Griffon Corporation (NYSE:GFF) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Griffon Corporation (NYSE:GFF) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript May 3, 2023

Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Griffon Corporation Fiscal Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded on Wednesday, May 3, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Brian Harris, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Brian Harris: Thank you, . Good morning, everyone. With me on the call is Ron Kramer, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Our call is being recorded and will be available for playback. The detail of which are in our press release issued earlier today. As in the past, our comments will include forward-looking statements about the company’s performance based on our views of Griffon’s businesses and the environments in which they operate. Such statements are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that can change as the world changes. Please see the cautionary statements in today’s press release and in our various Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Finally, some of today’s remarks will adjust for those items that affect comparability between reporting periods. These items are explained in our non-GAAP reconciliations included in our press release. Now, I’ll turn the call over to Ron.

Ron Kramer: Thanks, Brian. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. This is the first earnings call we’ve hosted since we initiated our strategic alternatives review process. So, we have a lot to discuss. Let me start by commenting on our strategic review process and its conclusion before reviewing our operating results, expectations for the year, and go-forward strategy. We publicly announced the commencement of this process in May of 2022, but actually, the process began even earlier in January of 2022, when we formed our committee on strategic considerations and engaged our advisers, Goldman Sachs and Decker. The committee on strategic considerations, which was comprised solely of independent members of our Board was given the mandate to work with our advisers to evaluate a comprehensive range of strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value including a possible sale, merger, divestiture, or recapitalization.

Over the remainder of 2022 and into 2023, Griffon and its advisers thoroughly explored many types of strategic alternatives and engaged with a wide variety of potential counterparties with the goal of finding strategic alternatives that would provide compelling value for Griffon shareholders. After extensive review and deliberation, the Griffon Board unanimously concluded that none of these alternatives, which we explored appropriately valued Griffon’s strong operating performance and growth prospects. And as a result, the Board unanimously determined that continuing to focus on executing our strategic plan is the best approach for maximizing shareholder value at this time. Our decision is a reflection of our Board’s confidence and Griffon’s outlook and strategy.

Due to the confidential nature of the process, we cannot disclose specific details regarding options explored or negotiations conducted. What I can tell you, however, is that the duration of this process over a year from initiation to conclusion is an indicator of how comprehensive the process was during the period of rapidly changing economic and financing conditions. With the process now concluded, we continue to believe that there is a fundamental disconnect between our share price and the intrinsic value of our businesses and we are committed to taking a series of actions to provide additional value to our shareholders. Further, I want to be clear that while we are no longer proactively exploring strategic alternatives, we will continue to be open to and will consider all opportunities to enhance shareholder value.

Let me turn to the operating results, Griffon’s performance through the first half of 2023 has exceeded our expectations. Our results were driven by the performance of our Home and Building Products segment HBP, which continued to see growth in commercial volume and favorable price and mix across all products and channels. Residential volume decreased year-over-year what was better than expected. The HBP team led by Vic Weldon, has been able to address the sectional door backlog that built up over the past two years. The factories are now operating with normalized backlog and lead times. This is great news as it frees up the HBP team to focus its attention on further improving productivity. It also allows the team to expand business development efforts that were previously slowed down as a result of our larger backlog and longer lead times.

The team is now intensifying their efforts to capture additional residential and commercial business by expanding marketing efforts and leveraging our leading positions in sectional and rolling steel product offerings. These efforts are complemented by a portfolio of innovative product offerings that are being positively received by customers. I want to thank the HBP team for their extraordinary performance and ongoing commitment to building this fabulous business. Performance with the Consumer and Professional Products business continues to reflect the difficult retail market conditions in which we are operating. All CPP channels and geographies are being affected by reduced consumer demand and elevated customer inventory levels. The situation has been particularly challenging in the U.S. lawn and garden and storage and organizational markets where we have seen customer supplier diversification drive shifts in buying decisions, which in some instances has exacerbated weakness in consumer demand.

The combination of reduced volumes and unfavorable manufacturing and overhead absorption has impacted operating leverage to the point that some of CPP’s U.S. product lines have become unprofitable. To address these evolving market conditions CPP is expanding its global sourcing strategy to include long-handled tools, material handling, and wood storage and organization product lines that are currently manufactured in the United States for sale in the United States. The CPP team will leverage its extensive global sourcing experience and capability to effectively manage this transition by utilizing an asset-light structure CPP’s U.S. operations will be better positioned to serve customers with a more flexible and cost-effective global sourcing model, enabling it to manage cost and efficiently meet variable demand and to enhance future profitability.

