Sylvamo Corporation (NYSE:SLVM) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call August 11, 2022 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Hans Bjorkman – Vice President-Investor Relations

Jean-Michel Ribiéras – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

John Sims – Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Paul Quinn – RBC Capital Markets

Cole Hathorn – Jefferies

Jonathan Luft – Eagle Capital Partners

Operator

Good morning and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Sylvamo’s Second 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 for questions. [Operator Instructions]

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

Hans Bjorkman

Thanks, Tory. Good morning and thank you for joining our call today. Our speakers this morning are Jean-Michel Ribiéras. 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-U.S. GAAP financial information. Reconciliations of those figures to U.S. GAAP financial measures are available in the appendix.

Our website also contains copies of the second quarter 2022 earnings press release as well as today's presentation. On Slide 4, we want to provide a brief update on our Russian business. As communicated in our first quarter earnings call, we made the decision to exit Russia and began conducting a process to sell our Russian business. In the second quarter, we have transitioned the Russian operations into discontinued operations. It is important to note now that our Russian operations are reported in discontinued ops, all earnings and figures for current and prior periods as well as our outlook in this presentation exclude our Russian business, unless otherwise noted.

The process to sell the business continues, and we will provide an update on any material developments when appropriate. Please keep in mind that the situation in Russia is complex and continues to change frequently. In the meantime, we will continue to comply with all regulations and sanctions.

With that, I will now 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 5. I'm very pleased to share our second quarter highlights. We continue to have good results with another quarter of excellent commercial and operational execution. Quarter-over-quarter, we had a 290 basis point improvement in our margins, and we grew our adjusted EBITDA to $189 million, a 29% improvement.