Eagle Materials - Q3 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Eagle Materials' third quarter of fiscal 2024 earnings conference call. This call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Eagle's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Michael Haack. Mr. Haack, please go ahead, sir.

Michael Haack (President and CEO)

Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to Eagle Materials' conference call for our third quarter of fiscal year 2024. This is Michael Haack. Joining me today are Craig Kesler, our Chief Financial Officer, and Alex Haddock, Vice President of Investor Relations, Strategy, and Corporate Development. There will be a slide presentation made in connection with this call. To access it, please go to eaglematerials.com and click on the link to the webcast. While you're accessing the slides, please note that the first slide covers our cautionary disclosure regarding forward-looking statements made during this call. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to differ from those discussed during the call. For further information, please refer to this disclosure, which is also included at the end of our press release.

Let me start out by saying that I'm excited to report on another quarter of superior execution at Eagle Materials. A few financial results that I wanna highlight from our third quarter are: record revenue of $559 million, up 9%. Gross profit margin increased 130 basis points to 32.3%. Adjusted EPS was up 16% to $3.72, and we returned $106 million to shareholders through stock repurchases and the quarterly dividend. These results would not be attainable without the over 2,600 fantastic employees at Eagle Materials that make the company successful through their safe, hard work, and dedication to customer satisfaction. Each of you contributes to the results I'm proud to report on. Thank you. Because of these impressive results, Eagle Materials continued to produce strong cash flows.

Over the years, we have been very clear as to how we will use the free cash flow generated from our operations. Our investment priorities have been consistent for years and will continue to remain so. They consist of three main components. First, is to maintain or widen our low-cost producer strategy by keeping our facilities in like-new condition. Second, is to grow the company with emphasis on expanding the heavy material segment through acquisitions or investments that increase existing capacity. And third, when investment opportunities do not meet our disciplined return on investment criteria, we prudently return excess cash to shareholders. In the first 9 months of fiscal year 2024, we have returned an impressive total of $276 million of cash to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. Our ability to execute our investment priorities relies on the long-term sustainability of our businesses.

A business is not just the hard assets of the equipment, but consists of our most vital asset, the people operating the plants, their safety, and ensuring we are good stewards of the environment. We have made and continue to make progress in these areas, and I would like to spend a little time highlighting a few items here. In 2023, we were able to sustain our total recordable injury rate well below industry averages. Any incident is one too many, and we will continue to strive for zero incidents, but I am proud of the work that was done to sustain our step change in TRIR from previous years. Environmentally, we continue to make significant gains on our transition to blended cements. This quarter, our blended cements accounted for over 75% of our manufactured sales volume.

These cements lower our CO₂ content per ton of material, enable us to extend our clinker capacity. We also announced agreements with Terra CO2, granting us exclusive rights to use Terra's technology to produce low-carbon, supplementary cementitious material in three regions, complementary to Eagle's current footprint. This product has the potential to lower the carbon intensity of our cementitious materials and will enable us to fulfill the increased cement demand in today's virtually sold-out market, especially as other SCMs, like fly ash, continue to decrease in availability. We look forward to highlighting these achievements and much more in our updated sustainability report to be published later this quarter. In the report, you will see significant progress from Eagle, both in what we are doing for our businesses, but also in how we are reporting that progress.

With that, let me turn to the specifics on the quarter, starting with the heavy materials business. Our heavy materials performance this quarter continued to benefit from favorable business conditions. Public infrastructure spending is robust. The bulk of the United States' investment in roads, bridges, and highways comes from the state and local level, and tax receipts continue to be strong while state budgets remain healthy. In addition, increased infrastructure spending from the federal IIJA funds should increase noticeably for the next several years. Private, non-residential spending also continues to provide demand tailwinds for our business. While certain pockets of non-residential construction, such as warehousing, may be a drag on the total spending,... The outlook from heavy industrial projects in manufacturing construction give us confidence in the visibility for our cement business.

