Ball Corporation (BALL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome back, everybody. I'm George Staphos with BofA on Paper and Packaging. Thrilled to have Ball Corporation back to our conference. Ball, again, was one of the very first companies we've had at a conference, we were back in the 1990s and honored that CEO, Ron Lewis; and CFO, Dan Rabbitt are here from the company. Ron became Chief Executive Officer of the company in 2025 after joining Ball in 2019. And Ron, prior to that, had an extensive career at Coca-Cola. Dan Meantime joined Ball in 2004 and became Chief Financial Officer in 2025 after a series of senior leadership positions at Ball. Gentlemen, welcome. Great to see you. So starting off most of the presentations, just with a quick [indiscernible] as possible. Our good friend and great friend, Brandon Potthoff in the audience as well. So he'll keep you honest. Brandon how are you? Doing well. Company got to 10% earnings growth, free cash flow in excess of $900 million this year. North and Central America was guided to grow at the low end of its 1% to 3% outlook, Europe at the top end of the range. Just help us understand how things are going so far in the year. No guarantees in life, we understand.

Sure. Thanks, George. Well, first of all, we're executing on our strategy, and our strategy is very simple, four pillars to our strategy, excellence in execution every day, being close to our customers, managing and continuing to drive, quite frankly, the substrate shift that's happening, cans taking share from other substrates and capitalizing on the complexity that's in the world and in our market because we have the best network and the most variety of operating of the cans. What's really exciting for us is focusing on profitable growth. Those four pillars of our strategy will help us deliver profitable growth through the execution of our strategy, what we call our Ball business system, and that is commercial excellence, combined with operational excellence, and people right in the middle of that. So that's what's helping us to drive our long-term growth expectations that we have as a company. We delivered, as you said, quite strongly in 2025 and 2026. The year started quite well, kind of on plan. Some things a little better, some things we had planned for, but are a little softer. But I can say like -- you talked about breaking down the various regions. North America, we said low end of the range. North America, quite frankly, has started positively for us, a little -- a positive surprise. So that's great. Europe, we expect high end of the range. And with the inorganic acquisitions we made, which closed right as we announced earnings early February, earlier this month, and we're excited that it closed earlier than planned. So we expect to grow even on towards the outside of our top end of our range there because of the inorganic growth. And South America, we had a really good carnival, which is helpful because the summer overall has been challenged there. We will deliver on the -- on our intention, which is towards the low end of the range on volume, but certainly achieving the 2x operating leverage that we've committed to there.

Got it. And if we can talk maybe peer a little bit into 8 weeks isn't necessarily something to take to the bank. You're going to work on it every day and every week of the year. What's driven the slightly better sell-through on beverage cans so far at North America?

I think certainly, North America, the year finished really strong. So the pipelines getting refilled has helped. I think that certainly helps. Quite frankly, we've talked a little bit about summer and some other previous calls. We're already making labels for World Cup. We're already making labels for America's 250th anniversary. And so I think people are really excited about that, and there's some opportunity there. We love all of our customers, and we love them to help them win with the can, and they're winning with that can. I think that's really helping. And I think they -- our customers are using the can as a means of supporting their revenue growth management strategies. It's a great way to offer value to consumers, which I think they're very focused on, how do we offer value to consumers. We've come out of a really high inflationary pressure environment where now they can use the can as a means of driving brand health.

Dan, what does that mean to you in terms of how you run the business if it's starting at least in line, maybe a tick better, especially in North America, anything that you need to do in terms of procurement, working capital management and the like, anything out of the ordinary there?

As we think about those areas that you said, really all the year is opening up really in line with what we thought. So those plans have really been put in place as we come into the year.

Very good. Ron, a question for you. Just came as we're talking now as I was listening to you talking about trying to manage the pack mix shift over time to cans. You at one point in time we're at one of the customers. And at the end of the day, whatever the customer wants is what ultimately the customer should get. How do you manage that now? Obviously, cans are what you sell, but your customers buy others. How do you manage that transition without while at the same time managing the good relationship that you should have with any given customer? You'd love to get them all push 100% cans in the mix, but they're not want -- they're not necessarily going to want to go there, and you got to manage that balance and at the same time, maintain constructive relationships.

Yes. We are passionate advocates for the can. We understand that consumers are going to drink what they're going to drink out of whatever packages, and we understand that our customers are going to buy various other substrates. Our job is just to make sure that we offer the right -- to win trust of our customers offer them the right quality, offer them the right service for them for the good a good price. And if we win their trust that way, they'll continue to convert to cans. And it's happening. They're building can filling lines. Not only are they doing that? There's a real strength in the co-packing market contract manufacturing. So there's a real demand pull for cans. We don't have to push it. It's naturally happening.

