Myers Industries - Q2 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Myers Industries Q2 2024 earnings call. My name's Kenneth, and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation, you may do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I'll now hand you over to your host, Megan Beringer, to begin. Please go ahead.

Megan Beringer (Senior Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Kenneth. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Myers' conference call to review 2024 second quarter results. I'm Megan Beringer, Senior Director of Investor Relations at Myers Industries. Joining me today is Mike McGaugh, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Grant Fitz, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release outlining our financial results for the second quarter of 2024. We have also posted a presentation to accompany today's prepared remarks, which is available under the Investor Relations tab at www.myersindustries.com. This call is also being webcasted on our website and will be archived along with the transcript of the call shortly after this event. After the prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session. Please turn to Slide 2 of the presentation for our safe harbor disclosures.

I would like to remind you that we may make some forward-looking statements during this call. These comments are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are based on management's current expectations and involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors, which may cause results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. Also, please be advised that certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted gross profit, adjusted operating income, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS, may be discussed on this call. Further information concerning these risks, uncertainties, and other factors are set forth in the company's periodic SEC filings and may be found in the company's Form 10-Q filings. Now, please turn to Slide 3 of our presentation. I'm pleased to turn the call over to Mike McGaugh.

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Thank you, Meghan. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter 2024 earnings call. I will begin today with a review of the performance highlights from the second quarter. I will discuss the progress we're making in executing our strategy, and I will then hand the call to Grant to review in detail our financial results and outlook for the remainder of the year. Our second quarter results were bolstered by the solid performance of our recently acquired Signature Systems business. These results reflect the company's first full quarter with Signature Systems. This business is benefiting from worldwide investments in infrastructure and enabled Myers to outpace the demand headwinds in the recreational vehicle, marine, and Automotive Aftermarket markets.

Combined with our cost reduction and operational improvement initiatives across the company, Signature helped us drive an expansion in gross margin, operating margin, and adjusted EBITDA margin sequentially and year-over-year. Myers' second quarter adjusted EBITDA of $38.9 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.7% is a strong quarter in terms of performance. Adjusted diluted earnings per share also improved year-over-year. As I highlighted at our investor day earlier this spring, we anticipated demand to be choppy through this year. As I said then, we're not out of the woods yet. Indeed, we are seeing continued soft demand in our sales to the recreational vehicle, marine, and Automotive Aftermarket markets. In our food and beverage end market, we know that the seed box business is also cyclical.

Following years of seed box sales, following strong years of seed box sales in 2022 and 2023, 2024 is showing signs of cooling demand. We are growing our industrial box business to help mitigate the volume decline of seed going forward. In light of this softer demand, we continue to take actions to reduce costs and increase productivity across the company. These actions include the consolidation of three distribution centers in our Myers Tire Supply business, as well as today's announcement of the consolidation of our Atlantic, Iowa rotational molding facility into our other rotational molding facilities in Indiana. We are able to reduce our footprint and reduce our costs due to the productivity gains that I've spoken about in past calls. We expect these closures to be completed in 2025, and the resulting annual cost savings of approximately $5 million to be fully realized in 2025 as well.

With these actions, we are on track to deliver the $79 million in annualized cost savings we've committed. These savings will impact the income statement in 2025. In addition, we are also on track to deliver the $8 million in annualized cost synergies in 2025 in connection with our acquisition of Signature Systems. Grant will speak to our cost savings and synergy progress in more detail in his segment. I'm confident that our productivity improvement and cost reduction initiatives will help us navigate the cyclical demand conditions some of our end markets are experiencing, while also positioning the company favorably for when these conditions revert to stronger levels of demand. As a result of the continued soft demand condition in the referenced end markets, we felt it was prudent to lower our full-year Adjusted Earnings Per Share guidance to a range of $1.05-$1.20.

