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QXO, Inc. (QXO)

Q2 2016 Earnings Call· Mon, May 2, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Beacon Roofing Supply's fiscal year 2016 second quarter earnings conference call. My name is Iela, and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will be conducting a question-and-answer session towards the end of this conference. At that time, I will give you instructions on how to ask a question. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded for replay purposes. This call will contain forward-looking statements, including statements about its plans and objectives, and future economic performance. Forward-looking statements are only predictions and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Therefore, actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward looking statements as a result of various important factors including but not limited to those set forth in the risk factor sections of the company's latest Form 10-K. These forward-looking statements fall within the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private securities litigation reform act of 1995 regarding future events and the future financial performance of the company, including the company's financial outlook. The forward-looking statements contained in this call are based on information as of today, May 2, 2016 and, except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any of these forward-looking statements. Finally, this call will contain references to certain non-GAAP measures. The reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures is set forth in today's press release. The company has posted a summary financial slide presentation on the investor section of its website under events and presentations that will be referenced during management's review of the financial results. On today's call for Beacon Roofing Supply will be Mr. Paul Isabella, President and CEO; and Mr. Joe Nowicki, Executive Vice President and…

Joseph M. Nowicki - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thanks, Paul, and good afternoon, everyone. Now I'll highlight a little more detail on a few key financial results and metrics that are contained in our earnings press release and the second quarter slides that were posted to our website this afternoon. We've included a few extra slides this quarter to help explain the results in more detail. In my prepared comments, I'll also go into more depth on a few key areas like synergies, RSG acquisition costs including amortization, and our outlook for the remainder of the year. Overall, it was a great quarter. Slide 3 provides an adjusted income statement for the quarter and year to date, excluding the non-recurring costs associated with the RSG acquisition as highlighted in our press release. We had strong top line growth of 99.3% for record second quarter sales of $823.5 million. This was driven primarily by the acquisitions which are made over the last year consisting of RSG, ProCoat, RCI, RIS and Statewide. In addition to the acquisitions, we saw significant growth in our existing markets of 27.7%. Gross margin increased over the prior year by 40 basis points. Operating expenses were up in total, mainly due to higher volumes and costs related to the RSG acquisition. Excluding those costs, operating expenses as a percentage of sales declined 490 basis points, demonstrating great leverage. As a result, for the quarter we achieved an adjusted EPS of $0.03, an improvement of $0.23 over the prior year, a very solid quarter with positive earnings in what is typically our toughest quarter of the year. For comparison purposes, there are 64 days in Q2 of fiscal 2015 and 63 days in fiscal 2016. Paul already went through our Q2 sales results as shown on slide four, so I'll not repeat any of that information…

Operator

Operator

Our first question comes from David Manthey from Robert W. Baird. Your line is now open. David J. Manthey - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Okay, thank you. Good afternoon, guys. Paul M. Isabella - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hey Dave.

Joseph M. Nowicki - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hey, Dave. David J. Manthey - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): As it relates to the guidance, as everyone, I guess I'm a little confused here when we look at you saying average storm volume versus above average, I mean, given the timing of the Texas storms in mid March and even into April, and the size of them, and your exposure to those areas, it would seem like it would almost be impossible not to have an above average storm period. So I'm just wondering given the fact that you exceeded Street estimates as you said by $0.24, but you're only increasing the high end of EPS range by $0.23, just hoping you can give us a little bit more color on what you mean basically by average. Do you mean average from here, or average including the storms you already know about? Paul M. Isabella - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Dave, let me take a swing at it. You look at where we're at through the first half and we know, as anyone that looks at it and can assume there's been some pull forward, very difficult to calculate. And also knowing, based on that and other factors, there's variability. We did the best job we could with our internal team looking at what the back half looks like including that current storm volume. Now, remember, the majority of that volume is centered around Dallas, and, of course, we have branches there. We have about 11 or so that we can go further out, let's call it 11, that can service that. But as you look at the potential gain there, it's nowhere near an East Coast hurricane type event or even Hurricane Ike going up through the middle of the country. What we mean by normal is other areas of the country besides the bit we saw in San Antonio, the bigger volume we saw in Dallas, for sure, there's a little bit of volume. It won't really move the needle, but it will help the east coast branches in Spartanburg, South Carolina. We're really talking about Denver, which is on the backside of hail they've had a year, a year and a half ago. The upper Midwest that had hail a year, year and a half ago. We still have four to six weeks left in the storm season, and I think it's just us looking at that saying what's the entire country done and then us trying to predict the variability of how much pull-forward. We know there's some in there versus these last five, six months. That's as simple as it is, Dave.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Keith Hughes from SunTrust. Your line is now open.

