International Paper Company (NYSE:IP) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mike Roxland: Got it. Great. Thank you very much for that.

Operator: Your next question will come from the line of Mark Weiintraub with Seaport Research. Go ahead.

Mark Weiintraub: Thank you. So the slide on or the slide on Page 7, very, very interesting slide. I was curious how you came about to put that together. Is that just conversations with customers? Do you do some sort of survey on that? And then are you seeing any sign in the metrics, be it shipments, be it bookings where this hopeful end to the destocking is translating into changing business as you look at what you registered in July and maybe thoughts on August?

Mark Sutton: Mark, this is Mark. That’s a great question. There is a qualitative piece to that slide and there’s a quantitative piece that’s internal and some other metrics we use. I’ll ask Tom to kind of give you a perspective on what that slide kind of represents in terms of how we feel demand has been evolving and different spots in the supply chain that have been a hard for anybody and everybody to call in terms of where inventory actually resides along the value chain. So Tom, if you could share a bit on that.

Tom Hamic: Sure. Right. Good morning, Mark. This is Tom Hamic. We take a subset of customers and that subset of customers is consistent of [indiscernible] we talked to them about how they see their demand patterns, but also what their inventory levels are for not only boxes, but finished goods. And so that’s what you see flowing through here. It’s not – we have a representative sample, but it’s not 60% of the customer base. It’s kind of leaders in the segments that we look at. I think when you talk about destocking, it’s been pretty consistent flowing through our system like we expected. And I think what you can see going back to Q4 is that consistency is based on the customer feedback. So these both pieces are matching up very well.

We’re going to – we finished Q2 about where we expected, so we was up 2% sequentially in terms of shipments per day and we’re seeing an improvement into June, no, excuse me, into July of mid-single digits. So I think that’s very reflective of kind of this curve of destocking or overstocking going away over time.

Mark Weiintraub: Super. And so that, that’s sequential and so the comps are getting easier too, I believe so. So is it fair to say that on a year-over-year basis it’s even better than the mid-single digits?

Tom Hamic: Well, the mid-single digit is a positive from quarter-to-quarter. That’s sequential. I think that that ties out to about a flat to minus 2% growth in the third quarter or in really more July. So we flowed through more strongly through the second quarter that’s continuing now, and I think that is a pretty good representation of how our customers are viewing it.

Mark Weiintraub: Right. Thank you that, that I misstated, thank you for getting that. And then just in terms of, in pulp, you idle to consolidate downtime and obviously you took huge amounts of downtime in containerboard during the second quarter. And even with things ramping up, it does seem like there’s a big gap between your capacity to produce and the demand. Are you looking at idling to consolidate downtime in the containerboard business or have you done anything there yet?

Mark Sutton: That’s a really good question, Mark. I – we kind of anticipated that, that question. What you see is a perfect example of the specific back patterns in two different parts of international paper. What Clay described is the best cost position for GCF was to take the Pensacola Mill down and then maximize production at the other mills. The – those mills are a 100% virgin fiber, so the marginal cost actions you have to take at the other mills to load them up. And the fact that you can sell green energy when you’re running full at those mills led us to one set of decisions. So far in containerboard because the marginal cost profile of the other containerboard mills, the ones you wouldn’t idle permanently or completely involve a huge mix of we’re 65, 35 urgent and recycle.

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