Earnings call transcript: Sylvamo Q3 2025 Misses EPS Forecast, Stock Dips

Sylvamo Corp reported its Q3 2025 earnings, revealing a notable miss on the earnings per share (EPS) forecast, which led to a decline in its stock price. The company's EPS came in at $1.44, falling short of the expected $1.75, marking a surprise of -17.71%. Despite the revenue exceeding expectations slightly at $846 million against a forecast of $840.32 million, the stock reacted negatively, dropping 4.03% to $40.93 in pre-market trading.

Key Takeaways

• Sylvamo's Q3 EPS of $1.44 missed the forecast by 17.71%.
• Revenue slightly exceeded expectations at $846 million.
• Stock price fell 4.03% in pre-market trading.
• New share repurchase authorization of $150 million announced.
• Uncoated freesheet sales volume increased by 7% quarter-over-quarter.

Company Performance

Sylvamo's Q3 performance highlighted both challenges and opportunities. The company's focus on uncoated freesheet paper, a resilient segment, led to a 7% increase in sales volume compared to the previous quarter. However, the earnings miss may reflect broader market challenges, particularly in Europe, where conditions remain difficult. The company's strategic investments, such as the expansion of the Eastover mill, are aimed at strengthening its competitive position.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $846 million, slightly above forecast.
• Earnings per share: $1.44, below the forecast of $1.75.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $151 million with an 18% margin.
• Free cash flow: $33 million.
• Cash returned to shareholders: $60 million.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Sylvamo's Q3 EPS of $1.44 missed the forecast by 17.71%, a significant deviation that contrasts with the slightly positive revenue surprise of 0.68%. This earnings miss is notable compared to previous quarters where Sylvamo has generally met or exceeded expectations, indicating potential operational or market challenges.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Sylvamo's stock price fell by 4.03% to $40.93 in pre-market trading. This drop reflects investor disappointment over the EPS miss, despite the revenue beat. The stock is currently trading closer to its 52-week low of $37.52, suggesting a cautious market sentiment.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Sylvamo has provided Q4 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance ranging from $115 million to $130 million. The company anticipates unfavorable price and mix impacts of $20 million to $25 million but expects volume to be favorable by $15 million to $20 million. Additionally, a planned maintenance outage is expected to impact Q4 by $18 million.

Executive Commentary

During the earnings call, John Sims, COO, stated, "We view the uncoated free sheet industry landscape as an opportunity," highlighting the company's strategic focus. Don Devlin, CFO, emphasized Sylvamo's unique advantage, saying, "Owning forest lands in Brazil is a unique strength that differentiates Sylvamo."

Risks and Challenges

• European market conditions remain challenging, impacting demand.
• Planned maintenance outages could affect future earnings.
• The transition to a new CEO may introduce strategic shifts.
• Global economic uncertainties could affect sales and profitability.
• Potential impacts from the Riverdale supply agreement ending.

Q&A

Analysts inquired about inventory normalization in North America and the impact of the Riverdale supply agreement. The company confirmed plans to build 60,000 tons of inventory to bridge the supply agreement's end, maintaining an estimated $30 million EBITDA impact.

Sylvamo's Q3 results underscore the complexities the company faces in navigating market dynamics, operational challenges, and strategic transitions. As it moves forward, its ability to leverage its competitive advantages and address market challenges will be critical to its success.

Full transcript - Sylvamo Corp (SLVM) Q3 2025:

Conference Operator: Good morning. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Sylvamo's third quarter 2025 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. As a reminder, your conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the call over to Hans Bjorkman, Vice President, Investor Relations. Sir, the floor is yours.

Hans Bjorkman, Vice President, Investor Relations, Sylvamo: Thanks, Tina. Good morning, and thank you for joining our third quarter 2025 earnings call. Our speakers this morning are Jean-Michel Ribiéras, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; John Sims, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; and Don Devlin, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Slides two and three contain important information, including certain legal disclaimers. For example, during this call, we will make forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. We will also present certain non-US GAAP financial information. Reconciliations of those figures to US GAAP financial measures are available in the appendix. Our website also contains copies of the earnings release as well as today's presentation. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jean-Michel.

