Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Q4 and Fiscal Year 2020 Interface, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers presentation there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Christine Needles, Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to Interface's conference call regarding fourth quarter and full year 2020 results hosted by Dan Hendrix, Chairman and CEO; and Bruce Hausmann, Vice President and CFO. During today's conference call any management comments regarding Interface's business, which are not historical information, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of our management team, as well as the assumptions on which such statements are based. Any forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any such statements, including risks and uncertainties associated with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and those described in our SEC filings. The company assumes no responsibility to update forward-looking statements. Management's remarks during this call also refer to certain non-GAAP measures. Reconciliation's of the non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures and explanations for their use are contained in the company's earnings release and Form 8-K furnished with the SEC today. Lastly, this call is being recorded and broadcasted for Interface. It contains copyrighted material and may not be rerecorded or rebroadcasted without Interface's express permission. Your participation on the call confirms your consent to the company's taping and broadcasting of it. After our prepared remarks, we will open up the call for questions. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Dan Hendrix, Chairman and CEO.

Thank you, Christine. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. 2020 was a challenging year and we all experienced the impacts of the global pandemic. I am very proud of the Interface team across the globe for your resilience. Thank you. Thank you. In response to the pandemic we took swift action to put our people first. We quickly moved our office based work force to work from home and establish stringent health and safety protocols to support our manufacturing team. We took significant actions to align our cost structure with the weaker demand environment which helped to protect both margins and cash flow during this time. Some of our cost reductions were temporary, like freezing salaries and limiting bonuses, but we expect a significant portion will be permanent changes to the way we run our business. This gives us significant earnings power as our markets recover. While we acted swiftly to control costs, we stayed focused on product innovation and our selling system. These competitive advantages positioned Interface for long-term success. The fourth quarter came in as expected with sales of $277 million in line with the third quarter 2020 sales, but down 18% compared to the fourth quarter 2019. Full-year sales of $1.1 billion were down 18% compared to the sales for the full year 2019. Interface continues to deliver solid cash flows despite the soft demand caused by COVID-19. Notably we generated $119 million of cash from operations during the year. Globally, in some parts of APAC and Europe, we are seeing modestly improving trends. The Americas have been slower to recover. With the rollout of the vaccine we're hopeful the market will recover. The new administration's return to the Paris Climate Accord and their focus on global warming should provide some tailwind for us.…

Thank you, Dan and good morning everyone. Our fourth quarter results came in as expected with net sales of $276.9 million, down 18% compared to the prior year period. Declines in carpet tile were somewhat moderate by lesser declines in LVT and rubber. Sales in the Americas were down 27% with declines across all product categories other than rubber. In EMEA, sales were down 13% in local currency and down 7% in U.S. dollars. Carpet tile was down for the quarter, while LVT rubber was essentially flat. Lastly, sales in Asia-Pacific were down 12% in local currency and down 8% in U.S. dollars. Declines in carpet tile were partially offset by growth in rubber while LVT was flat. There were however, some good signs as order levels have continued to stabilize. Fourth quarter adjusted gross profit margin was 35.5%, down 550 basis points from the prior year period. Given the 29% decline in carpet tile production in the fourth quarter, we believe this is a solid margin that reflects our strong supply chain, solid plant operations, and our ability to flex our plant and cost structure to changes in demand. We also continue to build earnings power through structural changes in our SG&A. SG&A expenses were $77.3 million in the fourth quarter or 27.9% of sales. Adjusted SG&A were $72.7 million in the fourth quarter or 26.2% of sales, which represented a 260 basis point improvement over prior year as a percentage of net sales. Fourth quarter operating income was $20.9 million compared to operating income of $27.9 million in the prior year period. Fourth quarter 2020 adjusted operating income was $25.6 million versus adjusted operating income of $41.5 million in the fourth quarter last year. Fourth quarter 2020 net income was $19.6 million or $0.33 per diluted share, while…