Grant will provide a more detailed discussion of our outlook momentarily. Before I hand the call over to Grant, I'd like to speak a few moments reviewing our strategy that continues to guide our decisions and actions as we transform Myers Industries. Please turn to Slide 4, which provides a reminder of the three horizon strategy roadmap that we have followed for the last four years. In Horizon 1, we built a strong foundation of operational and commercial excellence. We gained experience and scale through smaller bolt-on acquisitions, and as a result, we were well positioned to announce our acquisition of Signature Systems, largely accomplishing our Horizon 1 goals by our 2023 target date. As we enter the second horizon of our journey, we are building on the fundamentals established in Horizon 1 to transform Myers into a stronger, simpler, high-margin, growth-oriented company.

We believe this strategy and our approach to acquiring and building businesses that have branded products, higher barriers to entry, clear long-term growth tailwinds, and significant commonalities with our four power brands will unlock meaningful value creation for Myers Industries long-term. Slides 5 and 6 of today's presentation are a reminder of our Horizon 2 strategic imperatives in the resulting strategic lens. This includes a focus on growing the Storage, Handling, and Protection portfolio, as well as a focus on maximizing the value of our Engineered Solutions and Automotive Aftermarket portfolios. On Slide 7, we summarize the progress we've made since our first quarter earnings call. Notably, we are continuing to benefit from strong growth at Signature Systems. As well, we are realizing gains in productivity and taking cost reduction actions in our Engineered Solutions and Automotive Aftermarket portfolios.

Within the Storage, Handling, and Protection portfolio, we have a long runway for growth in the infrastructure and military end markets, and we continue to invest capital and innovation in this portfolio. In the Engineered Solutions and Automotive Aftermarket portfolios, we are focused on maximizing value by driving further improvements in efficiency, reducing our cost, maximizing cash flow, while delivering excellent value to our customers. These ongoing initiatives, combined with improved growth and profitability across the portfolio and continued contribution from our four power brands listed on Slide 8, will help us maximize cash flow and deliver appropriately, an important priority for us following the acquisition of Signature Systems. In summary, we believe our second quarter actions and results demonstrate meaningful progress on our path to transform our company, and we are confident that the strategy we are implementing will drive long-term shareholder value creation.

Now, I will turn the call over to Grant for a detailed review of our second quarter financial results and updates to our outlook.

Grant Fitz (EVP and CFO)

Thank you, Mike. I would like to begin on Slide 9 to go over the full summary of the second quarter 2024 financial results. Net sales were $220.2 million, which increased $11.8 million, or 5.7%, compared to the second quarter of 2023, with the increase primarily driven by the Signature Systems acquisition, which contributed 15.2% of inorganic sales growth as compared to Q2 of last year, partially offset by a 9.6% organic sales decline related to lower pricing and volumes in both the Material Handling and distribution segment legacy businesses. Our quarterly adjusted gross profit was $79.6 million, an increase of $11 million, or 16%, compared to $68.6 million in Q2 of last year, largely driven by the Signature Systems acquisition and partially offset by an adjusted gross profit decline in our legacy business. Adjusted gross margin was 36.1% compared to 32.9% in 2023.

The variance in adjusted gross margin was driven by the acquisition of Signature Systems, favorable product mix, and lower material cost, partially offset by lower pricing and volume. Selling general and administrative expenses decreased $1.8 million sequentially, or 3.4%, and $0.7 million year-over-year, or 1.3%, to $51.7 million. SG&A's percentage of sales decreased to 23.5% compared with 25.8% in the first quarter of 2024 and 25.1% in the same period last year. Excluding contributions from Signature Systems, SG&A expenses declined 18% year-over-year, and SG&A's percentage of sales would have been 22.8%, driven in part by lower incentive compensation accruals reflecting Myers' full-year outlook and other cost savings initiatives. Adjusted operating income in the second quarter increased 51.5% year-over-year to $28.8 million as compared to $19 million in Q2 of 2023.

