Andy Nemeth
Analyst · CL King. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Julie Ann. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and thank you for joining us on the call today. Before we start, I would like to take the opportunity to welcome and recognize Jake Petkovich, our Chief Financial Officer, joining our quarterly earnings call for the first time. We are extremely excited to have Jake on the Patrick team and look forward to his leadership, creative thought process and positive impact on our culture and our business in the years to come. Jake brings a wealth of experiences to us in the areas of financial management, investment banking and M&A from across many industries. Additionally, I'd like to thank John Forbes for his tremendous enthusiasm, engagement, energy and passion, as he assumed the role of Interim CFO. John's commitment to Patrick is just incredible, evidenced every day in his interactions with our people and his contributions to our organization reflect his dedication to our team and leadership spirit. On the COVID-19 front, our team has adapted incredibly well to the changing operating environment and safety protocols implemented with resilience and energy and we continue to prioritize the health, safety and well-being of our team members. This team has worked and continues to work tirelessly to enable us to respond to ongoing strong demand for our products and services with demanding production schedules. Our core values, which are central to our business model have been the foundation for our humble culture, and made it possible for us to align together to care for one another during this incredibly dynamic time. Continued strong retail demand tailwinds and interest in RV and boating activity reinforces our positive view of the momentum and strength of our leisure lifestyle markets, which represent 72% of our fourth quarter revenues. OEMs continue to work to replenish through the depleted inventory channel to meet strong demand and address their growing backlogs. Demand for housing has also remained strong, further bolstering the performance of our MH and industrial segments, representing 28% of our fourth quarter revenues. Housing inventories on both fronts remained very tight. Additionally, home improvement activity has been very active amid shifting demand to suburban and rural communities from the urban migration that these markets were experiencing just over a year ago. Backlogs for both MH OEMs and single-family homebuilders continue to indicate demand is outstripping supply in these markets. ESG and related initiatives continue to be a priority for us as well. Our teams are continuing to drive focus on emphasizing sustainability in the way we utilize resources through innovative programs to reduce and reuse materials and reclaiming production byproducts, where they have a valuable use in other industries. We've also continued to make investments in human capital management initiatives, which are a product of our core values to provide a safe, inclusive and tolerant environment, in which everyone is empowered to pursue their professional and personal development goals. With that backdrop and momentum accelerating off of and through Q3, our fourth quarter operating performance was again solid based on double-digit revenue growth in all of our end markets in the fourth quarter. As a result of fundamental execution and the strong operating and financial platform, we flexed our business model and capacities to match up with OEM and builder production levels and leveraged our fixed cost structure to drive improved gross profit, operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share during the quarter. Our fourth quarter revenues of $773 million increased 41% or $223 million compared to the prior year, reflecting our team's efforts to strive to ensure a reliable and uninterrupted source of quality products and service to our customers. We earned $1.64 per diluted share, a 91% increase over the prior year fourth quarter. Full year 2020 can generally be categorized in three separate chapters. The first chapter began with increasing momentum through the first quarter as planned and expected. After inventory recalibration, it impacted our leisure lifestyle markets for the previous 18 months. RV had reached, and we believe exceeded wholesale retail inventory equilibrium, while marine had primarily rebalanced with full correction estimated by mid-year. Low interest rates further bolster demand in all of our core markets. And our MH and industrial markets were poised to benefit from high demand with low inventories. The second chapter of the year was the navigation through the unprecedented and virtually overnight emergence at the end of the first quarter of the COVID-19 pandemic, where our primary concern pivoted to ensuring the health and safety of the Patrick team and our communities. We paused operations early in the second quarter in a number of our RV and marine businesses for five straight weeks, implementing new safety protocols in alignment with CDC guidelines designed to protect our team members both for operations that did not shut down due to being declared essential and those that did. During the industry-wide wholesale production shutdown in RV and partial geographic shutdown in marine, OEMs continued to ship finished units to dealers, which continued to retail very well depleting channel inventories to recent historical lows. During that same period, we had operations across the country that did not shut down and continue to service our customer base in a very dynamic environment. The final five to six weeks in the second quarter saw a sharp recovery in OEM production and a snapback in demand within our leisure lifestyle and housing and industrial markets as consumers also pivoted towards leisure lifestyle, housing and repair and remodel. Our team adjusted to the demands in their usual dedicated and committed fashion, and did whatever was needed to take care of our OEM customers and builders. The protocols we established in the second quarter in addition to our strategic efforts to appropriately deploy capital, despite the shutdowns, allowed our team to meet the needs of our customer base while accelerating production. The third chapter reflected and highlighted our ability to be flexible and nimble. And again, quickly pivot from a defensive position to a strategic position. We focused on investment in our team and infrastructure and pulling CapEx forward to ensure we have the capacity to support expected continuing strong demand. We also reignited our acquisition strategy, where we were