Carlisle Companies - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 revenue was $1.10B, diluted EPS $3.13 and adjusted EPS $3.61; Carlisle modestly beat Wall Street consensus on EPS ($3.42*) and slightly exceeded revenue ($1.089B*) and EBITDA ($236.0M*) estimates, helped by strong March and re-roofing demand. Bold beat: adjusted EPS $3.61 vs $3.42*; revenue $1,095.8M vs $1,088.8M*; adjusted EBITDA $238.4M vs $236.0M* [functions.GetEstimates]*
• Adjusted EBITDA margin compressed to 21.8% (~240 bps YoY) on lower carryover pricing, CWT deleveraging, and targeted innovation investments; management reaffirmed FY 2025 guidance: mid-single-digit revenue growth and ~50 bps adjusted EBITDA margin expansion.
• Segment performance bifurcated: CCM revenue +2% to $799M with 27.1% adjusted EBITDA margin; CWT revenue -5% to $297M with 15.6% adjusted EBITDA margin on soft residential and drier West Coast winter.
• Capital allocation is a catalyst: Carlisle repurchased 1.2M shares for $400M in Q1 and lifted 2025 buyback target to $1.0B (from $800M), reinforcing confidence in $1B full-year FCF and Vision 2030 ($40 adjusted EPS, ≥25% ROIC).

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Strong March rebound and resilient re-roofing underpinning CCM: “improved weather conditions in March and healthy reroofing activity helped to offset much of the unfavorable impact”.
• M&A synergy traction: “MTL continues to exceed our expectations… on track to exceed $20 million of synergies… leveraging COS and cross-selling with Henry and CCM”.
• Capital return and conviction: Q1 buybacks of $400M; 2025 repurchase target raised to $1B; management reiterated $1B full-year FCF and Vision 2030 trajectory.

What Went Wrong

• Margin compression vs prior year: Adjusted EBITDA margin fell to 21.8% (−240 bps YoY) on negative price/cost and CWT deleverage; adjusted EPS -3% YoY.
• CWT weakness: Revenue -5% (−12% organic), adjusted EBITDA -28% with 15.6% margin due to soft residential, fewer rain events impacting coatings, and negative price/cost.
• Seasonal cash flow: Free cash flow from continuing ops was -$30.4M vs $132.0M last year, reflecting lower income and higher working capital in seasonally light quarter; cash balance declined to $220.2M largely due to repurchases.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good afternoon. My name is John, and I will be your operator for today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Carlisle Companies' First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Mehul Patel, Carlisle's Vice President of Investor Relations. Mehul, please go ahead.

Mehul Patel (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Carlisle's First Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. I'm Mehul Patel, Vice President of Investor Relations for Carlisle. We released our first quarter financial results today, and you can find both our press release and the presentation for today's call in the Investor Relations section of our website. On the call with me today are Chris Koch, our Board Chair, President, and CEO, along with Kevin Zdimal, our CFO. Today's call will begin with Chris providing key highlights of our first quarter. Kevin will follow Chris with an overview of our Q1 financial performance and a reaffirmed outlook for 2025. Following our prepared remarks, we will open up the line for questions. Before we begin, please refer to Slide two of our presentation, where we note that comments today will include forward-looking statements based on our current expectations.

Actual results could differ materially from these statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties, which are discussed in our press release and SEC filings. As Carlisle provides non-GAAP financial information, we provided reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures in our press release and in the appendix of our presentation materials, which are available on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Chris.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Thank you, Mehul. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Starting with Slide three of the presentation, where we highlight our first quarter performance and progress, I'm pleased to report that the Carlisle team showed superb perseverance in driving our key initiatives in the first quarter of 2025, overcoming significant challenges and post-election turmoil to deliver solid results. The first quarter challenges included the continued weakness in the residential construction markets, the negative impact of this winter's weather, especially in January and February, and the significant economic uncertainty and instability created by the ongoing U.S. tariff actions. With tough year-over-year comparisons and with an ever-increasingly complex macroeconomic backdrop, revenue of $1.1 billion was essentially flat year-over-year. Diluted EPS for Q1 was $3.13, and adjusted EPS was $3.61.

As anticipated and consistent with the trends we experienced as we exited 2024, the first quarter began with a slower start, primarily due to unfavorable weather conditions in January and February across many of our key markets. Fortunately, improved weather conditions in March and healthy reroofing activity helped to offset much of the unfavorable impact experienced in those first two months. In our CCM segment, in addition to the strong reroofing activity, Carlisle also benefited from our 2024 MTL acquisition. Both of these factors helped offset softer conditions in the new commercial construction activity, challenging prior-year weather comps, and, as anticipated, low single-digit price declines in CCM. The ongoing strength in reroofing demand, which represents 70% of CCM's commercial business, continues to be a key driver of our resilient performance, helping to offset the more negative macro environment.

For CWT, we continue to face headwinds in residential end markets due to buyer uncertainty, affordability challenges, higher interest rates, and lower housing turnover. As we've discussed previously, these residential market challenges were largely anticipated, impacted most market participants, and are well understood. While we are optimistic that the underlying drivers of the residential end markets will ultimately bring significant growth and margin expansion in our CWT business, for now, we will continue to focus on areas in our control. We are making progress on many of our key investments and seeing gains in areas such as new product introductions and factory automation within CWT. These efforts are expected to provide $3 to 4 million of incremental adjusted EBITDA per quarter starting this quarter, along with share gain initiatives.

