AptarGroup, Inc. 2026 Q3 Earnings Call

Good morning, and thanks for being with us on our call today. Joining me on today's call are Gael Touya, President and CEO, and Vanessa Kanu, Executive Vice President and CFO. Our press release and accompanying slide deck have been posted on our website under the Investor Relations page. During this call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. These measures are reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure, and the reconciliations are set forth in the press release. Please refer to the press release disseminated yesterday for reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures discussed during this earnings call. As always, we will post a replay of this call on our website. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Gael.

Thank you, Mary, and good morning, everyone. I am pleased to join you today for my first earnings call as CEO of Aptar. I will touch on the quarter briefly and then turn it over to Vanessa to add more details. Our results in the quarter demonstrate the underlying strength of our businesses, with 5% core sales growth across all three segments and adjusted earnings per share at the higher end of our guidance range. Our adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.3% remained within our long-term target range, despite emergency medicine destocking and the associated mix impacts. In Pharma, while the anticipated reduction in emergency medicine sales continued to affect our growth rate, the underlying business remained strong. Results were driven by broad-based demand across a number of end markets in each of our divisions. This breadth is important. Our Pharma growth opportunities are not dependent on one product or one therapeutic category.

It reflects the depth of our portfolio, innovation, pipeline, and the increasingly important role Aptar plays with customers across the drug development cycle. Our ambition is to continue moving forward, becoming the partner of choice for our customers through our technology, scientific expertise, services, and regulatory capabilities. Beauty also delivered strong top-line growth in the quarter, with strong demand from a number of end markets, including prestige fragrance and color cosmetics. Looking at the profitability, I want to be clear. Sales growth alone is not our objective. Our goal is to convert the strong demand for our products into more consistent profitability. We have excellent technology, strong customer relationships, and leading positions in attractive categories. At the same time, the margin performance, mostly in North America, is not where it needs to be.

Closures also deliver double-digit core sales growth, reflecting strong demand in beverage and food, and continued momentum from innovation. From a margin perspective, without the decrease from the impact of indexation, Closures would have been within their long-term adjusted EBITDA target range, and Vanessa will talk further about that. Across Aptar, my priorities remain straightforward: profitable growth, execution, and disciplined capital allocation. Pharma is a pipeline business, and many of you have asked us to provide more visibility into that pipeline. I want to spend a few minutes highlighting some of the key developments we have seen over the last several months. These opportunities span different technologies, customers, and therapeutic areas, and they are at different stages of development. Some will take time to contribute, but taken together, they provide a clearer view of how we can extend our leadership positions and create new avenues of growth.

Let's look at some concrete examples. In ophthalmic, we continue to see attractive opportunities to build on our strong position in eye care. Earlier this year, we introduced Beat the Blink, designed to improve dosing precision and the patient experience. The technology is not yet commercially available and is being developed and industrialized through an exclusive collaboration with Bausch + Lomb. Since then, we are encouraged by an early clinical study of Beat the Blink, which showed strong patient acceptance and preference for the solution. This innovation demonstrates how we are bringing together our drug delivery, formulation, and human factors expertise to address unmet patient and consumer needs. In our ophthalmic pipeline, I want to point out that we are starting to see biologics in clinical testing across areas such as limbal stem cell deficiency, macular degeneration, and dry eye disease.

Biologics are starting to be disseminated through different routes of delivery beyond injectables. This is another area where we see meaningful long-term growth potential. Overall, we see ophthalmic as an attractive area for continued innovation and future growth. Prescription to over-the-counter switches can be an attractive growth opportunity for Aptar, as broader consumer access can translate into higher volumes for our dispensing solutions. A recent example is an acne treatment where our device is supporting its transition from prescription to OTC in the U.S. It also reflects the growing intersection of pharmaceutical innovation and consumer skincare. Switching to nasal drug delivery, we recently announced a research collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital focused on advancing the science of nose-to-brain delivery.

The goal is to make this emerging pathway more predictable and data-driven, and to help pharmaceutical companies assess molecular classes earlier and accelerate the development of therapies targeted neurological and central nervous system diseases. This build on decades of Aptar expertise in nasal delivery and is expected to strengthen our position in an area where we see meaningful long-term opportunity. Nasally delivered therapies continue to progress across several therapeutic areas. We have phase III programs in pain management and severe allergic reactions. Phase II programs include amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, other neurological diseases, and therapies focused on the prevention of respiratory viral infections and emergency treatment. Earlier stage opportunities further broaden the pipeline across schizophrenia, nausea, concussion, Alzheimer's and dementia, and migraine. We also see longer-term potential in pain and anesthetics, addiction, depression, and other novel therapeutics.

