Profits at Irish-American packaging giant Smurfit Westrock more than doubled to €590 million in 2025, the first full year for the group formed in July 2024 through the merger of Smurfit Kappa with US rival Westrock.
But earnings in the final three months of 2025 were one-third weaker than in the previous year.
The New York-listed group’s sales rose almost 50 per cent to $31.18 billion (€26.2 billion) in 2025 from $21 billion the previous year, the company said on Wednesday.
Net profit climbed 120 per cent to $699 million (€587 million) last year from $319 million in 2024, its accounts show.
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Created by a merger of Irish-based Smurfit Kappa with US business Westrock and headquartered in the Republic, the group is the world’s biggest maker of cardboard boxes used to package goods.
The company reported that profits in the final three months of 2025 fell 33 per cent to $98 million from $146 million during the same period the previous year.
Its board last week approved a quarterly dividend of $0.4523 a-share.
Smurfit Westrock expects to generate cash of between $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion in the three months ending March 31st, and between $5 billion and $5.3 billion for the full year.
The manufacturer is seeing a “generally better industry operating environment” so far in 2026, added a statement.
Chief executive Tony Smurfit said the group had exceeded the $400 million in savings to which it committed last year following the merger with Westrock and had cut more than 3,000 jobs. The group employed around 100,000 at the end of 2024.
“We also reduced loss-making businesses and closed approximately 600,000 tons of high-cost or inefficient capacity as we continued to focus on portfolio optimisation,” Smurfit added.
Earnings before interest, tax and write offs, a measure of the cash a business generates, were $4.94 billion.
This was at the lower end of a $4.9 billion to $5.1 billion range, guidance the company cut in October due to weak North American demand.
Smurfit Westrock aims to grow its full-year earnings to $7 billion by 2030 from the $4.94 billion reported for last year, the company said after published its results on Wednesday morning.
This hinges on maximising the potential of its North American business, it cautioned.
“We are focused on unlocking the full potential of North America, while continuing to outperform in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) and APAC (Asia-Pacific) and delivering dynamic growth and strong margins in Latin America,” said Smurfit.
The goal should allow it to return around $5 billion to investors over the next five years through dividends, alongside the capacity for additional share buy-backs from 2027, Smurfit Westrock said.
Its chief executive added that the company had ended most of the US loss-making contracts inherited from WestRock while changing the way sales staff target more profitable business.
“We allow our salespeople to entertain our customers, make sure that they can buy them a drink. Nothing was allowed to be done before (at WestRock),” he told investors.
Smurfit Westrock’s shares in New York were up more than 12 per cent in early trading after the results.
Smurfit Kappa and Atlanta, Georgia-based Westrock completed their $25 billion merger in July 2024.
