Good morning, Welcome to CCL Industries fourth quarter Investor Update. Please note that there will be a question-and-answer session after the call. The moderator for today is Mr. Geoffrey Martin, President and Chief Executive Officer. Joining him is Mr. Sean Washchuk, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, gentlemen. Thank you, Holly. Welcome everyone to our fourth quarter call. I'll draw everyone's attention to slide number two, our disclaimer regarding forward-looking information. I'll remind everyone that our business faces known and unknown risks and opportunity. For further details on these key risks, please take a look at our 2022 and 2021 annual MD&A, particularly under the section Risks and Uncertainties. Our annual and quarterly reports can be found online on our company's website, cclind.com, or on sedar.com. Moving to slide three, financial summary for the fourth quarter and the year. For the fourth quarter of 2022, sales increased 6.6%, with 4.9% acquisition growth and 2.3% positive impact from currency translation, part offset by an organic decline of 0.6%, resulting in sales of $1.59 billion compared to $1.49 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021. Operating income was $211.2 million for the 2022 fourth quarter compared to $208.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2021, a 2% decline excluding the impact of foreign currency translation. Geoff will expand on our segmented operating results for the CCL Avery, Checkpoint, and Innovia segments momentarily. Corporate expenses were down slightly for the fourth quarter, with an insurance accrual reversal offsetting higher expense for long-term variable compensation compared to the prior year fourth quarter. Consolidated EBITDA for the 2022 fourth quarter, excluding the impact of foreign currency translation, increased 2% compared to the same period in 2021. Net finance expense was $17.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to $13.9 million in the 2021 fourth quarter due to an increase in total debt outstanding and an increase in interest rates on our variable rate of debt. The overall effective tax rate was 21.2% for the 2022 fourth quarter compared to an effective tax rate of 20.1% recorded in the fourth quarter of 2021. This reflects the utilization of previously unrecognized deferred tax assets at certain subsidiaries of the company in the prior year quarter that did not reoccur in the 2022 fourth quarter. The effective tax rate may change in future periods depending on the proportion of our taxable income earned in different tax jurisdictions with different rates. Net earnings for the 2022 fourth quarter were $145.2 million, down 3% excluding foreign currency translation compared to the 2021 fourth quarter. For the 2022 year, sales increased 12%, operating income increased 5%, including a $3.5 million non-cash acquisition accounting adjustment to fair value the inventory at Adelbras. Net earnings increased 5% compared to 2021. 2022 included results for 12 acquisitions completed since January first, 2021, delivering acquisition-related sales growth for the period of 4.8%, organic sales growth of 7.3%, and a foreign currency translation headwind of 0.8% to sales. Moving to the next slide. Earnings per share. Basic earnings per Class B share were $0.82 for the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to $0.80 for the fourth quarter of 2021. Adjusted basic earnings per Class B share were $0.83 for the 2022 fourth quarter compared to adjusted basic earnings per Class B share of $0.81 for the fourth quarter of 2021. The change in adjusted basic EPS to $0.83 is primarily attributable to an increase of $0.02 from our joint ventures contribution and $0.03 from currency translation, partially offset with $0.01 from higher tax rate and $0.02 from increased finance costs. Moving to the next slide. Free cash flow from operations. For the fourth quarter of 2022, free cash flow from operations was $271.6 million compared to $197.2 million for the 2021 fourth quarter. The increase in cash flow from operations of $74.4 million is primarily attributable to strong working capital management in the fourth quarter of this year compared to 2021. For the 12 months ended December 31st, 2022, free cash flow from operations increased $42 million compared to the 12 months ended December 31st, 2021. This comparative improvement is primarily attributable to increased earnings, better comparative working capital management, offset by an increase in net capital expenditures. Moving to slide six, returns to shareholders. For the 2022 year, the company repurchased almost 3.4 million shares at an average price of $58.95, for total proceeds of $200 million. Including the 14.3% increase in the 2022 annual dividend announced in February of this year. Dividends year to date have amounted to $170 million, representing a solid 27% dividend payout ratio. Moving to the next slide, our cash and debt summary. Net debt as at December 31st, 2022, was $1.52 billion, an increase of $273.1 million compared to December 31st, 2021. The increase is principally a result of new borrowings to finance the company's acquisitions during the year and the repurchase of shares under our normal course issuer bid. Although the company's net debt increased, the balance sheet closed the quarter in a strong position. Our balance sheet leverage ratio was approximately 1.24x increasing from 1.06x at the end of the prior year. Liquidity was robust with almost $840 million of cash on hand and $0.9 billion available on our revolving credit facility. The company's overall average finance rate was 2.9% at December 31st, 2022, compared to 2.4% at December 31st, 2021. This reflects an increase in interest rates on our variably drawn debt. The company's balance sheet continues to be positioned well to move into fiscal 2023. Geoff, over to you. Thank you, Sean. Good morning, everybody. I'm on page eight, highlights of our capital spending for the year. $419 million net of disposals for the year, a little higher than we thought. Probably inflation doing its dirty deeds on us there too. It excludes right of use asset depreciation for the comparison you see on the bar charts there. We're planning $415 million spending in the year of 2023. Moving to slide nine, highlights for the CCL segment. 