These actions will enable CPP to continue providing high-quality products, leveraging our iconic brands while strengthening our competitive positioning with industry-leading distribution and service that our customers and consumers expect. In addition, these actions are a continuation of the evolution of CPP positioning this segment to achieve targeted EBITDA margins of 15% and generating substantial additional value for our shareholders. Let’s turn to guidance for the year. Our overall strong performance in the first half has exceeded our expectation. As a result, we are raising our full-year segment EBITDA guidance to at least $525 million from the previous guidance of $500 million. Also earlier today the Griffon Board announced the 25% increase to our regular quarterly dividend, this is in addition to the $2 per share special dividend and the increase in our share buyback authorization to $258 million that was approved by our Board two weeks ago.

These actions demonstrate our commitment to enhancing both immediate and long-term value to our shareholders and reflect the confidence Griffon’s Board and Management have in our strategic plan and outlook. Let me turn it over to Brian to go through some of the financials.

Brian Harris: Thank you, Ron. I’ll start by discussing our second quarter consolidated continuing basis performance revenue of $711 million decreased by 9% and EBITDA before our unallocated amounts of $152 million decreased by 1% both in comparison to prior-year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 21% increasing approximately 180 basis points year-over-year. Gross profit on a GAAP basis for the quarter was $194 million compared to $261 million in the prior year quarter. Excluding restructuring-related charges and the acquisition write-off of inventory as applicable from the current and prior periods. Gross profit was $269 million in the current quarter, increasing 1% over the prior-year quarter. Gross margin increased year-over-year by 275 basis points to 37.9%.

Second quarter GAAP selling, general and administrative expenses were $160 million compared to $150 million in the prior year excluding adjusting items from both periods. Selling, general, administrative expenses were $150 million representing 21.1% of revenue compared to the prior year of $144 million or 18.5% of revenue. Second quarter GAAP loss from continuing operations was $62 million or $1.17 per share compared to the prior year period income of $58 million or $1.09 per share. This decline was primarily driven by charges related to the CPP’s intangible asset impairments, and global sourcing expansion excluding all items that affect comparability from both periods, current quarter adjusted net income from the tenant operations was $67 million or $1.21 per share compared to the prior year of $73 million or $1.36 per share.

In the quarter, we recorded a non-cash impairment charge for indefinite life intangible assets of $100 million or $74 million net of tax. The charges results, CPP’s year-to-date expected 2023 results being below expectation. Corporate and unallocated expenses, excluding depreciation were $14.6 million in the quarter compared to $13.1 million in the prior year. Our normalized effective tax rate, excluding adjusting items for the quarter were 29.5% and 29.4% for the year-to-date period. Capital spending was $7.1 million in the second quarter compared to $11.5 million in the prior year quarter, depreciation and amortization totaled $17.3 million for the second quarter compared to $16.3 million in the prior year. Regarding our segment performance, revenue for Consumer and Professional Products decreased 24% from the prior year, with organic revenue decreasing 29%.

The reduction in revenue is primarily attributable to reduced volume across all channels and geographies driven by soft consumer demand and elevated customer inventory levels. These items were partially offset by a full quarter of Hunter revenue as well as favorable price and mix. CPP adjusted EBITDA decreased from the prior year by 59% primarily due to the unfavorable impact of reduced volume and revenue and its related impact on manufacturing and overhead absorption. These items were partially offset by reduced discretionary spending and a full quarter of Hunter contribution. Home and Building Products revenue increased 8% over the prior-year quarter, driven by favorable pricing and mix for both commercial and residential products. Total volume decreased due to decreased residential volume, partially offset by increased commercial volume.

Adjusted EBITDA increased 26% compared to the prior year quarter, driven by increased revenue and reduced material costs, partially offset by increased costs for labor transportation, advertising, and marketing. As mentioned earlier and detailed in our press release, CPP is expanding its global sourcing strategy for products manufactured and sold in the U.S. The project includes the closure of four manufacturing facilities on the forward note, we expect to complete this project by the end of calendar 2024. In that period we will include — incur charges of $120 million to $130 million including $50 million to 55 million of cash charges for employee retention and severance operational transition and facility costs and $70 million to $75 million of non-cash charges primarily related to asset write-down.