Keith Hughes - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you. Just talking on acquisitions, you highlighted some of the deals recently, and some of your deals of late have had more of a complementary product focus in various areas. I just want to talk more about what the strategy is there. How do you integrate those with your surrounding roofing focus branches and what does that look like in the future? Paul M. Isabella - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Great question. And I tried to allude to it without spending a whole page on it. But if you look at what we've done, there certainly was a compliment of roofing acquisitions we did. We talked about Statewide and RCI. If you look at Lifetime and Atlantic, they're on the East Coast, Lifetime in the Carolinas, Atlantic up in Philly, in an area where we already have some pretty good complementary businesses. So they will just be a good add-on to an already strong base and they fill out geographies some a little bit different product lines down in the Carolinas within complementary. So they fit quite nicely as does RIS and what we're trying to do is expand all of our lines of business, and as I said, we can't predict when specific acquisitions will come available, but as we see ones that make sense, that drive good EBITDA and fit strategically, we're going to go after those. Now in the case of Lifetime and Atlantic, there's not a lot of sales volume but they're also in areas where we also have a very strong commercial and residential roofing business. So we will use their branches, their salespeople to go ahead and offer those two product lines in addition to the complementary. And really the same for Fox Brothers up in Michigan, they have very large branches. They do sell shingles, but we believe we can sell even more shingles and we also can introduce commercial roofing, which we're going to do in that area. So I think it fits nicely into our strategy of buying good acquisitions in good geographies whether they're adjacencies or somewhat separate because if you look at Michigan, we're in Detroit and Grand Rapids only, all commercial roofing. Although our team there has a very good experience with residential products, it's just a great base for us to expand.

Joseph M. Nowicki - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

I think it's a combination of the two pieces, as Paul mentioned, Keith, which is really good. It's both complementary spread through our branches plus also the locations. Getting into good locations that we're not in and really trying to enhance and increase our geography as well, too.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Kevin Hocevar from Northcoast Research. Your line is now open.

Kevin Hocevar - Northcoast Research Partners LLC

Analyst

Hey, good afternoon, everybody, and congrats on a nice quarter. Wondered if you could comment on inventories. Wondered if you could break out the legacy inventory per branch versus the RSG inventories. Give us a sense where that's at. And with the upcoming price increase, I mean, the industry's looking pretty strong. Wondering your plans on inventories heading into that price increase. You think it has a decent chance of sticking, do you plan on building inventories ahead of it or kind of curious of your thoughts on how you're going to manage that.

