Q4 2022 Transcontinental Inc Earnings Call

Speaker 2: Yandla Point, Director Investor Relations and Treasury. Je m'a reméd

Speaker 3: Thank you, Sylvie, and good afternoon, everyone.

Speaker 4: Welcome to our fourth quarter in fiscal year 2022 earnings call.

Speaker 5: Before we begin, please note that the press release, the MDNA, along with complete financial statements and related notes, as well as the slide supporting management's remarks are all available on our website at www.pc.pc under the investor relations section.

Speaker 6: A replay of this conference call will also be available on our website shortly after the call.

Speaker 7: We have with us today our present and chief executive officer, Peter Bruce, and a chief financial officer, Donald Cabeli.

Speaker 8: Before I turn the call over to management, I would like to specify that this conference call is intended for the financial community.

Speaker 9: Media are in listen-only mode and should contact Natalie St. Jean, Senior Advisor, Corporate Communications, for more information.

Speaker 10: Please be reminded that some of the financial measures discussed over the course of this conference call are not IFRs.

Speaker 11: You can refer to the MDNA for complete definition and reconciliation of these measures by FRS.

Speaker 12: In addition, this conference call might also contain four looking statements.

Speaker 13: These statements are based on the current expectations of management and information available as of today and they involve numerous risks and uncertainties, known and unknown.

Speaker 14: The risk uncertainties and other factors that could influence actual results are described in the fiscal 2022 annual NDNA and in the annual information form. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to our President and CEO , Peter Bruce.

Speaker 15: Thanks, Jan. Good afternoon and thanks for joining our call. As usual, I'll start with safety. I'm proud to report that in fiscal 2022, our injury rate decreased by 21%. This is a major achievement by the team.

Speaker 16: Although significant work remains to achieve an injury-free workplace, this is a big step in the right direction.

Speaker 17: In terms of Q4 financial results, excluding the impact of the 53rd week in the Canadian wage subsidy, we saw a solid increase in profit. I'm proud of the actions taken by the team to make our clients successful and improve our financial performance.

Speaker 18: Following a disappointing first quarter, our packaging sector took action and demonstrated improved profit in each quarter that is followed. Q4 was no different, achieving over 10% growth in adjusted EBITDA on a comparable basis.

Speaker 19: The Q4 results were achieved despite a 1.8% decline in volume due to the continued weakness in our Latin American business.

Speaker 20: We have taken action to adjust our cost-based structure there to reflect current volume.

Speaker 21: In our print sector, in-store marketing, book printing, and pre-media activities continue their growth path with double-digit revenue increase.

Speaker 22: Excluding the additional wheat, the sector continued to grow organically.

Speaker 23: Despite organic growth, inflationary pressures had a negative impact on our volume, cost structure and profit.

Speaker 24: Our media sectors saw another quarter with a strong increase in both revenues and profits, mostly coming from our most recent acquisitions.

Speaker 25: In Fiscal 2023, we will remain focused on improving profitability and cash flow from our operating activities.

Speaker 26: Our solid financial performance with no major debt maturity until 2025 gives us the flexibility to pursue our disciplined approach to growth.

Speaker 27: And now, overview done up.

Speaker 28: Thank you, Peter. Moving to consolidated numbers on slide 5 of the earnings call presentation.

Speaker 29: Last year we had an extra week in the quarter, which we need to take into account when comparing the results.

Speaker 30: For the fourth quarter of 2022, we reported revenues of $802.2 million.

Speaker 31: When excluding the impact of the extra week, this is an increase of 83 million or 11.5% versus the same period last year.

Speaker 32: This revenue growth was driven by the acquisition in our packaging and our media sectors.

Price increases following the pass-through of higher raw material inflationary costs to our customers.

higher volume in our printing sector due to the continued growth in our ISM book printing and pre-media activities.

And lastly, positive exchange rate variation from a stronger US dollar.

On the profitability front, consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $141.1 million.

Excluding the Canadian wage subsidy of $3.7 million and the extra week of last year's results.

This represents a digestive growth of about 10%.

The increase was mainly due to our acquisitions.

We also benefited from a $2.7 million positive variation in exchange rates.

Financial expenses decreased by 1.4 million to 10.5 million despite higher interest rates.

As a reminder, we have no significant debt maturities before February 2025 thanks to proactive refinancing.

The tax rate was 23.3%, leading to adjusted net earnings of 79 cents per share for the quarter.

