CSW Industrials, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSWI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So you won’t have that pick up, so to speak, opportunity, unless we see another step up in cost. And we need to take action outside of just our normal annual price increases which we implement this time of year. So pricing is going to continue to be a tailwind for us for a couple of quarters on the year-over-year. The volume, as Joe said, it’s a little bit of a wait and see. The team is doing a great job talking to customers, understanding what their stocking levels are across segments. I think our distributors are being careful in overstocking. There’s been a little bit of destocking, and I think that slowed down volume a little bit. And I think inventories continue to be right-sized. So as Joe said, the February and especially into March ordering and buying season for Contractor Solutions will tell us a lot.

And on the call we have in May with our fiscal year results, we’ll have a much better sense of how that looks, of course.

Jon Tanwanteng: Got it. Last for me just the working capital improvements as supply improves. How much excess are you carrying right now? What kind of cash can you throw off, assuming you get to your optimized levels?

James Perry: Yes, it’s a great question, Jon. This is still James. It’s hard to put a specific number on it, because it’s going to vary week-to-week and month-to-month. Our teams do a really good job. When you look back, you use things like days on hand. And we know what those metrics look like. And they bump around a little bit. Part of that, like I said, is seasonality and just stocking down and up for the seasons. But we really have a forward look, and our businesses do a good job looking product-by-product, how much they think they need to hold, especially that product that comes from overseas. While shipping times have slowed down or have gotten shorter, I’m sorry, it still takes a while to get product. So you can’t produce a lot of this overnight.

So it’s a few million dollars. How much that is, is probably hard to identify and get real precise. We certainly have some goals and metrics. And as we go through our budget season, we’re going to work hard on what those goals need to be given a little easing of the supply chain constraints that we have. So I wouldn’t put a hard dollar number out there. But there’s still a few million dollars out there that we think we can turn into cash, kind of in a quarter-over-quarter basis. Again, this quarter, you start stocking back up. But when we think about days forward and days on hand, we have opportunity.

Jon Tanwanteng: Got it. Thanks, guys. I’ll let someone else ask a question.

James Perry: Thanks, Jon.

Operator: Our next question is from Julio Romero with Sidoti & Company. Please proceed.

Julio Romero: Hi. Thanks very much. Good morning. Maybe to start off, if you could just talk about on Contractor Solutions, just talk about what’s working well in this segment? I know you mentioned strong pricing gains and the inorganic growth as well. But just hoping for a little more detail on the strong segment profit, especially given that this is usually your seasonally weakest quarter for that segment?

Joseph Armes: Yes, Julio, thanks. We got strength across the board. I would say that we’re selling more of the ductless mini-split products than maybe we did a few months ago. There were some shortages by the OEM manufacturers that were slowing some of that down. That provides a good mix impact for us; and so strength across the board really. I don’t know that I’d note anything in particular. I would say that we continue to be able to grow wallet share with our customers. There are particular customers that are continuing to grow. We’re growing our GRD business. As you recall, after we bought TRUaire, we had kind of production slowdown in Vietnam because of the pandemic shutdown and all of that. We’ve had to rebuild inventory.