Sonoco Products Co (NYSE:SON) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call November 1, 2023 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Lisa Weeks - VP, IR & Corporate Affairs

Robert Coker - President, CEO & Director

Robert Dillard - CFO

Rodger Fuller - COO

Conference Call Participants

George Staphos - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Anthony Pettinari - Citigroup

Mark Weintraub - Seaport Research Partners

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q3 2023 Sonoco Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions].

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Lisa Weeks, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Lisa Weeks

Thank you, operator, and thanks to everyone for joining us today for Sonoco's Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. Joining me this morning are Howard Coker, President and CEO; Rob Dillard, Chief Financial Officer; and Rodger Fuller, Chief Operating Officer.

Last evening, we issued a news release highlighting our financial performance for the third quarter, and we prepared a presentation that we will reference during this call. The press release and presentation are available online under the Investor Relations section of our website at sonoco.com.

As a reminder, during today's call, we will discuss a number of forward-looking statements based on current expectations, estimates and projections. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Therefore, actual results may differ materially. Please take a moment to review the forward-looking statements on Page 2 of the presentation.

Additionally, today's presentation includes the use of non-GAAP financial measures which management believes provides useful information to investors about the company's financial condition and results of operations. Further information about the company's use of non-GAAP financial measures, including definitions as well as reconciliations to GAAP measures is available under the Investor Relations section of our website.

For today's call, we will have prepared remarks regarding our results for the quarter and outlook for the fourth quarter, followed by a Q&A session. If you will turn to Slide 4 in our presentation, I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Howard Coker.

Robert Coker

Okay. Well, thank you, Lisa. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our third quarter 2023 earnings call.

Let me begin with highlights of the quarter. For Sonoco, we executed well, even with the ongoing market uncertainty. Sales came in at $1.71 billion, adjusted EBITDA was $280 million and adjusted earnings per share was $1.46. Sales were flat sequentially and generally in line with expectations. In the industrial sector, demand remains muted and volumes low. In consumer, volumes were sequentially higher in most businesses, while metal aerosol can volumes continue to underperform driven by lower end market demand and ongoing customer destocking.