Very fair point and actually a very interesting point. About the co-pack opportunity there or trends that you're seeing there? We don't normally talk about them.

Yes. I would just say there's, of course, we're a scale business and we sell to really important large-scale customers. But there's always somebody coming along. Somebody always trying to disrupt that. And maybe I would pick on the probiotic sodas, prebiotic sodas, poppy, [ Ali pop ], et cetera. That's a whole new category that's never existed until a few years ago. They have to start somewhere, so they're going to start with a co-packer or a contract manufacturer. We have good relationships with all of those contract manufacturers. We know where they're installing new assets, and we work closely with not only them, but the people that help them build their brands. So we hope they grow into a large, large customer 1 day or they may get acquired by one of our large customers.

Do you have a minimum purchase thresholds with these types of customers? Or...

We have a minimum order quantity. That's basically a truckload Yes. And we also have a very good distributor model as do the can industry does. So if you want to buy a can, you can buy a can, but it would largely probably be through one of our distributor partners. .

Understood. Any questions from the audience as we're starting with Ball Corporation, Ron and Dan here? Switch gears a little bit here. What changes have you tried to bring to Ball, which was in a good place and has been in a good place for 125 years, right? Okay. 145. Okay. And what change have you brought in terms of operations day-to-day incentive plans. Tell us about how the Ball world has looked maybe a little bit differently since November.

I'll talk for a moment and then I'd like for you to add some things on the incentive, et cetera. Where I spend my time. For most of my time I spend with our customers, the very top of the house from our customer perspective, I spend time with them because if you want to hear how you're doing and where you can improve, that's a great place to go. So very much with our customers.

That would be comfortable to do it, too.

Yes. Yes. But I fly to go see them purposefully. Second place I spend a lot of my time is with our people. So we are a manufacturing company. We have 67 plants around the world and how they perform is how we perform, and they work extremely hard for us. The overwhelming majority of our people come to work on shift every day, and they need to know that their management team works as hard as they do. So we go see them. I've met every single one of our plant managers, all 67 of them in the first 6, 7 weeks of this year. Been out to see them in their locations. We go to their plants. We took our entire management team at 5:30 a.m. like we're in the plant. That's when shift tend to happens. I'm going to plant on Monday and Tuesday next week, Dan and Brandon are in plants on Monday as well. They need to see us. They need to know how hard we work for them. And then the third place where I'm spending my time is quite frankly, with you and all of the people you represent, our owners matter. We need to deliver results and then we need to make sure that we're telling the story around how we're delivering those results. So that's sort of where I'm spending my time. It's hard work, but it's teamwork. It's high touch. It's low egos and high collaboration, and we're all in this together.

Yes. I'm going to migrate this a little bit more to the financial metrics, the incentives, which was part of the question. Ron and I really were -- as we both came into this job really saying, embrace this culture. This culture is what makes us great. And one of the key components of that culture is we had a high financial acumen because of something called the EVA, Economic Value Added, and it is something that is still at the core of what we do. When we make big decisions. We run them through -- are we going to make more EVA dollars at the end of the day. But one of the downfalls of EVA was it is a kind of complex financial concept. And then how do we use that to connect with the people at the lowest level of the organization. We have actually found that we feel like we're on the path to the best of both worlds. It's still the biggest part of our compensation for the senior executive team. But in the short term, really we need to break it down for people. How do we make our plants more profitable. How do we sell more product. So we started to break EVA down on our -- some of our short-term plans. And let me give you an example. Last year was the first time in my 22-year history at Ball that we actually had an incentive around growing our volumes. And guess what, last year was the best organic growth volume year in my 22 years. So I think we're seeing that by doing that, we're bringing more volumes in more profitable growth and that drives our EVA. So at the heart of it is still EVA, we've tried to make it more personal to the people in their respective jobs.

Very good, Dan. How do you -- at that same level for the plant manager, how are you incentivizing on return on capital and spread, which ultimately is EVA? Is it does that person get an EVA target? Or they're getting the volume target and they're also getting a capital target that you've prescribed to them?

