Louis Gries
Management
Okay. Good morning. Thanks for joining the result. We are going to do it like we always do it. I will cover the business overviews and Matt will cover kind of all the financials in details behind that. We will start then on Slide 7. Yes, the result was good right across the board. I think it's a little bumpy at the start of the year, we will get into that. In North America, the only thing really worth going out is understanding how we got to where we got in volume, but our financials look pretty good at least from our perspective. In North America, price was solid right through the year, so we had that increase a year-ago April. Everything stuck tactically. The guys in the U.S have been doing better. So, not a lot of leakage in our price. Obviously, we are in a win back situation on some volume loss when we are capacity constraint, so we handle that well without using a lot of price to get there. The EBIT got better as the year went through, and that was all driven by manufacturing, so we talked about. Then you'll see a slide in a little bit, but manufacturing traction has been good, and also on the market side attraction is good. So how did we get 1% volume in the fourth quarter? I think when we talked early in the year, we acknowledged that having customers move over to other brands while we were out was a bit of a -- was creating a bit of a lag on our -- on the market side. All those customers weren't just automatically coming back once we got our capacity in place. So we were -- I think we had a below index count for the year, okay? Now we did two different things. One is exterior, one is interior. Let me get interiors off the table, so we understand that. When capacity was tight just like any company, we looked at kind of where our profitability was with our different product lines and channels with interiors. And we did exit some -- we didn't participate as broadly as we had a year before, so that was a bit of the reduction in interior volume, so we got out of the gypsum channel and we got out 4 by 8 G2 backer. In addition to that, we just lost traction for a period of time with interiors, and it's important that we are in a process of fixing that and I think that won't be an issue for us going forward this year, and all the products and all the segments we are servicing now we like in interiors, so there will be no more pulling back from any positions we have. So in the fourth quarter, interiors was down about 8%. So that was a lot of the lack of volume growth. Exteriors, I think we kind of in the previous Q&A, I talked about we thought we would work our way back to market index by year-end and we would be positive against the market index in fiscal year '19, and I think I gave the range 3 to 5. And basically both those things have played out, so in the third and fourth quarters, basically we are at market index as far as our volume growth and exteriors, and our order fall right now looks pretty good and we're pretty optimistic that we are starting the year in positive market index in a range. So that was the main story. The U.S business runs really well now. I mean, certainly there's a lot of upside, but the issues we'd had when we ran out of -- that were caused by us running out of capacity, they are pretty much all been addressed, and the organization has responded, and like I said there's still upside, but traction is there. This goes into delivered unit cost. You would remember in the past, we talked about we woke up one day and decided we were underspending on basic maintenance in our plants that would have been in parts of fiscal year '16 and early fiscal year '17. So that's -- you see the low bars in Q1’17 and Q2 '17. That, in addition to, we had startups during this period that would have helped cause that spike, and then we've had material input cost increases right through those eight quarters. So the story is we're kind of where we want to be with unit cost production and a step further delivered unit cost of production. That's not to say freight costs aren't up, but our freight efficiencies are pretty good right now. There is more upside. So some of these lines has started up in the last two or three years. They will definitely continue to become more efficient as we produce more board on them, but this is what really drove the EBIT in that last half of the year, the EBIT improvement was strictly delivered due to -- delivered unit cost. I shouldn’t say strictly, but that was a big contributor. This slide, kind of just explains -- you can see we went from the top of our range and we dropped down to the bottom of the range, it's that unit cost spiked on us, and we pulled ourself back up to the top of the range, and top of the range is pretty comfortable for us right now in this market even with a lot commodity cost increases. We still think we're going to be able to -- be up in the top of the range as we run our programs in the U.S. Not much of a story last year on price, meaning it was 5%, and I think it was pretty steady right through the year, and it was like I said reflective of an increase we took, but also pretty good tactical pricing. This year, we did take an increase, April 1. We think we will get over 2% on increase this year and maybe then approach 3%. So it would be somewhere in that range, not as big as the improvement on last year. As far as any leakage in our pricing, tactically we’ve got most of that. So there's not much upside there. So you have your regional mix, your customer mix, and your product mix, it will determine where we end up in that 2 to 3 range. And then, housing market is still pretty good. Gradually, little better every year, which was good with -- we are just going to get our market share growth above the index going in and we will be fine as far as the chart on the right. International business had a very solid year. I'll talk about just one or two exceptions, small exceptions, but the business in Australia -- I will flip through the countries. The business in Australia was just really strong, very good on both the upside and the market side, so obviously EBIT performance was also --. New Zealand is kind of one of those exceptions. Obviously, New Zealand' is good business for us with good returns, but they stubbed their toe a couple of times last year and you can kind of see it their results. There is a reset going on there right now that I don't think is going to be that difficult to get them to point in the right direction again. It’s not a big problem, it's just -- but it’s outside the normal variance that you would see in a business, so it is something that needs to be addressed. The Philippines, kind of New Zealand story last year. The Philippines has been reset and had performed very well this year, so that’s in good shape. And then the last thing, Europe like you know interiors in the U.S was a bit of a reset, and I think we got to a point with what we're doing in Europe with fiber cement, it wasn’t really leading us to where we want to go, and the profitability of some of the product lines again or the countries wasn’t where we want to be, so we did do a reset in Europe, pretty much all arrows point down, but I think we have a smaller but better foundation in Europe for our existing fiber cement products. Again, Europe and New Zealand are small potatoes compared to the overall international business. So, as a whole, international ran really