Sylvamo - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Q3 2025 delivered stronger volumes and improved operations: net sales $846M, diluted EPS $1.41, adjusted operating EPS $1.44, and adjusted EBITDA $151M (18% margin). Management cited 7% q/q volume growth and better operational performance, alongside $60M capital returns ($42M buybacks, $18M dividends).
• Versus Wall Street consensus (S&P Global), revenue modestly beat while EPS modestly missed: Revenue consensus $835.7M*, EPS consensus $1.50*; actuals were $846.0M and $1.44. The miss was driven by price/mix pressure in Europe, partially offset by volume gains in Latin America and North America.
• Q4 2025 outlook guides adjusted EBITDA to $115–$130M, with price/mix down $20–$25M, volume up $15–$20M, operations and other costs up $5–$10M, and planned maintenance outage expense up $18M; net income guided to $39–$49M.
• Corporate actions include a new $150M buyback authorization (Sep 15) and a limited‑duration shareowner rights plan adoption (Nov 10) following Atlas Holdings’ termination of the cooperation agreement—potential governance and stock reaction catalysts.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• 7% q/q sales volume growth and improved operations drove adjusted EBITDA to $151M with an 18% margin; “Our team delivered 7% sales volume growth quarter‑over‑quarter and improved operational performance” — CEO Jean‑Michel Ribiéras.
• Significant cash returns: $42M buybacks at an average price of $44.74 and $18M dividends; year‑to‑date through October total cash returns of $155M (repurchases $82M, dividends $73M).
• Segment improvement: Europe reduced losses q/q (operating profit −$21M vs −$38M in Q2), Latin America rebounded to $35M OP, and North America increased to $84M OP, aided by lower outage costs and volume recovery.

What Went Wrong

• Price/mix headwinds: −$14M impact q/q, “primarily driven by paper and pulp prices in Europe,” reflecting ongoing pricing pressure and challenged demand in Europe.
• Europe still negative: adjusted EBITDA −$11M and margin −6%, as pulp and UFS prices remain under pressure; demand down 5% YoY through September despite some late‑quarter pulp price recovery.
• Higher effective tax rate: reported ETR 35% vs 25% in Q2 due to earnings mix; excluding special items, ETR was also 35% (up from 28% in Q2), modestly weighing on EPS.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Sylvamo Corporation's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. As a reminder, your conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the call over to Hans Bjorkman, Vice President, Investor Relations. Sir, the floor is yours.

Hans Bjorkman (VP of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Tina. Good morning, and thank you for joining our Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Our speakers this morning are Jean-Michel Ribiéras, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; John Sims, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; and Don Devlin, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Slides two and three contain important information, including certain legal disclaimers. For example, during this call, we will make forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. We will also present certain non-US GAAP financial information. Reconciliations of those figures to US GAAP financial measures are available in the appendix. Our website also contains copies of the earnings release as well as today's presentation. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jean-Michel.

Jean-Michel Ribiéras (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Hans. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. I'll start on slide four with our third quarter highlights. Our uncoated freesheet sales volume increased quarter over quarter by 7%. Our teams also executed well, resulting in improved operational performance. We returned $60 million in cash to shareholders by distributing $18 million via the third quarter dividend and repurchasing $42 million in shares. Our board also approved a new $150 million share repurchase authorization in the quarter. Let's move to the next slide. Slide five shows our third quarter key financial metrics. We earned adjusted EBITDA of $151 million with a margin of 18%. Free cash flow was $33 million, and we generated adjusted operating earnings of $1.44 per share. Now I will turn it over to Don to review our performance in more detail.

Don Devlin (SVP and CFO)

Thank you, Jean-Michel, and good morning, everyone. Slide six contains our third quarter earnings bridge versus the second quarter. The 151 million of adjusted EBITDA was in line with our outlook of 145-165 million. Price and mix was unfavorable by 14 million, primarily driven by paper and pulp prices in Europe. Volume increased by 14 million, mainly driven by stronger seasonality in Latin America and North America. Operations and other costs were favorable by 5 million, driven by improved operational performance. Planned maintenance outage costs improved by 66 million as we had no planned outages at our mills. Input and transportation costs were unfavorable by 2 million. Let's move to slide seven. North America and Brazil industry conditions are solid, while Europe and other Latin America are challenged. In Europe, market conditions continue to be very challenging. Pulp and uncoated free sheet prices remained under pressure.

However, some pulp grades started to show signs of recovery at the end of the third quarter. Uncoated free sheet demand is down 5% year over year through September, while supply is down 7%. Wood costs in southern Sweden are starting to ease, recently decreasing by a reported 8%. In Latin America, demand remains mixed. Brazil is up 3% year over year through September, and prices are stable. However, demand in other Latin American countries is down 5%. Pricing is under pressure in some countries. Even though the majority of this demand decline is due to Argentina and Mexico, some countries across other Latin America are having economic challenges as well. This demand decline, in addition to shifts in global trade flows, is resulting in continued pricing pressure across other Latin America. In North America, demand is stable year over year through September.