We also expect capital expenditures in the range of $3 million to $5 million, these charges exclude the benefit of cash proceeds from sale of owned real estate and equipment, which are expected to largely offset the cash charges and also excluded inefficiencies due to duplicative labor cost and absorption impacts during transition. In both the quarter and six months ended March 31, 2023, CPP incurred pre-tax charges of $78.3 million related to the expansion of global sourcing strategy consisting of cash charges of $19.2 million and non-cash asset-related charges of $59.1 million. Regarding our balance sheet and liquidity, as of March 31, 2023, we had net debt of $1.3 billion and net debt to EBITDA leverage of 2.5 times as calculated based on our debt covenants.

Compared to $1.4 billion of net debt and 2.7 times leverage of the previous quarter. Regarding our 2023 guidance, we are updating our expectations for revenue and segment-adjusted EBITDA, we now expect 2023 revenue of $2.7 billion compared to previous guidance of $2.95 billion as a result of decreased CPP revenue, partially offset by increased HBP revenue, adjusted EBITDA in 2023 is now expected to be at least $525 million compared to our previous estimate of at least $500 million. Our EBITDA guidance excludes unallocated costs of $56 million and charges related to the strategic review process of $22 million, which is an increase from our prior guidance of $16 million, as well as CPPs global sourcing expansion charges. Our increased adjusted EBITDA expectations reflect strong HBP results, partially offset by the reduced CPP volume mentioned earlier.

Guidance for other metrics remain unchanged for 2023 including free cash flow to exceed net income, capital expenditures of $50 million, depreciation of $50 million, amortization of $22 million, interest expense of $103 million, and normalized tax rate approximating 29%. As Ron mentioned earlier, Griffon’s Board of Directors authorized a 25% increase to our quarterly dividend to $0.125 per share payable on June 15, 2023, to shareholders of record as of May 25th. On April 20, the Board — Griffon Board approved an increase to our share repurchase authorization $200 million, bringing the total outstanding authorization $258 million. Now, I’ll turn the call back over to Ron.

Ron Kramer: Thanks, Brian. I want to highlight that despite our businesses, continuing to navigate in an uncertain global macroeconomic environment, our employees have maintained high levels of customer service and product quality. We thank each of them for their efforts. We are very confident about our future. Home and Building Products continues to perform well and with HBP’s returned to normal operations after the pandemic surge, the business is now able to focus on growth and productivity initiatives. We continue to see long-term tailwinds for the business driven by healthy demand for our commercial products and the historically resilient repair and remodeling market for our residential products. We are also confident about the prospects for our Consumer and Professional Products segment while CPP is currently working through challenging conditions, we expect the business environment will stabilize over time, allowing CPP to deliver significantly improved financial results.

Griffon’s Board and Management have strong conviction in our outlook and strategic plan as demonstrated by the significant increase in our dividends and expanded stock buyback authorization. We will continue to use the strong operating performance of our business and its free cash flow to deliver long-term value to our shareholders. We believe our best days are ahead of us. Operator, we’ll take any questions.

Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you, Mr. Kramer. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Your first question comes from Bob Labick with CJS Securities. Please go ahead.

Bob Labick: Good morning. It’s nice to talk to you again.

RonKramer: Good morning, Bob.

Bob Labick: Congratulations on continued strong performance. Obviously, so many questions, I’ll follow the instructions and keep it brief and get back in the queue but maybe starting with HBP, obviously, the performance has just been off the charts and hard to model in a good way. Clearly, margins have improved materially from mixed pricing and operating efficiencies that you’ve garnered over the last year plus. Can you give us a sense of maybe what’s the new normal range for doors operating margins looking out? And how we can think about — Has there been like a overbuild period where we are in the demand cycle and what are normalized margins over the next few years for this business.

RonKramer: Let me start by saying that building the company, gets lost in moments in time and you have to go back and recognize that we have been on a five-year journey of building the Clopay business we bought, Cornell Cookson going on five years ago, we had three years of COVID, we were doing well pre-COVID, we had a plan of improving margins that was working. We’ve come out of COVID, we have grown our commercial business, our team has done an extraordinary job of managing the integration of the acquisition, the expansion of our commercial business to balance the already leading residential business that we have. We are positioned for residential and commercial growth, our business is not dependent on new home construction, it is a repair and remodel on the residential side.

