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

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Peter Jackson: Yes and I think we’ve talked a lot about the amount of investment we’ve made in pricing management and pricing rigor and pricing discipline. That’s certainly an important part about how we expect to manage this business on a go forward basis and combine with this point about how efficient we are, we think that puts us in a great position to offer a total cost benefit to our customer, while at the same time getting a fair margin and being able to hold on to what we worked so hard for. So we’re certainly optimistic right now, especially as you see each quarter’s numbers come through.

David Rush: I do believe normal margins for product that the margin ran up simply based on supply and the demand dynamics, that will normalize first and we’re already seeing that. You’ve definitely seeing it, for example, with lumber and sheet goods as an example. The other products in our industry won’t respond as quickly and as deeply as lumber and sheet goods have, but we should see some of that. But as far as what we can control, I think what we’re going to try to do is, is win by providing better customer service, better reduced cycle times for our customers, allow them to win on cycle time costs, and then we’ll be able to hold on to some of the margin that we’ve tried to create.

Ketan Mamtora: That’s helpful perspective. Good luck in 2023. I’ll jump back in the queue.

David Rush: Thanks, Ketan.

Operator: And thank you. We’ll take our next question from David Manthey with Barclays. Your line is, I apologize, with Baird. Your line is now open.

David Manthey: Yes, thank you. And let me add my congratulations to you, Dave.

David Rush: Thanks.

David Manthey: First question, could you discuss your comfort level with the debt in a downside 2023 scenario? I assume you delever a lot from the balance sheet unwinding, but is there any change in your views at all on M&A or share repurchase as we move through this downturn yet or potentially in the future?

David Rush: Yes, thanks Dave. That’s a great question. So the short answer is, we feel really good about the balance sheet and we think that our priorities around capital allocation are still the right ones. We’re going to lean in on it. You know, we’ve got no really, no structured debt till 2030. The ABL is, we just reran that one from a timeline perspective. So we’ve got new maturity start, plenty of liquidity. We feel very good about the strength of the balance sheet. You layer on the fact that, as you noted, we would expect to release some working capital in the event of a further sort of slowing in the market. So that will be a nice tailwind in terms of available cash. The business is still generating cash, so feel good about that, even in some of these more aggressive downside scenarios.

And then the overlay of all that is, we do expect there to be opportunities, right? While M&A has certainly been a source of growth for us, and it has slowed down in terms of total number of opportunities on the market, we still see nice targets at reasonable multiples as evidenced by the Noltex deal that we think should be part of the BFS family. And we’re going to continue to execute those. So we’re going to — as we stay disciplined, we think there’s really going to be, there are going to be nice opportunities for us to continue to do that. And as we’ve demonstrated up through now, we think there’s real intrinsic value in the repurchase of shares. So to the extent we’re not seeing good targets in M&A or we don’t have the capacity internally to do more M&A, we’ll continue to leverage that as well.

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