UFP Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:UFPI) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Matt Missad: Yeah, that’s a great question. And what I would point to is the, I’ll call it reasonable optimism that the second half of the year was going to be significantly better because we were expecting interest rate to come down a little bit from the Fed. That doesn’t appear to be happening. So that’s the largest single issue. I think we’re just basically reflecting the difference and we’re looking at what we’re seeing. We’re talking to our customers. They’re indicating a change from what even we had a couple months ago because of the interest rate expectations. So we haven’t lost any confidence in the business. We still believe that our share is strong and we have opportunities to gain share and we will certainly be doing our best to do that. But we think overall demand without the interest rate drop is going to be kind of in line with where we are today, as opposed to improving in the second half.

Reuben Garner,: And just one last quick follow up there. Your first quarter kind of mix between ProWood and composites or decorators. Would it look something like that as the year progresses, where we may still see growth in the decorator side and it’s offset by unit declines in the treated lumber business?

Matt Missad: Yes, we would expect that. I think it’s also important, Reuben, to note that I’m certainly not talking on a sequential basis. I’m talking more relative to year-over-year because second and third quarter we still expect will be more in line kind of with seasonality, typical seasonality. But we do expect that decorators has opportunities to continue to grow and take share.

Reuben Garner,: Got it. Thank you, guys. I’ll pass it on. Good luck.

Matt Missad: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our next question that will come from the line of Kurt Yinger with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open.

Kurt Yinger: Great, thanks and good morning, everyone.

Matt Missad: Good morning, Kurt.

Kurt Yinger: I just wanted to go back to Site Build and hopefully put a bow on it. But you talked about pricing and the idea that from a competitive standpoint, seems like things have kind of stabilized there. Is there a tail impact from the multifamily dynamic that may continue to weigh on margins, even though pricing is generally stable at this point? Or do you think you’ve worked through those challenges as a whole?

Matt Missad: That’s a good question, Kurt. I’m not sure I have a great answer for you. I guess what I would look to is the consolidation in the industry over the last few years on the Site Build side, I think probably is a dynamic that needs to be considered as you think about what’s going on in the marketplace. We have expected that multifamily, at some point in time would take a brief pause or peers that maybe that’s where we are as they wait for rates to improve. So I think my outlook right now is that if demand stays relatively in this range, that the pricing should stay relatively in this range.

Kurt Yinger: Got it. Okay, thanks for that. And then on the retail side, it was kind of striking to me, looking at the gross margin. Very strong for that business, which is surprising, considering volumes seem to still be a little bit soft and not a whole heck of a lot going on in lumber. So maybe give us a little bit more color around what you saw there and whether there was anything from a mix perspective worth calling out with the transfer of certain sales to other segments.

Matt Missad: Yeah, that’s a good observation, Kurt, and I think there might be a little bit of a head fake [ph] in there. You know this well, but if we look at our – if we look at how we price products there with a fixed adder, when the lumber market goes down, obviously the percentage goes up, even though the fixed adder is the same. So I think you’re seeing that as a big contributor to this swing that you’re observing there. It’s primarily driven more by the lower lumber market than by anything else. And the team’s been working really hard on operating improvements. So I know the retail team has added inventory managers. Inventories are much more, much better positioned now than they’ve been in the past. We’re using our vendor managed inventory programs more now than we have in the past.

Last year, we were still integrating the Sunbelt team into our ERP systems and, and operating practices. The Edge team kind of stubbed its toe out of the gate, so there’s a lot of opportunities for operating improvements, and the team’s just done a fantastic job on getting after those.

Kurt Yinger: Got you. And about a year ago, you guys acquired Cedar Poly. Any noteworthy kind of updates in terms of integration and savings that the combination of that and decorators has provided thus far?

Matt Missad: Yeah, so if you look at Cedar Poly, we’ve essentially become – they’re not exclusive, necessarily, but pretty close to their exclusive customer for our wood plastic composite operations. We’re exploring the other opportunities to open that up for other materials which could be used with our Surestone technology. But that’s served us very well and in line with what we expected in terms of cost savings. And we are continuing to explore additional opportunities, including being able to utilize more recycled material in our finished products. Our commitment to quality once requires us to make sure that quality comes first. And if we can add more recycled content without hurting quality at all, we’ll continue to do that.

Kurt Yinger: Got you. Okay. And then just last one, can you remind us any notable organic growth plans or, sorry, organic capital plans in the Site Build business this year? And I guess as we look at the $100 million of kind of growth related CapEx, how much of that is related to decorators capacity specifically this year?

Matt Missad: Yeah, I’ll answer the first question first. And Mike can probably give you the specific numbers if we’re allowed to give you the specific numbers. But what I would tell you is we have significant amounts built in for the Site Build group to expand both geographically and to improve certain locations, including relocating existing locations to larger, more efficient facilities. So that’s baked into those numbers, as well as adding decorators capacity, which we’ve talked about on prior calls and talked about a couple months ago as well. We’re excited about growing that capacity both in Selma and in a location in the northeast. So those are all on the board for this year.