Myers Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MYE) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Myers Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MYE) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript August 6, 2023

Operator: Hello and welcome to today’s Myers Industries, Inc. Q2 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Jordan and I’ll be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions] I’m now going to hand over to Grant Fitz, Chief Financial Officer at Myers Industries to begin. Grant, please go ahead.

Grant Fitz: Thank you, Jordan. Good morning and thank you for joining us. I’m Grant Fitz, Chief Financial Officer at Myers Industries. Joining me today is Mike McGaugh, our President and Chief Executive Officer. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release outlining the financial results for the second quarter of 2023. We’ve also posted a presentation to accompany today’s prepared remarks. If you’ve not yet received a copy of either the release or the PowerPoint, you can access them on our website at www.myersindustries.com under the Investor Relations tab. This call is also being webcast on our website and will be archived along with the transcripts — transcript of the call shortly after this to that. Please turn to Slide 2 of the PowerPoint for our Safe-Harbor disclosures.

I would like to remind you that we make some forward-looking statements during this call. These comments are made pursuant to the Safe-Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are based on management’s current expectations and involve risk, uncertainties and other factors which may cause results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. Also please be advised that certain non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted gross profit, adjusted operating income, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EPS may be discussed on this call and are reconciled to the nearest GAAP metric and the exhibits to today’s press release and to our presentation. For information concerning these risks, uncertainties and other factors is set forth in the company’s periodic SEC filings and may be found in the company’s 10-K and 10-Q filings.

Please turn to Slide 3 of our presentation, I’m now pleased to turn the call over to Mike McGaugh.

Michael McGaugh: Thank you, Grant. Good morning, everyone and welcome to our second quarter 2023 earnings call. Before we discuss our quarterly performance, I want to take a moment to say how delighted we are to welcome our new CFO, Grant Fitz to our organization. Grant has considerable experience across the industrial, automotive and technology sectors. His financial acumen, experience and leadership will deliver meaningful contributions to Myers Industries and help us execute our 3 Horizon strategy. Welcome, Grant. We’re glad you’re here. As I prepared my remarks for this quarter, many of my comments directionally echo the past few quarters. We continue to face demand headwinds in certain end-markets, primarily in recreational vehicles, in marine tanks and in high-dollar consumer discretionary items such as gas cans, in decorative planners and Home Goods.

Just as in past quarters, we continue to offset the impact of these demand headwinds through our operational excellence and commercial excellence initiatives, what we call our self-help initiatives to drive performance improvements at Myers. We still have a long, multi-year runway of profit-improvement opportunities due to our self-help initiatives. These improvements are largely within our control and we will continue to execute them through this year and beyond. One concrete example on the operational excellence side are the gains we’ve made in productivity, allowing us to streamline our asset footprint and take cost-out of the company. Due to running our plants in a more optimal fashion, we continue to on our new capacity, what we call the hidden factory.

This enhanced productivity and new found capacity has allowed us to optimize our footprint and take cost out of the company. An example of this is our recent move to consolidate 2 rotational molding facilities in Northern Indiana into a single facility. This move improves our efficiency and saves cost. Across-the-board, we’re using our operational excellence focus to drive a more variable cost structure, reducing cost when demand is soft but ensuring we are well-positioned to meet the demand when markets recover. While we are serious about cutting costs, we’re also serious about investing in-building critical capabilities that we need to improve our profit margins in Horizon 1 and execute our growth plans in Horizon 2 and 3. One example, we are investing to standardize and institutionalize our best practices by building out the Myers business system which will allow company to scale faster, with fewer pitch points.

In an another example, we invested over $1 million this past quarter towards other building out our best-in-class M&A frameworks, tools and capabilities to help us acquire and integrate larger and more complicated companies. Both of these new capabilities, the business system and M&A will serve us well as we pursue meaningful acquisition opportunities. We are focused and disciplined in our approach to acquisitions, we have a world-class team, a strong balance sheet and are ready to act decisively on the right target. As we’ve said before, we won’t get deal fever, we won’t overpay, we are and we will continue to be disciplined in our M&A approach. Now, let’s get to our results. Second quarter of 2023 was challenging, given the softness of some end-markets but this quarter also demonstrated the resilience in our earnings and cash generation capabilities, driven in-part by our focus on our self-help actions and our disciplined execution in general and the consistent pursuit of our 3 Horizon strategy.

