International Paper Co (IP) 2011 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good morning. My name is Christie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the International Paper fourth-quarter and full-year 2011 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions.) I would now like to turn the call over to Glenn Landau, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Christie, and good morning. And thank you all for joining International Paper's fourth-quarter and full-year earnings conference call. Our key speakers this morning are John Faraci, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Carol Roberts, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. During the call, we will make forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, which are outlined on slide 2 of the presentation. We will also present certain non-US GAAP financial information. A reconciliation of those figures to US GAAP financial measures, are available on our Web site. As always, our Web site will also contain copies of our fourth-quarter 2011 earnings press release, and today's presentation slides. I will now turn the call over to John Faraci.

Thanks, Glenn, and good morning to everybody, or good afternoon, depending where you're calling in from. Over the next 20 to 30 minutes, Carol Roberts and I will review our full-year and fourth-quarter 2011 results. And the performance of our individual businesses. We have also got Mary Laschinger, a Senior Vice President and President of xpedx here to give you all an update on the progress we're making transforming our distribution business.

I am going to start just by talking about the full year. And set that up for Carol to go into the quarter. We had strong full-year results for International Paper. Actually it was the best financial results in almost two decades. Margin expansion, where we needed it, price realization stayed with us throughout the year, great operations for cost management, outstanding results from Ilim, which we will talk about, and excellent cash generation.

Looking at International Paper In North America and around the world, this is now on slide 2, volumes in North America were down slightly, but sales revenue was up slightly, reflecting the fact we got price flows through and strong margin expansion in our North American businesses at 200 basis points. Outside the US, we improved earnings, but it was a different way. Margins, which were high, stayed high, but we got good strong volume growth, up 6%, and as a result of that, plus some sales price improvement, sales were up 17% outside North America, including the Ilim joint venture.

When you go into the next slide, look at it all for 2011, sales moved up from $25 billion to $26 billion. Strong improvement from EBIT from $1.8 billion to $2.3 billion. EPS up by close to 50%. Cash from operations again very strong. Solid free cash flow, even though capital spending was up year over year. Year-end debt up some, because of the pre-funding or pre-borrowings of the Temple acquisition. And very strong cash balance, even when you take out the debt that we put on the balance sheet for Temple, and we funded the pension plan as well.

This next slide I think just shows the journey that International Paper has been on. The transformation plan is over. It was all aimed at putting International Paper in a paper from a portfolio standpoint, where we could earn returns in the cost of capital zone, and with the exception of 2009, which is now in the rear-view mirror, the worst recession we had in 80 years, we have steadily have been on that march, and in 2011, which was still a challenging economic environment, we got to that 80% returns. So we feel very good about the year. We feel we had a strong quarter to end a very strong year. And I will come back at the end and talk about how we're looking at 2012. So Carol?

Thanks, John. And good morning, everybody. Let's take a look at the financial bridge from 2010 to 2011, where IP earned an incremental $1.20 per share from continuing operations and before special items. While volume in our consolidated businesses was down slightly, I think it is worth noting that our Ilim JV provided $0.21 of additional contribution, mainly driven by year over year revenue growth of 26%.

I think the other main story that John mentioned in 2011 was the significant margin expansion driven by year over year price realization and mix improvements, as well as excellent operations in cost management. And both of these more than offset the higher input costs of $0.61 a share. In summary, as John stated earlier, this result marks the best year that International has had financially in almost two decades.

Moving to the next slide, to the fourth quarter, earnings per share were $0.66. These results were in line with our expectations for the quarter, as we experienced what we would say is the normal seasonal weakness in North America, and we saw -- we did see some downward price pressures in market pulp and exports from North America in both paper and packaging. Additionally, we had significant negative currency impact at our Ilim JV in this period, which did reduce their earnings in the quarter. These headwinds were somewhat offset by our global balance.

We saw seasonally-stronger demand in paper sales in Brazil, Russia, and Eastern Europe, as well as stronger box volumes and improved margins in Europe. And we did see some input cost relief in fiber and energy. I think it is worth noting that as we exited the quarter, our inventories did remain in balance as we continued to balance our supply with our customer's demand. So taking a quick look at the fourth-quarter financial snapshot that you can see on slide 10, during the quarter, we did generate greater EBITDA year over year, and we did improve our margins by 100 basis points, despite the headwinds that we just talked about. Importantly, the resulting free cash flow remained strong at $328 million.

Going to the fourth quarter to third quarter slide, looking at the bridge from the third quarter, those seasonal head winds on costs and volume, you can see them there and you can also see the impact of the lower prices for pulp and exports, and this did offset the positive on input costs. And also on this bridge, you can see the Ilim earnings impact which was down $0.12 a share due to the currency impact that I have already mentioned. Let's just take a moment on the next slide, and take a look at global input costs. As you can see on slide 12, input costs in the quarter did provide some relief, primarily of fiber, and that was primarily OCC, a little bit of energy, and so this was down and combined for a $42 million improvement in earnings from the third quarter.

If I take you to slide 13, I would like to comment on our North American business operating rates. In North America, our mills ran at a 91% operating rate in the quarter, and 94% for the full year. And as you can see on this slide, our packing businesses did take nearly 240,000 tons of downtime in the quarter, and we did this quite simply to balance our supply with our customer's demand. As a result of these actions, our inventories are in good shape, entering the new year. I will note that in container board, we do have a lot of outages coming up in the first and second quarter and a seasonally strong ice season, so we will plan to build some inventory early in the quarter to get through the second quarter.

