Amcor plc (AMCR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

February 25, 2026

NYSE US Materials Containers and Packaging conference_presentation 36 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

George Staphos

analyst
#1

I'm George Staphos from BofA on Packaging Paper. On behalf of my Epic team, Brad Barton and Kyle Benvenuto, we want to welcome you here. We're kicking off with Amcor. Couldn't be happier. We know everyone traveled through snow, sleep, rain, just like the postal service to be here, but you're here. And we are grateful to be hosting you again for our annual conference. Welcoming today P.K. Konieczny, CEO of Amcor. P.K. thanks for being here. And our old friend, Steve Scherger, CFO of Amcor now. PK has been with Amcor since 2010 and Chief Executive since 2024. Although it feels like what, decades PK. And Steve, as we know, for many years as Chief Financial Officer of Graphic Packaging, having joined Amcor this fall. Welcome, gentlemen. We're very, very happy that you're here. So right into it, Amcor is guiding to $0.90 to $1. For the fiscal third quarter, $4 to $4.15 for the year. As we recall, that requires some incremental synergies, kind of $100 million sequentially, 1/2 to 2 half, also a pickup in the business itself.

George Staphos

analyst
#2

Can you confirm these points as our guardrails and to the extent possible with Dustin in the audience, Dustin, still well, crack IR for Amcor and prior Berry in the audience. How are you doing? What's new fiscal third?

Stephen Scherger

executive
#3

George. Good to see you, and thanks for the kind words and welcome, and I can take that question just relative to our -- to the guidance. You said it well, $0.90 to $1, $4 to $4.15, no change to that, obviously, in our conversations today since we brought that to life 3 weeks ago. And you touched on it well, the first half, second half improvement from an EBIT perspective. 3 primary components. One you touched on $100 million of synergy improvement first half to second half. We've got a $260 million target for synergy capture this year that we have high confidence in. We've achieved about $93 million of that through the first half. So there's a nice sequential $100 million positive in the second half that we expect to execute on. Seasonality is $100 million first half, second half. We tend to be busier. Our fiscal year is at June 30 and the second half for us because we're in Q3 and Q4 is busier for us. So sequentially, and that's common now with the combination, sequentially $100 million of improvement there. And then as we talked on the call, our noncore businesses, the $2.5 billion that we're actively looking to exit from, had a pretty tough Q2. EBIT margins were down to 3%, tend to be more in the 7s and 8s. We expect to see and we will see improvement in that business back to more normalized levels. We've got some new contracts and negotiations that are in place, volume commitments. And so really, those 3 things, $100 million, $100 million and $50 million are the primary first half, second half. And then the only other point to add there is that in our guidance, as we indicated, kind of the bottom half of our guidance was today's volume environment, kind of what we experienced in the first half, modestly down. I'm sure we'll talk more about that. And then any improvements towards the higher half of the range would be a more buoyant volume environment. So thanks for asking that.

George Staphos

analyst
#4

No, we appreciate the opening answer there, Steve. So again, to the extent that it's only 3 weeks ago, you doesn't sound like you're updating anything here. From the macro data points that you're seeing from any of the data points that are available in the public domain, what is -- pardon the phrase, what's the setup relative to what your volume guardrails were? Is there -- is it looking relatively consistent with what your expectations were earlier in the month whenever you guided for the fiscal third?

Peter Konieczny

executive
#5

I think it's very consistent. I think it's very consistent with what we've seen. I mean if you take a hard look, you have reasons to believe that things are going to turn. The question is when. When I think about some of the public announcements from our big customers, and these have been all public, and you will have seen the same thing that I see. When you think about Kraft Heinz, when you think about Mondelez, when you think about Nestle, they all came out and they said, look, we're going to put more focus on volumes and volume growth going forward. And when that comes, we should be participating in that. The question is when it really translates. At this point in time, we are approaching the second half of our fiscal year, very much consistent with sort of the volume exposure that we've seen in the first half.

