Clearwater Paper Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
July 28, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Negative Sentiment: Second-quarter profitability remained weak: Clearwater Paper reported a $21 million net loss and negative $8 million of adjusted EBITDA, as an 8% shipment increase was more than offset by a 9% decline in market pricing and higher outage, transportation, and chemical costs.
  • Positive Sentiment: SBS industry conditions are improving. The company cited 6% year-to-date industry shipment growth, an 11% decline in imports, reduced industry production, and operating rates expected to exceed 90% by year-end.
  • Positive Sentiment: Two planned $60-per-ton price increases are expected to begin benefiting results in the second half of 2026; the first increase and related index changes are expected to provide a $50 million-$60 million annualized EBITDA benefit, with a larger impact expected in 2027.
  • Negative Sentiment: The Iran conflict is expected to raise chemical and transportation costs by an additional $3 million-$5 million in the third quarter and negatively affect full-year results by approximately $20 million-$25 million.
  • Positive Sentiment: Cost reductions and balance-sheet actions continue: the Cypress Bend restructuring is expected to save $8 million-$12 million annually, net debt fell $59 million in the quarter, and management expects positive free cash flow for 2026 while pursuing refinancing ahead of facility maturities.
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Earnings Conference Call
Clearwater Paper Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to today's Clearwater Paper second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I'd now like to turn the call over to Cheri Ellison, Investor Relations. Cheri?

Cheri Ellison
Cheri Ellison
VP of Strategy and Corporate Finance at Clearwater Paper

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Clearwater Paper's second quarter 2026 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 second quarter of 2026 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 financial 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 our supplemental information covering forward-looking statements.

Cheri Ellison
Cheri Ellison
VP of Strategy and Corporate Finance at Clearwater Paper

Rather than reading this slide, we incorporate it by reference into our prepared remarks. With that, let me turn the call over to Arsen.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. I'll begin my comments with a brief overview of our second quarter results. I will also provide some perspectives on industry conditions and discuss actions that we're taking to reduce costs and improve our margins through the cycle. I'll then turn the call over to Sherri to review the financial results in more detail and discuss our outlook. Turning first to highlights of our second quarter performance. Our shipment volumes were up this quarter with strong 8% year-over-year growth. This was offset by a 9% year-over-year decline in market pricing, as reflected in the RISI index. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was negative $8 million, which was within our guidance range. We faced higher than expected transportation costs, partly driven by the RM war.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

We successfully completed the major maintenance outage at our Lewiston, Idaho facility on time and on target with total direct expense of around $22 million. We restructured our Cypress Bend Arkansas facility, resulting in a reduction of approximately 20% of roles at the mill. This action is driving an expected cost reduction of $8 million-$12 million on an annualized basis. SG&A expenses were at 5.6% of net sales in the quarter, remaining below our targeted range of 6%-7%. We believe that these are industry-leading numbers that reflect our continued cost discipline. Last week, we announced the launch of Circa, our new CRB product line. This line will be sold and distributed through our network while being manufactured by Green Paper. This is aligned with our strategy to offer a broader product range to our North American converter customers.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

We reduced net debt by $59 million in the quarter and by $50 million year to date, driven by improvements in net working capital, tax refunds, and additional insurance recoveries. Let me now provide you with some industry updates. We are seeing some meaningful green shoots in SBS industry conditions. Our shipment volumes are up 6% year to date. Industry imports are down 11%, continuing a trend that we saw last year. RISI has reflected approximately 300,000 tons of reduced SBS production across the industry since the beginning of the year. We are seeing evidence of substitution into SBS from other substrates by customers and our integrated competitors. We also believe that some industry participants have been able to swing some of their SBS capacity to other paper grades.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

All of these factors are driving an improvement in SBS operating rates from the low 80% range in the first quarter of this year to a RISI forecast of 88% in the second quarter and over 90% by year-end. As a result of substantial cost pressure and improving industry conditions, we are implementing a $60 per ton price increase that we announced in June. We have recently announced a second $60 per ton price increase across all of our products that is to go into effect in August. In its latest monthly report, RISI has reported a $40 per ton price increase on folding carton and $60 per ton on cup. We expect that our June price increase and the RISI price index changes will be reflected across all of our tons, with a $50 million-$60 million annual improvement in EBITDA.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