Moving to slide 14, let's touch on industrial packaging. Industrial packaging operating earnings in the fourth quarter of 2011 were $316 million, compared to $301 million for the third quarter of 2011. The current quarter's earnings were favorably impacted by very strong mill operations. We did talk about the lower recycled fiber costs in the US, and we do have a seasonally-strong box volume in Europe, and improved margins in Europe. Partially offsetting these positive variances were higher maintenance outages. We did see lower export prices in container board, and we do have just a seasonally-slower US box business in the fourth quarter.

If I take you to the chart on margins, this puts our industrial packaging results in perspective. Slide 15 shows our North American EBITDA returns for both 2010 and 2011, relative to the competition, and it is worth noting that in 2011, our EBITDA margins were above 20%, and importantly, 250 basis points better than last year, and 350 basis points better than our next competitor. Just a quick comment regarding the Temple-Inland acquisition. As we announced last Friday, we have agreed to an extension until February 13, to provide time for the parties to complete the binding documentation to resolve the DOJ concerns, with respect to the transaction. We anticipate entering into the definitive agreement on terms acceptable to all parties within this time frame. We continue to work internally on our integration plans and importantly over the last several weeks, our teams did get a chance to visit all of the mills and we were quite energized with what we saw in terms of assets and potential synergies, and we remain very confident in our synergy target of $300 million.

Moving to consumer packaging, on slide 17, operating profits were $62 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, compared with $103 million in the third quarter of 2011. Increased maintenance outages, seasonal-weaker US and export demand for coated paperboard, and lower pricing in China and Europe were only partially offset by the lower input costs in the quarter. Relative to our competition, if you look at the total year in North America, the business continues to outperform in this space, improving EBITDA margins by 440 basis points greater than our next large competitor in 2011 versus 2010. And logically, and not surprisingly, this would amount to a record year for our North America coated paperboard business, and on slide 19, we show that we nearly doubled our earnings over 2010, and achieved an almost 11% return on investment.

Moving to page 20, there's so many good things going on in our coated paperboard business, but an area that is worth mentioning is a portion of the success can be attributed to our supply chain initiative, which really are enabled by our associated enterprise-wide operating model. Things like schedule integrity improvements, make-to-stock functionality, have enabled the business to reduce inventories by greater than 5%, while increasing turns to close to 9 times, so this is a good outcome in a complex business and slows the results we can get.

Another great success in 2010 was our food service business. As we discussed last quarter, this business closed an outstanding year, finishing above pre-recession volume levels, and increasing earnings by nearly 20%. The key for this business has really been about aligning our sales with growing and winning customers, as we introduce innovative new products. In 2012, our new hold-and-go insulated hot cup product line is going to roll out with a number of market leaders in the quick service and convenient store segments, driving further profitable growth and mix improvement.

Moving on to Asia, just a quick update on our capital expansion in our Sun JV. Construction is under way on our new coated paperboard machine, PM26. This project remains on schedule for a fourth-quarter 2012 startup. And importantly, it brings on an incremental 550,000 tons of new annual capacity of very high quality coated paperboard.

Moving to printing papers, on slide 23, operating earnings were $190 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, versus the $238 million that we saw in the third quarter of 2011. Higher manufacturing operating costs, really primarily associated with the unfavorable seasonal energy use, increased maintenance outage expense and lower export and pulp prices in the quarter, and more than offset lower input costs and seasonally-stronger paper sales in Brazil, Russia, and Eastern Europe. So the way I would talk about printing papers is, we had strong results in Russia, Europe, and Brazil, and in North America, we had a solid quarter, third quarter was outstanding, but we did see some of these head winds in the higher maintenance expenses. If you look at North America printing papers, for the full year, you can see that we finished the year with a record return on investment of nearly 13%, and improved earnings over $45 million.

Moving on to slide 25, an exciting piece of work that we want to mention is Franklin, Virginia, where work continues on our fluff pulp repurposing project. Very exciting. Crews opened the gates for the first time in nearly two years as wood began to flow, and to arrive in preparation for a planned mid-year startup. IP is currently -- we are the third largest supplier of fluff pulp and this investment is going to give us greater participation in a market that is growing 4%-plus. The mill will be capable of producing 270,000 tons, metrics tons of high-quality fluff pulp for our customers across the globe.

Moving to page 26, let me touch on IP India. As you know in India, integration is underway, and best practice transfer is underway, post our closing of Andhra Paper last quarter. Although it is still very early, we can clearly see that we've got a great opportunity for incremental opportunities to expand production, leveraging our global expertise in uncoated free sheet, and to take part in what's a very fast-growing market, with uncoated free sheet growth of 7% to 15% in India. Andhra Paper, noteworthy, increased their revenue per ton by 12% in 2011, and operated at EBITDA margins of greater than 20%. This first quarter had some noise in it, but going forward, I think the first quarter and beyond will give us a better indication of the progress and the success of Andhra Paper.