I'll start, if you don't mind. So they -- all of our plants are incented based on how efficiently they run. And that's the best way, a high fixed cost business getting more out of what we've got. So their job is to deliver volume, but to deliver profitable volume. And the way they do that is by getting more cans out the door. That's part of this execution of our strategy. It's the Ball business system, and there's three elements to it. One is commercial excellence. One is operational excellence, and then there's people and culture right in the middle of that. So from an operational excellence perspective, we committed in June of 24 to deliver this $500 million of gross cost savings. That's part of it. Part of that is how do you get more cans out the door every day and really, it's an efficiency metric that we look at for them efficiency, spoilage, output production. That's what's important.

No, I think we've got the plant management team really on a lot of the statement seems that Ron and I and the executive team are on. And yes, they've got the benefit of having things that are more personal, more relatable to the people that work in the plant. There's the only thing I can really overlay on that.

We all get paid on EVA dollars every single person in this company.

No. For sure. And you already touched on this to some degree, but -- and you talked about it on the last earnings call, but the confidence in the 2x operating leverage. You mentioned you're getting it in South America. This year, you'll get close to it, I believe, if not for the start-up costs. Or remind me if I'm wrong, last year, you got closed without the start-up costs and supply chain. And this year, you expect to get to 2x on North America. Just give us a bit of color why you're comfortable on getting there and how it will play out across the various regions?

Sure. Well, at the very foundation of this again is we need to be the best can maker in the world, and that's about operational excellence, what we call Ball operational excellence. So the way we're confident is that we know that this program delivers standardization to our facilities. Every single plant runs the same way we look at them and how they operate their metrics. We look at them the same way. Again, they deliver scale continuous improvement and can we drive stability into those plants. So those are our three assets as it relates to operational excellence. That's what gives me the confidence. We've been delivering in Europe more than 2x that operating leverage for a couple of years now and we will do it again this year even with the inorganic acquisition of the two Banepack plants. So we'll grow on algorithm in that 4% to 6% or 3% to 5% range in Europe organically, and then we'll compound that with this inorganic growth. We'll still -- whatever that growth is, we'll deliver more than 2x. In South America, we've said we'll be on the low end of that range given what has been a challenging summer, but we'll deliver it and we'll deliver more than the 2x there as well. North America, yes, we have a few things that are happening that are transitory, one is starting up a new plant, which we're excited about because it gives us the opportunity to grow. And two is adjusting our network related to all the tariff impacts producing both cans and ends in the U.S. as opposed to in Mexico. But not for those two things, we would be on algorithm as well from delivery of the 2x operating leverage. So we -- the fact that we are able to do it broadly in our business, it gives us confidence as well.

Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Dan. As we think about it, we haven't finished first quarter 2026. So forgive me for asking you to project out 2027. But when we think about it, let's assume we have volume growth in your target ranges. Next year, you don't have the start-up costs next year, Banepack is not that it is a new entity, but it's new within Ball. That will probably have some operating leverage. Seems likely that to us, that '27 might actually see better, not worse earnings per share growth relative to '26 growth. So if you're a 10% or better this year, certainly, that seems fairly likely in '27 based on what we can know, at around that.

Yes. Well, I think I'll give a comment, but I'd like Dan to add some comments too. Number one, yes, we're excited about 2027. It's very early. We haven't really done a ton of work on 2027 yet. I will say that in 2027 our book of business, we are more or less 90-ish percent sold for 2027, so -- versus the capacity we have, which is, I think, quite a strong basis to grow from. Second thing I would say is we should expect to grow operating earnings. The third thing I would say is you know our algorithm is to also buy back 4% to 6% of our shares. We bought back significantly more than that in 2025 that helps us in 2026. And this year, you should expect us to be much more close to that 4% to 6% range. So that will drive the EPS growth in '27. Dan?

Look, in isolation, if you look at the growth events that, George, you referenced, first of all, is the Millersburg plant. In isolation, that comes with volume and really allows us to better align our network in the U.S., and that means we can be more efficient, more efficient and production more efficient in how we're shipping and transporting the cans. So clearly an opportunity. When we look at Banepack, with a market that continues to have just great growth outlook, getting two plants really at nearly half the cost will take to build them out -- and this year, we get them up and running under our Ball system. Next year, we get the benefits of. So those are exciting projects for us, and they do give us a little more breathing room for one, and they allow us to actually grow. And I think we're continuing very early days, thinking around the algorithm being a good way to look at next year, but maybe it's early days. We're not really spending a lot of time on '27 yet other than being -- seeing what these new projects can do for us.

No, that makes sense. But I think it's constructive for what it's worth that you keep anchoring everything in a good way to the algorithm when you do that basically that flows downhill and everyone else thinks about it the same way.

