll just end where we began. You know, I'll just say look what. I mean, what a great team we have. We have a lot of value here. We have really urgent work to do. Our priorities are really clear.

Deliver positive free cash flow in 2026. We're gonna assert our leadership and lift value in Cellulose Specialties. We're gonna improve EBITDA across every business. Look, we're executing on that now. We intend to exit 2026 with significant momentum and hit 2027 running really hard. You should also expect us to continue to update these plans where we hinted on the four themes that they will contain. Marcus added a fifth very important value creation theme to that as well. You know, that's what we'll be talking about in our upcoming earnings calls. I mean, with that, I'll just say, you know, thanks a lot for your questions, and thanks a lot for your interest in RYAM.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.