Sylvamo Corporation (NYSE:SLVM) Q3 2024 Results Conference Call November 12, 2024 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Hans Bjorkman - Vice President, Investor Relations
Jean-Michel Ribiéras - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
John Sims - Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Daniel Harriman - Sidoti & Company
George Staphos - Bank of America
Matthew McKellar - RBC Capital Markets

Operator

Good morning. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Sylvamo's Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, your conference is being recorded.

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

Hans Bjorkman

Thanks, Audra. Good morning, and thank you for joining our third quarter 2024 earnings call. Our speakers this morning are Jean-Michel Ribiéras, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and John Sims, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

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 earnings release as well as today's presentation.

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jean-Michel.

Jean-Michel Ribiéras

Thanks, Hans. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. I'll begin on Slide 4. We had a really strong third quarter. Our teams executed very well, delivering strong commercial and operational performance. Our mill system ran well, and we continue to see relatively stable input costs. We continue to make good progress with Project Horizon, our cost reduction program to streamline overhead, manufacturing and supply chain costs. We are on target to exceed our $110 million year-end run rate savings goal by up to $10 million.

Lastly, these combined performances by our teams resulted in very strong earnings and outstanding cash flow in the quarter.

Let's move to the next slide. Slide 5 shows our key financial metrics. We earned adjusted EBITDA of $193 million with a margin of 20%. Free cash flow generation was $119 million, and we generated adjusted operating earnings of $2.44 per share. I'm proud of our teams delivered impressive results while taking care of our customers.

More importantly, I'm proud of our team's commitment to putting people before paper to ensure everyone returns home safe at the end of each day. We are focused on building a resilient safety culture by involving every team member in our efforts to proactively eliminate risk and create a safer environment for everyone every day.