Like that of ourselves.

So you've talked about the fact that because returns have dropped in prior years, there was a fair amount of capacity build that had occurred that you are on a going-forward basis not going to spend more than $600 million on average over a 3-year period. First, did I correctly get that.

I think what I would slightly tweak it, we're going to spend at D&A levels no more than. And this year, quite frankly, our depreciation and amortization is $655 million. We've committed to a $600 million budget this year because that's what it rolled up as. Over the 3 year period, It will be a D&A. It may tick up 1 year, it may tick down 1 year, we tick down for 2 years, the last 2 years, et cetera?

So let's assume instead of growing 1% to 2% in North America, 1% to 3% is your target range. Let's say the market goes through another period of accelerated growth, will you be -- would you be willing to spend over depreciation for a longer period of time, recognizing that in the past, even though you're benefiting now for some of the investments that you made, you and peer is overcapitalized. So how are you going to maintain that discipline when that next accelerated move comes, if it comes.

Let's hope it gets comes. But I would say, number one, we learned our lesson. I just can tell you we did. From a management team perspective, the answer is D&A, period, full stop, end of discussion. From a Board perspective, they learned their lesson. We're going to spend at D&A or less. Over a 3-year period. So I think from a governance perspective, we've learned our lesson. The second thing I would say is there was capacity built in North America that was built for the general market, and we were no exception to that. We do not build capacity anywhere in the world without it being tied to a long-term contract that pays for that capacity with very specific strategic aligned customers to us. So that's how we're going to manage it. And I can only just commit that to you. And that's what we're committed to our business and as a team.

Understood. Any questions from the audience? There's a question kind of back row if you can wait for Laura. Thank you. If you can speak up.

What are the current pain points that you see? So IG trajectory and pain points in the specific end markets that you see at this point? .

The first part of the question was about leverage? I just want to make sure I'm understanding the question.

Yes. So generally, the view has been that we aren't able to reach IG possibly, maybe not a goal there. but generally not on the IG level because of the leverage and the kind of buyback that we have seen, the cash flow go there, right -- so is there a trajectory in mind or a time line in mind that you're looking to execute there?

Let me at least take the first part of that, and that is part of the capital discussion that was just occurring here with Ron leading us through looking at depreciation and amortization is because we did learn a lot also about what we think the appropriate debt levels are for the company and the need to be returning money to our shareholders continuously. And so that does play a role. So really on the leverage front, we've -- historically, in my 22 years, I was always told is 3x is a good number of balance sheet leverage, and we'll flex it up to 4x if we had a strategic acquisition with Synergy that we could pay it down. That's not shifted. I mean it's shifted for lower today, right? I think what we learned coming out of COVID with the inflation and the supply chain disruption really was -- and that level of -- in that tariff environment is probably a little better flexibility by having a lower -- we're driving it towards that 2.5x. We finished up to 2.8x this year. I think we guided to 2.7x by the end of this year. And see a path to bringing that down. We think that's very important. So that will be prioritized. We also realize that 10% EPS growth is really nice. It sounds really good in a GDP industry. And the reason why you get there is you have to buy back shares. And we're not going to buy back $3 billion of shares like we did over the last 2 years, but it's something more in that 4% to 6% of the outstanding shares that we're really targeting. And the combination of the operating earnings or EBITDA growth and the combination of the share repurchase is how you get to the 10%. So we're very committed to that. That also holds us in check on our capital spend.

Thanks for the question. Ron, I was hoping that you could talk a little bit about Millersburg and the benefit it's going to bring to Ball's operations in a little bit more detail. And relatedly, when do you think the tariff headwinds normalize relative to the thing you're doing operationally? Is it something that's going to continue through the entirety of the year? Are you largely over the hump by middle of the year, whatever you want to say there.

