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Message From Our Chairman, President and CEO

Mitch Butier, Chairman, President and CEO, Avery Dennison

In a year that brought challenges unlike any our company has ever faced, our global Avery Dennison team demonstrated tremendous agility in delivering for our stakeholders. By consistently applying our foundational attributes of materials science innovation and leveraging our global scale and operational excellence, we made solid progress against our long-term strategic priorities, despite a challenging environment.

"In our ongoing commitment to operate a sustainable business and serve as a force for good both environmentally and socially, we continue to pursue our 2025 sustainability goals."

Navigating the challenges of COVID-19

We entered the pandemic from a position of financial, operational and commercial strength, and our company is once again proving its resilience. Our teams adapted quickly to new commercial and operational norms, responding decisively with best-practice safety protocols and measures to protect our profitability in a lower-growth environment. Our focus continues to be on ensuring the health and well-being of our employees, delivering for our customers, supporting our communities and minimizing the impact of the pandemic-driven recession on our shareholders, while continuing to invest in the long-term success of our company.

Solid progress toward our long-term financial goals and new 2025 targets

We increased adjusted earnings per share and delivered record free cash flow in 2020 despite a modest decline in sales due to market conditions. A key priority in this low-growth environment has been to protect our overall profitability, and we’ve delivered, expanding our margins significantly. And after substantially meeting or exceeding our long-term financial goals for the last two cycles, we’re largely on track to deliver our 2021 goals, and are again raising the bar, recently establishing new 2025 targets.

Progress toward sustainability—and three new goals

In our ongoing commitment to operate a sustainable business and serve as a force for good both environmentally and socially, we continue to pursue our 2025 sustainability goals. In this report, we are also announcing three new sustainability goals for 2030, which we will pursue in parallel with our 2025 targets.

Continuing to demonstrate our resilience

Entering 2021, we remain confident in our ability to deliver value for all of our stakeholders by executing our five core business strategies and making further progress toward our long-term goals, including consistent delivery of GDP-plus growth and top-quartile return on capital.

Our consistent performance reflects the strength of our markets, our industry-leading positions and the strategic foundations we’ve laid. Above all, it speaks to the agility and talent of our team members, who have come together in extraordinary ways to navigate one of the most demanding periods in our history. I thank them for their commitment in 2020. And on their behalf, I thank you for your interest in our company.

 

Mitch Butier