Let me touch on xpedx. xpedx had a strong fourth quarter with operating earnings of $33 million, compared with $27 million in the third quarter of 2011. The fourth quarter costs did decrease, primarily associated with the transformation initiative, and more than offset lower printing paper volumes due to fewer shipping days. And at this point, I would like to turn it over to my colleague, Mary Laschinger, Senior Vice President, and President of xpedx to share more news about the progress we're make in transforming our distribution business.

Thank you, Carol. Good morning, everyone. Last April, we shared with you that xpedx had just finished a strategic assessment on our business and that we would launch that work in 2011. And today, I am going to provide an update on that work, and the outlook for the business. But first, I wanted to take an opportunity, because I believe it is important to provide some background, which helps explain the opportunity available to us in the distribution business.

On page 28, you can see that xpedx had many acquisitions over the years. And during that time, we continued to progress and had improved earnings through 2008. But it has only just been recently that we have actually achieved a single operating system to take advantage of those capabilities. On the next page, you can see that we had improvement up until 2008. 2009 not only brought a general economic decline, but it also was the beginning of a structural demand decline in print, especially in the coated grades, and that still has not recovered to pre-recession levels.

So 2010, we took the time to assess our options to reposition the business. And 2011 was all about building capabilities on how to win, and making choices on where to win. And we believe through centralizing strategies, with local execution, we can deliver more than $100 million of improvement over the next few years, taking the EBIT to over $200 million. The next few slides that I'm going to cover further explain the three key levers of buy, handle and sell, and how the benefits are achieved with some specific examples to show this success. And I will finish up to share with you the impact on our second half and fourth quarter specifically, and the long-term outlook.

The buy part of this business is all about building a robust capability around strategic sourcing and replenishment. We are thoroughly assessing our supplier's capabilities. We are matching those to our customer and product needs, and then making some tough choices. We're also currently in the process of upgrading our technology around our replenishment capabilities, which will also improve service levels, and provide robust inventory management capabilities. On the left-hand side of this chart, I've shared with you, or we've highlighted, a category within each of our focus segments of print, packaging, and facilities solutions, and the outcome of our first phase of work. You can see we have fewer suppliers and fewer SKUs, all of this resulting in better service to our customers with improved product availability, better total value, at a lower total cost to the enterprise. This first phase of work is just now being implemented in the first and second quarter of 2012.

The second key lever in our business, shown on page 31 is all about optimizing our supply chain. It is matching our warehouse network to our customer demand, and the service levels required in each segment. We are also installing warehouse and fleet management systems to optimize our national footprint. All of this resulting in better service, higher order fill rates, and lower fixed and variable costs. The chart on the left shows our progress and our plan on revenue per square foot, throughout our warehouse network, which is a productivity measure. And you can see we're making significant improvement in productivity. The example on the right is a success story in the repositioning of our Salt Lake City operation, where we took four locations and three brands and consolidated into one, and you can see the outstanding results. Again, this handle initiative is all about fewer larger facilities, with best-in-class capabilities, leading to better service and lower costs.

The last key driver in our business is about making choices on where to focus and investing in growth. As you can see from the top part of this grid, we have opportunities in this business to grow, and we are investing in those segments. For example, in our packaging business, we have invested in packaging design centers, to support growth in specialty packaging. And we couple that with the commodity product offering. And you can see our results in 2011 have been significant, with great improvement year over year. But we also recognize that the commercial print segment is in decline, but we have a very large position, with many strengths to win, and we're going to continue to support that segment as a core part of our business.

Lastly, we did make some tough choices in 2011, and we are in the process of exiting some markets or segments due to either market dynamics, or our assessment of our ability to win. Page 33, the last page here, shows our progress in 2011, and the long-term outlook. As I stated earlier, 2011 was all about building a plan and capabilities, and we began executing in late 2011, with some impact in the fourth quarter. We do have seasonality in this business, but our fourth-quarter results were significantly better than prior years. This is a multi-year program, and we are about three to six months into the execution, but we're very confident that this business has significant potential to add value to International Paper. With that, I'm going to turn it back to Carol.

Thanks, Mary. Appreciate it. So one final update before I move on to the outlook, and then John provides the wrap-up. I want to comment on our progress at the Ilim joint venture, specifically our Bratsk and Koryashma mills. And those projects continue on schedule. As you can see from these pictures on slide 24, we essentially have passed the halfway mark and remain on plan for the startup in late 2012. And just to remind you of the scope of those projects, the Bratsk project will bring on 500,000 tons of bleach softwood pulp, leveraging our low-cost export position to China and our new paper machine in Koryashma will add [155,000] tons of uncoated free sheet, which will support our domestic market growth in Russia. So very exciting and on track and on plan.

So let me take us to slide 35 and move into the summary of the fourth quarter, and then to the outlook. As we said, we had a solid fourth quarter despite the seasonal weaker demand environment in North America that we normally experience in this time frame. All things considered, we continue to feel more positive about the demand trend in North America, about our ability to expand margins globally, and to grow our business in the emerging markets that we've invested in. So let me take you through a detailed look of our first-quarter outlook on slide 36.

Looking ahead, the first quarter is always a seasonally slower period. With that said, we do expect modest increases in volume in North America, versus the fourth quarter, primarily in packaging, and that's primarily due to four more box shipping days but we do expect to increase in exports in our paper business. Through January, the good news is that US box demand held up what I would consider quite nicely, although we're working with a fairly weak year over year comp, our box demand is up, nearly 4% versus January of last year.