Now, moving to slide 6 for a sector review.

In packaging, we recorded revenue of $433.5 million.

The increase of 16 million versus last year was mainly due to the acquisitions of H.S. Crocker and Panoplast.

the pass-through of higher raw material prices and other inflationary costs, and a positive impact from the exchange rates.

This growth was partially offset by the effect of the 53rd week.

in terms of profitability.

Adjusting the beddock and packaging grew by $3.8 million, despite one fewer week in the quarter.

Excluding last year's extra week.

The positive contributions of 1.7 million dollars from our two acquisitions and 1.6 million from exchange rates

Adjusted the best dog grew organically by over 10%.

The growth is mainly due to the profit improvement from inflationary cost recovery.

Moving to print on slide 7.

Excluding last year's extra week, we recorded organic revenue growth of about 20 million, or 6%.

This growth benefited from another quarter of double digit growth in our in-store marketing, book printing and pre-media activities.

Brimthings adjusted EBITDA was $64.6 million for the quarter.

The decline was essentially due to the impact of last year's additional week and the $3.7 million in wage subsidies.

While the team implemented proactive price increases,

The inflationary pressures had an impact on our volume and affected our cost structure and profits.

The sector adjusted a bit the margin for a quarter was 19.8% reflecting the lower earnings but also the dilated effect of the pass-through of higher costs.

In our media sector, we recorded another solid quarter with revenues and profit growth following our two acquisitions in fiscal 2022.

Corporate expenses were lower than last year due mainly to non-recurring positive adjustments and lower stock-based compensation costs.

Now turning to cash flow, we generated $103.5 million from operating activities, an increase of $10.8 million versus the same quarter last year.

mainly due to improved working capital despite closing the year with higher levels of inventory.

Our investments in CapEx at $34.2 million are in line with last year.

At the end of the quarter, our net debt ratio was at 2.47 times, a slight improvement from 3 months ago. The next quarter, our net debt ratio was at 2.47 times, a slight improvement from 3 months ago.

Despite our growth capex and other investments, we continue to maintain a strong financial position.

Finally, we distributed 19.5 million dollars in dividends to our shareholders.

Now moving to the Outlook.

in packaging.

We expect volume growth and improved profitability in fiscal 2023.

However, the economic environment remains uncertain and could affect demand in the short term.

In print, we expect higher revenues in fiscal 2023 from growth in our ISM book printing activities and the transfer of higher costs.

In terms of profitability, we expect lower adjusted data from the impact of inflation on volume and cost structure.

We expect corporate costs at the IPDOT level to be around $40 million for the year.

In terms of capital allocation, we expect CapEx in fiscal year 2023 to remain in line with 2022 at around $140 million as we continue our strategic investments before returning to a lower run rate in fiscal 2024.

If you have any questions, you can post them on the social media on your phone at the end. A call will be sent to confirm your request. The questions are answered in the Q&A box.

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Ladies and gentlemen, we will now conduct a question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. You will then hear a tone acknowledging your request. Your questions will be pulled in the order they are received. Please ensure you lift the handset if you are using a speakerphone before pressing any keys.

One moment please for your first question.

which will be from Amir Patel at CIBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon.

Peter, I was wondering on the packaging side, are you starting to see signs of some of your customers destocking and do you have a sense as to you know maybe how much higher their inventories are right now versus pre-COVID?

In terms of the packaging business, what I would say is that it's not a single product

It's a funny time in that we're going through or going into a recession and usually I'd be telling you in a recession people stay home more and as a result volumes go up. I think coming after COVID I don't know that we can say that anymore. I think people just finished taking some time hanging out at home.

pressure on working capital and both for us and them there can be pressure to decrease those inventories. That said, I haven't seen it of significance. We've seen some in specific segments where we saw a decline in volume.

in the quarter year on year. But overall, from a North American perspective, we were fine. And looking forward, you know, while we have to be ready for a potential blip that could happen if there was a correction, we don't see that happening yet.

Great, thanks Peter, that's helpful. And just had another question on the printing side of the business. Just given some of the large price hikes that you need to pass through, are you starting to see signs from some of your print customers about them, you know, reducing circulation or page count?

making sure that our pricing reflects the volume that's being purchased and ensuring that inflationary increases are passed through.

That said, you know,

The result of that, while it's fully covered, the inflationary costs on our P&L, it does have an impact on volume. We have customers when we're looking at the retail sector, we have customers that have fixed marketing budgets.

