Rayonier Advanced Materials is a Jacksonville cellulose-specialties producer sitting inside a live board-led strategic review, and the second-quarter print is the first clean look at whether the franchise still has pricing power after a messy leadership change. Daniel Krawczyk took the chief-executive seat in late June after Scott Sutton resigned in April and an interim office ran the company for two months. Morgan Stanley is running a formal process that the new chief describes as the top priority, with a path-forward update scheduled for the fourth quarter. Mill Pond Capital, a small holder, has already published a public letter urging a full sale. The equity is a thin residual claim on a specialty-chemicals platform that still makes the demanding grades used in acetate filters, pharmaceutical excipients, and nitrocellulose for defense. The investment debate is whether that residual expands if the review finds a buyer who values the Jesup and Fernandina assets as scarce specified-cellulose capacity, or shrinks if the Temiscaming paperboard complex keeps consuming cash while the next refinance window approaches.
The specialty franchise is doing the work the commodity legs are not. Cellulose Specialties contract prices rose 21% from the year-ago quarter as newly negotiated agreements reset. High Purity Cellulose produced $57 million of adjusted EBITDA, more than double the first-quarter run rate. That is the evidence that value-over-volume is more than a slogan. The offset sits in Paperboard and High-Yield Pulp, which posted a negative $10 million of adjusted EBITDA after another high-yield-pulp impairment. Adjusted net debt finished near three-quarters of a billion against a thin cash balance. The capital structure leaves little room for another soft print.
Consolidated sales rebounded sequentially after a first quarter that absorbed Temiscaming high-purity idling charges. Adjusted EBITDA rose to $40 million from an $8 million trough. The open question for the next two quarters is whether specialties volumes recover enough, and whether the review produces a real bid, before the refinance window and the covenant math start to dominate the equity residual.