Advanced Drainage Systems, Inc. (NYSE:WMS) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

So that’s kind of what we hear. And but as we look underneath that quoting activity, it’s being backfilled decently by these large onshoring projects and other stuff that we’re pursuing. And the geographies are helping us out. As you know, we put more resources in what we call these high priority states, and that’s helping us. So the backdrop of kind of business activity, we probably feel a little bit better today, including Infiltrator, than we did 30 or — I mean, 90 days ago when we were speaking with you all.

Michael Halloran: Last one from my perspective. The residential side, one side, you’ll see a little better starts, a little more optimism on starts, hasn’t hit the property development side yet. If you look back in history, what kind of lag is there normally between when those start improving a little bit versus when that starts hitting the next wave of property development?

Michael Higgins: Yes. Mike, it’s Mike Higgins. I mean, I think probably eight-plus months is probably kind of that timing, right. I think that might be different this time around because it just depends on the homebuilders and how much land they’re holding and how much more land they have to go and acquire to develop, put the underground infrastructure before they can start building the homes on top. But I think we have — like we said in the comments, we haven’t — even though the starts have kind of stabilized and look like they’re going to approve, we don’t see kind of the same level of activity in that land development just yet. So I would expect that improvement if things continue to follow the path they are, we would expect to see some benefit from that in our next fiscal year, which starts kind of April of ’24.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Garik Shmois with Loop Capital.

Garik Shmois: I wanted to follow up on the residential piece as it relates to Infiltrator, given that these projects tend to go in after houses completed, but we’re seeing starts and completions narrow fairly significantly. Just wondering what the outlook for Infiltrator growth is over the next several quarters? You’ve seen some declines or the kind of the improvement in the rate of declines of late, but should we continue to expect that path? Or could you see a bit of an air pocket here?

Scott Cottrill: Yes. Garik, yes, I’m very encouraged by Infiltrator results. We had talked about the first half of the year for the entire company being down 15% to 20%. But when you look at those housing starts and the impact on Infiltrator, we thought their impact was going to be much greater than that average for the Company, and it didn’t come to fruition that way. So I’d say that right now, our line of sight would expect that favorability from what we thought looking at how dire those housing starts were six months ago, nine months ago to continue, but it’s definitely something that we’re watching right now.

Garik Shmois: Understood.

Michael Higgins: We made the comments in the call, Garik, that the two things that are also helping Infiltrator there is these septic tanks have a large conversion opportunity and we’ve made some investments over the past couple of years at Infiltrator to give them the capacity to sell these and kind of take the handcuffs off the sales guys and have them go out and chase and sign up more distribution, sign up more contractors. So that’s helping even though the gap is narrowing that kind of conversion story in the tanks and then the active septic are helping kind of offset some of the weakness that you’re seeing in their traditional leach field chamber business.

Garik Shmois: Understood. A follow-up question is on SG&A. In light of the headcount reductions you recently announced, the SG&A cost savings fully baked in at this point? Or should we expect continued improvement on the SG&A volume moving forward?