When we look at pricing across both CCM and CWT, we experienced modest declines, as expected, during the quarter, with low single-digit price declines in both CCM and CWT. Based on the announced price increases and the start of the summer season, contractor expectations are that price increases will gain traction in the second quarter, and we expect year-over-year pricing to be neutral for both CCM and CWT in the second quarter. Turning to the much-discussed subject of tariffs. As we alluded to in the Q4 2024 earnings call, over 90% of our raw materials are sourced within North America. Additionally, many of our materials that are sourced from Mexico and Canada are covered by USMCA and are not subject to tariffs. Additionally, we import very little directly from China, approximately 5% of purchases.

Because of Carlisle's predominantly North American sourcing position, we currently expect a negligible direct impact from tariffs in 2025. Turning to the indirect impact of tariffs. The indirect impact is much more difficult to quantify and forecast due to the complexity and many moving parts involved. Nonetheless, the current indirect impact of tariffs is minor for Carlisle overall and should remain so for the rest of 2025. While the impact from tariffs, both direct and indirect, may be limited, we do remain concerned that there may be unforeseen indirect consequences of the tariffs for our contractors, distributors, and suppliers, along with the increased potential for a U.S. recession the longer these conditions remain unresolved and businesses remain uncertain about the future. Nonetheless, we have increased conviction in our well-understood drivers to our businesses and our market intelligence, and we remain committed to our 2025 outlook.

Our 2025 outlook is reinforced by the data from our latest Carlisle Market Survey conducted in early April. Feedback from those surveyed reinforces our positive outlook on the 2025 roofing season and our belief that commercial roofing volumes will be up low single digits. This low single-digit increase will be more heavily weighted to reroofing than new construction demand, which we believe will be essentially flat for the full year. Additionally, pricing in our non-resi markets is showing signs of traction, and our survey participants expect pricing to improve as the year progresses. Consistent with what we experienced starting in the second quarter of 2024, 2025 full-year residential volumes are expected to be down low single digits due to the continued negative impact of buyer uncertainty, affordability challenges, higher interest rates, and lower housing turnover.

Comments also suggest that inventory in the channel remains low by historical comparisons due to higher carrying costs and economic uncertainty. During the quarter, we maintained our commitment to returning capital to our shareholders, repurchasing 1.2 million shares for $400 million, bringing the total share repurchases since 2017 to $5 billion. Additionally, following the $1.6 billion in share repurchases in 2024, we now expect to deploy approximately $1 billion into share repurchases in 2025, an increase over our original projected share repurchases of $800 million. As a reminder, we also increased our dividend by 17.6% last August, our 48th consecutive year of increasing our dividends to our shareholders. These actions underscore our confidence in Carlisle's future growth prospects and our ability to generate significant free cash flow. We believe our approach to capital allocation continues to be a source of competitive advantage.

We are disciplined, have always been disciplined, and will remain disciplined, with an aim to keep our ROIC above 25%. Additionally, we will continue to allocate capital towards strategic M&A to enhance our leadership position within the building envelope, invest in our key strategic initiatives, and invest in significant capital expenditures to support growth, innovation, and further operating efficiencies. Touching on M&A for a moment, our acquisition of MTL continues to exceed our expectations. We are on track to exceed $20 million of synergies, well above our originally announced $13 million of synergies, as the Carlisle Integration Playbook delivers substantial value through a disciplined approach. Similarly, we are utilizing the same playbook on our integrations of both Plasti-Fab and ThermaFoam. ThermaFoam, as a reminder, continues to build our vertically integrated expanded polystyrene capabilities and adds geographic coverage in Texas and the South Central United States.

Please turn to Slide four as I discuss the strong structural trends that continue to support our businesses. Approximately 5.9 million buildings exist in the United States, according to the 2018 Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey. Of those, roughly 70% of U.S. non-residential buildings are now over 25 years old and represent a significant pool of potential buildings requiring reroofing activity. Based on our internal data, more than 80% of reroofing permits come from buildings over 25 years old. This pool of potential reroofing demand creates a consistent and somewhat predictable demand pattern. That demand pattern is demonstrated in CCM sales data from 2008 to 2025. It is extremely important to remember, and I want to emphasize, that Carlisle is an imperative business with a leading market share position in North America in what we believe is the world's best market for building products.

By using the words "imperative business," what we mean is that Carlisle provides key products and solutions to address a basic need of society: the need for buildings that protect and house us and are essential to our daily lives. Roofing, insulation, and weatherproofing are largely non-discretionary and necessary components of the built environment. This fundamental need for our products and solutions, combined with our market-leading position, provides resilience for Carlisle even during periods of economic uncertainty. It is also important to recognize that many of these older buildings will undergo multiple reroofing cycles during their lifetime. Buildings over 35 years old are 55% of the building footprint in the U.S. and require their second or often third roof replacement. As the 30% of buildings under 25 years old steadily roll into our addressable reroofing market, they reinforce the expanding pipeline of recurring revenue for decades to come.

Turning to Slide five, beyond the dependable base of recurring reroofing projects, Carlisle is also benefiting from increasing revenue and profitability per square foot. This increased content is driven by several factors: stricter building codes, increasing energy efficiency regulations, more severe weather events leading to higher specification roofs, and the growing adoption of 20-year warranties, which require more comprehensive systems and materials. This trend of increasing content per square foot is not new to Carlisle. In fact, it is directly aligned with one of our key pillars of our Vision 2030 strategy: innovation. Innovation drives differentiated products by first understanding the job to be done and how we can provide a better solution based on strong voice of the customer content. These products are then designed to create value for our customers.

