Mark W. Kowlzan
Thank you, Joe. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for participating in Packaging Corporation of America's Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Release Conference Call today. I'm Mark Kowlzan, Chairman and CEO of PCA. And with me on the call today is Tom Hassfurther, President; and Kent Pflederer, our Chief Financial Officer. I'll begin the call with an overview of our second quarter results, and then I'm going to be turning the call over to Tom and Kent, who will provide further details. I'll be then wrapping things up, and then we'll be glad to take questions. Yesterday, we reported second quarter net income of $242 million or $2.67 per share. Excluding the special items, second quarter 2025 net income was $224 million or $2.48 per share compared to the second quarter of 2024 net income of $199 million or $2.20 per share. Second quarter net sales were $2.2 billion in 2025 and $2.1 billion in 2024. Total company EBITDA for the second quarter, excluding special items, was $451 million in 2025 and $404 million in 2024. Second quarter net income included special items income of $0.19 per share, primarily for gains on the sale of real estate for corrugated products facilities that were previously closed which were partially offset by costs relating to the pending acquisition of Greif containerboard business. Details of special items for both the second quarter of 2025 and 2024 were included in the schedules that accompanied our earnings press release. Excluding the special items, the $0.28 per share increase in second quarter 2025 earnings compared to the second quarter of 2024 was driven primarily by higher prices and mix in the Packaging segment for $0.98, lower fiber costs $0.13, higher prices and mix in the Paper segment, $0.04 and a lower tax rate for $0.02. Partially offsetting these improvements were higher operating costs of $0.30 and higher annual outage expenses, $0.21, with the change in the timing of the Filer City outage from later in the year, which we moved up to the second quarter. Other offsetting factors included lower production and export sales volume in the Packaging segment of $0.13, higher depreciation expense $0.10, higher fixed and other expense, $0.09, lower paper segment volume $0.02, higher freight expense, $0.02, and higher interest expense, $0.02. The results were $0.07 above the second quarter guidance of $2.41 per share, primarily due to lower operating costs and lower fiber costs. Looking at the Packaging business. EBITDA, excluding special items in the second quarter of 2025 of $453 million with sales of $2 billion resulted in a margin of 22.6% versus last year's EBITDA of $400 million and sales of $1.9 billion or 21%. Corrugated products price and volume were generally consistent with our expectations, and as expected, export containerboard sales were lower. We ran to demand during the quarter, producing 85,000 fewer tons of containerboard than the second quarter of 2024 and 55,000 tons fewer tons of containerboard in the first quarter of 2025. We drew down 17,000 tons of containerboard inventory from the end of the first quarter, putting us in excellent shape for the rest of the year. We operated exceptionally well during the quarter in all aspects of our business to control our operating costs, helping offset the effects of continued inflationary pressures across our cost structure as well as the negative effects of lower containerboard production. Our employees continue to perform at the highest level, delivering cost and efficiency improvements, outstanding sales performance and capital project execution to deliver best-in-class results. On the strategic front, we're very pleased to have announced our agreement to acquire the Greif containerboard business and look forward to working with our new colleagues in serving our new customers at the highest level. It is a well-capitalized business that complements us nicely, and we will provide -- and will provide us with a very good growth platform for both containerboard and corrugated products. We're targeting completion of the transaction by the end of the third quarter. Subject obviously to customary conditions, including regulatory approval. I'll now turn the call over to Tom, who will provide further details on containerboard sales and corrugated business in general.