And when pricing increases, they have to look at how to adjust, as you said, page count or volume. And we've seen in the past quarter pressure on volume. Usually we see October as a strong month.

And we didn't see that historic strength repeating, affecting volumes in the business specifically. And in newspaper, we saw people like Post Media for certain papers making the choice that they wouldn't print Monday editions. So I mean, that's been the effect in a quarter. I think what is of importance is the actions that we have to take as a result or that we have to look.

on our last person standing strategy. And while I think strategies are really sexy and fun to talk about, the reality is it has to be about execution. And when we talk about last person standing in terms of newspapers, what we said is, look as costs increase.

And as volumes go down, you know, our partners in the newspaper industry are going to be less efficient, in a less efficient place to continue printing their own newspapers. And as a result, we have to partner with them and see if we can't help them improve their profitability by moving the printing of newspapers in-house to us.

and position them to free up some assets that may be captive on their side. So a ton of work has been done. And what I can tell you is we are very close to finalizing a deal that would see us take over the volume from a major publisher.

So, yes, having an impact on volume and we continue, we'll continue to take actions to ensure we protect the volume we have, we find ways to grow our volume and we adjust our cost base if we need to.

Great. Thanks, Peter. And just following up on that, would, you know, if you do reach an agreement to bring some of that printing in-house, would that be similar margins to the overall segment?

It would.

All right. That's all I had. I'll turn it over. Thanks.

Next question will be from Adam Shine at National Bank Financial. Please go ahead..

Thanks a lot. Good afternoon. Peter, just following up on one of the last couple of questions just related to printing, this has always been a segment where you guys have historically done a good job of driving efficiencies and keeping margins or at least protecting overall EBITDA.

you know, in answer to the last question, you alluded to the fact that, you know, you'll look at where the volumes are and make adjustments accordingly, but maybe you could talk a bit more proactively rather than necessarily react to anything out there in the marketplace, just on an efficiencies basis. Do we start to look at the prospect of printing?

Thanks for the question, Adam. From a percentage standpoint, you see percentage declining and you'll appreciate the percentages change as inflationary costs get passed through, so just the mathematics of it get done. In terms of being able to preserve our cost structure, we continue to have opportunities

If we need to, we can take action to ensure that our margins remain at a solid level.

Okay, no thanks for that. It may be one for Donal. Just in regards to free cash flow, obviously helpful in terms of some of the outlook elements, capex and cash taxes that you provided. Obviously, this has been a year of significant working capital usage. Can you speak at all around the working capital dynamic and you know...

supply chain issues. And the team did a very good job to make sure that we have the right inventory to respond.

demand by our clients. Having said that, with what we see now, the supply chain issue seems to be less of an impact. So therefore, on that side, we will certainly see a decrease of inventories in the coming quarters, but this is what we see right now. And over the pricing, it will depend where the pricing will go. Right now, it's a good direction, but …

It's really hard to make calls over the next few schools here, but you're totally right. The reason why today we're at that leverage is obviously we did something.

for acquisition this year, but a large impact on the impact of the working gap that we had to finance in fiscal 2020.

Okay, thanks for that.

Next question is from

Thanks very much. Three from me. Just following up on the printing volume, you alluded to obviously fixed marketing budgets and your customers adjusting. Can you just unpack a little bit in terms of the inflationary kind of impact versus actual direct? Well big thanks to petco.com. Second, the

macro impacts or economic impacts that you're seeing today. Second question on other revenues. Looks like the run rate is closer to 100 million or 110 million in annual revenues. Just wondering if you could.

this ballpark, help us ballpark that for modeling purposes. And then the last one just on free cash flow priorities, if you could just give us an update given the macro environment looking into 2023, just what has changed if anything on your free cash flow priorities. Thank you.

I can take the – regarding your question, Drew, for the volume and for media, it's I think what we have said when we did the acquisition, especially the FPS acquisition, is that there's SIS of NBT in those numbers. So therefore, Q3 and Q4 are –

our media business that we had before.

You make the right assumption with the numbers because if you look at the other this year, we were slightly above 100 and obviously you will have the impact of the full year of the acquisition but as I said the last six months don't represent the first six months of the business.

So you need to evaluate that when you're manualized for media business. You need to evaluate that when you're manualized for media business.

