Avery Dennison Corporation (NYSE:AVY) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

So that’s what drove the increase. And then both of those factors basically started to stabilize at the same time. And so people no longer needed the excess inventory, and they were starting to build it down. So that’s the biggest reason for why you’re seeing a shift here overall.

Operator: Our next question comes from Anthony Pettinari with Citigroup.

Bryan Burgmeier: This is actually Bryan Burgmeier sitting in for Anthony. With some inflation buckets moving lower throughout 4Q, what do you assume for price cost in the Materials group this year? Do you think Avery would be able to potentially capture a benefit from lower raws? Or would that be passed along in full to customers? And separately, just apologies if I missed this. Did you provide a growth target for Label this year? Is it fair to assume that it could fall a little bit short of that 20%, just given the headwinds in apparel?

Greg Lovins: Yes. Thanks, Bryan. So on the inflation question, I think sequentially from Q3 to Q4, overall net price inflation was a relatively immaterial impact. We had a little bit of sequential price Q3 to Q4 from some of the actions we’ve been taking as we move through the back half and a little bit of sequential inflation. I think I talked about last quarter, we expected a little bit of sequential impact from paper. At the same time, we had some sequential benefit from the films and chemicals, a bit of deflation there. So as you look into 2023, sequentially, we don’t see a lot of change there. Still a little bit of pressure on specialty papers, just given capacity and what’s happening in the marketplace there from a specialty paper perspective and maybe a little bit of sequential benefit in films and chemicals just like we had in Q4.

When we look at overall price inflation, we have a carryover benefit of price, carryover impact of raw material inflation. We also have a bit at or above historical levels of wage inflation. We’ve got some utility inflation where we had a little bit of a benefit last year from prices we had locked in for part of last year as well. So we look across that whole basket of raw materials, wage inflation, utility inflation. We expect roughly neutral impact year-over-year from that perspective, all those things included.

Deon Stander: And Bryan, on your IL question, we will be growing more than 20% this year. Recall that we’ve said, we are very confident in this being a $1 billion platform in 2023, and we see growth in Apparel, and we see significant growth in our logistics platform during this year.

Operator: Our next question comes from Mike Roxland with Truist Securities.

Mike Roxland: First question, just I know you mentioned, Deon, just now in response to the last question about more than 20% growth in IL. But with respect to IL adoption, as global economy soften, companies are increasingly laying off employees, could that be a headwind as companies look to spend? Or alternately, really be a benefit as they look to increase efficiency and productivity and the like? And then my second question is just in terms of China, with Chinese government using a strict Zero COVID policies, obviously, that’s been last year. I think, in April, it was a $10 million headwind. Could that actually serve as a pretty big tailwind to you as things normalize in China?