Good morning. My name is Stephanie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Mohawk Industries Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this call is being recorded today, August 3, 2012. Thank you. I would now like to introduce Jeff Lorberbaum, CEO and Chairman of Mohawk Industries. Mr. Lorberbaum, you may begin your conference.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our second quarter 2012 conference call. Joining me on the call is Frank Boykin, our CFO, who will review our Safe Harbor statement and later, our financial results. Frank?

I would like to remind everyone that our press release and statements we make on this call may include forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, those set forth in our press release and our periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This call may include discussion of non-GAAP numbers. You can refer to our Form 8-K and press release at the Investor Information section of our website for a reconciliation of any non-GAAP to GAAP amounts. Jeff?

Thank you, Frank. Our second quarter earnings per share were $1.06 as reported, or $1.14, an increase of 20% over 2011, excluding restructuring charges. Selling prices offsetting raw material inflation, productivity gains, product mix improvements and lower interest costs all contributed to our results. Sales increased 2% on a constant exchange rate, with commercial sales continuing to outpace residential sales. We continue to control SG&A costs while increasing new product investments across all businesses. During the quarter, we generated adjusted EBITDA of $187 million, free cash flow of $96 million and paid off $336 million of senior notes. U.S. commercial activity continues to expand as it has for some time. The residential multifamily category is improving with the rising occupancy and additional construction projects. Residential new construction is rebounding from a low level, as reflected by the National Association of Home Builders confidence index reaching its highest level in 5 years. Residential remodeling continues to lag due to concerns by consumers about the general economy and compressed housing prices. As the second period progressed, the flooring industry slowed along with retail in general. Frank, could you give the financial report, please?

Yes. Thank you, Jeff. Good morning, everyone. Net sales for the quarter were $1,470,000,000, down 1% as reported or, as Jeff pointed out, up 2% on a constant exchange rate basis. Higher prices and better mix offset lower volumes in the quarter. Overall, commercial and sales outperformed residential. Our gross profit margin was 26.4%, an improvement over the 25.9% last year and up 70 basis points over last year, excluding restructuring charges. SG&A was $281 million or 19.1% of sales. We held dollars flat to last year, with emphasis on cost control placed across all of our businesses. We're focusing on reviewing all functions to apply Lean principles throughout the business to continue to control cost. Restructuring charges were $8 million. They included $7 million in the Mohawk segment and $1 million in the Unilin segment. We closed a yarn plant and consolidated other operations in our carpet segment, and then we've also announced an additional carpet plant closure for the third quarter. Our operating income was $116 million with a margin of 7.9%, excluding charges. Operating income improved 7% over last year as a result of our many efforts over the business. Interest expense was $19 million and improved $7 million over last year. These results was -- the improved results were from rating agency upgrades, as well as lower rates realized when our 2012 bonds were rolled over into the revolver. We expect similar results in the second half for our interest expense. Other expense was down, primarily due to foreign exchange. Our income tax rate, excluding charges, was 18%. We expect a rate of 19% to 20% in the second half. Earnings per share, excluding charges, was $1.14 per share, which was a 20% improvement over last year. If we jump to the segments, the Mohawk segment…

Thank you, Frank. The Mohawk segment's adjusted operating income margin increased 110 basis points over 2011, with gains from pricing, improved product mix, lower costs from productivity offsetting lower volume and a higher material cost. Segment sales were down 3% during the second quarter. Carpet sales for both the industry and Mohawk were approximately flat compared to last year, with residential remodeling activity slow. Our rug sales continue soft due to lower retail sales, as well as retailers deferring promotional activities and further reducing inventories within the channel. Carpet price increases were fully implemented in the second quarter to offset inflation. Our carpet raw material costs have stabilized in the period. We do not see significant cost changes from the falling oil prices as certain chemical components increased due to worldwide demand. During the quarter, we completed the launch of our SmartStrand Silk collection, and consumers embraced its unsurpassed softness, high performance and proprietary environmental features. Our innovative merchandising systems highlight silk's superior luxury and ease of care. We're broadening the styling options of our luxury silk collection and leveraging our technology innovations into other products and channels that should benefit future growth and product mix. Early in the third period, residential carpet orders are showing some improvement, and new product introductions in both carpet and rug channels should grow our business in the second half of the year. We anticipate continued favorable product mix and stable input costs in the second half. In our Mohawk-branded hard surfaces, we introduced new soft-scraped wood products, porcelain designs using our industry-leading Reveal technology and laminates inspired by exotic woods. Sales of our new luxury vinyl planks with UNICLIC technology are growing because of their easy installation and enhanced visuals. During the period, we implemented a 2% to 6% price increase on our…

[Operator Instructions] And your first question is from the line of Stephen Kim with Barclays.

