Glatfelter Corporation (NYSE:GLT) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 11, 2024

Glatfelter Corporation isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good day, and welcome to the Glatfelter's Q1 2024 Earnings Release Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ramesh Shettigar. Please go ahead.

Ramesh Shettigar : Thank you, Ruth. Good morning, and welcome to Glatfelter's 2024 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. This is Ramesh Shettigar, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. On the call to present our first quarter results is Thomas Fahnemann, President and Chief Executive Officer of Glatfelter and myself. Before we begin our presentation, I have a few standard reminders. During our call this morning, we will use the term adjusted earnings as well as other non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these financial measures to our GAAP-based results is included in today's earnings release and in the investor slides. We will also make forward-looking statements today that are subject to risks and uncertainties.

Our 2023 Form 10-K, which has been filed with the SEC and today's earnings release, disclose factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. These statements speak only as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them. I will now turn the call over to Thomas.

Thomas Fahnemann : Thank you, Ramesh. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Glatfelter's First Quarter 2024 Investor Call. I'm pleased to report that the business produced solid but mixed results at the segment level as we continue to face industry-wide market headwinds and challenges from the volatile global economic environment with Europe representing our most difficult market currently. We achieved adjusted EBITDA of $23.8 million for the quarter or approximately $1 million lower than the same quarter last year. Also, in relation to the proposed merger of Glatfelter with Berry Global's HHNF business, we reached a significant regulatory milestone with the expiration of the HSR waiting period. I will speak more to the work that is underway related to the proposed merger towards the end of today's call.

Turning now to the highlights of Glatfelter's first quarter performance, the Spunlace segment continues to gain momentum, having generated $5 million higher EBITDA versus the first quarter of 2023. This performance was driven primarily by ongoing price-cost gap improvements combined with approximately $2.4 million of operational efficiencies throughout our Spunlace sites. In addition, we continue to hold pricing benefits for our branded Sontara products and realized further gains in our Soultz, France facility following the site's 2023 restructuring. Also in Spunlace, I'm pleased to report that our Tennessee facility is fully operational following the tornado that swept through the community in December. I commend the team for their hard work and dedication to restoring operations while ensuring customer commitments were met during the recovery efforts.

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