Avery Dennison Corporation (NYSE:AVY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Deon Stander: And Bryan, I’ll just want to add that our approach has always been that as we see ourselves as the industry stewards to make sure we maintain the health of the industry as well as part of our role. But as we’ve lent into productivity, we tend to maintain and hold into our productivity benefits as we move sequentially through the years, given the investments in our core capability in our scale and innovation capability.

Operator: Our next question comes from George Staphos with BofA Securities. Please proceed.

George Staphos: I just want to pick up on the margin discussion. So rough math, when we look at your guidance, look at the midpoint of earnings, look at the midpoint for revenue growth, we wind up roughly with about 130 basis points of margin expansion, ’24 versus ’23. Greg, would you agree that that’s roughly in the right ZIP code? And if not, where would you have [indiscernible] and putting all of the commentary together on some of the other questions and things you said in the past, would it be fair to say that most of the margin lift in ’24 will go to, will accrue to solutions versus materials, or would it be relatively split? Thank you.

Greg Lovins: Yes. Thanks, George, for the question. So on the latter point, I think it will be a combination. I mean, we had, obviously, improving margins in solutions in the back half. We also have proven margins in materials in the back half of 2023. So based on our run rates in both of those businesses, both of them I would expect to be improving margins in ’24 versus where we were last year. At an overall level, I think we put it on the slide with the long-term targets. Our expectation for 2024 be 15% plus margins. So if you do your math there on the EBITDA expectations, would be closer to 16% in 2024. So that’s how we thought about the plan and how we’re thinking about margins increasing across the two segments as well as total company, of course.

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

Mike Roxland: Congrats on a good finish to a very tough year. Just a question, you mentioned in your remarks about disruptions in terms of the Panama Canal. You obviously have that and the Suez. Do you think the issues that whether from shipping, whether it be the actual product selling for shipping costs, could that actually serve as a tailwind and maybe drive a buy or a restock particularly if retailers get concerned that they’re going to be out of pocket a lot of money to try to find alternative ways to get ships? So do you think that volume ultimately could actually be higher because of some of these transportation issues?

Deon Stander: That’s not what we’re hearing at the moment, Mike. What we are hearing is that retailers and brands initially, largely in Europe are rethinking about how they’re trying to get their goods to their home markets quicker, because they’re having to route to round the cape of good hope and what we’ve seen is some degree of pull forward of orders maybe the first quarter, but we’re anticipating that normalizing in the second half of the first quarter, so being on aggregate, the same. I think there’s also a slightly broader challenge when it comes to the Panama Canal given the water level over there. But equally there, we’re seeing retailers and brands taking appropriate action to ensure that they have continuity of supply. And we don’t anticipate additional volume balance as a consequence of that.

Operator: Our next question comes from Jeffrey Zekauskas with JPMorgan Securities. Please proceed.

Jeffrey Zekauskas: And a couple of questions around intelligent labels. In the logistics and food category, you were up 110%. Is there a cliff that we have to worry about as maybe new business is fully loaded? Or can we continue to grow from that level? And do you think that intelligent labels will grow 20% plus in the first quarter of ’24? And then from a housekeeping standpoint, in your slides, you talk about intelligent labels as being 32% of the solutions group, which is 817 and last year, it was 29%, which is 738. So are those the right numbers? Because sometimes in your slides, you talk about intelligent solutions earlier in the year, being an $800 million business, but maybe you were rounding up or there’s some currency or something like that. Can you clarify what the levels really are?

Deon Stander: Sure, Jeff. Thanks for the question. I’ll address the first two, and I’ll let Greg deal with the third one then. On your first question as it relates to logistics being up 110%, that or there and thereabouts that relates to effective the program that we said we’ve been rolling out during 2023. Recall, I said the largest single single-wave program in the industry’s history. And that ramp through the year, I think we talked about this each quarter as well, Jeff, culminating in the fourth quarter as that particular customer was getting ready for their busiest holiday period as well. Now as we look forward into 2024, two things are going to be a player of this. So one is, as we’ve seen and we’ve consistently said, when we have a new segment leader start to adopt the technology and realize the benefits in this instance of shipping accuracy, it tends to be something that then drives greater adoption across that particular segment.