Imports were up 46% year over year through August in anticipation of the tariffs, but are expected to moderate. In fact, customer feedback indicates inventories from increased imports are being consumed and returning to normal levels. Industry supply was reduced by 6% in the third quarter after Pixel closed their Chillicothe, Ohio, mill in August. There's still uncertainty caused by the US tariffs, which may take a while to settle out. Let's go to slide eight. Looking ahead, we expect to deliver fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA of 115-130 million. We project price and mix to be unfavorable by 20-25 million, primarily due to paper prices in Europe and mix across the regions. We expect volume to be favorable by 15-20 million, largely due to Latin America and North America.

Operations and other costs are projected to be unfavorable by 5-10 million, primarily due to seasonally higher costs, and we expect input and transportation costs to be stable. Planned maintenance outages will be unfavorable by 18 million as we have one outage in North America planned in the quarter. Let's move to slide nine. In August, International Paper announced plans to convert their uncoated free sheet paper machine at its Riverdale mill to produce container board by the third quarter of 2026. Last week, we announced we would continue to receive uncoated free sheet from Riverdale mill until May 2026. Riverdale should supply us with approximately 260,000 tons in 2025, and we expect to receive around 100,000 tons in 2026. As a result of the supply agreement ending, we will optimize our product segment and customer mix and leverage our European mills to supply the US and Mexico.

We will be building inventory over time to help bridge the gap until our Eastover investments are complete, and we have the additional 60,000 tons of incremental capacity, which is expected to ramp up in the fourth quarter of 2026. Let's go to slide ten. The Riverdale amendments we recently executed had a few components. One component was that IP agreeing to a $15 million reduction to the $100 million payment we would owe to IP in the event we sell the Brazil forest lands. We have no intention of selling the forest lands as we believe we are unlocking value every day by producing uncoated free sheet. Owning forest lands in Brazil is a unique strength that differentiates Sylvamo. These assets provide a competitive advantage and go beyond operational benefits. Direct control over wood fiber ensures security of supply, reduces exposure to market volatility, and supports long-term cost management.

Our forest lands represent a significant part of our intrinsic value that we feel is not reflected in our current market valuation. We recently had an appraisal completed on our forest lands, which are now valued at almost 5 billion Brazilian reais. Forest lands are tangible and appreciating resources that are the cornerstone of our strategy, delivering cost advantages and a source of intrinsic value for our shareholders. I'll turn the call over to John.

John Sims (SVP and COO)

Thank you, Don, and good morning, everyone. I'll pick up on slide 11. As we navigate through cyclical industry conditions and headwinds, we are focused on the things we can control. We are continuously working to improve our business. We are driving operational excellence and strategic initiatives across all our regions. These efforts should improve margins, reduce costs, and strengthen our competitive position. In Europe, we're improving our product mix, winning new customers at our Saiyot mill. We're actively working to reduce wood costs at Numila and at key levels of cost efficiency. Additionally, we're focused on reducing fixed costs and improving operational efficiency and reliability across the European region. In Latin America, we've secured new strategic Brazilian customers and further developed key partnerships in other Latin American countries, expanding our market presence. We're investing to improve wood self-sufficiency, to reduce costs by decreasing the need for higher-cost third-party wood.

Our team is also executing a pipeline of more than 100 initiatives across the entire business, designed to strengthen EBITDA and cash flow. In North America, we're focused on strategic commercial initiatives to improve volume and margin. We're reducing supply chain costs and optimizing inventory. Finally, we're investing in our flagship mill in Eastover South Carolina to improve our competitive advantages by lowering costs, enhancing efficiency, and increasing capacity by 60,000 tons. Across all regions, these initiatives reflect our commitment to customers, operational efficiency, and strategic investments to deliver sustainable value. So let's move to slide 12. Our long-term capital allocation strategy drives shareholder value. We are focused on maintaining a strong financial position, reinvesting in our business, and returning cash to shareholders.

Our healthy financial position allows us to stay focused on our customers with a long-term perspective in mind, especially during times of challenging industry conditions like we're currently experiencing in some of our markets. It enables reinvesting in our business, enhancing our reliability, productivity, and improving our service through operational excellence initiatives. And it preserves the flexibility to return cash to shareholders. Dividends are an important part of our cash returns to shareholders, and after paying $0.45 cents per share in all four quarters, we have returned approximately $73 million through dividends this year. Another strategic pillar of cash returns to shareholders are share repurchases. We will continue to evaluate opportunities to repurchase shares at attractive prices, especially when we feel our valuation is well below our intrinsic value.

This is why in the third quarter, we repurchased $42 million worth of shares at an average price of $44.74, exhausting the remaining amount of our share repurchase authorization. This brings our year-to-date share repurchases to 82 million. In September, the board also approved a new $150 million share repurchase authorization. Slide 13. Our strategy is to be singly focused on uncoated free sheet paper, which remains the largest and most resilient segment in the graphic paper space. We view the uncoated free sheet industry landscape as an opportunity. We are investing to strengthen our competitive advantages, to drive earnings and cash flows. We view these investments as high return and low risk as we are staying in our core product line and reinforcing our position as a supplier of choice for customers. We will leverage our strengths to generate high returns on invested capital.