George Staphos

analyst
#6

Okay. And one of the questions that we had relayed prior, we talked about what your guidance assumes in terms of volumes, including the various ways that you slice the business. Over time, do you think that maybe you'll be sort of saying, hey, on a regular basis, core is doing this, focus is doing that. I mean you articulated, so you already are to some degree. And how are those different slices doing to the extent that you have any sort of vantage point on that right now in terms of the core of the focus markets early in the second half?

Peter Konieczny

executive
#7

Yes. Look, I mean, we're going to talk about the business the way how we look at the business, and that's obviously evolving. So you're going to see what we're seeing. We made a pretty big acquisition a couple of months ago. We went into that. And as a result of that, we actually looked at the business a little different. We carved out $2.5 billion of business that, as Steve said earlier, we now call noncore, and we're finding ways to exit. And then there is the core business. So we'll hopefully make some progress on the noncore divestments soon. So then we're going to talk about the core. And the core business itself, we've always been very explicit around trying to position the company where you see growth momentum in the markets. And that is the whole concept of the focus categories. So we're going through the market. We're trying to find out what's growing well and what categories that's what we college do we like because they have good industry structure, but we're well positioned to win in those categories. We have identified 6 of those, and they make up collectively a little bit more than 50% of the business. And that's where we want to disproportionately invest in terms of capacity of people, management, but also capital in order to drive more growth going forward.

George Staphos

analyst
#8

We'll leave it there. I had a question, I'll come back to it in a bit. Very, very complete answer. Thank you. Any questions from the audience? who want to make this as engaging and 2-way as possible. If we can get a microphone to the front for Ham, who's in the front row. And how is your trip in?

Peter Konieczny

executive
#9

Yes. Where did you come from?

George Staphos

analyst
#10

Right there, Ms, the gentleman who's speaking. Thank you.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#11

Maybe just spend a second on R&D as a percentage of sales. As you try to create products that are slightly more proprietary, what's the right level of R&D so that the basket of goods you're selling aren't as commoditized? And maybe speak to what you think is commoditized today.

Peter Konieczny

executive
#12

Yes. I think generally speaking, we have a mix of products in different categories of the market. You wouldn't be surprised that given the breadth of the participation, we have some products which are higher value than others. I would say that everything that relates to the focus categories typically is product that has higher value. And the focus categories collectively make up more than 50%. We have good value products in the balance of the portfolio also. And all my commentary goes around the core business right now. So that's about the $20 billion business that we consider to be core. So broad exposure, but a lot of initiative to drive the company to index the company towards value products. We've always done that. And focus categories examples, just in order to put some more life to it, is protein, it's health care and the likes of that. So that's the exposure to higher-value products. Now your question goes to R&D. We believe that particularly after the combination of the 2 companies, we have a real strong R&D platform. We speak about the investments on an annual basis, which is about $180 million. We have more than 1,500 people in R&D. These are significant scale numbers in the packaging industry, and they obviously are facilitated and enabled by just simply the size of the company. We've always said that this is a potential differentiator for us. And we are being more efficient now between the 2 companies to address really tough R&D problems. Sustainability continues to be on the table as a big focus area for us, and we'll continue to drive sustainability. And then there is a whole lot of customer back or category back innovation work that we're doing. So all of that, I think, comes together nicely in driving the company towards higher-value products with a more explicit edge in differentiating ourselves.

Stephen Scherger

executive
#13

And Ham, just to add to that, I've visited 2 of our major facilities here in the U.S. over the last, I guess, 3 months. and the capabilities are impressive, material science, very high end, focus on the bears, focus on sustainable, innovative packages.

George Staphos

analyst
#14

[ Ham ] if you can wait for the microphone. And this, what's your name, by the way? Laura, thank you, Laura. Ham, if you can wait for Laura.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#15

It's roughly 1% of sales, right? So when I think about R&D at other companies, usually higher than that. Is that the right number, 1% of sales?

