Sylvamo Corporation (NYSE:SLVM) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call November 10, 2022 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Hans Bjorkman - Vice President-Investor Relations

Jean-Michel Ribiéras - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

John Sims - Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Ed Brucker - Barclays

Paul Quinn - RBC Capital Markets

Operator

Good morning and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Sylvamo's Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, we will have an opportunity to ask questions [Operator Instructions] And as a reminder your conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Hans Bjorkman Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir the floor is yours.

Hans Bjorkman

Thanks Lorris. Good morning and thank you for joining our call today. Our speakers this morning are Jean-Michel Ribiéras, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and John Sims Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Slides 2 and 3 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 third quarter earnings press release as well as today's presentation.

I would now like to turn the call over to Jean-Michel.

Jean-Michel Ribiéras

Thanks, Hans. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. I'll begin my comments on Slide 4. On October 1, we completed our first year as a public company. Our first year was one of significant achievements. As we build the world's paper company, we generated strong earnings per share and free cash flow, which we used to reduce debt, begin returning cash to shareowners and reinvest in our business.

We agreed to acquire the Nymolla mill in Sweden and divested our Russian business. Then we repaid our Term Loan B. and achieve our gross debt target of $1 billion. We have also exited our transition services agreement. I'm proud of our teams and accomplishments over the last year. More importantly, I'm pleased that we are well positioned to navigate any macroeconomic headwinds and resulting industry challenges.

Slide 5 highlights our third quarter results. Our three-point strategy of commercial excellence, operational excellence and financial discipline was the foundation of our success. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, we increased adjusted EBITDA by 14% to $216 million and we grew our margin by 160 basis points.