Operator
Operator
Good afternoon. My name is Rob, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Fortune Brands Third Quarter 2018 Results 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. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Brian Lantz, Senior Vice President of Communications and Corporate Administration. You may begin your conference call. 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're pleased to be here today to provide an update on our progress during the third 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 Investors 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 our 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 filing 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 our 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 their prepared remarks, we've allowed 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 managed to grow sales and EPS in the third quarter, despite the summer and early fall market that was slower than expected and the impact of Hurricane Florence on our North Carolina operations. The market's been growing at a slower pace since July and running at the lower end of our planning range. There's more moderate growth period, it's not unlike other pauses that we've seen throughout this recovery as buyers, sellers and renters adjust to changes in affordability in local markets around the country. Even with this market moderation, consumer demand for our Home & Security products continues to be solid overall. R&R, which accounts for about two-thirds of our business, remained stable at mid-single digit growth rate for the eighth consecutive year. Additionally, our Plumbing and Doors momentum continues to be strong and the disciplined actions that we've taken all year on price and supply chain to offset inflationary pressures are having a greater effect. So, despite the more uncertain environment and third quarter results that are not as we expected, we continues to execute aggressively against our plans. We are managing costs tightly, adjusting supply chains to address inflation and tariffs, launching new products and getting price. Even with significant headwinds and inflationary pressures, our sales and margin are holding in advance of further actions we are taking to improve each business. We're adjusting our full-year guidance down to reflect our third quarter results, the impact of our recent acquisition and bond financing, and an assumption of market growth that is at the bottom end of our range for the balance of the year. Let me first take you through our view of the U.S. home products market. Next, I'll provide my perspective on our business performance in the third quarter and the effect of tariffs on our business. Pat will then provide more details on our third quarter performance and the 2018 outlook. Starting with our view of the U.S. home products market, growth rates in the market for our home products moderated during the summer and early fall, particularly relating to single family new construction as consumers adjusted expectations on interest rates and price against a limited supply of housing. In the quarter, we estimate repair and remodel activity grew at about 5%, and new construction grew at about 6% to 7%, reflecting the low end of our full-year expectation. Our updated 2018 annual outlook is based on revised assumption that the U.S. home products market grows at a combined rate of 5% for the year versus our initial estimate of 5% to 7%, which is still solid growth even at a more moderate rate. Also, the fundamental drivers of our market, which include employment, wage growth, household formations and consumer confidence, all continue to remain positive. Before getting into the details on the quarter, let me provide some additional high-level thoughts on our current view. One, while the market is moderating some, particularly in single family new construction, we do not see a housing downturn or recession in 2019. Two, as we exit the third quarter, we are now fully covering commodity and freight inflation. Three, tariffs are not trivial, but they are manageable. And four, we expect our Cabinet business to return to sales growth and margin expansion in 2019 following a tremendous amount of activity to restructure and reposition the business in 2018. With that, let me now provide some perspective on our business performance. In the third quarter, sales increased 2.4% in total or 4% excluding the impact of the hurricane, and total company operating margin came in at 13.8%, or 14.5% excluding the hurricane. Hurricane Florence hit our Plumbing operations hard at the end of the quarter and led to eight-lost shipping days as our main Moen assembly plant for the U.S. is in New Bern, North Carolina, and our component warehouse is in Kinston, North Carolina. The effect is to push some sales from Q3 to Q4. Across the company, we have a number of operations in North Carolina. Although our manufacturing facilities missed some third quarter production time, they are all up and running, having suffered only minimal damage during the storm. The largest impact on our company was to our associates, as a number of them were displaced from their homes or had to navigate flooding. As part of our recovery effort, we partnered with Team Rubicon, a volunteer disaster recovery organization and hundreds of our associates contributed to raise nearly $60,000 in relief funding to support their fellow employees and neighbors in North Carolina. All of our facilities are back to normal staffing across multiple shifts and weekends. We are recovering shipments and have already moved through much of the backlog created by the storm. Turning to the segments, beginning with Plumbing, we continue to outperform the market with our GPG strategy. Excluding the hurricane, our sales rose over 9%, and our operating margin came in at nearly 22%. Organic sales growth was 7%, excluding the impact of the hurricane. Results in both our core