Masco Corporation (NYSE:MAS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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The other thing that I would point you to, in Keith’s prepared remarks and my prepared remarks, we talked about that we’re going to make some incremental investment in the — particularly, in the Decorative Architectural segment around the PRO business. And so that’s also having an impact on 2023 margins. Now, to the point you also raised, to the extent that commodities were to roll over, and there would be input cost deflation, you would see some margin expansion as a result of that — due to the fact that there could be some pricing concessions that we would give when commodities rollover. So that’s how that math would work. So, I think your point is well taken and I think that helps explain the 16% versus our historical margin.

Michael Rehaut: Okay. No, that’s a great answer. And before I ask my second question, perhaps you could fold it in. You highlighted the incremental investment in PRO. I’d be curious to know how much of a drag that might be in this current upcoming year. But secondly, I mentioned also that overall volume expectations for ’23, I think, being much more conservative than some of your peers and we’re certainly in that direction ourselves in terms of how we’re thinking about things, would be helpful, and sorry if I missed that earlier, if you think about the low double digit volume decline, you kind of broke it out between, I believe, how you’re thinking or at least on a top-line basis the two segments. But from an end market perspective, I’d assume that repair/remodel end market demand, you’re thinking about in a similar level, but correct me if I’m wrong.

And also, how that other end markets that you play in such as Europe or new res, which is admittedly pretty small, how those different end markets play into the down low double digits? And if you’re expecting that to kind of accelerate as the year progresses? Thanks.

Keith Allman: Mike, maybe it’d be helpful if I kind of go through our principal markets and talk through our assumptions as it relates to overall market performance. The big one, obviously, is North American repair and remodeling. And in general, we’re looking at that market to be down low double digits. International, obviously, a significant portion of our business. We’re calling to be down high single digits. And then, as we talked a little bit already in terms of the paint market, we think broadly of that and, obviously, in two markets, the DIY and the PRO market, and our estimation is that the DIY market will be down high single digits and the PRO market would be down mid-single digits. So, we look at — to get those numbers, we look at trends that we see and numbers that we evaluate in terms of industry research and we come to an assumption on how that all filters out.

And then, importantly, we look at how we were performing in the back half of ’22 and we roll that in with our R&R focus and industry research to come up with, our estimations are where they are. Now, obviously, we’ve heard and talked to many folks who have different views. So, it really is a matter of the point of view that we take. And if that point of view varies, I think, you can see that we consistently have delivered 30% drop down on the incrementals. And when we see some pullbacks like we’re expecting in ’23, we will decrementals that look better than that 30%. So, we are ready to not only flex our business down and have demonstrated that with regards to cost control and working through issues associated with variable productivity and lining up our supply chains to address a new volume level, but we’re also committed to investing in the key growth levers of our business.

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