able to use our strong financial position, liquidity and cash flows to add valuable and accretive companies to our platforms with the acquisitions of Inland Plywood, Synergy Transport, Front Range Stone, Geremarie and Taco Metals. For the full year, we reported net sales of approximately $2.5 billion, an increase of more than 6% over the prior year, despite an unprecedented wholesale production shutdown of more than five weeks in our RV and certain geographic regions of our marine sectors. On the bottom line, we reported net income of approximately $97 million or $4.20 per diluted share, an increase of 8% and 9% respectively over 2019. Now, turning to a deeper dive in our end markets. RV and marine dealer inventories, both new and used, ended the year at recent historical lows as measured by weeks on hand. RV and marine retail sales continue to be driven by already-strong demographic trends. New buyers looking for ways to social distance and spend quality time with family and friends and a reenergized interest in outdoor recreation activities. Housing demand continued to be driven by low interest rates and a shift in migration trends, as a result of COVID from urban areas to suburban and rural housing, supporting demand in our industrial markets and continuing to increase the attractiveness of affordable MH housing. Our RV revenues were up $153 million or 52% in the fourth quarter and represented 58% of our consolidated sales. RV wholesale unit shipments were up 35%, totaling more than 130,000 units for the quarter. We estimate retail unit shipments also increased 35% in that same period or resulted in over 100,000 units sold. Dealer inventories continued to decline to recent historical lows and immediate retail sell-through at the dealer level due to increasing backlogs continued to delay inventory replenishment cycle. RV wholesale unit shipments were up 6% for the full year. And based on our estimates, we believe between 80,000 and 85,000 units were pulled out of dealer inventory channel in the past 12 months and over 100,000 units were pulled out of the dealer inventory channel in the last 18 months on increased retail sales of 12% and 6% respectively. Our estimates indicate that dealer inventory weeks on hand is down more than 60% for 2014 on retail shipments that are up approximately 55% over the same period. The RV market continues to additionally benefit from upgrades by existing users along with recent work-in study from Anywhere Trends. The continued strong traffic at the dealers, widespread awareness of the RV lifestyle, OEM and dealer commitments to offering a strong value proposition and investments in new campgrounds and amenities will all provide greater opportunities and capacity for Americans to experience camping outdoors. On the marine side of our business, momentum continues based on similar trends that parallel RV wholesale, retail and dealer demand and inventory levels. Our marine revenues of $108 million representing 14% of our sales were up $35 million or 48% for the quarter on estimated marine wholesale unit shipments that increased approximately 7% in the same period. Marine retail shipments are estimated to have increased approximately 35% in the quarter and 15% for the full year to over 226,000 units the largest retail shipment year since 2007. The marine industry continues to see a strong increase in new buyers, driven by similar secular trends in outdoor recreation. Heavy boat usage patterns and resulting demand for marine products including aftermarket products where our presence continues to grow have created historically low channel inventories. Our estimates here indicate that dealer inventory weeks on hand are down approximately 70% since 2014 on retail unit shipments that are up approximately 30% over the same period. We expect a very positive demand trajectory for marine wholesale unit shipments and healthy supply and demand dynamics through 2021. In summary the leisure lifestyle markets continue to benefit from the network effect as a broader demographic of consumers are embracing the domestic recreation space. We believe this longer-term customer base will support expansion of our addressable markets and continue to enhance our growth potential. The RV and marine markets satisfy the need for continued social distancing and quality time with family and friends. Historically low RV and marine inventories and the expansion of the customer base lead us to believe that the leisure lifestyle markets are poised for continued strength throughout 2021 and likely into 2022. Now turning to the industrial side of our business, once again we saw tailwinds due to strong new single-family housing starts and the continued surge of home improvement projects and related do-it-yourself activities. The housing market remains very tight and affordability of manufactured housing remains appealing to a sizable segment of the population. Strong demographic trends and increasing OEM backlogs indicate robust future demand and growth potential. Our manufactured housing sales of $122 million represented 16% of our total revenues in the fourth quarter, increasing 9% compared to the fourth quarter of 2019 on an increase in MH wholesale unit shipments of 2%. MH OEMs have experienced post-COVID production capacity hurdles and OEMs are currently working through healthy production backlogs which indicate a tailwind likely through 2021. Revenues in our industrial business of $96 million which represented 12% of our overall sales mix in the fourth quarter increased 35% compared to the prior year. Our supply to new residential construction the remodeling market and big box home improvement was driven by continued growth in single-family housing starts and robust home improvement demand. Additional demand drivers include low interest rates demand for suburban homes and tight supply. New housing starts increased 12% in the fourth quarter. Single-family housing starts increased 30% in the fourth quarter, while multifamily housing starts decreased 23% primarily due to the lingering economic and health-related impact of COVID-19. In summary, strong demographic trends and secular tailwinds in all four of our primary markets have positioned our business for a continued growth trajectory through 2021. We are investing in our infrastructure to support the OEMs and builders as they fulfill backlogs driven by continued expansion of our addressable markets and expect to continue to leverage our fixed cost structure in alignment to continue to drive results. I'll now turn the call over to Jake who will provide additional comments on our financial performance.