Kristy Olshan - Director Investor & Public Relations Victor D. Grizzle - Chief Executive Officer and President Brian MacNeal - Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Dennis Patrick McGill - Zelman & Associates Alaxandar Wang - Bank of America Merrill Lynch Nishu Sood - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. Kenneth R. Zener - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc. Keith Hughes - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc. Stephen S. Kim - Barclays Capital, Inc. Kathryn Ingram Thompson - Thompson Research Group LLC Jason A.

Marcus - JPMorgan Securities LLC David S. MacGregor - Longbow Research LLC Matthew Scott McCall - BB&T Capital Markets Samuel H. Eisner - Goldman Sachs & Co. Jim R. Barrett - C.L. King & Associates, Inc..

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Armstrong World Industries, Incorporated First Quarter 2016 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded.

I will now turn the conference over to our host for today, Kristy Olshan, Director of Investor Relations. You may begin..

Thanks, Sonja. Good morning and welcome. Please note that members of the media have been invited to listen to this call and the call is being broadcast live on our website at armstrongceilings.com. With me today are Vic Grizzle, our CEO, and Brian MacNeal, our CFO.

Hopefully, you have seen our press release this morning and both the release and the presentation Brian MacNeal will reference during this call are posted on our website in the Investor Relations section. I advise you that, during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties.

Actual outcomes may differ materially from those expected or implied. For a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that may affect Armstrong World Industries, please review our SEC filings including the 10-Q filed earlier this morning. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made.

We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements beyond what is required by applicable securities law. In addition, our discussion of operating performance will include non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of SEC Regulation G.

A reconciliation of these measures with the most directly comparable GAAP measures is included in the press release and in the appendix of the presentation. Both are available on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Vic..

Thanks, Kristy, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first post separation earnings call. I'd like to begin by saying that I'm really thrilled to be the new Armstrong World Industries' CEO. As many of you know, I've been leading our ceilings business for the past five years and you also know what a great business this is.

I'm truly excited about the possibilities that we have with our leadership position and now as a stand-alone publicly trading company. And you should know that beyond myself there is a highly capable and highly energized organization that's here and they're already off and running.

This morning, I'm pleased to share with you a brief overview of our first quarter results and provide some perspective on the market conditions we're seeing and our outlook for the rest of the year. I'll then turn the call over to Brian MacNeal, our CFO, who'll walk you through a more detailed discussion of the quarterly results and our guidance.

And before we get into the first quarter results, I'd like to make a few comments.

We've recently and successfully completed the separation of our legacy flooring business, and I want to take this opportunity to wish our friends and colleagues in the flooring business much success, as they look forward to the opportunities ahead of them as a new independent public company.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank my leadership team and all of the Armstrong team members who have worked tirelessly to complete the transaction, while remaining focused on serving our customers and not allowing themselves to become distracted by the separation process. They've done a terrific job.

Armstrong World Industries is now a pure-play global leader in the design and manufacture of innovative ceiling and wall solutions. As a smaller, more agile company, we are focused on opportunities to grow. And with the strength of our position, we are uniquely positioned to capture these opportunities.

Given our standout leadership position, we will grow by leveraging our deep customer relationships and strong innovation pipeline to sell into more spaces and sell more complete suite of Armstrong products into every space.

My leadership team and the entire organization are aligned to this mission, a mission to create a ceiling solution for every space. I'd like to now turn to our first quarter results. Since the separation wasn't completed until the beginning of the second quarter, our earnings release materials include results from the flooring business.

We will touch briefly on our consolidated results for the quarter, but I'm not going to spend time discussing floorings results since they've released their results earlier this morning and have already had their call. For the first quarter, consolidated AWI reported sales of $572 million were up $20 million, just over 3.5% from the prior year.

On a comparable foreign exchange basis, sales were up almost 6% driven by the strength in the Americas across both the ceilings and the flooring businesses.

Consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $81 million was up $9 million or 13% from the prior year due to strong volume growth in the Americas, lower input cost and strong earnings from our WAVE joint venture. Now, specifically, in our ceilings business, reported sales were down just over 1.5%, driven entirely by foreign exchange.

On a comparable foreign exchange basis, sales were up just over 1% as broad-based volume growth in the Americas and continued improvement in our average unit value was partially offset by volume declines in the Europe and Pacific regions.

Adjusted EBITDA of $73 million was down $2 million or 3% from prior year due to the integration of corporate functions into the business. On a comparable cost basis, when adjusting for the corporate cost absorbed by the business, adjusted EBITDA improved 13% and margins expanded globally by 270 basis points.

Brian will provide more details of this when he reviews the financials. The first quarter results confirmed the strength of our Americas business as well as the challenges and opportunities that we have in our international operations. In our Americas ceilings business, sales were up almost 6% on a comparable foreign exchange basis.

The majority of sales improvement was driven by mid-single digit volume growth that was broad-based across multiple regions and across the entire product line. We believe some of this volume strength is the result of softer first quarter 2015 comparables where we experienced weaker demand due to the weather.

Nevertheless, we were encouraged by the broad-based nature of the market strength and with the continuation of improvement in our average unit value. Growth in premium products continued to exceed the growth we saw at the low-end of the product portfolio.

However, the difference here in the first quarter was the strong growth at the low-end of the product range, indicating a pick-up in the R&R sector. Because of the growth in the low-end of the product portfolio, our AUV improvement year-over-year was limited.

With the benefits of stronger volumes and solid productivity, we had strong earnings performance and expanded adjusted EBITDA margins by 300 basis points. Turning now to the EMEA region, on a comparable foreign exchange basis, sales were down 9%. Most countries within the region had a slow start to the year.

But the majority of the year-on-year decline continued to be driven by weaker markets in the Middle East and Russia. This extended period of low oil prices had negatively impacted market growth opportunities in the form of project delays, particularly in the Middle East. The market in Russia also remains challenging and was down double-digits in Q1.

But, I have to say, I'm continued to be pleased with how the team is executing as they continue to gain share in a tough market. Our operations in the Pacific Rim performed as expected with sales on a comparable foreign exchange basis down 2%.

This was driven by a continuation of the trends we experienced in the latter part of 2015 with ongoing softness in the China office market, which represents the majority of our opportunity there. Australia had a strong start to the year and India got off to a relatively slow start.

We had a strong quarter across many of our growth initiatives, including Architectural Specialty products and our recently launched Total Acoustics line of products.

I'm happy to report that since we launched our Total Acoustics line last fall, first quarter sales were solidly ahead of our expectations, as the value proposition has resonated well with our customers. In fact, they've begun changing existing specifications to incorporate these new innovative products.

Our WAVE joint venture also delivered a record earnings quarter driven by a strong U.S. commercial volumes and strength in the component solutions like drywall grid. Turning now to our market outlook, in the Americas, we continue to see sequential improvement in volumes from new construction start activity hitting back to 2014 and 2015.

And we believe this will continue for the balance of 2016. We believe the growth in year-on-year volume will likely moderate as we progress throughout the year due to the progressive improvement in volumes we experienced in the back half of last year.

The broad-based first quarter volume growth points to improvement in the repair and remodel activity, which is encouraging. But the underlying fundamentals remained uneven and will likely result in choppy R&R activity from quarter to quarter.

Our international regions will continue to be challenged by sluggish end markets, particularly the emerging markets, highly impacted by lower commodity prices. The first quarter results continue to emphasize the importance of addressing our local cost structure in these regions.

And as previously reported, we've executed cost reduction actions in both the international regions in the fourth quarter of last year, which helped offset market softness we experienced in the first quarter. We have more to do here, and we will continue to implement our action plans to improve our operations and lower cost in these regions.

