Ball: The King of Cans

You more than likely see the logo every day, without even thinking about it. The tiny, cursive “Ball” is found on soda, beer, energy drinks, and just about everything else you would drink out of a can. The company that is the number one can packaging partner for the world's largest beverage brands traces its history back nearly 150 years. Along the way, it has reinvented itself more times than you can count, before ultimately refocusing entirely on aluminum. This is how Ball came to dominate the beverage aisle.

The Ball brothers

The company whose logo is printed on aluminum cans around the world was founded nearly 150 years ago. Its story starts with five brothers, by the name of Ball. In 1880, two of the brothers, Frank C. and Edmund B., borrowed money from their uncle to acquire the Wooden Jacket Can Company in Buffalo, New York, a small maker of tin cans encased in wooden jackets for kerosene, paint, and varnish.

Within a few years, they began experimenting with glass to avoid the corrosion problems of the original tins. Glass solved the issue. The business, now operating out of Muncie, Indiana, ramped up production. It expanded into canning jars, oil containers, and lamp chimneys, manufacturing both glass bodies and metal lids in-house, with the first-mentioned product line proving to be the breakthrough.

Incorporated as Ball Brothers Manufacturing Company, output climbed from 22 million fruit jars in 1894 to 37 million in 1897 and 60 million by 1905. Now accompanied by the remaining Ball brothers, production spread across seven factories and sales expanded to international markets.

The founding Ball brothers, photographed in the early days of the business.

Scaling through integration

Renamed Ball Brothers Company in 1922, the business scaled quickly in the early 20th century through a mix of organic growth and acquisitions. As demand for its canning jars rose, Ball pulled more inputs in-house: a zinc mill for lids, a rubber maker for sealing rings, and a paper mill for packaging. Vertical integration to tighten cost control, quality, and supply would prove to be a common theme throughout its history.

During the Great Depression, falling demand for home-canning jars prompted Ball to expand into glass containers for commercial food packers, scaling up its previously smaller industrial customer line. As the U.S. entered World War II, its vertically integrated operations quickly pivoted to support the war effort, producing zinc shells and machine parts for the U.S. military.

At war's end, the company continued to meet a falling demand for its different canning jars. While this had been a growing issue over the last decade or so, another event would add to the strain and eventually push Ball in new directions.

Beginning in 1939, U.S. antitrust authorities targeted the glass packaging industry's patent-licensing and market-allocation arrangements. Ball wasn't the ringleader, but did operate within and benefit from those practices. The eventual remedies from the 1947 ruling tightened how far Ball (and other companies) could expand its glass business, especially via acquisitions.

Therefore, to pursue new growth opportunities, Ball had few options but diversification.

From canning to the cosmos

From the 1950s onward, Ball's story became one of diversification, divestment, and, eventually, focus. After World War II, Edmund F. Ball, the son of Edmund B. Ball and part of the founding family's second generation, took the helm of what was still a family-run enterprise. Following the events of the previous decade, he sought a long-term plan for renewal and began working with outside consultants to chart a new course for the company. In 1956, Ball launched Ball Brothers Research Corporation, betting early on the emerging space age.

That research venture evolved into Ball Aerospace, which built satellite instruments, cameras, telescopes, and computer components for prominent NASA and government missions. While the company made headlines in space, it continued to strengthen its footing on Earth, expanding the scope of its packaging business and bringing more production steps in-house.

Ball working on the Orbiting Solar Observatory, NASA's second science satellite, launched in 1962.

In 1969, Ball Brothers Company became Ball Corporation, and in the same year, it entered into beverage can packaging. At the time, beverage-can manufacturing was booming, fueled by production advances and surging demand for beer and soft drinks. Steel cans had existed since the 1930s, but the 1960s brought major advances with the introduction of aluminum cans and the first pull-tab designs. So when Ball began aluminum can production, it was perfectly positioned to capitalize. Thanks to its reputation in packaging, it quickly attracted major contracts with leading beverage producers.