This results in creating a preference for Carlisle's products and solutions and allows us to price to that value and increase the dollar content per square foot when compared to existing products. The ability to better address customer needs and wants, in turn, enables Carlisle to capture a greater share of wallet and deliver superior margins. Our comprehensive warranties further enhance our ability to drive content growth. Carlisle warranties are a highly valued benefit desired by building owners who prefer complete system solutions rather than individual components. Over 80% of our warranties sold now have 20-year terms, up significantly from previous years. These market dynamics present tremendous opportunities for Carlisle, and we're strategically positioning our innovation capabilities and initiatives to capitalize on them.

By developing products that deliver superior energy efficiency, require less labor to install, and enable us to sell more value-added solutions per square foot, we're directly addressing the key needs of building owners and contractors while driving our own growth and profitability. Turning to Slide six, we remain committed to accelerating our innovation efforts to deliver margin-enhancing, energy-efficient, and labor-saving solutions for our customers. As outlined in our Vision 2030 strategy, we're investing significantly in R&D, with our new state-of-the-art research and innovation center in Carlisle, PA, representing a critical part of this commitment. We continue to focus our innovation pipeline on three key areas: evolutionary improvements to existing products, transformational new solutions, and business lifecycle innovations that enhance efficiency and reduce costs. Our product development efforts are yielding positive results across both CCM and CWT segments, with new products gaining traction in the market.

In prior calls, we've highlighted several recent product introductions, including SeamShield, Blueskin VPTech, and UltraTouch. All three rollouts are resonating with customers, responding to their VOC stated needs, meeting our price-to-value objectives, and are margin accretive to our portfolio. As we continue to work with customers to grow our pipeline of innovation opportunities, we remain disciplined in our approach. Our rigorous underwriting process ensures that every R&D investment is aligned with our financial and strategic objectives to drive profitable growth and maximize returns. Simply put, we've built the right infrastructure to consistently bring margin-enhancing, energy-efficient, and labor-saving solutions for our customers. Our innovation investments are a critical component of our Vision 2030 strategy, and we expect our efforts to contribute meaningfully to our goal of generating 25% of revenues from new products by 2030.

With that, I'll turn it over to Kevin to provide additional financial details and color on our outlook for 2025. Kevin.

Kevin Zdimal (CFO)

Thank you, Chris. Starting with Slide seven, I'll review our first quarter 2025 financial results. In the first quarter, we delivered revenue of $1.1 billion, essentially flat compared to the first quarter of 2024. The acquisitions of MTL, Plasti-Fab, and ThermaFoam contributed $50 million in the first quarter. However, we were offset by a soft residential end market, unfavorable weather in 2025 compared to favorable weather in 2024, as well as lower pricing in the first quarter from carryover pricing from 2024. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 21.8%, down 240 basis points from the first quarter of 2024. Adjusted EPS was $3.61, a 3% decrease from the prior year.

The margin and EPS decline was due to a combination of lower volume in the quarter, negative price-cost, and investments in the business. Turning to our segment performance, starting with CCM on Slide eight, first quarter revenues were $799 million, up 2% year-over-year. The contribution from MTL was partially offset by a 1% decline in organic revenue. Revenue in the quarter was supported by recurring reroofing activity and customers accelerating approximately $15 million of orders to get ahead of anticipated tariff-related price increases. However, these increases were not enough to offset softer new commercial construction, prior year weather comps, and lower carryover pricing from 2024. CCM's adjusted EBITDA was $217 million, down 5% compared to the first quarter of 2024, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 27.1%, a decrease of 180 basis points year-over-year.

This margin compression was primarily due to lower carryover pricing and targeted investments in innovation and enhancement to the Carlisle Experience. However, we continue to realize synergies from the MTL acquisition, which partially offset these headwinds. Moving to Slide nine in our CWT segment, first quarter revenues were $297 million, down 5% compared to the prior year, with organic revenue declining by 12%. This decrease was primarily due to softer residential end markets impacted by affordability challenges, higher interest rates, and lower housing turnover, along with lower demand for roof coatings impacted by fewer rain events. CWT's adjusted EBITDA was $46 million, down 28% year-over-year, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 15.6%, a decrease of 510 basis points. This decline was the result of deleverage on lower revenue and negative price-costs in the quarter.

We remain confident in the investments we made, including our automation projects and share gain initiatives. Our automation in factories, cross-selling initiatives in the retail chains, M&A synergies, and new product introductions are all progressing well. They should deliver benefits starting in the second quarter and accelerate into the second half of 2025, positioning CWT for improved performance going forward. Slide 10 provides our first quarter 2025 adjusted EPS bridge for your reference. Moving to Slide 11, our balance sheet remains strong with a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 1.2 times, within our target range of one to two times. We ended the quarter with $220 million in cash and $1 billion available under our revolving credit facility. The strong liquidity position provides us with ample flexibility to continue investing in our businesses while also returning capital to shareholders.

We maintain a balanced debt maturity schedule with a weighted average interest rate of 2.9% and a weighted average maturity of 4.8 years. Our EBITDA to interest ratio stands at 19.5 times, reflecting our strong cash flow generation and modest debt levels. Turning to Slide 12 in our cash flow performance, the first quarter is typically our lightest cash-generating quarter as we pay down liabilities that grow throughout the year, like accrued customer rebates and employee incentive compensation, and we temporarily deploy more cash into working capital to prepare for the construction season. Cash generation this year was lighter than usual due to first quarter payments for higher year-end liabilities, as well as the dynamics of the first quarter shipping pattern.