1.8% organic sales growth, very mixed picture. North America up mid single digit, Europe and Latin America up high single digit, and Asia Pacific, which is where the challenges have been, it was down a little over 20%. With strong results in the home and personal care, healthcare and specialty, and food and beverage spaces, with an unusually soft quarter at CCL Secure. At CCL Design, we were impacted by the slowdown in electronics demand with many OEMs. The COVID events in China, you know, accelerated that even further. That was part offset in CCL Design by gains in automotive. Moving on to slide 10, an offsetting here on the CCL segment was really the results of our joint ventures, which were exceptionally strong. That's why our earnings were a lot better than our EBITDA results. We're only consolidating earnings here, not the EBITDA numbers and Medit and other lines you see on the slide here on slide 10. Slide 11, results from Avery. Strong gains in the direct-to-consumer channels, especially in North America. We had another good quarter in Brazil at the Adelbras Tapes acquisition. The reason for the decline in the operating income margin is really the mix of business we have now due to the more recent acquisitions in the Avery space. Checkpoint, on slide 12. The MAS merchandise availability business improved overall and in all regions of the world except Asia, which had very tough prior year comps on 1 rollout we had last year, and challenging markets overall, especially in China. The apparel label business, which has had a very strong year so far, slowed in the fourth quarter as the apparel industry focused on managing excess inventory at all points in the channel. We expect that situation to continue in the first quarter, coming up here as we speak. Slide 13, Innovia. Volume decline on soft demand in the label industry in Europe and North America. There's been some trade data published in, particularly in Europe, where label materials demand. It's not label demand, but the materials that labels are made from declined over 25% in the fourth quarter. That's really been due to the buildup of inventory due to the many supply chain problems, particularly in Europe in the earlier part of the year, now correcting. Our sales to laminators in that, in that part of the industry have been particularly difficult in the fourth quarter and continue to be so far in the first quarter. Energy and freight inflation, and the new Echo flight line startup in Poland impacted profits in Europe. In the U.S., we continue to be impacted by the margin squeeze from having higher cost inventory as resin indices continue to decline, reducing solid prices to our customers. That has begun to reverse in the early days of 2023. At slide 14, just some comments on the outlook, and then we'll open it up to questions. The core CCL business units orders pictures, that's healthcare and specialty, home and personal care, food and beverage is still solid. The CCL Design picture has not changed. Outlook's similar to Q4. We do expect that to pick up as the supply chain situation corrects in China and the economy there opens up. CCL Secure volume has improved dramatically in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter, which was very slow. Avery direct-to-consumer strength remains, and we got the recent acquisitions. In the horticultural space, it's the peak season in Q1, which we missed when we bought one of those companies last year. The Checkpoint, the apparel destocking, as I mentioned earlier, is expected to continue for a few months. The MAS outlook has been stable. We have a much easier comps than we had this time last year. The Innovia volume will be subject to the labor industry demand recovery when that occurs. The good news is inflationary pressures have stabilized, particularly on energy and freight. The inventory cost squeeze is reversing in North America. We expect a modest foreign exchange tailwind at current rates as we go into the current quarter. With that operator, we'd like to open the call up to questions. Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to be removed from the question queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment while we poll for questions. Your first question for today is coming from Walter Spracklin at RBC Capital. Yes. Thank you very much, operator. Good morning, Geoff, good morning, Sean. Hope you're doing well. Really when I look at the results, it, you know, a little weaker than expected, but it appears that a number of the driving factors look to be temporary. A few of my questions are really to assess whether that, whether in your view it is indeed temporary. Just starting with CCL Secure, Geoff, you called it out as unusually weak, but having rebounded quite significantly. Any indication as to what caused it to be unusually weak? I know this is a very good business. Is it just, you know, kind of a few events that all happened all at once and now those are done and behind us? Just your views on what caused that unusual weakness. It happens from time to time, Walter, in this industry. It's if banks don't want banknotes, there's not a lot we can do. There's only one customer per country. If they delay orders from one quarter to the next, we just have to put up with it and move on. We had an unusually weak Q4. Orders that we would have normally had in the fourth quarter of last year have come in the first quarter this