My first question relates to the U.S. You had made some comments about how the residential market showed some improvement in 3Q. I was curious if you could elaborate a little bit more on whether a little bit of this pickup that you're seeing here in 3Q is showing up in -- from primarily the new, or if it's also a little bit of remodeling starting to pick up. And as part of that, if you could talk a little bit about the impact of product mix looking into 3Q.

The statement was that we saw some improvement in the business coming in. We didn't really reference any piece in general. We're seeing slightly better trends in the first part of the quarter than we saw coming out of June. I forgot the second part of your question.

Mix. We're seeing it improve.

The product mix, we spent a tremendous amount of effort over the last 1.5 years, 2 years, focused on trying to create more innovation in the marketplace, introducing better products that can achieve higher margins in all the different segments. And we're starting to see some benefit from those actions in all the different segments.

Okay. Well, let me -- I'd like to follow up on that more, but I'm sure other people will. Let me switch to -- switch it a little bit to Unilin. Obviously, another very strong performance there. If I heard Frank right, it sounded like Unilin's operating margin was actually 12.8% x currency, which obviously was a very strong figure. I'm trying to understand if you could help us with a couple things as we look into Unilin going forward. First of all, my understanding is that the foam board business is expanding rapidly, and I was -- I'm guessing that, that probably represented about roughly half of the growth, that 7% growth top line in that division that we saw this quarter. Want to see if you could give me some sense of if that's about right, or if the laminate part of the business grew -- was the bulk of the gain. And then also, if you can make some basic comments about what you expect for the furniture initiative and any update on what's going on there.

The insulation board business, the increase we have today will allow us to grow to about EUR 70 million with our present capacity in the business, and it's growing much faster than the other parts of the business. The laminate business grew less than the average for the others, which we would expect, and all the different actions we're taking, we think -- we're growing where the industry is shrinking has got to do with, again, all the actions to expand our distribution into different channels and marketplaces as we go forward.

And Steve, let me correct -- you had said -- I don't remember the number, but the actual operating margin, excluding charges, was 11.7%, and that does not exclude FX. That's just the margin as a percent to sales.

Right. But if you exclude the currency on top of that, it would be 12.8% excluding charges and excluding currency effect. Right?

We can go off-line on that. I think you'd have to go back and adjust the sales number as well for the currency.

Your next question is from the line of Mike Wood with Macquarie Capital.

In the DIY channel expansion in Unilin, how much room is there to go? How much headroom or how much longer should we expect that kind of penetration to occur for?

We think we have continued opportunity. We really have different strategies between the U.S. and Europe. In Europe, the strategy is to have selective distribution and participate under our brand in the premium part of the marketplace. So we're going to each country, looking for a limited number of customers to participate in the premium marketing, give them opportunity to step their customers up. In the U.S., we have a broader based strategy, which is to participate in a broader range of price points in the marketplace and do it under other brand names. So we have different -- we think there's opportunities in both to keep growing. We have limited participation in both continents in it, so it has significant upside.

Okay. And in the rugs, with the retailers deferring promotions, can you just give us some more color in terms of do you have control over whether or not they're promoting the product? And in your view, is this the right thing to do in the current environment?

We don't have any control over what they do. We provide them opportunities, and they choose whether to do it. What's happening is they're getting -- in the last quarter, they were much more conservative than we expected, both with their inventories and their promotional activities as they had greater concerns over the consumer.

Your next question is from the line of David MacGregor with Longbow Research.

You flagged the commercial business and the growth there. Can you just give us some quantification of what you were seeing in terms of the growth rate for the overall commercial business?

I'm not sure that I have a number for the overall piece. We see that the commercial business started growing about 2 years ago now, as most of it started out with mostly investments in remodeling. We saw an increase in it through the period. We see, as we've gone through this year, that it's continued to grow. So the growth rate is slightly less than we think it's been last year. There's some new building starting going on, which is helping it a little bit, and we think it's going to continue at a reasonable rate.

Can you give us an update on the percentage of each segment that would be commercial?

I don't have those broken out.

At a very high level, David, in the Dal-Tile segment, about 40% is commercial. In the Mohawk segment, it's in the kind of mid-20s, maybe high 20s, in that range.

In Unilin, it would be 0.

And Unilin is 0.

Close to 0.

Yes. Yes.

