Avery Dennison Corporation Price & Performance (AVY)

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 four to A eight 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 made subject to the Safe Harbor statement included in today's earnings release. On the call today are Dion Stander, President and Chief Executive Officer and Greg Lovens, Senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer. I'll now turn the call over to Dion.

Thanks, John, and hello, everyone. We delivered a strong first quarter in a dynamic environment. With earnings per share up 4% ex currency and in line with expectations. We grew volume in both segments with strong growth in high value categories and expanded overall margins. Materials Group delivered solid volume growth and strong margins as we continue to drive productivity across our businesses. Our strategy to expand our position in high value categories which makes up more than a third of Materials Group sales is working We delivered high single digit organic growth for these products in the first quarter. With particular strength in graphics and reflective solutions and industrial tapes. Our leadership position in our base business is strong as we continue to differentiate ourselves through quality and service strong material science and process technology capabilities and sustainable innovation over the long term. In the first quarter, overall label volume in North America was up compared to prior year and improved significantly on sequential basis as customer working capital actions at year end normalized as expected. Volume in Europe was up sequentially and down slightly compared to prior year in part due to the strong first quarter last year that benefited from some customer order pull forward related to the Finnish port strike in 2024.

Overall, emerging market volume was solid with particular strength in the ASEAN region while volume in China was comparable to prior year. In the Solutions Group, we delivered strong top line growth and margin expansion. Driven by strong growth in the base business and low single digit growth in high value solutions. Overall, apparel growth was strong up mid single digits. Within High Value Solutions, VESCOM our market leading suite of productivity and media solutions for the retail shelf edge delivered strong growth driven by both existing customers and the rollout of our solutions at CVS Health. This new program is on track and underway. Embellix, our high growth platform driven by personalization and fan engagement in team sports, and the performance athletic category was down mid single digits in the quarter driven by softer sales for large U. S. Performance brands and new program launches that benefited Q1 last year. We expect Impella's growth to strengthen later this year partially driven by the Performance Apparel brands preparing for the twenty twenty six World Cup. Turning to enterprise wide intelligent labels. We grew mid single digits on an organic basis in the first quarter. In line with expectations. Driven by strong growth in apparel and food categories, partially offset by a decline in logistics as expected.

In food, our strategic collaboration with Kroger focused on enabling more frequent and accurate inventory information to maximize freshness reduce waste and improve the consumer and associate experience is on track. We are actively working on other large scale grocery pilots in our pipeline. In logistics, our solutions continue to deliver strong returns for helping drive increased routing accuracy labor efficiency. We are actively engaged on key projects in the pipeline and do expect more industry adoption through the cycle. As previously discussed, we don't foresee another large scale rollout in 2025. In apparel and general retail, key new programs are on track. Retailers are adopting embedded technology to increase the return on their overall RFID program unlocking additional value from loss detection and self checkout And general retailers are driving supplier compliance in new categories. It is clear that physical items increasingly need a digital identity to help solve key industry challenges. Our competitive advantages here are clear. We provide labeling materials that both decorate and provide information on most of the world's items, and we are market leaders in the most ubiquitous broadly applicable sensing technology in UHF RFID. This combined with our innovation leadership and go to market strategy uniquely positions us to lead and win in multiple industry segments with more than three fifty billion units of opportunity at the nascent point of industry growth.

As such, we continue to invest to capture the significant opportunity ahead. As we grow the overall industry through both the Solutions Group as well as our channel partners in the Materials Group. Shifting back to the total company level. While we delivered a strong first quarter, and our underlying business is on track, macro uncertainty is elevated. Due to an evolving and dynamic trade policy environment. And near term global GDP growth outlooks have continued to reduce. But it's not clear how things will play out the recent change in tariffs will likely have both direct and indirect impacts to our business. We expect the direct impact to our material purchases to be relatively low and largely mitigatable. Greg will provide some more details on this front momentarily. The indirect impact of trade policy on macro demand is more uncertain in particular for discretionary categories. Taken together, it is more difficult to predict and forecast full year results And as such, we have moved to provide quarterly guidance. As we've done in the past, we are prepared for a lower volume environment should it happen.

Have initiated our proven scenario planning playbook across the organization to maximize opportunities and protect earnings in various environments. We are initiating actions such as activating temporary belt tightening identifying share gain opportunities and identifying trigger points for additional structural actions in the event of a broad economic slowdown. Stepping back have a proven track record of delivering strong results across cycles, due to the strength of our overall franchise We are industry leaders in more than 80% of our portfolio in large, growing and diverse markets. We are competitively advantaged, including a global scale footprint innovation and go to market strategy. We have catalysts for strong growth over cycles in multiple high value categories that provide differentiated growth potential and in emerging markets. The durability of our portfolio which is stronger than ever, and the agility of our global team provides us multiple levers to deliver in broad range of scenarios. Materials Group has demonstrated strong resilience through and across cycles and has limited direct tariff exposure due to the regional nature of the business. Solutions Group is less cyclical than it was in previous downturns, with roughly a third of its end market exposure now outside of apparel.

