Apr. 22 at 8:28 PM
$PKG Packaging Corp. sees Q2 EPS
$2.41, consensus
$2.65
"Looking ahead as we move from the first and into the second quarter," Mr. Kowlzan added, "as always, our attention will remain on what we can control. Our North American focus together with our balance sheet strength, well-capitalized mills and plants, commitment to strategic goals, and proven ability to respond quickly and effectively to external factors will serve us well during this period of economic uncertainty. We anticipate continued ambiguity relative to domestic and foreign tariff actions and their effect on global trade and our demand trends.
Therefore, we have made certain assumptions in our guidance to recognize potential negative impacts to volume and costs from this uncertainty. In the Packaging segment, we expect domestic prices to improve with continued implementation of our price increases, along with fairly flat export prices. Although we see box shipments improving, operating costs will be negatively impacted due to lower containerboard volume as we run our operations to match demand assumptions.
We have also adjusted our planned maintenance outage schedule and pulled up an outage that was scheduled for later in the year resulting in higher second quarter costs than what we had provided previously. In the Paper segment, implementation of the higher published index prices from the first quarter will continue, although volume will be lower with the planned maintenance outage at our International Falls, MN mill. Rail contract rate increases at six of our mills during the first and second quarters will result in higher freight and logistics expenses, and depreciation expense is assumed to be higher as well. Considering these items, we expect second quarter earnings of
$2.41 per share."