Joseph M. Nowicki - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Good question. Sure, I'll go through some details of the first part for you, Kevin, around our kind of inventory profile today, and then Paul will talk a little bit about our go-forward strategy. So our inventory profile today from a turns perspective, I'm going to cover both. Turns as I mentioned, 4.1 versus 2.9 last year, great improvement. If you look at the legacy branches, it's similar. Our Beacon legacy turns with 3.9 versus 2.9. The RSG legacy branch is 4.6. And then those branches we combined had turns of 4.3, so as you can see just great performance on all of them. Now look at the inventory per branch. Our Beacon legacy per branch inventory went up slightly from $1.340 million to $1.360 million, so 1%-ish, and really driven primarily by the increased sales. We had 25%-plus sales going through them, and that's what really drove the inventory to be up slightly. So overall, well managed and in good shape. The legacy RSG branches, their inventory per branch about $1.940 million each. And the branches we combined had a little over $2 million of inventory per branch on those combined ones, again, bigger branches. So in total, our inventory per branch went from $1.340 million to $1.430 million. So up a bit, but really our focus around the turns, you see significant benefits improvement in the turns and also the legacy Beacon branches on an inventory per branch, right in line with where they have been. Paul M. Isabella - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And in terms of the second part of your question, Kevin, again, I'll say we're managing inventory very, very well. As I said on the last call, there was no planned winter buy; there was not a winter buy. We bought December, January, February for the incremental volume we saw, and you can obviously see the increase we had year over year. In terms of what we're doing now, of course we're going to buy inventory to satisfy demand to service customers, especially in the Texas market. And as I alluded to, that is fueling the manufacturers' price increases and ours. And also with ours, it's a result of increased costs as we move more trucks, people, et cetera into the area. So in general, our inventory is going to stay well under control, and we're going to buy what we need to satisfy demand. We're certainly not going to do any equivalent of a winter buy in the third quarter. That's the best way I can answer that.

Operator

Operator

Our last question comes from Bob Wetenhall from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Robert Wetenhall - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Hey, pretty awesome quarter. Paul M. Isabella - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hey, Bob.

Robert Wetenhall - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Nice to see. Hey, talk me through – and thanks for all the detail. You guys did a great job. I'm just trying to think about – you touched on a lot of things. I think Joe's comments were there were a couple of moving pieces. I'm just trying to understand the interplay between the mix shift in the second half of the year and how we should be thinking about organic growth trends by product line and also how that relates to your comments that pricing was down, but you're going to keep getting some raw material relief as well as mix benefit. And we're just struggling to reconcile the two. I know there are a lot of moving pieces, but it would just be great to understand how in back half of the year speaking to your guidance we should think about that. Thanks and good luck, guys. Paul M. Isabella - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Bob.

Joseph M. Nowicki - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

You bet, Bob, this is Joe, and I'll give you just a quick view on some of the mix shift parts. As we put together the forecast on those two bookends, the low end and the high end, in both cases, we really assume the mix pretty consistent in the second half of the year to what we saw in the first half of the year, which as you know, there was more residential product in the first half of the year than we had seen in the prior year. So we're thinking that same shift is what we're going to see in the second half of the year. So there will be an improvement and an increase in residential product, which'll drive a mix gain or benefit slightly in the second half of the prior year. But it should be pretty much aligned with the mix of products. The residential versus complementary versus commercial sales mix that we saw in the first half of the year we'll see in the second half of the year. Paul M. Isabella - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And related to the pricing element, we've seen for the last number of quarters, and I think I mentioned it in my prepared script, negative price. And I think it's just a function of the demand not being quite as strong, and then the volumes, of course, the corresponding volumes. We have offset that to a large part over the last few quarters. We just do not project any major flip on that, meaning that all of a sudden because of Texas, let's say, the whole country is going to go to positive pricing. Of course, we would enjoy that if it occurred and we're certainly working to that end. But as we looked at the base case, it was similar negative pricing to what we saw, with the offset thereabouts in the product cost because we think we have some good trending there. And I think in the best case it lessens in that fourth quarter let's say or even later fourth quarter gets closer to zero as we make improvement with pricing. And it depends on the degree. In Texas, the manufacturers announced increases in the 3% to 5% range. We announced something larger and so did our competitors just because of the amount of equipment and people we have to bring in to mobilize, our costs are going to go up a bit. So we've just done our best job at predicting what we think the back half looks like with all the variables we have. And we think we laid out a pretty concise plan of the $2.00 to the $2.10 based on all the elements that could potentially impact it.

Operator

Operator

That concludes the questions. Now I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Isabella for his closing comments.