For the third question, can you do one thing, the first one? I'll do the first one. So in terms of the first question, in terms of the flyer, you know, what I'd say to you is that, you know, what we've seen historically in an inflationary period, the

that, you know, what we know as a family can save $1500 a year using the flyer. And what we've seen historically is customers use flyers as a means to help the consumer and attract them to their stores. And when we see what they're doing, we can see that they're doing a great job of helping the consumer.

we continue to see strong volume in terms of that. That said, we usually have a stronger month in October and we didn't see that from that, we're not at a point here where we can extrapolate what that means. It was a month.

And we're going to have to watch it closely so there's not some macro effect. We do recognize that as pricing goes up or as the cost of our service goes up, that can put pressure on volumes. But it's not something at this point where we see...

something we forecast as having an impact on the business in the long term. And we need to be ready and adjust our cost structure if that's what's required.

Andrew, maybe for me, can you just repeat the third question for the cash flow?

Yeah sure just on access for cash flow priorities dividends debt repayment kind of further M&A just wondering how that has evolved just given the background to the changing month about here

Well, yeah, for cash flow, obviously we're at 250 right now and usually the position we like to be following acquisition is near two or below two and this is what our target is. But obviously if there's acquisition, then Peter can comment a little bit more on the M&A side.

You know, this is part of the strategy of the growth. But right now, 247, it's really to pay debt, especially in the short-term environment. Pay down debt will be the first priority.

The only thing I'd add is we're pretty proud that we closed four acquisitions.

In the last year, we talked about $125 million of cost to that. And as we talked earlier in the call, we've spent over the last two years, probably $200 million on working capital growing. And so in this environment, we'll be prudent.

And at the same time, we're committed to continue to grow the business. But I'm much more comfortable growing the business when the net debt to EBITDA ratio is closer to 2 than it is right now. Right now it's about 2.47. I'd rather see it closer to 2.

Okay, super understood. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next question is from Steven McLeod at BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, guys.

My question is around the packaging business. And I'm just wondering, coming off of the Q4 where you saw a bit of a dip in volumes, and as you talk about the near-term uncertainties, can you just give a little bit of color as to where your initial volume and pricing expectations are for 2023?

In terms of 2023, first, why don't we talk, in terms of packaging, the

We looked at a business that in the first quarter was a disappointment. And then we saw Q2 was a small improvement year on year. And then Q3 a strong improvement, Q4 a strong improvement. And that's baked by actions that the team has taken both in terms of growing volume.

And, you know, while I'm not going to spend a ton of time forecasting into next year because of the environment, because the uncertainty around the environment and what I talked about in terms of the potential for inventory adjustments, et cetera, you know, what I'd say is we've had weakness in LATAM. And, you know, we've had weakness in LATAM.

for a couple of quarters. The war in the Ukraine continues to persist, and therefore we're taking costs out. For me, what's important to say is that business remains a really strong business, and I think taking costs out, if anything, positions it to be stronger coming out of that.

In terms of the rest of our businesses, we've put a bunch of time and effort, whether it be in R&D, whether it be in capacity, whether it be in working with sales teams, to understand where we create value for customers. And as a result, we have confidence that we're going to continue to create value for shareholders next year.

But at this time, to start estimating what the year is going to look like from a growth perspective, et cetera, I think it wouldn't be prudent to do. But what I am confident in saying is the team's done the work and I expect us to continue to improve. We understand that our credibility is built on the

surpassing last year, quarter after quarter. We've done it three quarters in succession. And our target has to be to do the same thing in Q1 next year.

Okay, that's fair. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. I appreciate it. And then, Donald, you gave a little bit of color around the other segment, media segment in terms of revenues. Always a tough segment to model. Just curious if you can give a little bit of color around...

maybe how to think about how he did the AUSTACs up for next year just given the fact that Q4 was so strong.

Well, I think the good way to modelize is look what was our business on the educational side and maybe up before the acquisition and I would say the acquisition is a good, what we had before, the acquisition is almost aligned with what we had before because it's totally aligned with our current business. So …

And the median number before the acquisition was, I would say, a very high percentage education. So the best benchmark you can use is look at last year and just do the same for your model to represent the acquisition. As I said in the previous question, for sure Q3 and Q4 represent the maximum likelihood of release of a country starting at Q. And as is Becker otherwise known, maybe it's because of what happened in ONE Range which limited the complexity of the industry

the biggest part of the business for both our current business and the acquisition we did during the year.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you very much. Thanks guys.