This does not take into consideration our second price increase or the additional increases that RISI is forecasting for later in the year and into 2027. As a reminder, approximately 50% of our volume is tied to the RISI index, while the rest is subject to open market negotiation. It will take us a couple of quarters for the RISI Index move to flow through our P&L. Even as industry conditions and pricing are improving, we continue to face substantial cost pressure and margin levels that do not support long-term investment in our industry's capital-intensive assets. We believe that our margins are still around 10% below where they need to be across the cycle to deliver returns on capital required to invest in our assets, even with a recent RISI reported price improvement.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Against this backdrop, we remain focused on the items that are within our control, primarily reducing costs and maintaining share with our customers. Since 2024, we have removed more than $60 million of fixed costs from our system, including restructuring all of our mills and lowering SG&A as percent of sales. These actions have enabled us to weather this industry downturn while continuing to invest in our assets. As part of these efforts, we announced a restructuring of our Cypress Bend, Arkansas, facility during the second quarter, resulting in a reduction of approximately 20% of roles with expected annual savings of $8 million-$12 million. This action limits our network production to approximately 1.2 million tons per year, balancing supply with our current demand. We are currently sold out across our network and are in an oversold position on extruded capacity, which primarily serves the cup market.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

We believe that the actions we have taken through the down cycle will result in improved margins and cash flow as the industry recovers in the coming quarters. Lastly, I would like to provide an update on our strategic actions to further build and diversify our product portfolio. Last week, we announced the launch of Circa, a new line of CRB for folding carton and beverage carrier applications in the U.S. Circa complements our SBS portfolio and strengthens our ability to serve customers across more end-use applications. It's a high-quality recycled option designed to deliver dependable converting performance, reliable supply, and strong value for everyday applications. Circa was developed through a collaboration with Green Paper, a global producer of 100% recycled paperboard at a state-of-the-art facility in Monterrey, Mexico.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

By combining our market reach, support, and service with Green Paper's manufacturing capabilities, we plan to deliver a high-quality CRB solution to independent converters in North America without the channel conflict that exists with current industry suppliers. This follows our launch earlier this year of Velora, a lightweight paperboard product that we believe can effectively compete with SBS. In addition to launching a CRB line, we continue to explore the possibility of producing CUK at our Cypress Bend facility to further meet demand for non-integrated paperboard options and expand our offering with other substrates. While engineering work is complete for a full capital solution of approximately $60 million, we're exploring a lower-cost capital alternative that would enable us to launch a CUK product line sooner and within our typical annual capital spend.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

We're in trials at Cypress Bend with this potential solution. We'll share updates on these efforts in the coming quarters. These actions are aligned with our long-term strategy to diversify our product portfolio and become a preferred independent supplier of paperboard to North American converters. With that, I'll turn the call over to Sherri to discuss our second quarter financial results in more detail and provide our outlook for the third quarter.

Sherri Baker
Sherri Baker
SVP and CFO at Clearwater Paper

Thank you, Arsen, and good afternoon, everyone. Turning to our second quarter financial performance, we reported a net loss from continuing operations of $21 million, or $1.33 per diluted share, including $15 million of insurance proceeds. Net sales were $375 million, with 8% shipment growth offset by a 9% decline in market pricing compared to the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was negative $8 million, with the year-over-year decrease impacted by the timing of our Lewiston major maintenance outage, lower market pricing, and impacts from the Iran conflict. The Lewiston outage was completed in June on time and on target with a direct cost of $22 million. SG&A as a percentage of sales was 5.6%, remaining below our targeted range of 6%-7% of sales.

Sherri Baker
Sherri Baker
SVP and CFO at Clearwater Paper

In terms of the balance sheet, we reduced net debt by $59 million in the quarter and $50 million year-to-date, driven by a cash tax refund of $26 million, insurance proceeds of $15 million in the quarter, and a reduction in net working capital. Let's now move to some additional details on the impact of the Iran conflict. We continue to see upward pressure on both chemical and transportation costs. Oil-derived chemicals, particularly polyethylene, have experienced significant cost pressure. Transportation costs have been impacted by fuel prices and further exacerbated by tight supply due to driver shortages. The combined impact of these factors was approximately $5 million during the second quarter compared to the first quarter. We expect an additional $3 million-$5 million impact in the third quarter, for a total of $8 million-$10 million.

Sherri Baker
Sherri Baker
SVP and CFO at Clearwater Paper

We expect some improvement in the fourth quarter as supply chains adjust to the new reality in the Middle East. In total, we believe that the conflict will negatively impact us by $20 million-$25 million this year. We will continue to monitor these developments closely and provide updates as appropriate. Let me also provide an update on our recovery efforts related to representation and warranty insurance. As a reminder, this is related to the Augusta acquisition, where we believe certain representations and warranties made to us were either incomplete or inaccurate. In the second quarter, we received a third settlement payment of $15 million, of which $4 million was directly related to reimbursable operating costs. Year-to-date, we have recovered $32.5 million. In total, we have recovered $55.5 million with $25 million of the $105 million policy limit remaining.

Sherri Baker
Sherri Baker
SVP and CFO at Clearwater Paper

We will continue to pursue a final settlement on the policy. Let me now provide a brief update on our refinancing efforts. Our intention remains to extend maturities prior to our credit facilities going current. We are working with our existing bank partners to find the best solution that balances cost, liquidity, and maturities. We have ample liquidity on our balance sheet today, with levels higher than historical averages with the tissue divestiture and our actions to quickly delever the balance sheet. We remain committed to maintaining a strong balance sheet and liquidity that enables us to invest in our assets across the cycle. Turning now to our outlook for the third quarter. We expect adjusted EBITDA of $20 million-$30 million. We expect paperboard shipments to be roughly flat versus the second quarter, with higher sequential production.

Sherri Baker
Sherri Baker
SVP and CFO at Clearwater Paper

We expect to begin seeing benefits from our price increase efforts. We have no planned major maintenance outages in the third quarter. As I mentioned earlier, we expect additional cost pressure from the Iran conflict, primarily in chemicals and transportation. Let me briefly provide an update on our planned major maintenance outages this year. We now expect total direct costs of $32 million-$35 million for the year versus previous estimates of $45 million-$50 million. We have reduced the scope of our Augusta outage in the fourth quarter of 2026 to $5 million-$6 million and plan to complete the remaining work in the first quarter of 2027, with remaining spend of $10 million-$11 million. We do not expect to have another major maintenance outage in Augusta until the first quarter of 2028.

Sherri Baker
Sherri Baker
SVP and CFO at Clearwater Paper

We also plan to conduct a maintenance outage at our Cypress Bend facility in the fourth quarter, with an estimated cost of $5 million-$7 million. For the full year 2026, our assumptions include revenue of $1.4 billion-$1.5 billion, with moderate shipment growth. We continue to expect a carryover impact from 2025 market-driven price decreases of approximately $70 million, partially offset by approximately $10 million-$20 million of price improvements in the second half of this year. We expect productivity and other cost reduction efforts to partly offset the cost increases that we are experiencing this year. To round out our 2026 assumptions, we expect capital expenditures of $65 million-$75 million, targeted working capital improvements of $20 million-$30 million, and maintaining SG&A toward the bottom of our targeted range of 6%-7% of net sales.

Sherri Baker
Sherri Baker
SVP and CFO at Clearwater Paper

With that, I'll turn the call back to Arsen for closing remarks.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Thank you, Sherri. To close, I want to emphasize that we operate high-quality assets, are executing well, and have longstanding strategic customer relationships that we're prepared to defend. We have taken critical steps to improve our financial performance, including the restructuring of our Cypress Bend mill, disciplined pricing actions, and continued product portfolio diversification. These actions will improve our margins and cash flow in the long run, regardless of where we are in the industry cycle. We're starting to see positive signs of a recovery in SBS, and I remain confident that the industry will return to its historical performance levels. Over time, we believe we will deliver cross-cycle EBITDA margins of 13%-14% and generate more than $100 million of annual free cash flow. With that, we'll conclude our prepared remarks and open the call up for questions.

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. Your line will remain open for follow-up questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of George Staphos with BofA Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

George Staphos
George Staphos
Managing Director at BofA Securities

Thanks very much, everyone. Good afternoon. Hope you're doing well. Appreciate all the details. Arsen, Sherri, I guess first question, if you'd mentioned it and I missed it, I apologize. Do you have a view on what free cash flow will be for this year at this juncture, given the momentum that you had in 2Q and some of the pricing? How would you have us think about that?