Fourth quarter, we had 8% growth in our Distribution segment, largely driven by the Mohawk acquisition. In our Material Handling segment, we experienced the softening demand across multiple end-markets, partially countered by the strategic actions we took, allowing us to expand our adjusted gross margin for the quarter by 90 basis points to 32.9%. While many of the end-markets in our Material Handling segment experienced lower demand due to the current macroenvironment, we continue to see many meaningful bright spots for the future. One example is our focus on the agriculture market, demand for our seed boxes continues to be strong and profitable. Second opportunity is our effort to develop what we believe will be a large and lasting opportunity for our Scepter cases in military lightweighting projects around the world.

A third example is our investment and focus to grow our e-commerce channel. We are investing in-building this capability and anticipate the gross sales-through this channel we’ll approach $40 million in 2023, roughly doubling our e-commerce sales revenue from just 3 years ago. In our Distribution segment, we made a change — leadership change naming Jim Gurnee, our Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Commercial Excellence to also lead this segment. Over the past 3 years, Jim has done an excellent job advancing Myers’ commercial capabilities. Jim’s expertise leadership and ability to deliver on demonstrated results are precisely what’s needed to take our Distribution segment performance to a higher-level. Our recent EBITDA margins and distribution have been below my expectations and I’m confident that under Jim’s leadership we will improve and expand our EBITDA margins in the near-term.

Just as with Material Handling, we also have bright spots for the future of the Distribution segment. We have a bullish long-term view due expected growth for the tire industry, in-part driven by the growth of electric vehicles. I’m also bullish on the future of the Distribution segment due to the new leadership and the resulting impact on our reinvigorated, aligned and strong management team. Now, I’ll pass the call to Grant to walk through our financial results for the quarter and expectations for full-year.

Grant Fitz: Thank you, Mike. I want to take a moment to say how excited I am to be part of Myers Industries. Mike and his team have done a tremendous job positioning this business to reach new heights through the Myers business system. We have a strong platform here at Myers that is poised for growth across new end-markets, products and geographies over the coming years and I am honored to be part of that trajectory. Please turn to Slide 4 for a summary of our second quarter results. Our second quarter net sales were down $24.7 million or 10.6% compared to the second quarter of 2022, primarily from lower sales in the Material Handling segment, largely due to reduced demand for RV and marine products, as well as softening in the consumer end-markets and the timing of seed box sales in Q2 which impacted the food and beverage end-market.

However, this decline was partially offset by incremental sales of $9.3 million from the Mohawk Rubber acquisition in our Distribution segment. On an organic basis, contributions from higher pricing in the Distribution segment were more than offset by lower volumes in both Distribution and Material Handling segments. Our quarterly adjusted profit decreased $6.1 million or 8.2% as the contributions from lower raw-material costs and the Mohawk Rubber acquisition were not enough to offset lower sales volumes. Adjusted gross profit — gross margin for the quarter increased 90 basis points to 32.9% compared with 32% in the second quarter 2022. Second quarter adjusted operating income decreased $4.6 million or 19.4% compared to the prior year, as a result of lower gross profit.

After removing adjusting items, SG&A expenses were down $1.7 million year-over-year as a percentage of sales and as a percentage of sales increased to 23.8% compared with 22% in the same period last year. Included in the Q2 SG&A expense is $1.3 million of M&A consulting to strengthen Myers acquisition capabilities, as we move into larger potential acquisitions in Horizon 2. Adjusted EBITDA was $24.7 million in the second quarter, a decrease of $4.2 million or 14.4% compared to the prior period. Adjusted EBITDA margin decreased 50 basis points to 11.9% for the second quarter compared with 12.4% in the same period last year. Lastly, adjusted EPS was $0.35 compared to $0.45 in the same period last year. EBITDA adjustments include environmental charge through remediation, investigation, acquisition integration cost and other restructuring cost actions.