well. I want to go into -- this is your first shot chance to get any information on Fermacell. So I want to make sure I kind of cover that. So I will take a little bit more time than I usually do. So we did close April 3. So the first, look, you're going to get at our numbers and Fermacell will be with the first quarter result. And again, I just want to answer the question again. What do we do on Fermacell? Why did we think it is important for our company? So everyone knows that our primary growth strategy over the last almost 15 years now has been fiber cement in North America. We've also talked about the importance of kind of other paths for growth in the future. So when 3590 is kind of close to be in reach, then we’ve got other growth initiatives that are kicking in. And those we put in the two categories, we like keep them simple, so non-fiber cement in North America and non-U.S fiber cement, okay? And that's the first thing you have to understand about Fermacell. It's a really good company. We are really glad with the quality of company we are able to buy. It's very much set up like Hardie, both on the market side and the outside. So the way they go-to-market, the way they approach their plants, the way they approach logistics it's just really an easy business for us to get our arms around and quite honestly the Fermacell managers joining us, they also have the comfort in that our business is kind of set up like theirs. So that's a good thing. The other thing is, when we decided we want to get some growth initiatives going, that will be important to us in the future. Obviously, organization that we had to kind of prepare for that. So that's why we brought Jack Truong in the organization. His job is to lead international growth and Hardie. So this is his division. He has got everything outside of North America. There's a lot of guys in the North America on the senior management team that only have North America responsibility. Those would be guys like Berkley, Kilcullen, Don and Nielsen, okay? So they’re entirely focused in North America. So there's been some concerns about opportunity cost and I guess what I would say is we got -- we anticipated that whatever we gain in Europe we couldn’t give up anything in North America to get there. So we anticipate and we structured accordingly, okay? So like I said, Fermacell is a really good business. It doesn't make our returns, okay? We will give you a look at the returns or an indication where the returns are. But those returns kind of improve and they've got organic growth left. But again, the main reason we needed something in Europe because we didn't think we could get there -- we could get to where we want to go in Europe without a kick up -- a significant kick up and regional capability and access to market. So we are trying to find a company we liked, that also provided regional capability in excess to market, and that’s what we think we've done with Fermacell. Now you need to keep in mind because this is a long-term strategy. Fermacell by itself doesn't get us there, okay? So we got a -- we got future funding that we need to really commit to for product development, market development and manufacturing. So that would all be in a 5 to 7-year plan. Okay. Now I will show you a few slides we have and see if I can walk you through them. Yes, the first thing is just the change in Europe for us which is obviously very significant. We go from 70 employees and 900 -- we've focus on a few geographies, very much on U.K., France, Germany, and Denmark to a lesser degree. From a sales more right across Western Europe, we are basically like we are in other markets either new construction or in our Fermacell, it is a nice position in commercial. They are more of an interior business. Now we do a good amount of our business in Europe is our backerboard business that doesn't clash with what they do. They kind of do sound abuse and fire. We do wet area, so they fit together fine. They do have one small business, so you can see our -- yes, you can see our business in Europe is about 10%. Our existing fiber cement business in Europe about 10% of the new business, total new business. That cement bonded particle board, that’s another 10%. So that's a smaller business that Fermacell had. It's okay -- it makes okay returns, it's not just that big. Go to the next one, so there's three. So all this is done, the integration between with Hardie and Fermacell is going really well, so everything is in market. Day one went really well. Day 31 went really well, day 45 went really well. We had no mess ups anywhere along the way. So everything is going good, but these are the brands now that we have in Europe. And like I said the cement bonded part of the board about 10%. Our current James Hardie about 10% and Fermacell about 80%.There are kind of footprint from a manufacturing standpoint. They have one plant in Spain, one in the Netherlands, four in Germany, one of them cement bonded particle board and one is a raw material plan and the head office is in Dusseldorf. On the other side, the organization which is very important to us -- so like I said, Jack is President of International, has responsibility for Europe. Jorg Brinkmann has been with Fermacell for seven years. He has been running the business. We are really impressed with him and his management team. So they bring what we need on that regional capability of that management team plus rest of the organization really does deliver what we were looking for on regional capability. We did move in two experienced managers out of Australia, which I think are very good adds to that team. One of them is more of a product strategy guy and the other is an organizational guy, so an HR -- Head of HR. So like I said, we end up with 900 employees there when you combine them. About 200 of them are field sales. And again we didn’t get into -- we didn’t buy Fermacell Just for Fermacell returns, we bought it for what enables us to do. You don’t want to get hung up on the [indiscernible] as far as the colors. But this is commitment to a major initiative in Europe. We are aiming for the $1 billion in revenue with good Hardie type returns. What did I do, I skipped over -- oh, we said that EBIT margins about 10. Now that's putting them and us together. And like I said, we just reset that Fiber Cement part. So the Fiber Cement pulled them down a bit. But they don't have Hardie type returns at this point in the fiber gypsum part of it. I think we will see those returns -- we hardly want to measure it in two returns or EBIT margin or EBITDA, you will see those kind of come up over time. But again that's not our main focus. Our main focus is organic growth. We got some room in fiber gypsum and more importantly we are kind of starting from scratch €30 million base on fiber cement. Now we think -- if you did pin me on those three bars. First, I wouldn’t have three bars, but if I was making a slide, I would have two bars and Hardie bar. The Fiber Cement bar would be bigger -- the bigger part of the bar. So maybe 60% two thirds, 55% somewhat narrow, but will be a fiber cement company in Europe. It's not -- we are not going to be a fiber gypsum company, but we will have the two divisions kind of like we do in the States where it's interiors and exteriors. We will have two divisions, but Fiber Cement will be very important to be in returns. Okay, I'll hand it over to Matt.