Second quarter adjusted EBITDA was $38.9 million, which increased 57.4% compared to the prior year quarter, again, largely driven with the addition of Signature Systems. Adjusted EBITDA margin increased 580 basis points to 17.7% from 11.9% in the second quarter of last year. As Mike mentioned, this is one of our strongest quarters of adjusted EBITDA performance in recent history. Adjusted earnings per share was $0.39 compared to $0.35 in Q2 of 2023, with the variance compared to the second quarter of last year driven by the improvement in sales and operating margins, offset by increased interest expense related to the term loan, which was used to finance our acquisition of Signature Systems. For an overview of each segment's performance, please turn to Slide 10. For the Material Handling segment, net sales increased $22.7 million, or 15.9%, compared to the prior year.

The increase was driven by a 22.1% inorganic sales increase related to the Signature Systems acquisition, partially offset by a 6.3% organic sales decline resulting from lower volumes and pricing. Material Handling's adjusted EBITDA increased $11.6 million, or 39%, to $41.5 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin increased to 25%, or an improvement of 420 basis points compared to the second quarter of 2023. These positive deltas were primarily driven by Signature's contribution, which was partially offset by a decrease in sales volume and pricing in our other businesses. Net sales for the distribution segment decreased $10.9 million, or 16.7% year-over-year, to $54.3 million, driven by lower sales volumes and pricing. The segment's adjusted EBITDA decreased $0.9 million, or 20.1%, to $3.8 million, resulting in adjusted EBITDA margin decreasing 30 basis points to 6.9% as compared to 7.2% in the prior year quarter.

The variances in EBITDA and margin performance as compared to Q2 of last year were primarily driven by the decline in sales volumes and pricing, partially offset by a favorable sales mix and material costs. Slides 11 and 12 of today's presentation provide updates on our progress to achieve our $7 million to $9 million in annualized cost reduction targets and $8 million in synergies with the Signature acquisition. As Mike prefaced earlier, we are on our way to achieve these initiatives with the recent cost reductions and the efficiency improvements, as well as the rationalization of our manufacturing footprint. These actions include the consolidation of three distribution centers in our Myers Tire Supply business and the consolidation of our Atlantic, Iowa rotomolding facility into our other rotational molding plants. We are able to reduce our footprint and reduce our cost structure due to the productivity gains we've achieved.

We expect these closures to be completed in 2025 and will deliver approximately $5 million in annualized cost savings. On Slide 12, you will see that we are on plan with our Signature integration and will continue to benefit from productivity and operational improvements, material savings, and other initiatives. Through these combined initiatives, we will continue our dedicated efforts to self-help the business, which in turn will create a new simplified Myers that is advantageously positioned for growth in the coming years. Turning to Slide 13, free cash flow for the second quarter of 2024 was $9.9 million compared to $16.7 million for the second quarter of 2023.

Working capital as a percentage of net sales was up roughly 400 basis points compared to the second quarter of 2023, which reflects an increase from historical trends as a result of the acquisition of Signature Systems because we have the full amount of working capital, but not yet a full 12 months of Signature sales. Taking on debt is necessary to grow through our acquisitions. However, as you will see later in the deck, we are well positioned to pay down the debt with a goal to decrease our net leverage ratio under the credit agreement to below two times within two years of the closing of Signature. Capital expenditures for the second quarter of 2024 were $4.4 million and cash on hand at quarter end totaled $37.3 million. Finally, our leverage ratio under the credit agreement was 2.6 times.

On Slide 14, I want to discuss Myers' capital allocation priorities. As noted, we are focused on creating a simplified Myers through the cost-cutting initiatives and increasing revenue and volumes through the strength of our four power brands. We are focused on reducing our debt following the recent Signature Systems acquisition, and we are targeting to reach a leverage ratio of under two times within two years of the closing of Signature Systems. We also want to maintain a strong balance sheet and ample liquidity for our business. At the end of June, Myers had $37.3 million of cash on hand and over $230 million of a large undrawn credit facility. We will continue to fund maintenance and other CapEx requirements, although, as you can see, we reduced our expected CapEx spend with the revisions to our outlook this morning.