Next, please turn to Slide 5 for an overview of our segment performance for the second quarter. For the Material Handling segment, net sales decreased $29.8 million or 17.2% compared to the prior year. This decrease was the result of lower sales in the consumer vehicle and industrial end-markets and timing of the food and beverage end-market sales. Declines in the RV and marine markets significantly impacted the Material Handling segment revenue, as well as overall softening of consumer spending in our markets and timing of agricultural orders. Material Handling adjusted EBITDA decreased $2.7 million or 8.2% to $29.9 million. Lower sales volume and unfavorable pricing more than offset lower raw-material costs and favorable sales mix. Net sales for the Distribution segment increased $5.1 million or 8.5% year-over-year.

Excluding the incremental $9.3 million of net sales from the Mohawk Rubber acquisition, organic net sales decreased 6.9%. Distribution’s adjusted EBITDA decreased $0.2 million or 3.7% to $4.7 million, primarily due to an increase in product costs and higher SG&A expenses year-over-year. SG&A expenses were higher year-over-year, primarily as a result of the Mohawk Rubber acquisition. The Distribution segment continues to integrate Mohawk Rubber and we are implementing new cost initiatives and further strategic pricing actions to kind of cost inflation and drive margin expansion. Turning to Slide 6, free cash-flow for the second quarter of 2023 was $16.7 million compared to $21.1 million for the second quarter of 2022. The decrease in cash-flow versus the prior year was primarily the result of lower earnings.

Working capital as a percentage of net sales decreased 70 basis points compared to the same period last year due to a continued focus by the team and working capital improvements. On a sequential basis, working capital as a percent of net sales were flat. Capital expenditures for the second quarter of 2023 were $6.1 million and cash on hand at quarter end totaled $30.7 million. Our balance sheet remained strong and continues to support our growth runway with a debt-to-adjusted EBITDA of 0.9 times. Now please turn to Slide 7 for an update on our outlook for the fiscal year 2023. Given the macro challenges that we’ve seen across our various end-markets, we elected to lower our top-line guidance to a decline in the mid-single digit range. However, with a proven ability to mitigate the impact of unfavorable market conditions, our profitability guidance for the year of net income per diluted share is in the range of $1.41 to $1.73 and we are reiterating our adjusted earnings per diluted share in the range of $1.55 to $1.85.

If current market conditions continue it’s more likely that we will be closer to the lower end of the adjusted EPS range. We continue to retain a strong balance sheet which is supported by consistent free cash generation. For the full-year, we expect capital expenditures to be in the range of $25 million to $30 million and an effective tax rate of approximately 25%. Before I turn the call over to Mike for an update on our strategy, I’d like to extend my gratitude to the entire Myers team for their warm welcome and continued hard work during the quarter. I am very excited about where Myers is headed and I am pleased to be part of the effort to transform this company into a world-class organization. Mike?

Michael McGaugh: Thank you, Grant. Please turn to Slide 8. We have consistency in our direction and in our purpose. I outlined our long-term vision 3 years ago. This multiyear road map is simple, clear and consistent and we continue to execute against it. I have confidence in our direction, in our company and in the shareholder value that this strategy delivers. Through Horizon 1, we have built a solid foundation of talent, operational capability and commercial excellence and in Horizon 2, we will build on that foundation as we transform Myers. Please turn to Slide 9 which outlines the 4 strategic pillars that provide the framework of our strategy. We use these 4 pillars to guide the tactics and work plans that drive the transformation of our company.

I’ll spend a few minutes walking through our progress of each pillar on Slide 10. First, organic growth remains a crucial element in Myers transformation into a high-performing, high-growth company. We continue to make investments to further strengthen our commercial capabilities, preparing Myers for an accelerated return to strong organic growth as end market demand recovers. Specific investments include continued third-party assessments and training for our sales team, as well as training and education on target account planning, market planning and value-based pricing for our commercial and marketing teams. We can sustain our investment in these critical capabilities due to the fact that our end markets and products are relatively diversified, providing us consistent cash flow and an ability to invest in ourselves.

