AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Robert Kuhn: Sure. I can take that question. So for the fourth quarter, it had a rather immaterial impact on the top line, approximately 1% on a consolidated basis and had a slight positive in each of the segments, but nothing significant. In Q1, we’re actually seeing sequentially resin in North America and Europe, increasing slightly from Q4 levels, but they are still on a year-on-year comparison going to be much lower than where they were in Q1 of 2022. So — it really depends. It’s difficult for us in our projections to forecast what the impact is going to be because there are different pass-through delays depending on the customers, and obviously, it’s going to depend a lot on the volume. So I couldn’t even begin to lean out for the year, what we would expect — but again, resin is our largest purchase, but we’re still seeing increased cost in other areas such as metal and aluminum and things like that.

Matthew Krueger: Got it. Got it, makes sense. I’ll turn it over. Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from George Staphos from Bank of America. George, your line is open.

George Staphos: Thanks so much. Hi, everyone good morning. Hope you are doing well. Thanks for the details. My question — the first one is on beauty and the overall realignment to the extent that you can comment, is there any way to bracket what the margin or cost benefits might be over a 1-year or 2-year basis, recognizing you have a lot of discussions to go through with employees, works council, etcetera, which may prevent you from talking to that. Assuming that you might not be able to give some color there. Just can you talk a bit about how much non-beauty will be within the Beauty segment as a percentage of revenues and talk about what you’re seeing in terms of launch activity in beauty? And then I had a quick follow- on CapEx.

Stephan Tanda: Sure. Let me kick it off, George and ask Bob to follow up. First, I want to make it clear that the segment realignment and the cost work that I referred to as we engage the European Works Council are separate and almost independent. So the second realignment is really moving about $200 million of closures revenues from beauty to food and beverage, which is almost exclusively a closures business. And the benefits are really, one, it allows the closure business to go after any and all end users. And just as an example, health care closures are very attractive closures and the pharma people are not going to be bothered to go after health care closures, but the closures people will. And while it’s just food and beverage, they won’t.

The one is it really position us to be more go after all closures business. The second one is really reflecting how customers buy it. We already get good feedback from also multinational customers because even in shared accounts, multinational customers, they have different people buying closures than they won’t have buying high-end fragrances or skin care products. And then, of course, as you pull common assets and common operations, you have increased efficiencies in both on the cost side and on the capital side. With that said, on beauty, and share cost, we really look at as we emerge from the pandemic with good top line momentum and are not happy with our margins. It’s as simple as that, we are committed to our long-term targets. And we feel that especially on the fixed cost side, we have some work to do, SG&A as well as operational fixed costs.

And of course, the bulk of that sits in Europe. That’s not that easy to get at. That’s why we need these consultation processes. But when we look at where our EBITDA margin is versus our long-term targets, is your sense that we’re looking for several tens of millions of improvement on the fixed cost side across SG&A and operations. And maybe Bob, you can comment on the breakdown?