January and February shipments were negatively impacted by weather and were followed by a very strong March, which shifted the time that cash provided by normal operating activities compared to the prior year. This will correct itself in the second quarter. We expect to generate full-year free cash flow of approximately $1 billion for 2025, providing us with the financial flexibility to pursue our balanced capital deployment strategy. Looking ahead to our 2024 outlook on Slide 13, we are reaffirming our expectations for mid-single-digit revenue growth for the full year with adjusted EBITDA margin expansion of approximately 50 basis points. While we continue to monitor the potential impacts of tariffs, interest rate movements, and consumer behavior, we remain focused on executing Vision 2030 and delivering on our full-year guidance.

For CCM, we expect mid-single-digit revenue growth driven by continued strength in reroofing activity and the full-year benefit from the MTL acquisition. We anticipate expanding margins through price increases, volume leverage, and operational efficiencies through the Carlisle Operating System. The second quarter for CCM will reflect a negative impact of the estimated $15 million of revenue that positively impacted the first quarter from accelerated purchases ahead of anticipated tariff-related price increases. For CWT, we expect high single-digit revenue growth, primarily driven by share gains and the full-year impact of the Plasti-Fab and ThermaFoam acquisitions. We anticipate margin improvements from acquisition synergies and the continued focus on the Carlisle Operating System, including the automation initiatives that we mentioned earlier. We expect total corporate and unallocated expenses of approximately $110 million for the full year.

Capital expenditures are projected to be approximately $150 million, with depreciation and amortization of around $200 million and net interest expense of approximately $50 million. We anticipate our base tax rate to be between 23% and 24%. Overall, we remain on track to deliver record-adjusted EPS for the full year 2025, with growth expected to exceed 10% year-over-year. We also expect to maintain our ROIC above 25% and free cash flow margin above 15%. Moving to Slide 14, I want to emphasize that our Vision 2030 adjusted EPS target of $40 plus remains firmly on track. We have multiple paths to achieve an adjusted EPS growth rate in the mid-teens through 2030, backed by our target organic revenue CAGR of over 5%, consistent free cash flow margin above 15%, and disciplined capital deployment.

Based on our Vision 2030 financial targets introduced in late 2023, we expect to generate cumulative free cash flow of more than $6 billion through 2030. This provides significant flexibility for share repurchases and accretive M&A, representing a combination of organic and inorganic paths to achieve our EPS target. We have a proven track record of effectively deploying capital to drive shareholder value, as evidenced by our robust share repurchase program and successful M&A playbook. In summary, while the first quarter presented some weather and market-related challenges, our underlying business fundamentals remain strong. We're confident in our ability to navigate the current market environment and continue delivering solid results for our shareholders in 2025 and beyond. With that, I'll turn the call back to Chris for closing remarks.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Thank you, Kevin.

In conclusion, we remain confident in our full-year outlook and our progress towards our Vision 2030 goal of $40 of EPS and exceeding 25% ROIC. I would once again like to take this opportunity to thank all of our Carlisle employees for their exceptional efforts and perseverance throughout this complex quarter. Your dedication has been instrumental in delivering resilient results. Thank you to all of you who are listening as well for your continued support and interest in Carlisle. That concludes our formal comments. Operator, we are now ready for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the number one on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised.

Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the number two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Tim Wojs from Baird. Your line is now open.

Tim Wojs (Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. Good afternoon.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Good afternoon.,Hey

Tim Wojs (Senior Research Analyst)

maybe just, you know, kind of first on maybe the volume cadence within maybe CCM through the quarter and kind of into April. If you could just give us a little bit of color on that and kind of what you're hearing from a season perspective from some of the contractors around things like backlog and stuff like that kind of heading into the busier season.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Hey, Tim, thanks. Interesting question. You know, we had our Carlisle market survey.

We've tried to publish as much as we could about that to let you know what was happening there. I think we look at that. There's a good tone out in the market of optimism despite what we have seen in the press and that our contractor base is pretty optimistic and the volumes seem to be building. When I was just in with about 125 contractors at one of the CCM signature events where they recognized contractors, and I was really surprised at how many people were optimistic about the construction season and the jobs that were out there. Arguably, the new construction is a little bit less, you know, optimistic. They're less optimistic about that, but I think we know the reasons why there, but the reroofing is strong as we go into the summer. Kevin will hit on the actual volumes a little bit as well.

Kevin Zdimal (CFO)

Yeah, Tim, January and February started slow. Those were both challenged by weather, was the biggest challenge in both those months. Once we got to March, it really picked up. Part of that was making up for some of that weather days that were lost in the first couple of months of the year. That picked up in March, and it continues into April. We're seeing favorable order patterns as we are three weeks into the second quarter. That's been favorable.

Tim Wojs (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Okay. I guess just on the cost basket, has anything changed, you know, in terms of the composition of that? I think last quarter you had kind of outlined that, you know, costs in CCM might be, call it neutral-ish, plus or minus. I guess you've got some sourcing of maybe MDI from China. I guess is that a headwind?

You know, how about like kind of TPO polymers, those types of things? I guess if, you know, some of that underlying basket has changed at all and kind of what you're expecting now for the full year?

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

With respect to tariffs, Tim, you know, we did say there was basically zero impact. I want to hit tariffs first, and then Kevin can hit the underlying things. When we look at Q2, again, not much impact there. Three and four, it looks like, you know, there might not be as much impact there as well, but that's going to be, that's pretty fluid, I think, three and four, given, you know, what we see from the administration each day on what we're going to do with China and that. On MDI specifically, there really wasn't any impact in the change in the pricing basket in Q1.