Moving on to pricing, the continued pasture of previously negotiated export price reductions really in packaging and tender board and in paper and in pulp will materially impact realizations in the first quarter. And additionally, in Brazil, seasonally-weaker domestic demand, that will result in us shipping a greater percentage of lower-priced paper exports in the quarter, which will be a drag on earnings. As to inputs, we see slightly higher costs in North America, primarily wood, energy and chemicals, which will largely offset the benefit of some slower outage expense, and it is fairly new news today, but OCC just came out today and it is up anywhere from $10 to $15 for February. Xpedx earnings will decrease as the quarter is just seasonally a slower shipping period for the distribution business.

On a positive note, contribution from our Ilim joint venture will improve, and that's really based largely on the absence of the negative currency impact that we experienced in the fourth quarter. I would point out that our run rate earnings coming out of this currency issue will reflect about 50% of the peak levels that we saw earlier in 2011, which is a result of the full impact of the pulp price erosion series. And lastly, I would like to point out that manufacturing operations and all other costs associated with the businesses will be impacted in the quarter versus the fourth quarter.

Essentially there's four major buckets, each worth between $10 million to $25 million of incremental expense in the quarter, and let me take you through those. First, we do expect one-time costs in the first quarter associated with the pending startups later this year at both Franklin and our Sun joint venture. And second, we talked about it, but there is seasonally higher costs related to the consumption of energy, fuel, primarily due to the colder weather, that will create some headwind for our manufacturing operation. Third, one-time annual true-ups that we experience in the fourth quarter, largely related to Company-paid benefits, we do not expect that to repeat in the first quarter. And finally, the Company's favorable experience related to last year's inventory revaluations will not reoccur in the first quarter, impacting first-quarter earnings. So at this point, what I would like to do is turn the call back to you, John.

Okay, Carol, thanks. Carol just covered the outlook. Let me talk more about extending the outlook beyond the first quarter and the full year. Looking at the US economy, I think it is recovering, but far from fully-recovered. The economic growth, we've got some growth, but it is still a lot slower than we would all like to see. So we see modest demand growth in IP business segments, mostly continuing to be driven by the growth in the emerging markets.

None of us have a great crystal ball on input costs, but as far as we can see, with what we can see, I would say our view on input costs is more or less stable. There is certainly moderate inflation in the US economy. Inventories are in good shape. We are going to get the realization of high-return cost reduction projects, most of that in the second half of the year, and I will talk about those in a minute. The major earnings runway drivers that kind of ramp up in the second half of the year, the most significant one being Temple-related synergies. We are going to have some higher pension costs during the year, and interest and tax expenses, which are covered in the appendix.

So let me go and just talk about capital for a minute. We discussed, if you look at this chart, it shows our capital spending over the last seven or eight years, and then the 2008 to 2012 average, which is how we think about capital over a cycle, we are going to spend more money in 2012. The $1.3 billion of before Temple, probably close to $1.5 billion with Temple, fairly close to depreciation. But it will be a big capital spending year. The 2008 to 2012 capital spending, cycle spending will be below depreciation, well below depreciation, as we said, about 75% over that period.

So we've got an impressive backlog of high-return projects, and we're going to begin to fund those, well we start funding them in 2011 aggressively, and we're going to continue to fund those aggressively in 2012. And if you go to the next slide, what you see are these projects, and they really fall into four categories. The biggest one being energy consumption. And no matter where we, are whether it is Russia, Brazil, or the US, the reducing energy consumption are really high pay back return projects. As you can see, we're going to spend close to $190 million this year on cost reduction projects.

Turning to slide 42, the major earnings run rate drivers we see, as we look out, not only in 2012, but beyond, are first, the Temple acquisition. As Carol said, we're very confident about the $300 million in synergies. More confident now that we've been in the Temple facilities. And that's going to start to impact us right away after closing, which we think is not too far away.

The Franklin fluff pulp conversion is also going to start to impact the Company positively in the second half of the year, into 2013. You heard Mary talk about the xpedx transformation, which is starting to produce results and those will accelerate as we get to the back half of 2012. The capital projects that are coming on and the markets where we need capacity, Russia and China, are going to be coming onstream at the end of the year, and really start to impact International Paper in a positive way as we move into 2013. And finally, the APPM acquisition, which we will talk to you more about probably at the end of the first quarter on investor day, we think is a terrific opportunity for International Paper to build a platform that will give us earnings, sales, and expansion over the next five years.

So summing up, our priorities, as we think about International Paper, before we kind of take your questions, remain very consistent. And we're going to continue to grow strong sustainable free cash flow, and be very disciplined in how we spend money to do that. Our objectives are to expand our margins and earnings and all of our businesses, achieving cycle average returns above the cost of capital. Maintain a strong balance sheet, and continue to use that free cash flow in a balanced way, to fund good cost reduction projects, delivering on our strategic initiatives, paying down the debt associated with Temple, to maintain a strong balance sheet, and finally, but importantly, increasing the dividend over time, as sustainable free cash flow permits. So with that, I think we will turn it back over to all of you to ask your questions.

(Operator Instructions.) Your first question comes from the line of George Staphos, of Merrill Lynch.