Stephen Scherger

executive
#16

I think it's a good number. I think it's a good number for us. And look, the question is we need to get away from -- this is sort of the way how I think about it. We need to get away from describing inputs into R&D as the key differentiator. What we need to get to is we need to describe the outputs. When you say, what are we getting in return for like roughly $200 million of investment on an annual basis out of R&D. And that is where we're spending quite a bit of time right now as we have put the 2 companies together. And that will eventually drive the question, what's the right amount of money that we need to put in R&D. I think there is a whole lot more that we can get with the structure that we have on the table right now. We have a unique setup. I mean, from an R&D -- innovation and R&D, I don't want to get off the charts here, but innovation and R&D are 2 different things. R&D is your capability to do research like material science. We can attract the best people. I think we actually have probably some of the best people in the space of packaging where we work. Innovation is the capability to actually drive that into real outcomes that differentiate you. So -- and we're on that journey. At this point in time, I think we're well set up with our investments.

George Staphos

analyst
#17

Thanks, [ Ham]. Interesting point of discussion. And we keep as investors, as analysts, coming back to growth for all of the companies, Amcor is not alone here because it's such an important driver of value when you look at dividend discount, whatever in terms of free cash flow. With that base, with that strength, with the Bemis acquisition a number of years ago, with the innovation. Again, I'm just an analyst. I run a spreadsheet, okay? You run a company. Why don't we see more growth? And does it argue perhaps that, yes, you've got your focus categories and they're over 50% of the portfolio. Might there over time, PK be more opportunity to hive off that, which is not growing? Or do you think the portfolio as it's constructed now actually can in the next year, show sustainable, repeatable same thing, growth. How would you think about that?

Peter Konieczny

executive
#18

Well, first off, George, it took you about 7 minutes to get to that question. It's a bit disappointing because we get this so many times. And obviously, it's one of the biggest things that we think about how can we facilitate?

George Staphos

analyst
#19

You have some coffee, you have some breakfast.

Peter Konieczny

executive
#20

Yes. I know it's early in the morning. But look, let me talk to this. First off, I'll say we're operating for an extended period of time now in a market environment that's pretty tough, right? And everybody has seen that. So we need to give the whole industry. That said, the aspiration that we have is to outperform the market, and we want to do better. I'm not sure that we've been able to do that. There's areas in the portfolio where we've been able to demonstrate that. Pet food is one on the focus side, we're driving really good growth there. And I would even go as fast as far as saying we're probably gaining share in pet food. Protein, we've done a lot of work on, and we're seeing our efforts really translate going from a supplier of film material, which is actually the core of the protein packaging with high barrier requirements to being a total solutions provider. We've made an acquisition of a company in New Zealand that has brought capabilities of packaging machines to us.

George Staphos

analyst
#21

[ Moody ] you're referring to?

Peter Konieczny

executive
#22

Sorry.

George Staphos

analyst
#23

[ Moody ] you're talking about.

Peter Konieczny

executive
#24

Moda. So we've done all that, and I think we're going to do more of this. We're having specific strategies across the focus categories. But the market is obviously holding us back a bit. We are believing that going forward, we're going to see more growth. And we -- when I talk to it at this point in time, given the new platform of the combined companies, the first thing that I will say is, look, active portfolio management is a key driver. And what you're seeing right now is that we've, again, carved out that noncore portfolio of businesses. We're going to take that away, and Steve is going to keep me honest here. But by doing that, we're going to add about 100 basis points of organic growth to the company, just by selecting a portfolio that is focused on those areas that are intrinsically growing faster, right? So that's the first one. The second one, and that's unique to the combination of the 2 companies, we're driving what we call growth synergies. Typically, we've been very, very comfortable in announcing cost synergies on the back of putting 2 companies together. And those are coming through very well. Steve reported on those in the first half, $93 million, upper end of our expectations and with a really good pipeline that give us reasons to believe we're going to get $260 million at least in this year. But the growth synergies, it took us a while for us to commit to those. And what are they? They are essentially sale opportunities, opportunities to sell on the back of the combined capabilities of the 2 companies. So think about product pairings. That's one key driver.

