RPM International Inc. (NYSE:RPM) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

John McNulty: Got it. And then maybe if I can squeeze in more just on just on MAP 2025, can you just give us an update where you are, I think, you were at about million run rate in the prior quarter. I guess, can you help us to understand where you are at, it sounds like you may have some upside to the $120 million target for this year?

Frank Sullivan: I will hit that $120 million target this year. But one of the things that people have to adjust relative to original expectations in Q3 is most of the MAP 2025 programs are focused at the gross profit level. So it’s greater efficiencies. It’s establishing greater levels of capacity through greater efficiencies. It’s a much more deliberate data usage on managing cost price mix. And it’s having a good effect. The reason that’s relevant to Q3 is it doesn’t flow through your P&L until you sell something and given the seasonal low of our third quarter revenues, the impact in Q3 of MAP 2025 will be less than what you saw in Q1 and Q2. And then you will see a disproportionately larger impact of MAP 2025 in Q4 because of our higher sales.

John McNulty: Got it. Got it. Thanks very much for the color. Appreciated, Frank.

Frank Sullivan: Sure. Yeah. Just to qualify that further. I think that’s an important thing to note that the MAP 2025 benefits will, because of where we are targeting them, be driven proportionally by a revenue basis as opposed to taking our communications about for instance $120 million and dividing it by 12 or dividing it by four, it won’t play out that way.

Operator: And our next question will come from Frank Mitsch with Fermium Research. Please go ahead.

Frank Sullivan: Good morning, Frank.

Frank Mitsch: Hey. Good morning, Frank, and Happy New Year to you and everybody there. The comment was made that November and December saw a significant slowdown. So I was wondering if you could kind of quantify maybe on a percentage basis or a dollar basis or what have you, the negative year-over-year impact that you have seen particularly in December. And as part of that, I’d be curious as to what your — what’s being embedded in terms of recovery in January and February in the $75 million to $85 million operating income?

Frank Sullivan: Sure. So I will try and address it in two ways. Number one, the biggest negative impact in Q2 and at the end going into Q3 is regional and it’s Europe. Europe was down 11% in revenues. If you assume price in there, you can make some assumptions that Europe was down even greater on unit volume and while we don’t disclose EBIT by region, EBIT in the European market was off by more than 50% year-over-year. And we have a disproportion, out of a $1 billion base of business, roughly half of that is in our Construction Products Group. And so that gives you a sense of the greatest challenge that we are facing, which is regional. We also saw a slowdown in residential, which today with Nudura and a few other product lines out of a $2.7 billion.

Construction Products Group, we have about a $200 million exposure to residential new construction. And including some of our Consumer businesses, I’d say our total exposure to residential new construction in North America is about $300 million. The last comment I will make again, which makes the performance at the end of Q2 and the beginning of Q3 difficult is, we had a weather event not dissimilar to a year ago that impacted the entire United States and so that slowed down results for us as we start off this third quarter and it will be interesting to see recessionary.

Frank Mitsch: Got you. That’s very helpful. And interestingly, there’s a lot of discussion regarding destock among the customer base, et cetera, your inventory levels continue to tick higher. I am wondering how we should be thinking about that?