Carol, welcome aboard. I guess, the first question on exports and container board, I think earlier in the slide deck, you show about $6 million of price reduction for the industrial packaging business. Should we assume that most of that was related to exports, and can you comment at all what type of trend you are seeing more recently in terms of export pricing in container board?

You should, George. Most of that was export related. And I will let Mark Sutton, who is here, who runs our industrial packaging business, just to comment on what we see in the marketplace today.

It was all export. In the fourth quarter, we lost about $28 a ton in export. And we've seen that continue a little bit more into January, but we believe it is pretty much hitting a bottom, and firming up. There are even a couple of cases, with some export markets where we've actually received price increases as we go through January. So I think we hopefully are seeing the bottom of that.

Mark, would it be fair to say that you have seen some pickup in South American export pricing, or is that too simplistic?

Probably too simplistic. We're still working through our customer activity in South America. But the one area we have seen a firming and somewhat of a reversal is more in our Mediterranean basin region.

Okay. Thanks for that. Two last ones, and I will turn it over. If we think about the bleach board market, certainly it would appear from the data that you shared, you're comfortable with your performance, versus the market. It is a smaller market though, say, versus container board. And you are seeing capacity coming on, not necessarily in North America, obviously, but around the world. The decline that we saw in the fourth quarter, how comfortable are you that is really more seasonal and/or cyclical and not the beginning of a more structural issue you need to deal with, within coated paperboard?

Tom, do you want to comment on that? Tom Kadien runs our consumer packaging business, which includes coated paperboard.

We saw the industry backlogs here in North America start to fall in October, and I would say they kind of bounced along the bottom in October and November. But we've actually seen some improvements in backlog since then. And I would say for the last three weeks, we felt very good about the demand. So I think from a North America perspective, the demand, I will say softness is behind us, and we feel much better about the first quarter. I guess from a structural standpoint, I think -- I don't think we have a structural issue. I think we just had an inventory correction and some slowdown in the segments that we participate in. But it seems like we're headed in the right direction this year.

Thanks, Tom.

We export about 20% of what we make in coated paperboard. And we are very targeted and selective about putting that volume to customers that need an SBS product. So while there is being capacity being added around the world, we think we got the right customer base in the export markets to support that kind of position going forward.

Thanks. Carol, last question, on the appendix, you note the tax rate guidance is trending higher, interest expense and corporate expense as well versus 2011. Can you give us a quick overview on why those are trending higher? Thanks. Good luck on the quarter.

The tax rate simply, just geographic mix, post Temple-Inland. We're going to have more of a US base, business base. Relative to corp revenue, Glenn can take you guys through more detail, but that is simply pension. Pension is going to be high. The biggest driver is pension expense is going to be higher. And of course, the net interest expense all around our Temple-Inland work. But Glenn can take you through any other details you might need on that.

And remember that pension expense is non-cash.

Understood. Thank you, guys.

Your next question comes from Mark Wilde of Deutsche Bank.

Good morning. I wondered if we could start out, I noticed in container board, you really took a lot of downtime, market downtime in the fourth quarter, and I wondered if you could give us a little color on where you're taking it and whether that is continuing in January, or whether you're running a little fuller as you try to build those inventories that Carol talked about?

Mark, this is Mark Sutton. On the market downtime, we, as you know, we run to our customer base, the needs of our customer base. And we took what we took in the fourth quarter simply to match what our customer demands were. And really, we tend to take it based on our flexible system. So we take the downtime in the most cost-effective way as one of the benefits of having a system as flexible as ours. So we took some of that downtime, and some of the recycled mills. And we are running stronger in the beginning of this year so far.

And Mark, you mentioned in the release a couple of times, the improved performance in European container. Is that simply the result of European container board prices having fallen so much in the fourth quarter?

Yes, what that is, Mark, is you've got -- board prices fell, and with the customer base we've had, we've got some margin expansion because the prices haven't.

John, a couple of questions about some of these other offshore operations. First of all, it seems like there is a lot of restructuring going on in the European container board and corrugated business, and I wondered if we could get your thoughts on your business in Europe and your strategy.

Well, we've got great corrugated business in Southern Europe, North Africa and Turkey, focused on fruit and vegetables. It is not insulated from what is going on in Spain and Italy, because we have an industrial business there. It is not integrated in the sense that we buy all our container board, a lot of the virgin liner board that we need for fruit and vegetables comes from International Paper, so to that degree, think of it is as an extension of our integration here in North America. There is some consolidation, as you point out that I think is -- we will see how that plays out.

But our business over there is a $1 billion business. And we like it. We would like to grow it if the right opportunity arises, but we are not focused on growing our business in Western Europe either in packaging or paper. Our tilt is more to the east and Russia.

Okay. And then down in China, in the Sun JV, the EBIT margins there continue to be quite low, despite you guys having built a lot of new modern equipment over there. I wondered if you could just talk about your outlook for where margins should trend in China over time, and also talk about how you're funding this latest machine within the JV?

Well, let me just comment on margins. And then Tom or Carol can talk about how we're funding it. I mean the China business model is different than just about every business we're in, different than the rest of the world. The margins are lower because it's the most competitive market we're in anywhere, but the capital turnover is a lot higher. We're building capacity over there, for, in some cases, less than 50% of what it would cost in Brazil, or Europe, or North America, and we got a great example of that, we built a paper machine in Brazil at the same time we built a coated board machine in China. And we saw that the difference in the capital costs, and that is what that means is you can make good returns, with lower margins. And fortunately, that's the case, because China is so competitive, even though market is big and growing, that margins are lower.