Right. Right. Last question, just with all the new product investments you've got going on, what do you think is sort of the temporary expense associated with just ramping those might be?

What we've done is we've really tried to focus on our SG&A expenses. And what we've been doing is reducing our general SG&A expenses by becoming more productive and cutting out things that we thought had limited value. And what we've been doing is investing those dollars into these new product categories. So I think we're managing through it reasonably well and overcoming all the inflation you have and everything in addition to that.

Can you save -- Can you hold on to those cost savings once these products are fully ramped?

We would expect SG&A as a percent of sales to keep improving over time.

Your next question is from the line of Eric Bosshard with Cleveland Research Company.

In terms of -- your commentary on second half volume seemed to suggest that you'd have growth in the second half, and you didn't in the second quarter. I'm just wondering if you can give a little bit more color on what you think is different in the second half relative to what you experienced in the second quarter.

We have -- our internal estimates that we think that we have in place, certain activities to increase the sales, we really do not know exactly what the market's going to do, but we're making the assumption that it's more of the same. And under those conditions, we think that the volume's going to go up a little bit and -- as well as price increases. So you have a price increase in the ceramic business going in. We have the price increases that we've already put in place in the carpet industry. We have expansion of products that we think are higher value than the other, which should help the average selling prices. So we think we're going to see some positive things.

Your next question is from the line of Mike Rehaut with JPMorgan. Michael Rehaut - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: I was hoping to go back to a question earlier about little better granularity around your comments of U.S. order trends improving so far in the third quarter. If you could possibly just break that down for us between -- if -- either that was driven by new residential construction or builder end market versus repair/remodel, what was the bigger driver of that? Or was it only 1 of the 2 segments? Just some better description of that.

I don't have the detail in front of me. We all know that the new construction builder business is going up from a very low base. Most people have it about 15% from a 15 plus-or-minus percent, and that the apartment part of the business is improving. The occupancy rates are there. It's showing improvement. The commercial business is still improving on similar trends as it has been in the past, we think. And the big question is what's going to happen to remodeling pieces, and your guess is as good as ours. We just think that we're well positioned in product mix and new introductions to help ourselves a little bit different than the market. Michael Rehaut - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Okay. And in terms of your back half outlook, so -- as you just said, you're looking for volume, a little bit of volume growth, a little bit of pricing growth but, at the same time, your comps in the back half of the year do get a little bit tougher. And here, in the second quarter, you were up 2% against an easier comp. So are there certain initiatives or selling promotions that give you that extra confidence? And if there's maybe certain segments like -- I mean, because we would still expect Mohawk to be down a little bit year-over-year -- if there are other things going on perhaps in Dal-Tile and Unilin that drives that confidence for the volume growth.

I can just tell you that each of the divisions, I have it broken down by customer, by product, by channel. They have looked at new introductions, and they appear optimistic about their potential.

Your next question is from the line of David Goldberg with UBS.

It's actually Susan. In terms of the new products that you guys are introducing, can you give us some sense of how the pricing or the margins on those compare to your more traditional offerings or your older products, your more established products?

Each of the divisions has internal goals to introduce new products that improve their margins over the past ones. They all have goals that look to add greater value on style and design that could command slightly higher margins on new products than old. They all track what they're introducing versus the ones they're doing. On the other hand, we want to participate in the different areas in the commodity businesses, which are price-driven. And we believe that we are improving our mix through providing leading style and design in each area. I would say that one of the best ones we have is our Unilin business, which they've focused on since we have it. They basically have almost no commodity business, and everything's driven through bringing style and design to the marketplace. And we are driving that across all the different business.

Okay. And given the current environment, would you say that you're basically able to hold the higher margins or the improved profitability on the products where that is sort of your goal? Or are you having to give some of that up?

We're in competitive marketplaces. We have inflationary pieces in different ones. We've talked about raising prices in the ceramic business to help cover the inflation. We've talked about the margins in the Unilin business being under pressure as the raw materials have risen faster than we've been able to pass them through. The Mohawk business, what you've seen is we've been able to change the mix in the products to help the margins as we go through, through the new product introductions. And so that's what -- that's how we're getting to the improved margins in the business.

Your next question is from the line of Keith Hughes with SunTrust.

On the rug business, can you give us some kind of idea how much the rug business was down or what it was down in dollars or something along those lines in the second quarter?

We really don't break out the sales of individual products within the business. The...

Let me ask you this way, Jeff. As a percentage of the Mohawk segment, what do rugs represent nowadays?