Lastly, we have a strong balance sheet with ample capacity and a disciplined approach to capital allocation that provides significant investment flexibility to drive earnings growth and expand EVA over the cycles. Taken together, these elements enable us to continue delivering strong results over cycles. I want to thank our entire team for their continued resilience focus on excellence and commitment to addressing the unique challenges at hand. With that, before I hand the call over, I want to officially welcome Greg back It's really great to have him back and healthy. And also take a moment to thank Daniel Louche, not only for stepping in as Interim CFO while Greg recovered, but for doing an excellent job. Danny has now reverted back to focusing on strategy and M and A. With that, over to you, Greg.

Thanks, Dion. And yes, a big thanks to Danny for stepping in while I was out. And I also want to thank everyone in the investment community who reached out while I was gone, and it's it's definitely great to be back. So in the first quarter, we delivered adjusted earnings per share of $2.3 up 4% excluding currency translation compared to prior year as benefits from higher volume and productivity were partially offset by the net impact of pricing and raw material cost as expected. Compared to prior year, sales were up 2% on an organic basis as higher volume was partially offset by deflation related price reduction.

And adjusted EBITDA margin was strong, at 16.4% in the quarter, up 10 basis points compared to prior year with strong margins in both segments. Free cash flow was roughly negative $50,000,000 in the quarter and in line with our expectations. You may recall that free cash flow in the first quarter has historically been negative driven primarily by the timing of customer rebates employee incentive payments. Balance sheet remains strong with the net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio at quarter end of 02/2003 which includes paying down €500,000,000 of debt, which matured in March. We continue to execute our disciplined capital allocation strategy, including returning cash to shareholders. In the first three months of the year, we returned $331,000,000 through the combination of share repurchases and dividends. And reduced our share count by 2,300,000 shares compared to the same time last year. So turning to segment results for the quarter. Materials group sales were up 1% ex currency and on an organic basis. Driven by low single digit volume and mix growth partially offset by deflation related price reductions. Organically, High Value categories were up high single digits, including strong growth in our intelligent label inlay channel and the base business was down low single digits.

In the first quarter, we we reclassified roughly $10,000,000 of Intelligent Label sales from the Solutions Group to the Materials Group, to better reflect our unique advantage in providing RFID materials to our strong converter network. To further drive growth of Intelligent Labels in new categories.

Overall, Label Materials volume was in line with the expectations. Looking at regional volume growth versus prior year in the quarter, North America was up low single digits. Europe was down low single digits as we lapped a strong Q1 twenty twenty four which included the pull forward Dion noted earlier. Asia Pacific was up low single digits and Latin America was also up low single digits.

Compared to prior year, both Graphics and Reflectives and performance takes in Medical delivered strong results and were up high single digits organically.

Materials Group delivered a strong adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.7% in the quarter, up 70 basis points sequentially and down 60 basis points compared to prior year. As benefits from productivity and higher volumes were more than offset by the net impact of pricing and raw material input costs due to the timing of deflation related price reductions through 2024. Regarding raw material costs, globally, we saw modest deflation sequentially in the first quarter. Our current outlook is for modest inflation sequentially in the second quarter, with higher tariffs impacting us by mid Q2. Where applicable, implementing surcharges to account for these higher costs.

Shifting to Solutions Group. Sales were up 5% on an organic basis. With base solutions up high single digits and high value solutions up low single digits. Within High Value Solutions, VESCOM was up high single digits, driven by strong growth with both existing customers and new program rollouts.

Embellis was down in the quarter, as Dion noted, and we expect to return to strong growth in this platform as we move through the year. Enterprise wide Intelligent Label sales were up mid single digits in the first quarter, and in line with our expectations. With strong growth in our converter channel, mid single digit growth in apparel, and strong growth in food partially offset by a decline in logistics as expected. Solutions Group delivered strong adjusted EBITDA margin 17.2%, up 110 basis points compared to prior year. As benefits from productivity and higher volume were partially offset by growth investments. Now shifting to our outlook. We're working to mitigate the direct impacts of the recent tariff announcements while also activating our proven playbook to manage throughout various scenarios. As it relates to the direct impact of tariffs, in both the current rate scenario as well as the scenario where the previously announced tariffs revert after the ninety day pause, a relatively small proportion of our material purchases are impacted. Less than 10% globally. It's also important to note that the vast majority of our imports and exports between The U. S, Canada and Mexico including RFID inlays, are USMCA compliant.

The overall direct cost impact will likely likely represent low single digit inflation on our total raw material purchases. In order to mitigate the potential impact, we're implementing some sourcing adjustments and pricing surcharges. The indirect impact of trade policy on macro demand is more uncertain, The majority of our portfolio is anchored in consumer staples, but we also serve some more discretionary markets such as industrials, durables and apparel. In apparel, retailers and brands serving The U. S. Market are assessing sourcing, supply chain and pricing strategies. Especially for garments produced in China. We estimate our apparel label sales in China for garments to be exported to The U. S. Are roughly $350,000,000 annually. Which represents just 4% of total company revenue. Taking all of this into account, our visibility for Q2 is currently stronger than for the back half of the year. For the second quarter of twenty twenty five, we expect adjusted earnings per share to be up sequentially. In the range of $2.3 to $2.5 With sales growth in the majority of our businesses to be offset by a mid single digit decline in apparel, resulting in overall sales roughly comparable to prior year. We expect a sequential increase in earnings will be driven by our traditional seasonality as both the calendar and Lunar New Year's impacted our Q1 as well as ongoing business momentum some of our high value categories.