The passing of the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act has led to meaningful increase in heavy industrial projects focused on computer, electric, and onshoring of other manufacturing. Signs also suggest residential construction may have bottomed. From these facts, our demand outlook remains positive, and we will continue to focus on executing to provide materials for our customers. Turning to the supply side dynamics for heavy, we still see no meaningful supply additions for the cement industry on the horizon. Blended Cement products, while important for making clinker go further, will not add enough U.S. cement capacity to alter the supply-demand fundamentals. Imports are increasingly required to meet U.S. demand, as they have been in the past. Since we are a well-positioned, low-cost heartland producer, Eagle remains generally insulated from imports, as transportation is very expensive and is expected to remain so.

Against this supply-demand backdrop, half of our markets are implementing a January 1st price increase, while the other half of our markets have announced an April 1st price increase. Now let me turn to the light side of our business. This quarter, our light materials business held steady in an uncertain environment. Gypsum Wallboard continues to benefit from a long-tail construction backlog that has kept demand steadier than expected, and construction across the South, where much of our footprint is, has held up particularly well. The near-term outlook remains dynamic, with the latter half of our fiscal third quarter seeing constructive market conditions for housing and wallboard demand, given the drop in interest rates. In the medium term, the direction of the U.S. monetary policy and its effect on mortgage rates remains uncertain and will dictate the big component of the demand picture.

While we expect multifamily housing starts and construction to drop off, single-family housing starts are recovering nicely, especially in the South, and home builders are reporting favorable outlooks. The longer-term housing deficiency in the U.S. will need to be addressed through new home construction. The wallboard demand backdrop continues to be set against supply constraints that are fundamentally changing our business. As the availability of synthetic gypsum continues to diminish, the approximately 50% of the wallboard industry designed to use synthetic gypsum faces raw material challenges, challenges from which Eagle is generally insulated, given the surety of raw material we maintain at all of our wallboard plants. The result of the synthetic gypsum shortages is a steepened industry cost curve and crimped industry capacity. We do not see any improvement in cost or capacity in the medium term.

Against these market conditions, we recently announced a wallboard price increase for February 1st. Given these structural and operational dynamics, we believe our heavy and light materials businesses look increasingly similar. Structurally, as I have discussed, supply side dynamics mean capacity remains constrained for both cement and wallboard, although for different reasons. On the demand side, each business is supported by long-term, demographic-driven tailwinds that should provide meaningful growth. Operationally, our two core businesses are well-defined, well-established, and well-positioned. Each uses mined minerals that have many decades of owned reserves, and each are in cyclical sectors, so cycle management skills are important, and we have proven for decades that operating through the up and down of the cycle is where we excel. In all, the combined businesses produce meaningful free cash flow, keeping our balance sheet healthy and positioning us to capitalize on growth opportunities when they come.

With that, I'll turn it over to Craig to go through our financial results in more detail.

Craig Kesler (EVP and CFO)

Thank you, Michael. Third quarter revenue was a record $559 million, an increase of 9% from the prior year. The increase reflects higher cement sales volume and prices, and contribution from the recently acquired import terminal in Stockton, California, partially offset by lower wallboard sales volume and prices. Excluding the Stockton acquisition, revenue was up 7%. Again, this past quarter, we generated record EPS. Third quarter earnings per share was $3.72. That's a 16% increase from the prior year and represents the 10th consecutive quarter of year-over-year improvement. This quarter's increase was driven by higher earnings and a 5% reduction in fully diluted shares due to our buyback program. Turning now to segment performance highlighted on the next slide.

In our heavy materials sector, which includes our cement and concrete and aggregate segments, revenue was up 18% to $366 million. This revenue growth was driven primarily by an increase in cement sales prices that were implemented earlier this year, higher cement sales volume, and the contribution from the recently acquired cement import terminal in Northern California.... Operating earnings were up 43%, primarily because of increased cement prices and sales volume. Cement prices increased 13% and sales volume was up 7%. Given the strong market conditions that Michael discussed, we have announced another round of price increases for the first half of calendar 2024. Moving to the light materials sector on the next slide.