Thank you, Bruce. I am proud of the team and what we accomplished in 2020. As a result of our efforts, we were recognized as a United Nations Climate Action now Award recipient and one of the Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies. We were once again recognized among the top leaders among global brands in the 2020 GlobeScan and SustainAbility Leaders Report. In addition to our environmental initiative, Interface is continuing our commitment to social initiatives in our business. We established a Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion task force to develop our long-term strategy. We're embarking on this journey with a thoughtful and measured approach seeking input from our employees to identify specific areas of opportunity globally. We want every employee to feel they belong, and that they can thrive at Interface. As with our other ESG initiatives, our Board of Directors and Executive Leadership team will have oversight and monitor our progress in this important area. As we move into 2021, we continue to put our people first, especially with health and safety protocols to mitigate any COVID-19 related matters. We'd like to thank our employees for their perseverance through this uncertain year. We expect to enter and exit 2021 from a position of strength and be successful, resilient and agile during these changing times. With that, I'll open it up for questions. Operator?

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Kathryn Thompson from Thomson Research. Your line is open.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions today. I have a follow-up question on inflation and it's a trend that we've been watching for a lot of different categories. But it's not just on raw materials, but its healthcare and several other buckets. A couple of full question for Bruce, I know you're passing on pricing, but to kind of give hedging and the timing. You're a little bit different than some of your peers in terms of the cost flow through, help us understand what we could expect in terms of timing? And then also, could you give us some color just in terms of other inflationary pressures beyond raw materials? Thank you.

Good morning, Kathryn. This is Bruce Hausmann. Thanks for the question. We're really focused in this area. As you know, we have a very unique supply chain, which is highly concentrated on recycled materials. So unlike a lot of our competitors, we have a competitive advantage, where we're less susceptible to the rises and falls and the spikiness that often happens with virgin materials. So that's a competitive advantage for us. We also have long-term contracts in place with our suppliers, where we're able to get great visibility into what inflation is coming. So in terms of timing, it's probably more likely to come in the back half of 2021. We've had great success historically at passing cost increases over to our customers, which we're planning to do and which we're teeing up our costs and infrastructure around to be able to do in the back half. Rough numbers, if you sort of think about a blended rate and because you mentioned input costs in healthcare and all that stuff, is probably around a 3%-ish increase if you blend everything in, whether it's yarn, latex, PVC, healthcare, et cetera. So those are the kinds of numbers that we're looking at right now for the year and again, we plan on mitigating it with price increases.

Which have already taken some actions there?

Yes.

Okay. And then on -- just in terms of growth in the post-COVID world, what type of feedback you're receiving for customers on types of projects, they are, either products rather they are either more or less willing to include in projects. And really is there visibility change and a greater focus on soft versus hard surface for flooring products?

Hey, good morning Kathryn, this is Bruce again. The most resilient product that we've had throughout the pandemic has been rubber. And as you know, our nora products focus very strongly around healthcare and education sectors, so it's done extremely well. We continue to see great traction in that area, followed by LVT and then followed by carpet. I think as more and more customers are employing at their office space, and looking how they want to potentially reconfigure it in a post-COVID world, that there is great opportunity for all products in all segments, where as you know we continue to diversify the corporation into news particularly around healthcare and education, we're way less dependent on office than we ever had been before. It's only about 47% of our revenue now. But we're well positioned for our customers who are looking at ways to create a new office environment in a pre-COVID world and/or other on our activity that we can -- is going to happen as there is less urbanization, and there's less de-densification of offices in a post-COVID world.