Sherri Baker
Sherri Baker
SVP and CFO at Clearwater Paper

Yeah. We are expecting free cash flow to be positive. I think some of the bigger drivers are obviously the reps and warranties insurance, of which we've received $33 million year-to-date this year. The tax payments that we've received, $30 million on a year-to-date basis, we're also targeting a $20 million-$30 million working capital improvement. We think all of those combined, offset by the capital and interest estimates that we've given earlier, we do believe that we have a clear line of sight to positive free cash flow this year.

George Staphos
George Staphos
Managing Director at BofA Securities

Thanks, Sherri. On the tax refunds, what's left at this juncture? I want to say you said there was $27 year-to-date, there was $23 coming into the quarter, I just want to make sure I've got my numbers right.

Sherri Baker
Sherri Baker
SVP and CFO at Clearwater Paper

Yeah. We got $4 million in the first quarter. We received $26 million in the second quarter. We do have, I'm going to call it a net payable of right around $5 million-$6 million, just due to some of the pieces that we need to reimburse. We have a small amount of tax receivable that's still to come. Call it a small net payable.

George Staphos
George Staphos
Managing Director at BofA Securities

Okay. Very good. Switching gears. The maintenance outage expense for the year, can you talk about what some of the drivers were in terms of, I think, a decent size reduction? Arsen, you mentioned that bleach board demand is up. It was up 8% in the quarter, 6% year-to-date. What gives you comfort that it's not just buying ahead of obviously warranted price hikes based on what you said about reinvestment rates?

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Thanks, George. Let me tackle the Augusta question first. That's the biggest delta this year is we are splitting the Augusta outage into two pieces, doing the $5 million-$6 million this year and the rest early next year. We had a go, no-go decision on the Augusta outage, and to be perfectly frank, I like the confidence that we were prepared to execute a good outage. We made the decision to do the most critical things in October and push the rest of it to January and give the team a little bit more time to prepare. We've also made some leadership changes at the mill, so we'd like to give the new leaders at the mill an opportunity to impact this outage. Augusta has historically done their outages in Q1, so we're going to revert back to that date moving forward.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

The next outage will be in Q1 of 2028. I think that's the Augusta question. From a demand perspective, we saw an 8% volume increase in Q2. Year-to-date, we're seeing a 6% volume increase. I don't view it as a fluke. We have good growth, especially in our food service business. We have some strategic customers that we are growing with through some new programs, new volumes that we're picking up. We feel pretty good about where we are from a volume perspective. Our production right now is about 1.2 million tons per year. Our paper machine backlogs were strong, and we're actually oversold on extruder capacity, which goes into the cup segment.

George Staphos
George Staphos
Managing Director at BofA Securities

Okay. I've got more questions. I'll turn it over to be fair. I'll see you back in the queue. Thank you.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

All right.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Matt McKellar with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Matt McKellar
Matt McKellar
VP at RBC Capital Markets

Hi, Arsen and Sherri. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe first, just on the collaboration with Green Paper. Can you maybe provide some updated perspective on what this does for you strategically, maybe talk about what kind of volumes you might anticipate through this agreement, either immediately or with time? Then I guess with adding that second grade to the portfolio, does that change at all how you think about pursuing that CUK capacity and what that might mean for you strategically? I'll leave it there. Thanks.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Yep. That sounds great. Good questions, Matt. Thank you. If we rewind the tape to 2024, when we emerged as a paper board-focused company, what we said is our goal is to have all substrates under our umbrella and to be able to offer a more complete solution to our independent converter customers. The CRB collaboration, pretty excited about it. I think it's an excellent product. The facility that Green Paper runs is outstanding. We think there's space in the CRB part of the industry for a truly independent supplier without any channel conflict. We think approximately 20% of that industry is non-integrated. It's hard to tell exactly how much volume we're going to capture, but let's just say it's 10%. That would be somewhere probably in the 40,000-ton range if we were to capture 10% of that independent part of the market.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

We're in the process of talking to our customers about it, and it's going to take a few months for us to get qualified and place volume. We're excited to have another tool in our toolkit for our independent customers. CUK is something that we think we can do on our existing assets. Cypress Bend is one we're looking at. We have an engineered solution, a $60 million solution that would essentially enable us to produce as much CUK as we want at Cypress Bend. We are developing a much lower cost solution, call it less than $10 million, that would fit within our capital budget that would allow us to come to market a lot sooner.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

What we would sacrifice there is probably some speed, some cost, but what we'd get is speed to market that would allow us to see how well this product would do. The key for us is to make sure that we deliver a really high-quality product to the market. We're in trials as we speak in Cypress Bend, and we're not going to go to market unless we're confident that we're able to deliver a solution that's as good if not better than what the competitive set out there offers.

Matt McKellar
Matt McKellar
VP at RBC Capital Markets

Very helpful. Thanks very much. Then just focusing on CRB again, beyond the benefits of being able to serve your independent converter customers more effectively, I guess, with the additional grade, should we expect, I guess, a meaningful financial contribution from this new arrangement? Thanks.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

I think it's too early to tell. I think it's essentially a distribution agreement. We will sell and distribute this product through our channels. It's a bit too early for us to start talking about potential revenue and profit upside. Let's see how much traction we get in the market in the next couple of quarters.

Matt McKellar
Matt McKellar
VP at RBC Capital Markets

Okay, thanks. Fair enough. I'll pass it back. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question from the line of Sean Stewart with TD Cowen. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Sean Stewart
Sean Stewart
Managing Director at TD Cowen

Thanks. Hi, everyone. Arsen, first question on the volume guide. You're guiding to higher quarter-over-quarter production flat shipments, which is surprising a little bit given you've taken some capacity out at Cypress. Maybe I'm missing something in sort of inventory shift quarter-to-quarter because we don't get the production data directly. Can you give us some context on where you're squeezing tons out of the other mills? You'd seemingly be on a track to exceed the pro forma of 1.2 million tons of capacity for volumes this year. Can you connect some of those dots through the back half of the year?

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Yeah. Absolutely, Sean. If you recall, we performed a major maintenance outage at our Lewiston facility in Q2. What we ought to see is a bit of a bump in production without having that downtime in Q3. That's really the extent of it. I think it's as simple as that. Sales would be, I would say, relatively flattish, but we would see a bit more production because we actually took down our inventory here in Q2 through the outage, so it's rebuilding just necessary inventories. We still have our net working capital goal reduction through balance of the year, so the team is focused on that.

Sean Stewart
Sean Stewart
Managing Director at TD Cowen

Okay. Then on that working capital piece of it, maybe a question for Sherri. You would seemingly be ahead of pace through the first half of the year with respect to the target for working cap declines, and I appreciate there's seasonality to this. Could we qualify the overall objective as conservative at this stage?

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

I think 20 to 30 is the right number. I think you'll see ebbs and flows in inventory. You saw, I guess, an ebb in Q2. You may see a flow in Q3. We're focused on getting to the right inventory targets by year-end. There's probably smaller pieces on other inventory buckets as well as accounts payable. We think we're on track for that $20 million-$30 million reduction.

Sean Stewart
Sean Stewart
Managing Director at TD Cowen

Okay. One last one. Appreciate the Q4 maintenance shut is being split, and you'll see some of that in Q1 next year. Is the only other outage the Q4 outage, I think it was at Cypress, next year? If so, do you have an estimate of direct costs for the maintenance program in 2027?

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Let's see. Next year, we will do the portion of the Augusta outage in, let's call it January. We will do a Lewiston major maintenance outage in Q2 which will be probably similar level of spending as maybe a little higher than this year with inflation and everything. At this point, we would probably do a Cypress Bend outage in a Q3, Q4 timeframe. Probably the delta would be a smaller Augusta outage next year, technically speaking, until we get to 2028, when we have all of our annual outages in full force.

Sean Stewart
Sean Stewart
Managing Director at TD Cowen

Got it. Okay. All right. That's all I have for now. I appreciate the context. Thanks very much.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question from the line of Mike Roxland with Truist Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Mike Roxland
Mike Roxland
Managing Director of Equity Research at Truist Securities

Thank you, Arsen and Sherri, for taking my questions.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Mike. Arsen [how's it going?].

Mike Roxland
Mike Roxland
Managing Director of Equity Research at Truist Securities

Hi, Arsen. How's it going? Wanted to follow up with you on, Arsen, on the answer to one of George's questions in terms of volume growth. You mentioned some new programs and volumes picking up. Does the volume growth you had this quarter reflect share gains against peers, or is the growth reflective of growth that's coming from existing customers?

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

It's a good question. Let me think through this. We saw call it 6% year-to-date growth. We haven't seen Q2 industry data yet. Q1 was flat. I would say there's been some capacity changes in the industry, as you know. Maybe that's impacting that a bit. I guess by definition, if our volume is growing and the industry is not, that would mean we are picking up share. Maybe I'll just comment more. It's existing customers, new and existing programs that are driving this growth. Hard for me to pinpoint whether there's some specific win we had against a competitor, but I think you have an industry capacity that has shrunk a bit through in the first half. We've seen some good, robust growth on food service with some of our existing customers.

Mike Roxland
Mike Roxland
Managing Director of Equity Research at Truist Securities

Got you. With the existing programs, it's more on food service, but actually it sounds like you also have maybe some business wins as well. Would that be fair? It sounds like new and existing business, right? The existing business you just mentioned being food service, the new business wins came from where exactly?

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Listen, I think the growth came from food service. Without going into too much detail, I think we're seeing quite a bit of good growth on the food service side. We have relationships, I would say, with essentially every major customer. Good relationships, longstanding relationships. In due course, you pick up programs, you lose programs, and I think we're picking up programs.

Mike Roxland
Mike Roxland
Managing Director of Equity Research at Truist Securities

Got it. When I think about the price weakness during the quarter with, I think you said it was $1,077 a ton, down from the $1,100 a ton in 1Q. Is that all due to RISI pricing or some of that due to maybe the more and more competitive market that you were participating in that helped you achieve some of those wins?

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

I think it's primarily the carryover from last year. If you recall, RISI reflected about $100 a ton late in the year, and we've said previously it takes us a couple of quarters for RISI to play through our P&L. I think that's what you're largely seeing. There was also a bit of a mix impact. Food service has various components, including things like plate. You have a bit of an ASP change because of a heavier food service mix.

Mike Roxland
Mike Roxland
Managing Director of Equity Research at Truist Securities

Got it. Thank you for that. One last question quickly. Just going back, you mentioned, obviously it takes a couple of quarters for RISI to flow through the P&L. Can you help us frame how to think about the $40 that RISI reflected in July in terms of folding card and then the $60 per ton in cup stock? What type of impact should we expect in 3Q and 4Q? My sense is it's probably going to be more of a 2027 event, just any type of color you can provide around how that flows through into 2H would be really helpful. Thank you.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Okay. I'll give you a little bit of detail here to help through this. Maybe starting at the high level, what we said is this year we are expecting $10 million-$20 million impact from both our first price increase as well as what RISI reflected in their July report. We think that that first increase and the RISI change will be applicable to all of our tons. That would be a benefit of $50 million-$60 million on an annualized basis as we head into next year. I think that's probably the best way to start thinking about it at a high level. If you drill into it a bit, about half of our volume is tied to RISI. The other half is spot negotiated or open market negotiated. 50% of our volume is tied to RISI.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

It's going to take a couple of quarters for that to play through, just like it did from 2025 into 2026. The open market negotiations, those are frankly arm wrestling matches that our team is doing on a daily basis with our customers. Does that help answer your question or can I go into more detail?

Mike Roxland
Mike Roxland
Managing Director of Equity Research at Truist Securities

No, that's very helpful. To put a bow on it, you're expecting a $10 million-$20 million impact this year from the $50 million-$60 million in total.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Yeah. That's right.

Mike Roxland
Mike Roxland
Managing Director of Equity Research at Truist Securities

on an annualized basis.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

I think it's going to start in Q3, probably bigger impact in Q4, and I would expect by early next year, we ought to see the full run rate of benefit across all of our RISI tons as well as our open market tons.

Mike Roxland
Mike Roxland
Managing Director of Equity Research at Truist Securities

Very clear. Awesome. Thanks very much.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of George Staphos with BofA Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

George Staphos
George Staphos
Managing Director at BofA Securities

Thanks very much. Hey, Arsen. Hey, Sherri. I wanted to come back to the question I'd asked earlier on volume and how you gauge it relative to customers trying to be strategic with their pre-buying. You said you're sold out, and that's good. What does that actually suggest about whether customers are or are not pre-buying? What gives you comfort that you're not borrowing some demand from third quarter, fourth quarter into second quarter? I had a couple questions on Circa.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Yeah. George, it's a really good question. It's a hard one to answer unless you have real good visibility into your customers' inventories as well as their customers' inventories. I would say receipt price changes flow through in a lot of times all the way down to the customer of the actual product. What I would say is the numbers we look at is backlogs, right? Our backlogs are as strong now as they were the last few months. If there was a major pre-buy effort in Q1, Q2, you would start to see the backlogs trailing off. We're not seeing that. Again, don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. At the moment, our backlogs are strong. We don't usually report our backlogs. It'll be more of a qualitative comment.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Our backlogs are strong, frankly, the team is struggling to deliver products on time to our customers right now.

George Staphos
George Staphos
Managing Director at BofA Securities

Okay. Understood. There's no penalty, though, for canceling an order, right? Backlogs are good as long as the customer hasn't canceled, right? There's a penalty if I ordered from you and then said I didn't need the order. How would that work?

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

I don't think there's some firm penalties that exist. I don't think that's how we normally operate. I may have to go back in time and try to recall last time we had a massive amount of orders canceled by customers. I don't have a good answer for you on that, George. I don't expect, at this point, cancellations of orders. I think customers are buying what they need to buy. Historically, when price does move, you would see some customers potentially pre-buying ahead of price increases. That is not an atypical pattern. I just don't know if I'm seeing it right now.

George Staphos
George Staphos
Managing Director at BofA Securities

Okay. No, Arsen, that's fine. I just wanted to make sure I understood the parameters. With Circa, strategically, on the one hand, I understand why you're bringing it into the market based on the original value proposition you offered your customers once you sold off tissue. Because there's been this compression that's occurred with CRB, and that's been one of the grades you've been, to some degree, battling against in the market. Why would you bring in CRB that's presumably pretty attractively priced, when ultimately you've got the integration and the value add, if you will, in bleach board? Help me understand how Circa ultimately helps Clearwater and helps you improve your return over time, particularly in bleach board.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Yeah. George, I would say many, many of our customers buy CRB and CUK in addition to SBS. Right now, all we can sell them is SBS, and they have to go to our competitors to buy the other two, and frankly, go to our integrated competitors to buy the other two, where they're not going to be a priority. We think having a more, call it, wholesome solution by an independent supplier to independent customers has value in this market over the long haul. I know there's dynamics at play right now with substitution and various operating rate trends across the various substrates. I think in the long run, our goal is to be able to deliver a more complete solution to our customers where they can buy all substrates from us, from an independent supplier, versus splitting up their buying.

George Staphos
George Staphos
Managing Director at BofA Securities

Okay. Fair enough, Arsen. I appreciate that. Lastly, what effect do you think some of the tariffs in the market might have on product coming into the U.S.? Given some of the work that we did and checking around, we think maybe around 150,000 tons from Canada and elsewhere from folding box might have a more difficult time coming into the U.S. Have us think about it from Clearwater's perspective. What are you seeing in the market right now? Thank you, guys, and good luck in the quarter.

Arsen Kitch
Arsen Kitch
President and CEO at Clearwater Paper

Thanks, George. Yeah. Tariffs have been notoriously difficult to predict on the impact of those tariffs. The latest 50% tariff on Canadian products, the way we read it will include paperboard imports from Canada, but not market pulp. There is a SBS, there's a bleached paperboard mill up in Canada. Hard to tell exactly what impact it has on the North American market. About 10% of everything we buy and sell is global. These things have a more limited impact on us, and we're yet to see how the USMCA negotiation plays out, and we're yet to see if there will be any retaliation from Canada for products coming up from the U.S. or if these tariffs will go into effect or if they'll get negotiated. There's just a lot of moving pieces.

Executives
    • Cheri Ellison
      Cheri Ellison
      VP of Strategy and Corporate Finance
    • Arsen Kitch
      Arsen Kitch
      President and CEO
    • Sherri Baker
      Sherri Baker
      SVP and CFO
Analysts
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