Clearwater Paper Corporation (NYSE:CLW) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call October 30, 2023 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Sloan Bohlen - Investor Relations

Arsen Kitch - President and Chief Executive Officer

Sherri Baker - Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Matthew McKellar - RBC Capital Markets

Paul Quinn - RBC Capital Markets

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Briana, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Clearwater Paper Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Please note that this call is being recorded. All participants are in listen-only mode at this time. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you.

I would now turn the call over to Sloan Bohlen, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Sloan Bohlen

Thank you, Briana. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Clearwater Paper's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Arsen Kitch, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Sherri Baker, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Financial results for the third quarter of 2023 were released shortly after today's market close, along with the filing of our 10-Q. You will find a presentation of supplemental information, including a slide providing the company's current outlook posted on the Investor Relations page on our website at clearwaterpaper.com.

Additionally, we will be providing certain non-GAAP information in this afternoon's discussion. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP information to comparable GAAP information is included in the press release and in the supplemental information provided on our website. Please note slide two of the supplemental information covering the forward-looking statements rather than rereading this slide, we are going to incorporate it by reference into our prepared remarks.

With that, let me turn the call over to Arsen.

Arsen Kitch

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. As you saw in our press release, we had an outstanding third quarter, driven by good operational execution, lower input costs, and continued strength in our tissue business.

Slide three of our supplementals provides a summary of our consolidated results. We reported net sales of $520 million and adjusted EBITDA of $81 million in the quarter, which is at the higher end of our expectations and $3 million higher than the third quarter of last year.

Our tissue business drove the improvement by more than doubling its adjusted EBITDA from $21 million in the third quarter of last year to $46 million this year. Our paperboard business delivered $52 million of adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter at a margin of 20%, even with the soft demand that we continue to experience.