Wedoany.com Report on Feb 26th, Recently, Sonoco Products Co. announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025, declaring the full completion of its portfolio transformation. This transformation involved leadership adjustments and business restructuring, aiming to build a more focused and streamlined operational model.
CEO Howard Coker stated at an investor event on February 17th: "Through years of effort, Sonoco has achieved a business transformation that enables the company to make decisions more agilely, allocate capital more effectively, and ensure the controllability of returns." He added, "By focusing on fewer but larger business areas, we have strengthened our competitive advantage."
Sonoco has consolidated its global metal packaging and consumer packaging divisions into a single unit, organized by geographic region, thereby simplifying its consumer packaging business. Starting in 2026, the company's performance will be reported across two segments: Consumer Packaging and Industrial Paper Packaging, with the industrial plastics packaging portion being integrated into the Industrial Paper Packaging segment.
Coker noted: "Our upfront investments in operations, systems, and personnel have driven an improvement in profitability. The streamlined portfolio, combined with a proven operational model, helps accelerate profit growth and achieve stable earnings." He emphasized that the company is focused on core areas within the store food categories and maintains partnerships with large growth brands and private-label customers.
Looking back to 2020, 42% of Sonoco's sales came from consumer packaging, 44% from industrial packaging, and the remainder from diversified businesses. Since then, the company has gradually adjusted its business mix to place greater emphasis on consumer packaging. Currently, over two-thirds of sales are derived from paper and metal packaging, with the remainder coming from uncoated recycled paperboard and processed products.
Coker explained: "During the transformation, we selected markets and developed winning strategies based on a set of principles, focusing on value-added packaging areas, building advantages with advanced materials science and technical expertise, offering highly functional products, and leveraging continuous process manufacturing to enhance efficiency and scale." He also mentioned that the transformation aims to improve the quality, predictability, and sustainability of earnings and cash flow in the long term, for which the company has increased investment in technology and innovation within its core operations.
"By the end of the transformation, we reduced our highly diversified business from 20 segments to two core segments, optimized our operational systems, and concentrated resources on the areas that best drive profitable growth," Coker concluded. "Now, the foundation is solid, and the portfolio transformation has been successfully completed."
Financial data shows that Sonoco's net sales in the fourth quarter of 2025 were $1.8 billion, an increase of nearly 30% compared to the same period in 2024, primarily driven by acquisition activities; adjusted EBITDA grew by 10.2%. For the full year, net sales grew by nearly 42%, reaching $7.5 billion in 2025 compared to $5.3 billion in 2024; full-year adjusted EBITDA was $1.3 billion in 2025, a 28% increase from $1.03 billion in 2024.
Net sales and adjusted EBITDA for the Consumer segment grew in both the fourth quarter and the full year, while data for the Industrial segment remained largely flat or saw slight declines, and the Other Activities segment showed a downward trend.