That gets locked in for 90 days. You know, we had that, let's call it an RFP in Q4, and that was for the first quarter. Locked in, you know, locked in Q1, or excuse me, Q2 at the end of March. Slight increases, low single digit. Then Q3 gets locked in in June. One of the impacts on MDI that I think we have to take a look at, though, is that there, in addition to the tariffs, and you know, one of the major producers is Chinese there, there's also an anti-dumping case that BASF, I believe, and Dow brought against the imports. You know, we're getting a little bit of upward pricing pressure. I would think that, you know, all the industry participants would use that, and we would see some upward pricing pressure as we get through the year.

For us, through Q2, you know, maybe a little impact, low single digits.

Kevin Zdimal (CFO)

Tim, this is Kevin. On the raw materials for the year, we still expect them exclusive of any further tariff increases. We expect raw materials to be neutral for the year. First half, we'd say slightly positive in the first half of the year, and then slightly negative in the second half of the year.

Tim Wojs (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Great. I'll hop back in Q. Thanks, guys. Nice job.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Thanks, Tim.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Susan Maklari from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Susan Maklari (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hello. Good afternoon, everybody.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Good afternoon.

Susan Maklari (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

My first question—hi, Chris. My first question is, you know, you talked about the momentum that you're seeing on a lot of the new products and the innovation that you're bringing to the market.

In this kind of a macro environment, how are some of your customers thinking about the value that those offerings bring? Is that actually helping or perhaps offsetting any perhaps shift to some of the repair side versus a full replacement of the roof in this kind of an environment?

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

I don't think that anybody is delaying a replacement if they need to do it. It might be on the margin, but I think, you know, with most of our customers, they've been in the queue for a while. I'll go back to the biggest constraint, I think, which is labor. We know labor is constrained.

I think whether it's in resi or non-resi, if you're in the queue to get a roof done and you've been planning it and speccing it and getting everything arranged for, let's say, you know, many months, if not a year, to delay it or to jump out of the queue might put you back so far that it's not really viable. I think that bleeds into innovation and what we're seeing. That is, we're seeing a lot of people talking about labor efficiency, right? How can you get off the roof faster? How can we get more jobs done with the existing labor? That manifests itself, and I think helps us to gain share and maintain share with the things we've done.

Now, arguably, most of our innovation has been around the Carlisle Experience and delivering, you know, the right product, the right place, right time. We've also had a lot of, you know, work in operational, you know, improvements and innovation where we're producing, I think, a better product that has less quality defects and, you know, is going to be on the roof for longer and is going to be less of a hassle to put down. You can look at the 16-foot line and it's just, you know, less labor and also less seams and less opportunity to leak.

I think the one we're really working on is this hardcore innovation around new products that'll be game-changing, like, let's say, doubling our value of insulation or something like that, where we can get the same R-value with half the content on the roof, which means, you know, you need half the people that you have on a job site to take it up. I think right now people are concentrating on that. They're looking at AI solutions. I think contractors are looking at ways they can interface with their manufacturers quicker and back office operations. It's all out there. I think what, you know, we talk about most of all is on the product side, and we tend to neglect all the improvements we've made on, you know, the customer experience side and on the operational side, but they're all meaningful.

Susan Maklari (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah. Okay.

That's really helpful. Maybe switching to the cash generation of the business. When you think about the changes that have come through in the profile and the businesses that you're in today, how do you think about your ability to generate really strong cash and positive free cash flow, even if the macro does further weaken in there? I know you reiterated your guide for this year, but can you just talk about some of those levers that you can pull and how we should think about what this business can do, even if things don't turn out as we currently anticipate?

Kevin Zdimal (CFO)

Yeah. What we've seen, you know, in past years, when we've had any dips in revenue, we end up having really good cash flow years. If you go back, you can go back to 2008 and see when the dip in the revenue was then.

We had excellent cash flow generation, a lot of it because we're bringing down working capital and get that benefit. Not something we're looking to have happen, but if it did happen, that's where we're pretty strong on the cash flow side. Our business hasn't changed that much from 2008 to now when you take out the non-building products company. Just talking about where we are today with building products, we're confident that we'll be able to generate this positive cash flow this year. We're looking at the 15% of sales, so about $1 billion of free cash flow, and really don't have concerns on that, even if there was that dip in revenue because of what we can do on the working capital side.

Longer term, when we look at Vision 2030, so through that period, we're expecting to generate $6 billion of free cash flow between now and then.

Susan Maklari (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah. Okay. That's great color. Thank you both, and good luck with everything.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Thanks, Sue.

Kevin Zdimal (CFO)

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Bryan Blair from Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.

Bryan Blair (Managing Director and Senior Analyst of Industrial Machinery and Flow Control Sector)

Thank you. Afternoon, guys.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Afternoon, Bryan.

Bryan Blair (Managing Director and Senior Analyst of Industrial Machinery and Flow Control Sector)

You mentioned pricing being roughly neutral for Q2 and full year costs being neutral-ish. Given our reads, a bit more accommodative than that. I'm just curious how Carlisle's thinking about Q2 price-cost and then the phasing for the full year.

Kevin Zdimal (CFO)

Yes. We look at Q2, we think both price and costs will basically be neutral.

Second half of the year, consistent with what we're thinking on our year-end call, is that we see pricing up low single digits in the second half of the year. With the raw material costs being neutral, we're seeing a positive, you know, 1% on the year from price-costs.

