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Text: I'm Mark Kowlzan, Chairman and CEO of PCA.
And with me on the call today is Tom Hassfurther, Executive Vice President, who runs our Packaging business; and Bob Mundy, our Chief Financial Officer.
And then I'll wrap things up and then we'll be glad to take questions.
Yesterday, we reported fourth quarter 2019 net income of $136 million or $1.43 per share.
Fourth quarter net income included special items of $26 million primarily for certain costs associated with the company's November 2019 debt refinancing, which included redemption premiums, financing fees and write-offs for unamortized debt issuance costs and treasury lock balances.
Excluding the special items, fourth quarter 2019 net income was $163 million or $1.71 per share compared to the fourth quarter 2018 net income of $205 million or $2.17 per share.
Fourth quarter net sales were $1.7 billion in both 2019 and 2018.
Total company EBITDA for the fourth quarter, excluding special items, was $335 million in 2019 and $387 million in 2018.
We also reported full year 2019 earnings excluding special items of $726 million or $7.65 per share compared to 2018 earnings, excluding special items of $760 million or $8.03 per share.
Net sales were $7 billion in both 2019 and 2018.
Excluding the special items, total company EBITDA in 2019 was $1.450 billion compared to $1.500 billion in 2018.
Excluding the special items, the $0.46 per share decrease in fourth quarter 2019 earnings compared to the fourth quarter of 2018 was driven primarily by lower prices and mix in our Packaging business segment of $0.57 and the Paper segment $0.02, higher operating costs $0.05, primarily due to inflation related increases with chemicals, labor and benefits expenses, repair and material costs and other outside service costs.
We also had higher non-operating pension expense of $0.02, higher depreciation expense of $0.01 and other costs including start-up related costs at our new Richland, Washington plant of $0.03.
These items were partially offset by higher volumes in our Packaging segment of $0.16 and Paper segment $0.01, lower annual outage expenses $0.04 and lower freight and logistics expenses of $0.03.
Looking at our Packaging business, EBITDA excluding special items in the fourth quarter 2019 of $303 million with sales of $1.5 billion, resulted in a margin of 21% versus last year's EBITDA of $352 million and sales of $1.5 billion or a 23% margin.
We continue to run our containerboard system to demand in a very cost effective manner.
Our mill production supplied the necessary containerboard to achieve a new all-time quarterly record for box shipments per day and a new fourth quarter record for total box shipments, allowing us to maintain our industry-leading integration rate.
Our new box plant in Richland, Washington had an excellent start up during the quarter, and we're now beginning to take full advantage of the benefits from our machine conversion at the Wallula Mill with its flexibility to produce from the heavier weight high performance linerboard grades, all the way down to the lighter weight high performance grades.
This gives us the capability to further optimize the mix in the inventory levels of the entire containerboard system and provide the type and the quality a board needs for our customers on the West Coast and on the Pacific Northwest and reduce our systemwide freight and logistics costs, which in the fourth quarter alone provided over $2 million of benefit.
For the full year 2019, Packaging segment EBITDA excluding special items was $1.3 billion with sales of $5.3 billion or a 22.1% margin compared to full year 2018 EBITDA of $1.4 billion with sales of $5.9 billion or 23.6% margin.
As Mark indicated, in corrugated products, we had an all-time record quarterly box shipments per day which were up 0.7% compared to last year's fourth quarter as well as a record fourth quarter total shipments, which were up 2.3% over last year.
Outside sales volume of containerboard was 6% below last year's fourth quarter while up 3.7% compared to the third quarter of 2019 due to higher export volume.
For the full year 2019, we established new annual records for total box shipments and box shipments per day, both up 0.9% versus 2018.
Domestic containerboard and corrugated products prices and mix together were $0.43 per share lower than the fourth quarter of 2018 and down $0.14 per share versus the third quarter of 2019 due to a less rich mix.
Export containerboard prices were $0.14 per share, below fourth quarter 2018 levels and down $0.02 per share compared to the third quarter of 2019.
Looking at the Paper segment, EBITDA excluding special items in the fourth quarter was $53 million with sales of $244 million or a 22% margin compared to the fourth quarter of 2018 EBITDA of $52 million and sales of $227 million or 23% margin.
We did a good job managing our inventories during the quarter as we ran the system to demand and reduced our office paper inventories by almost 10% versus the third quarter of 2019.
Volumes during the quarter or volume during the quarter was better than anticipated at levels above last year as well as the third quarter of 2019, and prices and mix were lower as expected, although slightly better than anticipated as well.
Throughout the quarter, the mills had control [Phonetic] over input costs and freight and logistics expenses.