And would you expect those margins to improve from where they're at right now, about 4%?

The margins are better, I think in the bleach board business, 4% may be an aggregate. I don't see anything changing in China to make China less competitive than it is. Every time I go there, I see more competitors.

Mark, this is Tom Kadien. What we see is coated paperboard prices in China do tend to follow pulp, because there is a fair amount of non-integrated capacity over there. Margins came under pressure for the second half of last year for that reason as well as a lot of extra capacity coming online. So I would say we're kind of -- we're probably a little bit past the bottom on the margin side at the Sun JV. And for the full year, we had a very good year, double digit ROI on the investment, and to John's point about the capital turns, they are over 3 on the JV. So the margins don't tell the whole story.

That's on new capital. So you would be looking at capital turnover probably 0.8 here in North America. From a funding standpoint, we've put some -- we own 55% of that joint venture, so our partner contributed real estate and infrastructure, and we contributed cash, and we're generating cash in that business. Up until this point in time, we had to put some -- put the capital out to fund the project. Which is roughly --

It is under $300 million.

$300 million.

For the whole project. And then the JV borrows the majority of the funds.

Okay. Very good. I will turn it over. Good luck in the first quarter.

Your next question comes from Phil Gresh of JPMorgan.

Good morning. In terms of container board, it sounds like you are running a bit more full here in the first quarter. But if I add it up, last year there was about 380,000 tons of market-related downtime. So I guess I'm just kind of curious how you're thinking about that flex capacity at this stage. Obviously, it's upside if markets recover, but is there a point where you consider that as more of a cost reduction opportunity, considering you have capacity creep every year, through your own productivity?

So Phil, this is Mark. I think the way we think about it is, the system is pretty large at International Paper. And last year, as you quoted, it was 380,000 tons. When you look at the flexibility of our system, and the size of it, and the constant work we do to select customers across the globe, especially for the craft liner board, we view that as something we can do in an ongoing way. And demand, as you said in North America would take a big hit out of that. But we already try to optimize how we take the downtime. Actually, we've gotten pretty good at it, in terms of doing it in the most cost effective way.

Phil, let me just add to that, if you think about the our channel access, our market access, we've got a big position in the export markets, that's a 4 million-ton market that is growing at faster than North America box consumption. And that's where we're targeting our virgin liner board. And we're more than willing to take temporary downtime, because we think the US market is growing over time, we are going to get back box demand, we will get back to pre-recession level. And as Mark said, with the flexible system we have, the more flexible system now, the cost of taking temporary downtime, as opposed to long term downtime, structural downtime, it is a cost but it is quite low. So I think we're well-advantaged to having this multiple market strategy to be able to manage through times when there is a bit of excess capacity.

Okay. That's helpful. And then my second question is over the past two quarters, the domestic demand on container board, has held up a lot better than the domestic demand for bleach board, and as the industry leader in both, I was wondering if you could share any observations as to why that might be, perhaps by certain end markets or otherwise?

We've been asking ourselves that question. And we frankly don't have a real good answer. And there's been some inventory destocking we think in the bleach board business. But there is no question, you look at corrugated shipments, you look at bleach board shipments, and you say that the two in the fourth quarter didn't really move in the same directions as Tom said. We're feeling more optimistic about coated paperboard backlogs, and shipments, as we go into 2012.

The other observation, Phil, is that if you take it over a longer period of time, they start to look closer and the container board business is just a much shorter-cycle business, so you see the changes in the supply chain, reacts much faster because you can't store corrugated and in the coated paperboard business end use markets, the cycle time and the supply chain is just longer.

Okay. That's helpful. Thanks, guys.

Your next question comes from Gail Glazerman of UBS.

Carol, I apologize if you quantified these numbers, but you had mentioned something about those true-ups in inventory adjustments that seemed to benefit the fourth quarter, and I was wondering if you could quantify them, if you haven't?

Gail, this is Carol. As I stated, there's kind of buckets of those, and some of those buckets were in the $10 million to $25 million of expense range and that kind of gives you a range. And what I do is I say we could follow up, just with Glenn, to see if there is any more detail in that. But I think that gives you the directionality of those, and the magnitude that you need.

Okay. And can you just remind us what your policy is on natural gas hedging and to what extent the recent declines may or may not flow through?

We are in pretty good shape to see any of the down -- the steady downdraft of natural gas, hit the bottom line, because for all intents and purposes, we're just about 100% spot now.

Okay.

We were hedging in the part and let those hedges run off, Gail.

Okay. And a competitor had a favorable ruling from the IRS in terms of fuel tax credits and I was wondering if you could give us any update if there are any potential incremental potential benefits that could come to you.

Gail, this is Carol. We also filed our amended return for the summer, and we booked a reserve against that, so it falls kind of in the IRS court, and we're waiting on their determination. So meantime we just wait and see. And I think we disclosed that, I think it was in the $660 million range.

Okay. And just one last question, I guess you're seeing OCC move up a little bit. And I'm just wondering, is that a driver, is that being driven by I guess pickup in China and maybe some insights into what you're seeing in your Chinese box business, and what that might mean for OCC moving forward?