Bryan Blair (Managing Director and Senior Analyst of Industrial Machinery and Flow Control Sector)

Okay. Fair enough. MTL updates have been very consistently positive. We knew that was a really good asset that you guys acquired and, you know, clearly synergistic with your metals platform. You know, but the updates have been, you know, I guess, exceedingly positive. Just curious if you're willing to speak to revenue run rate, you know, current margin, where you now see that business over the next, you know, couple of years in terms of financial contribution.

Then, you know, quick follow-up, just how the M&A pipeline is looking, you know, given the uncertainty of the macro backdrop, how that is, you know, played out for that.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Yeah. Brian, let me try to give you the MTL thing. Extremely pleased with the MTL team, with how the integration went. Our team that worked on the integration, as you know, I think the last couple we have exceeded our expectations, our deal model expectations. MTL is no different. The team there, I have a lot of confidence in the team. Tony Mallinger, who ran MTL before, has taken over the metal business. We had that change. We have had some people from within Carlisle, some experts in both the market side, customer service side, and operations side come in and augment. Tony's already a good team.

We're doing things like spreading COS into the culture, and it's being well received. We got a safety culture that, you know, we take great pride in, and you know the results there. I think we're in the upper, you know, probably 15%, 10% of manufacturing companies, and we're spreading that in there. Again, well received. What's been really neat to see is the collaboration. We've had a couple of projects recently that, you know, Tony's team has led where they're bringing in other Carlisle products, both Henry and CCM products, and we're putting packages together that are, you know, getting into the specification and are creating that solution that we talk so much about that's going to give us additional stickiness, give us some probably better margin profiles, new customers. That is going well. We're also seeing MTL continually increase their integration with CCM.

You know, one of the things we did not have in our portfolio is when we would put on our roofs for CCM, the edge metal was, well, it might have been MTL, but it was not ours. Now MTL is working with CCM to get that in the spec. We are making good progress on that. Obviously, we can do it pretty easily with the architect. We have to make sure our contractors are pulled along as well, and it works for them, but making great strides in there. The MTL team continues to innovate. You know, that was one of the big strengths of MTL was they had something like 30-plus patents, which we had not seen in the metal business before. That is going well. We are leveraging our Petersen and Drexel metal businesses that started this off.

You know, Drexel and Brian Partyka's business started it all off a couple of years ago. And so things are good. I would imagine we would continue to expand that portfolio. There are many other opportunities in architectural metals that we can, you know, especially on the commercial side and facades, insulated metal building panels, roofing, things like that, that I think Tony and the team will continue to expand in and will leverage both the Henry business and the CCM business to continue to further that. The M&A pipeline has been good. We're getting, we had, you know, I would say, looks at deals and some at various stages, but I would say that the uncertainty created by, you know, some of the actions taken over the last few months has made it a little bit more difficult to make things progress.

I think there's obviously some disconnect there on risk that buyers probably don't want to include in their offer or may reduce it that sellers don't want to have happen. That happens. Then there's just the whole idea of how do you project your returns going out if indeed tariffs stay in place or they don't stay in place. When we look at these deal models, I think it's hard for the two parties to get together. I would expect, though, that when, you know, this stuff gets resolved, which it will, we're confident of that, that we get some certainty, a lot of these deals will come to market then.

Bryan Blair (Managing Director and Senior Analyst of Industrial Machinery and Flow Control Sector)

Got it. Very helpful color on MTL and also on the deal environments and understood on that front. Thank you.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Yeah. You bet, Brian.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Garik Shmois from Loop Capital. Your line is now open.

Garik Shmois (Managing Director)

Oh, hi. Thanks. Just wanted to follow up on the comment around the $15 million of pre-buying that you saw in the first quarter. Just wanted to get your observation of whether or not you consider that a normal level of pre-buying or you're seeing anything unusual just given the strength in March and April thus far, and then maybe some color on how inventories are at distribution.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Hey, Garik, how are you doing? I would say the pre-buy was really related to, I mean, isolated to Canada for the most part. I'm sure somebody could find there's a dollar somewhere that wasn't, but most of it was Canada. I think that the impact was pretty minimal. I mean, we had no issue supplying it.

We understood the rationale for doing it. I don't think it'll be a meaningful impact as we go forward. It might be a little bit of an impact, you know, a couple pennies or something in Q2, but it's not going to disturb anything, you know, happening in a major way. I can't remember your second part of your question. I apologize. You asked me about.

Garik Shmois (Managing Director)

It was just on inventories.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Oh, inventories. Of course.

Garik Shmois (Managing Director)

You're seeing anything excessive.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Of course.

Inventories. I mean, you know, we said it in our Carlisle market survey. We thought inventories were still fairly light. That had been an assumption we'd had coming into the year.

I think one of the things we had communicated was that if inventories stayed light and we had a fairly good roofing season, it would be beneficial to pricing and some other things as well. In fact, we were going to build a bit of inventory going into the, you know, the season to make sure we could address what we thought was going to be a pretty decent season, which is turning out, you know, as we March and April are turning out to be pretty good. I would say there's still some lightness of inventory in the channel. Obviously, interest rates and some uncertainty, as well as, you know, the big thing that no one has really talked about, at least as its impact on inventory, is the QXO deal and Beacon.

Beacon is a major distributor in the country, and I can't imagine that during a lead-up to an acquisition, if you're building inventory, I think you're trying to probably keep it as clean as you can, and then we'll see what happens after the deal closes. I would say in general, inventory is, you know, probably where it was in the first quarter and fourth quarter, and people are wary, and they're thinking about the carrying cost and working capital associated with higher levels of inventory. Certainly, you don't want to sit on it if the season doesn't turn out to be what you thought it was.

Garik Shmois (Managing Director)

Okay. That's super helpful. Just my follow-up question is just on the cost basket, you know, specifically related to non-North America costs and MDI specifically.

You know, just we're getting just a ton of questions on MDI, and just wondering how you're thinking about sourcing and if you're looking, you know, to, you know, move your supplier base away from China and just kind of any mitigation efforts that you're planning on putting in place.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Yeah. I don't think our strategy is changing much. I mean, we've always had a pretty, I would say, competitive, you know, RFP process. Our purchasing team does a great job. We've been a big, excuse me, purchaser of MDI for a long time. We have good relationships with all the major manufacturers. You know, they do move around from time to time, but I would also say, you know, you get a certain formulation embedded in what you're producing in the factory, and there is some stickiness there that you're not inclined to change.

Doesn't mean we can't change and we do when we need to, but I think the team does a good job of balancing that. As I explained earlier, you know, really, because we're doing this in 90-day blocks, for us, I'd say with what we're seeing in terms of potential price increases, we'll probably stick to our strategy. That doesn't mean that if things change, we won't take action there. You know, we always think of these things in a couple of ways, right? Probably three ways, right? When you have this happen, is it temporary and do you pass it through, or do you, two, not do anything and just absorb it in margin, or three, do you, you know, make a transition to a new supplier and move it around? We have those options, and I think we're in a good position.

Like I said, I think our team's always done a good job of keeping us in supply of MDI, not having any shortages. We're able to fulfill our obligations to our customers and at the same time producing what I think is probably the, you know, we probably buy at one of the lowest costs in the industry.

Garik Shmois (Managing Director)

Understood. Thanks for that. Best of luck.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Yep. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Adam Baumgarten from Zelman & Associates. Your line is now open.

Adam Baumgarten (VP of Vertical Research Partners)

Hey, guys. Just on the maintain guidance for the year, just have implies a decent step up on a year-over-year basis for, you know, revenue growth and EBITDA margin expansion to get to that target. I guess, how much visibility do you have to that improvement and maybe more specifically on the CWT organic growth and just margins across both businesses?

Kevin Zdimal (CFO)

Yeah. As we look at the range we put out there, I mean, we do mid-single-digit revenue growth, approximately 50 basis points of improvement on EBITDA. As we went into the year, we were probably on the higher end of those ranges, and now we're probably at the lower end of those ranges, but we're still confident in those numbers overall. As we look at the individual businesses, yeah, we see CCM for sure at that 50 basis points of improvement. They do need the pricing in the second half of the year to happen. CWT, we think we'll be back in that 22% range starting in Q2 and through the balance of the year. Showing improvement in that business as well for the full year. Yeah, overall, on a consolidated basis, looking at that 50 basis points of improvement.

Adam Baumgarten (VP of Vertical Research Partners)

Okay. Great. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of David MacGregor from Longbow Research. Your line is now open.

David MacGregor (President and Senior Analyst)

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Just to stay on that last question.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

David.

David MacGregor (President and Senior Analyst)

Hey. I hope everything's going well with you guys. Just wanted to stay on that last question. Specifically with respect to CWT, you're guiding up high single digits. When we talked last quarter's call, you were expecting that residential markets would show a moderate second-half recovery. Is that still the expectation, or what's changing in terms of the composition of the expectations that leave the guidance unchanged?

Kevin Zdimal (CFO)

Yes. We look at the business overall. We have new first half of the year. We would have new on the resi side, down mid-single digits, and second half of the year, obviously much harder to predict on it. Flat to up low single digits.

Overall, down low single digits for the new resi, R&R. When we look at that on the resi side, down low single digits first half of the year. We have an up in the second half of the year, the low single digits, which makes it flat for the year. R&R looking flat, new being down. As we look at commercial, on the re-roofing side on commercial, this is up mid-single digits for the full year, each of the quarters. On commercial, we have that down low single digits first half of the year and up low singles in the second half of the year for flat for the year.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

David, I think there's a couple other things that should help us as we move through the year.

You know, UltraTouch, which we've been talking about, continues to expand its presence across the nation and our relationship with a, you know, major retailer. We have some other things, VPTech, that's taking hold. All these are, you know, labor-reducing and more, I would call, efficient from an ROIC perspective. That's been good. We continue to make some channel gains as the team expands the EPS, expanded polystyrene footprint. We've got, obviously, the additions of Plasti-Fab and ThermaFoam that once we get through the integration, they should pick up speed. They have some sales synergies there, some things in Canada that the Plasti-Fab team can work on. I hope we show some results as the U.S. team helps them with their relationships up there. We've got some good things there. Weather's another one.

You know, Mehul had, you know, educates Kevin and I on how dry weather is great for CCM, but it may not be great for roof coatings where you need, you know, rainy weather for people to identify that they have a roof leakage problem on the resi side, and then they head to one of the major retailers and pick up a Henry product. You know we've had some dry weather. Obviously, it's been helping CCM, but it hasn't been helping CWT on that side. We also think that when there's that extended period, it usually takes about four to six months for that to recover, which, you know, with what we've seen, puts us into that second half. There are some positives in the second half, and then we have the normal things we're doing around automation in the factories.

We've got projects like the Kingman project I talked about that's a full factory automation project underway right now that'll also have some impact on margins. Yeah, we're a little bit more positive as we go along. You know, it's been three years, I think, since we've had Henry, and the team has come in, and we continue to find things for them to work on. Even though they're being pulled down pretty, you know, remarkably in a lot of ways with negative energy in the resi markets, the team's pretty resilient, and they keep making a lot of progress on new product development and other things. Hopefully their initiatives will pay off, and we think they gain momentum through the year.