When Ball listed on the NYSE in 1973, many of the headlines remained focused on space. But it was the company's packaging, now primarily driven by its growing beverage packaging, that was generating the revenue. Still, the diversification pressure that had led it into space continued to influence the company's growth agenda.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Ball appointed its first CEO from outside the family, and diversification continued to define the company's growth. Sometimes reasonably, as it layered into plastics and specialty metals, while sometimes (at least in hindsight) extremely odd. One short-lived venture, prefabricated housing, saw Ball designing modular homes that could be assembled in six hours. Perhaps unsurprisingly, beverage can production would prove a little more sustainable over the long term.

Through these decades, the packaging mix steadily shifted toward metal. By the 1980s, Ball had extended into food packaging through both metal and plastic containers, and by the early 1990s, metal had overtaken glass as the company's core. The decisive turn away from glass came in the mid-1990s. The acquisition of Heekin Can in 1993 lifted Ball into top-tier food steel packaging, while it spun off the household canning brand and sold its remaining glass interests, closing the chapter that had made “Ball” a fixture in American kitchens.

By then, Ball Aerospace was gaining less attention in the successful group total. From the space race years of the Cold War, government contracts had slowed, while Ball's packaging business was flourishing both in the U.S. and abroad. By the early 1990s, Ball's international expansion reached far beyond North America, across Europe and into China through joint ventures.

Consolidation and focus

With the glass era behind it, Ball's shift toward metal packaging gathered pace in the late 90s and into the 21st century. The transition became unmistakable as the company expanded through a series of decisive acquisitions that reshaped both its scale and focus.

Large acquisitions of manufacturing assets, comprised of plants and supply contracts for several leading soft drink brands, expanded the company's footprint significantly. At the same time, it established Ball Packaging Europe after acquiring the second-largest manufacturer of beverage cans in Europe. Around the world, Ball's growing network was slowly but surely narrowing its focus to one core product: beverage cans.

At the same time, Ball deepened its aluminum ecosystem. The addition of U.S. Can in 2006 and Neuman Aluminum in 2010 brought in a new product line in aluminum aerosol packaging while tightening vertical integration around that. That same year also saw Ball exit plastics entirely. By selling its PET packaging business to Amcor, it clearly signalled where it was heading.

Accelerating change

In 2011, Ball launched Drive for 10, a long-term vision built around five levers: maximizing value in core businesses, expanding capabilities, aligning with key customers, broadening its footprint, and leveraging technology. In hindsight, it was the first clear step toward Ball's all-aluminum era.

A defining step came in 2016, when Ball completed its $7B acquisition of UK-based Rexam, one of the world's largest beverage-can makers, with 54 plants across more than 20 countries. The deal was strategically convincing, taking Ball's geographic reach and customer base to the next level. Regulatory approval required divestments, but even after those sales, Ball emerged with 75 beverage manufacturing facilities and as the largest beverage-can supplier globally.

The portfolio kept tightening. In 2018, Ball sold its U.S. steel food and aerosol business, forming the Ball Metalpack joint venture (which it fully exited in 2022). Each move hinted at the same intent, and if you studied Ball closely, a bigger picture of their master plan was being laid out. By the late 2010s, the “Drive for 10” strategy had become visible in action. As then-CEO John Hayes explained at an investor event in 2018 (sourced through Quartr Pro):

Entering the 2020s, Ball looked very different from the diversified company of earlier decades. Of its former glass, plastic, steel, aluminum, and aerospace businesses, only the last two remained. The company had nearly completed its long transition, but one final shift still lay ahead.

Divesting aerospace

In August 2023, Ball announced the sale of its aerospace business to BAE Systems for $5.6B in cash, marking a watershed moment in the company's transformation. In 2023, its final full year under Ball ownership, the Aerospace segment contributed just under 15% of total company revenue. The pivot into space made sense when diversification was essential to seek growth. In today's reality, that logic had flipped, as it felt obvious for Ball to concentrate capital where it had scale, advantage, and momentum.

Ball then-CEO Daniel Fisher contrasted two capital-allocation profiles at Morgan Stanley's 11th Annual Laguna Conference: “95% of our cash is generated by our aluminum packaging platform,” while aerospace required significant upfront investment with revenue often five to seven years out. With the sale complete, he noted that free cash flow “is going to look a hell of a lot closer to our net income levels moving forward.”