George Staphos

analyst
#25

I didn't hear that PK what?

Peter Konieczny

executive
#26

Product pairings, I'm going to give you an example. Product pairings, give you an example. Berry makes the yogurt cup, Amcor makes the lid. You put the 2 together, you're essentially selling a solution to a customer. And there is many other examples out there that are more sophisticated, but this is the one that sort of resonates because everybody gets it. We have capacities that now combined has helped us to gain different additional business. We have a regional footprint. That as you leverage that for the combined product portfolio allows us to make sales, like Amcor has been like in simple terms, more global than Berry has, and we now have a platform to commercialize Berry products or legacy Berry products across the Amcor footprint. One of the examples, if I may, if I just can give one example is it's always my favorite, which makes the point really well. We get very much questions on GLP-1, right, and the impact on our business. Maybe we're going to get to it later. But the first thing that I will say is we're actually participating in GLP-1. Because we have a scale health care business. Between the 2 companies, $2.5 billion of our top line is actually in the health care packaging space. So we're participating in the whole GLP-1 sort of drive. And we had a customer, a global pharma customer that is introducing solid oral dose GLP-1 products. And they were attracted to us and we actually made a good deal on the back of being able to supply them in Europe and in the U.S. So multiregional with our -- that speaks to the global footprint. And even more so because due to consumer preference, they wanted to have a blister solution in Europe, and they wanted to have a rigid solution in the U.S. And that was us. That was us. After the combination of Amcor, think Flexibles and Berry, think rigids and then multiregional, we were able to give them what they wanted. And those are the type of synergy opportunities that we're driving. So first one, portfolio, secondly, synergies and the third one we already talked about is the focus on track. Steve, go ahead.

Stephen Scherger

executive
#27

And then George, I think just to add to that, I think if you step back as well, what we're observing is that the global day-to-day consumer has absorbed an unbelievable amount of inflation over the last 3 years. And that consumer affordability issue, whether it's here in the U.S., throughout Europe, anywhere around the planet, quite frankly, has been the real challenge for the consumer who is spending more dollars, euros, pounds to get through there and manage their day-to-day life. They're just buying fewer items. And we've been working through that now longer than normal, quite honestly, if you kind of stand back from it and look at the world of daily food, beverage, health care consumption patterns. And what we certainly are observing and seeing now is that inflation has been more absorbed by that consumer, wage inflation catching up with the realities of that significant onslaught of inflation that the daily consumer has absorbed. And we're also now seeing more evidence as we talked at the beginning, that our customers as well, the world's biggest CPGs, small, medium and large, QSRs, et cetera, are seeing more intent around driving more volumetric growth with the consumer, with their customers because this consumer affordability issue is a global phenomenon. It's real, and it played itself out over the last 3 years. And it's what gives you some visibility into the potential for that to turn more towards a positive environment.

George Staphos

analyst
#28

Steve, PK, let me -- this is a great discussion. We think if the customer -- I realize there's not going to be one answer to this question. But if there was a common denominator response, if we had your 20 largest customers here in the audience right now, and we ask them, what could Amcor do other than cut price to make you buy more of their product? What would be the one thing that they would say? And in response, what would you tell your customers, hey, guys, if you would do this one thing based on our own work as we're Amcor, we're in the markets. We've been doing this forever. There's no one better packaging, maybe tied to first, but no one better packaging than us. If you did this, you'd sell more. What would those 2 responses be?