Gail, hi, this is Mark. Yes, that is definitely a part of it. And we expected to see that, because you know what happened in the drop-off really, was a lack of Chinese demand. So we are seeing that pick up, and seeing the expected rise in OCC costs.

Tom, you want to comment on how you see box demand in China?

We saw box demand slow down, in the second half of the year, kind of mirroring everything you read about economic activity over there. On the other hand -- and what we didn't see, what we normally see is a bit of a buildup between Chinese New Year in inventories and folks did not do that over in China. Now we're out of Chinese New Year now, and I think we expect that it will start to pick back up again. It was slower the second half, more like a plus 5% than the plus 10% in the box markets that we had been experiencing.

We still think China is going to grow at 5%-plus, in terms of box consumption, and it is a 40 million-ton market, so those are big numbers, even though they're not the kind of numbers we're looking at maybe two years ago.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Chip Dillon of Vertical Research.

Yes, thank you. One thing that we're noticing is the depreciation and amortization seems to be coming down, which is obviously a benefit to earnings. I noticed in the quarters, year-over-year, it was down $40 million, like 10%. And you're guiding to 1.2 ex-Temple versus 1.5 in 2010. Could you just give us a little color as to what is causing that? I guess maybe some runoff of previous acquisition, accelerated depreciation, and sort of how we could expect that to progress, with or without -- on a post-Temple or a pre-Temple basis?

Well, Chip, this is Carol. I think what you're seeing is you're seeing the depreciation that is coming off from Weyerhaeuser that is coming down, the depreciation that is coming down from there. And you're also seeing the result of the capital spending, and we've been spending less in the last few years. So I think it works itself out over time. But I don't think it is anything more extraordinary or dramatic from that, than that.

And Chip, we will have to go through kind of the whole asset allocation issue with Temple, which is probably going to result in a step-up of assets which will lead to higher depreciation again. But if you think about our capital spending, our target had been 75% of depreciation over the last cycle, and we're not going to be over depreciation in this coming cycle. But we will share more of that with you when we get to investor day.

Got you. And sort of on that score, we are seeing sort above your average level this year, as you've guided us. And we have another player out there that just recently made a big acquisition that sort of stepped up the CapEx for a year, after that closed. It seems though that your situation is a little different. And should we expect sort of post-Temple for your CapEx to still sort of be kind of at a peakish level in 2012 and 2013 and likely come down a little bit, all things being equal?

In 2012, we've got these projects we're talking about, the Franklin project, we've got the Sun project, that are expansion projects, plus we have $200 million of cost reduction projects which don't have any volume associated with them. We will have to see how the Boiler MACT regulations get played out, but that's a wave of capital that is going to hit the industry that we haven't had in the last five or six years. And we will quantify that for you and share it with you on investor day. And at that point in time, we will know more.

Got you. And one last one. You know, with the increase in corporate expense, of about $75 million, is most of that tied to the pension increase, or I will ask it differently, is any of the pension increase going to be allocated to the segments?

Most of that is the pension increase, Chip.

But some of the pension increase will also show up in the segments, is that fair?

No, this particular part of the expense we keep on that corporate line.

Got you. That's very helpful. Thank you.

Your next question comes from [Al Covaly] of Credit Suisse.

Hi, and I've been bouncing around calls so I apologize if some of these have been addressed. I guess first is on bleached capacity, in China, we're seeing a meaningful ramp I guess there. One, is how are you feeling about the returns on the expansion on the Sun JV? And then two, if you could talk about maybe any risk you see, or addressing the risk of some of that coming into North America?

Hi, Al. It is Tom Kadien. Relative to the returns, our business at Sun JV really plays in the higher-end, higher-priced more technical grades around food and beverage, and aseptic, and I think where we're at and where we positioned ourselves purposefully, because of the excess capacity, is to move as much of our mix up there, where others typically don't play. So 60% of our mix at the JV is up at the higher end, and is mostly -- I will say insulated from a lot of the capacity that is coming in folding box board.

Now, that said, there's still kind of a second effect of pressure, so we saw some of that in the second half of last year, but I think long-term, we still look at the investment on PM26 as being a double-digit kind of return. And we're going to have to work through some of this excess capacity in coated board. But the market is still growing 8% to 10% over there. And that will chew up a bunch of that pretty quickly. Relative to the impact on the US, I think it is relatively minor. We see some of it coming in, I will say in sheet form, for commercial printing applications, but not a lot of tons, and it shouldn't impact our business much here in the US at all. I'm talking about the excess China capacity.

Okay. Thanks. That's helpful. And then if I could ask a question for Carol, I don't know if you could quantify the pension expense, the incremental pension expense, this year, and also, what that means, how should we be thinking about corporate expense this year?

Yes, Al, just to clarify that, what we keep in corporate is the investment performance, and the service costs, which is much more of a flatter number, it stays out of the business, and I think if you look in the appendix, I think on page 43, there's some data, or 44, and I think the majority of the increase in the corporate item is that pension expense which is investment performance-related.

Okay. And for 2012, how should we be thinking about corporate expense?

On that chart, it is $220 million.

$220 million, okay.

All of that stuff is in the appendix so there is more detail and if you have any questions, if you could follow up with us.

Okay, I apologize. I missed it.

That's okay. No problem, Al.

