Christopher Klein
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open
Thank you, Brian, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. Our teams drove strong sales and profit gains in the first quarter as the home products market continued to grow at the pace that we expected. Our core businesses performed well across all segments and we remain focused on driving profitable growth. Based on the solid first quarter performance, the momentum we have inside of our businesses and our recent share repurchases, we are increasing our full-year EPS outlook. Let me first spend some time on our view of the U.S. home products market. Next I'll provide my perspective on our business performance in the first quarter. Lee will then provide more details on our first quarter performance and 2016 outlook. Starting with our view of the U.S. home products market. In the first quarter, the market for our home products continued to grow at the pace that we expected it would. We estimate that repair and remodel activity grew over 5% and new construction grew low double-digits. Repair and remodel activity remained steady with consumers continuing to demonstrate an appetite for more on-trend styling, product differentiation, and project complexity. We see the impact of these trends in the improving mix across our categories. As anticipated, new construction demand is growing at a low double-digit rate and we expect single-family to grow faster than multifamily, as single-family entry-level activity is beginning to accelerate. Additionally, we saw added strength for more days of good weather in the first quarter. And more broadly, our basket of near-term indicators point to stronger underlying demand and continued market momentum as we head into the busier seasons of the year for home products. In fact, we think there could be some upside to market growth assumptions. As R&R and new construction demand look strong, financing at affordable rates is more accessible, and builders and contractors seem to be making progress on attracting more labor into the industry. In spite of these positive indicators, we think it's too early to revise our full year market outlook higher. So our overall assumption remains that the U.S. home products market, which impacts 70% of our sales, grows at a combined 6% to 7% rate for the full year 2016. However, we are closely monitoring market activity as we move through the spring season and we will determine any further upside to our market assumptions as the year unfolds. Within that overall assumption, the pace of repair and remodel demand is assumed to grow at around 5% rate and new home construction is assumed to grow around 10%. Now let me provide some perspective on our business performance. For the first quarter, sales increased 16% in total and 20% for our U.S. home products businesses. Importantly, total company operating margin increased 180 basis points to 9.5% with solid performance across all operating segments. Starting with our Cabinet segment, we continue to follow a disciplined strategy focused on profitable growth. Our consistent pace of product innovation and our high levels of reliable service to our channel partners continue to drive strong performance. In the first quarter, our overall Cabinet sales were up 34% over the prior year, and increased 12% excluding the Norcraft acquisition with broad growth across all channels. Specifically, sales in our largest channel, dealers, grew 62% and 16% excluding the Norcraft acquisition. Our share gains are coming from our new construction product lines in this channel and deeper multi-line relationships with existing customers. We're beginning to cross-sell more of our product lines across our recently expanded dealer network. Our home center in-stock cabinets and vanity sales grew mid-single-digits due largely to sell-through of new programs and product upgrades that we launched last year. Our Cabinet team has been focused on partnering with our customers to consistently balance inventory levels with production to further enhance service and manufacturing efficiency. The remaining 25% of our Cabinets business, which includes home center semi-custom, builder direct in select markets, and Canada, grew strong double-digits. We're disciplined in our approach to these segments as we focus on where we can partner with customers to capture profitable growth. With our focused approach, we grew share in these segments and drove strong margin improvement. We are especially pleased with our home center special order business where our partnership approach is working well and driving nice growth. The Norcraft acquisition is on track. Cost savings are running ahead of initial projections. We're adding capabilities, and we're beginning to see some sales benefits as well. It's a wonderful combination and the teams are working well together. Overall for Cabinets, we continue to execute well across multiple facets of a complex category. Our plants are increasingly more efficient and we are pleased we added capacity when we did to handle the growth that is now being realized. On the front end of the business, we're performing particularly well as we build share in the most attractive segments of the market by deepening our partnerships with dealers, home centers, and builders. The impact of our consistent execution can be seen in our share gains, our stronger mix, and our improving margins. For our Plumbing segment, sales were up 2% for the quarter with solid mix and strong operating margin. Sales increased 6%, excluding the negative impact of currency and some channel inventory reductions by select wholesale and retail customers who drew down inventory in the quarter as we expected. We remain on track for our Plumbing sales to increase mid to high single-digits for the full year. In the first quarter, POS growth ran at mid-single-digits across U.S. wholesale and retail. So far in the second quarter, customer orders are running ahead of POS levels and we have a number of product introductions that are flowing into the market coupled with investments we have made in showroom displays and marketing programs. Across our markets, we continue to see consumers trade up and our mix improve as innovation and design, finish and function attract consumers who trust our brand. In the coming quarters, we have a strong lineup of new products which include additional Magnetix, easy-docking, easy-releasing showerheads, pull-down and pull-out faucets with Reflex center, Kendall, Glenshire and [indiscernible] Dartmoor bath suites targeting builders and wholesale showrooms. Sales in Canada were down low single-digits to the prior year, but were up high single-digits excluding the negative impact of currency. China sales increased low single-digits versus prior year, but were up mid-single-digits in local currency, driven primarily by our retail stores and e-commerce. We remain optimistic about both our long-term business model in China and the growth potential and are encouraged by their R&R activity that we are seeing. Doors reported sales were up 13% for the quarter, Door products again saw sales growth driven by gains in both new construction and retail. Mix continued to improve. The consumer is more frequently choosing our decorative glass designs and premium upgrades. Like our recently launched Classic-Craft doors that capitalize on the growing trend toward taller doors and wider openings. In addition to innovative new products, furniture is benefiting from last year's rollout of our refreshed retail strategy. That includes an enhanced product lineup, simpler more intuitive displays, and better sales support for our customers' associates. And in wholesale, we continue to benefit from strong new construction placements and our enhanced distribution in the Western United States. In Security segment, sales increased 1% from the prior-year quarter and were up approximately 3.5% excluding the negative impact of currency and exited Sentry product lines. The growth was driven by mid-single-digit increases in both Master Lock U.S. retail and U.S. commercial. These increases were somewhat offset by the planned exit of some less profitable Sentry Safe product lines as part of the broader Sentry integration. We continue to be excited about the opportunities we see between our Master Lock and Sentry businesses over the next few years. And the integration of Sentry into Master Lock is on track to be completed this summer. So to recap the quarter, results were strong. We again executed well in the U.S. home products market that is continuing to grow as we expected. Our teams are delivering profitable growth on that momentum. Before I wrap up, let me comment on our efforts to drive long-term growth. We continue to believe that we can create meaningful incremental shareholder value by using our strong cash flow and balance sheet to make strategic acquisitions, repurchase our shares and increase our dividend. Right now, we're busy evaluating a healthy pipeline of potential acquisitions. We're assessing a number of opportunities. And while we cannot guarantee success in any one situation, I'm encouraged with the number of things we're looking at and the quality of these businesses. Meanwhile in the first quarter, we were again successful at repurchasing some of our shares at very attractive prices. It's important to note that we repurchased our shares as part of a process, which highlights when a significant disconnect is occurring between the equity markets valuation and our expected long-term business performance. Over the next three years, we continue to believe that we have the potential to deploy more than $2 billion to drive incremental growth and shareholder value. To sum up, the demand for our home products remained strong as we expected, and we continue to grow faster than our market. Our strong brands, management teams and capital structure provide flexibility to both focus on profitable organic growth, and drive incremental shareholder value with our balance sheet and strong free cash flow. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Lee who will review our financial performance and provide detail on our increased EPS outlook for 2016.