Operator
Operator
Good afternoon. My name is Scott, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Fortune Brands' Home & Security First Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Thank you. Brian Lantz, Senior Vice President, Communications and Corporate Administration, you may begin your conference. Brian C. Lantz - Fortune Brands Home & Security, Inc.: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Fortune Brands' Home & Security Quarterly Investor Conference Call and Webcast. We are pleased to be here today to provide an update on our progress during the first quarter of 2018. Hopefully, everyone has had a chance to review the news release issued earlier. The news release and the audio replay of the webcast of this call can be found in the Investor section of our fbhs.com website. I want to remind everyone that the forward-looking statements we make on the call today, either in our prepared remarks or in the associated question-and-answer session, are based on current expectations and on market outlook and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those currently anticipated. These risks are detailed in our various filings with the SEC such as our Annual Report on 10-K. The company does not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements, which speak only to the time at which they are made. Any references to operating profit, earnings per share or cash flow on today's call will focus on the results on a before charges and gains basis for continuing operations, with the exception of cash flow, unless otherwise specified. With me on the call today are Chris Klein, our Chief Executive Officer; and Pat Hallinan, our Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we've allowed for some time to address questions that you may have. I will now turn the call over to Chris. Christopher J. Klein - Fortune Brands Home & Security, Inc.: Thank you, Brian, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. Our teams delivered solid sales and earnings growth in the first quarter, which was on plan and met our overall expectations. This was in spite of the challenging weather across the Midwest and East Coast versus last year's milder winter. We also had inflationary input cost across our businesses that we are pricing for, and we will see more of the benefit in margin expansion as the year unfolds. Our business has performed well overall, and the results in our Global Plumbing Group were outstanding. Based on the strong momentum we see in our Global Plumbing Group, share gains in Doors and Security and our accelerated set of actions to pivot our Cabinet business, which should drive more value in the second half of the year and into next year, we took advantage of the pullback in our share price, and we purchased a significant amount of our stock in the first four months of the year. I will return to the subject of capital deployment in a moment. Let me first spend some time on our view of the U.S. home products market. Next, I will provide my perspective on our business performance in the first quarter. Pat will then provide more details on our first quarter performance and 2018 outlook. Starting with our view of the U.S. home products market. In the first quarter, the market for our home products was slightly below the pace we planned. We estimate that repair-and-remodel activity grew between 4% and 5% and that new construction grew mid-single digits, slightly below our full-year expectation of high-single digits. The weather impact in the quarter, both on bigger ticket R&R and new construction, appears to be transitory, and our demand indicators remain strong. So our full-year outlook for both new construction and R&R remains unchanged as we head into the busy spring selling and construction season. Now, let me provide some perspective on our business performance. For the first quarter, sales increased 6% in total. Total company operating margin was similar to last year at roughly 10% as inflationary pressures were a headwind in all segments as anticipated. Operating margin is still expected to improve as we move through the year, particularly in the second half, as our pricing actions typically lag and many products are now shipping with price increases that offset the higher input costs that the industry is facing. Beginning with our Plumbing segment, we saw a strong performance from our most significant earnings engine, the GPG. Sales were up 19% for the quarter. Organic sales were up over 16%, with strong double-digit growth running ahead of the market across all channels, including wholesale, retail, Canada and China. We saw a significant share gains across all markets as a result of the strategy shift and management changes we initiated in 2016. And the new management team continues to execute and build momentum even with weather-related headwinds in many U.S. and Canadian markets. POS was strong in the quarter, and inventories look healthy moving forward as our channel partners more fully embrace the value that our GPG platform brings to their customers. The performance we are seeing is being driven by coordinated strategy. Taking a broader portfolio of products and brands into our existing market-leading channel positions across North America and China; growing a newer less penetrated sales channels such as hospitality; accelerating the portfolio with a more rapid pace of innovation; making more targeted investments in brand building; and leveraging more sophisticated channel capabilities, particularly in data analytics and e-commerce, where we continue to invest. The impact of these actions can be seen in our sales growth and share gains, our strong mix and our improving margins. Operating margin was solid and a little above our expectations for the