Such as VESCOM, and a sequential currency benefit assuming current rates.

This growth will be partially offset by our annual wage inflation cycle that started on April 1, and the impacts of tariffs on apparel revenue that we've discussed. We've also outlined some contributing factors to our full year results on Slide 13 of our supplemental materials. To highlight a few of the key drivers, we now anticipate a roughly $7,000,000 headwind to operating income from currency translation. Assuming recent rates, which is better than the roughly $30,000,000 headwind, we expected at the beginning of the year. And we now expect restructuring savings net of transition cost, of more than $45,000,000 which is up $5,000,000 from our expectations a quarter ago. And we continue to expect strong free cash flow across a wide range of scenarios. In summary, we delivered a strong quarter in line with our expectations, through a dynamic environment. We are well prepared for a variety of macro scenarios and expect to grow earnings sequentially in the second quarter. And we're well positioned to continue to deliver exceptional value to all of our stakeholders through our disciplined strategies for our strategies for long term profitable growth disciplined capital allocation. [indiscernible] with that, we'll open up the call for your questions.

Your registration, please press 1 again. To accommodate all participants, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and then return to the queue if you have additional questions. Our first question comes from the line of Ghansham Panjabi with Baird. Please go ahead.

Hey guys, good morning. Greg, welcome back. It's good to hear your voice again. I guess first off, as it relates to the first quarter, maybe you can give us a frame of reference as it relates to how you think tariff pre buying, etcetera, might have impacted the first quarter. I think apparel was up mid single digits, and then you're calling out 2Q as down mid single digits. So just any more color on there would be great. And then I know you're staying away from annual guidance, but for RFID specifically, apart from just the tariff uncertainty, is there anything good or bad plus or minus versus your outlook three months ago as it relates to 2025 in terms of new programs and so on and so forth. Thank you so much.

Hey, Ghansham. Let address that. In the first quarter, we actually didn't see on aggregate any really pull forward because of tariffs overall. If you recall, the sequence of events that led through each announcement and some what the retraction of the announcements, we were anticipating seeing some of our customer base adjust as they went through. But we didn't actually see any material impact at all in the first quarter. What we did see in the really last few weeks of March if you recall, post the 20% announcement of tariffs to China, we did see some retail brands, apparel brands look at their sourcing decisions, their pricing decisions that last couple of weeks that we saw a slightly more muted demand there. You then look in the second quarter, our anticipation, as you said, is we're looking we're expecting sort of mid single digit declines for apparel. And what we're seeing so far at the start of the quarter is roughly about high single digit declines. And that's based on the discussions we're seeing with brands and retailers really anchored around what are they trying to do to resolve the significantly high tariff rates they see currently in place with [indiscernible] And they're really focused on three actions.

So one is what sourcing decisions can they make to move goods, and we're actively involved with them in that.

That's actually one of our inherent strengths because of our global network We see advantage for us in that regard. The second is that they're thinking through how do they leverage supplier partnerships in the whole ecosystem to help offset some of those additional costs. Then the third element is really they think through what are they going to do in terms of pricing strategy. And then this is area where they're actually holding largely on some of their pricing decisions because if you think through the supply chain, a lot of what we provide them is price ticketing, for example, that has a particular price point retail price point, some couple of months to be in advance of when it hits the market. They have to make decisions to determine what they're actually going to price these garments at. And that's really why there's a bit of a slowdown. We anticipate as they make these decisions in the very, very short term, that we'll continue to see orders rise still anticipating given the visibility we have, that apparel will be sort of mid single digit decline for the quarter. On our material side, what it's worth, we haven't seen really any impact of tariffs so far.

We're not seeing really any pull forward of orders either in the first quarter.

And order patterns for the first three weeks so far would are as expected, perhaps a little bit of elevated volume in North America, That's probably because we've all been discussing potential price surcharges We don't expect that to be material anyway. Turning to your second quarter, on RFID.

Will say that absent the tariffs and the macro uncertainty, the underlying business is on track with what we thought it was going to be. You recall that 10% to 15% range that we gave. Again, one of the reasons why we're actually only focused on the second quarter is because even in that 10% to 15% range, apparel still makes up roughly 60% to 65% of our overall sales. And given the uncertainty over there, we thought it better that we focus on the second quarter and what we know now. I look across the rest of the segments, Ghansham, I don't see any change in the growth programs that we have planned. Which as you recall, we said with scale during the year. They were all on track in the way that we'd anticipated and remain very confident in those overall.