businesses and new platforms continue to be outstanding, and we are actively working to enhance the platform by investing in brand, talent and products. For example, we recently repositioned the Moen brand in the U.S. by launching our new 'who designs for water campaign'. The new ads are off to a strong start, and we've seen positive consumer response. On the product front, innovation continues to pay off as 25% of sales are now coming from products introduced in the last three years. Modern styles and innovative finishes are driving solid growth across price points, brands and channels. The pace of innovation across all of our brands is significantly higher. So in Plumbing, we're having a very strong year despite inflationary headwinds and are carrying good momentum into 2019. Continued strong POS in the high-single digit range drove our third quarter growth. Inventory levels continued to run lean in both wholesale and retail channels, and Plumbing operating margin continues to be on target, even with significant inflation in 2018. We will continue to position our Plumbing business for above-market growth consistent with our strategy. In Doors & Security, our performance accelerated overall as we continued to see strong door growth with wholesale builder wins and the continued contribution of new retail R&R programs launched earlier this year. In Security, in interim production challenge affected sales and margin at Master Lock for the quarter. As the launch of our newly upgraded ball bearing laminate lock was the largest launch in our history and stressed capacity at the same time we saw stronger commercial sales activity. As we exited the third quarter, the production bottlenecks have been addressed, and volumes and margins are improving. Our newly combined Doors & Security leadership team has improved execution since it was put in place last June, and these manufacturing challenges are mostly behind us as the world-class (9:12) approach is taking hold in the combined business. The expansion into outdoor living with our acquisition and integration at Fiberon is going well, and through the first month of ownership, we've moved quickly on plans to capture synergies in 2019. We are on track to deliver $0.05 to $0.06 accretion in 2019, and $0.09 to $0.10 in 2020, including financing costs associated with the acquisition. The more we get into the business, the more excited we become regarding the potential of this acquisition. Importantly, the integration of the Doors & Security units and the formation of consolidated back office is progressing as expected, which should set up a strong 2019 with continued sales growth and margin progression across the segment. Moving on to Cabinets, when adjusting for the business exits, our sales grew 1% and operating margin was 11%, excluding the hurricane impact on our Kinston plant. While we have deliberately ceded some share overall in Cabinets this year with some business exits, we are focused on winning in the segments of the market that offer us more consistent profitable growth. Throughout the year, we've been realigning capacity and product lines with margin improving sequentially quarter-over-quarter, even as input costs rose more than anticipated. Sales volumes are solid in the targeted segments despite lower than expected second half market growth. As proof points in the third quarter that our strategy is on track, we delivered 11% margin ex-hurricane, while growing in segments of the market that we are targeting. For example, sales of in-stock cabinets and vanities continued to be strong and grew low double-digits in those accounts. Sales of stock cabinetry products across builder direct and dealer continued to be very good and rose high single digits in the quarter. And while sales of semi-custom cabinets declined, our margins are improving as we focus on attractive parts of this market, tighten the cost structure and balance capacity for these products and capture pricing to offset inflation and tariffs. We expect all the restructuring and repositioning activity in 2018 will position us to resume annual margin expansion beginning in the first quarter of next year. On the revenue side, we are focused on growing profitably in the simpler, cleaner styles and finishes that permeate the market. I'm confident that we will return to mid-single digit growth in 2019 as our dealer, home seller and builder relationships remain strong and we've coupled products that are selling well today with the launch of new value oriented products that leverage our unique North American supply chain capabilities. At the Investor event in February, you'll hear more about our reoriented Cabinet platform and our long-term expectations for the newly positioned Cabinet business. So to recap the third quarter, since the July call, we've experienced the impact of a significant hurricane on our North Carolina operations, continued strong inflation, and more moderate home products market growth. Despite these headwinds, we made excellent progress on price and supply chain versus these rising costs. We also took important strategic steps to position us well for 2019. I'm very encouraged with the progress that we've made in the quarter on our cabinets pivot plan; the new product introductions and brand positioning in our Plumbing business; the continued integration and operational improvement of our new Doors & Security unit; and the acquisition and integration of the Fiberon composite decking business. As we look into 2019, we are still positive on the market. We see a stable R&R market and a more modest but positive new construction market. We'll detail our outlook for 2019 early next year with the Investor event in Boston on February 6. Given all the changes we've made to our businesses, coupled with some uncertainty in the current market environment, we wanted to hold this event and have a candid discussion with you about how we're positioned against the market going forward and