You're welcome. So first of all, on Millersburg, that plant will start up in Q3 of this year. And we'll have start-up costs as we've said, that's normal. You'd expect that. What do we get from it? What we get is number one, capacity, much needed. We've said we are largely sold out this year because we don't have -- we've lost a pressure relief valve in these plants to the south of Mexico. So we're serving our customers with distinction but we don't -- we're not -- we don't have the ability to go create a lot of spot volume. So number one, it gives us capacity. Number two, it gives us capacity in the right place. in an important part of the world where it's on the fringe of our network, and we need to have capacity in the fringes of our network in Florida and in the Pacific Northwest, so it helps us there, and it helps us not ship cans from out of pattern. At the moment, we are shipping cans out of pattern from the Southwestern U.S. to the Northwest U.S. So we'll achieve some value there. And the third thing I would say is it's not -- let's assume things go really well. That's a place where we can add more capacity. We can add a line there, just like we can add a line in the plant we bought in Winter Haven, Florida. There's the ability to add a line there. So we don't have a lot of open days to put new lines in, but we'll figure it out. So those are some of the things that gives us, and we should see the benefit of that beginning in Q4 of this year, certainly from a capacity perspective, and you should see value in it in 2027 for sure, Millersburg. Your second part of the question around tariffs. And when should we see that start to ease? I would say I'll talk about lids or ends, for example, the tariff on those came in on August 2 of this year of last year. And it will take us a good 12 months to get the capacity moved from a certain production location into a certain production location in the U.S. So you should expect that tariff elements start to ease in Q4 of 2026. And certainly, all of that headwind is largely gone by 2027.

Any questions in the audience for Dan or Ron? So tell us a little bit about how you're able to get the $500 million of targeted cost saves a year earlier than expected. And with that as a backdrop, what's the opportunity to have another relatively significant number recognizing every day, you're trying to drive more and more productivity, more yield and it's not -- you get there and you're done.

So as you know, George, I had a chance to lead that initiative for us. And we, as a company, we're not standardized across the enterprise from a platform perspective. And this is all operational excellence is what we keep talking about because that's what we talk about internally, how we were able to achieve that is by getting to a standard. So every plant, everywhere around the world does shift hand over the same way. Every plant, everywhere in the world manages voluntary turnover the same way. Every plant, everywhere around the world measures spoilage or losses the same way. So that has helped us see where the opportunities are. And the trick for us is how do we keep that up? And you should expect us, we should expect ourselves in a business like we're in if we're running a very lean operation to find gross savings in the 1% to 2% range of our supply chain costs. So our supply chain costs, let's call it, round it to $10 billion. So we should expect $100 million to $200 million every single year. Now are we able to keep that in our pocket, I'll give you an example. We lightweight these packages, and we try to lightweight them every year. And we usually share the value of that after we paid for the capital with our customers. So some of that we use to compete in the marketplace and share that with our customers. So we hope that half of it sticks to our fingers, if there's large inflationary cost pressures, maybe only 1/3 of it does. I can just say from -- you mentioned 2022, 2023, we had a business that was selling roughly the equivalent amount of cans, bottles and ends in 2022 that we'll sell in 2026. We had to sell our Russia business. We lost. We're finally back to where we were going to be in that year 2022 to 2026. We'll make north of $300 million more this year than we did that year. So that's proof point in my mind that the commercial excellence as well as our operational excellence agenda are delivering on the profit per can.

Ron, is it easier to generate those savings when maybe a couple of years ago, the system wasn't quite as full as it is now. And so now that you're relatively tighter, obviously, you're adding Millersburg, some of that productivity benefit might be tougher to get at? Or "no, George, that's exactly the opposite" because I'm so tight, I can get that much more incremental return from my productivity. How should we think about it if that's a relevant way to look at the dynamics?

I would just say, I'm not sure this is the -- I would look at it this way. because we weren't looking at things in a standard way, and we weren't driving to a common platform there is still low-hanging fruit. There's still low-hanging fruit for us. So it -- we will deliver more productivity when you get to a more rational supply-demand balance. And I think we're more or less there. Last year, we added -- the can market grew 2% in North America, for example. Well, on a $130 million, $140 billion can market, that's an entire can plant. So the market is rational. There wasn't -- there hasn't been a significant amount of investment, but I think we're more or less in balance. And that's when we hit the sweet spot. If you're -- two capacity. It's actually harder to deliver these productivity gains because you're just working so hard and fast to deliver the cans. We want to be in this mid-90s percent range of utilization.

Switching gears maybe to the volume outlook or drivers. You mentioned that you're making labels now for the World Cup or America 250, would you not have been producing them this early? Or is that a pretty good indicator of a little bit of extra demand? And then broadly, how are your customers -- what are your customers saying about what the volume uplift could be from these on a combined basis?