Revenue in our light materials sector decreased 4%, reflecting lower wallboard sales volume and prices, partially offset by record recycled paperboard sales volume, which was up 9% in the quarter. One comment on our wallboard sales price this quarter. With wallboard sales volume coming in stronger than we had anticipated, we had a catch up in our customer rebate program this quarter that impacted our quarterly average wallboard sales price. Excluding the catch up, our wallboard sales price decline would have been about half sequentially. Operating earnings in the sector declined 13% to $83 million, reflecting lower wallboard sales volume and prices. Looking now at our cash flow. As Michael discussed, we continue to generate strong cash flow and allocate capital in a disciplined way.

During the first nine months of our fiscal year, operating cash flow was up 4% to $501 million. Capital spending increased to $88 million, and we acquired the cement import terminal in Stockton, California, for $55 million. We repurchased approximately 1.5 million shares, or 4% of our outstanding, for $249 million, in addition to paying our quarterly dividends, returning a total of $276 million to shareholders during the first nine months of the fiscal year. We have approximately 6.3 million shares remaining under our current repurchase authorization. Finally, we also used our strong cash flow to strengthen our balance sheet. Let's look at our capital structure.

At December 31st, 2023, our net debt to cap ratio was 43%, and our net debt to EBITDA leverage ratio was 1.2 times. We ended the quarter with $49 million of cash on hand. Total committed liquidity at the end of the quarter was approximately $684 million, and we have no meaningful near-term debt maturities, giving us substantial financial flexibility. Thank you for attending today's call. Rocco will now move to the question and answer session.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Today's first question comes from Trey Grooms with Stephens. Please go ahead.

Trey Grooms (Managing Director)

Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Wallboard volume, it, you know, clearly came in a little bit better, looks to maybe even seen a little bit of an inflection here in the quarter. First, is that primarily, you know, the impact of single-family starts, beginning to show up? And as we kind of look, you know, into the next few quarters, would you expect to see, you know, volume continue to get better here?

Craig Kesler (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, thanks, Trey. So I would say, yeah, look, as I said in my comments, I think wallboard volumes came in stronger throughout the entire year, not just this quarter. I think for the calendar year 2023, volume was 27 billion sq ft, not that far off of the pace for calendar 2022. So overall, I would say, sales volume for wallboard was stronger than anticipated. And as you say, you've looked at the housing numbers, the orders coming out of the home builders for the last three quarters or more, and they've certainly seen a pickup in their order books, which would translate eventually into wallboard volume. There's a little bit of a lag between a start or really an order to a start and then ultimately to wallboard consumption.

You know, our best guess is that's more of a calendar 2024 event. So I don't know that we've actually seen that turn yet in the actual volume, but would anticipate that given the increase in orders. And as Michael mentioned, that's why, you know, we put out a February price increase in wallboard, as we start, we think we're gonna be pretty busy into calendar 2024.

Trey Grooms (Managing Director)

All right. Thanks for that, Craig, and I wanted to touch on that as well. So, thank you for bringing up the price increase here. The, you know, wallboard margins were down, and I understand, you know, volume and price were both slightly down in the quarter, but, maybe if you could talk about a little bit more into the drivers there on the margin declines. And, clearly, the February price increase comes at a good time, given some of the headwinds you're seeing on the margin. You know, any color on, magnitude or geographically, if it's, you know, widespread or just any other color you could give us around that increase?

Craig Kesler (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, the February increase is slated for across the country. A little too early for us to speculate on exact dollar amounts and, region by region. But, again, given the volume strength, and, you know, utilization rates are still pretty high, you know, we're gonna be moving forward with it. You did point out some cost pressures, OCC prices, while they had been lower during most of calendar 2023, we have seen a recent uptick in recycled fiber prices, and so that will start to impact in the next quarter or two.

And then in terms of the price for this past quarter, as I mentioned in my comments, we had, because volumes were better, our rebate programs needed to get caught up in the last part of the calendar year. And so really, if you were to exclude that catch-up, the price cadence has been very similar for the last several months.