We also plan to continue with our existing practices for dividends. Finally, we will evaluate the most beneficial uses of cash to create value through additional acquisitions with targets similar to Signature, with clear commonalities to our four power brands, or potentially through share buybacks, pending the timing of potential acquisition opportunities and when debt has been paid down to more historic levels. Now, please turn to Slide 15 for an update on our outlook for the fiscal year 2024. We are revising our full-year guidance to reflect the slower demand and challenges within certain end markets and the broader macroeconomic conditions, which we discussed earlier today.

Our new guidance ranges are net sales growth of 5% to 10%, net income per diluted share in the range of $0.76-$0.91, adjusted earnings per diluted share in the range of $1.05-$1.20, capital expenditures in the range of $30 million-$35 million, effective tax rate to approximately 26%. Turning to Slide 16, I want to highlight some of the near-term growth opportunities that we foresee during the second half of the year that we are quite excited about. Signature Systems will continue to benefit from long-term infrastructure improvement projects. To meet this increased demand, we are ramping up our production capacity. Additionally, we have recently launched the exciting new DiamondTrack product, which is a product that removes tire sediment and mud on-site at construction and infrastructure projects.

The DiamondTrack allows this removal in a more economical and efficient manner versus traditional gravel. This is another example of Myers' ability to convert markets from traditional materials to reusable composites that are more economical and environmentally friendly. On Slide 17, Scepter also appears poised for growth with increasing sales of military products. Our military products serve as lightweight alternatives to most existing ammo casings, and we have successfully aligned our operational capabilities to realize this opportunity. We are pleased that these Scepter products meet virtually all vital qualifications, including NATO and the U.S. Department of Defense, and we've secured recent contract wins in the United States, and we are also engaged in award processes for additional potential contract wins in Europe.

We are estimating that the Scepter military business will grow to approximately $40 million in revenue for 2025 compared to only $10 million of military revenue in 2023. Lastly, and just a note on the status of the current storm season, as questions start to come up at this time of year, particularly given the recent Hurricane Beryl, we are seeing an uptick in our five-gallon gas can sales from an early start to the hurricane season, which resulted in significant power outages in Houston in July. We will continue to monitor the potential impacts from what is expected to be a strong storm season this year. Now, I will turn the call back to Mike for some closing comments.

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Thanks, Grant. Please turn to Slide 18. As I conclude my remarks, I'd like to reinforce how we are moving forward in Horizon 2 of our strategy.

First, throughout the quarter, we took action to improve cost and efficiency to maximize value in the Engineered Solutions and Automotive Aftermarket portfolios. I outlined approximately $5 million of annual cost reductions that will impact our results in 2025 and beyond. This is a component of the $9 million of total annual cost reductions highlighted by Grant in his talk. Second, we are growing the branded products in the Storage, Handling, and Protection portfolio. We have highlighted growth projects, all largely plays where our sustainable plastic products replace another material. This is being driven across all four of our power brands: Buckhorn, Akro-Mils, Scepter, and Signature Systems. Third, our continued work to institutionalize our commercial excellence and operational excellence gains from Horizon 1 continues to provide benefit in terms of our EBITDA margin and dollars.

As a reminder, we are making these gains permanent through the establishment of our Myers Business System I've discussed in prior calls. And last, we continue to position the company so that it can capitalize on long-term growth trends. Two good examples are Scepter's growth runway in military applications and Signature's growth runway in infrastructure. We anticipate that these long-term trends will help drive the company's growth over the next several years. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two to withdraw your question. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. We have our first question from Jacob Moore from KeyCorp.

Jacob Moore (Analyst)

Good morning. This is Jacob Moore filling in for Christian today. Thanks for taking the questions.

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Thank you, Jacob.

Jacob Moore (Analyst)

Thanks, Richard. First one for me. I'd like to ask about the sustainability of Material Handling margins following the Signature deal. Should we think that this quarter is a normalized level for the segment given the mixed bag of Signature relative to ongoing pressures in your core Material Handling markets, or was there some variable mix benefit in 2Q?

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Yeah, thanks, Jacob. We certainly had some improvement in the margin from the Signature Systems acquisition, so that was something that we look at as a very positive thing for the business and really gets to the hydraulics of why we thought that this was such a good acquisition for Myers, as it really effectively starts to create the value that our four power brands can contribute.