For sure, all I would say is we're planning better with our customers. Like we are very much leaning into them helping us understand what labels they would like us to make for them. So yes, we would likely be making labels well in advance. But I'm excited that we've been making them for several weeks now and both World Cup and 250 and it's exciting. They have great plans in place. And they let us in on some of them, and we're excited about it. What can we expect there -- two of our major customers -- strategic important customers are the sponsors for the World Cup. But every one of our customers is a sponsor of America's birthday and they're all leaning into that. So is there an upside to it? Yes, it's certainly a positive. As you know, as we've said, our constraint or our issue is how many cans can we make and produce and ship and sell. So that's really our opportunity is how can we run those plants in the most stable way to get all the cans out that we can. There is certainly upside in North America. And depending on how the rest of the world goes, like there should be. As I said on the earnings call, I hope Brazil does really well because when Brazil does really well, they like to celebrate together and they'll drink a lot of beer even if it is in the winter time for them.

It sounds like a good thing to be doing. In terms of these events, are your customers without naming specifics, obviously, you wouldn't be able to planning any new product introductions like it would seem like it would be a great opportunity to bring out that next new product brand, flavor around World Cup and the advertising you'd be doing around America 250.

I would say like maybe not necessarily new products. I mean I -- what we see is the labels. And we're excited about like really personalized in terms of like this is a collectible. This is something I would like to have, whether it be a team or something about that calls on the heritage of this country that we live in. That's what I think is pretty exciting for us. People collecting -- or just that excitement around the can. The other thing I would say is they, for sure, are -- our customers always promote their products at the time of the year when consumers are out buying. The -- what we've heard from them is a desire because there is slightly less inflationary cost pressures is getting back to a more balanced volume and price mix to drive revenue growth for themselves. And we're there to help them do that. So we're excited about not only the labels on the innovation and the collectible aspect of that to celebrate these two major events, but also how they're choosing to promote their packages and their products and our packages.

Ron, Dan, maybe two last questions and we'll wrap it. One of the other producers of another beverage type -- beverage pack type will -- and we respect them frequently, we'll talk about the relative premium and the relative gap of glass versus metal and with aluminum going up and other trends that are happening in their supply chain, that premium that glass traditionally has had narrowing and making glass more competitive. Are you seeing any impact from glass taking share in any of your markets versus cans? Does that concern you? Maybe it hasn't happened, but it's something that your customers say, "Hey, listen, I can get glass or plastic more cheaply these days than aluminum and what can you do for me?" So that's question number one. Question number two, you mentioned that you are, I think, 90% -- again, to the extent that you know, right, no guarantees in life, utilized sold through -- out through '27, and I want to mischaracterize Help us understand if they're any larger than normal contract renewal periods in the next 3 years that we should be mindful of, say, U.S. or Europe?

So let me -- I'll start, and Dan, please share, but I'll say over the long history, more than a decade the substrate shift moving from other substrates to the can has happened and continues to happen unabated. I mentioned North America, the U.S. specifically, the overall packaged beverage industry was more or less flat last year, the can grew 2%. We grew close to 5%. So am I worried about a substrate shift? No. Not out of cans. It's not happening and there's no facts that would bear that out. Now we're concerned about the consumer just like everyone is, and all of our customers are. So we want to help our customers. We don't love the price of metal either, but we help them by bringing to life like flexibility. The multipack that we sell, that they sell as it can is really a great value package for a consumer. Sits in the pantry, the shelf life on a can is 12 months. The shelf life on a plastic bottle is 12 weeks. That matters. The can doesn't break in shipping. The can doesn't degrade in the sunlight. Glass does. So there's a number of reasons why substrates exist for various occasions, et cetera, et cetera. We choose to support our package, and we love the can industry and it continues to win. I just -- I don't spend any time really worrying about shift out of cans and into other substrates. It just hasn't proven to be true.

The only thing to overlay on that is that you specifically called out the U.S., but the reason why the growth rate is higher in the other continents is because there is glass conversion actually coming into cans. And we can't really tell you what's going to happen 5 years from now. But for the next 1 to 2 years, we think that's a pretty good tailwind for us that we'll be able to continue to enjoy.

And on contract renewals?

Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing extraordinary. I would say, I mentioned we do multiyear contracts. And if we're going to invest capital, it's for a long-term contract that will pay for and an investment we're making. And so with a number of our major customers, we have contracts that extend well out into the next decade.

Okay. So -- and you might not want to and we'd understand, but is there a way to frame, okay, we have X amount of our volume up for renewal next year at Y in '28 and so on?

Yes. I would just very, very roughly, we're certainly as I said, in this 90% range for '27, we're north of 50% for '28. In some parts of the world, we're closer to 3/4 sold for '28. So I think we're in pretty good shape.

Yes. Any last questions for Ball Corporation before we wrap up. If not, please join me in thanking Ron Lewis and Dan Rabbitt and Ball Corporation, great presentation, everybody.