In April, the volume activity has continued to be positive. Accordingly, we are maintaining the 2016 guidance we provided at our separation and business update meeting in March. Now, I highlighted earlier that we will grow by leveraging our strong innovation pipeline provide our customers with industry-leading innovative products.

I'm excited about the launch of our new Sustain product line that we introduced to the market just last week. These high-performance ceiling solutions meet the most stringent sustainability compliance and transparency standards in the market today.

With our new Sustain program, we've optimized our ingredients to support the design of healthy buildings. This was a significant innovation accomplishment and I'm pleased that our customers now have complete acoustical control with our Total Acoustics solutions.

Plus, through our Sustain program products, they have a pathway to provide for healthier buildings. It's this kind of innovation leadership that enables Armstrong to make a difference in the lives of people, where they live, work, play, learn, and heal. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Brian for a detailed review of the quarter..

Americas, EMEA and Pac Rim. With that, I'll turn it back over to Vic..

Thanks, Brian. And with that, we're happy to take questions..

Thank you. And our first question from Dennis McGill from Zelman & Associates. Your line is now open..

Hi. Thank you. The first question is based on that last point you made there. So the segments going forward, just to understand how this will look beginning next quarter. You'll have three segments. Those three segments will give both revenue and operating profit and then the $42 million of corporate will be its own line item? Just to clarify..

Yes, Dennis. This is Brian. Yes, we're going to report just three segments. Now, we'll also have a corporate unallocated in 2016, but it was largely driven by the separation activity. So, yes, all that corporate unallocated from prior years will be pushed back into the segment..

Sorry, just to clarify.

So the corporate will sit within those segments or will sit outside the segments like you previously did?.

Yeah, the ongoing costs of corporate get pushed into the segments. But just to be clear, there will still be a corporate unallocated, but it will all be beta or separation-related activity..

Okay. Understood. Okay.

So once you get past that corporate unallocated goes away?.

Correct..

Okay. Understood. And then so, along those lines, can you just may be talk to the relative trends? I think you mentioned North America apples-to-apples margin being up about 300 basis points year-over-year.

Can you talk to what you saw in the international segments with the top line pressure there?.

Yeah, Dennis. This is Vic. Let me take that. The first quarter for the Americas was a strong quarter obviously, really hitting on, really, all cylinders as we talked about, even growth at the lower-end of the market or the product portfolio. So that was very encouraging.

Internationally, we were obviously not happy with the top line result, but it was really centered around two markets, Russia and the Middle East, and so the rest of the markets delivered about what we expected to see. I think the Middle East we saw some additional project delays based on the situation there.

And then Russia got off to a really slow start and actually gained momentum in the quarter. And I think, for the year, we're going to end up about where we expected them to be. So, again, it's concentrated in those two markets for us internationally. China, again, pretty much where we expected it to be, a little soft in the office segment.

And as we outlooked in our Investor Day presentation is, we're not expecting these markets to heal very quickly. I did mention in my opening remarks how India got off to a slower start, which is one of our largest markets in the region now. But we do expect, again, for the whole year, for us to be on track and where we expected that market to perform.

So, I think, from a margin standpoint, how that fell through to EBITDA, which I think it's more your question, Dennis, it finished pretty close to what we expected, because we took the cost actions that we were proactive within the fourth quarter and we had talked about.

So, with those, we were able to offset a lot of the softness that we saw in those markets. And again, on the bottom line, we finished about where we expected it to be.

Again, we're not pleased with that result and we're still working hard to get these markets back or this whole region back to covering its cost of capital for those investments that we've made there. That's our focus. So, there's more to do as I mentioned, but no surprise on the bottom line, really, in the international regions..

Thank you. And our next question comes from George Staphos from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open..

Hi. Good morning. It's actually Alex Wang on for George. Thanks for taking the question. Question on the top line.