Our next question will come from the line of John McNulty with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So a question on the working capital front. It had a relatively decent jump. And I know normally that happens in the first quarter, but it seems bigger than usual. Is that a little bit of repositioning your own products and building up inventory kind of ahead of tariffs? Or if not, can you help us to understand maybe why we saw that ramp up the way that it did? And then just, you know, another kind of somewhat related issue. On the low single digit impact from tariffs, How do you anticipate dealing with that Is it again, some of it may be moving working capital around ahead of it? Do you expect to be able to get it all through in pricing? I know you mentioned a little bit of price a little bit of efficiency improvements. But I guess how quickly can you get that pricing through? To help offset some of the tariff headwinds? Yes. Thanks for the questions, John. So on working capital, I wouldn't say there's anything really specific to call out. I think when we look at DSOs and turns and DPOs, each of them had slight increases or decreases from a DPO perspective versus prior year, but nothing really significant across the businesses.

Would say that we had some purchases in the fourth quarter of inventory [indiscernible] got us future rebates that had some impact on our inventories as we exited last year and the payables went out in the first quarter here this year. There's a little bit of an impact for that, but nothing really major that I would look at there. As I talked about in the prepared remarks, we had incentive compensation payments this year obviously, significantly higher that went out in Q1 of this year than it was in Q1 of twenty twenty four. Given the destocking and things we had in 2023 and the impact that had on incentive comp for that year. So that was a big piece of it as well as just higher customer rebate payments that went out in the first quarter of this year.

Given the improvement in '24 versus '23 as well.

So both of those things, higher order of magnitude this year than they were a year ago in Q1.

I think when we talk about the tariffs, as you said, our expectation is if everything as of right now and if they go back toward the higher rates in a few months, both of those scenarios results in basically low single digit impact on us from tariff perspective.

We're looking at pricing surcharges as we talked about as well as looking at wherever we can shift sourcing to mitigate some of the tariff impacts. So it'll be a combination of those things. That we're looking at, not a % pricing, but certainly in The U. S, looking at pricing surcharges. That we would expect to go out relatively soon.

Now we do have some inventory in the second quarter. So we don't really start to see a big impact from that until we get kind of midway through the second quarter here.

Our next question comes from the line Jeff Zekauskas with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much. So I just wanna see if I can describe what you said about the change in apparel demand from positive mid single digits to negative mid single digits in the second quarter.

Is this mostly a China event or does it have to do with other Asian countries? That that is do do you see it more as a tariff event rather than an economic event? And then for Greg, know that the company bought back a lot of stock in the first quarter you spent. $260,000,000 which is more than you spent for the entire 02/2324, But at the same time, what you did is you opt providing earnings guidance for 02/2025 and can only see a quarter ahead. Why did you buy so much stock even though the the outlook seems to be cloudier?

Thanks, Jeff.

Yes, the change in from mid single digit to sort of negative mid single digits overall is based on what we can see at the moment. I talked roughly about what we saw initial order demand looks like as we're working with our customers to determine how best we can help them make sourcing changes, think through the entirety of how to help them offset some of these costs, but also thinking through where we can help them do pricing changes for garments, whether it's in country or actually through the supply chain even back into The United States. And largely, this is really a China tariff issue at the moment. That's the way I'd characterize it. I think Greg made the point of saying we have about $350,000,000 roughly 4% of the company's revenue. [indiscernible] on apparel tags and labels that get attached to garments that get exported to The United States.

And what we're seeing with customers over there is trying to determine how much they can move to other sourcing locations We've done that historically for them for a very long time with their prime partner in that. Actually see advantage for us in that. And the second piece is then how do they then also make decisions on what they're to price point these into the the markets ultimately when they arrive in stateside. I see it very easy to distinguish between if it's a tariff issue, if it's an economic issue because ultimately any high tariffs of that order of magnitude will have likely consumer volume impact at some point. Again, it's on a very small part of our business overall. And that's the way I'd characterize it. I think it also highlights at least for me, Jeff, just the broad strength of the franchise that we have. This is a smaller part in this. We have significant opportunity in some of our high value category growth areas. Our base business across the world outside apparel in China continue to do well. Competitive advantage over there We have a strong balance sheet that we're going to leverage and move as we move forward through the cycle as well.

All right. Thanks. And yes, Jeff, your question on share buyback, nothing's really changed from our approach to capital allocation. I think you've heard us talk about that many times and how we think about capital allocation. Specific to share buybacks, our focus there over the years has been on and focused on generating a return on our share buybacks. I think when you look at we started to increase purchases in late fourth quarter, as well as Q1. Coincident with the share price decline that we saw at that point in time. With continued confidence ourselves in the intrinsic value of the company and the stock. So from that perspective, we increased the pace of our buybacks accordingly as we think we can then generate a strong return. That's been our focus and how we think about buybacks. Of course, we use a grid based approach and we're disciplined in that. But when we think the share price is in a period where it's declining, and well below our intrinsic value, then we'll look to accelerate our purchases.

That's what we've done here in the last few months.

I think the uncertainty that we're talking about with 2025 and full year guidance really came about in the last two or three weeks with the increased pace of tariffs and the changes that have happened there. So that's that's a little bit different than I think, our approach. We'll continue our approach on buyback, I should say.

