Rock-Tenn's CEO Discusses Q2 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

During the course of this call, we will make forward-looking statements involving our plans, expectations, estimates and beliefs related to future events. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those that we discussed. We included a description of these risks and uncertainties in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our 2011 [ph] Form 10-K and our Form 10-Q for the -- filed for the period ended December 31, 2011. During the call, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures. We provided reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in the appendix to the slide presentation, which is available on our website.

Jim is going to begin with a commentary on the performance of our businesses during the quarter. And then I will discuss the status of our integration, as well as non-operating items in our financial statements. After our prepared comments, Jim and I will be available for questions. Jim?

James A. Rubright

Thanks, Steve. Good morning. Our adjusted earnings of $0.97 per share reflected continued excellent performance in our Consumer segment. That was more than offset by the lower earnings in our Corrugated segment caused by the continued price weakness in domestic box and export containerboard markets and the seasonal demand and pricing bottoms we believe we experienced in January and February. The weak market conditions we faced in the maintenance downtime we took in the quarter had the greatest impact on our Corrugated segment, where sequential quarter adjusted earnings were down $0.31 per share, and that more than offset the $0.10 per share in other earnings improvements.

While the improvements in the market conditions in March and April have been modest to okay, we performed much better in March than we did in January and February. Quarter's actual earnings improvement over our pre-announcement resulted from better performance during the month of March than we estimated that we pre-announced expected quarterly results. But March can be a very good and a picky month than for us it was this year.

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