first quarter as pricing actions and a better mix offset some of the inflation pressure and the increased investment spending are leveraging to drive sales growth above market. We will continue to position our Plumbing business for accelerated growth, consistent with our strategy. We're excited by the recent performance and long-term potential of the Global Plumbing Group, which has been building momentum over the last four quarters. And our broader band lineup is delivering results. Our recent acquisitions such as ROHL, Riobel, Perrin & Rowe, Shaws and Victoria + Albert are all performing well. And we have been successful going to market with this collection under the new channel concept, the House of ROHL, which our channels are embracing. In summary, our GPG strategy is working really well. The new team is executing at a very high level, and our Plumbing business has reemerged as the next big driver of earnings growth for our company. In our Doors business, sales were up 8% against a strong first quarter comp from last year as we continue to take share in the door market. Sustained share gains and mix improvements contributed to the strong performance in Doors, which was driven by low-double-digit growth by big builders in the wholesale channel. Retail sales also continued to grow and were up low double digits as well after adjusting for the prior year inventory load-in associated with retail wins. These results would have been even stronger but for the weather headwinds in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic and the prior year inventory load. The team also faced commodity pressures but has rolled in price increases that will more fully leverage as the year unfolds. Similar to our Plumbing Group, we have a relatively new Doors leadership team that has been upgrading its management talent across functions since 2016. They have refined their strategy, invested in new technology and innovation center and are delivering more rapid and sophisticated innovation and enhanced product offerings. As a result, the Doors team has continued to outperform the market and gain share by driving innovation in wholesale and retail, leveraging their distribution strength and refreshing targeted parts of the product portfolio. Sales from new product introductions at the high end of the fiberglass line were up double digits in the quarter and we're seeing strong sales tied to our new composite edge products and industry-leading door systems as well. We're evaluating new ways to continue to grow our Doors business aggressively, both through acquisition opportunities and new internal initiatives. In the Security segment, sales were solid and increased 4% from the prior year despite a strong comp and the headwind from winding down a non-core commercial line that we chose to exit in the middle of last year. Our core retail and commercial lines were up over 6% growing faster than the market. The growth was driven by solid sales in U.S. retail and commercial channels, which includes industrial accounts and security distributors. Retailers have been responding positively to our new product refreshers and combination locks, stainless steel padlocks and safes. The commercial channel is seeing strong pull-through from accounts with their presence in the construction market. In our Safes business, we continue to expand capacity in our new manufacturing facility. Margins were roughly even with prior year and impacted by inflation, but we continue to expect margins to improve in the back half of the year as price covers the input cost pressures we are experiencing. Before I transition to Cabinets, let me share some quick perspectives on our overall portfolio and the thought process through the early part of this year. As I just described, we see significant strength and momentum inside of our Plumbing, Doors, and Security businesses which represent two-thirds of the earnings power of our company. These businesses are running a bit ahead of our plan despite the weather and inflationary headwinds in the quarter. In Cabinets, the market continues to evolve in terms of consumer preferences, price points and labor constraints. We have successfully navigated the changes in the cabinet market over the last decade by refocusing our product lineup, supply chain, and customer service to address the needs of the consumer and our channels and from time-to-time have pulled back from the parts of the market that have become less attractive. As a result, you have seen us accelerate growth and gap up to the next margin threshold after each period of transition. We are now in the middle of one of those transition periods and are actively setting up the next wave of growth and margin expansion to achieve 14% operating margin with consistent mid-single-digit sales growth. More specifically, since our fourth quarter call, we have accelerated our plans for the strategic pivot in our Cabinet business and pulled forward some of our repositioning and restructuring actions. We believe these actions will play out over the rest of the year, begin to add value in the back half of the year and into 2019, and set us up nicely to capture profitable growth and expanded margins to 14% over the next three to four years. We have begun by investing and increasing capacity to support growth in the areas where we are already taking share and where more predictable volumes will flow in the Cabinet business over the next few years. At the same time we are reducing capacity for some slices of business in the U.S. and Canada in order to align our cost base to the potential we see in these areas which will result in some one-time charges in the second quarter. The impact of these actions, both the capacity reductions and business exits, should improve