We'll continue with our capital allocation strategies we always had I wouldn't say that we're necessarily going to buy $250,000,000 of shares every quarter, but of course, we're going to continue executing our strategy the way we have in the past. Our next question comes from the line of George Staphos with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Thanks, everyone. Good morning. Great to hear you back, Greg, and also congrats to Danny My question is on again, solutions and apparel tags. And so if we think about the amount of volume or revenue that is looking to move from China to elsewhere? Recognize there's gonna be some inertia.

Would you be able to satisfy that from your existing locations in other countries right now?

Or would there be some leakage, I. E, either because you don't have the capacity in place or for some other reason, if so, would there be a way to quantify that?

Related question, we totally understand that the uncertainty might lead to delays in some of the pilots. But I just want to make sure that I'm correctly. Coming into the year, the outlook for IL growth was 10% to 15%. With the lower end of that range, Dion seemingly being relatively baked in based on what you knew right now.

So can you help us understand how that may have changed or what the outlook should be as we sit here today given again so much volatility in the last few weeks? Thank you.

Sure.

On the first on your first question, George, we've historically seen in time is and this probably means for the last decade is we've helped customers move their sourcing for apparel into other countries, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Latin America, Eastern Europe. Is that we've actually over that time built up a fairly robust network. It's one of the I keep reiterating, it's one of the advantages we have and it's one of the reasons partners work with us in that regard. I will also say that there is still a substantial amount of garments still being sourced in China. It's vertical supply chain that it has in that country combined with highly efficient manufacturing, still makes it an attractive destination. To source apparel in, even relative to some other lower cost environments particularly because in some of those other countries, there's not still yet the full value chain established domestically. There's not every piece of componentry that you'll need to make garments and see still having to export in those countries as well. Typically, when we see movements we have more than ample capacity to be able to deal with that. And we do that both through a typical approach in terms of productivity, improving our own processes, but also just in terms of shift management and as we've continued to invest in assets where we see higher returns as well.

The scale of the magnitude, if the if the existing tariffs stay at the same rate, we anticipate roughly 10% or so of what remains now in China to still be probably exported back out to some other regions. This is largely as it relates to U. S. Volume. And we know within our network, can manage it across our network Again, I'll point to whether the industry has enough garment manufacturing and vertical capacity to absorb that that approach. And there's probably a question mark there. It will also take time. To stand up factories for Garm manufacturing to stand up those supply chains. So I think there's an advantage for us there, and we're involved in conversations with all of those customers. Just turning to IL, I was very clear when we talked to this last time. I saw that 10% is really strong certainty around that, largely because it was based on existing market for existing customers where they were either growing or had new programs that were already in rollouts and we were just fulfilling those programs. And then the additional 5% we talked about was for new program rollouts, not speculative, but planned for a specific time and the variability could come if those timing changed.

In that 10%, clearly, still have a very large portion of a apparel, George, that's anchored at roughly 60% or 65% is still apparel. And so any volatility or uncertainty as it relates to apparel, particularly the applicability of tariffs now, makes it more difficult to understand. That's why I made the point absent the tariff implications, our IL business the underlying ILM business is on track. The programs that we plan to roll out are rolling out. The programs that we are destined to roll out yet from a timing perspective still look to be on that case. We're seeing significant increased interest from our food channel on the strength of what they've seen at the Kroger rollout. Which so far we're in 25% of their stores on track for the rollout over there. And we continue to see really strong interest from the pilots that we haven't fully expanded even further. In logistics, we continue to see further interest as well I will still say that's more likely to be a 26 application rather than the 25 application. In general retail, we've seen high levels of retailers wanting to drive compliance And it's one of the reasons we've stood up our materials group channel program because we access all of those channel partners, and we've made it a clear focus for ourselves to enable them to be a mechanism for activating industry adoption from which we will benefit significantly as well.

Our next question will come from the line of Mike Ruxlin with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Yes. Thank you, Dion, Greg and John for taking my questions.

Greg, nice to have you back and wishing you continued good health. Thank you. Just two quick ones for me. Just in terms of intelligent label supply, globally, seems to be increasing Competitive dynamic obviously has negatively impacted the logistics [indiscernible] With the potential for further negative impacts. I just want get a sense, like, yeah, like, what are you doing to try to to mitigate any further share erosion in logistics And then, yes, just also following up on a comment you just made in response to George's question about deployments for 2026. It sounds like there is something in the pipe with respect to '20 with logistics. So any additional color you could give us around deployments that could potentially happen next year? Thanks.

Sure. So Mike, yes, I think I've spoken previously about where we see the overall competitive landscape to be for Ireland. I'll just remind everybody that it's not just in a singular note, it's a series of nodes. The chip manufacturing, that's not us. There has been taking that chip and putting it on to an inlay specifically designed and attenuated for its applicability, whether it's food, logistics, apparel, whatever the case may be. We are world leaders in that. With much of our intellectual property centered there. You're to have to manage data on that device. Again, we're world leaders in that. Have to have some form of hardware or software that hardware that reads it and we play partner in that area. Then on the software side, there's a whole stack of software options that enable you to make sense of what that data means, whether it's applications for reading, whether it's ERP systems, and we selectively play have bought and have stood up applications including our admin.io. So I'd say across that ecosystem, Mike, remain the go to person to enable large scale rollout and adoption. Is also typically when that rolls out that we tend to be the only or largely predominant supplier And then in time, sourcing decisions change within brands, retails and customers, they may bring on a second real service supply, but we tend to remain the majority supply That's what we've seen in every instance in apparel, seen this in logistics.