Peter Konieczny

executive
#29

I think it's hard for me to speak on behalf of the customer. So this is all hypothetical what I'm saying now. My best understanding would be right now to your first question, what would they want us to do is they would want us to help them innovate through the current challenges in their marketplace. And what I mean by that is they're trying to address a consumer that is stretched and is seeking for value. That's one of them. And they want to stand out and they want to facilitate their volume performance. They're coming back from applying a formula of success, which was very much driving price on the back of high inflation and sacrificing -- being prepared to sacrifice volumes for it on the other side. That formula no longer works because inflation has tapered off. And now they're all coming back to focus more on volumes. And the question is how do you do that? And it's going to be too simplistic to think that just by cutting price on the product is going to do the trick. And it has an impact, obviously, also on the profitability. So they will want to innovate through that, stand out, differentiate the packaging, smaller pack sizes would be another trend that addresses 2 things actually. It's the stretched consumer and bring it to a price point that they can afford. And on the other hand, potentially GLP-1 because people consume less categories. So that's another thing. So it is that innovation support. And I believe our response to that is we're right here for you. We spoke about innovation.

George Staphos

analyst
#30

And to [ Ham's ] point, you have -- you feel you've got the R&D, you've got the innovation. You've got it ready for them, whatever they want and you can provide to them.

Peter Konieczny

executive
#31

I'm going to invite everybody here to make the effort and come and join us in one of our innovation centers. We have one in Neenah, Wisconsin. We have another one in Ghent in Belgium, and we'll be able to show you what we can do on the innovation side. I've been with customers there, and I'm not going to brag about anything here, but we're able to really have good conversations with customers and help them out. I mean there's been nothing but very positive reactions to what we can do. But we need to bring all this to bear.

George Staphos

analyst
#32

Very good. Maybe one last question on Flexibles and on the noncore, and then I want to pivot. So near term, from our vantage point, the operating leverage in Flexibles in the last quarter was a little off from what we would have expected. Were you happy overall with the performance out of the business? You had a lot in synergies, but we only saw about 1% EBIT growth in the quarter. So tell us, again, and I know minimize, again, I just run a spreadsheet. Why you guys were comfortable with that. And then you mentioned in terms of the portfolio review, that could add 1 point when we've done the math, when you've done the math to revenue. What could it add to return? When we've done some of the math, it's sort of 0.5 point, 0.5 point to return on capital, agree, disagree comment, that would be helpful.

Stephen Scherger

executive
#33

Yes. No, let me touch on the segments and Flexibles specifically. Actually, we were very pleased and we kind of conveyed it in the materials for the quarter with the performance of the core businesses. So think about the Flexibles and Rigids segments. And when you look through both of those and you actually strip out the synergies, so the synergy capture, as we talked, met our expectations. But if you strip those out of both segments, Flexibles volumetrically was down about 2% and actually held its own on a year-over-year EBIT basis and then the synergies dropped through to the bottom line. It's a smaller percentage of the synergies because synergies are weighted a little bit more towards the Rigids side for obvious reasons on being more very centric. And actually, with the Rigids side, volumes were flat. That was a good positive indicator for us. And there, too, EBIT, excluding the synergy capture was relatively neutral. And so that was actually good on -- in both cases that in a slight net headwind environment, EBIT was holding its own. synergies dropped through to the bottom line, which is critical. So it showed that the synergies weren't eaten up, if you will, by the slight headwind environment that we're managing through. So that actually was -- we viewed as a very good outcome, work to convey that as we were talking about the quarter. What you summarized there is actually quite well said on the noncore businesses, the $2.5 billion that we're exiting from the North American beverage business being a large percentage of that. You touched on it from a growth perspective, at 100 basis points or so to the growth. We also shared in the materials, it's margin value creating as well. And so if you kind of remove those businesses today, you've got EBITDA margins in the mid-15s, CapEx on an ongoing basis for our business being in the 4% to 5% of sales. That gives us the ability, George, to generate the kind of cash flows that also in our positive returns on invested capital. And that's really the model that we're embarking on. Obviously, there's more capture coming on the synergy side. But the actual net performance in this environment is good. I have high confidence that when we're in a low volume growing environment that the flywheel will spin quite nicely, low volume growth and earning mid-single-digit EBIT growth. So that financial algorithm holds up nicely here. I haven't seen anything that would imply that, that changes. So -- and do you want me to touch on the noncore sale process? Or do you want to.