Yes, thanks Bruce. Kathryn, I'd say that we're getting traction on our dealer strategy, take the United States, we introduced Open Air, which is a product that really hits squarely in the dealer market. And I've never seen a quicker takeoff of any product that we've introduced even over Entropy. I love our online business; we don't talk much floor, but online business is really exploding as well. And the carbon matters story is resonating with our customers in the United States; we're winning business every day, because carbon matters and our carbon negative product. I love the fact we got a patent issued on that product and now we're rolling it out in Europe and we're going to roll it out in Asia as well. So I'm really sorry about everything that's going on. Now we have a non-PVC back as well. we have a bio back that allows us to compete in markets where we were held out because of PVC. So I like our strategy on growing the top line.

Yes.

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

And your next question will come from David MacGregor from Longbow. Your line is open.

Yes, good morning everyone. I wanted to maybe ask, yes good morning, I wanted to ask you a little bit about the gross margins and 35.5% down 550 basis points. Normally, from a seasonality standpoint, fourth quarter is a little bit there in third quarter, not by a lot but a little bit, which would, if you look at third quarter 37.2% and I realized there was a lot of other things going on in the background would suggest that it was maybe a couple of 100 basis points of other price pressure in here. So, I know there's a lot of parts in the gross margin arithmetic, but is it possible to unpack just a little bit for us and just help us understand some of the moving parts? I mean, there's the raw material inflation, which you've already indicated you didn't feel was maybe as big of a deal because of your yarn and your contracting, but were you maybe a little more aggressive in terms of quoting activity, just given the 29% decline in production and carpet tile. You're talking about the dealer strategy, the rolling data, and I'm guessing that -- congratulations by the way on [indiscernible] really fast pickup, but I'm guessing that that was maybe a little source of gross margin pressure as well and if you can just unpack that for us, it will be a big help? .

Yes, thanks, David. This is Bruce. As I hear your question, I think one of the things you're trying to get at is that, are we seeing any pricing pressure? And the answer to that is no. Our pricing continues to hang in there strong. Really the biggest impacts that we had in Q4 around gross margin was just that our volume was down in our carpet tile plants and it was down 29% in the fourth quarter. It was down 27% for the year. And so there's just fixed, there's just less fixed cost leverage in a situation like that. We've been -- done a great -- our supply chain has done a great job at managing input cost inflation. It has done a great job at passing that through to customers to the extent that we've seen any of that. And I also want to just thank, our operators; they've done a great job at flexing the plants up and down as demand has changed. So, in sum, we feel -- we're really pleased with the gross margins that we saw in Q4 and we remain optimistic around gross margins as we go into next year due to very agile operators, and due to the mechanisms that we have in place to maintain strongest margins.

Yes, and I would say that we've re engineered Open Air. We're not taking the gross margin hit at the price points we're selling it at today. We changed the threat ups, and we changed how we make that product to make it more efficient product. So yes, we're not taking diluted margins on that product.

Okay, so as you rolled out that dealer product, I mean initially, I think the expectation was that could be mildly dilutive to gross margins. Now you're saying that it should be neutral to gross margins?

On this one particular product? Yes.

Okay. And so I guess that kind of brings around the question of how do we think about incremental gross margins, not operating margins, but incremental gross margins for 2021 just based on everything that you feel those before you know?

Yes, David this is Bruce. We're really -- we're mainly providing some guidance around the first quarter, which we think will be around 37% to 38%. And then it's a little bit of a, sort of see how it plays out in terms of top line volume. Obviously as top line volume picks up, we'd continue to get additional fixed costs leverage, which helps us a lot on that line. And then we'll just, we're going kind of keep watching this quarter-by-quarter and month-by-month, and we're going to make sure that we continue to being critical part of our cost structure.

And we're also -- been continuing to right size this company based on what we see on the top line. Yes, I'm not happy with 331 either, we had to add back a lot of bonuses and variable costs into that, but we're continuing to right size the company. We're not done right sizing Interface going forward.

Yes, David, I think Dan was referring to our SG&A number. That's right. And so we're going to take a hard look at that number.

We're going to continue to look at that and we've got a lot of initiatives to try and think about how to restructure Interface going forward.