Jean-Michel Ribiéras, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Sylvamo: Thanks, Hans. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. I'll start on slide four with our third quarter highlights. Our uncoated freesheet sales volume increased quarter over quarter by 7%. Our teams also executed well, resulting in improved operational performance. We returned $60 million in cash to shareholders by distributing $18 million via the third quarter dividend and repurchasing $42 million in shares. Our board also approved a new $150 million share repurchase authorization in the quarter. Let's move to the next slide. Slide five shows our third quarter key financial metrics. We earned adjusted EBITDA of $151 million with a margin of 18%. Free cash flow was $33 million, and we generated adjusted operating earnings of $1.44 per share. Now I will turn it over to Don to review our performance in more detail.

Don Devlin, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Sylvamo: Thank you, Jean-Michel, and good morning, everyone. Slide six contains our third quarter earnings bridge versus the second quarter. The 151 million of adjusted EBITDA was in line with our outlook of 145 to 165 million. Price and mix was unfavorable by 14 million, primarily driven by paper and pulp prices in Europe. Volume increased by 14 million, mainly driven by stronger seasonality in Latin America and North America. Operations and other costs were favorable by 5 million, driven by improved operational performance. Planned maintenance outage costs improved by 66 million as we had no planned outages at our mills. Input and transportation costs were unfavorable by 2 million. Let's move to slide seven. North America and Brazil industry conditions are solid, while Europe and other Latin America are challenged. In Europe, market conditions continue to be very challenging. Pulp and uncoated free sheet prices remained under pressure.

However, some pulp grades started to show signs of recovery at the end of the third quarter. Uncoated free sheet demand is down 5% year over year through September, while supply is down 7%. Wood costs in southern Sweden are starting to ease, recently decreasing by a reported 8%. In Latin America, demand remains mixed. Brazil is up 3% year over year through September, and prices are stable. However, demand in other Latin American countries is down 5%. Pricing is under pressure in some countries. Even though the majority of this demand decline is due to Argentina and Mexico, some countries across other Latin America are having economic challenges as well. This demand decline, in addition to shifts in global trade flows, is resulting in continued pricing pressure across other Latin America. In North America, demand is stable year over year through September.

Imports were up 46% year over year through August in anticipation of the tariffs, but are expected to moderate. In fact, customer feedback indicates inventories from increased imports are being consumed and returning to normal levels. Industry supply was reduced by 6% in the third quarter after Pixel closed their Chillicothe, Ohio, mill in August. There's still uncertainty caused by the US tariffs, which may take a while to settle out. Let's go to slide eight. Looking ahead, we expect to deliver fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA of 115 to 130 million. We project price and mix to be unfavorable by 20 to 25 million, primarily due to paper prices in Europe and mix across the regions. We expect volume to be favorable by 15 to 20 million, largely due to Latin America and North America.

Operations and other costs are projected to be unfavorable by 5 to 10 million, primarily due to seasonally higher costs, and we expect input and transportation costs to be stable. Planned maintenance outages will be unfavorable by 18 million as we have one outage in North America planned in the quarter. Let's move to slide nine. In August, International Paper announced plans to convert their uncoated free sheet paper machine at its Riverdale mill to produce container board by the third quarter of 2026. Last week, we announced we would continue to receive uncoated free sheet from Riverdale mill until May 2026. Riverdale should supply us with approximately 260,000 tons in 2025, and we expect to receive around 100,000 tons in 2026. As a result of the supply agreement ending, we will optimize our product segment and customer mix and leverage our European mills to supply the US and Mexico.

We will be building inventory over time to help bridge the gap until our Eastover investments are complete, and we have the additional 60,000 tons of incremental capacity, which is expected to ramp up in the fourth quarter of 2026. Let's go to slide ten. The Riverdale amendments we recently executed had a few components. One component was that IP agreeing to a $15 million reduction to the $100 million payment we would owe to IP in the event we sell the Brazil forest lands. We have no intention of selling the forest lands as we believe we are unlocking value every day by producing uncoated free sheet. Owning forest lands in Brazil is a unique strength that differentiates Sylvamo. These assets provide a competitive advantage and go beyond operational benefits. Direct control over wood fiber ensures security of supply, reduces exposure to market volatility, and supports long-term cost management.