So I would say, in general, we continue to see strong margins. As a normalized basis, we will have some ups and downs with mix. We did have some favorable mix this quarter, but also we had some offset with some pricing and volume, which impacted the margins as well. And so I would say the way we see it, and we're probably a little bit more conservative on this, we would see some slight decline in gross margin in the second half of the year is what we're projecting. But that's really driven by just, in general, what I would say is some conservativeness that I think we've taken as we started to look at some of these trends in some of these key end markets that seem to be creating some headwinds for us right now.

Grant Fitz (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. Jacob, just appreciate that question.

On that Slide 10, where we break out the results by segment, and you have Material Handling going from 21% basically up to 25%. That should be a good metric. We believe this storage handling and protection portfolio, as we've talked about, is 80% of the profit runway of the company. Those are all differentiated brands, leading brands. There's good competitive moats. There's good growth runway. And so directionally, I think that your question was a good one. And directionally, the quality of the business should sustain there. Remember also in the Material Handling piece, you've got the Engineered Solutions business, which is largely a contract manufacturing business that has EBITDA margins, as we've discussed before, 10%, 12%. So it dilutes it a bit. But really, that's why we are focused on driving the storage handling protection portfolio, is the quality of the margins.

And again, I think that that should be noted going forward as where our watermarks will be.

Jacob Moore (Analyst)

Understood. Thank you for that. That's good color. And I think it leads well into my next one, which is the same question, but distribution. Can you provide any latest thoughts on that segment and what you're seeing in that business? Are mid-single digit percent margins and distribution sustainable given the volatility we've seen in the past few quarters?

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Yeah. So we reported in that distribution segment of 7% EBITDA margin. As we've discussed before, we have had aspirations for higher margins in that business, either high single digits or even low double digits. What we found over the last couple of quarters is the retail tire business and the resulting tire supply business, which is where we are, is off directionally 10% year-over-year.

When that happens, you lose some operating leverage, and so you're going to unwind a few hundred basis points on your EBITDA delivery versus your expectations. That 7%, give or take, is directionally a good number going forward. And again, like I said, as you've got in that space, tire repair. Right now, anything that's impacted by high interest rates, demand that's impacted by high interest rates, or demand that's impacted by inflation. And so right now, your consumer is not buying tires at the same replacement rate as we would have expected or hoped a year ago. As a result, the wheel weights, tire valves, tire pressure sensors that we sell are also down. And so what you see in that 7% is just an unwinding of operating leverage when your revenues are off 15% year-over-year, which is the case with that Myers Tire Supply business.

So we're trying to combat it by streamlining. We talked about the ERP work we've done over the last six to nine months. Because we got on the same ERP system, we were actually able to reduce three distribution centers going from eight down to five. That simplifies the business, allows us to take cost out, and ultimately, we think that will be reflected in the margins. But 7%, Jacob, is probably a fair number going forward. Grant, what would you say?

Grant Fitz (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, I would say so. I think the other important part of these consolidation distribution centers, it really is more of an efficiency play as well, too, because we don't see a significant deterioration in terms of any service quality levels or anything else like that. So on-time delivery will continue to perform well to the standards that Myers has set in the past.

But I do think that, as Mike said, we were thinking that this business might be able to improve the overall margin. We just see with some of the headwinds right now that that's probably not likely. And so I do think that that range of 7% margin is a pretty good one for the future looking out the next couple of quarters.

Jacob Moore (Analyst)

Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Just a couple more from me. Can you speak to any productivity gains that you've made in either segment that enabled the footprint consolidation? And then maybe a related question to that is, with the defense business ramping, do you have available capacity should we see an accelerated ramp in orders from the new Scepter products?

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Yeah.

So hey, Jacob, this is something I've talked about since I've arrived and been here for the last four, 4.5 years, is all this operational excellence. I've talked about the sales and operations planning processes that we've brought in, the sales and operations planning software and systems, and then all the personnel we've brought in from some of these large-cap companies that really help us schedule our plants better, operate our plants better. And as a result, I talked about the hidden factor. We actually are unleashing and finding 20%, 30% more capacity out of a given machine. And as a result of that, it allows us to take our assets out, streamline our footprint, streamline the company, make the company simpler while we can continue to have the runway and volume to satisfy the market demand.