year. That's really the driver for it. Okay. Talk that up to timing. On Avery, Geoff, you mentioned the margins were down due to the mix from recent acquisitions. Is that because the acquisitions that you've made are running below your efficiency level, which you hope to bring up? Or is it just the nature of the way they operate, and they are a lower margin, albeit a creative type of business that we should now recalibrate our Avery margins going forward to reflect the new paradigm of these acquisitions? Well, we have to wait. We have to let all the anniversaries quarter by quarter flow through. The Adelbras and the horticultural, the two horticultural acquisitions, which I think combined sales for all of those three added together are, you know, well over, well over $200 million, $250 million, something like that. They're at materially lower margins than the, than the core Avery businesses today. I mean, we still make a good return on capital on those deals. They're definitely accretive to the company. The margin it will, it will change the margin picture of Avery going forward. The seasonality will also be a factor, Walter. The horticultural season, the strong period for that is the very latter part of the year and particularly the first quarter. Got it. Okay. That's great color. Last question here on China. Clearly the lockdown impact, having impacted your quarter in the fourth quarter. Indications as to how that's adjusting now here in the first quarter. Are we seeing that ramp back up? Could we see it, you know, any pent-up effect, or supply chain issues still kinda tempering what would have been an otherwise a stronger rebound in China, following that lockdown? Well, I think, you've all seen the results from the tech space. The mobile phone guys, the computer guys. There's nobody reporting particularly good news in the tech space at the moment. That's definitely a factor that affected our performance. It was for sure compounded by the lockdown. The supply factories to those OEMs were severely impaired in Q4. You know, when the sickness epidemic occurred in China, many factories were forced to close. That was a factor. We do expect the second of those two trends to come back quite strongly at some point in the first half of this year. We had an early January Chinese New Year this year. That also took this factor through the end of January. The older picture is beginning to pick up now as the supply chain there begins to normalize. Okay. That's fantastic. Appreciate the color. No problem. Your next question for today is coming from Stephen MacLeod at BMO. Thank you. Good morning, guys. Morning, Stephen. Morning. I just wanted to follow up on a couple of things. One was on the CCL Secure. Are you able to quantify what impact that had relative to your expectations in the quarter? Well, the business lost a little bit of money in the quarter, which it doesn't normally do. It's one of our more profitable businesses. It's probably the most color I could really give you. Okay. Okay. Thank you. then just on, Avery. The swing a little over $10 million quarter-to-quarter, Stephen. We'll give you a frame of reference. That's $10 million in profit? Little over $10 million. Yeah. Okay. Okay, great. Are you able to qualify what like organic growth might have been excluding the CCL Secure impact? It's not a big business, $200 million in sales, so it's not a huge factor on the top line. Yeah. CCL Design is a much bigger factor on the top line because of the slowdown in the electronics. Right. Okay. Okay, thank you. Just on Avery with respect to the mix shift that you're seeing, you know, we used to think of that business as potentially having a margin profile reaching into the low twenties on EBIT. Yeah. Is that something that's still possible, or do you think that is now like a high teens, 20% tops margin business? Yeah. Yeah. We'll have to wait and see how these new acquisitions bed in and we understand their seasonal patterns. There'll be certainly quarters where we'll have in excess of 20% operating margins, and there'll be other quarters where we don't. I think we'll have to understand the seasonal effect as we go forward quarter to quarter. The Avery business performed very well in 2022 at all levels. You know, the acquisitions contributed. The core business did well. I mean, we had a great year there, and it's continuing to be strong in the first quarter of this year so far. Yeah. There's nothing we're concerned about about Avery at all, actually. Yeah. Okay. Okay, that's great. Maybe just higher level, as you think about the year ahead here, 2023, do you sort of expect the first half of the year to look a lot like Q4 and then, well, maybe a bit stronger and then, and then a bit of a rebound in the back half of the year? Is that sort of how you're thinking about things unfolding in 2023? Well, we'd certainly say that about Innovia. you know, Innovia will have a, you know, a difficult top line Q1 like it had in Q4 because of that label industry, raw materials impact. That's, we, you know, we sell to companies like Avery Dennison and UPM in that space, they've all reported slow numbers in Q4 and forecast slow numbers in Q1. So now they're our major customers in that space, whatever happens to them is gonna happen to us. They're predicting that will change from Easter onwards, that's probably we think it'll be sometime around Easter or early summer when that situation changes. That would be the picture for Innovia. I think Avery will start off the year strong. I think Checkpoint will be okay. You know, we do have to remember the apparel industry is going through a compression in its inventory management situation, you know, just addressing bloated inventories at all points in the supply chain and correcting that. That's a pretty common theme in that space. That'll have a more negative effect. The core CCL