New home construction, which continues to be in a shortage in this country will only benefit us. The commercial business has grown, will continue to grow. And while this quarter is clearly the best margin quarter that we’ve ever had in HBP. We continue to see strength, and sustainability of the business where that will shake out in terms of margin. Only time will tell but we have a business that finished last year with $412 million of EBITDA will be better than that this year. That’s why we have confidence in raising our guidance and we believe the sustainability and the resilience of the business going forward that this is a defendable business with higher margins than we’ve enjoyed over prior cycles. Brian, do you want to add to that?

Brian Harris: I think you summarized it pretty well unless Bob you have additional questions to way.

Bob Labick: No, that’s, I think, that’s super helpful there. Maybe just — because I do appreciate that taking a step back and, obviously, we’ve been watching this journey since CornellCookson and the integration and the expansion and everything. So, maybe give us a sense of the commercial market opportunity and where you’ve been growing, and where you’re targeting additional growth in commercial now that you’re kind of fully integrated and ready to go after it.

Brian Harris: Sure, I’ll start with that. The commercial market has been strong and continue to see good results from that side of the market from our historical legacy products as well as the new products that we’ve come up with over the last couple of years. In addition to that, we are getting great benefits out of leveraging the historical of the legacy CornellCookson dealers, and bringing on our sectional commercial product into those dealers and there’s still much of that to capture in the future. Some of that was on pause over the last two years as our backlog was elevated and now that our backlog and our lead times are normalized, we are going to be back out there and getting after that business. Of course, things like warehouse spaces and institutional-type operations is where we see most of our business.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Tim Wojs with Baird. Please go ahead.

Tim Wojs: Hi guys, good morning. Good to hear from you again.

RonKramer: Hi, Tim.

Tim Wojs: Hello, maybe just the first one on maybe CPP, as it relate just to maybe level set us in terms of kind of where that business after all the changes kind of lands from a revenue perspective on a normalized basis.

RonKramer: Sure. So, as we go through this process and come out the other side at the end of ’24, we see this as a $1 billion-plus size revenue business that will be generating 15% level margin.

Tim Wojs: Okay. Okay. And then maybe just on the cash flow, kind of a two-part, I guess firstly cash flow supposed to be better than net income. But it’s already kind of meaningfully better this year. So, I guess is it possible that it’s pretty meaningfully higher relative to net income. And then I guess where the stock is today, I mean, how aggressive would you be with the stock here, just given the expanded buyback?

RonKramer: Sure. Let me start by answering the cash flow question, yes, we are seeing very good cash flow, especially in the first half of the year, we’re generally we don’t have much cash flow in the first half of the year, so it can be meaningfully better than net income as you pointed out. But we stick with our stated better than net income, which falls under that category.

Brian Harris: And let me just add, start with our balance sheet, we don’t have a debt maturity until ’28 and we have substantial free cash flow, we’ve authorized $258 million, stay tuned.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Noah Merkousko with Stephens. Please go ahead.

Noah Merkousko: Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions.

RonKramer: Good morning.

Noah Merkousko: First, I wanted to talk on HBP kind of just get an update on how you’re seeing demand, at least through the balance of the year, especially now that backlogs are normalized, I’d imagine that would limit your visibility somewhat. So, I guess how do you get confidence in the demand there for commercial and RES R&R?

RonKramer: Sure. On the residential side, volume is below where we’ve seen it last year, but it’s in the resilient repair and remodel market, and actually the volume has been a little better than we originally expected, and leads to raising our guidance. On the commercial side, we continue to see strong volume, our products are doing well and I referenced back to us going after commercial sectional business, leveraging our legacy CornellCookson relationship.

Brian Harris: And the other point I’ll make is in our pricing has and we expect it to continue to hold.

Noah Merkousko: Got it. That’s really helpful. And then maybe switching gears to the CPP side you’ve announced that you’re expanding your global sourcing strategy and we should expect 15% EBITDA margins in ’24, but at what point —

Brian Harris: ’25.

Noah Merkousko: Okay, ’25. At what point would you expect this strategy to start bearing fruit — start becoming accretive to segment margins?

Brian Harris: Yes. So, ’24 will remain a transitional period as we move over these particular product lines to sourcing model and those benefits will come through in ’25, we expect it to take to roughly at the end of calendar ’24.

Operator: Your next question comes from Sam Darkatsh with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Sam Darkatsh: Good morning, Ron. Good morning Brian, how are you?

RonKramer: Doing well. How are you, Sam?