For the full year 2019, Paper segment EBITDA excluding special items was $213 million and sales were $964 million or 22% margin compared to full year 2000 [Phonetic] EBITDA of $165 million with sales of $1 billion or 16% margin.
These results are the best we've ever achieved and reflect the hard work and dedication by all employees in our Paper business as well as the strategic decision to exit the white paper and pressure sensitive business at the Wallula Mill back in 2017.
We had very good cash generation in the fourth quarter with cash provided by operations of $329 million and free cash flow of $194 million.
The primary uses of cash during the quarter included capital expenditures of $136 million, common stock dividends totaled $75 million, $31 million for redemption premiums and fees associated with our debt refinancing, $34 million for federal and state income tax payments, pension payments of $4 million and net interest payments of $35 million.
In addition, in order to generate higher interest income for a portion of our cash, $146 million moved from cash to marketable securities on our balance sheet during the quarter.
We ended the quarter with $679 million of cash on hand or $825 million if you include the marketable securities.
During the quarter we refinanced $900 million of our existing 2.45% notes maturing in 2020 and 3.9% notes maturing in 2022 with new 10-year and-30-year notes.
This resulted in only a marginal increase in the company's average cash interest rate of just over a 0.1% and extended the company's overall debt maturity from 4.1 years to 10.3 years.
Gross debt remain unchanged at $2.5 billion.
For the full year 2019, cash from operations was a record $1.2 billion.
Capital spending was $399 million and free cash flow was a record $808 million.
Our final effective tax rate for 2019 was 24% and our final cash tax rate was 19%.
Regarding full-year estimates of certain key items for the upcoming year, we expect total capital expenditures to be between $400 million to $425 million.
DD&A is expected to be approximately $400 million, pension and post-retirement benefit expense of $22 million, and we expect to make cash pension and post-retirement benefit plan contributions of $85 million.
Our full year interest expense in 2020 is expected to be approximately $81 million and net cash interest payments should be about $84 million.
The estimate for our 2020 combined federal and state cash tax rate is approximately 19% and for our book effective tax rate of approximately 25%.
As we mentioned during the last quarter's earnings call, we have a heavy volume of scheduled mill outages in 2020.
In total, we are planning for nine outages this year versus six in 2019.
Four of these scheduled outages at three of our containerboard mills and one of our paper mills are planned for the first quarter versus only two outages in last year's first quarter.
This will have a negative impact on earnings per share of approximately $0.09 moving from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the first quarter of 2020, and $0.06 per share versus the first quarter of 2019.
The total earnings impact of these outages including lost volume, direct costs and amortized repair costs is expected to be $0.81 per share compared to $0.60 per share for 2019.
The current estimated impact by quarter in 2020 is $0.24 per share in the first quarter, $0.17 in the second, $0.13 in the third quarter and $0.27 per share in the fourth quarter.
Looking ahead as we move into the first quarter of 2020, in our Packaging segment, we expect lower prices as the remaining impact of the published domestic containerboard price decreases from last year work through the system as well as the negative impact from the recent January decreases in the published prices for linerboard medium.
We also expect lower export prices.
Containerboard volumes will be lower due to scheduled outages at our three largest mills during the quarter, but we do expect higher corrugated product shipments.
In our Paper segment, volumes will be lower due to the better than expected levels in the fourth quarter as well as the scheduled outage we have at our Jackson, Alabama mill.
As Bob mentioned earlier scheduled outage costs will be significantly higher than with the fourth scheduled in the first quarter versus just one in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Freight costs will be higher due to rail rate increases in certain areas and scheduled outage related increases.
Labor and benefit costs will be higher with annual wage increases and other timing related expenses.
There will be inflation with purchased electricity and most of our chemical and repair and material costs while seasonally colder weather will increase energy and wood costs.
We also expect our tax rate and depreciation expense to be slightly higher.
Considering these items, we expect first quarter earnings of $1.20 per share.
With that, we would be happy to entertain any questions.
The statements were based on current estimates, expectations and projections of the company and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including the direction of the economy and those identified as risk factors in our Annual Report on Form 10-K on file with the SEC.

user
compname posts q4 earnings per share of $1.43.
q4 earnings per share $1.71 excluding items.
q4 earnings per share $1.43.
sees q1 earnings per share $1.20.
q4 sales $1.7 billion versus refinitiv ibes estimate of $1.7 billion.
looking ahead to q1 in our packaging segment we expect lower prices.
expect lower export prices in packaging segment.
containerboard volumes will be lower due to scheduled outages at our three largest mills during quarter.

assistant