Ferguson plc (NYSE:FERG) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Kevin Murphy : Thanks, Matt. In terms of pros and cons, if I take a step back, and think about our journey that we’ve been on for the last several years, we’re really pleased with the methodical way that we’ve approached the entire process, the standing up of a secondary listing in New York, the movement of the primary listing to New York out of London, what’s happened in terms of the shift in sell-side coverage, what’s happened in terms of the shift of indexation. And for us, this is really viewed as a natural next step in terms of moving the governance moving what our headquarters is in line with our geographic location of our markets. This is a North American company, principally in the U.S. and where our leadership sits. And so for us, it’s more of just a natural next step, and we’re early days in terms of what that journey looks like.

Bill Brundage: Yes. And in terms of the financial impact, we’re in the process of evaluating that. But sitting here today, we expect the overall financial impact to be relatively immaterial with a move to a U.S. corporate headquarters. But more to come on that as we fully develop our process and the approach.

Unidentified Analyst : I appreciate that. And then just one more. I guess your guys’ outlook is unchanged, but interest rates have obviously come in meaningfully over the past month. I guess, can you guys just provide any thoughts on end market recovery if rates did just say stay where they are from here?

Kevin Murphy : For our end markets, they really are playing out very much as expected. And as you think about the rate environment, the biggest impact that we saw, obviously, was on the new residential construction side, just half of our — just over half of our business is on the residential side of the world with the lightest portion of that being new res. We saw that play through. But we’re seeing stabilization inside of what permit and start activity looks like. And although it’s not north of that 1.5 million starts a year that we need as a country, we are seeing some degree of stabilization there. As you think about what the rate environment is doing on the non-res side, yes, we have pressure and there’s some — going to be some fits and starts, maybe some pauses even on the mega project side.

But generally speaking, we see that continuing to play out very much as expected with knock-on commercial being pressured, but data center activity, mega projects continuing to press on in light of the interest rate environment that we’re in today.

Operator: Our next question comes from Mike Dahl from RBC Capital Markets.

Unidentified Analyst : This is actually [Chris Kanoff] for Mike. Just shifting over to margins. I was hoping to get your latest thoughts on the trajectory for margins this year, first half versus second half, realizing the guidance is unchanged, but just your latest views on dynamics there?

Bill Brundage: Yes. Really no change in that. As we look at the full year, Chris, expecting that operating margin to land in that 9.2% to 9.8% range, as we talked about on our fourth quarter call as we set that guidance out, we’re expecting that midpoint expect some modest continued normalization and most of that coming in the first half of this year, as you just saw, the 10% operating margin down from last year and that was very much as expected. We expect as we go through the second quarter to have a bit of continued pressure given the really strong second quarter we had last year and then some improvement as we step into the second half, as growth stabilizes to Kevin’s point that he just walked through and as we returned back to growth and get back to broadly flat revenue for the year.

Unidentified Analyst : I appreciate that color. And then just shifting over to capital allocation with share repurchases kind of stepping down sequentially this quarter. I just wanted to get your latest thoughts on capital allocation priorities and how the M&A landscape is looking today?

Kevin Murphy : Yes. Really no change in terms of how we’re executing that. Our intention is to operate towards the low end of our leverage range, 1x to 2x. We’re sitting right at the bottom end of that range right now. And so as you saw from an acquisition perspective, 1 small acquisition completed in the quarter, but the deal pipeline is pretty healthy. So we’re maintaining some capacity there to continue to consolidate our markets. But you should expect us to operate towards the low end of that range and continue to execute our capital priorities across that 4-step priority order.

Operator: Our next question comes from Will Jones from Redburn Atlantic.

Will Jones: Just a couple for me, please. I think on the gross margin. Perhaps you could just help us better understand that first half — or first quarter gross margin, the 30.2%. Would you be willing to draw out what the commodity impacts were against that? And what was working in your favor to still deliver that good gross margin despite the commodity effects? And then secondly, just when we think about gross margins with regard to mega projects, just as you go through the bidding process there. Any more insights into whether those mega projects might be gross margin accretive or not relative to normal non-res projects.