GMS Inc. (NYSE:GMS) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

They want quick closings. So we are seeing activity, at least to whatever the expectation of sales are you’re seeing a lot of builders reflect that in their strategy into next year. So a long-winded answer, but we have a pretty good view, and it’s usually incorporated into the outlook, well it’s always incorporated into the outlook, quite frankly, and we break it out in a bunch of ways internally and so far, we’ve been pretty good at it. Although I would tell you, it’s getting more complicated.

Michael Dahl: Yes. Okay, that’s helpful. And my second question as part of this, there’ll also be a follow-up. But when we’re thinking about the 3Q guide in terms of total growth going from the 20s to mid-single digits, you’ve articulated some of the moving pieces certainly, but maybe a little more detail. When you say timing of single-family demand slowdown unknown, but will materialize. So do you expect — is the expectation that your single-family resi business is down year-on-year in volume terms in the third quarter? And then on the pricing side, very helpful color on some of the sequential trends and October trends in the ceiling grid and the steel. If those sequential declines continue as you expect, what does that mean for the year-on-year declines that you’re expecting within your third quarter guidance?

John Turner: I would tell you that Wallboard, we’re still expecting to have a slight growth in Wallboard volume but still really strong pricing on a year-over-year basis, so high double digits really in total revenue growth from a Wallboard perspective. Ceilings, possibly in revenue we had a very, very strong third quarter last year, winter season last year in Ceilings. So we’re going to comp that as well, but it’s probably down low single digits. And steel based mostly on the same trends we’ve already been experiencing just the reality of the steel prices year-over-year; we are lapping now the high point in steel. I should have made that Commentary a little earlier to you all, but I think you probably know it already anyway.

But this is the high point in steel pricing as November, December, January was the peak of steel pricing last year. And so that’s probably going to be down in that, I don’t know, 15% to 20-ish range plus. And so you mix all that together with Complementary and you get that mid-single-digit revenue guide.

Carey Phelps: Mike?

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Stevenson with Loop Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Jeffrey Stevenson: Hi, thanks for taking my questions today and congrats on the nice quarter.

John Turner: Thank you, Jeff.

Jeffrey Stevenson: So you guys saw strong Wallboard volumes during the quarter, which came in ahead of the industry. And I just wanted to know kind of what were the primary drivers of that above industry growth? And can you talk about as well how volumes trended throughout the quarter?

John Turner: Well, I think the efforts we’ve put in over the last several years, we’ve talked about it many times of being more focused on the builder business as a company over the course of the last three to four years, not that we were big, and I said it before, not that we anticipated the post-COVID balance and the extreme success in single-family. But the reality is we were focused on doing more of it, and that came to fruition and here we are, unfortunately, peaking when inflation hits and now the rates are up, and now we’re going to go from peaking into whatever is going to happen to us next year. But I think that that’s really the biggest driver is really the success on the single-family side. The other piece of it, of course, is we still were — even though we’ve had all the success in single-family, we’re probably still more weighted in Wallboard to commercial than the industry is.