Crown Holdings reports Q1 adjusted EPS $1.20, consensus $1.05

Reports Q1 revenue $2.97B, consensus $3.09B. Commenting on the quarter, Timothy Donahue, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, stated, "Operating results for the Company during the first quarter exceeded our earlier estimates as better than anticipated results in European Beverage and Transit Packaging more than offset softer than expected overall volumes. The benefits from actions taken in 2022 to negotiate more comprehensive raw material and other inflationary pass-through provisions in European Beverage and a significant overhead reduction program initiated in Transit Packaging were clearly visible in the first quarter and will continue to yield benefits throughout the balance of the year. Volumes in Americas Beverage were up 6% during the quarter with North America up 4%, despite lighter than expected consumer promotional activity to date. On April 1st, the inflation-recovery mechanisms built into our North American beverage can contracts commenced, allowing us to begin to recover cost increases experienced during the past year. Our strategy from 2019 has been to responsibly deploy capital into our global beverage can operations to profitably expand production capacity in support of growing customer demand. As we near completion of the multi-year beverage can expansion program, we will remain keenly focused on supporting customers’ needs from our global platform and will use expected increasing cash flow to pay down debt and return capital to shareholders. In the near term, consumer demand may continue to be impacted by inflationary pressures; however, we believe the beverage can remains the preferred package for new product launches with unmatched sustainability benefits."