And I know I suspect in time as the other segments rather be similar. So our aim is to make sure we're maintaining our majority share because we will disproportionately benefit then as these new segments roll out. We're doing that really in three things. We're continuing to really lean into our innovation capability And during this year, we will see new innovation, proprietary innovation that we bring to market that is going to help unlock some of these new segments even further, and we will benefit from that. We lean into our process engineering roll to roll manufacturing capability producing billions of items to maintain our low cost leadership in the world in this area. And that also provides us competitive advantage. And I think the final thing is that we've learned over time as the team that most people call for the first time out, how to position the value creation that this technology will provide. And then we backed it up with support throughout the network, whether you're at source wherever you're in garments or sourcing, food sourcing, whether you're in the supply chain or even in retail where we help retailers do cultural adoption. So we continue to see that as a predominant and key focus for us is maintaining our advantage in that area.

I think on the color as it relates to '26 and logistics, all I will say, and I'm not going to comment on individual programs, Mike, is that in the extended pilots that we currently have going outside of UPS, which is our largest customer, every one of those pilots has actually extended slightly, some of them fairly largely. And they're still in the pilot phase where they're testing the returns that they will see largely anchored on labor efficiency, or routing accuracy. They're all directionally there. And there's not one of the large logistics providers that we're not engaged with now. If things continue in the progress in the way they are, then I don't I don't see why that we've not seen another progress moving forward as we go through the next year or so. But again, that will be subject to how that particular customer sees it as a priority within all of their other strategic priorities.

Our next question comes from the line of Mike Leithead with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. Good morning, team. Wanted to follow-up on the raw material side. I think you talked about inflation going into 2Q. You obviously flagged some of the tariff impact But but we've also seen chemical prices like propylene come down quite a bit of late. So so can you just walk through the broader raw material basket and what you're seeing in the key areas and how that's sort of all netting out?

To inflationary in 2Q?

Thanks.

Sure. So yes, I think when we look at our pure raw material basket, we've got kind of sequentially looking forward relatively stable, maybe we had low single digit inflation in the first quarter from Q4 to Q1. Mostly paper, a little bit on our films and chemicals deflationary as well. When we look forward to Q2, we see relatively stable outlook a little bit of maybe a little bit of deflation from our raw material basket, potentially offset by some of the tariffs that I talked about earlier that probably started impacting us here in the middle of the quarter. So think from that perspective overall, it's probably relatively stable. Is how we're thinking about it right now. Most of our dynamics over the last few quarters have really been on the paper side.

More so than on the chemicals or film side for us.

Our next question comes from the line of Matt Roberts with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, Greg. Welcome back. Glad to hear all is well.

Dion, you sound confident in in the new program rollout and I don't want to believe your questions already brought up too much. But thinking about the RFID supply chain more broadly, what type of cost impacts or tariff exposures are your suppliers or partners in the RFID value chain facing that could drive costs higher for the end retailer and whether that be wafers for circuits made in China and whether those are exempt or not or or anything on the reader or printer side. And do any cost increases there add uncertainty into your partner's own planning and the timing of those rollouts? Or have those investments really already been made from retailers that makes the timing somewhat immune to ongoing uncertainty? Thanks for taking the question.

Matt, let me see if I can best address that. To the best of our knowledge, we're not anticipating substantial tariff impacts on the predominant pieces that make up the RFID supply chain. I'm deliberately excluding semiconductors out of China at the moment. There's chips, because most of what happens from a semiconductor perspective that we use and that the industry use at the moment doesn't come out of China. There are some local for local China pieces they get dressed over there. There may be very small elements where they're using chemicals or other substrates to make those that may be subject to some of the limited tariffs, but they're very opaque to us and I suspect very low impact overall. In terms of hardware, I would there are certainly hardware players that have got manufacturing based in Asia. And there may be some incremental costs associated with that. But I suspect like we are doing, all other companies are trying to make sure they're mitigating those large lease resourcing changes And so overall, I would suspect that the increased tariff costs to retailers or customers will be very, very limited And in that regard, I'd also say that typically, if you have such a small order of increase, it's not a deterrent The way we've seen the return on investment for these RFID programs, they're typically pays back within a year Returns are so strong that it they would typically offset any of those.

Now in discussion that had with our existing planned rollouts that we have currently, this has come up a couple of times, but there's been no indication from any customers suggest they will pull back. I put that in the context of some of you know apparel customers who are wanting to roll out clearly looking at their sourcing strategy. But they see still the value of doing this overall. And that may change as the environment changes over the next sixty to ninety days. And we'll see and once we know more, we'll come back and let all of you know.

