International Paper Company

International Paper Company is an American producer of fiber-based packaging — containerboard, corrugated boxes and the recycled fiber that feeds them — with manufacturing concentrated in two regional systems: the United States and Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It generated $23.63 billion of net sales in fiscal 2025 and employed roughly 62,602 people at year end.

That headline number is doing a lot of work, and the first thing to understand about this file is how much of it is new. A year ago International Paper was a materially smaller company with a different shape, a different balance sheet and a different management team. Between 2021 and 2026 it sold or spun off its printing papers business, its Brazilian operations and its entire pulp business, and in January 2025 it bought DS Smith for approximately $9.9 billion in stock — roughly doubling revenue in a single step. The company now describes itself as a pure-play packaging business and is preparing to break itself in half again, separating its North American and EMEA packaging operations into two separately listed companies within twelve to fifteen months of the January 2026 announcement.

What follows is a story about whether a very large operational and financial restructuring is producing a better business, or simply a differently financed one. Management is three years into an operating system it calls "IP 80/20" — simplify, segment, resource, grow — and has staked its credibility on a claim that the combination of DS Smith's European assets, an advantaged North American cost position and a shrinking portfolio will produce something structurally more profitable than the sum of the parts. The file turns on a single question: whether the earnings recovery management has promised for 2027 is a fair description of where the business is heading, or a target that the market is already paying for.