Trey Grooms (Managing Director)

Yep. Okay, that's helpful. I appreciate it, Craig. I'll turn it over. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question today comes from Anthony Pettinari with Citi. Please go ahead.

Anthony Pettinari (Research Analyst)

Good morning. You talked about cement hikes. I think half of your regions in January 1st and half in April 1st, if I got that right. Is there any way to kind of think about the differentiation between the two hikes or maybe where they impact or why they're staggered or any color you can give there?

Michael Haack (President and CEO)

Yeah, you know, really, when you look at the staggering of the increases, if you remember in last year, we had several price increases, and some of them were at different times on the second price increase. So really, this is more on the cadence of where these price increases are falling, for, you know, for our customers and everything. If they got one in the later half of the year, they're not in the January timeframe, they're in the April timeframe with it. You know, as for consistency, it's very similar to what Craig was saying on the wallboard side.

You know, nationally, as everybody knows, we've been in a sold-out condition across the nation with it, so, you know, it's gonna be increases, pretty much across the nation, for our cement businesses with it. And we, as also with the wallboard, as you know, it's, it's too early for us to speculate on what those numbers are. We're working with our customers right now, and then you'll see those results, as we report the next quarter.

Anthony Pettinari (Research Analyst)

Okay. Okay, that's helpful. And then, I guess, maybe switching gears, can you talk a little bit more about the Terra CO2 agreement? And I, I guess in the announcement, it says that you have sort of the, the, the right to, to build the SCM plants, and that those could produce each at 240,000 tons per year. In terms of, you know, timeline, implementation, capital investment, I'm just wondering if you can give us any more, kind of details on how this agreement is expected to play out.

Michael Haack (President and CEO)

Yeah. No, I'm happy to talk about the Terra businesses with you today. You know, we, you know, we, as a company, look at a lot of different technologies out there that help us provide product to our customers and also reduce our CO2 footprint through some blended products. As you know, we've been talking a lot about blended products here over the last year, so we've increased that quite a bit. Terra was a great partner that we wanted to work with. You know, us, as Eagle, don't necessarily have a research and development arm with it, and we rely sometimes on some outside, you know, experts in that field to help us there, and we've been very happy with what Terra has brought to the table.

They have done a bunch of research on a product that we feel is very beneficial for us. What I do want to caution in a way is that they are working on their first commercial scale facility right now, so we're still a little ways away from having that commercial production. But we're working with them really daily between our engineering teams and their engineering teams on how we bring that to the market. They do have one facility they are building that they're doing with another partner that they have, and that is in process of being constructed on a commercial grade. We are kind of watching that closely, so we know when we could pull the...

and feel confident on pulling the trigger on building our own facilities with Terra, with it. So in the meantime, we're going to work with them, still work on the making this a commercially viable product, which they feel confident in doing. And so we're still several quarters out from having, and potentially several years out, from having a commercially available plant running to deliver that 240,000 tons that we put in the press release. But all indications are very favorable in their product and their performance in the testing we've done in the cement manufacturing.

Craig Kesler (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, Anthony, I might just add one thing to that. In terms of the capital investments, as Michael mentioned, I would not anticipate that being in our fiscal 2025. And then in terms of profitability, look, I would just say it, we believe this will more than meet our investment hurdle rates and return criteria. So very excited about it, but it is still a ways off for us.

Anthony Pettinari (Research Analyst)

Okay. That, that's very helpful. I'll turn it over.

Operator (participant)

Our next question today comes from Jerry Revich with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Jatin Khanna (VP of Equity Research)

Hi, good morning, everyone. This is Jatin Khanna on behalf of Jerry Revich. Could you please talk about the potential for new margin highs for cement amid rising replacement costs and slowing input costs in the coming quarters?

Craig Kesler (EVP and CFO)

Could you repeat the first part of that, that question?

Jatin Khanna (VP of Equity Research)

... Yeah, sure. Could you please talk about the potential for new margin highs for cement, amid rising replacement costs and slowing input costs? Thank you.