Our next question comes from the line of Josh Spector with UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, it's Chris Perrella on for Josh. I wanted to follow-up on the capital spend. As As you follow or work with your customers to relocate them, is there how much flexibility do you have in the capital outlays? Or how much more of a step up is required to shift production or serve customers in a new region? And then I have a follow-up question on U. S. Demand. Given it's 30% of the revenue. What are your U. S.-based customers say?

So on the capital spend, I think I may have touched on this [indiscernible] Don't anticipate really a significant step up in capital because we actually have available capacity, we have available shift mechanisms, we continue to work on productivity, I think the things I outlined overall. And we will and we always do continue to invest in capability and capacity in all of these regions. But always returns based We look at that from an EVA perspective. Perspective. Can't remember your specific second question. Maybe John, you can help me on Just color on U. S. Demand right now.

U. S. Demand for overall U. S. Demand? Okay. Overall U. S. Demand we are seeing at least on the materials business no change to overall U. S. Demand. I think for retailers and brands and apparel, certainly, I think I've indicated there is a current slowdown in orders specifically for China as they think through their pricing strategies and their procurement strategies. But largely for the rest of where they source from, those volumes continue to be steady as we expect.

Our next question comes from the line of Anthony Padmari with Citi. Please go ahead.

Good morning.

On the last earnings call, you talked about expecting negative net price in 1Q and then I think a little bit in 2Q and then stabilizing.

I'm just wondering, is that kind of broad cadence still applicable? Or does it get pushed out a quarter? As you implement surcharges? Or is the visibility just kind of out the window? I'm just curious how you kind of think about the progression of net price given the kind of cost environment that you talked about in 2Q?

Yes. I think when we look at, as you said, versus last year, we had price down in the quarter in materials business to go with the year over year deflation. As we work through that final part, I guess, of that cycle of inflation, deflation we had for the last few years.

So some price down in Q1 versus prior year, we'd have a little bit more in Q2 versus prior year.

When we look sequentially, we had price down in the first quarter to go with that low single digit deep deflation that we had sequentially in the first quarter.

And I'll put the tariff impacts aside for a second, but otherwise we would expect relatively stable environment from a pricing and raw material perspective from Q1 to sequentially. With the tariffs, as we talked about, we'll look to implement some surcharges to manage part of that. So you would expect some some benefit as we move through the second quarter from a price perspective.

Depending on what happens with the tariffs overall and everything, of course. But you would expect some increase in price as we move through the second quarter to manage that tariff surcharge.

Our next question comes from the line of John Dunnigan with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking the question and I'll echo others in real Greg, glad to hear you're healthy and back in the seat.

I just wanted to start off with slide 15. You gave a nice detailed sales breakout by end markets there. But it doesn't seem like you guys are considering a logistics exposure as maybe a bit more cyclical. The current environment. [indiscernible] you provide some details around why that end market should be a bit more stable? And anyhow, you can, you can touch on some of the logistics [indiscernible] and and how how much of that would be more for international transportation that could be impacted by tariffs, trade wars and ongoing uncertainties? So John, the way we think about the logistics piece, which is largely function within our intelligent labels platform, but we also have some base business as well. And on the material side, where we've got a lot of VI labels that go into box shipments. Let me break that into two pieces. So on our intelligent label side, we actually see less variability even though there may be some economic impact to overall logistics. If there is a lower volume environment. And largely because we have aligned with that significant customer what our absolute volume will be for this year whether that is affected by volume changes or not.

So it's largely I'd say largely secure in terms of where we hence why we see less variability. I think as it relates to if there is more volatility in the volume broader volume environment that impacts logistics shipments, domestic in The United States, for example. Or internationally, then some of our VI label growth that we typically see which goes in this will be slightly impacted. But again, it's a smaller part of the overall business for us. And so we see it as largely mitigatable. Within our control.

Yes. I would just add to Dion's points on much of that logistics slice of that pie outside of the intelligent labels portion that goes logistics. It's really the majority of that is within our materials businesses.

Think if you look over past recessionary periods, our materials business has been pretty stable. Certainly, it's not immune to the impacts of a downturn, but has been pretty stable throughout recessions We've been able to hold or even grow margins in recessionary periods in that Materials business. So we feel good about overall within Materials Our ability to withstand a downturn is pretty strong, and we've that, I think, over the last number of downturns that that we've seen globally.

Our next question is a follow-up from the line of Jeff Zekauskas with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much. In the quarter in Intelligent Labels, how did the general retail category do? And given that you expect a change in apparel dynamics in the second quarter. What do you expect for Intelligent Label growth in the second quarter?

Okay. Jeff, yes, General Retail in the first quarter was up very low single digits. And as we saw compliance continue to be driven by some of these particularly large general retailer who's focused on additional categories they brought in overall. Our outlook for apparel IL in the second quarter had originally been high single digits. Sorry, our outlook for overall IL originally been high single digits for the quarter. Our expectations when we started the year. We know now that if the apparel impact that we're seeing, which we're saying is mid single digit decline for the whole business, anticipate the range of our IL growth to be probably in the mid single digits growth. Again, highly variable, could move quite a lot. That would that's currently where we see it at the moment. I will say that if, again, if you extract the apparel piece out of this, where there is the uncertainty all the other programs that we have and our expectations for them during the second quarter are on track.