businesses look okay. That's the picture as we see it, as I tried to put on the outlook slide comment. Okay. That's, that's great color. Thanks, guys. I'll go back in line. Okay. Your next question is coming from Michael Glen at Raymond James. Hey, good morning. Geoff, I'm just trying to fully understand the commentary surrounding the soft demand for the label materials industry in Europe and North America and what appear to be relatively strong conditions for CCL segment in Europe and North America. Just if you could walk through that a little more detail? Yeah. I think what happened, Michael, last year, in the early part of 2022, one paper company went on strike in Europe, a very large supplier to the label materials industry of release liner. That caused everybody in the label converter channel to over-order and panic and create false demand on the label materials industry that was not really reflective of the end-use demand. Many label converters, including ourselves, stocked up of pressure-sensitive material supply, particularly in the first half of last year. Once the strike ended in April of last year, gradually as the rest of the year unfolded, things began to ease. The label converter channel stopped ordering materials from those suppliers. As our films are used by them to make those materials, they stopped ordering on us, and that's basically what's happened. It was a pretty big phenomenon in Q4. I think it'll carry on in Q1. Sometime in Q2, it'll probably ease off, we'll move on back to normal. Okay. That's, that's really helpful. Just in terms of, some customers, like customer trends on volume across some of the large CPG companies have continued to see some challenges in Q4. Are you seeing any of that show up in your order book? It didn't in Q4, in Q4, we had very, you know, we had strong double-digit growth in the healthcare space. I mean, very strong double-digit growth in the healthcare space. Home and personal care was up mid-single digits. Food and beverage is up high single digits. There was some price in there, so, but I wouldn't have said our volume was lower than it was in the prior year in those three spaces. So far, you know, I'd describe it as a fairly solid picture, but we read the results of those companies the same as you do. They're all noting sort of, you know, low to mid-single digit declines in unit volume. So far, we haven't seen that translate into actual label demand. In some categories, like in our aerosol can business, we, you know, we're booked out as, you know, almost through the summer. It's very strong. If I go back to Q3, I think you highlighted beer in Q3 was a particular outlier for strength. Did that continue in Q4? It did. Okay. Thanks for taking the question. Not in the U.S. I mean, we're not a big supplier in the U.S., and not, you know. Beer industry in the U.S. is very concentrated, as you know. Around the international beer business was strong in the second half of the year for sure and has started off okay this year as well. Okay, thank you. Your next question for today is coming from David McFadgen at Cormark Securities. Oh, hi. Yeah, a couple of questions. Hey, David. Hi, how are you doing? Yeah, just a couple of questions. When I look at the organic growth across all the segments, obviously it was a lot lower in the fourth quarter. Is it safe to conclude that the pass-throughs are basically done now and we're gonna get more into a more normalized organic growth going forward? Yeah, I think that's a fair statement, David. I think we also have to bear in mind, we passed through very considerable price reductions in the Innovia space with the huge declines in resin. The resin went up at a very escalated level in 2021 and then deescalated at the same pace into all the way through 2022. We've been passing price reductions really for pretty much all of last year, that's now stabilized. As we go into Q1, resin on the slight uptick again in the U.S. in the early part of Q1. Just continuing on that theme, how many more months or quarters will it take for you to work off that high-cost inventory at Innovia? I think probably one more quarter. Just on Checkpoint, you talked about the excess retail apparel inventory, and it's gonna take a few months to work that down. I was wondering how many months. I don't know if you can comment on that. Do you think that that business might also be starting to see the negative impacts of a recession? I think it's more inventory than a recession, to be honest with you. I think it's just, you know, when the, probably driven by a slowdown in demand, but I wouldn't say a recession. I mean, I think demand is definitely down compared to a year ago, but it's I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say it's shrinking. The, you know, the rate of increase has stopped at the speed it was accelerating at. Then the other factor we have to think about in that space is RFID and the strength of RFID. That's a, that's a pretty significant offset to that. I, the, the correction in the inventory situation is well documented by all the players in the space, so it's undeniable. It's just how it is. The nature of that space is they sell in seasons. At some point, you haven't got the inventory you have for the season you're in, and it corrects. I think by the time we get into the spring and summer, we should be back in a normal situation. I mean, when I look at your business, at least in the past, it was very recession resilient, but you didn't have Avery at the time. I'm just kind of wondering what your thoughts are on Avery and how that would do in a recession. I think Avery will hold up pretty well. It's the business has changed in the 10 years or so that we've owned it. We've bought a lot of new businesses that are performing significantly better than the old legacy business. That's an upside. There's some categories in Avery that