Ranpak Holdings reports Q2 EPS 7c, consensus (6c)

Reports Q2 revenue $86.4M, consensus $87.67M…Packaging systems placement increased 0.4% year over year, to approximately 141.2 thousand machines as of June 30… Omar Asali, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, commented, “We are pleased to build on our momentum to start the year and deliver a solid performance in the second quarter that included growth in volumes, sales, Adjusted EBITDA and an increase in our cash position. Sales for the quarter increased 5.5% year over year, or 5.9% on a constant currency basis, driven by an 8.8% volume increase fueled by a meaningful uptick in strategic account activity in North America and a 3.2% volume growth rate in the quarter in Europe and APAC. The input cost environment remained roughly inline with the first quarter and resulted in gross profit growth of 5.0% or 5.4% on a constant currency basis, implying a gross margin of 36.7%. The improved volume growth and gross profit drove a 7.4% increase in Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter continuing our steady progress on deleveraging, achieving a 4.2x net debt to LTM Adjusted EBITDA ratio on a constant currency basis as of the end of the second quarter. In addition to driving volume growth, deleveraging to 3.0x or below and generating cash remain our key priorities at Ranpak.” “We were pleased to execute on our strategic account activity plan in the second quarter and see the beginnings of large e-commerce players in North America making the plastic to paper shift while publicly citing the benefits of paper versus air pillows. Although activity levels at many of the consumer and industrial customers we serve remain constrained due to persistent interest rate and inflationary pressures, we believe we are well positioned to benefit from continued volume growth for the year as our strategic account initiatives began to bear fruit and build from here. We believe this is only the beginning as these sites ramp up and our additional actions begin to be layered in later this year, which we expect will provide us with solid momentum going into 2025.