So what you're seeing in these consolidations is a proof point of all the S&OP and operational excellence work we've been doing in 2021, 2022, 2023. As it relates to the military, same story there. We actually have added some capacity, but we are able to get more units out of each machine based upon how we schedule it, how we operate it. And ultimately, our OEE is higher, and the output of each plant is higher. And so we're able to do more with less. And so that's actually going to continue to bear fruit over the coming quarters and years. So Grant?

Grant Fitz (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. I just would add to that some additional color. I mean, I come from a pretty strong operations background, and it's been really impressive what the team has been able to do on just increasing the throughput of equipment and manufacturing processes.

The other thing, Jacob, that we want to be careful about is that we still maintain capacity because we are in the trough position. And so our thought process is that as markets might pick up again in the future in some of these end markets, that we have the ability with adding some additional shifts and things of that nature to really maintain and meet those demand requirements as well, too. So I think it's a good balance of efficiency improvements, allowing the consolidation while still maintaining capacity for future opportunities when the peaks happen in the future, so.

Jacob Moore (Analyst)

Thank you. That's helpful. I think doing more with less is a common theme in the military, so you're on the right track there. Last one from me. I'd like to ask about the capacity additions in Signature specifically.

When do you think those additions will be fully operational, and how soon should we expect to see an associated revenue ramp as a result?

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Yeah. So again, Jacob, I'll tell you what I can tell you, recognizing that it is confidential information. So we've announced a capacity addition in 2024. We have an additional capacity addition that will come on in 2025. The directional goal for this business when we acquired it, and Jeff Condino, who is the CEO of this business and his team, their directional goal is to double the business. Double the business in terms of revenue and EBITDA over the next nominal three or four years. I believe things are set up to do that, and I believe that these two capacity additions will allow that to happen. So good business, good growth trends. One machine has been added this year.

There's another one coming online that will be in place for 2025.

Grant Fitz (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. I would just say when we acquired Signature, we said we expected that business to grow at least 10% annually, and I think we're on a good path for that in general. And it's very similar to the question you asked about military. We like to ramp up our capacity as the demand is there. And so there is some timing element of this, but we certainly have opportunities to meet the objectives that Mike outlined, so.

Jacob Moore (Analyst)

All right. Thank you, gentlemen. That's been good color, and thanks for taking our questions.

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Thank you. Thanks, Jacob.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We have our next question from Carolina Jolly from Gabelli & Company.

Carolina Jolly (Analyst)

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. It's Carolina from Gabelli.

So just to start, to end with the last question, Signature, can you just give an update on how you feel the integration is going to date?

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Yeah, Carolina. It's going well. On the soft side, the qualitative side, the culture is meshing well. We really like the quality of the Signature team. And actually, it's been a nice add. The talent in the Signature team, I believe, will be additive to the rest of Myers. So that's a win. On the quantitative piece, the financials and the delivery are coming through as we had anticipated. The integration itself, the cost-out initiatives are, again, on track, as Grant had mentioned, so that we have $8 million of synergies in 2025. That number still holds. And so overall, Carolina, we're quite pleased with the acquisition, its performance, qualitative and quantitative. Grant, anything to add?

Grant Fitz (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. I think it's going really well.

The team's a strong team. We've been able to supplement on both sides where we've had some good learnings on some of the operational processes to implement some performance improvements at Signature. But also, Signature's had some areas where they've had some excellence, centers of excellence type of ideas that we've been able to implement in some of our other manufacturing processes. So it's been a good opportunity to just share knowledge and really drive some of those synergies that we had identified we felt we could achieve with the acquisition.

Carolina Jolly (Analyst)

Perfect. Thanks. And then, Grant, can you just help me better understand on page 13 kind of the difference in cash flow conversion year-over-year?