have still got to come back. We've begun to see in some of the legacy product lines as there's a more gradual return to work, a demand increase there. That's still a factor. Parts of the badge business that are really involved around business conferences, which were on the wane pretty much all of last year. They've started now to come back. We've still got some uptick cycles to come in Avery to get back to sort of pre-2019, pre-pandemic levels. I would expect our Avery business to perform well in 2023 and have a good start. That certainly has in January. Okay. could you provide the same commentary for Checkpoint, sorry? Yeah. I think in Checkpoint it's the same, similar to the situation in Q4. We expect our MNS business to do pretty well because its people are still focused on store security and protecting merchandise. That's not nothing to do with whether you're in a difficult retail sales position or not. The apparel supply chain will eventually correct, and then we'll be back to where we were, you know, pre-pandemic. Okay. All right, thank you. No problem. Once again, if there are any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time. Your next question for today is coming from Daryl Young at TD Securities. Good morning, everyone. Morning, Daryl. First question will just be on the M&A environment, if you're seeing any improvement or any availability as we've, you know, continued to extend into this higher interest rate environment. Yeah, we certainly have seen more interest in businesses for sale at multiples we wish to pay. Our pipeline is quite good at the moment. You know, LBO transactions are challenged in the private equity space in our industry cause of debt financing is very difficult for the private equity firms to get a hold of to do these kinds of deals at the moment. That's all helping the market situation for businesses we would like to buy. We're quite encouraged by that. Okay, great. Then just in terms of the CCL segment profitability, I mean, you gave some good color already around CCL Secure and CCL Design. If you strip those out, was the core label performance effectively in line with traditional profitability and volume price mix? Yeah, I would say, I would say HPC, healthcare and specialty, and food and beverages all had strong fourth quarters. Strong on the top line, strong on the bottom line. You know, it was a very, very good quarter for all three of those businesses. I think in CCL Design, you know, the delta profit number was quite large in the electronic space due to the situation in China. That was the big driver. The slow quarter at CCL Secure were both pretty big offsets. Okay. I think in the past you said that, on the labels, the core labels, they're a pretty small percentage of the cost structure for the CPGs. But are you expecting any headwinds on pushing price through or price gains, just given they're gonna be very cautious around their price volume mix, in light of the weaker? I don't think we'll have any difficulty getting the price points we need. you know, I think in the, in the label industry, the inflationary period we went through in last year seems to have come to an end. We're moving into more of a deflationary cycle on the raw material side there. That's a good news story. Where we do have some cost increases, like in the aerosol business, metals have started to rise again. You know, we've got very clear pass-through mechanisms in that space, and the business is performing very well, and demand is solid. I don't see anything to be concerned about in those three businesses. What we're hopeful is to see the situation at CCL Design in the electronic space. Once the supply chain gets back to normal in China, we do think there probably is some inventory destocking there. Most of the OEMs would like to have more inventory out around the world than they have. Although their business isn't in great shape, stockouts are a problem 'cause of availability of inventory. We would expect the supply side of that equation to improve as we go through particularly Q2. January, we had the early Chinese New Year, so the year really only started in China about the second week in February. Okay. That's great color. Thanks very much. No problem. You have a follow-up question coming from Stephen MacLeod at BMO. Thank you. I just wanna follow up regarding Innovia. I'm just wondering if you can help us sort of think about the margin profile as you work through the year, particularly as you get through the high-cost inventories and run through some price declines as you give some of that price back. Just curious if you could help us think about how that shapes the margin. There's a lot of moving parts in that, Stephen. I don't know that I can help you much more than. We'd expect Q1 to be a little better than Q4 because we've got some of the inflationary issues calming down in Europe. That's a good news story. I think the demand picture will be similar in Q1 as it was in Q4. I don't think we'll see much improvement in that. We'll have a pickup as the year unfolds in Poland, where we've got the EcoFloat line starting up. That's going to accelerate as we go through the year. We've got a lot of interest in that product from many of the Consumer-Packaged Goods customers from a sustainability standpoint. In the Americas, we'll have the benefit of a rising resin market. Once we work through those Q1 high-cost inventories, the squeeze there will disappear. Okay. That's great. Thank you. We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session, and I will turn the floor back over to Geoffrey Martin for closing remarks. Okay, everybody. Well, thank you very much for joining the call. We look forward to seeing you in, hopefully, a sunnier May than the gloomy, snowy Toronto this morning. Thank you very much for attending the call. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.