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RYAM Announces Impressive Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Results and Provides 2025 Guidance

In This Article:

  • Net sales for 2024 of $1,630 million, down $13 million from the prior year

  • Loss from continuing operations for 2024 of $42 million, a $60 million improvement over the prior year

  • Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations for 2024 of $222 million, up $83 million from the prior year

  • Total debt of $730 million; Net Secured Debt of $625 million with a covenant net secured leverage ratio of 2.7 times

  • Cash provided by operating activities in 2024 of $203 million; Adjusted Free Cash Flow generation of $128 million

  • 2025 Adjusted EBITDA guidance of $215 million to $235 million

  • 2025 Adjusted Free Cash Flow guidance $25 million to $45 million

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., March 05, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rayonier Advanced Materials Inc. (NYSE:RYAM) (the "Company") today reported results for its fourth quarter and full year 2024.

"2024 marked a transformative chapter in our journey at RYAM, with the achievement of several strategic milestones that will position us well for the future," stated De Lyle Bloomquist, President and CEO of RYAM. "We continued to strengthen our core High Purity Cellulose business and reduced our exposure to commodity markets. We made significant strides towards executing on our biomaterials strategy, and we improved our balance sheet while delivering outstanding financial results.

"We took decisive action to reduce our exposure to commodity markets in 2024, including the indefinite suspension of our High Purity Cellulose operations in Temiscaming. As a result, we reduced our commodity viscose, paper pulp and High-Yield Pulp sales from 22 percent in 2023 to 13 percent in 2024. With respect to our biomaterials strategy, we secured €67 million of capital commitments for future investments in our biomaterials strategy. Of this capital, €30 million came in the form of equity, which valued these biomaterials investments at approximately $180 million. In November, we finalized the refinancing of the majority of the Company’s debt with a new five-year loan, which provides the runway and flexibility for us to execute on our strategies. Lastly, we emphasized value over volume in our core cellulose specialties markets, which was the primary driver of increasing our Adjusted EBITDA by 60 percent to $222 million and generating $128 million of Adjusted Free Cash Flow, reducing net debt by $73 million.

"Looking forward to 2025, we expect to build upon last year’s achievements by continuing to prioritize value over volume for our core cellulose specialties products, advancing our biomaterials strategy and realizing production efficiencies from strategic capital investments. We have negotiated a mid single-digit price increase for our cellulose specialties business for 2025 without losing market share, though our sales volumes will be lower due to accelerated shipments in 2024 resulting from the indefinite suspension of the Temiscaming HPC operations. We expect to achieve $10 million in production efficiencies in 2025, driven by $15 million in strategic capital investments and other continuous improvement initiatives. Additionally, we intend to invest in several biomaterials projects that are expected to meet our investment hurdle of a minimum of 30 percent ROE and less than two-year payback period for RYAM equity. While we foresee headwinds to our Paperboard business due to new supply and certain one-time benefits in 2024, we still expect to generate Adjusted EBITDA of $215 to $235 million in the coming year, which includes our estimate of the impact of the 25 percent tariff on U.S. sales of paperboard. However, this guidance remains subject to the potential for additional tariffs across our business segments," concluded Mr. Bloomquist.