provide an opportunity for you to meet more members of our strong leadership team who are driving these businesses. Before I wrap up, I want to address a topic on which we've received a number of questions lately, the impact of tariffs on our businesses. In the fourth quarter, we estimate modest impact in the tariffs, roughly $2 million to $3 million, which is included in our revised guidance. More will come in 2019 if we move to the 25% tariff level. However to give you some sense of the total impact, even at 25%, the total impact across our businesses amounts to roughly half of the $90 million in commodity and freight inflation we have already absorbed in 2018. So on order of magnitude basis, the tariffs are significant but manageable. And you have seen us successfully navigate 2018 inflation with aggressive supply chain and pricing actions. Given the current trade dialog, we've already begun aggressively working supply chains and our pricing strategies to recover from a 25% tariff scenario, albeit with a quarter or two lag into 2019. Once we manage through the initial impact, we actually see potential upside for us from the tariffs, given our competitive positions. Considering we are very well-positioned in plumbing versus private label as well as other branded competitors since we assemble the majority of our finished goods in the U.S., and many plumbing components used in the U.S. assembly have been excluded from the section 301 tariffs. Also in Doors & Security, we own a door component facility in Mexico. And for security products, we have a very large North American footprint that should advantage us relative to others in Asia. Finally in Cabinets, Commerce Department clarity on the enforcement of the 200% plywood tariff on flat pack products coupled with a 25% tariff on components is likely to hit Chinese import competition harder as we move into 2019. Our U.S. and Mexico operations could have a distinct advantage over the importers going forward, which is also aligned with the spirit of the trade policy. To advantage large U.S. manufacturers like ourselves, the significant number of employees, sales and taxes paid in the United States. All of our capacity rebalancing over the last year will take advantage of our unique North American supply chain. Now let me review our capital deployment and our broader plan to create long-term incremental value. In the quarter, we closed the acquisition of Fiberon for $470 million and year-to-date we have repurchased over 11 million shares for approximately $650 million. Our approach to share repurchase continues to be opportunistic and focused on where we can generate significant returns. We have approximately $450 million remaining on our current share repurchase authorization. The team continues to work on a robust pipeline of potential acquisition opportunities and we'll provide further commentary as developments occur. This year, we've deployed over a billion dollars and, as a reminder, over the next three years we continue to believe we have the power to deploy more than $3 billion to make strategic acquisitions, repurchase additional shares and increase our dividend to create meaningful incremental shareholder value. So in summary, while we've revised our 2018 outlook down to reflect a softer market, we feel good about our performance this year, given the headwinds, and expect strong execution in the fourth quarter. We also have confidence in the steps we have taken to set up each part of the business to accelerate our performance in 2019, and our broader plan to drive value over the next three years which you'll hear more about at our event in Boston in early February. 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 operations. Starting with our third quarter results, sales were $1.4 billion, up 2.4% from a year ago. Hurricane Florence caused approximately $22 million in shipment delays, which impacted growth by 160 basis points in the quarter. The storm impacted our Plumbing and Cabinet groups, we expect to recover these sales within the fourth quarter. Consolidated operating income for the quarter was $191 million, down 5% or $9 million compared to the same quarter last year. The hurricane was at $13 million headwind to operating income, though similar to sales most is expected to be recovered in the fourth quarter. Total company operating margin of 13.8%, or 14.5% excluding the hurricane was still below our expectations, driven by lower volume due to a softer market and the temporary inefficiencies in our Security operations. EPS were $0.93 in the quarter versus $0.83 the same quarter last year, an increase of 12%. We estimate approximately $0.07 of EPS headwind in the quarter due to the hurricane. The result is below the Street and our own expectation; however, the execution of our plans continues to be solid. Price is now covering commodity and freight inflation and we have been addressing the current and future tariff scenarios, which we expect to manage effectively as we have inflation during 2018. We see a number of positives in our business, including our Plumbing and Doors performance, which continues to produce above-market growth and deliver on margin expectations and the progress in our Cabinet business, which is driving the anticipated fixed cost structure changes and it's pivoting more of our capacity towards the higher growth parts of the market. We expect to finish 2018 on a positive note in the fourth quarter, even with a slightly slower housing market. Now, let me provide more color on segment results. Beginning with Plumbing, sales for the third quarter were $462 million, up $23 million or 5%. Sales adjusting for the hurricane were up 9% as our Global Plumbing Group strategy is driving above-market growth with high single-digit POS. Our organic sales continue to outpace the market, as sales excluding acquisitions and hurricanes were up 7%. Plumbing operating income was down $4 million to $94 million, with an operating