When it completed the sale in February 2024, it announced that it would utilize “approximately $4.5 billion of after-tax cash proceeds to reduce leverage, return value to shareholders and embark on the next step in our journey with greater financial flexibility and a focused purpose of advancing sustainability through aluminum packaging solutions”. Fisher emphasized that positioning at its 2024 Investor Day:

From mining to store shelves

Ball of 2025 is a pure-play aluminum company, with beverage cans generating nearly 95% of total revenue. With so much of the business concentrated in one product and material, it's worth first looking at where Ball sits in the aluminum beverage can value chain and why that position matters.

The process begins upstream with bauxite mining, alumina refining, and primary aluminum smelting, where ore is first refined into alumina and then smelted into base metal. That metal then flows to rolling mills, which turn it into thin can sheet and coil stock. Some suppliers handle both smelting and rolling, while others specialize in one step. This step of the chain also forms the backbone of aluminum's circularity, as collected cans are recycled and reprocessed into new sheet at this level. Across its operations, Ball sources aluminum can and end sheet from a small group of global suppliers (seven in North and Central America, six in EMEA, and two in South America), many of which overlap across regions.

Ball's role as a can manufacturer involves converting this coil stock into precisely trimmed beverage cans at high-speed lines processing thousands of cans every minute. In short, the process begins with the flat aluminum coil being fed into lines that blank and press the flat metal into shallow cups, which are then drawn and ironed into tall, thin-walled can bodies. These are incredibly lightweight in their design but strong, thanks to the structural efficiency of the cylinder and domed base.

Each can is trimmed to uniform height, washed, dried, and spray-lined with a food-safe coating to protect the beverage from corrosion or flavor change. After curing, Ball applies a basecoat, prints brand graphics through multi-color offset “decorators,” adds an over-varnish, and bakes the finish. The opening is then narrowed and a rim formed so the end can later be seamed on by the customer.

In a parallel process, Ball manufactures the top ends on separate lines. Flat shells are pressed, lined, and cured before finalizing by forming the rivet, scoring the opening, and attaching the pull tab, which is available in brandable colors. The finished bodies and ends are then palletized and ready to be shipped. This production model runs around the clock across Ball's 67 plants, which together ship more than 100 billion cans annually. As then-COO, now CEO (announced November 10, 2025, effective immediately), Ron Lewis described at the 2024 Investor Day:

After the cans and ends have arrived at the beverage producer – whether an integrated company like PepsiCo or Heineken that operates its own filling lines, or an independent bottler like those in the Coca-Cola system that fill and package on behalf of brand owners – the cans are filled and double-seamed with their ends to create airtight, pressure-resistant packages ready for retail.

An overview of the aluminum beverage can lifecycle.

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Scale, proximity, and integration

The aforementioned companies are just some of the global beverage giants on Ball's customer list, and speak to its strength across the aluminum packaging value chain. Long before aluminum cans became the industry standard, the company had built a deep and durable presence, which has continued to strengthen over the years through strategic acquisitions and an increasingly sharpened focus. At its 2022 Investor Day, Ron Lewis summarized the company's edge:

Proximity is critical in a business where cans compete on price, quality, and sustainability. Because empty cans are low in value per unit, long-distance transport erodes margins. To exemplify, across the U.S. alone, Ball operates 16 facilities, strategically positioned to reduce logistics costs and minimize inventory requirements. The same logic shapes its entire global network: a distributed web of local plants that keep production within trucking distance of customers and, together, cover each region's demand.

This model perfectly exemplifies economies of scale, where massive fixed costs are absorbed by continuous, high-volume production. Decades of refinement have produced a global playbook: state-of-the-art plants that run 24/7, optimized layouts, and consistent operating processes across and between every site.

The scale and long-term nature of its operations are other key aspects. With suppliers, relationships often span decades, giving Ball both bargaining strength and influence over quality and output. And with its customers, Ball operates under multi-year supply contracts, typically lasting five to seven years.

These long-term agreements create powerful switching costs and tight operational interdependence. Over time, customers' filling operations become physically aligned with Ball's manufacturing footprint, reinforcing reliability and loyalty that goes both ways. The result is a network of partnerships that, in many cases, has endured for decades.