Our forest lands represent a significant part of our intrinsic value that we feel is not reflected in our current market valuation. We recently had an appraisal completed on our forest lands, which are now valued at almost 5 billion Brazilian reais. Forest lands are tangible and appreciating resources that are the cornerstone of our strategy, delivering cost advantages and a source of intrinsic value for our shareholders. I'll turn the call over to John.

John Sims, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Sylvamo: Thank you, Don, and good morning, everyone. I'll pick up on slide 11. As we navigate through cyclical industry conditions and headwinds, we are focused on the things we can control. We are continuously working to improve our business. We are driving operational excellence and strategic initiatives across all our regions. These efforts should improve margins, reduce costs, and strengthen our competitive position. In Europe, we're improving our product mix, winning new customers at our Saiyot mill. We're actively working to reduce wood costs at Numila and at key levels of cost efficiency. Additionally, we're focused on reducing fixed costs and improving operational efficiency and reliability across the European region. In Latin America, we've secured new strategic Brazilian customers and further developed key partnerships in other Latin American countries, expanding our market presence. We're investing to improve wood self-sufficiency, to reduce costs by decreasing the need for higher-cost third-party wood.

Our team is also executing a pipeline of more than 100 initiatives across the entire business, designed to strengthen EBITDA and cash flow. In North America, we're focused on strategic commercial initiatives to improve volume and margin. We're reducing supply chain costs and optimizing inventory. Finally, we're investing in our flagship mill in Eastover South Carolina to improve our competitive advantages by lowering costs, enhancing efficiency, and increasing capacity by 60,000 tons. Across all regions, these initiatives reflect our commitment to customers, operational efficiency, and strategic investments to deliver sustainable value. So let's move to slide 12. Our long-term capital allocation strategy drives shareholder value. We are focused on maintaining a strong financial position, reinvesting in our business, and returning cash to shareholders.

Our healthy financial position allows us to stay focused on our customers with a long-term perspective in mind, especially during times of challenging industry conditions like we're currently experiencing in some of our markets. It enables reinvesting in our business, enhancing our reliability, productivity, and improving our service through operational excellence initiatives. And it preserves the flexibility to return cash to shareholders. Dividends are an important part of our cash returns to shareholders, and after paying 45 cents per share in all four quarters, we have returned approximately 73 million through dividends this year. Another strategic pillar of cash returns to shareholders are share repurchases. We will continue to evaluate opportunities to repurchase shares at attractive prices, especially when we feel our valuation is well below our intrinsic value.

This is why in the third quarter, we repurchased $42 million worth of shares at an average price of $44.74, exhausting the remaining amount of our share repurchase authorization. This brings our year-to-date share repurchases to 82 million. In September, the board also approved a new $150 million share repurchase authorization. Slide 13. Our strategy is to be singly focused on uncoated free sheet paper, which remains the largest and most resilient segment in the graphic paper space. We view the uncoated free sheet industry landscape as an opportunity. We are investing to strengthen our competitive advantages, to drive earnings and cash flows. We view these investments as high return and low risk as we are staying in our core product line and reinforcing our position as a supplier of choice for customers. We will leverage our strengths to generate high returns on invested capital.

I'll now wrap up my comments on the next slide, slide 14. You likely saw some public filings yesterday related to Atlas Holdings and a couple of our directors resigning. I want to spend a minute discussing this topic. At the direction of Atlas Holdings, Carl Myers and Mark Wilde resigned from the board effective November 5th. I would like to thank both of them for their contribution to Sylvamo. As a reminder, they both joined our board in 2023 as part of a cooperation agreement with Atlas. Sylvamo Board also thanks them for their service. With these resignations, the restrictions on Atlas and the cooperation agreement will terminate. When we move to the Q&A portion on this call, I hope you can appreciate that we will not be taking questions or commenting further on this matter. We appreciate your cooperation on that.