We have time for one more question. Our final question is follow-up from the line of George Staphos with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much. I'll ask a couple of questions in sequence here. So you talk about the trigger points for additional structural actions. Dion, Greg, can you talk a little bit about what you mean by that? I mean, directionally, no. But if you could put some detail around that or timing or what the trigger points might be which would then drive the actions. Second question, back to the earlier comment on sourcing. In China. And I think I heard you, Dion, say that based on current tariffs, that roughly 10% of what you were seeing of your volume would look to be moved to other countries from China Correct me if I was incorrect in sort of your interpretation of your answer there, what happens if we go back to the prior tariffs Is there a way to sort of scale what that movement might look like and whether you would still have the capacity to take on that volume if it moves in a new tariff regime? Thanks very much and good luck in the quarter.

Thank you, George. In terms of the way we think about me address the sourcing piece first, and then we'll get to the trigger points after and between Greg and I, we'll handle that. When I laid out what I thought is around 10% movement from the existing piece that's left in China. It's probably at the upper end of what we would see possibly from a supply chain capacity perspective. I'm talking broader supply chain, not ourselves. What we know in previous tariffs when they went up, I think during the first administration prior to the Biden administration was that we saw tariffs increase and we saw more of a steady but slow migration over time. They weren't substantial enough to drive diverted action straight away. And we were able to respond as we were. If there's a more of a requirement, so let's say over the next nine to twelve months, people want to move by season substantial portions, then the gating factor is first going to be can they get the capacity at apparel, garment or shoe manufacturing in those countries. Does the supply chain stand up to support all of that? And then they typically turn to us and say, can you help make that possible?

And generally, even in the extreme situation like that, I think we will have the capacity to be able to address that.

Yes. George, to your other question about trigger points, I think when we look at various trigger points, of course, the the landscape on what happened with tariffs as we move across this quarter, clearly, will be one thing we're keeping an eye on in terms of how that evolves and hopefully, we we end up with some negotiations that when we when we get to a few months from now that they don't go back up, or even the China ones hopefully come down as we start to hear some some anything about last night. So hopefully, see some improvement there, but that's something we'll keep an eye on and how that evolves and and then from that perspective, where that puts projections for GDP, in the macro environment for this year. So we know that projections over the last couple of weeks have come down a little bit. From a number of sources, so we'll continue to monitor that. And see how that evolves.

And, of course, we'll continue talking to our customers, particularly in apparel given the China dynamics there and understanding how they're how they're looking at things, whether they're shifting, manufacturing to other regions like we just talked about, etcetera. There's a number of different trigger points we'll keep an eye on as we move through the quarter. We're following the similar playbook that has we done how we've done in recent downturns as we look at 2020. Or even in 2023 when we had the destocking.

We'll look at temporary savings buckets, whether that be volume driven actions or belt tightening and discretionary spend reductions, things like that. And then we'll look at are there other structural actions that will accelerate or not?

We already increased our restructuring savings expectation for the year here in our in our numbers we provided you this morning as well.

And, George, the only thing I'd add to what Greg said is as you know, we will actually tend to probably be see any changes in the macro environment prior to many other companies because of the role that we play in the supply chain. So whether it's in our solutions business Materials business, we're probably likely to see demand soften ahead of many other people as well. And part of that advantage then allows us to pull into play the playbook that Greg was talking about. I think it's for me, it just constantly underlines the fact that the strength of the franchise we have is really resilient. We've gone through down cycles And when they have happened in the past, we've actually been able to not only maintain margins on our materials business, slight decrement in our solutions business, but actually come at an overall stronger both from a share perspective and a market perspective overall. And I don't see that changing as we move forward. This time around, I think we also have other levers that we are to pull, not least our high value categories, some of which are somewhat immune to even cyclicality. Now call out Vescom as an example.

This is a business for us where we're seeing significant growth because of some of the new customers we brought on board. Typically in downturns, when either pricing changes or there is less volume, you need more promotional activity. And actually, somewhat counterintuitively, our BestCom business will actually thrive more in a downturn economic cycle. Again, highlighting the resilience of our solutions group, actually different to what it was even in 2020 when we saw the last real significant change overall. I think overall, I think we're well positioned Should growth continue, we have all the innovation we bring to the market. We have the strength of our base business. But these great high value categories differentiate including IL. And should things change, we have a really robust playbook that allows us to take action protect earnings and take advantage of market dislocations where we see opportunities as well.

And that concludes our question and answer session. Mr. Ebley, I will now turn the call back to you for any closing remarks.

Thanks, Regina. To recap, delivered a strong first quarter in a dynamic environment, We are well prepared for a variety of macro scenarios. And we expect to grow earnings sequentially in the second quarter most importantly, we are well positioned to continue delivering superior value through this cycle for all of our stakeholders. Thank you for joining today. This now concludes our call.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines.