Builders FirstSource, Inc. (NYSE:BLDR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Matthew Bouley: Got it. Okay, that’s very helpful. That makes sense. Second one, on the value-add you had the 16% decline in manufactured products over the quarter. Clearly that’s more tied to the front end of construction. And I think you had the windows, doors and millwork growing 22% reflecting completions. My question is, how should we think about the timing of those converging? Kind of at what point do you see this sort of tale of completions beginning to more closely resemble what we’ve seen in starts? Thank you.

Peter Jackson: Yes, Matt, that’s a good question. I think we’ve pretty much already seen that convergence as we get farther into the quarter. Our door and millwork sales have somewhat normalized, but we still believe in the value-added segment as a positive for the overall business. And the Truss component, as I said, has been really resilient. We haven’t seen people move away from Truss, granted, because there’s fewer starts. We’re going to have fewer sales in Truss, but the fact that we can maintain that percentage of our overall business is very encouraging to us and we believe it will continue.

Matthew Bouley: Got it. All right, thanks Dave. Thanks Peter. Good luck guys.

David Rush: Thanks Matt.

Operator: Good, thank you. We’ll take our next question from Ketan Mamtora with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Ketan Mamtora: Thank you. First question, recognizing that there’s still a lot of uncertainty around, can you give us some sense of how you guys are thinking about the multi-family business and R&R? It seems like that is becoming a greater focus area for y’all.

David Rush: Yes Ketan. I appreciate the question. Multi-family will certainly be a buoy for us in 2023. We are not quite sure how 2024 is going to play out. I was at the Harvard Housing Conference and there was some concern that multi-family in 2024 may start seeing some headwinds. What we’re seeing in the amount of bid activity for 2024 has not tremendously waned though. So we’re still slightly optimistic there. On the R&R front, again, the thing that made that difficult for us in prior years was capacity and the supply chain constraints that we were facing. It was hard to fully explore that opportunity and go after new business when we were having struggles with supply chain taking care of existing customers. So we will rededicate our focus on growing that share now that those kind of conditions have lessened.

Ketan Mamtora: Got it. That’s helpful. And then my second question, either Dave or Peter, it seems like there is some investor concern about your sort of ability to hold onto price gains on the manufactured component side, with engineered wood pricing also starting to fall quite sharply, obviously single-family is down. Can you talk at a high level, sort of at least philosophically, how you’ll approach that?

David Rush: Yes, that’s a great question. I think for us we did invest significantly almost $100 million and our ability to gain productivity through automation in all our plants; that has created a cost advantage for us in the marketplace. We believe we’re the low cost provider for Truss in the marketplace. That gives you a little bit of flexibility to go after share where that’s the answer, and to be able to hold on to a little bit of margin for a little longer time where that’s available. Anything you want to add there, Peter?

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