I mean, it's a limited portion of the total, and we just don't break down to each individual product and pieces for you, guys. I mean, we have 100 different products and pieces in all the different businesses.

In that segment, Keith, as you know, we've got broadloom carpet, we've got rugs, we've also got hard surface products, we've got pad and cushion products. So we've got a number of different products in that segment.

Okay. This is the second quarter where we've had some rug issues. Are they behind us at this point? Or do you think this is going to continue on in the second half of the year?

We believe that the third quarter rugs will be better than the second quarter in rugs. There were some things pushed out in the second quarter into the third quarter, we'll see those. We're anticipating improvement in it, but we haven't assumed that the market's going to change dramatically and the retailers are going to change, some of them becoming very conservative in their buying habits.

Final question. You talked about mix positive. Is mix in carpet positive in the last quarter or 2?

Yes.

Is that the first time in 3 or 4 years that you've seen positive mix in carpet?

I don't know -- remember exactly when it started, but I mean, we have put a lot of emphasis on putting out more stylized differentiated products, and it's starting to give us benefits.

Your next question is from the line of Kathryn Thompson with Thompson Research Group.

In your prepared comments, you talked a little bit about raw materials, both the pluses and minuses. But the reality is, is a lot of -- you have had some abatement of raw materials in Q2. Could you clarify the potential positive impact of lower raw materials as we go into Q3 on your margins?

The raw materials went up. We raised prices. I assume we're talking about the carpet business. We raised prices going into the quarter. The raw materials reached a peak, and then -- we work off our own business. We work off a forward view that we anticipate them, and we typically don't raise the prices to momentary peaks. So in there, we build our models and pricing based around what we think the long-term values are. So basically, we were on track for what we thought was going to happen. And what we're trying to say as we look forward into the future, we believe that the oil prices should push down the raw materials. However, there are individual chemicals, which are in short supply due to world dynamics, and we think that the increase in those specific chemicals are going to offset the general declines and give us basically a stable material environment for as far as we can see. That could change in a given moment based on market conditions of those chemicals.

So in other words, you really won't see any positive impact. It's just really neutral and covering past increases.

From quarter to -- I'm talking from quarter to quarter, consecutively. But we're not anticipating an overall decline to help us at this moment.

So that would imply, just assuming no real changes right now, there's probably not much room or possibility for another soft flooring increase in the second half this year.

We're not anticipating one.

Your next question is from the line of Dennis McGill with Zelman & Associates. Dennis McGill - Zelman & Associates, Research Division: Jeff, just wondering if you had an opinion on the nonresidential market. Your trend seemed to be stronger than both peers, both peers in flooring and the broader market. I wonder if you have any views on why flooring remodeling on the nonresidential side or the commercial side would generally be stronger than other building product categories. Anything unique that you can think of that would be driving that?

I'm not sure that I said that. The remodeling part of the market has been under pressure due to the general economy and consumers' perception that their home values are much lower than they were. Dennis McGill - Zelman & Associates, Research Division: No, no, no, I'm -- no, I was asking on the nonresidential side.

Your question is why the commercial business is going to be stronger? Dennis McGill - Zelman & Associates, Research Division: Yes, just curious what you think is driving the refurbishment activity on nonresidential, because that strength is not evident across building products. And just from your perspective, if there's anything in the flooring industry that you see that's unique in that regard.

I don't think that I anticipate it getting stronger. I think it's more of the same. The only thing in the carpet business, which is different, is the change to carpet tile. The average unit price goes up when you move from broadloom to carpet tile, which helps the dollar volume. Dennis McGill - Zelman & Associates, Research Division: Do you have any approximation of how much of -- across both the carpet and the tile business, how much would be publicly funded education projects for you?

I don't know that off the top of my head.

Your next question is from the line of Sam Darkatsh with Raymond James. Sam Darkatsh - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division: First off, a housekeeping question. Frank, I think you mentioned that you'll be closing another carpet plant in the third quarter. Do you have a sense to what the restructuring charge will be for that item in the third quarter?

I think it's going to be around $5 million. And that is not included in the guidance.

It was a yarn plant consolidation. Sam Darkatsh - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division: Got it. And then the other question I have, with respect to Dal-Tile margins, the new plants online, you're getting some pricing benefits, should we expect incremental margins over the next 6 to 12 months to be better than the 30% kind of standard contribution margin because of that? Or are there some mix issues that degrade that a little bit?