Inside today's Ball

Ball in 2025 is the most focused it has been since its early canning days. Over nearly 150 years, it has operated in a total of 50 different businesses on its way to becoming the company it is today. Following the aerospace divestiture, Ball operates three segments, all under Beverage Packaging, differentiated only by region: North & Central America, EMEA, and South America.

Operations are broadly the same across regions, but product mixes vary with local regulations, consumer preferences, and customer portfolios. In one market, beer drives the production mix; in another, highly customized Monster formats serve as a niche product; and across most regions, standardized global SKUs for PepsiCo's and Coca-Cola's brands are staples. In short, we'll get into the details of the product portfolio.

Beyond beverage packaging, Ball retains its personal & home care business, producing extruded aluminum aerosol packaging and refillable aluminum bottles with end-to-end vertical integration. With ~20% global share, this unit represented roughly 6% of Ball's revenue in 2024 and serves global consumer brands including Unilever, Beiersdorf, P&G, and L'Oréal.

An overview of the Ball beverage can portfolio

Ball's product portfolio spans carbonated soft drinks, beer, energy drinks, water, and just about everything else you drink out of a can. Roughly two-thirds of its global output comes from beer and carbonated soft drinks, packaged in formats ranging from 7.5-ounce portion-control cans to 25-ounce single-serve cans. The company groups its offerings into three categories: Standard, Specialty, and Super Specialty.

A sample of can formats from Ball's portfolio.

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The standard 12-ounce/33 cl can remains the backbone of Ball's business: efficient to produce, easy to fill, and stackable for shipping and retail. It dominates price-sensitive beer markets where volume and affordability matter most.

At its 2022 Investor Day, Ball disclosed that Specialty formats already exceeded 50% of global shipments, and has since then expressed that that mix has continued to grow. Although it hasn't specified the Standard share, it's fair to assume that this makes up much of the rest of the total. Regionally, both EMEA and South America now have Specialty mixes above half, while the U.S. remains closer to one-third.

Specialty covers everything outside the classic 12-ounce shape but within the conventional cylindrical design, formats like 7.5-, 16-, and 24-ounce cans, and various sleek profiles. The sleek can, popularized by Red Bull, has become especially prominent and is now the default for many energy and soft-drink producers.

The breakthrough of the sleek can on a global scale began in the 2010s and has since spread to many different beverages and brands. And while it is still labelled as Specialty, it's increasingly becoming standard in terms of production scale. In Europe, the sleek 33 cl (~11.2 ounces) is now the go-to design for many beverage brands, including Coca-Cola, where it is a way to “drive premiumization”, as said by James Quincey, CEO of The Coca-Cola Company at the Q1 2024 earnings call.

Specialty formats command higher margins and are Ball's main lever for margin expansion. The downside is that they introduce greater complexity in production. Across its regions, there are often other challenges that Ball has to take into consideration that imply that although a higher margin profile of the can, it might be a more complex market. One of the main ones is adhering to different metric sizing standards, but there are also plenty more factors that together make it more difficult than simply producing the identical product across its entire footprint. Europe is a great example of this:

Customization is key for Ball's customers and is a part of all three different portfolio levels, with increasing differentiation options in the Specialty and Super Specialty categories. Each step toward greater differentiation increases value for brands and expands margins for Ball. Carey Causey expanded on this at the 2024 Investor Day, and how it is one of Ball's core competitive advantages:

Ball's plant in Kapolei, Hawaii, illustrates the importance of proximity and local adaptation, ironically, by deferring modernization. The facility still runs legacy 206-end lines (the former U.S. standard until the 1990s, with visible ridges near the rim) because halting production to modernize wouldn't pay off. Some 202-end cans are imported for smaller SKUs that don't warrant retooling, but shipping full production across the Pacific would be prohibitive, so maintaining local production, even with a nonstandard format, makes economic sense.

It's a clear example of Ball's operational principle: stay close to customers, maintain predictable throughput, and invest only where scale justifies it.

A Hawaiian Sun can, produced in Hawaii with a legacy 206-end design.

Markets, mix, and share

Ball's global aluminum beverage business is, as we previously mentioned, divided into three segments. Each segment serves distinct markets while maintaining focus on cans for carbonated soft drinks and energy beverages as core product categories. It is worth noting that these regional segments are organized around Ball's manufacturing footprint, though distribution of finished cans extends to surrounding markets served from its production hubs.

