Boxboard Update: GPK Announces Price Increase on SBS, CUK; + for GPK, CLW, SW

Research evidence excerpt

Boxboard Update: GPK Announces Price Increase on SBS, CUK; + for GPK, CLW, SW

Truist Securities

Equity Research Report May 14, 2026

INDUSTRIALS: Paper

Boxboard Update: GPK Announces Price

Increase on SBS, CUK; + for GPK, CLW, Michael Roxland

212-326-4839 SW Michael.Roxland@truist.com

Yesterday, Fastmarkets RISI (RISI) reported that Graphic Packaging (GPK, Hold)

announced a $60/ton price increase on bleached and unbleached boxboard effective

Niccolo Piccini June 8. While we believe it will be difficult to increase SBS prices, any successful SBS

212-303-4140 and/or CUK price implementation would be positive for GPK, Clearwater Paper (CLW, Nico.Piccini@truist.com

Hold), and Smurfit Westrock (SW, Buy).

5 Page Document

Yesterday, RISI reported that GPK announced a $60/ton price increase on bleached

and unbleached boxboard effective June 8. The increase applies to GPK’s Aqua-Kote,

Reasons for this report Omni-Kote, and Pearl-Kote CUK grades, KraftMax uncoated unbleached kraft, and

Everest SBS liner, SBS platestock, SBS folding carton, and Fortress SBS folding carton.

✓ Sector Update

While the company did not provide a rationale for the increase, we believe it is likely due ✓ Industry Pricing

to rising input costs, stable to better demand in CUK ahead of the beverage season, and

an effort to recover a portion of the SBS pricing lost late last year and stem substrate

switching from CRB. That said, we believe GPK will face difficulty in implementing the

SBS increase due to oversupply. Recall that SBS folding carton pricing declined $100/

ton in total over November and December last year given excess supply following the

startup of Sappi’s (SAP-JSE, NR) 520k ton (~10% of North American supply) PM2

in Maine. Oversupply conditions persist given minimal capacity curtailments (~127k