Latest news with #MercerInternationalInc
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mercer International Inc. Releases 2024 Sustainability Report
NEW YORK, May 27, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mercer International Inc. ('Mercer' or the 'Company') (Nasdaq: MERC), a global forest products company, today released its 2024 Sustainability Report, Fit for Future: Transition and Transformation. The report outlines, among other things, the Company's progress towards its 2030 sustainability goals. Juan Carlos Bueno, President and CEO, stated: 'In 2024, we applied the same operational discipline to our sustainability efforts that we bring to all areas of our business. We focused on where Mercer can make the most meaningful contribution—reducing emissions at the source, improving resource efficiency, and advancing renewable bioproducts. These steps reflect our learning and commitment to a long-term, practical impact that we believe will add value to our overall business.' Bill Adams, Chief Sustainability Officer, added: 'We recognize that credibility in sustainability comes from transparency and benchmarking. In 2024, we prioritized ESG governance by securing third-party assurance of our emissions data and aligning with evolving disclosure standards. These efforts helped improve our Sustainalytics ESG risk rating and position Mercer as a reliable partner for investors, customers, and communities who increasingly expect clear and consistent sustainability performance.' 2024 Highlights Selected highlights of accomplishments include: Climate & Emissions 83% of fuel-based energy came from renewable sources, advancing toward the Company's 90% target by 2030. Completed Mercer's third climate scenario analysis, enhancing climate risk assessment and disclosure. Waste & Resource Efficiency Landfill waste totaled 16.6 kg/ADMT—a 24% improvement over the 2019 baseline—advancing toward the 30% reduction target by 2030. Water consumption at pulp mills declined 8% year-over-year due to operational efficiencies. Employee Safety The Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) improved 25%, from 3.68 to 2.76. ESG Governance & Reporting Released Mercer's first Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) aligned report on nature-related risks and dependencies. Completed a double materiality assessment designed to align with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) requirements. Recognition Received the 2024 SFI President's Award for leadership in mass timber and supply chain certification. Improved Sustainalytics ESG Risk Rating to 17.6 (low risk), down from 21.4 in 2023. Looking Ahead Mercer's 2024 Sustainability Report reflects the Company's continued commitment to measurable, science-based progress. As Mercer advances toward its 2030 goals, it remains focused on integrating sustainability into core business decisions, building trust through transparency, and delivering long-term value for stakeholders. The full report is available at About Us Mercer International Inc. is a global forest products company with operations in Germany, the USA, and Canada. Its consolidated annual production capacity is 2.1 million tonnes of pulp, 960 million board feet of lumber, 210 thousand cubic meters of CLT, 45 thousand cubic meters of glulam, 17 million pallets, and 230,000 metric tonnes of biofuels. For more information about the company and to read the full report, please visit its website at The preceding includes forward-looking statements which involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which may cause our actual results in future periods to differ materially from forecasted results. Words such as "expects", "anticipates", "are optimistic that", "projects", "intends", "designed", "will", "believes", "estimates", "may", "could" and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Among those factors which could cause actual results to differ materially are the following: the highly cyclical nature of our business, raw material costs, our level of indebtedness, competition, foreign exchange and interest rate fluctuations, our use of derivatives, expenditures for capital projects, environmental regulation and compliance, disruptions to our production, market conditions and other risk factors listed from time to time in our SEC reports. APPROVED BY: William D. McCartney Chairman +1 (604) 684-1099 Juan Carlos Bueno Chief Executive Officer +1 (604) 684-1099
San Francisco Chronicle
01-05-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Mercer International: Q1 Earnings Snapshot
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Mercer International Inc. (MERC) on Thursday reported a loss of $22.3 million in its first quarter. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based company said it had a loss of 33 cents per share. The pulp company posted revenue of $507 million in the period. _____ May 1, 2025
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Is Mercer International Inc. (MERC) the Best Canadian Penny Stock to Invest in Now?