As I mentioned earlier, we’re capitalizing on favorable trends in both our Material Handling and Distribution segments that we believe will stimulate future organic growth. As an example, in our Material Handling segment, we are pursuing innovative growth projects like our lightweighting efforts for the military. We also expect positive impact in our distribution segment as a result of electric vehicle mandates because heavier EVs where tires down at an accelerated pace compared to traditional internal combustion vehicles. We expect both of these trends to be meaningful medium to longer-term tailwinds for Myers. Before I leave organic growth, I do want to highlight that we’re celebrating our recent significant target account win in the distribution segment, landing a new nationwide customer that will bring significant revenue to the segment.

Now moving on to the strategic M&A pillar. In second quarter, we worked with outside advisers to strengthen Myer’s processes and capabilities and target assessment, due diligence and integration planning. We spent significant time and effort building and organizing our capabilities so that as we identify and pursue larger acquisition opportunities, we’re well positioned to capture those opportunities and deliver meaningful cost and growth synergies. Our M&A playbook has been sufficient from previous Horizon 1 bolt-on deals and we’re now well prepared to tackle larger Horizon 2 and 3 acquisitions. One word on M&A, we’ve seen strong deal flow over the past several months and many opportunities have been well aligned with our strategic screens.

We’ve been disciplined in our assessment of potential synergies and valuation. In general, we see that financial performance of many businesses has been impacted by the recent economic environment. However, sellers projections of future performance are still quite optimistic, creating a disconnect in valuation expectations. We feel we’re in a good position as it relates to M&A and we have a strong balance sheet, a clear and consistent strategy and screening criteria and we are prepared to act decisively once we are confident that a transaction will create significant value for Myers shareholders. Now, moving on to the operational excellence pillar. We continue to focus on deploying better processes and purchasing in supply chain and in product and asset management.

In past calls, I’ve spoken to the improvements we are realizing through a more centralized structured approach to purchasing. On the supply chain and asset management side, I’ve spoken about the hidden factory of new and uncovered capacity that we are realizing by better operating and scheduling our plants. All of these are lowering our cost. The recent streamlining of our asset footprint that I highlighted earlier in this call is an example of obtaining lower cost through operational excellence. In spite of inconsistent end-market demand, we’re confident that we continue to have the significant multi-year runway to deliver earnings per share gains through productivity and operational excellence. What’s exciting is that these gains are largely within our control and will continue to provide EBITDA improvements year-over-year.

As I mentioned in the past two quarterly earnings calls, we continue to use the years 2023 and 2024 to institutionalize the progress we’ve made at Myers. We’re doing this by creating a business system. The Myers business system is driving standard work and standard processes to ensure that our gains over the past 3 years are lasting and a part of Myer’s DNA. In the second quarter, we’ve invested time and financial resources to further build VMBS [ph]. We believe the Myers Business System is critical to transforming our company in ensuring that the improvements we have made in Horizon 1 are sustainable and scalable in Horizon 2 and 3. Turning to the fourth pillar, our high-performing culture. In the second quarter, we strengthened our executive team with the hiring of Grant, as well as the decision to have Jim Gurnee lead the Distribution segment.

With these two moves, I’m convinced we now have the strongest and most streamlined leadership team in my tenure at Myers. With this team, we are very well prepared to create significant shareholder value as we drive Myers into the future. Our strategy of targeting and recruiting large-cap talent from strong industrial firms continues to be in place. This model has been a key ingredient of Myers transformation and progress so far and we plan to stick with it. While our ability to recruit talent to our company is a key strength, it’s also important to note that we are building our bench strength by developing our next generation of leaders internally through new assignments, stretch assignments and new roles. This type and level of talent development we are doing at Myers is more akin to the programs found in much larger companies.