David MacGregor (President and Senior Analyst)

Got it. Yeah. Thanks for that detail. That's helpful. I guess follow-up question.

I was hoping within the context of that mid-single digit growth guide that you're providing for the year, you could just talk about membrane versus Polyiso and what you're seeing in terms of, you know, market dynamics and how you're expecting each of those to contribute to that mid-single digit number.

Kevin Zdimal (CFO)

Yeah. We don't really break that out, David, going through it. I mean, we do. Polyiso has been growing faster than the membrane has just from the more energy-efficient buildings and putting more Polyiso on each of the jobs. That's when we look at price per square foot on the content for each of our jobs. That's been going up, and that's really been driven by that Polyiso piece of it. Breaking out the individual revenue growth numbers, we haven't put that part out.

David MacGregor (President and Senior Analyst)

Is there any way you can talk about market conditions there?

Any kind of general commentary?

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

General commentary on the different product categories. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think if we go through the big ones, at least in CCM, Mehul could talk on CWT, but I mean, in CCM and our product categories, you look at EPDM. I still think EPDM is a great solution. We're seeing that despite what people talked about years ago, that EPDM was going to be replaced by PVC and TPO, we haven't seen that. We've seen EPDM continue to have a real, you know, solid market presence. In fact, I would just say we've even seen some positive growth here in Q1. TPO continues to be a big solution of choice for people. It's reflective.

We get a lot of positive shared, you know, and gains against modified bentonite in the south where you get the reflectivity and obviously the insulation properties from the Polyiso. Kevin mentioned how Polyiso is growing. PVC has been a nice grower for us. You know, it serves a certain part of the market. When we look at our architectural metals business, again, that is growing at a nice clip. I think people like the recyclability of metal, the ability to use colors, the ability to produce a different architectural look to the business. I think on the CCM side, you know, it's really been a positive story in all the categories. You know, our job here on innovation is to continue to innovate and add to that category.

We think what we'd really like to see is in five years, we have another roofing membrane we can talk about with some, you know, pretty remarkable benefits, whether they be labor savings or energy efficiency. Obviously, Polyiso is something that is a great insulated product, but we'd like to see another product category that perhaps has, let's say, 2x the R-value of Polyiso and has some other benefits, whether it's enhanced flame retardancy or something like that. Mehul, do you want to talk a little bit about product categories in CWT?

Mehul Patel (VP of Investor Relations)

Yeah. A lot of the same secular drivers that Chris went over around energy efficiency, labor savings. As you guys know, CWT with a broadened portfolio. Yep. Mehul?

David MacGregor (President and Senior Analyst)

Yeah. I think we got all this. We're just trying to get—yeah, I think we got all this.

We're just trying to get some color on market conditions and dynamics. I think we understand the big picture.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Yeah. I think, David, I think we've been pretty clear about the market dynamics. I mean, we referenced the fact that re-roofing continues to do well. We were at the Contractor Event. I mentioned that. Our Carlisle market survey continues to show positives. I mean, really, in the RESI markets, I mean, you know what it is. If they're not remodeling or building new houses, it's a pretty direct correlation between how market conditions are, and I think that's been pretty well stated. If you have something specific—I am sorry I took you on a wild goose chase there—if you have something really specific you want to answer, we could try to answer it.

I would say we're a little bit hesitant to give out what we consider confidential information considering we've had so much talk of competitors coming into the market from places like, you know, overseas and that. So we are a little bit more guarded on some of these numbers. Do you have a specific thing you'd like to— in that case,

David MacGregor (President and Senior Analyst)

maybe I'll take it up with you offline. Maybe just last quick question. Could you just talk about the cadence on the tax line over the balance of the year to get to the 23% to 24%?

Kevin Zdimal (CFO)

That's pretty steady throughout the year. I wouldn't say it'd be anything different than the first quarter that that continued through each of the next three quarters.

David MacGregor (President and Senior Analyst)

Thanks, Shelm.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Okay. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Keith Hughes from Truist. Your line is now open.

Keith Hughes (Managing Director)

Thank you. What was the pricing number in the CWT segment in the first quarter?

Kevin Zdimal (CFO)

It was down just about 1%.

Keith Hughes (Managing Director)

Over 1%. And was that coming specifically out of Spray Foam or which product in there?

Kevin Zdimal (CFO)

Yeah. You're spot on. It is the Spray Foam product line that is down in the first quarter.

Keith Hughes (Managing Director)

Okay. There's talk of a lot of price increases there, particularly with some increases in the fire retardant. I guess, do you think that will turn back around positive in the second quarter? Will it take more of the second half? What's your view?

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

I think on the ATO that we've got, I think we'll continue to see it into the second quarter. I think we'll also continue to see the fasteners and plates that we mentioned, that those were a significant industry impact. That was across the board for everybody.

I think it's putting on a roof, at least our type of roof. And then, yeah, so that'll go through to the second quarter.

Keith Hughes (Managing Director)

Okay. Thank you.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Yep. You bet.

Operator (participant)

There are no further questions at this time. I'll hand the call over to Chris Koch for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Chris Koch (Chair, President and CEO)

Thank you. And thanks, everybody, on this first quarter earnings call. We really appreciate all the questions. Hopefully, we've provided substantial details to help with the understanding of Carlisle. Again, thank you for your participation. We'll look forward to speaking to you on the next earnings call. Thanks very much.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.