Yes, we’ve talked about. Sorry David, this is Bruce again. We've talked about it before, but really, we're principally focused on operating income margins. At the end of the day, that's what we need to be driving and that's what we need to continue improving. Now, sometimes the mix between GP and SG&A will change, but we're going to use those levers inside the middle of the P&L to get to the right outcome on the bottom.

We're seeing some positive activity. We're seeing sampling pick up, we're seeing RFPs pick up. We're seeing customer visits picking up. And we're seeing a lot of interest in our carbon negative product.

Last question then, let's get you to elaborate a little further on that then if you would, how much of that's in the U.S. versus overseas and how much of that is kind of first or second…?

I would say, yes if you go to Asia Pacific is coming back Asia, I won't say Pacific, Asia and Australia has been okay, but China is coming back, India is starting to come back. But the biggest positive to me is that our U.S. business is starting to see a lot more activity. We're starting to see some big RFPs come through. We're starting to see a lot more sampling activity. Our salespeople are more active and more positive and I think we're hitting the market with the right kind of products to be honest with you.

Congratulations, and I'll hand it over to someone else, I'll get back in queue. Thanks.

Thanks, David.

Thank you, David.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Keith Hughes from Truist. Your line is open.

Thank you. First question on the SG&A, you had a good run here in 2020 cutting that down, given the fall offs in the market. I guess with the demand you're talking about here for 2021, I don't really understand why you're talking about taking costs out permanently. Why is the SG&A estimate for the year, why is it going up so much considering that the [indiscernible], there's still, why it is still kind of uncertain at this point. What kind of spending is coming back?

Our spending coming back in that number really Keith is the variable comp that we added back on salary increases and bonuses that we budgeted and all that is variable comp. The bonus is obviously variable comp yet hit performance targets. But we are at 306, and with 331 there's 25 million of variable comp that we put back in there. So I'm all focused on how to reduce it. Yes, I'm all focused on how to reduce the SG&A [indiscernible] I mean, and yes, so we're really focused on how to continue to go after that number.

Okay, thank you guys. One is for Bruce, one number that I want to make sure is go ahead…I would just say one number I want to make sure you are aware of…

Yes, if you talk about that, it's kind of flat, correct. And there was a lot of furlough in that number which was funded by governments around the world. But we're going continue to work really look at SG&A and go after it.

Keith, one thing I wanted to mention, this is Bruce, is that, structurally if you look at the number compared to 2019, it's down 15%. We've taken about $59 million of costs out of the SG&A structure, which is a great outcome. That the money that comes back, as Dan mentioned, only comes back if we hit our targets because it is a variable comp. It's -- there were some things that we did in 2020, where we stopped 401-K match. There weren't very many bonuses paid; very, very few. And so – and our stock comp was basically zero in 2020. So, now as we think about 2021, a lot of that stuff resets and we're just, we're trying to bake that into our thinking as we want to hit our targets for the upcoming year.

And we're going to continue challenging the structure.

Great, second question, you'd said I think you mentioned that earlier, Dan was it your clothing or your samples or something like that was back to a pre-COVID [indiscernible] than government's range, was that worldwide, U.S., if you can just give me some specifics on [indiscernible]?

He is asking about sampling activities, he is asking about geographies, U.S. versus Europe versus.

Most of the -- lot of -- activity is picking up everywhere around the world, to be honest with you. We got pockets of strength in Europe, and where they've had the lockdowns and second lockdowns, you're seeing less activity. But the most encouraging to me is what's going on in the U.S.

Okay, all right, thank you. Thank you for answering the questions.

Thank you, Keith.

I have no further questions in queue. I’ll turn the call back over to the presenters for closing remarks.

Thank you all for listening to our call. And we're very encouraged about the vaccine rollout. We're very encouraged about how we're positioned in the marketplace to win. And hopefully we'll have a lot better conversations and positive conversation next quarter. Thank you.

Thank you, everyone. This will conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.