Craig Kesler (EVP and CFO)

Yes. No, look, it's very consistent with what we've talked about for several years now. You know, we've improved the cement network at Eagle through large M&A over the last decade or so, and the assets that we've acquired have been high-quality assets. And so, again, then against the backdrop of, you know, very limited supply response to improving demand, you have diminishing alternative materials like fly ash. And so that's led to an environment where we've been able to achieve good pricing. And so yeah, we've seen margins improve very nicely, and this quarter is in line with that. As we look forward into fiscal 2025, we've talked many times over the last several quarters about we would expect to see some lower energy prices, especially around fuel.

So, you know, we would expect over the rest of the cycle, we should continue to be able to expand margins across our cement network.

Jatin Khanna (VP of Equity Research)

Thanks very much. I'll pass it on.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question today comes from Kevin Gainey with Thompson Davis. Please go ahead.

Kevin Gainey (Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. It's Kevin from Adam. I actually maybe wanted to talk a little bit about the California import terminal. Seems to be performing well. And, have those assets been absorbed into the network easily? And, how are they performing versus kind of when you guys bought them?

Michael Haack (President and CEO)

Yeah, you know, that asset was a fantastic fit into our operation, as we discussed previously with it. You know, they were absorbed very quickly into the operation, and it's to support that Western market and to support our plants on that side and satisfy our customers' demand. We'll continue to integrate that. However, it's actually came up very fast and very efficiently and is supporting our markets very well.

Kevin Gainey (Senior Research Analyst)

Good to hear. Then maybe if you guys wanted to go just on cement margins a little more, what gives you guys the confidence in sustaining that, looking forward?

Craig Kesler (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, and just to be clear, you know, we look at our margin profile, whether you want to call it a trailing twelve months or on an annual period. You certainly have quarters where you'll have our major maintenance outages, like we'll have in the June quarter. And so we're really talking about annual margins. And look, it comes from a foundation of, you know, high-quality assets, low-cost position in very good markets. Michael has alluded to many times, you know, we're relatively insulated from imports, so we're more in the heartland part of the country. And so, given the market conditions where demand is outpacing supply, that generally provides a pricing power to the manufacturers.

You've seen that the last couple of years, and we've got incremental price increases announced for the first half of this year. And then, you know, on the cost side, it's an energy-intensive business and energy prices certainly have stopped being as inflationary as they were a couple of years ago. So, you know, that's what gives us the confidence as we look at this business on an annual basis, why we think we can continue to improve margins.

Kevin Gainey (Senior Research Analyst)

Sounds good. Appreciate the time, guys.

Operator (participant)

Our next question today comes from Philip Ng with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Philip Ng (Managing Director)

Hey, guys. You know, appreciating you're pretty insulated from imports, Craig, as you mentioned, but there is the conflict in the Red Sea. You seeing any impact out there from, you know, imports, whether it's supply and pricing, will that—and what that ultimately means for the markets you're in?

Craig Kesler (EVP and CFO)

You know, Phil, no direct impact for us, you know, in terms of supply or anything coming across the ocean. But I think it does highlight the risk that imports have, that they are subject to global issues, whether it's very specific events, as you mentioned, or others, that could impact timing of ships, the trips that they have to take, longer trips that are more expensive. So that is the issue with why imports, you know, have a restricted ability to impact the U.S. market.

Philip Ng (Managing Director)

Are you seeing any upward pressure on import prices, just given that dynamic in recent weeks?

Craig Kesler (EVP and CFO)

You know, ocean freight rates have kind of gone up and down over the last, call it, 6-9 months. You know, those are impacted by many things. You know, again, we're not as large of an importer as others are, so I can't say that we've seen any direct impact at this point. But I think your point is well made, that there are some upward pressures on ocean freight rates.

Philip Ng (Managing Director)

Okay. On the, on the wallboard side, the quarter was obviously quite strong from a volume standpoint. Is any of that, like, tied to, like, pre-buy? I know there was a fall price increase or any of your customers trying to hit these rebates. So my question is: Could there be a hangover effect on the demand side for your March quarter? And then, I guess, bigger picture this year, with rates potentially coming back, let's say, we get back to, like, 5.5%, how quickly do you see that kind of rippling through? I appreciate there's a lag, but, like, how quickly do you kind of see that inflection if you do see one on wallboard demand?