The North and Central American aluminum beverage market, encompassing the United States, Canada, and Mexico, accounts for 48% of Ball's revenue. This North American aluminum beverage market totaled approximately 138 billion units in 2024. Ball is the largest producer in this region, shipping roughly 48 billion cans and capturing a 34% market share. The region is heavily weighted toward carbonated soft drinks and energy beverages, with major customers including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Molson Coors, Red Bull, Monster Beverage, Celsius, and Constellation Brands.

Ball's EMEA aluminum beverage can market stretches across Europe, Egypt, and Turkey. These facilities shipped 36 billion aluminum beverage cans in 2024, accounting for 29% of Ball's revenue. The total EMEA aluminum market for that year amounted to 93 billion, which implies that Ball held a share of 36%, making it the largest player. Similar to North America, the EMEA portfolio is concentrated in carbonated soft drinks and energy beverages. Key customers include Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Carlsberg, Heineken, Red Bull, and Molson Coors.

Its South American region represented 17% of revenue in 2024. The company shipped 19 billion units during the year, capturing 45% of the region's 43 billion unit market and maintaining its position as the largest supplier. Major customers in the region include Anheuser-Busch InBev, Coca-Cola, Heineken, and CCU. Historically, its South American business has been heavily weighted toward beer packaging compared to Ball's other regions. However, management is actively repositioning the portfolio mix. At the Q2 2025 earnings call, then-CEO Fisher indicated the company aims to reduce beer's portfolio concentration "from around 40% to 30% over time," both in South America and globally, to better align with the company's strategic priorities.

Across these regions, Ball competes with other large, multi-continent players such as Crown Holdings, Ardagh Group, and Canpack, but also smaller regional manufacturers.

Ball's revenue by its three geographical segments.

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As you've seen across its regions, many of these names recur. In Ball's case, Anheuser-Busch InBev and the Coca-Cola Bottlers' Sales & Services Company LLC (representing the Coca-Cola bottler system) accounted for 16% and 13% of total revenue in 2024, respectively.

However, these relationships are not always global in scope; some customers are major partners in one region but have limited or no relationship with Ball elsewhere. Packaging agreements are heavily shaped by geography, with dynamics differing markedly across regions. In some markets, beverage companies rely on a single supplier; in others, they spread production across several. If we take Monster, for example, which Ball has as a customer in North America but not elsewhere, sources packaging from multiple partners, and notes in its 2024 annual report that:

This flexibility is echoed by both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, which state that they purchase packaging materials from multiple suppliers, often across different regions, to ensure security of supply. Understandably, this means that leverage in expanding partnerships doesn't sit with the supplier but with the brand owner. Therefore, rather than exclusivity, Ball's position is built on being the preferred choice through regional scale, manufacturing reliability, product innovation, and sustainability leadership.

Growth opportunities

The comment that “Europe isn't an especially fun place to operate” captures a broader reality for Ball: every beverage market presents its own mix of opportunities and constraints. With preferences, regulations, and logistics varying from market to market, there's no easy formula for expanding globally. Producing its Standard can and replicating success across borders doesn't work when each region requires different formats, materials, and customer partnerships. Daniel Fisher explained the nuance during Ball's Q3 2025 earnings call (sourced through Quartr Pro):

The European operations exemplify Ball's market-by-market strategy, a selective approach rather than broad, aggressive expansion. Every major investment also requires an anchor customer. That pre-committed volume means market entry depends not only on Ball's willingness to invest but on customers' readiness to make long-term commitments in that geography.

Outside its core regions, Ball maintains a smaller presence across Asia, operating two wholly owned facilities (India and Myanmar) and holding one equity investment (Vietnam). Then-CEO John Hayes touched on its global expansion strategy and the Southeast Asian region in particular at the Q4 2020 earnings call:

Competition extends beyond traditional rivals like Crown, Canpack, and Ardagh. Ball also competes with other materials such as glass and PET plastic. While glass, PET, and aluminum each have sustainability pathways, policy and consumer pressures are prompting material shifts across markets. With global beverage packaging volumes in the hundreds of billions, even small percentage-point conversions toward aluminum translate into tens of billions of incremental cans of opportunity for Ball.