margins going forward and eliminate some of the top-line drag in these underperforming areas. When repositioned, we'll have a healthier mix of business going through our industry-leading dealer network, our key wholesale partners and our builder relationships, and an expanded margin profile as we leverage our unique supply chain advantages. In terms of the first quarter results in Cabinets, where normal winter weather, inflation in tariffs impacted Cabinets more than our other businesses. Storms caused multiple plant closures throughout the quarter, resulting in some operating inefficiencies and more typical operating leverage in the first quarter, most of which was already anticipated and in our plan as we were comping against a mild 2017. Sales overall were up 1%, adjusting for our exits. Our core dealer business was down slightly and was tied directly to accounts impacted by weather slowdowns, primarily in the Northeast and Midwest, as our dealer business in the South and West was much stronger. Our core in-stock cabinets and vanities business was also strong, with good POS. As previously discussed, we have increased prices and pulled back on promotional activity to offset input costs, which is currently playing out through our channels. The net result of the softer first quarter, coupled with pricing and accelerated restructuring actions in the first half, is that we now see our Cabinet results accelerating more significantly in the second half of 2018. I am confident that the results of our actions should begin adding value in the second half of this year and set us up well for the next three to four years of sales growth with higher margins than we enjoy in Cabinets today. So to recap the quarter overall. Results were solid and met our expectations in total. We again executed well in the U.S. home products market that ran a little below our plan due to weather. Our teams did an excellent job of growing our company sales and holding the line on margin until price has a more meaningful impact in the back half of the year. Before I wrap up, let me return to our capital deployment in the quarter and our broader plan to create long-term incremental value. Year-to-date through April, we have spent $400 million on share repurchases for about 6.4 million shares. We feel good about our 2018 outlook and are comfortable with our plans to drive value over the next three years. We're also engaged in active discussions with a number of potential acquisition targets. And the volume and pace of activity remains elevated. While the timing is uncertain, some capital deployment against M&A is likely to occur in the next 12 months. In terms of targets, we're assessing a number of opportunities across our businesses. And we also continue to evaluate the possibility of adding a new home product segment or category where we do not have a presence today. Regarding share repurchases. We plan to continue to use them opportunistically as a vehicle to generate attractive returns, consistent with prior practice. Using our strong cash flow and balance sheet, we have the capacity and flexibility to make strategic acquisitions, repurchase additional shares, and increase our dividend to create meaningful incremental shareholder value. As a reminder, over the next three years, we continue to believe that we have the potential to deploy an additional $2.5 billion to drive incremental growth and shareholder value. So to sum up, the demand for our home products remains solid, as we expected, and our year remains on track despite more normal winter weather. I'm encouraged by the strong momentum in the GPG and by our continued success in Doors and Security. I'm also encouraged by the pace of execution on our plans to drive long-term value in our Cabinet business and believe that all of our businesses have taken the right actions to address the pickup in inflation that we are seeing. So based on how things are progressing, we feel more confident in our full-year performance. We are maintaining our current sales outlook and increasing our EPS outlook based on share repurchase activity. We will further revisit our outlook on our second quarter call after assessing the key spring and early summer selling seasons. Long-term, we see continued solid demand for housing and home products, and our businesses are well-positioned to capture that demand. Plus, we will likely have an opportunity to add some businesses along the way. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Pat, who will review our financial performance and provide detail on our EPS outlook for 2018. Patrick D. Hallinan - Fortune Brands Home & Security, Inc.: Thanks, Chris. As Brian mentioned, to best reflect ongoing business performance, the majority of my comments will focus on income before charges and gains for continuing operation. Let me start with our first quarter results. Sales were $1.3 billion, up 6% from a year ago. Consolidated operating income for the quarter was $124 million, up 5% or over $6 million compared to the same quarter last year. Total company operating margin was 9.9%, roughly even with last year. We remain on track to achieve our goal of 50 basis points of operating margin improvement for the year. EPS were $0.56 for the quarter versus $0.53 the same quarter last year, an increase of 6%. EPS met our expectations in the quarter, and we were pleased by our team's ability to grow earnings during a period of elevated inflation and a more challenging winter. Now, let me provide more color on our segment results. Beginning with Plumbing, sales for the first quarter were $450 million, up $71 million or 19%, with share gains and our GPG strategy driving strong double-digit growth across all channels. Excluding acquisitions, sales were up strong