Yes to all the above. The Mexican plant is pleasantly not contributing anything to the business. It's actually a negative. But we're expecting next year that the Mexican plant will rise up to the normal levels of returns on the rest of our business. I don't know if -- I don't know when it's going to get to that level. But during the year, we expect it to get up to the average of our whole business so that you'll move from a negative into a positive contribution in that part. We continue to -- and the rest of the business depends on inflation and product mix going forward. We're trying to drive it as high as we can. We're hoping to keep expanding the margin. Sam Darkatsh - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division: So incremental margins in Dal-Tile overall would be better than 30% or so over the next year?

I don't think they'll be that high. I think it's more in the mid-20s, Dal-Tile. Sam Darkatsh - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division: Okay. If I can sneak one more question in, if I could, with the global demand moderation period that we seem to be entering into on a macro sense, does that make your appetite for larger scale international acquisitions a little bit more circumspective? Or are you still actively drilling for deals internationally of some size?

We continuously look for opportunities. I think what it does, it impacts positively the valuations of the buyers and the sellers and the future perceptions of what's going to happen, and that makes concluding in transactions more difficult, as you would suspect.

Your next question is from the line of Dan Oppenheim with Crédit Suisse. Daniel Oppenheim - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: If you can talk quickly in terms of the SmartStrand, you talked about the benefit in terms of sales, great product and at clearly a much higher price point. Just confirming, you're basically saying that despite that significantly higher price point, you're getting the sales that you expect, and so the margin is coming through and sort of -- more for those non-commoditized products in general rather than just -- can you comment on that in particular?

I think you'll understand that the -- as you introduce higher-value products, the margins on those are higher. The introductions that we put in, we are achieving good sales results at higher margins. We are continuing to expand those attributes into more products and categories. And we think those will help us as we move them into the marketplace. Daniel Oppenheim - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: Okay. And then just following up, I guess you talked about some of the trends in July subsequent to the quarter end in terms of most -- primarily in the States. But hearing less in terms of just Unilin, which did very well in constant exchange basis, can you give any sense in terms of what you've been seeing since the end of the quarter there and the overall trend?

The trends from the second quarter of the consumers in Europe were following the same thing. There's plenty of concern in Europe over what's going on. Country by country, you have differences in each one. The further south you go, the worse it gets. You get into markets like Spain, I mean, they're under tremendous pressure with unemployment. And as you would expect, the volume there are under a great pressure.

And Dan, I would add, too, as you move into July and August in Europe, that's the holiday season over there. So sequentially, it's a slower time of the year.

Your next question is from the line of John Baugh with Stifel, Nicolaus. John A. Baugh - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Could you remind us first again what total revenue exposure is to U.S. residential construction activity? And then on the laminate piece, you've mentioned, I think, that U.S. is up. And I'm curious, is that a margin negative for the Unilin segment? Or are you filling up your plant there better and actually getting a margin benefit from U.S. laminate sales growth?

In the different divisions, we have -- in the Mohawk side, the residential business is about 75% of the piece, about 25% commercial. In the Dal-Tile business, it's about 60% residential and 40% commercial. In the Unilin side, there's very little. John A. Baugh - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: And how much of that is new construction at the residential pieces?

In Dal-Tile, it's about half and half, residential and remodel. And it's high teens, maybe 20% range. And Mohawk's probably a little bit closer to the teens, given the environment we're in right now. And everything -- I'd say most of what's sold in Unilin is going into the remodel channel. John A. Baugh - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: And the U.S. laminate issue?

Could you repeat the question? John A. Baugh - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: I'm curious, you said U.S. laminate sales were up, and in -- this is a difficult market here, and I believe generally a lower margin market than European laminate. But you've got a plant here, maybe you're getting some leverage by utilizing that plant. I'm wondering whether or not the growth in U.S. laminate sales is a hurt or a help to the overall margin of the Unilin segment.

Listen, growth always helps. What happened in the Unilin piece is we have some large retailers that have done better during the period. They're doing promotional activities to try to do that. We have made some progress into expanding our business in some of the home center channels so that we think we're doing a little better than the average, and anything that adds volume to the business helps. On the other side, in the laminate business, you do have a contraction of the value products, as there's pressure on the mix.

Your next question is from the line of Bob Wetenhall with RBC.

You had very strong margin performance in Mohawk against down sales, and that's pretty impressive. And I was just trying to understand, is the pace, the 110 basis points and the 6% range for operating margin in the Mohawk carpet business sustainable in the back half of the year?

We believe it is.

That does conclude our Q&A session. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Lorberbaum for closing remarks.

We appreciate everyone joining us. We look forward to a good rest of the year. Have a good day.

This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.