If we look at the full year guidance, I think, of 3% to 7%, and it was up about 1% in the first quarter ex-currency, what one or two factors you expect to materialize to accelerate the growth over the balance of the year? I assume there's some easing from more favorable FX trends, but with the challenges in EMEA and Pac Rim and you also referenced some tougher comps sequentially, if you could just provide a little more color there..

Yeah. I think the one thing that will help us get back there is a continuation, of course, of what we're seeing in the Americas volume, which was strong, although the year-over-year comparisons will moderate, as I said, because of the base period comparisons. But as long as that continues as we're expecting, that'll be very helpful obviously.

And then in the international segments, again, a lot of the segments that make up our international segments got off to slower start and accelerated through the quarter and continued into April. So, again, there's no reason to believe that this won't continue.

We have some pretty good visibility outside of those two regions, Middle East and Russia that I mentioned earlier, that give us a reasonable expectation to continue to be on track for our guidance on the top line..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Nishu Sood from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open..

Thank you. Vic, the comment you made about some of the lower price points, the repair and remodeling coming back on commercial, is encouraging. Was wondering if we could talk through some of the implications of that.

The 1% to 3% AUV growth that's expected or baked into the guidance for this year -- does it provide – does that become a challenge with the remodeling coming back? And also on WAVE, how does the recovery of the repair and remodeling volumes, if it continues, how does that affect WAVE? WAVE has obviously been a terrific performer.

Does it provide a headwind as it does with the AUV on the WAVE earnings?.

Yeah. So, first on the low-end, again, the growth there is very encouraging. As you know, the fundamentals in the market drive the R&R sector, and those continue be very uneven and inconsistent across. So, for us, to have broad-based activity, and I mean broad-based across the regions in the U.S.

is, you remember in prior calls, we talked about how uneven and choppy it's been. That was a big difference for us in terms of the uniformity of that across the regions, then across the portfolio like I mentioned. So that is very encouraging for us. And it's obviously at lower price points and so it becomes a mix headwind.

But the offsetting thing to that that we're expecting continuous growth at the high end of the market. So that will keep us in the range and we're very encouraged by what we see at the high end of the market, both our Architectural Specialty products as well as the products like the Total Acoustics that we talked about last quarter.

We continue to see the traction at that high end of the market that I think will continue to at least partially offset that nice volume growth at the lower end. I did outlook an issue that we do expect some choppiness through the year in terms of the R&R sector just based on the fundamentals and where we are.

So, we'll keep a close eye on that obviously, but we're expecting that to moderate as well as we go through the remainder of the year..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Ken Zener from KeyBack Capital Markets. Your line is now open..

Good morning, everybody..

Good morning..

Good morning..

Vic, I wonder – just looking at your comment and in the K that you guys have, obviously, the widespread higher volume in the U.S. is a good thing. You said even at the lower end, which I assume we're talking about education, probably some beta infrastructure type stuff..

Yeah, it was – go ahead, Ken..

Go ahead. No. No. you go..

No. I was just saying, yeah, you're right, Ken. It was broad-based, I think, from a segment standpoint..

Now, and this shouldn't be interpreted negatively, but I think it's certainly part of a theme that you've talked about in the past, because there was a bit – I think for the first quarter here – a bit of unfavorable AUV in that segment. Could you just kind of walk us through – I know you have high operating leverage in the business.

But could you talk about how you would expect this broad-based recovery come into those lower price points to impact the AUV going forward, the asset – the average price?.

Yeah. Again, part of the impact on the AUV was merchandising funds for one of our large retail customers. It's a one-time expense that happens every so often. It hit the first quarter. And so I think you're seeing a little bit of that drag in the first quarter. That will obviously go away.

Again, growth at the low end of the market, we expect that to remain choppy through the rest of the year. And I think, again, with consistent growth at the high end of the market, we should still be within our range on AUV. That's our expectation at this point. So, that's in the Americas.