double digits in the quarter, rising over 16%. Plumbing operating income increased to $92 million, up 33%. Operating margin was 20.5% and came in above our initial expectation, driven by strong leverage on our sales and share gains. We are taking our full-year Plumbing sales outlook up based on the strong Q1 performance. Versus our original outlook of high-single-digit growth, we now expect full-year Plumbing sales in the low-double-digits range, exclusive of any further acquisition, with margin performance at or slightly above 21%. Door sales were $110 million, up $8 million or 8% from the prior year quarter, driven by strong wholesale growth with big builders and continued share gains. Operating income increased $6 million and was up 73%. Operating margin for this segment was 12.5%, a 470 basis point increase from the prior year, as strong sales leverage and favorable mix resulted in first quarter margin above our expectations. For the full year, we expect Door sales to continue to outpace the market. Given our strong start to the year and the back-end weighted nature of our strategic expansion to retail, we now expect to achieve the high end of our original sales outlook for Doors. For the full year, we now anticipate Door sales in the low-double-digit range, with continued strong operating margin well above 15%. Security sales were $137 million in the first quarter, up 4%. Sales were impressive in the quarter as we comped to a growth rate of over 7% last year and considering the wind-down of a single non-core commercial line we exited last year. Segment operating income was flat at $15 million due to inflation, and the operating margin was 11.1%. For the full year, we continue to expect operating margin of over 16% in Security, with sales growth in the mid-single digits. In Cabinets, sales for the first quarter were $557 million, down $16 million or 3% versus the prior year quarter. Excluding the home center business, we exited at the beginning of this year and select low-margin Canadian business we exited in the middle of last year, Cabinet sales were up 1%. Excluding business exits, sales of in-stock cabinets and vanities grew high single digits on continued solid demand despite lower customer traffic due to weather. Builder sales were up low single digits despite a clear impact on new construction activity in the Midwest and East where we have a significant portion of our business. Dealer sales were off by low single digits on lower new construction activity and showroom traffic due to weather. Home center special order and sales in Canada were also down, reflecting the impact of our pullback on promotions. In Cabinets, where we anticipated a challenging first half, operating income in the quarter was $24 million, down 49%. Operating margin was 4.3%. Given the accelerated strategic changes Chris described earlier, we now expect full-year sales growth and operating margin in Cabinet to be slightly lower than expected at the start of the year. For the full year, we now expect cabinet sales to be up low single digits, with operating margin around 11%. To sum up consolidated first quarter performance. Sales increased 6%, and EPS were on plan at $0.56, overcoming a challenging comp to a milder winter and widespread inflation. Our total company operating margin was 9.9%, similar to last year despite the headwind. Turning to the balance sheet. Our March 31 balance sheet remains solid with cash of $244 million, debt of $1.9 billion, and our net debt-to-EBITDA leverage is 1.9 times. We currently have over $600 million remaining on our $1.25 billion revolver, and we continue to have substantial capacity and flexibility to fund potential acquisitions and repurchase additional shares as we move into the higher cash flow-generating quarters of the year. Year-to-date, we have repurchased over 6.4 million shares for approximately $400 million. Our approach to share repurchase continues to be opportunistic and focused on where we can generate significant returns. We have approximately $160 million remaining on our current share repurchase authorization. Turning last to the details of our outlook for 2018. As Chris mentioned, we are increasing our 2018 EPS outlook to the range of $3.58 to $3.70 versus $3.08 last year due to strong business performance in the first quarter and our share repurchase activity. We are encouraged by the positive demand signals we continue to see in the U.S. housing market and our business performance. The important spring selling season, especially after this more normal winter, we'll inform any further update to guidance at the end of the second quarter. We expect 2018 free cash flow of $525 million to $550 million with a conversion rate of over 90%. The annual EPS outlook includes the following assumptions: Interest expense of around $63 million, tax rate of approximately 25%, and average fully diluted shares of approximately 150 million. In summary, we are off to a good start to 2018. Demand indicators remain strong, and we delivered solid sales and earnings despite inflation and weather impacts across our categories. We remain well-positioned to use our balance sheet and cash flow to drive incremental shareholder value through acquisitions, share repurchases and dividends. I will now pass the call back to Brian. Brian C. Lantz - Fortune Brands Home & Security, Inc.: Thanks Pat. That concludes our prepared remarks on the first quarter of 2018. We will now begin taking a limited number of questions. Since there may be a number of you who would like to ask a question, I'll ask that you limit your initial questions to two and then re-enter the queue to ask additional questions. I will now turn the call back over to the operator to begin the question-and-answer session. Operator?