Sam Darkatsh: I’m well. As well, and it’s good to hear your voices certainly on a formal basis. So, a couple of questions and I’m actually have three or four maybe I’ll get back into the queue if possible. So, the $250 million authorization, if you do it at least by my math on the open market that could take years depending on the daily volume, why wouldn’t you consider a tender or an ASR to put that money at work while the stock is at current levels?

RonKramer: We don’t think it will take years and we will consider any and all possibilities, but we are not able to be in the market until we put out our earnings, let 48 hours go by. And I believe that means starting on Friday expect us to be in the market.

Sam Darkatsh: Got you. And then the retention payouts, Brian, do they continue or how are they going to be accounted for now that the strategic review process is concluded, at least for the time being?

Brian Harris: Yes. So, we’ll continue to call those amounts out as they are — though they are over several years, they are a specific event. And those payments will continue each third quarter for this year, next year, and the year after.

Operator: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, Mr. Kramer, back over to you.

RonKramer: No, I think Sam has some more questions.

Sam Darkatsh: Hello. Am I on?

RonKramer: Yes.

Sam Darkatsh: Hello, Am I on?

RonKramer: Sam, you’re on.

Sam Darkatsh: Can you hear me okay?

RonKramer: Yes.

Sam Darkatsh: Okay, terrific. Sorry about that. My last question again getting back to the CPP sourcing, which is fascinating. So, where specifically are you contemplating moving the sourcing from a geographic standpoint, is that going to be kind of a sole contract OEM manufacturing setup like you have with Hunter, how do you manage risk with that type of setup, if you could help us put a little meat on the bone in terms of what the plans are at this point.

RonKramer: Well, let me start by saying this is an evolution and a continuation of what we do globally, we have a global sourcing office in China, we have facilities that we already work with, our Australian business is part of that global sourcing, our U.K. business is part of global sourcing. The evolution of our U.S. operations, and our aggressive approach to repositioning it based on what’s changed in the consumer markets, you correctly point out our Hunter relationship and that is a design in the United States and manufactured elsewhere for distribution in the United States. So, I view what we’re doing to our CPP business is an evolution of what we’ve done successfully at very attractive margins globally, to be able to fix a business in the U.S. that has a very high manufacturing overhead that can be supported other than being on an outsourced global sourcing model.

Brian Harris: Yes. I’ll just add to that global sourcing truly means global sourcing that includes sourcing in South and Central America, the U.S. as well as Asia, and it’s not going to be sole-sourced to one person or one entity and in fact using entities over against themselves in further periods will give us even more advantage.

Sam Darkatsh: Is there an issue around the potential for challenged lead times based on some of the seasonality of some of these products? I thought that was one of the primary reasons why there was an appeal to a North American production footprint, especially around long-handle tools whereby you’re able to have high fill rates during the heavy selling season. How does that impact, that I’m guessing you might move that type of production to Mexico, or is that also contemplated in Asia? I’m just trying to get a sense of how to manage risk and especially knowing that you still may look to monetize the CPP business at some point, making it still palatable for a potential suitor.

Brian Harris: Sure. So, you touched upon, part of it will be sourcing from possibly closer areas such as Central America and further, we will leverage our distribution footprint and keep enough inventory on hand to ensure that we provide the same levels of service to our customers that we have been able to do in the past.

Sam Darkatsh: Got you. And then if I’m still on.

RonKramer: You are.

Sam Darkatsh: Okay, terrific. They didn’t cut us off yet. All right.

RonKramer: No, we’ve been silent for a while. Keep going.

Sam Darkatsh: It’s terrific that you’re able to speak publicly again. The — after the repo authorization has been completed, what do you anticipate the debt leverage either at that point or optimally for the business.

RonKramer: So, it will depend on when those buybacks occur. But generally, we don’t expect leverage to get much above 3x type of level it will be generating cash flow as we’re buying shares.

Brian Harris: And as we continue to generate cash, we’re in a luxurious balance sheet position, we’ve got both undrawn bank capital, we’ve got no debt maturity as I said earlier till ’28, we’ve got free cash flow and we’ve got a very undervalued stock that we have every intention of taking advantage of. We’ve always been in the acquisition business, we’re going to be acquiring as much of us as we can with free cash flow for the foreseeable future.

Sam Darkatsh: Terrific to hear. And again, terrific to hear your folks voices in. So, we’ll be in touch soon.

RonKramer: Thank you.

BrianHarris: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you, Sam. There are no further questions.

Ron Kramer: Okay. Well, thank you all, look forward to speaking to you after our next quarter in early August.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a great day.