William Bosway
Analyst · Julio Romero with Sidoti & Company
Well, from a market perspective, that army of data is kind of interesting because you think about the largest markets between Texas, Florida, California all being down, that's where you've had in the recent years a lot of migration and/or build happen or just sheer size of those respective states. I think Texas is -- which is important to us, but I wouldn't say that's a place that we're incredibly well positioned. We've been making strides there. But I think that's a location or I'd say a region that -- and generally the Southeast is probably going to see some recovery in the next year or so. And the reason I think that is, a, Florida is coming off -- came off of a very strong set of series of storms. We saw a big reduction last year in year-over-year type of performance. And I think it's now normalized and what now you're starting to see is -- I think they're positive for the year or year-to-date so far. I think you'll start to see that settle in and be a little bit more positive growth. We're pretty well positioned there, but we are coming off of a year or 2 where it was -- once you get past the hurricanes, it was really depressed. So we'll see how that evolves. I think the Southeast in general -- states like Georgia are still pretty strong, Alabama and that whole area. The Carolinas are pretty strong. We've been expanding into the Carolinas, if you saw the dots on the map, through metal roofing, but now we're actually running some of our building accessories through those metal roofing locations because those are areas -- those -- that region is -- that Mid-Atlantic or Carolina region is underserved. So we're seeing some opportunity there. So it really is somewhat surgical for us, but I would say how do you continue to do well in Florida, how do you expand in the Southeast, get the Carolinas going. And we'll continue to expand our presence in Texas. We've been doing a lot in the Rocky Mountain region as you see with Colorado, Idaho, Montana area, and we still think that has got some pockets out. Salt Lake has been pretty good for us. We've done some things in Boise, which seem to be a pretty decent market. So yes, really, the places we've gone, Julio, are places we think, a, are underserved, and b, have decent markets. And I can't tell you specifically what every MSA is going to do in the next 2 years, but I feel like our coverage today is better than it was 2 years ago and we're in more places than we would have been otherwise. And so as these regions return, I think that's important. And I think the other thing to think about is it's not just the region, it's being with the right channel in the region. And so part of our localization effort is to be stronger with wholesalers where 80% of what contractors need, they typically buy through. But there's also cases where we want to be in certain regions where we're doing really well with retailers and wholesalers. So there's a lot more under the curtain, if you will, in terms of how we're trying to drive our participation. But I think all of that is kind of working for us right now. We have more work to do. But that's a long answer to your question. But we're trying to skate to where the puck is going to be. Right now with the market, it's a little challenging to figure out exactly where the puck is going to be. But we think about it more than just the next year or the next quarter. We're trying to figure out migration patterns, where investments are going, where the new construction guys are going, as well as the inventory stock that's out there. So it's a combination of a lot of things. But sorry for the long answer. Hopefully, that helped a little bit.