George Staphos

analyst
#34

So returns actually could go up if the margins are going up to mid-teens, returns could go up 1 point, 2 points?

Stephen Scherger

executive
#35

Yes, I think on a return on invested capital basis, Yes, I think that's -- those are good structural conversations to have in terms of what the financial algorithm should look like.

George Staphos

analyst
#36

And sale process?

Stephen Scherger

executive
#37

Yes. No, as we talked, obviously, I think importantly into PK's portfolio point, we did identify and PK and the team identified before I joined $2.5 billion of what is noncore business. And those are businesses that are good businesses. They're just structurally in slightly different places relative to natural headwinds on a volumetric basis and slightly lower overall margins. We could elect to fix those businesses, make them better, drive consolidation. It's just not ours to do. And so we've got very good processes underway for the totality of that $2.5 billion, the majority of it being the North American beverage platform, along with some bottle and closure businesses that we have. And we've got good process. And these are salable businesses because they're actually good scale fundamental businesses, modest headwinds, but they're in industries that are in need of consolidation. And so the actual interest in the business is good and acceptable, good processes underway. Things aren't sold until they're sold, but what our confidence that we will find good solutions there, as we said on the call, good optimism and encouraged by what we're seeing there. So we're actually looking forward to kind of bringing those to the conclusion at the right time. We're maintaining good, thoughtful transaction optionality. What we mean by that is could be straight sales, could be potential deconsolidate partnerships where you participate in some of the upside because there's a consolidation play here that another owner will likely drive.

George Staphos

analyst
#38

Thank you, Steve. Any questions from the audience? I want to pivot a little bit here. It sounds like you're very happy with how the acquisition is playing out. Steve, you spent many years in a different substrate. What's been your sort of 1, 2 most illuminating finding about the plastic and Flexible sector relative to where you had been? And what was attractive about the opportunity to you to the extent that you can comment?

Stephen Scherger

executive
#39

Yes. No, I think to the first part of your question, I think one thing that is very clear having been around consumer packaging for the last 30 years is packaging is always fit for purpose. It's the best solution for the package. And we are a primary consumer packaging company. We are in the food, beverage and health care markets, and we're providing packaging that is very fit for purpose, safety, the health of the products that are there, the ability to enjoy them effectively. And that's what really gave me the confidence that this is really the global capabilities here are also quite spectacular. But to your question on kind of alternatives and the like, things truly are fit for purpose and primary fiber-based packaging tends to be more secondary packaging, as you know, as opposed to the primary, some instances of primary and the actual net movement among the substrates has been modest. The attractiveness here, this is an amazing business. It's an incredible combination with phenomenal history with both businesses, the opportunity for us to allocate capital effectively, invest for innovation and volume growth put the money to work to drive above cost of capital returns, continue to look at the portfolio in active ways, apply good experiences there, partner up with PK and what is a phenomenal global set of capabilities. The uniqueness here that's probably, in some ways, not as clearly understood is just how global Amcor is. I mean, literally 400 facilities around the world, large presence in large, mature and good markets as well as in emerging markets. And all of that was really just a compelling opportunity to join the team.

George Staphos

analyst
#40

Thank you, Steve. PK, Amcor has a well-earned reputation over the years for integrating businesses, Alcan, Bemis. What is most challenging, what is most invigorating about the opportunity that you have with Berry. And one of the things that Amcor has, from my vantage point over the years, done well is value-based pricing. How are you implementing that? And if you can talk a little bit about what that means, you're the expert, not me, within Berry in that regard. So those 2 questions.

Peter Konieczny

executive
#41

Yes. So in terms of making scale acquisitions, you mentioned the 3 that I've been a part of with Alcan in 2010, Bemis 2019 and then Berry last year. We've -- I think we've done well in terms of integrating the businesses in the first 2 certainly and the jury is a bit out on Berry. But we're -- on the other hand, we're like 8 months into it or maybe even more than that now. I think it's 10.