Next, we'll look more closely at these trends and explore Ball's direction.

All in on aluminum

At its core, the decision rests on the material itself. Aluminum is produced from bauxite ore, which is refined into alumina and then smelted into primary metal. The process is energy-intensive, but the result can be recycled indefinitely without losing quality. Unlike most materials that degrade with each cycle, aluminum retains its properties and can move through true closed loops. Glass is recyclable but depends on color sorting and high-heat remelting; PET can be bottle-to-bottle but often faces polymer degradation and contamination hurdles.

That permanence underpins aluminum's circular advantage. Used beverage cans have high residual value, which supports collection, sorting, and recycling rates that lead other packaging types. It's also why roughly 75% of all aluminum ever produced is still in circulation today. Additionally, aluminum packaging is homogeneous, meaning that whether it's a can, bottle, cup, or aerosol container, it all feeds back into the same recycling stream. Every format has the same potential to return as another piece of packaging, again and again.

That efficiency is central to Ball's strategy. As of 2023, Ball's aluminum beverage cans contained 70% recycled material content on average globally, and by 2030, it aims to increase that to 85%. We'll soon get into the trends driving those numbers, but first, let's look at what that circularity actually looks like in practice.

The aluminum can lifecycle

After a drink is finished, the aluminum can faces a fork. While many cans are lost to the waste stream and are never recycled, the ideal destination is a regional recovery system. These differ significantly from one country to the next: deposit-return in some markets, and curbside/municipal or informal scrap collection in others.

Collected cans go to sorting facilities where machines separate metals from paper and plastic; aluminum is isolated, then compressed into bales. Those bales go to recyclers, where coatings are removed in a furnace, the metal is melted and cast, and then rolled back into can sheet to make new cans. In efficient systems, a can can complete this loop and be back on shelves in about 60 days. As mentioned, recovery rates vary widely by region. The stronger a region's collection policy and infrastructure, the tighter and more valuable this loop becomes.

The tailwinds of aluminum

The aluminum can's momentum fits perfectly into the circular economy: high-value material, closed-loop recycling, and growing policy support that rewards recoverable packaging. At Coca-Cola's 2023 AGM, CEO James Quincey captured the direction:

Much like Ball's own goal of increasing the recycled content of its cans, all of its high-profile customers are pursuing ambitious sustainability agendas. These initiatives don't exclusively favor aluminum, but given the metal's circular efficiency and enduring economic value, much of the focus inevitably lands there. Ball was early to recognize this inflection, reshaping its portfolio over the past decade to meet this growing demand. As then-CEO, Daniel Fisher explained during its 2024 Investor Day:

The trend clearly supports Ball's vision, with recycling rates steadily increasing over the past decades. In the mid-2000s, Europe's aluminum can recycling hovered around 60%, which by 2023 had increased to 75%. Notably, many individual countries in the region where deposit-return systems are mature have rates well above 90%.

The U.S, however, shows the policy contrast where system design sets the ceiling. Even though aluminum remains the most recycled beverage package, the recycling rate was around 43% in 2023. Across the world, rates vary widely by country, but the direction is broadly upward as more jurisdictions see the benefits and invest in the infrastructure to support it. Coca-Cola CEO Quincey continued at the 2023 AGM:

That global push toward circularity has been strengthened by the alignment between regulators, material producers, and brand owners. Heineken CEO Dolf van den Brink reflected on this collaboration at the company's 2022 CMD:

Focused financials

Ball reported a revenue of $12.7B for Q3 2025 TTM. Given the structural changes over the past decade – divestments, acquisitions, and the recent sale of Ball Aerospace – historic company-wide financials don't provide insight into the trend of the current Ball. With a focused portfolio, future results will reveal a clearer performance pattern.

Its EBIT for Q3 2025 TTM amounted to $1.4B, which resulted in a margin of 10.7%. Breaking down that into its three segments and further into its portfolio of packaging gives the full picture on the underlying trends driving the numbers. Across its three regional segments, comparable operating margins sit between 12-13%. Those margins vary with market maturity, geopolitics, customer mix, and product mix. Over the past five years, each has stayed within roughly a 10-15% range in a challenging post-pandemic period, with supply-chain volatility as the constant theme.