Grant Fitz (EVP and CFO)

Okay. In terms of cash flow conversion, we actually see ourselves at essentially a 60% cash flow conversion business continuing. That's been kind of historically where we've been at.

We don't show a specific cash flow conversion chart in our earnings presentations, but it is a good cash flow conversion business. And so we do think that that may continue to improve as we get some of these improvements in place with some of the cost and things of that nature. But overall, we see that with the Signature acquisition, you can see that the percent of working capital has gone up. But that's really driven by, as we said in the comments, where we don't yet have the full 12 months of sales with Signature. So we think that that will start to normalize over time. Additionally, Signature does bring on a little bit more inventory than what we have in some of our other operations, but their cash conversion is really quite good. So we think that essentially offsets that.

And so we should, over time, I think, Angelina, continue to, or Carolina, continue to move forward with what we've seen traditionally on our cash conversion for Myers.

Carolina Jolly (Analyst)

Great. Perfect. Then last question, just specific to the distribution segment, it seems as if some of the overall industry or market commentary around cadence has been positive, potentially sequentially improving in June and July. Do you have any thoughts on cadence for that segment?

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

And Carolina, we're seeing the sales come back. So remember, we made a strategic move to reorient the sales force, and we did that the back half of last year. We took our sales personnel, we focused them on in-market, retail separate from commercial, separate from retread, etc. That change and conducting that change with 100+ sales reps, it did not deliver the gains as fast as I would have expected.

And in fact, in some instances, it took us a little bit backwards. Longer term, I think those are the right calls is to have a focused sales organization based on in-market. The market was also down 8%-10% in our space of wheel weights, tire valves, tire pressure sensors. We also, Carolina, in the midst of changing out the sales force, we raised price and tested our value proposition, probably got a little aggressive on price. What we're doing now is we're going back and addressing all of that. We're gaining back business, sometimes at a lower price. Our salespeople are now getting more traction. And ultimately, I don't see the in-market itself recovering until 2025. That's part of why we changed our guidance. But I also see that Myers Tire Supply, it has a great brand.

It's got a great brand and a great ability to service. What we're seeing is we're coming back and gaining share, and I expect that to happen over the next year. So hopefully that answers your question.

Carolina Jolly (Analyst)

Great. Yes. Thanks so much.

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Thank you. Thanks, Carolina.

Grant Fitz (EVP and CFO)

Thanks, Carolina.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We have our next question from William Dezellem from Tieton Capital Management.

William Dezellem (Analyst)

Thank you. Two questions. First of all, relative to the military ammunition carrier business, do you see that ramp going from $10 million to $25 million to $40 million happening rather evenly over the quarters of this year and next year, or does it end up being pretty lumpy depending on how order shipments go? Walk us through the dynamics of that revenue ramp, if you would, please.

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Yeah, Bill. Good to hear from you.

So on that business, what we've seen is that the contracts that we get approved for come in chunks of $10 million to $15 million chunks. And what's changed since 2023 is we now have three of those chunks, if I'll call them that. And so the revenue numbers of $25 million this year and actually $40 million next year, I feel good about those numbers. The lumpiness, Bill, is when a contract is approved and we actually go to production with aerospace or with military, these things just always take longer than you expect. And so the ramp of those can be a little bit lumpy. Once that contract is in place, once we're producing the product, we're running 24/7. And once each contract is approved, then it's pretty even. Directionally, the military sales, so there's a tremendous amount of restocking worldwide because of these conflicts.

I think that over the next five to -10 years, this business is going to be a good growth tailwind for Myers. Is $40 million the end? I don't believe it is. I don't know exactly what the end could be. I know there's a lot of good growth runway, but the startup, Bill, will be a little lumpy. As we mentioned in first quarter, there was a bit of delay on getting some labeling approved and getting some packaging approved. Now that's been resolved, and that production line is going 24/7, and we're seeing the results of it. So I'd say on the startup, Bill, a little bit lumpy, but directionally, if you look at this over the next 3, 5, 7, 10 years, the trajectory that Grant had in his slide is correct.