We recently published a list of In this article, we are going to take a look at where Mercer International Inc. (NASDAQ:MERC) stands against other best Canadian penny stocks to invest in now. We define penny stocks as shares trading under $5.00, which usually fall into the small cap category. As illustrated by the performance of thematic ETFs, the small cap factor, which performed well historically, fell out of favor sometime in the mid-2010s and has kept underperforming ever since. The 2023-2024 period brought even stronger underperformance of penny stocks, as the proliferation of the AI trend created disproportionate opportunities across the market, favoring only a handful of large capitalization big tech names. This was an important factor in explaining the difference in cross-country stock market returns as well – for example, the Canadian stock market has largely moved in sync or even occasionally outperformed the US market during the first decade of the century, until a noticeable decoupling took place in the early 2010s. Besides lagging on productivity improvement and different monetary policies, the size factor clearly played a role, as Canada lacks big tech players to capitalize on the rapid technological advancements that took place during the 2010s. READ ALSO: 10 Best Canadian Stocks to Buy According to Billionaires As a result, both the Canadian and small-size factors have found themselves at multi-year lows relative to the US stock market at the end of calendar 2024. While many investors make reactive decisions and avoid stocks with historical underperformance, the smart way to make money is to often take contrarian bets based on forward-looking signals that may suggest a reversal in the previous tendencies. The main questions to answer in this article are the following: will the small cap factor and Canada stocks become favored again and able to outperform their large cap and US counterparts? When discussing the small factor, we get to see that its recent 2023-2024 underperformance was accelerated by rising stock market concentration to record levels. External data suggests that the 2024 US stock market concentration, as measured by the share of the top 10 largest companies in the total market, was at a record 38%, significantly above the historical average of around 24%. This means that most of the stock market returns were driven by a handful of companies favored by AI-related FOMO which overstretched their market valuations. In a scenario where large caps perform well, the small caps fall out of favor automatically, by setup. History shows, however, that concentration tends to revert to the mean – this is already happening in 2025 as the Magnificent 7 ETF, which includes the largest big tech stocks, has significantly underperformed the broad market, decreasing its concentration. Furthermore, the small cap factor tends to perform well when the economy is growing, interest rates are low and capital moves freely to riskier assets – while we aren't there yet, the stock market is a forward-looking animal that tends to anticipate economic developments 6-12 months ahead. We believe small caps and particularly penny stocks may start performing well in anticipation of lower interest rates and better economic conditions in 2026 and beyond, past the current tariff turmoil and other uncertainties induced by rapid policy changes brought by the new US administration. There are reasons to expect an improvement in the performance of Canadian stocks relative to the US market. First, the Trump Tariff Turmoil has much worse potential implications for the US than it does for Canada – the US has put its entire export/import base at risk of retaliation, while Canada only risks tariffs for its US exports (and likely at a lower overall tariff rate). Second, the breaking of economic and ideological ties with the new US administration could lead to an overall mobilization of the Canadian people and political class, and drive several positive developments: (1) substitution of US consumer brands with local Canadian brands; (2) accelerating investments into the mining/energy infrastructure and pipelines to create alternative paths and markets for the main Canadian product, which is commodities. Both (1) and (2) would have positive implications for the entire Canadian stock market and economy. The main takeaway for readers is that combining the small size factor with the Canadian factor could lead to substantial outperformance relative to the US market which witnesses heightened uncertainty and negative returns year-to-date. In such a scenario, Canadian penny stocks appear the ideal securities to pick for a bet on both factors, which would be contrarian to the trends we witnessed in the last 10 years. To compile our list of best Canadian penny stocks we use a stock screener to filter for Canadian companies trading in the US with a stock price below $5.00. Then we compared the list with our proprietary Q4 2024 database of hedge funds' ownership and included in the article the top 13 stocks with the largest number of hedge funds owning the stock, ranked in ascending order. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter's strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (). A panoramic view of a forest filled with trees used to make NBSK pulp, wood chips, and saw logs. Mercer International Inc. (NASDAQ:MERC) is a forest products company producing market pulp, solid wood products, and bio-based materials in its fields located across Canada, the US, and Germany. The company's strength consists of vertical integration and large-scale operations, featuring a combined annual capacity of more than 2 million tons. The solid wood segment produces lumber, cross-laminated timber pallets, and biofuels. MERC ranked seventh on our recent list of 10 Best Paper Stocks to Buy According to Hedge Funds. Mercer International Inc. (NASDAQ:MERC) reported a significant improvement in Q4 2024 with operating EBITDA of $99 million compared to Q3's $50 million, driven by no planned maintenance downtime, a