As we've touched on earlier, different regions are tilted differently across its wide portfolio of different packaging. Ball's Specialty and Super Specialty product segments command higher margins due to the increasing manufacturing complexity required to create differentiated packaging. While Standard formats remain the core of Ball's business in many markets, the growing mix of differentiated designs is driving margin expansion.

Ball's revenue and EBIT growth since 1995.

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Managing aluminum exposure

Aluminum is the lifeblood of Ball's business and its largest cost by far. The company sources rolled can sheet and end sheet in coil form from a handful of global suppliers, holding it as raw material inventory on its balance sheet until it's converted into cans and shipped to beverage customers. Most long-term customer contracts are based on Ball-sourced metal, with tolling (customer-sourced metal) only covering a minority of volume.

Approximately 60% of aluminum price changes pass through automatically to customers under long-term supply contracts. The remaining aluminum exposure, along with other input costs like energy, labor, and logistics, is covered by built-in inflation clauses that allow Ball to adjust pricing periodically. Combined with its metal pass-throughs and balance sheet exposure hedging, these mechanisms keep the company largely insulated from aluminum price volatility.

Most recently, the company has had to navigate a tougher trade-policy environment. It has been actively managing tariff-related supply chain disruptions, optimizing aluminum sourcing from multiple continents to minimize exposure to tariff-driven price increases and supply bottlenecks. Fisher addressed this at Ball's Q3 2025 earnings call:

Shareholder value creation

Every company aims to create long-term value for shareholders, but few are as outspokenly committed, transparent, and disciplined in how they plan to achieve it as Ball. Back in 1992, the company adopted Economic Value Added (EVA) as its core financial management framework. EVA measures the true economic profit a company generates when returns exceed its cost of capital. For Ball, EVA dollars equal net operating profit after tax (NOPAT) minus a capital charge, calculated as invested capital multiplied by the company's 9% after-tax hurdle rate.

While EVA serves as Ball's underlying financial discipline and incentive structure, the company measures its operating success through diluted EPS growth. Its long-running Drive for 10 vision targets +10% annual EPS growth over time, translating EVA-enhancing investments and operational improvements into compounding shareholder returns.

Ball's EPS growth and shares outstanding since 1995.

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The algorithm for optimizing EPS growth

At its 2024 Investor Day, Ball presented a clear, quantitative framework for delivering that consistent double-digit EPS growth, a transparent “algorithm” for compounding shareholder value:

(2-3% volume growth x 2x operating leverage) / 4-6% share count reduction = +10% EPS

Then-CFO Howard Yu elaborated on the flexibility of this model:

"You should think about the components of the algorithm on the left as levers that we can pull to get to the 10-plus percent. For example, if volumes come in closer to 2%, we would expect that we are able to achieve higher efficiencies on our plants and hit or exceed 2x operating leverage. Additionally, we would be able to lean more heavily on share repurchases as we manage our CapEx spend lower. Overall, what I'm saying is that this is a long-term algorithm that we believe we can achieve through many different market dynamics and that we are committed to delivering 10-plus percent EPS growth."

Ball's shareholder value commitment crystallizes in what the company calls "30x30", an aspirational goal to reach a $30B market capitalization by 2030:

A slide from Ball's 2024 Investor Day, visualizing what its value creation strategy will lead to in 2030.

This unwavering focus on shareholder value creation runs deep across Ball's 16,000 employees. EVA-linked compensation, standardized operational processes, and a shared focus on returns above the cost of capital embed value creation into daily decision-making. That same consistency extends to capital allocation. Management repeatedly frames decisions "as fellow owners and through the lens of EVA discipline," linking every investment, divestment, and capital return directly to value creation.

Closing thoughts

Durability defines Ball's vision of creating shareholder value, but also its wider operational strategies. Coincidentally, it also describes the very material upon which its entire business is built. Ball has endured for nearly 150 years, and its focus on durable aluminum ensures that durability will continue to be a key in the years to come.

We'll close by returning to our starting point. If you haven't noticed the iconic logo on cans before, you'll never be able to pick up a can without thinking of the company behind the aluminum silhouette.