Yes, there’s a cost to this investment and we’re making it because the development of our bench is critical in order for us to deliver our growth aspirations over the next 5 to 6 years. To conclude, I’m excited for Myers in our future. I’m proud of the results of our self-help initiatives and the progress on our long-term strategy. I’m confident in the structure and capabilities we are building both in M&A and in the Myers Business System. I remain committed to the disciplined approach in which we are investigating, vetting and evaluating prospective acquisitions. I continue to believe that for our team being a part of Myers is the opportunity of a lifetime and I continue to believe this opportunity will translate into attractive shareholder returns.

Thank you for your continued interest and support in Myers Industries. With that, I’ll turn the call over to the operator for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Jonnathan Navarrete of Cowen.

Jonnathan Navarrete: Jonnathan on for Lance. My first question is, it’s very exciting, can you discuss the opportunity in electrical vehicles? And are there any big contracts for us to be aware of and see the benefits in, let’s say, the second half of ’23 or would this be more of a 2024 story?

Grant Fitz: This is Grant. Just let me walk through this a little bit. So first of all, I spent a fair amount of my career in the automotive industry, so — and it was actually also on a public company Board for an electric charging company. So I spent a little bit of time in this space. What we see overall is that with the tire industry right now, that’s expected to grow anywhere from 3% to 4% to 5% on which outlook you look at. Embedded within that is the electric growth for vehicle or vehicle — electric vehicle growth, excuse me. And part of that is, as Mike mentioned, is electric vehicles, they tend to wear out the tires much faster. They are essentially — we’re out about 20% faster than what conventional internal combustion engine vehicles do.

It’s really driven by two things, one is just the heavier weight of the vehicles causes more wear and additionally, there tends to be more torque that electric vehicles have, particularly front-end torque which can also drive down the increase where the vehicles. So we see that as a real tailwind as electric vehicles continue to be expand in the overall vehicle market. And so with that, I would say that this bodes very well for our distribution business because it does — as vehicles were out, there certainly will be more and more focus on what they can do to repair, replace and replenish tires in the industry. As far as additional opportunities, we really see it as an overall trend for the entire market that we’ll basically be able to benefit from.

And so from that standpoint, we feel very good about our distribution segment and just where it’s going from a market and our ability to capture that with some of the additional discipline that Jim Gurnee brought in as the new leader for our operations.

Jonnathan Navarrete: Moving on just to the end markets. Obviously, the second quarter, there were some softness in some key areas and I’m wondering as of what you have seen so far in a month in the third quarter, right? Have you seen operating conditions improve in any particular end market? And do you see a trend where some of the soft market in the second quarter are going to pick up perhaps sometimes during the middle of the third quarter or into the fourth quarter?

Michael McGaugh: This is Mike. So it’s a bit of a mixed bag — a bit of a mixed bag. We do see some weakness on the wholesale side of RVs and that was a nice market for our company. We do see continued strong sales in the back half of the year for the seed boxes which is in the food and beverage end market. The Industrial is still going to be soft. There’s going to be some softness there. And on the Consumer side, right now, we’re tracking a bit behind on the sale of some of our consumer products, most notably fuel containers or gas cans. It’s our current expectation that we’ll have an average year on hurricane. There may be some upside there, given some recent forecasts we may end up with an above-average hurricane season from an activity standpoint. But net-net, the next 6 months, you’re going to continue to see softer demand for the storage handling products that we make in Material Handling on average.

Grant Fitz: I would just add as well too, Jonnathan, that we do see, as Mike mentioned, we do have a larger industrial customer for our distribution business that we’ve been able to secure that contract. So that will provide some upside revenue for the distribution business that we’ve also reflected that in our range. And then overall, the momentum that we continue to grow with the e-commerce business is something that is very positive for us. And certainly, the military that we talked about in the past provide some good opportunities and how quickly that will ramp is still a TBD but we certainly see some upside opportunity there as well.

Michael McGaugh: Yes, that’s correct.

Jonnathan Navarrete: And my last one is with the revenue guidance now going a little bit lower than before but you still have the ability to maintain some key profitability metrics, right? So I’m wondering, should the need arise, what other key cost levers if you will does the company have that they can poach should they need to — in order to maintain this type of profitability guidance?