Avery Dennison Corporation (NYSE:AVY) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call April 24, 2024 12:00 PM ET

Company Participants

John Eble - Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations
Deon Stander - President and Chief Executive Officer
Gregory Lovins - Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

George Staphos - Bank of America
Ghansham Panjabi - Baird
John McNulty - BMO Capital Markets
Bryan Burgmeier - Citigroup
Jeff Zekauskas - JPMorgan
Josh Spector - UBS
Chris Kapsch - Loop Capital Markets
George Staphos - Bank of America

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. During this presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions].

Welcome to Avery Dennison's Earnings Conference Call for the First Quarter Ended on March 30, 2024. This call is being recorded and will be available for replay after 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time today and until midnight, Eastern Time, May 1st. To access the replay, please dial 1-800-770-2030 or 1-609-800-9909 for international callers. The conference ID number is 3299441.

I'd now like to turn the call over to John Eble, Avery Dennison's Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

John Eble

Thank you, Mandeep. Please note that throughout today's discussion, we'll be making references to non-GAAP financial measures. The non-GAAP measures that we use are defined, qualified and reconciled from GAAP on schedules A-4 to A-8 of the financial statements accompanying today's earnings release. We remind you that we'll make certain predictive statements that reflect our current views and estimates about our future performance and financial results. These forward-looking statements are subject to the safe harbor statement included in today's earnings release.

On the call today are Deon Stander, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Greg Lovins, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

I'll now turn the call over to Deon.

Deon Stander

Thanks, John, and hello, everyone. We're off to a strong start to the year. In the first quarter, we again delivered sequential earnings growth, with earnings up significantly compared to prior year and slightly above our expectations. We grew volume in both segments, significantly expanded margins generated strong free cash flow and delivered significant growth in Intelligent Labels.

Materials Group once again demonstrated its resilience, delivering significant volume growth and margin expansion both above expectations as downstream inventory destocking subsided and volumes continue to normalize. Label volume in Europe was particularly strong, as our teams managed through the now concluded finished port strike, which resulted in slight customer order pull forward in the quarter.