margin of 20.3%. Adjusting for the $11 million hurricane impact to operating income, margins were 21.8%. Year-to-date, hurricane-adjusted Plumbing operating margin is at 21.1%, a clear indication of our ability to maintain margin, despite significant inflation and a slower market. For the full-year, we expect sales growth approaching 11%, with over 8% organic growth and margins of approximately 21%. Doors & Security sales increased 8%, driven by continued strong double-digit sales growth of our Therma-Tru doors, partially offset by a lower single-digit sales decline in Master Lock due to the temporary inefficiencies in our Security operations. Operating margin was 16.1%. Fiberon deal costs and the operating inefficiencies in Security weighed on margins relative to the prior-year, but we expect these issues to be transitory. For the full-year, we expect sales growth for the combined business approaching 11%, and operating margin between 14% and 15% compared to a prior expectation of above 15%. In Cabinets, sales for the third quarter were $599 million, down $15 million or 2% versus the prior-year quarter. Excluding business exits, Cabinet sales were up 1%. Sales of in-stock cabinets and vanities grew low double-digits on continued solid demand for these products, excluding the exit of U.S. home center business. Builder sales were up high single-digits and rebounded from the weather slowed start to the year. Dealer sales increased 1% and saw high single-digit sales growth in the south and west regions of the country. Home center special order sales were down as we continue to promote at a level below that of our competitors. Cabinet operating income in the quarter was $65 million, down 7% and operating margin was 10.8%, or 11% adjusting for the hurricane. Operating margin continues to improve each quarter versus the prior-year. And in the fourth quarter, we expect operating margin to be equal to or better than that of the prior-year. In the fourth quarter, prices now covering inflation, sales of in-stock cabinets and vanities and stock cabinets are expected to remain strong, and we expect better semi-custom performance as we refine our promotional strategy. For the full-year, we expect reported sales to be down 1% to 2%, or flat to up 1% adjusting for the exits. And we expect operating margin in the range of 10%. In Cabinets, a year of transition was expected, but the market was weaker than anticipated. Execution of fixed cost structure reductions were on plan and being pursued expediently, our in-stock and stock product lines continue to grow strongly, and we continue to make progress in expanding the shares of these product lines, while also leveraging our supply chain scale to improve the cost competitiveness of our mid-price semi-custom product lines. To sum up consolidated third quarter performance, sales increased 2.4% and EPS were $0.93. Despite the results below our expectations, we are positioned for a solid fourth quarter and a strong 2019. Our Plumbing and Doors teams continue to outperform the industry and we are realizing greater benefits from the Cabinet pivot. Importantly, we have taken the pricing and strategic steps necessary to deliver improvement during the fourth quarter and to accelerate growth in 2019. Now turning to the balance sheet. Our September 30 balance sheet remains solid with cash of $390 million, debt of $2.5 billion and our net debt to EBITDA leverage is at 2.5 times. We currently have $750 million remaining on our $1.25 billion revolver and we continue to have substantial capacity and flexibility to fund incremental capital deployment opportunities. Year-to-date, we have deployed over $1.1 billion, $470 million for Fiberon and approximately $650 million to repurchase over 11 million shares. Our approach to share repurchases continues to be opportunistic and focused on where we can generate significant returns. We have approximately $450 million remaining on our current share repurchase authorization. Turning last to the details of our outlook for 2018. As Chris mentioned, we are adjusting our 2018 EPS outlook to the range of $3.41 to $3.49 versus the prior guide of $3.62 to $3.72, and versus $3.08 last year. Driven primarily by lower volume due to a softer market and the temporary inefficiencies in our Security operation. Fiberon is also marginally dilutive to the fourth quarter, given the fourth quarter decking, seasonality, deal cost and incremental financing. The financing will cost us approximately $0.03 in 2018, but the ability to lock in a 4% interest rate on a five-year $600 million bond, before underlying treasury rates inflected over the last month will provide attractive financing going forward. We expect Fiberon to be accretive in 2019 and beyond. We expect full-year net sales growth of 5% to 6%, with free cash flow of approximately $460 million and a conversion rate of over 90%. This cash flow expectation reflects our forecast adjustment and modest inventory builds due to pre-tariffs inventory purchases. The annual EPS outlook includes the following assumptions. Interest expense of around $75 million, a tax rate of 25%, and average fully diluted shares of approximately 147 million. In summary, our teams have positioned us well for improved fourth quarter and a strong 2019. Fundamental drivers of housing market demand remained strong, specifically housing formations, employment and wage growth. Our teams are doing an excellent job navigating inflation, tariffs and a slower than expected market. We remain well-positioned to use our balance sheet and cash flow to drive incremental shareholder value through acquisitions, share repurchases 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 third quarter of 2018. We will now begin taking a limited number of questions. Since there may be a number of you would like to ask a question, I'll ask that you limit your initial questions to two, and then reenter 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?