I'll now wrap up my comments on the next slide, slide 14. You likely saw some public filings yesterday related to Atlas Holdings and a couple of our directors resigning. I want to spend a minute discussing this topic. At the direction of Atlas Holdings, Carl Myers and Mark Wilde resigned from the board effective November 5th. I would like to thank both of them for their contribution to Sylvamo. As a reminder, they both joined our board in 2023 as part of a cooperation agreement with Atlas. Sylvamo Board also thanks them for their service. With these resignations, the restrictions on Atlas and the cooperation agreement will terminate. When we move to the Q&A portion on this call, I hope you can appreciate that we will not be taking questions or commenting further on this matter. We appreciate your cooperation on that.

Lastly, as we prepare for our leadership transition on January 1st, and I am honored to lead Sylvamo as its next CEO, as Jean-Michel is retiring at the end of the year on behalf of our senior lead team and all the employees of Sylvamo, I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his four-plus years of dedication to Sylvamo as its CEO. He led Sylvamo through the spinoff and other challenges in our first few years and has been instrumental to Sylvamo's success, positioning it for further long-term value creation. We wish him all the best. Jean-Michel, would you like to say a few words?

Jean-Michel Ribiéras (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, John. I appreciate your kind words and well wishes. Leading Sylvamo has been an absolute honor these past four years, and I'm pleased with everything we have accomplished. I would like to thank our employees, customers, suppliers, and investors for the support and partnership. I'll leave knowing that the company is in very good hands and its brightest days ahead of it. As I've said many times before, I'm confident in the future for Sylvamo and motivated by the opportunities that lie ahead. Thank you. I'll now turn it over to Hans.

Hans Bjorkman (VP of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Jean-Michel, John, and Don. Okay, Tina, we're ready to take questions.

Operator (participant)

If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We do ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Thank you. Our first question comes from Daniel Harriman with Sidoti.

Daniel Harriman (Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my questions. And John Michelle, congratulations on the retirement, and we certainly appreciate all your help since we've had you under coverage. I'll start off with one today, and then I'll get back in the queue. But regarding North America, you highlighted stable demand, even with imports running higher earlier in the year. And as those inventories continue to be worked down, I'm wondering if you think we can expect that normalization to translate into potentially a more stable or improved pricing environment as we move into 2026.

John Sims (SVP and COO)

Hey, Daniel, it's John Sims. Thanks for your question. Yeah, we're expecting, and we are already seeing, and we're hearing from our customers that the inventory is being worked down from the import surge that occurred earlier in the year as a result of the threat of tariffs, if you will. And that has worked out, working through the system, and also the fact that imports have actually started to decrease coming in as a result of the tariffs. And then also you have the closure of the Shell coffee mill that we talked about, so that the operating rates should improve and strengthen going into next year.

Daniel Harriman (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, great. Thanks, John.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of Matthew McKeller with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Matthew McKellar (Equity Research Associate)

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Just to follow up on the last one there, how far along are we in that process of inventories being consumed? Are they approaching normal levels today? Is that something you'd expect by year-end, or will that process continue into '26? Thank you.

John Sims (SVP and COO)

So I would say that we're approaching normal levels right now. That's how we're seeing it currently.

Matthew McKellar (Equity Research Associate)

Great. Very helpful. And then a couple of quick ones on Riverdale and how you're preparing for the end of that supply agreement. Can you give us a sense of how much inventory you're intending to build to bridge you to that incremental capacity at Eastover and maybe what kind of working capital investment you'd expect? And then at the time that the calculation of that supply agreement was announced, I think you said the impact of 2026 EBITDA would be about 30 million at current margins. Is that still a good estimate of what you expect the impact to be based on how margins may have evolved and any changes to your plans since that time? Thanks very much.

Don Devlin (SVP and CFO)

Hey, Matthew, this is Don. Thanks for the question. So for the first part of your question, we plan to build about 60,000 tons of inventory through the year. Most of it will happen in the first half leading up to the Eastover outage for the conversion speed-up of Eastover. And then we plan to consume that inventory in the balance of the year. So from beginning to end, it would even out. And relative to the $30 million, I think in the previous call, we estimated the impact to Riverdale to be about $30 million. And that's the same. That hasn't changed for 2026.

Matthew McKellar (Equity Research Associate)

Thanks very much. I'll turn it back.

Operator (participant)

Again, to ask a question, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. And we'll pause for just a moment. And with no further questions in queue, I will now hand the call back to Hans Bjorkman for closing remarks.

Hans Bjorkman (VP of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Tina. We appreciate it. And thank you all for joining our call today. We appreciate your interest in Sylvamo, and we look forward to our continued conversations over the coming weeks. Thank you.

Jean-Michel Ribiéras (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you. Bye.

Operator (participant)

Bye. Once again, we would like to thank you for participating in SylvamoCorporation's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings call. You may disconnect.