And again, the other part that's hitting this AUV number is this international mix that had a pretty good impact on our AUV as well. So, it's those factors that are impacting the AUV today. Our price was positive in the Americas, and so, again, we remain on track to deliver that range on AUV..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Keith Hughes from SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Your line is now open..

Thank you.

Just kind of building on your last answer, Vic, if we look within the Americas, how much was price off and then what were the negative offsets with these customer promotion funds and the mix impact?.

Yeah. So, Keith, we're not breaking out price specifically, but price was not down in the quarter. It was positive in the quarter. The international mix was about a third of it. The merchandising fund was about another third of it. And then the higher growth at the lower-end providing a little bit of a mixed headwind in the Americas was the other third..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Stephen Kim from Barclays. Your line is now open..

Yeah. Thanks very much, guys. I guess the question I had was related to the input cost and productivity. Was wondering if you could give a breakdown of the relative sizes of those two components.

And then just a clarifying question regarding your previous answer, the lower-end mix, is that lower margin also?.

Let me answer the first one first, Stephen. It's not necessarily lower margin percentages. They're obviously the price points. You have different margin dollar contributions at the different price points. But it's not necessarily a lower margin percent. That's a very important question. I'm glad you asked that.

In terms of productivity and deflation, we really had a good contribution from both of them.

Nice natural gas deflation as well as some raw material deflation, which, coupled with our consistent productivity gains that we've been delivering every quarter, together is really the driver of the 270 basis points of margin improvement of the business in the quarter..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Kathryn Thompson from Thompson Research Group. Your line is now open..

Thanks for taking my question today.

Just with the rapidly rising steel costs since the start of this year, how will that impact your WAVE earnings contribution for 2016?.

Yeah, Kathryn. One of the things that we're enjoying now is the lower steel input prices, and that really helped drive some of our margins in our WAVE joint venture through the first quarter. You're right. Prices are going up. We have announced a price increase effective May 1. Is that right, May 1? I'm going to make sure I got that date right.

And it looks like the industry is following that price increase based on these steel prices. So, our plan is to stay ahead of the steel price inflation with prices increases in the market..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Michael Rehaut from JPMorgan. Your line is now open..

Good morning. It's Jason Marcus on for Mike.

Going back to the input and productivity cost for a second, I just wanted to a get a sense as to how you're thinking about that in the context of the full year guidance, if you're expecting things to remain stable from where they are, if you've baked in some further improvement? And then also on the SG&A side, I think last quarter you talked about a 20% reduction in EMEA.

Just wanted to see if that was completed and if you have any other cost action in line for the upcoming quarters?.

Hi, Jason. This is Brian. So, on the input and productivity, we were happy to see the first quarter performance. I think we'll see some of that slow down as far as deflation in the rest of the year, but still being a somewhat deflationary period on the full year.

And then, on SG&A, the 20% you referenced was specifically over in China, and that's been completed. Some of the cost actions we took in Europe are also completed. And we mentioned before that we're in the process of idling one of our China plants in Wujiang. So, more to come there.

I think the top line performance, as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, isn't where it needs to be in our international group, and so we're continuing to look at other actions there to offset that softness..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Garik Shmois from Longbow Research. Your line is now open..

Yes. Good morning. It's David MacGregor on for Garik Shmois. Vic, congratulations on getting this done, hitting it on your own. Best of luck..

Thank you..

A question on the mix issue and why don't you just explore, if you would, the competitive factors that are unfolding in the market at both the high end and the low end.

And you know that the strength at the low end of the mix, was there a market share negative dynamic for you at the high end of the mix in the quarter, and maybe just talk a little bit about how the competitive environment is evolving..

David, the competitive environment is pretty consistent. In the new construction part of the market and if that is the fastest growing part of the market, the projects are visible, everybody is fighting for those projects and we fight vigorously on those projects as our competitors do too. So, that's not really changed.

