Clearwater Paper Corporation (NYSE:CLW) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call April 28, 2022 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Sloan Bohlen - Investor Relations

Arsen Kitch - President and Chief Executive Officer

Mike Murphy - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Adam Josephson - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Mark Wilde - BMO Capital Markets

Paul Quinn - RBC Capital Markets

Operator

Good day. My name is Emma and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Clearwater Paper’s First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Sloan Bohlen, Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Sloan Bohlen

Thank you, Emma. Good afternoon and thank you for joining Clearwater Paper’s first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Arsen Kitch, President and Chief Executive Officer and Mike Murphy, Chief Financial Officer.

Financial results for the first quarter of 2022 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 of 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 2 of our supplemental information covering 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. Please turn to Slide 3. As you saw from our press release, we had an outstanding first quarter that exceeded our original expectations. On a consolidated basis, we reported net sales of $488 million, which was 15% higher than prior year. Adjusted net income was $18 million and adjusted EBITDA was $59 million. A few highlights to mention. Strong paperboard demand continued and prices increased. Tissue demand was stable, while prices increased. Inflation continued to be a headwind across most of our input costs, particularly pulp, chemicals, energy and freight.

We continue to focus on offsetting inflation with price increases and better operating performance in both businesses. And finally, we reduced net debt by $31 million in the quarter. As a result of our strong first quarter performance and our improved outlook for the year, we’re now anticipating achieving our debt leverage target sooner than anticipated and are resuming our previously authorized share buyback program. The program has approximately $30 million remaining. With that, let’s discuss some additional details about both of our businesses.