CSW Industrials, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSWI) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Peter Lukas: Perfect. Thank you. And then could you also just give us a little more color on the drivers of the higher sequential corporate expense?

James Perry: I think just overall, I think compensation expense is part of this, as I mentioned, as the company grows, you’ve got to cover that growth to some degree, the acquisitions we’ve done, the organic growth we’ve done, nothing unusual in the corporate line, I would say, just kind of general growth with the overall company growth [ph].

Peter Lukas: Perfect. Thanks. And then just the last one for me. You talked about your M&A strategy being unchanged and still seeing a pipeline of opportunities, but looking to allocate on a risk-adjusted basis. Just wondering, are you seeing just more or less opportunities given the higher cost of capital and hurdle rate? Or just in general, what are you seeing out there?

Joseph Armes: Yes, Pete, this is Joe. I don’t know that we are seeing a lot different level of activity. Certainly, our hurdle rates have risen as a result of the higher cost of capital. We’ve always had a really high hurdle rate to begin with, right, from the standpoint of our margins. We really don’t want to dilute our margins. We have a really high-value products that we offer to customers. And so our opportunity set, I think, continues to be robust, and we’re pleased with that. And we tend to respond well in tougher markets because we’ve got a stronger balance sheet than others, allows us to move with speed and certainty and provide that to sellers. As you may recall, our largest and most successful acquisition to date, TRUaire, was done in the middle of the pandemic. And we did that on our balance sheet because we had the liquidity and the available capital to do that. And so — so we are optimistic.

Peter Lukas: Extremely helpful. Thanks for your time and I will jump back in the queue.

Joseph Armes: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question today comes from Julio Romero with Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead.

Julio Romero: Great. Thanks. Hey, good morning, Joe, James, Alexa. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe to start on the Contractor Solutions segment. I was particularly impressed by the increase in the unit volumes there, and you called out that some of that might be attributable to a warm summer, maybe what’s your best guess as to what the impact of that late summer heat wave was on the volume in the quarter? Or maybe thinking about it another way, how are unit volumes trending in the periods not affected by that heat wave?

James Perry: Yes. I think if you look at the last several quarters — Julio, this is James. And again, appreciate you being on with us. Yes, in the last several quarters, we’ve talked about volumes being slightly down. We’ve never called out large decreases. The comps have been hard after a couple of really strong years 2021, even ’22 were pretty strong and this fiscal year, so we are up against some tough comps. The comps have maybe gotten a little bit better. But overall, our team is doing a great job by picking up new customers, by picking up market share and wallet share. And again, when the OEMs and distributors talked about, they’re still seeing residential down low single digits, and that’s better than low mid teens or mid teens to high single digits.

Overall, though, we feel good about that. And we talked about that in the last call. We were already a month into it and July was looking hot, August stayed hot, September stayed hot. So we certainly picked that up. As part of that, obviously, the [indiscernible] and we called that out specifically because it was a late start to the summer and when people are on their air conditioner 24 hours a day instead of 10 or 12 hours a day, that certainly creates more maintenance work, more repair work and even replacement, which is a positive tailwind for us. So we are pleased to have turned that from a slight negative to a slight positive. But I think as much as anything, it’s our team out there selling more to new customers, a little bit of benefit from the acquisition, as we talked about.