There's no real material difference in the competitive landscape when it comes to fighting for every project. So I think that that's an important note. I also think that, from a share gain standpoint, and I've said this many times before, share doesn't move materially over short periods of time in this market.

In fact Armstrong has had a 50% market share in the America's market for over 30 years. So, it just doesn't change very rapidly and it certainly hasn't changed at the high end of the market.

Certainly, with our innovative new product launches that we've had in the last six months and we're going to continue to launch, the latest being the Sustain platform, we're going to continue to reinforce our leadership position at the high end of the market..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Matt McCall from BB&T Capital Markets, your line is now open..

Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Back to the international business a second, sounds like you've completed some moves. Think you said there's more to come there. Can you talk about what was the profitability – I think somebody asked this earlier. I didn't catch the answer.

What was the profitability in Q1 and then what's the international profitability that's baked into the EBITDA guidance for the year and, ultimately, where can those margins go just from structural moves without any real top line improvement?.

Hi, Matt. This is Brian. We're going to show those splits of the segment starting in Q2. As we showed in our investor presentation, there was minimal EBITDA contribution from that international business, and these actions we outlined both at the investor call and today have roughly a two-year payback.

We're using some of that benefit to offset the soft market in 2016 and we expect it to contribute more fully in 2017..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Sam Eisner from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open..

Yeah. Good morning, everyone..

Hey, Sam..

Good morning..

So, going back to the WAVE comments, if I look at your 10-Q, looks as though WAVE is up $9 million of gross profit on $7 million of revenue, pretty exceptional gross margins there.

So I'm curious -- what do you have embedded for either incrementals for that business for the rest of the year and, in addition, if I look at your adjusted EBITDA midpoint of around $320 million, up about $24 million year-on-year, curious how much of that is strictly related to deflation of WAVE tailwinds. Thanks..

Yeah. Hey, Sam. This is Brian. So, remember that what we show in the Q is actually full WAVE contributions. So, at a 50/50 we get about half of that. And so, as we move forward and look to the rest of the year, WAVE benefited greatly from the volume, especially in Americas, as we noted earlier. And they've got some good guys in the quarter around steel.

There's some headwind there with steel prices going up. But we believe we've got the right position and pricing actions prepared to help continue that benefit we saw on WAVE..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Jim Barrett from CL King & Associates. Your line is now open..

Good morning, everyone. Brian, a question for you.

The $50 million to $60 million in cash separation charges -- would you give us an update as to how much has been incurred through Q1 and how much would you expect to spend in Q2 and beyond?.

Yeah, in Q1, Jim, we had $15 million of cash related to that. And so we're still holding the $50 million to $60 million for the full year, obviously, that's flowing through payables and accruals and so forth, so $15 million of cash in the first quarter..

Thank you. And we have a follow-up question from Keith Hughes from SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Your line is now open..

Thank you. You referred in the guidance about $40 million of – $42 million, I think, of corporate loss for the year. There's $17 million according to this footnote in this result.

Are some of those one-time or (44:35) give me some sort of discussion?.

Yeah, Keith. This is Brian. So, as you look at the $17 million, back out the $3 million of depreciation, which is net – previously recorded in corporate, another $3 million for the non-cash pension. So, you get down to about $11 million. If it's even across the four quarters, you get the $44 million. We put out there $42 million.

So, there's a little bit of movement in between the quarters, but that's the logic to get to the full year..

Thank you. And this does conclude our question-and-answer session. I would now like to return the call back over to Vic Grizzle, President and CEO for any further remarks..

Yeah, just want to say thanks again, everybody, for joining us today, for your interest in the new Armstrong World Industries. We're excited about our possibilities as a pure-play ceilings company and what our strong leadership position provides us a platform.

And the strong start for the year in the Americas in particular and our continued ability to expand margins in this business are encouraging. And we're going to remain focused on delivering our 2016 plan. We look forward to updating you on our future calls and want to say thanks again and have a good afternoon..

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes today's program. You may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day..