Jim Owens
Analyst · Baird. Your line is open
Thank you, Barbara, and welcome to everyone joining us on the call this morning. In a world where there are unprecedented supply chain shortages and significant inflationary pressures impacting every portion of our business. H.B. Fuller delivered double-digit growth and met our bottom line commitments. Last evening, we announced strong third-quarter results, led by 20% year-over-year revenue growth. Organic revenue was up 16% versus 2020, and was up 13% versus the pre-COVID-19 environment in the third quarter of 2019. This top-line performance reflects broad-based, double-digit organic revenue growth in all 3 global business units, and includes significant contributions from both volume and pricing. We also reported adjusted EBITDA of $111 million, and adjusted EPS of $0.79. These results were slightly ahead of our implied guidance. Our margins in the quarter were reduced as expected. And we expect to see significant margin recovery in Q4 and 2022, as our price increases begin to outpace raw material increases and other inflation. In the third quarter, we continue to gain share in key market segments, with our innovative solutions. We are leveraging our technical capabilities and global footprint, as well as our operational speed and agility so that our customers can continue to innovate and build new products. Our hugest wins this quarter are in products ranging from new consumer electronics and globally produced solar panels to sustainable food packaging and electric vehicles. These wins are driving our growth. At the same time, our team is managing the raw material supply chain exceptionally well, enabling us to meet high customer demand without impacting our sales volumes. We are also demonstrating our ability to price based on the value our critical adhesive solutions provide our customers. Through the third quarter, we have implemented $225 million of price adjustments, and we took the decisive step of announcing a September 1st increase and surcharge in order to offset further raw material cost increases. These actions are expected to result in more than $400 million of pricing revenue on an annualized basis. We anticipate a significant improvement in margins in Q4 and into 2022 as a result of these actions. We are also prepared to take additional pricing actions as needed at the end of the year. These pricing actions coupled with our strong organic volume growth, which is up 13% year to date is the basis for our confidence that H.B. Fuller 's innovative solutions and global network will continue to drive share gains and significant margin improvement in the quarters ahead. We are demonstrating an outstanding ability to perform in a highly dynamic macro-environment. Shortages persist for many specialty chemical raw materials, for plastic and metal packaging, and for international shipping containers. We continue to see inflationary cost pressures in terms of materials, freight, and labor. The extraordinary weather conditions during the year have caused shipping disruptions, unplanned safety, and governmental actions have caused factory closures. And we continue to navigate the uneven impact of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world. Through all of this, we are serving customers, we are winning through innovation, and we're protecting our margins. We anticipated gross margin headwinds in the third quarter, and we managed them well by controlling SG&A expenses. We are now positioned to reestablish our margins through higher pricing over a larger base of business. We have grown our base of business through exceptional support for existing customers, helping other customers in need when we can, and by adding new customer business by winning through innovation. While we overcome these near-term challenges, our actions are aligned with our long-term strategy to grow our business through innovation and continue to build our position as the world's leading dedicated procedure provider. We're gaining share in our markets by focusing on providing new and innovative adhesives that enable hygiene and packaging products to be more environmentally friendly, buildings more energy efficient, and durable goods stronger and more lightweight. Our largest customer wins in this quarter were in the areas of electric vehicles and solar panel production. We are also actively investing to further differentiate our products and expand capacity. We recently announced a strategic partnership in Europe with Covestro, one of the world's largest polymer suppliers, to deliver an adhesive with a reduced climate impact for the woodworking composites, textiles, and automotive industries. This partnership is one of our initiatives to advance our sustainability efforts and better enable customers to achieve their own sustainability objectives. We also recently announced a strategic investment to build a new facility in Cairo to support customers' increased demand in the fast-growing markets of Egypt, Turkey, the Middle East, and Africa. Because of the resilience of our cash flows, we are able to make these investments while continuing to pay down debt in line with our $200 million target for 2021. Now let me move on to discuss our GBU performance in the third quarter. Hygiene, Health, and Consumable Adhesives third-quarter organic sales increased 13% year-over-year, with strong growth across the portfolio, including very strong results in packaging applications, beverage labeling, and tapes and labels.