Packaging Corp of America Q3 2026: sales up 12.5%, Q4 guide steps down
PCA beat its own guidance and cleared consensus on earnings excluding special items, with gross margin rising to 23.2% from 21.8% a year ago. Revenue grew 12.5% to $2.60 billion, helped by the acquired Greif mills. The catch is the fourth quarter: management points to $2.81 per share as outages and cost inflation bite. Read the margin line first, then the guidance bridge.
1 · Expected vs. Actual
Free preview belowGAAP EPS was $2.93, up from $2.51, and $3.04 once $0.11 of special items are stripped out. Against a $2.9468 consensus, that ex-items number is about $0.09 ahead, while the GAAP figure lands slightly below. The quarter also finished $0.13 above management's own $2.91 guidance.
Net sales were $2.60 billion, up 12.5% from $2.31 billion a year earlier. Packaging supplied $2.414 billion of that, while Paper contributed just $163.2 million. The growth is mostly the Greif containerboard business: total corrugated shipments rose 10.6% per day, while legacy packaging shipments slipped 0.5%.
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Figures on this page come from the company's original SEC filings. The analysis is generated automatically and checked against validation rules, but may still contain errors or omissions. Not investment advice. · Generated 2026-11-06
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