Lastly, as we prepare for our leadership transition on January 1st, and I am honored to lead Sylvamo as its next CEO, as John Michelle is retiring at the end of the year on behalf of our senior lead team and all the employees of Sylvamo, I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his four-plus years of dedication to Sylvamo as its CEO. He led Sylvamo through the spinoff and other challenges in our first few years and has been instrumental to Sylvamo's success, positioning it for further long-term value creation. We wish him all the best. John Michelle, would you like to say a few words?

Jean-Michel Ribiéras, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Sylvamo: Thanks, John. I appreciate your kind words and well wishes. Leading Sylvamo has been an absolute honor these past four years, and I'm pleased with everything we have accomplished. I would like to thank our employees, customers, suppliers, and investors for the support and partnership. I'll leave knowing that the company is in very good hands and its brightest days ahead of it. As I've said many times before, I'm confident in the future for Sylvamo and motivated by the opportunities that lie ahead. Thank you. I'll now turn it over to Hans.

Hans Bjorkman, Vice President, Investor Relations, Sylvamo: Thanks, John Michelle, John, and Don. Okay, Tina, we're ready to take questions.

Conference Operator: If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We do ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Thank you. Our first question comes from Daniel Harmon with Fidioti.

Daniel Harmon, Analyst, Fidioti: Hey, guys. Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my questions. And John Michelle, congratulations on the retirement, and we certainly appreciate all your help since we've had you under coverage. I'll start off with one today, and then I'll get back in the queue. But regarding North America, you highlighted stable demand, even with imports running higher earlier in the year. And as those inventories continue to be worked down, I'm wondering if you think we can expect that normalization to translate into potentially a more stable or improved pricing environment as we move into 2026.

John Sims, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Sylvamo: Hey, Daniel, it's John Sims. Thanks for your question. Yeah, we're expecting, and we are already seeing, and we're hearing from our customers that the inventory is being worked down from the import surge that occurred earlier in the year as a result of the threat of tariffs, if you will. And that has worked out, working through the system, and also the fact that imports have actually started to decrease coming in as a result of the tariffs. And then also you have the closure of the Shell coffee mill that we talked about, so that the operating rates should improve and strengthen going into next year.

Daniel Harmon, Analyst, Fidioti: Okay, great. Thanks, John.

Conference Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Matthew McKeller with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Matthew McKeller, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Just to follow up on the last one there, how far along are we in that process of inventories being consumed? Are they approaching normal levels today? Is that something you'd expect by year-end, or will that process continue into '26? Thank you.

John Sims, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Sylvamo: So I would say that we're approaching normal levels right now. That's how we're seeing it currently.

Matthew McKeller, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Great. Very helpful. And then a couple of quick ones on Riverdale and how you're preparing for the end of that supply agreement. Can you give us a sense of how much inventory you're intending to build to bridge you to that incremental capacity at Eastover and maybe what kind of working capital investment you'd expect? And then at the time that the calculation of that supply agreement was announced, I think you said the impact of 2026 EBITDA would be about 30 million at current margins. Is that still a good estimate of what you expect the impact to be based on how margins may have evolved and any changes to your plans since that time? Thanks very much.

Hans Bjorkman, Vice President, Investor Relations, Sylvamo: Hey, Matthew, this is Don. Thanks for the question. So for the first part of your question, we plan to build about 60,000 tons of inventory through the year. Most of it will happen in the first half leading up to the Eastover outage for the conversion speed-up of Eastover. And then we plan to consume that inventory in the balance of the year. So from beginning to end, it would even out. And relative to the $30 million, I think in the previous call, we estimated the impact to Riverdale to be about $30 million. And that's the same. That hasn't changed for 2026.

Matthew McKeller, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Thanks very much. I'll turn it back.

Conference Operator: Again, to ask a question, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. And we'll pause for just a moment. And with no further questions in queue, I will now hand the call back to Hans Bjorkman for closing remarks.

Hans Bjorkman, Vice President, Investor Relations, Sylvamo: Thanks, Tina. We appreciate it. And thank you all for joining our call today. We appreciate your interest in Sylvamo, and we look forward to our continued conversations over the coming weeks. Thank you.

John Sims, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Sylvamo: Thank you. Bye.

Conference Operator: Bye. Once again, we would like to thank you for participating in Sylvamo's third quarter 2025 earnings call. You may disconnect.

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