These developments demonstrate how the pipeline is maturing, with program advancing through clinical development and moving closer to potential approval and commercialization. We have also seen development related to vaccines with our LuerVax intranasal delivery system and Spray Divider now carrying the European Conformity Mark, enhancing our ability to support customers developing intranasal vaccines. In inhalation, we continue to expand our capabilities in next-generation pulmonary drug delivery. We recently announced a three-year collaboration research with Macquarie University focused on high-dose dry powder delivery of biologics medicines using our Orbital Inhaler platform. This is yet another example of biologics projects in our pipeline being disseminated through a route of delivery beyond injectables. We are also expanding our respiratory platform through the acquisition of PULMOTREE, adding its Kolibri non-propellant liquid inhaler technology.

Together, these initiatives are intended to broaden the range of complex therapies we can support and create opportunities for long-term growth. We are also supporting the transition to our next-generation lower carbon metered dose inhalers. One program using our valve technology has progressed through phase III into regulatory review in Europe, with the potential to significantly reduce the environmental footprint of a widely used respiratory therapy while maintaining comparable efficacy and safety. Beyond the pipeline, we continue to invest in manufacturing capabilities to support customers as these markets grow. This quarter, we expanded our Pharma operations in Mumbai, India, strengthening our supply chain resilience and our ability to serve customers in the region. In injectables, we launched Premia Precision, a new quality standard for elastomeric components designed for complex and high-value injectable therapies, including biologics, GLP-1 medicines, for instance.

It brings together tighter quality controls, advanced contamination and defect management, and 100% automated vision inspection. Earlier this week, we announced a collaboration with Stevanato Group to advance system-level solutions aimed at helping customers make earlier, more informed packaging decisions for complex biologics and other injectable therapies. This is Aptar Pharma's first collaboration as part of the integrated system-level framework launched in July for injectable drug development. These developments are meant to position Aptar Pharma for the future. We are continuing to deepen our differentiation across all delivery routes, where our technology, services, scientific expertise, and patient understanding position us as the partner of choice for our customers. Turning to Beauty, we are focused on driving growth by bringing differentiated premium solutions to leading brands across key beauty categories and geographies.

Recent wins include the first launch of our patented fragrance refill technology with Bvlgari's Le Gemme Tygar travel spray in Europe, our premium cosmetic pump on Helena Rubinstein's Powercell serum, and our custom pump for SK-II facial treatment serum in China. These launches highlight the strength of our innovation pipeline and our ability to translate customer partnerships into attractive growth opportunities. In Closures, we continue to support the conversion of tub-based condiments to easy-squeeze pouch dispensing. Our recent example is Hormel Foods' Wholly Guacamole, featuring our closure with SimpliSqueeze valve. Our SimpliSqueeze valve technology is also used in the personal care market for ease of dispensing products in the shower, as found on the new inverted dense body wash by IP-1 in Thailand.

Finally, our continued partnership with McCormick, which is focused on elevating their spice portfolio, led to the launch of a distinctive two-color, easy-open closure for spices in Mexico. As you can see from our highlights, we believe we have strong businesses, excellent customer relationships, and differentiated technologies. My focus is on initiatives intended to translate those strengths into consistent financial performance and long-term value creation. I am encouraged by what I have seen in my first weeks as CEO, but I am equally clear about where we need to improve. We are focused on staying close to our customers, continuing to invest behind our best growth opportunities, and bringing greater accountability and operational discipline to how we execute to improve profitability. With that, I will turn the call over to Vanessa to take you through the quarter in more detail.

Thank you, Gael, and good morning, everyone. Before we get into the results, I want to acknowledge our 8-K filed in late September regarding our Russian subsidiary that is now under administrative control. As previously reported, that subsidiary, which is currently primarily closures, is not material to the company's ongoing revenue and earnings. As a result of the loss of control, we have deconsolidated the Russian subsidiary effective September 21, 2026. We recorded a combined charge of $61.2 million before tax and $60.4 million after tax, or $0.94 per diluted share. The charge consists of a $58 million loss on deconsolidation, which included approximately $30 million of cash held by the subsidiary, along with related receivables reserves and legal costs. This charge has been excluded from our adjusted earnings.