William Dezellem (Analyst)

That's very helpful. Thank you.

You said you now have three contracts, and I think in the opening remarks, there was a reference to additional contracts that you thought were possible. Would you talk to those and how significant they could be?

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Yeah. Directionally, that same bucket, as I said, $10 million to $15 million top line per contract. I can't, Bill, get too much in the specifics because we're dealing with specific countries and their militaries and their sourcing. But you would stand to believe that some of this is in Europe, some of the countries that have publicly said they're restocking their artilleries, some of those that are a little bit more concerned about some of the instability and potential conflict there. So again, we've got good positions in Eastern Europe as well as in Western Europe, and we're negotiating with some of those militaries on this artillery packaging.

William Dezellem (Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

I appreciate that. Then shifting to Signature, if we could, please. Longer term, there's this movement to convert from wood mats to composites. Did you have in the quarter or this year any meaningful or material kind of tangible evidence of that shift or transition taking place, or is this literally just one small piece of business at a time?

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Directionally, so remember, let's say 80% to 90% of the installed base is a wood product. 10% to 15% is a composite product in the U.S. In Western Europe, the installed base is an aluminum product to the same extent, 80% to 90%, and then 10% or 20% is a composite product. It's very similar to what we see with our Buckhorn product, and even, quite frankly, similar to what we see with our Akro-Mils product.

It's over the course of several years or really even decades, the plastic composite, particularly if it's sustainable and recyclable, continues to gain share from the primary substrate, which again is cardboard in the case of Buckhorn and Akro-Mils, and it's wood in the case of Signature. The drive and the conversions that we're having and the growth there over the last five years at Signature and what we're forecasting for the next five years is, yes, you've got $1 trillion of infrastructure spending through the two acts that Grant cited in his slide. That's a big lift. The other piece is just the conversion. And again, if you can move your conversion of composites from 10% to 15% or 20%, you're basically doubling the available market. On the tip of my tongue, I don't specifically know those numbers.

I'd have to go back and relook at what we disclosed at Investor Day. But that is a part of the Investor Day materials under Jeff Condino's presentation for anyone to reference.

William Dezellem (Analyst)

Great. Thank you. And Mike, I'm actually going to take off on one of your comments relative to Akro-Mils and the replacing cardboard with the composite. What proportion of that business is cardboard or of that industry is cardboard? So just really trying to get my mind wrapped around how far along in the transition from cardboard to composites those bins are.

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Yes. The way I'd look at it is we've consistently talked about Akro-Mils being a GDP business, GDP plus business. The bigger driver there would be in Buckhorn and Signature.

On Akro-Mils itself, if you think about the Kanban bins and organizational bins in industrial settings, at restaurants, in medical, at nurses' stations as an example, supply stations, I would be over my skis, Bill, if I tried to talk about how much is cardboard versus plastic. But directionally, the key thing to know is that Akro-Mils, and there's one other competitor, Akro-Mils product, based upon how we manufacture it and the raw materials we use, is a little bit more durable, a little bit more heavy-duty, typically priced a little bit higher, and it does have a brand known for the highest quality. The specific conversion rates, again, GDP to 2x GDP, but it's not going to be a conversion rate of 10% or 15% like what we expect with Signature.

William Dezellem (Analyst)

Great. Thank you for the time.

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Thank you. Thanks, Bill.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We currently have no other questions.

And as a reminder, to ask any question, you can press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. Thank you.

Mike McGaugh (CEO)

Just while we're waiting to see if there's any other questions, Carolina, I had said one item about the cash conversion. I had used the term percentage. I was actually referring to days. We typically have about a 60-day cash conversion cycle when we look at our day sales outstanding plus days on hand less our days payable outstanding. So just to clarify that.

Megan Beringer (Senior Director of Investor Relations)

All right. Well, thanks, Kenneth. And thank you all for joining Myers Industries' second quarter earnings call. We invite you to follow up with additional questions or meeting requests. To schedule time, just please contact me, Megan Beringer, using the information found on Slide 26. Thank you for joining and have a great day.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call.

Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.