AZZ Inc. (NYSE:AZZ) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Heim: Thanks for taking my question. With the jump-up in capital expenditures, it looks like we’ve got maybe $80 million more to spend for the rest of the year. Can you just talk a little bit about how you see that falling between the third and fourth quarter?

Philip Schlom: That should fall pretty evenly between the two quarters. The Washington, Missouri project has been ramping up. So quarter two was double quarter one as we go through Q2. Q3 and Q4 should be pretty well balanced between the two quarters, maybe a little heavier on the fourth.

Michael Heim: Okay. And then, Philip, you talked about the lower tax rate in the quarter. And I just wonder if you could repeat, maybe expand upon the reasoning that I believe you referred to something with the Precoat acquisition.

Philip Schlom: Yeah. Without getting into too much in — during the acquisition of Precoat Metals, we had, during our due diligence, taken reserves related to some state tax exposures. We were able to address those post-acquisition and resolve themselves. So during the quarter, we were able to reduce the most significant portion of our reserve for state taxes and we’re still working through a couple of other states.

Michael Heim: Okay. And then, finally, as we kind of talk about some of the adjustments to GAAP that you’ve provided. I assume that the legal settlement is probably a one-time in nature. What about the amortization of the intangibles, can you just talk about the ongoing nature of that?

Philip Schlom: Yes. The amortization of the intangible is directly related to acquisition and purchase accounting that we hold at corporate because it doesn’t impact the segment operations. And so we’ve excluded that consistently from our ad backs. And you’re right, the legal settlement was related to the business we sold and we see that as a one-time non-recurring item.

Michael Heim: Okay. Thank you very much.

Tom Ferguson: Thank you.

David Nark: Thanks, Mike.

Operator: The next question comes from Lucas Pipes of B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Lucas Pipes: Thank you very much, operator. Good morning, everyone. Good job on the quarter and also a good job on keeping the Washington project ahead of schedule and budget, that’s not something I hear very often these days.

Tom Ferguson: Thank you.

Lucas Pipes: I wanted to ask about kind of projects more broadly, kind of what you’re — given what you’re seeing in the market with demand seemingly really resilient despite higher rates and such. How do you think about organic growth? Do you have a pipeline of similar projects to the Washington one and if so what geographical region are you most focused on? What markets are you focused on and what stages with those potential greenfield projects be today? Early planning, middle planning, late planning, would really appreciate your color on that. Thank you.

Tom Ferguson: Yeah. We actually don’t have any Greenfields we’ve done. This is actually the second ones since I’ve been here. The first one was galvanizing plant in Reno about five years ago and then this one in Washington, Missouri, Usually, we’re — we’ve tended on the galvanizing side to buy up one-off competitors where they were adjacent and provided new territory reach for us. So we’ve tended to find that has been the better way. Right now, that pipeline is, I’ll call it, quiet, which is in line with our desire not to do any acquisitions until we get through this cash flow pump on the Washington coil cutting facility. So we’re always looking at new opportunities. One of the things we are doing on the Precoat side is we are working with customers to I’ll call it, buy out their existing lines so to be vertically integrate them.