George Staphos

analyst
#42

Come on PK it's 8 months, no just kidding.

Peter Konieczny

executive
#43

No, exactly. No. But the point is it's interesting because I've had a conversation with someone else who said, if this would not be going well, you would see it at this point in time, right? So you're only 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 months into it in an acquisition like this. And you know if it's going sort of well or not, you see it at this point. And I think we can say, look, we're on a pretty good trajectory. That speaks to the playbook that Amcor sort of applies to this. There's 4 very key priorities. The first one is to keep everybody safe. And that's the most important thing within Amcor. That's not a priority. That's a value of Amcor. Priorities change over time, values don't. So safety is the most important one. You take care of the customers. Before you worry about cost synergies, you got to take care of the customers because we're always on our toes when it comes to potentially losing business on the back of making a scale acquisition, right? Because customers may sit there and say, too large of a share of wallet exposure to the combined company. We don't like that, have not really lost any business, not really in any of those acquisitions, not without challenges here and there in conversations, obviously, but we haven't. The third one is you got to get the organization right. So even before you think about cost synergies, everybody thinks about you got to get the synergies, you got to get the synergies. No, the third one is you got to get the org right. And you got to think about what's the structure, where do you put the people. And the fourth one is actually then get the synergies and support the base. So the playbook is good, and that was the same one. The uniqueness here with Berry, I think, was part of your question. I think it lends itself to the challenges that the businesses have. When we go back a number of years, Amcor had a challenge on margins. And we were very focused on margin expansion in the Flexibles, as Amcor Flexibles business. So we're very focused on margin expansion, and we put a good playbook in place, which comes back to the next question that you asked. Now it's more about growth. And we are more focused on protecting the margin, expanding it where we can, but particularly put an effort on growth. So that's a bit of the difference. But other than that, a lot more similarities between those acquisitions than differences, I'd say. Now to your point on the value-based pricing, let me take that a level up. I mean, we believe in certain things that are very critical for success in our business at Amcor in packaging. One of that is you need to have a solid commercial excellence program. And we continue to believe that, and we will continue to build that out as we go forward. We're overhauling it now because with every acquisition, we get to see other things that other companies have done really well, and we take the best of both, we combine it and then we roll it out. So it's not really a change of strategy on the commercial excellence. It's really just more rigor in terms of execution. Now value-based pricing is just one of the elements that we have focused on in Amcor in the past and that we are applying across the combined portfolio, things like disciplined contract execution may be one example. Another one is how do you actually monetize value in the context of sustainability. That's another one. You have a more sustainable package, which is a more higher value package. And therefore, it should generate better margins for you because in order to develop it, you have to have to invest into it. There's good examples there, but I don't want to go too deep.

George Staphos

analyst
#44

No, that's very, very, very helpful. And speaking personally, I frequently forget about the fact you got to get the organization right because at the end of the day, organization and leadership drive everything else, you have that?

Stephen Scherger

executive
#45

Right.

George Staphos

analyst
#46

Have you need to change incentives significantly? And I know you're not going to go sort of salesperson by salesperson here, but is there an overriding change in what you might be doing within Berry to help drive that?

Peter Konieczny

executive
#47

I'd say, again, this one is driven by just the priorities of the company in the short term, right? I mean a big priority for us is to get the integration right, to get the synergies and to facilitate growth. And you won't be surprised to see that our incentive structures are pivoted to those priority areas. And as we get into a more stable state with the company, we will find other priorities that we incentivize against. But we've always done that. And right now, people -- yes, they make money if the company makes money on the back of generating synergies as an example.

George Staphos

analyst
#48

No, that's fantastic. I appreciate the review, P.K. Any questions from the audience as we're wrapping up? Going once, going twice. [ Laura ] is doing her best. Anyway, without further ado, Steve, PK., thank you. Everyone, please join me in thanking Amcor for a great presentation.

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