Thank you. Thank you.

Next question is from Mark Nivelle at Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon guys. I guess just curious if you're seeing.

I'm seeing any relief or decline in resin costs. I guess if how you're feeling with your inventory and packaging through maybe a risk potentially to short-term to margin as those prices come down and you have inventory.

Thanks for the question. Resin specifically has been and has seen some decline. We've been aware you'd see the industry has about 10% capacity. We've seen some decline.

that's coming on stream in the near term, which has obviously an impact on pricing. So yes, we've seen a decline in pricing. I can tell you that the suppliers are attempting to stem the decrease.

In calendar Q1, by announcing an increase, we'll see if that can stick, given capacity is coming on. That said, we're aware of what was going on, and the teams understood the importance of balancing. AS

security supply with getting our inventory to a level where we can benefit from reduced pricing and raw materials.

We'll move to the next question.

Next question will be from David Macfadyen at Coremark Securities.

Oh yes, hi. A couple of questions.

Just on the printing business, you talked about the revenue you expected to be up fiscal 23 and then you also said that you expect EBITDA to be down. I was wondering if you can give us a little more detail or a better outlook on the printing EBITDA. You've never been without FIB down?

mid single digits. I was just wondering if you could just help us with how much you think it might be down.

I think the issue right now is is it's difficult.

So, you know, what we're trying to do is in a time that's uncertain to give the best indication we can for the year ahead. You know, what I can tell you is the amount of work we've done in the last year to...

to maintain volumes has been significant. We continue to do that. That said, to repeat what I said earlier in terms of there has been inflation, there continues to be inflation of costs. It's paramount that we pass those through.

We understand that that has an impact on volume and volume obviously has an impact on our bottom line. But at this time to predict how inflation is going to continue for a year and how that's going to impact volume I think isn't something that I'd want to do today.

And as the year progresses, we can give a better view. But from our perspective today is we'll do everything we can to hold volume and, given the current circumstances, there's a risk.

that it'll have an adverse effect on profitability, but to say what that impact will be at this point, I think it's too soon, and it's too uncertain to be starting to guess at that.

Okay, then a question on working capital. It was discussed earlier in the call, the last two years, you invested over $200 million in working capital. You know, one of the attributes that a lot of investors...

like about Transcendentalist and strong free cash flow, but if you keep investing this level of working capital, it really rose to free cash flow. So do you think that you could have flat working capital this year or actually maybe free up some working capital and get some of that back? Is that realistic? Even think about that? Yeah, I think it is, Mike.

It's a great question. So investing in working capital is a bit of a misnomer, isn't it? The reality has been that raw materials have risen massively and as raw material pricing goes up, unfortunately, the net of working capital is...

is to the negative from a cash flow perspective. And you couple with that, where some raw materials, really specific raw materials, and today's oil specifically, continue to be difficult to acquire, and as a result, it's important to keep a certain level of inventory. That said, if we're looking at the coming year, and we look at the direction that resin is going, for example.

is as raw materials go down, you'll also see our working capital go down. And as supply chains free up, you'll see our working capital go down, and we understand the importance of doing that. And as...

We see PE specifically, polyethylene specifically going down. We have a material we have to work on for); the

We are focused on making sure that our inventories go down so that we can benefit from a decline in raw materials as opposed to be hurt if we have high cost raw material inventories on hand and pricing reflects lower costs.

our lower price. So in conclusion to your question, long answer is we will do everything we can to see working capital go in a different direction this year.

Okay, all right, thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, if there are any additional questions at this time, please press star followed by one. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys.

There are no further questions at this time.

Thank you everyone for joining us on the call today and we look forward to speaking to you soon.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.

...

Thanks a lot. Good afternoon. Peter, just following up on one of the last couple of questions just related to printing. I mean, this has always been a segment where you guys have historically done a good job of driving efficiencies and keeping margins or at least protecting overall EBITDA. You've – in answer to the last question, you alluded to the fact that you'll look at where the volumes are and make adjustments accordingly, but maybe you could talk a bit more proactively rather than necessarily reactively to anything out there in the marketplace. Just on an efficiencies basis, do we start to look at the prospect of printing margins, you know, dipping, you know, lower in the teens or is there this opportunity to, through efficiency efforts, preserve something, you know, a little bit closer to the F-22 levels? Thanks for the question, Adam.