Domtar Corporation reported net earnings of $18 million for the second quarter of 2019 compared to net earnings of $80 million for the first quarter of 2019 and net earnings of $43 million for the second quarter of 2018. Sales for the second quarter of 2019 were $1.3 billion.

Personal Care segment sales were $237 million in the second quarter of 2019, compared to $247 million in the second quarter of 2018.

“Our results in the Paper business fell short of our expectations. This was primarily due to higher imports and customer destocking following a build-up of inventory ahead of the announced industry capacity closures, leading to lower volume and market-related downtime in our system. In Pulp, the current cycle in global markets led to downward price adjustments in most regions,” says John D. Williams, president and chief executive officer. “The second quarter was also our peak outage quarter this year, with planned maintenance spending $44 million higher versus the first quarter. The elevated level of outages impacted productivity in Pulp and Paper.”

Williams adds, “In Personal Care, we had a good performance with favorable input costs, and margin improvement initiatives coming in as planned. Our results were negatively impacted by the permanent closure of the Waco, TX, facility, resulting in lower overall production volumes and unfavorable absorption of fixed costs, but we do expect the full benefits of the closure to flow through in the second half of the year.”