And I guess the final question, maybe for John, and again I apologize if you addressed this already, but the inventory levels and the industry inventory levels in the US on container board, how are you feeling about those, and your own inventory? Thanks.

I feel good about them. But I will let Mark Sutton talk how he sees them from his perspective, since he is running the business.

Good morning, Al. I think I would agree with John's comment, the inventory levels are in the normal range, both measured in absolute and in million -- number of weeks. What rise we've seen has been pretty clearly discussed as build for outages and specific needs, so I think we feel pretty good about the overall level. Our inventories were flat in the fourth quarter, and as Carol mentioned, we do have some maintenance outages in the first two quarters obviously, and we will have some build to deal with that. And we're expecting, based on the way the weather has played out, a stronger agricultural season, so we will have to be prepared for that to be successful there, even though we have some maintenance outages.

Okay. Terrific. I appreciate it. Thanks.

Your next question comes from Anthony Pettinari of Citi.

Good morning. Looking at 2011, I guess US uncoated free sheet volumes were down about 3% industry-wide. As you look at 2012, is there any reason to think that those volumes could be materially better or worse than 2011? And just to follow up on the quarter, it seems like your free sheet volumes were flat year-over-year, which I think is a little bit better than the industry. Could you give a little color there as well?

Yes, Anthony, it is Tim. Most of the third party forecasts that I've seen for this year are showing about a 3% decline forecasted. We will have to see what impact the election and some of the other 2012 events, how they impact the market. But we're not seeing anything dramatically different for 2012 than we saw in 2011.

One of the things that is structural, and it won't last forever, but as unemployment comes down, one of the biggest drivers of cut size consumption, which is the biggest segment of uncoated free sheet is white collar employment, and that has still been stickily high. And as that comes down, you would expect to see some offset to the structural decline in uncoated free sheet to be offset a bit.

Okay. That's helpful. And then on the container board side, you've had competitors that have announced or completed large projects that are going to try to move them down the cost curve, and I was wondering if you could discuss your overall cost position in North America, and maybe what steps you can take, you referenced the $190 million in capital projects, the Temple integration, and what steps can you take to protect your cost advantage, and just sort of how you think about that.

I would say that there is no Company that has got the opportunities that International Paper has, if you think about opportunities to improve the cost structure, with the Temple integration. There's $300 million there that we can see just in integration opportunities. And then as we did with Weyerhaeuser, the whole reoptimization of a platform, that's significantly different, we fast forward in 2013, and the one we have today. So I think International Paper is -- because we've made these opportunities for ourselves, has got far more leverage to pull than anybody has in the world to kind of manage our own cost structure and improve it. That and whether that is in Ilim with the Bratsk project, with the Temple integration.

We got a big energy project going on in Brazil which is going to make Mogi Guacu totally non-dependent on fossil fuel, will be all wood fiber or biomass, those types of things, we've got going on all around the world. We're just about to start up a new turbine project in Svetogorsk, which is going to significantly reduce our energy costs. So we're pulling those levers everywhere. And we've got more of them to pull than anybody else does.

Can you give any kind of guidance of what portion of that $190 million would be going toward North American container board?

It is probably in the -- I don't have the exact numbers, this is Carol, but it is probably in the $40 million range.

Great. Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Our final question will be coming from the line of Mark Weintraub of Buckingham Research.

Three clarifications. First, on the black liquor question which Gail had brought up, I believe in the case of Capstone, they basically would be reversing a liability, so there wasn't going to be any cash coming to them. I don't see that you have a liability. So in your case, if you were to get a similar ruling, would that actually mean that you would get cash coming to you?

We basically -- we basically paid the taxes on the gain we got when we had the black liquor credit, and therefore, we kind of believed in the beginning that it was not taxable, but we did indeed pay the tax on it. And so now we're coming back and saying, we're amending the tax return saying gee, that shouldn't have been taxed, and so how that comes back to us in the form of either refund, or deferred, another tax credit, in another way, it will come back to us over time.

Okay. Second, Carol, when you're referencing page 36 and you threw four items that you were truing up, you zipped through those pretty quick, it sounded like two of them were positive 4Q to 1Q and two of them negative. Did I net that right?

I don't think you captured that correctly, Mark. Sorry, they're all negative. They're all going in the opposite direction, in a negative direction.

Okay.

The more costs for the startups, higher costs for the consumption of energy and fuels, and there were some positives in 2011 that do not repeat in 2012.

Got it. And lastly, in terms of the $300 million synergies that you reiterated, again, I take it that is -- is that not dependent on the specifics of the pending binding documentation with DOJ?

Thinking about what most of those synergies are, Mark, they're related to eliminating duplication, combining two companies that have a lot of duplication, and the other part are, we said there would probably be fewer box plants at the end of the day, so that's what we see as the main portion of the synergies. And based on what we've seen in temple, because we put together that estimate without having visited any facilities, and now we've been to all of the mills, we feel very good about that $300 million number.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Well listen, that wraps it up. Let me just summarize, I think International Paper finished a very good year. In fact the best year we've had in almost two decades on a strong note. We're in the seasonally slow time of the year, but we're very positive about the prospects for International Paper as we go through 2012. And as I said, looking forward to talking to you about the Temple integration on our next conference call. So thank you.

Thanks, John. And of course, Investor Relations and Media Relations are available on the phone numbers on our Web site after the call. Have a good afternoon.

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.