Craig Kesler (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. We didn't see any sort of pre-buy activity, those type of things. I think that is, you know, fundamental wallboard consumption. We look at our orders post the quarter and been very happy with the environment, and the order activity. So, I don't think it was pretty clean volume. Yeah, in terms of the inflection point for interest rates, and therefore, the benefit to housing affordability and demand, you know, as I mentioned earlier, there is a lag between a start to wallboard consumption that was elongated post-COVID because of some of the supply chain issues the home builders were dealing with. I think those issues have eased over the last 18 months, let's call it.

You would expect to see going back to more of a normal timing in terms of, call it, 3-4 months from a start to wallboard consumption, is typically what or historically what we've seen, for how fast that flows back into the business.

Philip Ng (Managing Director)

Okay. Super helpful. Really appreciate it.

Operator (participant)

Our next question today comes from Keith Hughes with Truist. Please go ahead.

Keith Hughes (Managing Director)

Thank you. Questions on the volume of the JV that was down in the quarter, was off a fairly easy comp from the prior year. I'm sure weather played some role in here, but can you just talk about the pace of business at the volume of the JV in the quarter?

Michael Haack (President and CEO)

Yeah, I'll take that question, Keith. Thank you. You know, when we look at the JV, we had discussed earlier in the year that we had some older equipment at that JV that we, if you remember, about a couple quarters ago, we had a mill that we were struggling with a little bit, and we did a repair to that mill that we thought would carry us through the lead time and get the parts that we need for that mill. That mill actually had some additional issues that it was still running fine, but from a safety perspective and standpoint, we wanted to make sure we took it down and addressed the issues that were happening, so we didn't have a catastrophic failure.

So we did take a little bit more of an outage this last quarter to address that. We have the parts for that mill on order. It's just the lead time on these heavy industrial parts, and it's a part that typically doesn't wear out as much that we're gonna have to replace. So it had an 18- to 24-month lead time with it. We're gonna change those mill components out later on this year. The other thing I also wanted to highlight with Texas Lehigh, as I've talked about in previous quarters, is we have the secondary thing that caused us some issues throughout the year was a clinker cooler we have, which we are going to also address during this next year.

So this next fiscal year, we will have a little bit more extended downtime to address those two issues. We're very confident that the plant infrastructure, other than these two components, is very, very good. We just started getting to the end of life of these components, and they take a little bit of time to replace and to get the parts in to satisfy them. So we had a little bit more downtime in the quarter.

Keith Hughes (Managing Director)

Okay. Sounds like this is gonna continue through really the next fiscal year. Is that, is that fair to say?

Michael Haack (President and CEO)

Yeah, we're gonna have an extended outage. We haven't defined when that outage is going to be yet because we want to ensure all the components are in, but it will happen sometime in this next fiscal year, where we will have an extended outage, you know, probably a couple weeks longer than a typical outage to address these two issues.

Keith Hughes (Managing Director)

Can you give us any kind of feel of how much capacity Texas Lehigh is affected by, you know, the problems you're discussing?

Craig Kesler (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, Keith, I don't know that I would say it's impacting the capacity. It's just the ability to ramp up to full production. As Michael said, post the installation of these the new equipment, we should be back to our ordinary level.

Keith Hughes (Managing Director)

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Michael Haack for any closing remarks.

Michael Haack (President and CEO)

Thank you, Rocco. We enter the new calendar year committed to continuing to operate safely and responsibly and deliver excellent results for our customers and you, our shareholders. The outlook for Eagle is bright, and we look forward to capitalizing on opportunities ahead. We're also excited to publish an updated and upgraded sustainability report and to discuss highlights when we meet again in May on the report and our full fiscal year 2024 results and progress on our strategic priorities. Thank you for joining us today.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, sir. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.