strong dollar, and higher sales volumes. For the full 2024 fiscal year, EBITDA increased substantially to $244 million from $17 million in 2023, attributed to stronger pulp markets, lower production costs from easing inflation pressures, and cost reduction initiatives. The company successfully redeemed $300 million of 2026 senior notes using $200 million of additional 2028 senior notes and $100 million cash, marking a first step in its leverage reduction initiative. Looking ahead, Mercer International Inc. (NASDAQ:MERC) expects softwood pulp pricing to remain strong due to reduced supply and steady demand, while the significant price differential between softwood and hardwood pulp is expected to persist well into 2025. The company faces potential challenges from tariff uncertainties but believes it can mitigate the majority of impacts through operational flexibility and sales strategies. Management's absolute priority for 2025 will focus on reducing leverage through strategic projects, including aggressive cost reduction programs, reliability improvements, operational rationalization, and prudent capital management. The long-term visibility and optimistic guidance reinforce our belief that MERC is one of the best penny stocks to buy. Overall, MERC ranks 7th on our list of best Canadian penny stocks to invest in now. While we acknowledge the potential of MERC to grow, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than MERC but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock. READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mercer International Inc. (MERC): One of the Best Paper Stocks to Buy According to Hedge Funds
We recently published a list of . In this article, we are going to take a look at where Mercer International Inc. (NASDAQ:MERC) stands against other best paper stocks to buy according to hedge funds. Paper stocks encompass producers of paper, pulp, packaging products, toilet paper, and forestry operators. This sector typically thrives during periods of economic expansion when consumer spending, ecommerce activity, and industrial production are accelerating, driving higher demand for commercial packaging and consumer paper products. The performance of paper stocks strongly correlates with commodity prices of pulp and timber, as well as with the price of energy and freight, which are large cost inputs in the production chain. Consequently, paper-related stocks generally thrive in inflationary environments due to their pricing power, as producers can easily pass any inflation onto consumers and capture a margin of the price increase. Conversely, these stocks underperform during economic slowdowns as consumer demand and industrial activity fall, and lower commodity prices pressure profitability. Some investors avoid this sector as they mistakenly consider it low growth and disrupted. Their perception is based on a tough 2010s decade marked by several challenges that pressured growth. Here is how AFRY Advisory commented on the paper market: 'With the universal move to digital communication, the demand for print has been on a steep decline, triggering massive shutdowns in the graphic paper sector and sizeable entries in the packaging board market through conversions and grade changes from graphics to packaging grades. The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic deepened the paper markets' decline as decreasing economic activity and lockdowns further contracted the demand for graphics and office papers, while hygiene and corrugated packaging businesses recovered more effectively.' READ ALSO: The struggles of the paper & paper products sector, as proxied by a timber ETF that includes many paper companies as well, extended into the 2020s. In early 2025, just before the US stock market entered correction mode, the sector reached a new all-time low relative to the broad market. Another global timber and wood ETF shows a similar picture – years of underperformance relative to the broad market, which killed most of the investor interest in this sector. Despite sluggish performance in the last years, we believe that the underfollowed paper sector may become favored in the following years due to a plethora of factors triggered by the new Trump 2.0 administration in the US. First, we already know that paper stocks thrive during inflationary periods, and the US appears to have entered a multi-year period of above-average inflation due to the trade wars initiated by President Trump. Many of the paper companies have operations spanning several continents, with cultivation, processing, and selling often happening in two or three different countries, which means that the production chain may become subject to tariffs. Under such circumstances, paper companies will fully pass any inflationary pressures onto the end customer, meaning that they would capture a higher margin in absolute dollar value. The hypothesis of higher inflation in the US is fully supported by the 10-year US treasury yield climbing to 4.58% on April 11, significantly above the second half of 2024. Second, the current US administration is a notorious proponent of onshoring, which means a partial or full return of manufacturing activity into the US. Paper stocks are positively correlated to the level of industrial and commerce activity in the US and could benefit from the accelerating demand for paper used in industrial and commercial packaging. In fact, the onshoring trend is already happening as several corporations, from semiconductors to automobile manufacturers and other consumer discretionary businesses, announced plans to boost their manufacturing presence in the US. We used a stock screener and thematic ETFs to identify companies engaged in the production of pulp, toilet paper, newspapers, cardboard, forest, and other paper-related products. Then we compared the list with Insider Monkey's proprietary database of hedge funds' ownership and included in the article the top 10 stocks with the largest number of hedge funds that own the stock as of Q4 2024. The stocks are ranked in ascending order of the hedge funds having stakes in them. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter's strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (). A panoramic view of a forest filled with trees used to make NBSK pulp, wood chips, and saw logs.Mercer International Inc. (NASDAQ:MERC) is a global forest products company that produces market pulp and solid wood products in Germany, Canada, and the US. MERC manages large-scale pulp mills that produce northern bleached softwood and hardwood kraft pulps, as well as biomass-based green energy. The company's key solid wood segment includes the manufacture of lumber, timber, and wood pallets, with its key facilities being located in Germany. The company's leadership is ensured through diversification across products, a focus on innovative green energy as well as a large annual production that exceeds 2 million tons per year. Mercer International Inc. (NASDAQ:MERC) reported a significant improvement in Q4 2024, with an operating EBITDA of $99 million, almost doubling if compared to Q3, driven by no planned maintenance downtime, a strong dollar, and higher sales volumes. For the full 2024 fiscal year, EBITDA increased substantially to $244 million from $17 million in 2023, attributed to stronger pulp markets, lower production costs from easing inflation pressures, and cost-reduction initiatives. The company successfully redeemed its $300 million 2026 senior notes using $200 million of additional 2028 senior notes and $100 million of cash on hand, representing a first step in its leverage reduction initiative. Looking ahead, Mercer International Inc. (NASDAQ:MERC) faces both opportunities and challenges, with softwood pulp pricing expected to remain strong due to reduced supply and steady demand. The significant contrast between softwood and hardwood pulp supply-demand fundamentals is expected to drive price differences beyond historical norms, with the current net price gap in China at about $220 per tonne compared to the historical norm of $100. The company's absolute priority for 2025 will be reducing leverage through strategic projects, including aggressive cost reduction programs, reliability improvements, operational rationalization, and prudent capital management. These initiatives are set to position the company well to withstand any potential market turmoil, which makes it one of the best paper stocks to buy now. Overall, MERC ranks 7th on our list of best paper stocks to buy according to hedge funds. While we acknowledge the potential of MERC to grow, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than MERC but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock. READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Favourable Signals For Mercer International: Numerous Insiders Acquired Stock
Generally, when a single insider buys stock, it is usually not a big deal. However, when several insiders are buying, like in the case of Mercer International Inc. (NASDAQ:MERC), it sends a favourable message to the company's shareholders. While we would never suggest that investors should base their decisions solely on what the directors of a company have been doing, logic dictates you should pay some attention to whether insiders are buying or selling shares. AI is about to change healthcare. These 20 stocks are working on everything from early diagnostics to drug discovery. The best part - they are all under $10bn in marketcap - there is still time to get in early. The insider, Eric Heine, made the biggest insider sale in the last 12 months. That single transaction was for US$168k worth of shares at a price of US$6.26 each. So what is clear is that an insider saw fit to sell at around the current price of US$6.15. We generally don't like to see insider selling, but the lower the sale price, the more it concerns us. In this case, the big sale took place at around the current price, so it's not too bad (but it's still not a positive). Eric Heine was the only individual insider to sell over the last year. Happily, we note that in the last year insiders paid US$266k for 43.30k shares. But they sold 26.91k shares for US$168k. Overall, Mercer International insiders were net buyers during the last year. You can see the insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last year depicted in the chart below. If you want to know exactly who sold, for how much, and when, simply click on the graph below! Check out our latest analysis for Mercer International Mercer International is not the only stock insiders are buying. So take a peek at this free list of under-the-radar companies with insider buying. For a common shareholder, it is worth checking how many shares are held by company insiders. A high insider ownership often makes company leadership more mindful of shareholder interests. Insiders own 4.3% of Mercer International shares, worth about US$17m. We've certainly seen higher levels of insider ownership elsewhere, but these holdings are enough to suggest alignment between insiders and the other shareholders. The fact that there have been no Mercer International insider transactions recently certainly doesn't bother us. But insiders have shown more of an appetite for the stock, over the last year. Insiders do have a stake in Mercer International and their transactions don't cause us concern. While it's good to be aware of what's going on with the insider's ownership and transactions, we make sure to also consider what risks are facing a stock before making any investment decision. You'd be interested to know, that we found 3 warning signs for Mercer International and we suggest you have a look. But note: Mercer International may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with high ROE and low debt. For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We currently account for open market transactions and private dispositions of direct interests only, but not derivative transactions or indirect interests. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Sign in to access your portfolio
